One of the debuts we’re watching this season is The Postmistress by Sarah Blake. Many have compared it to Kathryn Stockett’s The Help. In fact, it’s received strong praise from Stockett (she even interviews Blake on Amazon’s site), and both books share the same editor, Amy Einhorn, who has her own imprint at Putnam.

In today’s New York Times, Janet Maslin also makes the comparison to The Help, which she calls a “socially conscious pulp best seller,”

Each of these novels appropriates galvanizing social issues in the service of a well-wrought tear-jerker. And each is crammed with talking points.

But Maslin also admits,

…the real strength of  The Postmistress lies in its ability to strip away readers’ defenses against stories of wartime uncertainty and infuse that chaos with wrenching immediacy and terror.

She also predicts that, like The Help, “this book will click in a major way.”

The books may share many qualities, but the settings are different. Rather than 1960’s Mississippi, The Postmistress takes place during World War II, which has led others to compare it to The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society.

The Postmistress releases today and has been steadily rising on Amazon (it’s now at #84). Library holds are also growing rapidly on conservative ordering; as high as 210 on 16 copies.

The Postmistress Sarah Blake Retail Price: $25.95 Hardcover: 336 pages Publisher: Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam – (2010-02-09) ISBN / EAN: 0399156194 / 9780399156199

Available from Blackstone Audiobooks

• CD: $100; ISBN 9781441725714
• MP3 CD: $29.95; ISBN 9781441725745
• Cassette: $65.95; ISBN 9781441725707

Audio and e-book available from OverDrive

Entertainment Weekly gave it a middling “C” grade, but Elizabeth Kostova’s second book The Swan Thieves (after her 2005 blockbuster vampire-themed The Historian) gets more love from the Associated Press. The author was also interviewed on NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday.

But the review that blows away the nay-sayers is from Laura Miller in the Barnes and Noble Review. Miller, a respected critic who writes for Salon, opens the review by marveling that The Historian was such a success; it’s “a vampire story without gore or brooding passions, a historical thriller without much in the way of action” but Kostova “…placed her faith in the conviction that readers are pleased to sink slowly into a novel, until the world it conjures has closed over their heads, submerging them entirely.” Miller feels she does the same with this book, even though the subject matter (Impressionist painting, rather than vampires) is quite different.

You can read an excerpt here. The book’s Web site offers information on the historical background of the novel.

The Swan Thieves Elizabeth Kostova Retail Price: $26.99 Hardcover: 576 pages Publisher: Little, Brown and Company – (2010-01-12) ISBN / EAN: 0316065781 / 9780316065788

Audio from Hachette:

• CD: $39.98; ISBN 9781600247453

Large Print:

• Little Brown: $28.99; ISBN 9780316043663

Playaway:

• $104.99; ISBN 9781607884828

The heaviest holds for fiction going on sale next week are on Robert Crais’s thriller, The First Rule: A Joe Pike Novel, an IndieBound pick for January and a popular Amazon preorder.

The First Rule (Joe Pike Novels) Robert Crais Retail Price: $26.95 Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: Putnam Adult – (2010-01-12) ISBN / EAN: 0399156135 / 9780399156137

Audio available from Brilliance Corporation:

• CD: $87.97; ISBN 9781423375494
• CD, MP-3: $24.99; ISBN 9781423375500

Large Print from Wheeler Publishing:

• $35.99; ISBN 9781410421418

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Elizabeth Kostova’s The Swan Thieves – her second novel after her blockbuster 2005 debut, The Historian – has hold ratios of about four to one in libraries we checked.

Entertainment Weekly grades it a “C,” with the criticism that this literary thriller about a mentally ill painter obsessed with a dead woman doesn’t maintain a sense of urgency – “a desperate flaw for a story of passion and obsession.”

The Swan Thieves Elizabeth Kostova Retail Price: $26.99 Hardcover: 576 pages Publisher: Little, Brown and Company – (2010-01-12) ISBN / EAN: 0316065781 / 9780316065788

Read an Excerpt

Audio from Hachette:

• CD: $39.98; ISBN 9781600247453

Large Print:

• Little Brown: $28.99; ISBN 9780316043663

Playaway:

• $104.99; ISBN 9781607884828

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Beth Hoffman’s debut novel Saving Ceecee Honeycutt, which was acquired by the same editor as Sue Monk Kidd’s Secret Life of Bees, is getting a push from the publisher and many enthusiastic quotes from booksellers. It’s also the first pick in the new Sam’s Club Book Club, according to GalleyCat, and will be featured in all 600 of the chain’s big box stores.

Prepub reviews included a starred Library Journal review:

“Southern storytelling at its best, this coming-of-age novel is sure to be a hit with the book clubs that adopted Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees.”

Libraries we checked are showing modest holds.

