FICTION/FIRST FICTION & COLLECTIONS
AGATE (agatepub@ameritech.net)
The Team (June, $23.95) by Dawson Perkins concerns a black professional woman's recovery after being raped by a basketball star. 5-city author tour.
ALGONQUIN
Poe & Fanny (May, $25.95) by John May revolves around doomed American writer Edgar Allan Poe.
Ursula, Under (June, $25.95) by Ingrid Hill opens with a two-year-old girl trapped in a mineshaft before tracing the lives of her forebears.
AMISTAD
Shifting Through Neutral (May, $23.95) by Bridgett M. Davis is a coming-of-age novel set in early 1970s Detroit.
ATRIA
Asphalt (May, $24) by Carl Hancock Rux. After returning from Paris, a young musician finds himself living among eccentrics squatting in a once glorious brownstone. Advertising. Author publicity.
BALLANTINE
The Botox Diaries (June, $23.95) by Lyn Schnurnberger and Janis Kaplan. Two friends turn 40 and long for adventure. Advertising. Author publicity.
BANTAM SPECTRA
The Arcanum (May, $22) by Thomas Wheeler is set in 1919 as secretive investigators seek a lost, dark book of the Bible. 27,500 first printing. Ad/promo. Author publicity.
BLOOMSBURY
The Half-Life (May, $23.95) by Jonathan Raymond. Two friendships in two time periods—set in the Pacific Northwest of the early 1800s and the 1980s—share a common landscape. Advertising. Author tour.
BROADWAY BOOKS
The Right Address (Apr., $21.95) by Caroline Doyle-Karasyov and Jill Kargman sends up New York's upper crust when an outsider marries into a Park Avenue fortune.
CANONGATE
How the Light Gets In (June, $23) by M.J. Hyland mixes humor and pathos in a story about a child on the brink of adulthood. 30,000 first printing. 6-city author tour.
CARROLL & GRAF
What to Wear to See the Pope (Apr., $24) by Christine Lehner. Ten interconnected stories feature a high-strung matriarch with many obsessions, including St. Theresa's eyebrows.
DELACORTE
Mina (Mar., $21.95) by Jonatha Ceely. A young Irish woman in service in an 1850s English country manor dreams of reconnecting with her beloved brother in America. 25,000 first printing. Advertising. Author publicity.A Season for the Dead (Apr., $21.95) by David Hewson introduces Italian cop Nic Costa and a series of cunning murders, each echoing the death of a martyr of the Church. 25,000 first printing. Advertising. Author publicity.
DIAL PRESS
Animal Crackers: Stories (Mar., $22.95) by Hannah Tinti is a collection of 11 unnerving tales in which animals expose humanity's fears and longings. 25,000 first printing. Advertising. Author publicity.
The Rule of Four (Apr., $24) by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason. Two friends seek to unveil the secrets of the 1499 text, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili , despite another researcher's death. 100,000 first printing. Advertising. Author publicity.
Reproduction Is the Flaw of Love (June, $23) by Lauren Grodstein. Commitment-phobic Joel waits for Lisa to take an at-home pregnancy test. 30,000 first printing. Advertising. Author publicity.
DOUBLEDAY
Angels Crest (June, $23.95) by Leslie Schwartz visits a community in severe crisis.
When Did You Stop Loving Me? (June, $23.95) by Veronica Chambers follows a young woman's efforts to maneuver her family's mesh of love, loss and magic.
DOUBLEDAY/NAN A. TALESE
Faithful (Mar., $23.95) by Davitt Sigerson is an erotic novel about an unabashedly sexual woman and the successful London trader who marries her. Ad/promo. Author publicity.
FARRAR, STRAUS & GIROUX
After (May, $20) by Claire Tristram. A widow whose husband was killed by Muslim extremists takes a Muslim lover one year later.
Natasha and Other Stories (June, $18) by David Bezmozgis spans 23 years in a loving family of Russian Jews who fled Riga for Toronto.
FEMINIST PRESS
Deborah (July, $24.95) by Esther Kreitman. This coming-of-age novel, set in pre-WWI Poland, is by the sister of Isaac Beshevis Singer.
FOURTH ESTATE
Colors Insulting to Nature (June, $24.95) by Cintra Wilson is a jocose skewering of America's adulation of celebrity. 35,000 first printing.
