The Wall Street Journal predicts a book with what they call a “cutesy” title, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, will be one of the summer’s surprise hits. According to the WSJ, pre-pub buzz is so strong among booksellers, that publisher Dial Press is shipping over 100,000 copies. It’s also the #1 Indie Next pick for August. Both B&N and Costco have placed large orders.

Libraries show light ordering, with reserves building. Few have ordered the audio or large type editions.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

• Hardcover: $22.00
• Publisher: The Dial Press (July 29, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 0385340990
• ISBN-13: 978-0385340991

• Audio CD: Unabridged, $80.00
• Publisher: Books on Tape; (Aug 5, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 1-4159-5440-2
• ISBN-13: 978-1-4159-5440-9

• Audio CD: Abridged, $22.00
• Publisher: Random House Audio; (July 29, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 0739368435
• ISBN-13: 978-0739368435

• Hardcover, Large Type: $34.95
• Publisher: Center Point Large Print; (September 2008)
• ISBN-10: 1602852693
• ISBN-13: 978-1602852693

This week’s People (July 21, with pink cover appropriate to the lead story “A Girl for Nicole and Keith”) gives 4 1/2 out of a possible 5 stars and a “People Pick” to debut novel, Telex from Cuba by Rachel Kushner.

Telex was also the cover review of the New York Times Book Review on Sunday and was reviewed in Monday’s San Francisco Chronicle. The story revolves around American executives and their families who lived luxurious lives on ex-pat enclaves in Cuba before Castro’s revolution.

The Times and Chronicle reviewers agree that, as the Times puts it, “the novel’s real draws are its complex relationships and well-researched cultural context.” The Chronicle reviewer says, “Kushner fills the novel with enough vivid details to make readers feel as if they are on the island at the zenith of American prosperity.” More fancifully, the Times review ends with, “Kushner has fashioned a story that will linger like a whiff of decadent Colony perfume.”

But both reviewers feel that a thriller subplot distracts from the rest of the book. As the Chronicle puts it, “ Kushner too often lets the novel stray into diluted John Le Carré territory.”

People’s review is largely an interesting description of the plot, winding up with, “a compelling look at a paradise corrupted.”

Telex is on order in small quantities in the libraries I checked, with comfortable holds to copy ratios. None have the audio on order.

It’s at #151 on Amazon, which is a high sales ranking for a debut novel.

Telex from Cuba by Rachel Kushner

• Hardcover: $25.00
• Publisher: Scribner (July 1, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 141656103X
• ISBN-13: 978-1416561033

• Abridged CD (10): Tantor Media, Inc.
• Pub. Date: August 11, 2008
• ISBN-13: 9781400108343

Media Coverage:

People, 7/21, not available online, “People Pick” 4 1/2 out of a possible 5 stars

New York Times Book Review, “Livin’ La Vida Loca,” 7/6/08, Cover review

San Francisco Chronicle, Review 7/7/08

Los Angeles Times, “Breathing Literary Life into 1950s Cuba” 7/5/08 — Interviews the author, who lives in L.A., focusing on her research.

In one of the first print reviews of Salman Rushdie’s Enchantress of Florence, the Washington Post Book World’s Michael Dirda makes it sound like a beach book:

…it may come as a surprise that he has produced a book that is the equivalent of a summer fling. Set during the 16th century, The Enchantress of Florence is altogether ramshackle as a novel — oddly structured, blithely mixing history and legend and distinctly minor compared to such masterworks as The Moor’s Last Sigh and Midnight’s Children– and it is really not a novel at all. It is a romance, and only a dry-hearted critic would dwell on the flaws in so delightful an homage to Renaissance magic and wonder.

Alan Cheuse, of the Chicago Tribune, waxes poetic over it:

…it’s fact that allowed Rushdie to construct this great dream-palace of a novel. To build his twin story of life in the grand city of Florence, his hero’s home, and Sikri, the Mongol capital to which he has traveled, the novelist had to digest a library wall of volumes (an extensive bibliography follows the story). In a world in which many readers seem to crave fact after fact after fact—the tiresome legacy of our Puritan ancestors—the novelist, the last alchemist, miraculously turns fact into something greater, and as if transforming clay bricks into gold, gives facts life.

In a separate story, the NYT reports:

In Britain, where it has already been released, most reviewers have been smitten. John Sutherland, who has twice been a judge for the Man Booker literary prize, wrote in The Financial Times that if it “doesn’t win this year’s Man Booker I’ll curry my proof copy and eat it.”

The article notes that while Rushdie was working on the book, he and his third wife Padma Lakshmi, host of the cooking reality show, “Top Chef” split and finds an echo in the themes of the book; “Beauty and betrayal are both elements of Enchantress.”

• Hardcover: $26.00
• Publisher: Random House (May 27, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 0375504338
• ISBN-13: 978-0375504334

• Audio CD
• Publisher: Recorded Books
• Reader: Firdous Bamji
• ISBN-10: 1436148707
• ISBN-13: 978-1436148702

• Large Print:
  
• Publisher: Random House Large Print Publishing (May 2008)
• ISBN-10: 0739328158
• ISBN-13: 978-0739328156

The book is currently at #69 on the Amazon Top 100. All libraries I checked have it on order, with comfortable holds to copy ratios.

Note: Title Confusion Alert. The Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston releases in a couple of weeks. The Wall Street Journal highlighted it in their preview of the forthcoming books that publishers, authors and booksellers are most looking forward to.

The Monster of Florence
by Douglas Preston

• Hardcover: $25.99
• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing (June 10, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 0446581194
• ISBN-13: 978-0446581196

• Audio CD: Unabridged edition, $39.98
• Publisher: Hachette Audio; (June 10, 2008)
• Reader: Dennis Boutsikaris
• ISBN-10: 160024209X
• ISBN-13: 978-1600242090

• Large Print, Hardcover: $27.99
• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing (June 10, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 044650534X
• ISBN-13: 978-0446505345

• Hardcover: $25.95
• Publisher: Harper (January 22, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 0060888644
• ISBN-13: 978-0060888640

• Abridged Audio CD
• ISBN-10: 0061370940
• ISBN-13: 978-0061370946

This week’s USA Today “Inside Buzz” column notes (second story) that Bernard Cornwell breaks into the top 50 on their bestseller list for the first time (his books have appeared on the list before, but below the 50 mark. They have also appeared on many other lists, including the NY Times) with Sword Song: The Battle for London, the fourth in his Saxon Tales series. The book was also reviewed by USA Today book editor, Deirdre Donahue, earlier in the week. She calls Cornwell the “alpha male of testosterone-enriched historical fiction.” A slightly less breathles review in Jan. 6 Washington Post said, “Cornwell tells [the] story with wit, intelligence and absolute narrative authority.”