Saving CeeCee Honeycutt Beth Hoffman Retail Price: $25.95 Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: Viking Adult – (2010-01-12) ISBN / EAN: 0670021393 / 9780670021390

Penguin Audio

• CD: $39.95; ISBN 9780143145547

Large Print from Thorndike

• $34.95; ISBN 9781410422750

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Melanie Benjamin’s portrait of Alice Liddel, Lewis Carroll’s muse in Alice I Have Been, is a big favorite of Random House’s library marketing team, who compare it to Nancy Horan’s reading-club favorite Loving Frank. In fact, the author invites reading groups to contact her and possibly arrange a phone-in.

Prepub reviews bear out the inhouse enthusiasm; Booklist says, “First-novelist Benjamin tells … a story that is a mixture of historically accurate fact and liberally imagined fiction, including her solution to the mystery of what actually happened to estrange Carroll … from his muse’s family.”

Most large libraries have ordered modestly, with 2:1 holds. However, one library clearly expects strong demand, ordering 80 copies.

Alice I Have Been Melanie Benjamin Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 368 pages Publisher: Delacorte Press – (2010-01-12) ISBN / EAN: 0385344139 / 9780385344135

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Elena Gorokhova’s memoir of  growing up in 1960s Leningrad, A Mountain of Crumbs, has already received positive reviews in Elle and More magazines. Libraries are showing holds of three to one on modest orders.

A Mountain of Crumbs: A Memoir Elena Gorokhova Retail Price: $26.00 Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: Simon & Schuster – (2010-01-12) ISBN / EAN: 1439125678 / 9781439125670

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Also on sale next week:

• John Lescroart’s new mystery, Treasure Hunt
• Amy Bloom’s new story collection, Where the God of Love Hangs Out. Her novel, Away, was a bestseller. People gives the new collection 3.5 stars and makes it a People Pick. Bloom’s subject is love. Several of the stories are interlinked and People says they “hit harder than the stand-alones: mapping passion’s fallout takes time.”

Here’s an early jump on some titles going on sale next week that we’re likely to be hearing more about (for more titles, check B&N.com’s Coming Soon section).

Phillippa Gregory returns with The White Queen, about Britain’s wars of the Plantagenets, with a more cinematic jacket look than usual for Gregory (perhaps influenced by huge success of the tie-in to the film of The Other Boleyn Girl). People heralds it this week with 3.5 of a possible 4 stars,

…Gregory’s lush detail and deft storytelling are all in top form here, making The White Queen both mesmerizing and historically rich.

Libraries we checked showed high reserves on orders of up to 56 copies. This is the first of a planned trilogy.

The White Queen: A Novel Philippa Gregory Retail Price: $25.99 Hardcover: 432 pages Publisher: Touchstone – (2009-08-18) ISBN / EAN: 1416563687 / 9781416563686

Audio available from Simon & Schuster Audio

• CD: $29.99; ISBN 9780743582292

Large print available from Thorndike

• $34.95; ISBN 9781410419309

Gail Parkin’s debut novel Baking Cakes in Kigali is an Indie Next pick for September. Set in Rwanda, it features a woman who finds healing after the losses of her two grown children, as we mentioned in an earlier post. Libraries we checked are showing modest reserves and under 10 copies on order. This could be a sleeper.

Baking Cakes in Kigali: A Novel Gaile Parkin Retail Price: $24.00 Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: Delacorte Press – (2009-08-18) ISBN / EAN: 0385343434 / 9780385343435

Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-Time Eater by New York Times food critic Frank Bruni gets a B+ in Entertainment Weekly. Libraries are showing modest reserves on modest orders. Our guess is that it’s likely to get enough review attention to change that.

Born Round Frank Bruni Retail Price: $25.95 Hardcover: 368 pages Publisher: Penguin Press Hardcover – (2009-07-21) ISBN / EAN: 9781594202315/1594202311

Also available on Penguin Audio

• CD: $39.95: ISBN 9780143145240

Day After Night by Anita Diamant is the top choice on the independent booksellers’ Indie Next list for September. At one library we checked, reserves were as high as 106 on 38 copies, but World Cat shows that only 53 libraries have it.

Here’s how Kris Kleindienst, co-owner of Left Bank Books, Saint Louis, MO pitched the novel:

“Four women with four different stories of surviving the European Jewish Holocaust find themselves in an internment camp run by the British military in Palestine as illegals, Jews without papers. Based on the true story of a dramatic rescue in 1945 of more than 200 prisoners at the Atlit internment camp, this extraordinary novel is equal parts history, adventure, and celebration of the profound determination of the human psyche. I loved this book and will recommend it for reading groups.”

