Diana Gabaldon's fans were eagerly awaiting The Fiery Cross, the fifth volume in her very successful Outlander series (the previous book, The Drums of Autumn, was a 1997 bestseller). With only a partial week on sale, four printings and nearly 400,000 copies in print, the Delacorte title has topped many bestseller lists this week and lands on PW's list in the #2 spot an excellent showing, considering the intense competition for our fiction list. On November 7, Gabaldon kicked off her 15-city tour in her hometown of Scottsdale, Ariz., at The Poisoned Pen, which has thus far sold nearly 700 copies of the author's latest. Delacorte reports that crowds and sales have been in the multiple hundreds at all events. In addition to a wide-ranging national ad campaign, Bantam Dell reissued the four backlist Outlander titles in trade paperback with new cover treatments and a specially designed floor display featuring excerpts from all the books.
With reporting by Dick Donahue.
