Fiction/First & Collections
ACADEMY CHICAGO
Sadika's Way: A Novel of Pakistan and America (Sept., $23.95) by Hina Haq. This social comedy deals with a Pakistani girl's coming of age and her journey to America.
ALGONQUIN
Purple Hibiscus (Oct., $23.95) by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie presents a young woman in Nigeria when she, her family and her nation are on the brink of change. 25,000 first printing.
AMISTAD
The Known World (Sept., $24.95) by Edward P. Jones depicts a black slaveowner's struggles on his plantation. 75,000 first printing. BOMC, QPB, Black Expressions Book Club selections.
ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS
Deafening (Sept., $24) by Frances Itani. A deaf girl falls in love with a hearing man before war separates them. 100,000 first printing. $100,000 ad/promo. 17-city author tour.
ATRIA
Love Is the Drug (Feb., $24) by Sarahbeth Purcell. A 24-year-old obsessed with music and list-making journeys from Tennessee to Los Angeles intent on wooing back the man who broke her heart.
BALLANTINE
The Amber Room (Sept., $24.95) by Steve Berry. One of the greatest treasures ever made disappears during the Allied bombing of Germany. Advertising.Author publicity.
When the Finch Rises (Oct., $23.95) by Jack Riggs centers on two 12-year-old boys from unstable families in 1960s North Carolina. Advertising. 6-city author tour.
BLOOMSBURY
Waking Samuel (Oct., $23.95) by Daniel Coyle is a suspenseful account of how a woman finds forgiveness.
BROADWAY BOOKS
Sixty-Six (Sept., $24) by Barry Levinson. The director of the hit movies Diner and Rain Man offers a nostalgic rendering of America at a crossroad of innocence and tragedy.
CANONGATE
Vernon God Little (Oct., $23) by DBC Pierre. A profane but lovable man upholds the values of love and truth after a high school mass murder. 35,000 first printing. Advertising. Author tour.
CROWN
The Fourth Queen (Nov., $23.95) by Debbie Taylor. In the 18th century, a beautiful Scottish runaway braves the deadly politics of the harem when Morocco's emperor chooses her as one of his wives.
DELACORTE
Mission Flats (Sept., $23.95) by William Landay. When a DA is found brutally murdered in Maine, the town's chief of police confronts ghosts of crimes past that seem to implicate the highest echelons of the Boston PD. 35,000 first printing. Advertising.Author publicity.
The 37th Hour (Jan., $21.95) by Jodi Compton introduces Det. Sara Pribek, who specializes in missing-persons cases and whose own husband of two months is missing. 65,000 first printing. Advertising.Author publicity.
DOUBLEDAY
Dating Dead Men (Jan., $22.95) by Harley Jane Kozak. Greeting card artist and small business owner Wollie Shelley literally stumbles across a murder.
Going to Bend (Jan., $24.95) by Diane Hammond limns the friendships at the Souperior Café in an Oregon fishing village.
ECCO
Lucky Girls (Sept., $22.95) by Nell Freudenberger is a short story collection from an author featured in the New Yorker debut fiction issue. 50,000 first printing. BOMC, QPB selections.
FARRAR, STRAUS & GIROUX
One Pill Makes You Smaller (Sept., $24) by Lisa Dierbeck is a tale of the 1970s counterculture that echoes elements of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
The Book of Hard Things (Oct., $22) by Sue Halpern unfolds in an isolated mountain hamlet, where an unlikely friendship between two dissimilar men comes under the town's scrutiny.
FORGE
The Hummingbird Wizard (Sept., $24.95) by Meredith Blevins. A widow and her husband's gypsy family join forces to solve his murder. Advertising.Author tour.
Smothering (Nov., $23.95) by Wendy French addresses mother-daughter relationships, male-female disasters and career-girl languors. Advertising.
FOURTH ESTATE
Politics (Oct., $22.95) by Adam Thirlwell ponders the sleeping arrangements of a ménage à trois. 50,000 first printing.
