As sales reps make their first rounds before BEA, news of the highlights is trickling out. Some of the most hotly anticipated titles—Toni Morrison's new novel, Love (Knopf, Oct.); The Pythons Autobiography, lavishly recounted and illustrated by the members of Monty Python's Flying Circus (St. Martin's, Oct.); and Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven (Doubleday, July)—won't be available in galley form at the show. But perhaps that's just as well, since so many other enticing gems will be glittering in publisher's booths. Here's our treasure map.
Fiction Highlights
Doubleday (booth 1637): Winner of a National Book Critics Circle Award for Motherless Brooklyn (1999), Jonathan Lethem returns with The Fortress of Solitude (Sept. 16), the tale of a two boys—one black, one white—set in 1970s Brooklyn. One early reader, Rick Simonson of Elliott Bay Book Company, described it as "a big, smart, ambitious novel that explores familiar terrain with more empathy than you'd expect from most white writers." Lethem will sign books on Friday, May 31, at 2:30 p.m. at the Doubleday booth, and will appear at the Book and Author Tea at 10:30 a.m. on Sunday, June 1.
Having made a quantum leap in sales with last year's bestseller Lullaby, cult favorite Chuck Palahniuk is back with Diary (Aug. 26), an alarming fictional exploration of the quest for fame and immortality.
Meanwhile, National Book Award—winner Pete Dexter delivers Train (Sept. 30), a noir tale of crime, race and unlikely liaisons in 1950s Los Angeles.
Houghton Mifflin (4336—4337): Having made her debut with the Pulitzer Prize— winning paperback original story collection Interpreter of Maladies (2001), Jhumpa Lahiri is back. Her first novel, The Namesake (Sept.), follows the members of a tradition-bound Indian family through their transformation into Americans over three decades. Lahiri will be a breakfast speaker on Saturday, May 31, from 8—9:30 a.m. From 10—11 a.m., she will sign books at table 29, and from 2—3 p.m., she will appear in Houghton's booth.
Beloved Boston Globe columnist and author of the National Book Award—winning memoir American Requiem, James Carroll delivers his first novel in nine years, Secret Father. Joining the recent wave of Graham Greene—style spy stories, it's the tale of three American teens in 1961 Berlin, caught in intense danger that entangles their families in a daring rescue.
Knopf (1637): Though David Guterson's first novel, Snow Falling on Cedars (1994), was a major bestseller and remains a core backlist title, his second, East of the Mountains (1999), didn't capture as wide a following. Now, four years later, he's back, with Our Lady of the Forest (Oct.), about a teenage migrant mushroom picker who claims to see the Virgin Mary. Jan Healy, buyer at Eagle Harbor Books, Bainbridge Island, Wash., told PW that the novel is "in line with Snow in its potential to appeal to a broad group of readers—the writing is excellent and I loved the characters." Guterson will sign books in the Knopf booth on Friday, May 30, at 3 p.m.
Miramax (1456): As admired in some circles as he is controversial in others, Martin Amis is back at BEA with his first major novel in five years, Yellow Dog (Nov.). He certainly hasn't lost his misanthropic bite: themes here include violence between men, tortuous alliances between the sexes and our disintegrating future. Amis will autograph books on Saturday, May 31, from 1—2 p.m. at autographing table 2.
Grove Atlantic (3637, 3639): Last fall, Grove paid one of its highest advances ever—$250,000 for two books—to Frances Itani. At the 2002 Frankfurt book fair, her novel Deafening (Sept.) was touted as "the book of the show" after rights sold in a dozen countries. At BEA, booksellers will be buzzing about meeting the author at pre-show dinners. Among them is sure to be Mark LaFramboise, buyer at Washington, D.C.'s Politics and Prose, who was captivated by the story of a deaf woman who falls in love with a hearing man on the eve of WWI. "The main character was very original, and so convincingly portrayed," he told PW.
