Book Expo 2017- The Editors' Buzz

Book Expo 2017 is off and running and today was the annual Editors' Buzz, where six editors present the upcoming books they are excited about. It was standing room only today and every book sounded like a winner.

Editors' Buzz Panel Books

Annie Philbrick, owner of Bank Square Books and Savoy Book Shop introduced the editors, reading a short bio of each. Jackie Cantor, Senior Editor of Scout Press presented Unraveling Oliver by Liz Nugent, which is a bestseller in Ireland and won the Crime Novel of the Year.

She opened by reading the killer first sentence- "I expected more of a reaction when I hit her." When Mary reveals to her husband Oliver that she found a secret box he had hidden, he beats her unconscious. The rest of the novel explains how Oliver became this sociopath, in the vein of Dexter and Hannibal Lecter.

Cantor described how author Nugent's "sunny disposition, so nice, so normal" is at odds with her creation Oliver's behavior. Is he morally depraved or insane? We'll have to read to find out.

Nigerian author Ayobami Adebayo's Stay With Me was presented by Jennifer Jackson, Senior Editor at Alfred A. Knopf. Yejide is in love with her husband and he with her. They long to start a family, but after four years, they still have no child.

One day her mother-in-law shows up with Funmi, whom she introduces as her son's second wife. Ilesa is devastated; she and her husband had an agreement that she would be his only wife. Yejide is so angry, she gives her mother-in-law food poisoning, and is determined to get pregnant at any cost.

Adebayo is just 28 years-old, and her debut novel is being compared to Lauren Groff's fabulous Fates and Furies, with its focus on a marriage told from two different perspectives.

The editors

Sarah McGrath, Editor in Chief of Riverhead Books passionately spoke of Gabriel Tallent's My Absolute Darling, which tells the story of 14 year-old Turtle, who lives with her survivalist, misogynistic yet charismatic father. When Turtle gets a crush on a sweet, loving boy named Jacob, she sees how different life can be and problems ensue.

McGrath said that reading this book "will renew your faith in transformative power of reading," high praise indeed. She said there is a "jaw-dropping climax" and although there is a darkness to the story, there is also humor and sweetness. And no less than Stephen King has called a modern classic.

Ben George, Senior Editor and Publisher at Little, Brown and Company spoke of Brendan Mathews' The World of Tomorrow, a sweeping novel set in New York City in June of 1939, at the time of the World's Fair. The Great Depression is ending, and America is on the cusp of WWII.

We meet two Irish brothers on their way to New York to see their brother. Set over the course of one week, the three brothers, a jazz musician, a fragile heiress, a Jewish photographer, a priest, a vengeful mob boss and his well-intentioned henchman all collide in this story that features  "big dreams, big love and the price you pay for family." George said that it felt like the documentary, Man On A Wire.

Sally Kim, VP and Editorial Director at Putnam spoke of Chloe Benjamin's The Immmortalists, calling it a "love story of a family". When four young siblings go to a fortune teller, they are forever changed. She has the ability to tell people when they are going to die, so the underlying question is if you know the day you are going to die, how will you live your life?

The story is told chronologically, with each sibling taking turns telling the story that spans five decades. Kim said that it has "a crescendo effect to the climactic end" and with questions of magic versus science and destiny versus fate, this one sounds very intriguing.

The last book is A.J. Finn's The Women in the Window, discussed by Jennifer Brehl, Senior Vice President, Executive Editor and Director of Editorial Development at William Morrow. Brehl said she was "held hostage to the story and characters, with its precise plotting and pitch-perfect voice."

Our narrator is a woman, who is separated from her husband and child, and refuses to leave her apartment. She drinks, takes pills, and watches the perfect Russell family across the way. When she sees something dangerous in the Russells' windows, she calls the police, but no one believes her.

Quite a crowd!

This Hitchcockian-thriller has already sold the movie rights, with Scott Rudin producing a script by Tracy Letts (whom I love!). Brehl let the audience in on a secret she discovered about the author, A.J. Finn, whom everyone believed to be a woman. After raving about the book to her colleagues, she found out that the author was not only a man, but he was an editor who works down the hall from her!

The crowd laughed as Brehl said "I thought we were friends, we go to lunch together" and she never knew he was writing a book.

I was able to fight through the hordes to get a copy of all six books and now my big decision is in which order do I read these fabulous books?

I'll post more about Book Expo 2017 in the next few days, and post photos on Twitter (@bookchickdi) and on Facebook (Diane Short LaRue).

BEA 13- Editor's Buzz Panel Books

This is the first year that I missed the Book Expo's Editor's Buzz Panel, where six editors each present a book that people will be talking about in the fall. Luckily, the next day, Ron Hogan moderated a panel where the six authors of the books each had a few minutes to talk about their books to an eager audience.

I got to attend that, and I enjoyed hearing these passionate writers speak about their books. The first one up was a book I really wanted to get (and I'm totally absorbed in it right now)- Sheri Fink's Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital. Fink is a physician who has worked in emergency situations in natural disasters (like Haiti) and her book sounds totally fascinating.

She writes about Memorial Hospital in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. Patients and staff were trapped there and doctors were later arrested for euthanizing patients who were very ill. She interviews people who were there to get their stories, but it is also an indictment of how hospitals and medicine have become big business. It was my one  must-have book of the show. (I didn't get it there, but did get it through Edelweiss.) Five Days at Memorial publishes in September from Random House.

On a similar note, Katy Butler wrote a book Knocking On Heaven's Door- The Path to a Better Way of Death. Her premise (and I agree with it) is that our society does not know how to die. We spend so much money prolonging lives, thinking of the quantity of years, not the quality of life.