GOOD BOOKS
Eyes at the Window (Oct., $22.95) by Evie Yoder Miller. The unsolved murder of an Amish baby roils a close-knit community of 19th-century pioneers.
HAMPTON ROADS
The Proposing Tree (Sept., $16.95) by James F. Twyman is based on an actual tree in L.A., where couples pledge their undying commitment.
HOLT/METROPOLITAN
Knee Deep in Wonder (Sept., $23) by April Reynolds. In this novel of four generations, a woman returns to Lafayette County, Ark., in part to discover "her people." Advertising.Author tour.
The Island Walkers (Jan., $25) by John Bemrose reveals the hard blue-collar lives among mill workers across a bend of Ontario's Attawan River.
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN
The Namesake (Sept., $24) by Jhumpa Lahiri. The Pulitzer Prize winner (for Interpreter of Maladies) explores the power of names and tradition in a novel about Gogol Ganguli, born in America to immigrant parents from India. 150,000 first printing. Advertising.11-city author tour.
The Calligrapher (Oct., $24) by Edward Docx employs the love poems of John Donne in the story of a London calligrapher who falls for an enigmatic woman. Advertising.Author tour.
HYPERION
The Five People You Meet in Heaven (Sept., $19.95) by Mitch Albom. Accidentally killed on his 83rd birthday, a man finds himself in the afterlife where five people reveal the meaning of his existence. 500,000 first printing. BOMC selection.
KENSINGTON
The Legend of Fire Horse Woman (Nov., $23) by Jeanne Wakatsuki-Houston follows three generations of courageous women that begins in 1902 Japan.
LITTLE, BROWN
Girls (Oct., $22.95) by Nic Kelman introduces a trio of men who lust for considerably younger females.
The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters (Jan., $23.95) by Elisabeth Robinson. A single woman in Hollywood is working on the fourth draft of her suicide note when she receives a plea for help from her younger married sister back home. Ad/promo.10-city author tour.
LYONS PRESS
Red Stag (Sept., $22.95) by Guy de la Valdene. When a gamekeeper on a count's estate in 1960s Normandy, France, is murdered, his visiting nephew vows vengeance.
MIRAMAX
Fatima's Good Fortune (Sept., $22.95) by Joanne and Gerry Dryansky is a fable about a Parisian housemaid with an unusual gift. 40,000 first printing. $40,000 ad/promo.
NOVELLO FESTIVAL PRESS
(704-432-0153)
Leaving Maggie Hope (Oct., $21.95) by Anthony S. Abbott, a poet, writes a coming-of-age story.
OVERLOOK PRESS
My Name Is Sei Shonagon (Nov., $23.95) by Jan Blensdorf. Named for the author of The Pillow Book, a woman reconstructs her past in Japan.
PETER OWEN
(dist. by Dufour Editions)
Santiago's Way (Oct., $24.95) by Patricia Laurent enters the mind of a woman tormented by insanity.
PELICAN PUBLISHING
Jubal (Sept., $23) by Gary Penley deals with interracial friendship and a house burned down in a small Mississippi town. Advertising.Author tour.
PERMANENT PRESS
Mother Country (Dec., $26) by Peggy Leon is narrated by Mala, an orphan in an Eastern European enclave of a poor 1950s Nevada mining town.
A Week in Winter (Feb., $26) by Barth Landor is set in an American embassy in Russia where Jews seek shelter as skinheads rampage in the city.
PICADOR
The Bride of Catastrophe (Oct., $24) by Heidi Jon Schmidt combines 1970s nostalgia with gay and bisexual politics. 8-city author tour.
PUTNAM
Idlewild (Sept., $23.95) by Nick Sagan. The son of the late astronomer creates a rebellious teen trapped in a futuristic school run by the enigmatic Maestro.
RANDOM HOUSE
Death by Hollywood (Sept., $24.95) by Steven Bochco. The Emmy-winning creator of L.A. Law and NYPD Blue introduces a screenwriter who witnesses a murder, then steals incriminating evidence for his latest script.