Farrar, Straus & Giroux (4236, 4237): After Jonathan Franzen's 2001 National Book Award—winning The Corrections and Jeffrey Eugenides's 2002 Pulitzer Prize—winning Middlesex, what next? The answer is No Matter How Much You Promise to Cook or Pay the Rent You Blew It Cauze Bill Bailey Ain't Never Coming Home Again (Oct.) by Edgardo Vega Yunqué. An arts activist and the stepfather of singer Suzanne Vega, the Puerto Rican—born author is a fixture among New York and Latino literati. His epic saga of intimately connected black, white and Latino families follows a novel and two story collections published over the last 20 years by Arté Publico Press.
Pantheon (1637): Praised as a writer's writer, Charles Baxter reached a new level of sales with his fourth novel, Feast of Love, which was nominated for a 2001 National Book Award. Will his fifth take him higher? Saul and Patsy (Sept.) is set in Five Oaks, Mich., and follows a contemporary young husband and wife who come to question all they know about themselves and each other. Baxter will sign books at the Pantheon booth at 1 p.m. on May 31.
Hyperion (1456): How do you top a #1 international bestseller that sold more than six million copies in the U.S.? That's the question facing Mitch Albom, author of Tuesdays with Morrie, and his new publisher, Hyperion. Albom's second book delivers an inspirational fable set in the afterlife, The Five People You Meet in Heaven (Sept. 23). Albom will give a 30-minute talk on Saturday, May 31, at 3 p.m., in The Theatre, Room 411. Signed special edition hardcover advance reading copies will be available at this event only.
Anna Quindlen, whose recommendation last year helped launch The Lovely Bones into the stratosphere of bestsellerdom, has tapped two novels as BOMC main selections this July. One is Laura Moriarty's The Center of Everything (July 2), which Quindlen also favored with a rave blurb. The tale of the 10-year-old daughter of single mother in Kansas is also a Literary Guild pick, and will be excerpted in Seventeen. (See under Little, Brown for Quindlen's other pick.)
HarperCollins (4437): Playwright and actress Ann-Marie MacDonald was already a literary star in her native Canada when Oprah chose her first novel, Fall on Your Knees (2002), as a summer reading pick. Now, she's moved from S&S to HarperCollins with The Way the Crow Flies (Oct.), about a high-spirited eight year-old living on an Air Force base near the Canadian border in the early '60s.
Ten years after Edward P. Jones's first collection of stories, Lost in the City (Morrow), was nominated for a National Book Award, he returns with The Known World (Amistad, Sept.). It's a richly observed novel about the dissolution of a slave plantation that—through the surprising twists of pre— Civil War Virginia—was owned by a black man. "It's a very powerful book," said Elliott Bay's Simonson, comparing Jones's style to Charles Frazier's in Cold Mountain. Raised in the U.S. and Chile, Alberto Fuguet started a literary movement when he edited an anthology of Latin American writers under 35 who broke from the conventions of magical realism. In his second novel, The Movies of My Life (Rayo, Oct.), Fuguet recounts the story of a 37-year-old Chilean seismologist whose bastardized outlook was spawned by the American movies he watched growing up.
Scribner (4320, 4321): Named one of Britain's 20 best young writers under 40 by Granta magazine earlier this year, Monica Ali makes her debut with Brick Lane (Sept.). Told from the point of view of a young woman brought from Bangladesh to East London to marry, the novel won unanimous approval from Granta's five judges, who compared Ali to Manil Suri and Zadie Smith. But will the U.K. buzz translate?
Free Press (4320, 4321): Haven Kimmel's memoir, A Girl Named Zippy (2000), was a Today Show pick last summer, but her first novel, the #1 Book Sense pick The Solace of Leaving Early (2002), didn't win a wide audience. Maybe things will look up with her second novel, Something Rising (Light and Swift) (Jan. 2004), about a teenage pool hustler who must come to terms with her brilliant sister, pensive mother and often-absent father.