She spoke passionately of her father, who had a pacemaker put in at the age of 79, and how his years after that were spent dealing with chronic illnesses; he led a very unhappy, unhealthy few years. When her mother became older and frail, after seeing what her husband went through, she chose a different ending. No extraordinary measures were taken, and her last years were a life filled with joy. Knocking on Heaven's Door publishes in September from Scribner. Butler's website is here.








Wendy Lower's Hitler's Furies: German Women on the Nazi Killing Fields is about a subject not extensively studied- there were German women who worked with the Nazi's as secretaries helping to decide which people lived or died in the Eastern front. Some of these women even personally shot women and children themselves. The book is from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and publishes in October.

Still another non-fiction book is Jennifer Senior's All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood. Senior says that there are many books out there that discuss how parents affect their children, but none on how having children affect parents. It's an interesting premise, and she interviewed many people on the topic. It publishes in January 2014 from Harper Collins.

There were only two fiction books on the list this year, the first one is The Facades by Eric Lundgren. Set in a fictional city that the author says is a "cross between Kafka and Gotham City", a man searches for his famous opera singer wife, who has gone missing. The city itself is an important character in this provocative novel. Overlook Press publishes this novel in September.

Lastly, Amy Grace's novel The Affair of Others tells the story of a young widow who buys a small apartment building. She carefully chooses her tenants, expecting to be left to her grief. But when a female tenant moves in and turns things upside down, bringing sex and violence into their quiet lives, everything changes. This one looks like it would appeal to fans of The Other Typist, a book I just loved. Picador publishes this in August.

Ron Hogan did a great job keeping things moving along so that we could hear from all of the authors in the allotted time slot. I can't wait to read these buzzy books.

Editor's Buzz Panel at Book Expo

The Editor's Buzz Panel books

My favorite panel at the Book Expo is the Editor's Buzz Panel. Six editors each present a book from their publishing house that they are proud of, and one that they hope will be a big seller.

Denise Roy, a senior editor at Dutton, presented the novel The Underside of Joy by Sere Prince Halverson. It is the story of a woman who loses her husband in an accident. She has been mom to her husband's young daughter, but the girl's birth mother comes forward after the funeral to claim her daughter. It is an exploration of the complex relationship between two moms, and it is not what it appears to be.

Roy identified so strongly with the book because she too lost her husband at a young age, and she understood these characters.

Kathy Pories of Algonquin Books (one of my favorite publishing houses) spoke about Naomi Benaron's Running the Rift. The novel won the Bellwether Prize, chosen by author Barbara Kingsolver. Pories states that in her 15 years as a editor, she has never been so moved by a book as she was by this one.

It tells the story of a young Rwandan boy who wished to compete in the Olympics as a runner. Rwanda was undergoing the tragic genocide at this time, and this novel "coveys the beauty and tragedy" of this country. The young runner does not want to get involved in the Tutsi/Hutu conflict, he only wants to run, and this novel "forces us to recognize the repercussions of being apolitical".

Michael Pietsch from Little, Brown & Company had the book that most intrigued me, The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach. He had me at "it's the story of a catcher on a college baseball team". (My younger son caught since the age of eight.)

It's more than just a 'baseball novel' though. It's a novel about youth, of striving for perfection, of figuring out who you are, who you will become. Peach said he had "aching tenderness for these people". It has "two love stories, a death, a championship season- who could ask for more?" Not me.

 Popular author James Patterson said that is reminded him of The World According to Garp, which is one of my all-time favorite novels. This one moved to the top of my TBR list immediately.

Alaine Salierno Mason of W.W. Norton spoke about Diana Abu-Jaber's Birds of Paradise. She worked on Abu-Jaber's first novel, Arabian Jazz, and she believes that this will be her breakout book.

Set in Miami it's about "family, food and real estate- the three most important things in life." She says it is "deep and sophisticated", and speaks to "youthful passion and rebellion versus middle-aged wisdom".  Avis is a pastry chef whose thirteen-year-old daughter ran away five years ago. It's the story of how a family is lost to each other and must find each other again.

Mason states that this book is "a new level of literary achievement, so rich with complexity you can chew on it after reading."

Jenna Johnson from Harcourt Mifflin Houghton brought debut novelist Justin Torres we the animals, a slim story of three brothers and "the push, pull and comfort of each other". It forces us to "reconcile who we are with who our family wants us to be". It's "filled with energy, beauty and fireworks" and "this book creates hardcore fans."

She says that it is filled with original imagery and overcomes you. I met Torres at BEA when he was signing books, and he was just the most delightful person. He had a big smile for everyone, and seemed so thrilled to be there. He is a very genuine person.

The last book was from Alison Callahan of Doubleday, and it was Erin Morgenstern's novel The Night Circus.  Callahan got the manuscript and read it in five hours in the office cafeteria. It is set in the 19th century, where a magical circus pops up in a city for one day, then moves on to the next city.

There is a duel between two magicians, a game that only ends when one of the magicians dies. Celia and Marco find themselves pitted against each other, and falling in love at the same time. Callahan said that this is "like reading a book in 3-D, with pop-in visuals where you can smell the scents". It is a "feast for the senses in every way".

She says it is a big love story, like The Time Traveler's Wife. I can tell you that the buzz on this book at BEA reminded me of last year's Room by Emma Donoghue. Everyone wanted this ARC, and the line for her signing had hundreds of people in it, snaking all around the Javits Center. I spoke with one man who said that this was the most exciting, incredible book he's ever read.  I also liked the marketing of this book- Doubleday had people dressed in black and red, handing out bags of popcorn; it made an impression.

So to recap, the six books from the Editor's Buzz Panel in the order in which I want to read them:
1. The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach
2. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
3. Birds of Paradise  by Diana Abu-Jaber
4. The Underside of Joy by Sere Prince Halverson
5. Running the Rift by Naomi Benaron
6. we the animals  by Justin Torrres