Next up for British bestseller Simon Winchester, whose book on the Krakatoa eruption is currently the disaster epic of choice at bookstores, is the story of one of our own: the great San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906. His longtime HarperCollins editor Larry Ashmead, who is finally hanging up his hat after 43 years, signed it with Peter Matson at Sterling Lord Literistic, and Harper will publish (without Larry) in fall 2005, on the eve of the centenary year of the disaster, which leveled the city, killing hundreds. Winchester, who studied geology at Oxford, is moving to San Francisco for a few months to do his research.