Publishers approach the fall trade shows with a variety of strategies: many use the regionals to build buzz for winter/ spring books, while others view them as a chance to remind booksellers about important fall titles. In any case, there are always heaps of galleys on offer. For help in identifying the most intriguing titles, PW enlisted Gayle Shanks, co-owner of Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe, Ariz., and Mary Gay Shipley, owner of That Bookstore in Blytheville, Ark. (Note: the galleys listed below will be featured at all 10 shows unless otherwise specified.)
Top of the Stack
It's not every year that Margaret Drabble delivers a new novel. That may mean that cultivating her audience involves some work, but it also makes The Red Queen (Harcourt, Oct.) an event for readers who enjoy her rich characterizations and assured writing. The novel focuses on an Englishwoman who, on the eve of a trip to Seoul, receives a mysterious 200-year-old manuscript by a Korean princess. (Drabble will tour the U.S. for 10 days this fall.)
Indie favorite
Donna Leon's Death in a Strange Country (Jan. 2005) is getting a big push in paperback from Penguin. "She's one of the best mystery writers out there," said Shanks, who relishes Leon's Venetian settings and her layered portrait of police commissioner Guido Brunetti. This time out, he investigates the drowning of a young American soldier caught in a high-level conspiracy.
Cassandra King's second novel, The Sunday Wife (2002), was an absorbing social drama set in a small Southern town. In The Same Sweet Girls (Hyperion, Jan. 2005), she explores the bonds between six old college friends. "You get real involved with these women early on," said Shipley, who'd just finished the galley when PW called. She also found "added depth" in King's exploration of how the women confront one friend's cancer diagnosis. (Author appearance at the SEBA Dinner.)
Physicist and former BBC producer
Simon Singh has proved himself a skillful popularizer of the history of science. His bestselling account of the quest to solve Fermat's Enigma (1997) and his history of cryptography, The Code Book (1999), have raised strong expectations for his Big Bang: TheOrigin of the Universe (HarperCollins/ Fourth Estate, Jan. 2005). Maybe by the time the book is published, readers of serious nonfiction will be ready for something besides politics.
Long known as a discerning writer and historian,
Adam Hochschild found critical and commercial success with his last book, King Leopold's Ghost (1998), about Belgium's brutal seizure of the Congo in the 1880s.Now, in Bury the Chains: Prophets,Slaves, and Rebels in the First Human RightsCrusade (Houghton, Jan. 2005), he turns to the abolitionist movement that began in England in 1787. "He can make difficult subjects interesting," observed Shanks, noting that her customers are increasingly curious about human rights around the world.
Writers to Watch
Booksellers looking for fresh fiction for readers in their 20s and 30s may find real promise in Sightseeing (Grove, Jan. 2005), a raw and tangy collection of stories set in Thailand exploring, with comic poignancy, how the small country is absorbing waves of Westernization. Its 25-year-old author,
Rattawut Lapcharoensap (known as "A"), was born in Chicago and raised in Bangkok, and will soon make his debuts in Granta, Zoetrope and Best New American Voices.
Suspense readers with a taste for noir might enjoy Out (Vintage, Jan. 2005) by
Natsuo Kirino, Japan's queen of crime fiction. This trade paperback reprint focuses on a young mother in the Tokyo suburbs who makes her living preparing box lunches. After she brutally strangles her abusive husband, she turns to her co-workers for help in covering it up. (Available at all shows except SCBA.)
Next up in the chick lit sweepstakes: Chloe Does Yale (Hyperion, Mar. 2005), a novel about a precocious Ivy League sex columnist. The buzz factor here is the notoriety of author
Natalie Krinsky's real-life sex column for the Yale Daily News, which snagged her a Today Show appearance after her comments on blow jobs attracted more than 200,000 hits on the newspaper's Web site.
Dutton reps are bringing only one galley to the shows: The Family Tree (Jan. 2005), a debut novel (and PW First Fiction pick) about the wife of a geneticist who tries to make sense of her life through family stories, '70s pop culture and genetic theory. It's all in the telling, they say, noting that author
Carole Cadwalladr was chief travel writer for the (U.K.) Daily Telegraph.
Audiobook narrator
Ron McLarty's Memory of Running (Jan. 2005) was first published as an audiobook that won praise from Stephen King in Entertainment Weekly, helping McLarty land a two-book contract from Viking and other deals in 12 countries. Also a PW First Fiction pick, the novel is about a supervisor at a GI Joe factory who takes a cross-country bike ride and sorts out his conflicted family memories along the way. (McLarty will appear at SEBA, and at the Author Feasts at PNBA and SCBA.)
Returning Fiction Favorites
As a novelist,
Francine Prose has won more praise from her fellow book critics than commercial success. But now she's got David Sedaris on her side: he's been plugging her Blue Angel (2000) on his recent tour, which may encourage some readers to try her new novel. A Changed Man (HarperCollins, Mar. 2005) is about a young neo-Nazi who comes under the sway of a Holocaust survivor who runs a human rights foundation.