RAYO
The Lady, the Chef and the Courtesan (Sept., $21.95) by Marisol is a sensual romance. 60,000 first printing.
REGANBOOKS
My Cold War (Sept., $24.95) by Tom Piazza. A professor of Cold War studies finds his life unraveling when his father dies and his marriage fizzles. 40,000 first printing.
RUMINATOR BOOKS
Whiskey Love (Oct., $25) by Rachel Coyne depicts a self-destructive rural family.
ST. MARTIN'S
The Playgroup (Sept., $24.95) by Nelsie Spencer. When a West Side Manhattan mother joins an East Side preschool, she falls into sizzling sex.
Push Not the River (Sept., $24.95) by James Conroyd Martin tells of a young woman's coming of age in 18th-century Poland.
Departures (Feb., $24.95) by Lorna J. Cook delineates a pivotal year in a Midwestern family as experienced by two teenagers.
SCRIBNER
Brick Lane (Sept., $25) by Monica Ali. An outsider searches for her own voice. 75,000 first printing.
Daughter (Oct., $23) by asha bandele delves into the complex mother-daughter bond among black women.
SEVEN STORIES PRESS
Popular Music from Vittula (Oct., $21.95) by Mikael Niemi takes place in northern Sweden with characters that include a forest witch and a champion —bicyclist and music teacher with a thumb in the middle of his hand. Ad/promo.10-city author tour.
Haymarket (Dec., $24.95) by Martin Duberman retells the bloody 1886 riot in Chicago's Haymarket Square that led to the trial and hanging of leaders of the anarchist/socialist movement. Author publicity.
SIMON & SCHUSTER
The Hornet's Nest (Nov., $27) by Jimmy Carter is the 39th president's fictionalization of the Revolutionary War period in the deep South, with several characters based on his own ancestors. 300,000 first printing.
SOHO PRESS
The Darkest Child (Jan., $26) by Delores Phillips is about an African-American girl in Georgia with nine siblings and a beautiful but unstable mother. Advertising.Author tour.
SOUTHERN METHODIST UNIV. PRESS
Full House (Oct., $22.50) by Wendy Fairey. New York City and East Hampton, L.I., are the primary settings for 11 linked stories about an array of women.
STEINER BOOKS
Nicaea: A Book of Correspondences (Sept., $19.95) by Martin Rowe reimagines Christianity and Islam through two contemporary characters.
TOBY PRESS
Beulah Land (Oct., $19.95) by Krista McGruder collects stories of geographic and emotional desolation.
The Death of King Tsongor (Nov., $17.95) by Laurent Gaude. The ruler of a vast African empire contends with suitors for his royal daughter; winner of the French Prix Goncourt des Lycéens 2002.
UNIV. OF NEVADA PRESS
The Greyhound God (Sept., $23) by Keith Lee Morris. A restless man obsessed with the dog races sets off for his Idaho hometown.
UNIV. OF PITTSBURGH PRESS
Speed-Walk and Other Stories (Oct., $24) by Suzanne Greenberg features dislocated characters seeking to survive.
VIKING
Parasites Like Us (Sept., $24.95) by Adam Johnson. Birds are disappearing in South Dakota, and an anthropologist abandons the classroom to unearth the deadly legacy of a 1,200-year-old grave. 5-city author tour.
The Turtle Warrior (Jan., $24.95) by Mary Relindes Ellis. Brutalized by his father, a boy creates a shield from the shell of a giant turtle.
WALK WORTHY PRESS
Mercy, Mercy Me (Oct., $22.95) by Ronn Elmore is Christian fiction about a widowed African-American psychotherapist who learns a lesson in love and faith when scandal disrupts his world. Advertising.6-city author tour.
WARNER
On a Night Like This (Feb., $23.95) by Ellen Sussman. The right man appears at the wrong time for a fiercely independent single mother in San Francisco. Ad/promo.Author publicity.
