Kizmin Reeves, co-owner, Partners & Crime, New York City
The other day, I was standing at the cash register laughing out loud. When a customer who'd just bought several seriously dark crime novels looked at me curiously, I handed her the galley of Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next: First Among Sequels (Viking, July 24) and told her to read the first two pages. In a minute, she was giggling uncontrollably and asking if she could have it. I told her it wouldn't be out until July as I retrieved a copy of The Eyre Affair, explaining, “It will be even more fun if you start at the beginning.” Recommending Fforde's novels is a bookseller's dilemma. You can go on about literature-as-technology in popular culture in the Nextian world, where you can also build a Dodo from a Home-Cloning Kit. Or you can tackle his Nursery Crimes series. But handselling First Among Sequels is easy. Just hand them a copy and tell them to read a couple pages—and have plenty of the earlier titles on hand, because you'll sell them, too!