HarperCollins is also on a mission to raise the profile of
Bernard Cornwell, who's traded his seagoing series for battlefield fare in a standalone novel, The Last Kingdom (Jan. 2005). It's set in England during the ninth-century war in which King Alfred the Great, his son and grandsons defeated the Danish Vikings.
Jennifer Haigh, author of the 2003 indie favorite Mrs. Kimble, about three women who marry the same man, is back with Baker Towers (Morrow, Jan. 2005). That Bookstore's Shipley has already grabbed the galley of this family saga set in a Pennsylvania coal town after WWII. "Mrs. Kimble did so well, people will want to know if they should read the next one," Shipley said. (Haigh will appear at NEBA.)
Paleoanthropologist
Mary Doria Russell's two speculative novels, The Sparrow (1996) and Children of God (1998), have become book club favorites. Her latest, A Thread of Grace (Random, Feb. 2005), focuses on the wartime conspiracy of Italian civilians, partisans, nuns and priests who saved the lives of 42,000 Jews during the last 20 months of WWII. (The galley will be available only at GLBA and NCIBA, where the author will appear.)
Nonfiction Rising
Shanks and Shipley both said they'd give a second glance to the paperback original Stolen Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy (Encounter, Sept.) by
John Fund, who writes the Wall Street Journal's "Political Diary" and is a freelance TV pundit. "Most of the population know who they're voting for, so maybe people will be more concerned about making sure this election is not stolen from them," Shipley observed.
Michael Perrywon over many Book Sense stores with Population 485 (2002), his offbeat memoir of returning to the small town where he grew up and joining the volunteer fire department. Now, in Off Main Street: Barnstormers, Prophets, and Gatemouth's Gator (HarperPerennial, Apr. 2005), Perry (who is also deputy sports writer at the Cincinnati Enquirer) offers a paperback original collection of essays and articles.
Booksellers looking for quirky new voices might also enjoy Nature Noir: A Park Ranger's Patrol in the Sierra (Feb. 2005), which Houghton Mifflin describes as "part Barry Lopez and part James Ellroy." The author is
Jordan Fisher Smith, a ranger who's dealt with survivalists, ill-equipped backpackers and other odd ducks over 14 years of patrolling a California park.
Cod, coal, the pencil—all have made for successful single-subject histories—so why not bees? Given how many successful novels there have been about them, Shanks said she could imagine Robbing the Bees: A Biography of Honey—The Sweet Liquid Gold that Seduced the World (Free Press, Apr. 2005) by
Holley Bishop attracting many readers.
Browsing the Booths
Atria:Readers who enjoyed Tracy Chevalier's Girl with a Pearl Earring and Harriet Scott Chessman's Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper are looking for something new. Maybe they'll like The Painted Kiss (Apr. 2005) by
Elizabeth Hickey,the story of an affair between painter Gustav Klimt and one of his models. (Available at all shows except PNBA.)
Harcourt: Former bookseller
Dean Bakopoulos's first novel, Please Don't Come Back from the Moon (Feb. 2005) is told from the point of view of a 16-year-old boy whose father disappears, as do, one by one, other men in their blue-collar neighborhood outside Detroit. (Author appearances at NEBA, SEBA, UMBA and GLBA.)
HarperCollins/Amistad:From the imprint that published Edward P. Jones's 2003 Pulitzer Prize—winning novel The Lost World comes Bound for Canaan: The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America (Apr. 2005) by
Fergus Bordewich, a sweeping account of America's first racially integrated, religiously inspired political movement.
HarperCollins/Ecco:Editor Dan Halpern presents the thriller Empire of the Wolves (Jan. 2005), the first novel by bestselling Frenchman
Jean Christophe-Grange to be published in the U.S.
Houghton Mifflin/Mariner:Josie and Jack (Feb. 2005) is a spooky debut novel about a young sociopath and his sister, written by 28-year-old
Kelly Braffet. As a paperback original, it would benefit from stronger jacket art, but there's still time to fix it.
Hyperion:Wondering if Hyperion can build on the success of last January's P.S. I Love You and make
Cecelia Ahern into a chick-lit brand name? Then try her second novel, Rosie Dunn (Feb. 2005).The house will also feature a road novel set during the Depression, The Wild Girl: The Notebooks of Ned Giles, 1932(Hyperion, Apr. 2005) by
Jim Fergus,whose first novel, One Thousand White Women (1998), won the Mountains and Plains Booksellers fiction award.
Penguin Press:Scoff all you want at books that sound like Da Vinci Code knockoffs, but the market's still hot. It might be smarter to sample The Geographer's Library (Feb. 2005), a literary mystery about a small-town reporter who stumbles onto a murder that involves 14 ancient talismans and the lost art of alchemy, by
Jon Fasman,a journalist at the Economist.