Day After Night: A Novel Anita Diamant Retail Price: $27.00 Hardcover: 304 pages Publisher: Scribner – (2009-09-08) ISBN / EAN: 0743299841 / 9780743299848

Also available from Simon & Schuster Audio on Sept. 1

• CD $29.99; ISBN 9780743598392

The Indie Next #3 pick for September, Baking Cakes in Kigali by Gaile Parkin, is a debut novel that’s a strong favorite of Jen Childs, over at Random House’s library marketing department, and was also picked by librarians at the BEA “Shout and Share” panel. World Cat shows that 93 libraries have it, but libraries we checked show only modest reserves - though it’s still early.

Here’s a pitch from Sandy Scott at The Galaxy Bookshop, Hardwick, VT:

“Cake maker Angel Tungaraza lives in a multicultural community in Rwanda, where she finds healing after the losses of her two grown children as she helps others solve their own problems with equal doses of common sense and kindness. Tragedy and humor find balance in this thoroughly enjoyable novel.”

Baking Cakes in Kigali: A Novel Gaile Parkin Retail Price: $24.00 Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: Delacorte Press – (2009-08-18) ISBN / EAN: 0385343434 / 9780385343435

The inevitable has happened: there will be a graphic novel version of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, to be published by Del Rey in 2010, according to Publishers Weekly.

Veteran comics writer Tony Lee, who has worked on X-Men, Spider-Man and other series, will team with artist Cliff Richards, of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer comics series.

Quirk books, publisher of the surprise hit mashup Jane Austen and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith, has announced a followup: Sense and Sensibility and Seamonsters by Ben H. Winters, slated for release on September 15. In the meantime, there’s a hilarious book trailer so good it gave me chills!

Here, the Dashwood sisters leave their childhood home after the arrival of their scheming stepmother, only to land on an island of man-eating sea creatures — alllowing Winters to take inspiration from ”everything from Jules Verne novels to Lost to Jaws to Spongebob Squarepants.“ 

However, the publisher has set a more conservative printing (200,000 copies vs. the 600,000 in print for Jane Austen and Zombies), since the house is not certain if the twist on Jane Austen will hold as much appeal as zombies do, according to Publishers Weekly. Then again, if the ingenious trailer truly reflects the book, there’s probably little need to worry.

Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters Jane Austen Retail Price: $12.95 Paperback: 320 pages Publisher: Quirk Books – (2009-09-15) ISBN / EAN: 1594744424 / 9781594744426

Released just over a month ago, Sarah Waters’ fifth novel, the stylish ghost story The Little Stranger, has steadily gained  critical attention. Reserve activity is pretty strong at libraries we checked, but orders are low.

The New York Times Book Review declared that Waters “magnificently” renders the grand old house where the novel is set, and that its inhabitants “sparkle like chandeliers in the damp, peeling rooms” as their way of life fades amid the Second World War. The review also notes that the members of the artistocratic Ayres family “are such lovingly depicted and realistic characters that it becomes hard to accept their gothic fates.” 

NPR’s “Books We Like” columnist Maud Newton observes, “Although her past works have focused on lesbian characters, repressed desire has always been Waters’ terrain. In her hands these hidden longings incite turmoil and even blur into the occult. . . . Hundreds Hall serves as a perfect symbol of the postwar erosion of Britain’s class hierarchies, but it also, increasingly, transforms into a scheming, deadly character.”

The Washington Post wonders, “What are we dealing with here? Hysteria? Evil spirits? A jealous doctor? Waters teases us with clues that send us running off in every direction: psychological, paranormal and socioeconomic. But the story’s sustained ambiguity is what keeps our attention, and her perfectly calibrated tone casts an unnerving spell over these pages.”

The Little Stranger Sarah Waters Price: $26.95 Hardcover: 480 pages Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover – (2009-04-30) ISBN-10: 1594488800 ISBN-13: 9781594488801

Avaiilable from Penguin Audiobooks

• CD; $39.95; 0143144804

Also available as a downloadable audio on Overdrive

R. Crumb, the famously subversive comics artist, allows a glimpse into his forthcoming Book of Genesis in a 12-page excerpt in this week’s New Yorker.  The book, due for release on October 19, offers an unconventional take on the Bible that is likely to provoke the religious right, according to The Guardian (UK), which also quoted Crumb saying that the book is ”very visual. It’s lurid. Full of all kinds of crazy, weird things that will really surprise people.” Most libraries we checked did not show copies on order.

The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb R. Crumb Retail Price: $24.95 Hardcover: 224 pages Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co. – (2009-10-19) ISBN / EAN: 0393061027 / 9780393061024

May 17 was a banner day for books on CBS Sunday Morning, which launched three featured titles into Amazon’s top 350 bestsellers. T.C. Boyle’s novel The Women, about the loves of architect Frank Lloyd Wright, moved to #100, while The Ashley Book of Knots by Clifford Ashley jumped to #295, and organization guru Julie Morgenstern’s SHED Your Stuff, Change Your Life: A Four-Step Guide to Getting Unstuck leapt to #336. 

