ONE DAY MY SISTER DISAPPEARED: A Memoir

Moroccan-born Orban has published 10 novels in French; here she offers a memoir of her friendship with her sister, Maco, who died pregnant with her third child when she was only 35. In brief, elegiac chapters studded with old photographs of the two sisters, Orban revisits their childhood days in the early 1960s, playing together in their seaside home in northern Morocco, where the "people around us were rich only in time, which they offered us with carefree generosity." These were magical years: "I loved being a child so much that I never wanted to grow up." Orban, four years older than her sister, was shy and bookish; Maco was wild and passionate. Maco fell in love and married a Moroccan Muslim. Willing to convert and adopt a conservative lifestyle, but unwilling to accept his eventual infidelity, Maco divorced her husband, which meant she lost most contact with their two children. In constant pain from that separation, she still found love again and remarried. While Orban does not specify what killed Maco—an aneurysm, perhaps—her grief at the loss of her sister is immense. For not only has she lost her oldest friend, she has also lost her favorite season, her childhood. Even as a teenager, she realized, "The only one with whom I could secretly prolong that childhood was Maco." Now she mourns: "With Maco, I was still a child; I no longer am." Orban's is a slight but heartfelt account of a very personal loss. Agent, Maria Campbell . (On sale July 6)

Forecast: In France; where Orban is known as a playful literary critic, her books have been bestsellers. As this is her first book to be translated into English, however, American readers probably won't have heard of her and therefore may not be drawn to her perso nal story.