FREE PRESS
Hidden (July, $23) by Paul Jaskunas pieces together scenes before and after a woman is viciously attacked by a man whom she believes to be her husband. Ad/promo. Author publicity.
GREYCORE PRESS
The Basket Maker (Apr., $24.95) by Kate Niles. A young woman reaches out to a burn victim and learns about herself. Author tour.
HARCOURT
Some Great Thing (Apr., $24) by Colin McAdam brings together a builder who claims he can plaster walls that change lives and a disaffected Ottowa businessman in the 1970s.
The Circus in Winter (July, $23) by Cathy Day follows circus performers at their winter home in the fictional town of Lima, Ind. Author publicity.
The Ghost Writer (July, $25) by John Harwood. Trying to decipher a past that his mother refuses to discuss, Gerard reads ghost stories written by his grandmother, which begin to come true. 50,000 first printing.
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN
This Is Not Civilization (June, $24) by Robert Rosenberg gathers four culturally diverse individuals in Istanbul on the eve of the 1999 earthquake. 30,000 first printing.Ad/promo. Author tour.
The Wasp Eater (Aug., $21) by William Lychack. A boy conspires with his father in hopes of reuniting his parents after his mother learns of her husband's infidelity. Author tour.
HYPERION
Gotham Diaries (July, $23.95) by Tonya Lewis Lee and Crystal McCrary Anthony blends ambition, betrayal, scandal and sex in a tale about the Big Apple's upper-crust African-American society. 100,000 first printing.
INTRIGUE PRESS
Killing Neptune's Daughter (June, $24.95) by Randall Peffer uncovers repressed memories of crimes committed 35 years earlier.
KNOPF
Caramba!: A Tale Told in Turns of the Card (Apr., $25.95) by Nina Marie Martínez is set in a California town just this side of Mexico, where Natalie and Consuelo work at the Big Cheese Plant, but both have larger plans. 50,000 first printing. Advertising. 9-city author tour.
LITTLE, BROWN
Here Kitty Kitty (May, $22.95) by Jardine Libaire features Lee, the consummate party girl, whose wealthy French boyfriend always bails her out when she teeters.
MERCER UNIV. PRESS
Distant Hearts (Mar., $23) by Jaclyn Weldon White. A graduate student grieving for her dead mother comes upon a Civil War diary with parallels to her own life.
MILKWEED EDITIONS
Ordinary Wolves (May, $22) by Seth Kantner concerns an unsure boy who tries to comprehend the ways of the whites and the native Inupiaq.
MIRAMAX
Bergdorf Blondes (Apr., $23.95) by Plum Sykes is a social satire about Manhattan's rich and spoiled. 100,000 first printing. $125,000 ad/promo. 10-city author tour.
Bling (June, $24.95) by Erica Kennedy. A hip-hop mogul intends to turn a smalltown girl into a star. 125,000 first printing. $150,000 ad/promo. 10-city author tour.
MORROW
The Annunciation of Francesca Dunn (Mar., $23.95) by Janis Hallowell features a 15-year-old girl who becomes the object of divine yearning. 50,000 first printing.The Grave of God's Daughter (Apr., $23.95) by Brett Ellen Block. A 12-year-old girl unwittingly exposes family secrets in a 1940s Pennsylvania mining town. 25,000 first printing.
NBM
How Loathsome (June, $15.95) by Ted Naifeh and Tristan Crane scrutinizes gender's many permutations.
W.W. NORTON
Breaking the Tongue (Mar., $24.95) by Vyvyane Loh fictionalizes the fall of Singapore to the Japanese in WWII, focusing on one Chinese family with a son raised to be more British than the British. 7-city author tour.
Country of Origin (July, $24.95) by Don Lee deals with the 1980 disappearance of a half-breed American girl in Tokyo. 5-city author tour.
Inheritance (Aug., $23.95) by Lan Samantha Chang is narrated by Hong, whose grandmother committed suicide in China before the 1931 Japanese invasion. Author tour.
OVERLOOK
Dragon's Eye (Apr., $24.95) by Andy Oakes introduces Chief Investigator Sun Piao on a manhunt through modern China.
PARACLETE PRESS
Unveiling (Apr., $19.95) by Suzanne Wolfe. While restoring a strange medieval painting in a Roman church, a brilliant young woman uncovers more than anticipated.
PERMANENT PRESS
Ideal Marriage (Mar., $26) by Peter Friedman. A 16-year-old boy sets out to perfect all the sexual techniques described in Ideal Marriage after he discovers the manual in his parents' bureau.