St. Martin's (4136, 4137): Former Time magazine bureau chief Jonathan Hull's first novel, Losing Julia (2000), was a Book Sense pick that hit several bestseller lists. His second, The Distance from Normandy, mines similar territory of love and regret, as a WWII vet comes to terms with his misfit teenage grandson over the course of a summer.
When David Sedaris made it his mission to shower praise on author Jincy Willett at every stop on his tour last year, Thomas Dunne Books rushed out a new edition of her 1987 short story collection, Jenny and the Jaws of Life. Her first novel suggests that Willett now has her eyes on a bigger prize: Winner of the National Book Award is the story of two rather odd sisters in present-day Rhode Island.
Algonquin (737, 837): A Southern writer with a solid following outside the region, Clyde Edgerton returns with his eighth novel, Lunch at the Piccadilly (Sept.), about an irreligious old lady in a nursing home, who keeps company with three other slightly addled women and a freelance evangelical preacher.
William Morrow (4437): Sena Jeter Naslund's first novel, Ahab's Wife (1999), rode to success on a wave of books related to Moby-Dick. Her second, Four Spirits (Sept.), is set in Birmingham, Ala., during the upheaval of the '60s. Will lightning strike twice?
Random House (1637): The creator of Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue, Steven Bocchco, delivers Death in Hollywood (Sept.), a comic crime novel about a writer who witnesses a murder and insinuates himself into the investigation to get material for his screenplay, and to get even with his estranged wife. Little, Brown (1445—1449): Hollywood settings and filmmakers-turned-novelists seem a good fit for BEA's L.A. venue, and The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters by Elisabeth Robinson (Jan. 2004) fulfills both criteria. It's a tale of two sisters whose relationship is tested when one struggles to make a movie and the other struggles simply to survive. Former Hollywood producer Robinson's credits include Braveheart and Last Orders. Rights sold in the U.K., Germany, Holland, France and Italy.
The house is also giving away copies of Carolyn Parkhurst's summer debut novel, The Dogs of Babel (June 13), the second one to be selected by Anna Quindlen as a BOMC main selection for July. Early word is that it's likable, but a little too farfetched to catch on as widely as Alice Seybold's novel did last year. MacAdam/Cage (447): The Time Traveler's Wife (Sept. 9) by Audrey Niffenegger features one of the season's trick plots. It's the story of a man whose genetic clock spontaneously sends him to the future and the past and his timebound wife. Harvest holds the paperback rights, and film rights have been optioned to New Line Cinema, in association with Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston's production company.
The house will also feature galleys of Reunion (May), a first novel by historian Michael Oren, whose Six Days of War, was a bestseller for Oxford University Press last year. Backed by a $40,000 marketing plan, his new book recounts the reunion of an infantry battalion whose members gather 50 years after the Battle of the Bulge.
Hot Nonfiction
Viking (429): Readers have steadfastly been ignoring tales of tragedy at sea lately, but Caroline Alexander, author of the bestselling The Endurance, will likely draw them to The Bounty (Sept. 18), an account of Captain Bligh and the infamous mutiny of 1789.
Crown (1637): The centennial of the Wright Brothers' first flight, to be marked this December, has prompted a deluge of books. Still, chances are good that former NPR host and bestselling author Noah Adams will capture a share of the attention with The Flyers (Oct. 14), in which he traces the brothers' footsteps and discovers who they were as men and inventors. Adams will sign books at the Crown booth on Friday, May 30, from 2—3 p.m.
Walker (4120): Walker's narrative nonfiction entry, Edison & the Electric Chair (Sept.) by historian Mark Essig, recounts how Thomas Edison overcame his opposition to the death penalty and supported the electric chair—but only if it used his competitors' alternating current. If this sounds familiar, it's probably because there was a similar book last October, The Executioner's Current: Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and the Invention of the Electric Chair (Knopf). Can Walker pull it off anyway? Essig will appear at the Walker booth on Saturday, May 31.
