The Ritual Bath, Faye Kellerman's first book to star Lt. Peter Decker and his Orthodox Jewish wife, Rina Lazarus, was published in 1990 and won the Macavity Award for Best First Novel. Twelve bestselling mysteries later, Kellerman's still going strong—The Forgotten, which went on sale August 14, is already up to 200,000 copies in print. Morrow's promoting the novel with print ads and extensive in-store support; in addition, ads for Avon's mass market edition of Kellerman's Stalker (which concluded a four-week run on our charts last month) included a teaser for the new hardcover. PW's review, just one of the book's many glowing notices (others ran in People and the L.A. Times), said, "The author, as usual, seamlessly weaves her themes of religious beliefs and familial respect into a multilayered thriller, with finely realized characters and a tangible sense of place."
With reporting by Dick Donahue
