Between the Bridge and the River, Craig Ferguson, 43 (Chronicle, May)

Born: Glasgow, Scotland; now lives in Los Angeles

Favorite authors: "Russians and Americans, mostly"; from Vonnegut, Melville and Twain to Ostrovsky, Dostoyevski and Bulgakov

Career arc: Musician; stand-up comedian; actor, screenwriter, director; currently hosting The Late, Late Show.

Plot: The misadventures of two Glaswegian chums and a pair of illegitimate brothers from the American South are accompanied by real-life figures ranging from Socrates and Jung to Tony Randall.

Author's toughest challenge: "It took me a year to write the book, but it took eight or nine months to write the first 100 pages. Eventually, you hit a tipping point, and after that the book writes you. I can't take screenplay writing seriously now. You're finished in 120 pages and it's all dialogue? That's not writing at all; it's creating a set of instructions for Ikea furniture."

Publisher's pitch: "The novel is bawdy and literary and messy—and guaranteed to offend everyone, regardless of race, religion, national origin or sexual preference," says Chronicle's editorial director Jay Schaefer.

Opening lines: "Cloven-hoofed creatures passed this way. They were never sure what kind. Some weird brainy kid like Gordy McFarlane or Freckle Machine might know, but Fraser and George's limited information about wildlife came from children's television and the free posters that they got with their Pathfinder shoes." —Ron Hogan

Cellophane, Marie Arana, 55 (Dial Press, July)

Born: Lima, Peru; now lives in Washington, D.C.

Favorite authors: Nabokov, Conrad, García Márquez, Flannery O'Connor

Career arc: From teacher of English in Hong Kong to book editor to book review editor (The Washington Post) to memoirist (American Chica) to novelist

Plot: An engineer who manufactures brown paper in the Amazon jungle suddenly decides he wants to make cellophane. The minute he does, everything changes: The people in his little town are overcome by an irresistible lust to tell the truth.

Author's toughest challenge: "The hardest thing—the complication I could never have predicted—was that so many characters wanted to muscle their way into the story. I had no choice but to say yes to them all."

Publisher's pitch: Says editorial director Susan Kamil, "Marie is a virtuosic storyteller. Her novel is a fantastic marriage of magical setting, Latin mythology and universal human experience. Interpersonal relationships and love stories are at the heart of the book, which reads like a collaboration between Isabel Allende and John Cheever."

Opening lines: "Don Victor Sobrevilla Paniagua always knew that he would die as he was born: in a bustling metropolis, surrounded by doting women, far from his paper, the trees, and the rush of a great, dark river. He had come into the world on an arid coast... but his days would spool out in a greener place, in an uncharted corner of the universe, in a life marked by chance and destiny." —Suzanne Mantell

The Faithful Spy, Alex Berenson, 33 (Random House, Apr.)

Born: New York City

Favorite authors: T.C. Boyle, John le Carré, Joan Didion

Career arc: From New York Times reporter embedded in Iraq to first-time novelist (with a screen deal that will cast Keanu Reeves as the book's lead character)

Plot: John Wells, the first American spy to infiltrate al-Qaeda, has been sent back to the U.S. as part of a sleeper cell. Still suspect in the eyes of the terrorists and the CIA alike, Wells has to carry out two diametrically opposed missions to save the lives of thousands of innocent people.

Author's toughest challenge: "Making the transition from nonfiction to fiction. As a journalist, I'm telling other people's stories, listening to their voices and trying to recreate them honestly. Writing fiction, I had to find my own voice. The experience was exhausting but exhilarating."

Publisher's pitch: Says editor Mark Tavani, "Thriller readers want fiction that draws on fact, and this does that as well as anything I've ever read. Alex elevates the post-9/11 novel to a higher level with smart, muscular prose. His book is completely accessible and deeply felt, the characters feel real and the suspense is scary."

Opening lines: "Fall 2001. Shamali Plain, north of Kabul, Afghanistan. John Wells tipped his head to the sky, searching vainly for a pair of F-15s circling slowly above in the darkness. Even during the day the American jets were difficult to spot. Now, with the sun hiding behind the mountains, they were all but invisible." —Suzanne Mantell

Family and Other Accidents, Shari Goldhagen, 29 (Doubleday, Apr.)

Born: Cincinnati, Ohio; currently lives in New York City.

Favorite authors: Will Leitch (her fiancé), Judy Blume

Career arc: Journalism school to "celebrity stalker"/reporter/magazine writer to author

Plot: Two brothers, age 15 and 25, suddenly find themselves without parents, and though under the same roof and inhabiting different universes, they learn to make their way in the world over the course of 25 years.