The Kiss of the Prison Dancer (May, $26) by Jerome Richard. A concentration camp survivor witnesses a murder in Golden Gate Park, but the neo-Nazi accused of the killing is not who he saw.
PUTNAM
The Accidental Diva (Apr., $23.95) by Tia Williams. The ambitious African-American beauty director of a popular fashion magazine falls for a performance artist from Brooklyn's mean streets. Author publicity.
RANDOM HOUSE
What to Keep (Apr., $23.95) by Rachel Cline is a tripartite novel presenting its main character at 12, with a crush on her drama teacher; at 26, about to audition for Robert Altman and, at 36, a playwright before her first off-Broadway production. Advertising.
The Laments (June, $24.95) by George Hagen introduces a peripatetic clan that moves from South Africa to Bahrain, Rhodesia, England, then to suburban New Jersey. Ad/promo. Author tour.
Sleeping with Schubert (June, $21.95) by Bonnie Marson. The composer of the Unfinished Symphony inhabits Brooklyn lawyer Liza's mind and body to tie up loose ends. Advertising.
REGANBOOKS
The Floating Book (Mar., $25.95) by Michelle Lovric glides along in 1468 Venice on the tides of letters and lust, intrigue and betrayal. 75,000 first printing.
Antonio's Wife (Mar., $24.95) by Jacqueline DeJohn. An opera diva searches for the daughter she abandoned, while an unglamorous seamstress is torn by life's choices. 30,000 first printing.
RIVERHEAD
Crossing California (June, $24.95) by Adam Langer focuses on three Jewish families with teenagers living in Chicago in 1979. Ad/promo. 6-city author tour.
ST. MARTIN'S
Better Homes and Husbands (May, $24.95) by Valerie Ann Leff portrays residents who share an upscale address, 980 Park Avenue. Advertising.
The Preservationist (July, $23.95) by David Maine reimagines Noah and the flood with a wry modern sensibility. Advertising. BOMC selection.
SHOEMAKER & HOARD
Our Savage (Apr., $25) by Matt Pavelich is a bawdy love story.
SIMON & SCHUSTER
Bet Your Bottom Dollar: A Bottom Dollar Girls Novel (July, $19.95) by Karin Gillespie. When the Super Saver Dollar Store chain connives to cripple the Bottom Dollar Emporium of Cayboo Creek, S.C., three enterprising employees take action. 60,000 first printing. Ad/promo. DBC, LG selections. 7-city author tour.
SOURCEBOOKS LANDMARK
4th and Fixed (Aug., $24) by Reggie Rivers. The six-season NFL player concocts a yarn about a scheme to fix a season's worth of games. 25,000 first printing.
SUNSTONE PRESS
O'Brien's Desk (Apr., $28.95) by Ona Russell is a tale based on true events of political corruption and reform in 1923 Ohio.
TOBY PRESS
The Ballad of the Low Lifes (June, $19.95) by Enrico Remmert ushers in two modern-day grifters in Turin, Italy, who contrive to strike it rich.
Love, the Painter's Wife and the Queen of Sheba (May, $19.95) by Aliette Armel. To delay her husband's departure to Rome despite a papal invitation, the wife of painter Piero della Francesca recounts daily installments about the Queen of Sheba's journey to Jerusalem to meet King Solomon. Author tour.
VIKING
The Doctor's Wife (June, $24.95) by Elizabeth Brundage. A rising OB-GYN and his wife each seek consolation outside their marriage in upstate New York, where he has agreed to moonlight at the city's only abortion provider. Advertising. Author publicity.
Dirty Sally (Aug., $23.95) by Michael Simon. A New Yorker by birth, police detective Dan Reles is the only Yankee and the only Jew in Austin's homicide unit in the 1980s. 7-city author tour.
WARNER
Good Grief (Apr., $18) by Lolly Winston. Widowed, 36-year-old Sophie loses her job and waistline before moving to Oregon to reinvent herself. Ad/promo.
WARNER FAITH
A Sundog Moment: A Novel of Hope (Apr., $19.95) by Sharon Baldacci features a woman with multiple sclerosis whose attempt to obtain illegal drugs leads to her arrest. Advertising.
WARNER/WALK WORTHY
Boaz Brown (June, $22.95) by Michelle Stimpson. A young black Christian woman is attracted to a faithful man of God from a different race. Advertising.