Author's toughest challenge: "It was hard to realize when I was done. I kept working on the manuscript for six months after I finished. I kept thinking it needed other things. I also think for every writer one of the hardest things is to cut something you love and say, 'As much as I like this, it's just not going to work.' "

Publisher's pitch: "The sibling relationships in this book are profoundly affecting," says Doubleday editor-in-chief Bill Thomas. "The book combines the shrewd, detailed portrait of everyday life that Anne Tyler excels at, with a really poignant exploration of how loss can affect love that Dave Eggers's memoir did so memorably."

Opening lines: "One hundred and ninety-eight hours before Jenny Greenspan's birth control pills should kick in, Connor is in juvenile traffic court explaining how he followed a pickup truck through a yellow light and slammed into the side of a minivan. 'It was raining and hard to see.' " —Hilary Crist

How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life, Kaavya Viswanathan, 19 (Little, Brown, Apr.)

Born: Chennai, India; grew up in Scotland and New Jersey

Favorite author: Ian McEwan

Career arc: Currently a sophomore at Harvard

Plot: At her Harvard admissions interview, overachiever Opal Mehta is unable to answer one question: "What do you like to do for fun?" In order to have a chance at admission, Opal learns to date, party and make friends.

Author's toughest challenge: "Writing the book while I was in school. After I outlined and had the plot set in my mind I put myself on a schedule of writing 50 pages every two weeks. The last 50-page installment was due the last week of finals. I pretty much sat in the library and drank several cups of coffee a day."

Publisher's pitch: Publisher Michael Pietsch says, "Kaavya has amazing writing skills, and her novel will touch the nerve of every parent who's lived with the insane pressures put on today's overscheduled, overpressured students. The Indian family background is another delightfully vivid and funny part of this sharp-eyed debut."

Opening lines: "I started my count at one. By the time we got out of the car and began walking towards the sign that said Byerly Hall: Admissions Office, I was at nineteen. Reciting my prime numbers always helped me relax. It was an old trick I used to get through important tests or presentations. It was what I did before every cello recital and Mathletes scrimmage. 23,29." —Natalie Danford

The King of Lies, John Hart, 40 (St. Martin's Minotaur/Thomas Dunne, May)

Born: Durham, N.C.; now lives in Greensboro

Favorite author: Pat Conroy

Career arc: Retail banker; criminal defense attorney; now on lengthy sabbatical from Merrill Lynch to write full-time.

Plot: After a lawyer in a North Carolina town discovers his father's corpse, the murder investigation tears at the frayed threads of his family life.

Author's toughest challenge: "I was living in Salisbury, N.C. Nothing is secret in a small town like that, so it was very public when I quit my law practice to write the book. It took most of a year, I had a new baby, and there were plenty of people around willing to tell me that I was insane to try it. Keeping a positive attitude was probably the hardest part. I couldn't have done it without my wife."

Publisher's pitch: "John's characters, landscape and prose are as captivating as his southern accent," says Thomas Dunne associate publisher Pete Wolverton. "His ability to craft a page-turning thriller with such power and emotion simply overwhelmed us."

Opening lines: "I've heard it said that jail stinks of despair. What a load. If jail stinks of any emotion, it's fear: fear of the guards, fear of being beaten or gang-raped, fear of being forgotten by those who once loved you and may not anymore. But mostly, I think, it's fear of time and of those dark things that dwell in the unexplored corners of the mind." —Ron Hogan

You're Not You, Michelle Wildgen, 31 (St. Martin's/Thomas Dunne, June)

Born: Cleveland, Ohio; now lives near New York City

Favorite authors: Lorrie Moore, Alice Munro

Career arc: Waitress; assistant to a woman with MS; senior editor at Tin House; writer for PW

Plot: Stuck in an affair with a married professor and in a college major she has little interest in, Bec answers an ad for a caregiver. She and her charge, a woman with Lou Gehrig's disease (ALS), become surprisingly intimate, and Bec's life changes in unanticipated ways.

Author's toughest challenge: "Being used to writing short stories in a compressed, economical style, it was difficult to write in the expansive style of a novel without babbling. I had gotten a residency at Hall Farm in Vermont, and I was crazy enough to think I'd write a whole draft of the book in a week. (P.S. I actually managed it.)"

Publisher's pitch: "It's a darkly humorous book," says editor Katie Gilligan. "The humor adds a level of intimacy and accessibility. Because it deals with two women, it will be very approachable for a female audience. But ALS doesn't discriminate, and men will enjoy it, too."

Opening lines: "I would begin on Thursday morning. The idea was for me to arrive early, by seven thirty, so Evan could show me what he did for his wife before he left for work, and afterward I'd follow him and Kate through a typical morning and afternoon. I had one day to observe and then training was over." —Judith Rosen