Libraries we checked favored Morgenstein’s self-help guide, with an average of 10 copies and signficant reserves. Quantities were more mixed and reserves more modest on Boyle’s novel, which came out in February, and The Ashley Book of Knots.

The Women: A Novel T.C. Boyle Price: $27.95 Hardcover: 464 pages Publisher: Viking Adult – (2009-02-10) ISBN-10: 0670020419 ISBN-13: 9780670020416

An audiobook version is available in three formats from Blackstone Audio:

• 15 CDs; $100; ISBN 978-1-4332-6061-2 
• 2 MP3CD; $29.95; ISBN 978-1-4332-6064-3    
• Playaway; $69.99; ISBN 978-1-4332-6068-1

Ashley Book of Knots Clifford Ashley Price: $80.00 Hardcover: 640 pages Publisher: Doubleday – (1944-06-21) ISBN-10: 0385040253 ISBN-13: 9780385040259

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SHED Your Stuff, Change Your Life Julie Morgenstern Price: $15.00 Paperback: 288 pages Publisher: Fireside – (2009-03-03) ISBN-10: 0743250907 ISBN-13: 9780743250900

An audiobook is available in three formats from Tantor Media

• 9 CDs; $24.99 (Retail Pkg); EAN: 9781400107872       
• 9 Audio CDs (Library Binder Pkg); $69.99; EAN: 9781400137879
• Mp3-CD; $24.99; EAN: 9781400157877

Beaufort Books, the U.S. publisher of The Jewel of Medina has announced that they are moving the book’s pub. date from Oct. 15 to this coming Monday, Oct. 6, according to the AP. 

Publication of the book in the U.K. was delayed because of a fire-bomb attack on the publisher’s house.  A new date has not been announced. It is still scheduled to be published in over a dozen other countries.

Eric Kampmann, president of Beaufort Books told the AP that they’ve made this move because, once people read the book, “…we thought the violence part of this story would disappear and people would be focusing on the story, and the book and [author] Sherry Jones.”

Jones has appearances scheduled in Spokane, WA and at the Montana Festival of the Book.

Barnes and Noble will display the book in their new fiction sections. Spokesperson Mary Ellen Keating told the AP, “We’ve been in touch with the publisher who assures us that neither he nor the author feels there are any immediate safety or security concerns around this title.”

The book is listed on Amazon as “currently unavailable.” Most libraries are showing it as on order.

The Jewel of Medina

Sherry Jones

ISBN: 978-0-8253-0518-4
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 432
Publisher: Beaufort Books

Publisher synopsis:

Born A’isha bint Abi Bakr in seventh century Arabia, she would become the favorite wife of the Prophet Muhammad, and one of the most revered women in the Muslim faith. Married at the age of nine, The Jewel of Medina illuminates the difficult path A’isha confronted, from her youthful dreams of becoming a Bedouin warrior, to her life as the beloved wife and confident of the founder of Islam.

In an era when women had few rights of their own and were often treated as chattel, A’isha used her wits, her courage, and even her sword in a struggle to control her own destiny and carve out a place for herself in the umma, fighting religious persecution, jealous sister-wives, political rivals, and her own temptations. Her ingenuity and devotion would make her an indispensable advisor to Muhammad, earn her the coveted position of his favorite wife, and ultimately make her a fierce protector of his words and legacy.

Extensively researched and elegantly crafted, The Jewel of Medina presents the beauty and harsh realities of life in an age long past, during a time of war, enlightenment, and upheaval. At once a love story, a history lesson, and a coming-of-age tale,The Jewel of Medina provides humanizing glimpses into the origins of the Islamic faith, and the nature of love, through the eyes of a truly unforgettable heroine.

 

Dennis Lehane recently switched genres from mystery to historical fiction. According to an interview with the author in the new Entertainment Weekly, he’s not switching back.

It’s not April Fool’s Day and there’s no reason to think it’s a joke, but I couldn’t help but feel Lehane is pulling our leg;

I’d be writing these friggin’ whodunits and I could care less. I wanna tell everybody on page 2, he killed so-and-so, he done it! If you look at my books in that regard — and I’ll be 100 percent honest about my flaws — you can see how I was whipping out the kitchen sink just to obscure s—, like the identity of the serial killer or whatever, and that’s why the books got so labyrinthian in the last 100 pages.

Lehane says his next book will probably be a sequel to The Given Day. It may even turn into a trilogy.

Entertainment Weekly’s not giving him much encouragement on that front; in the same issue, they reviews The Given Day,  calling it “regrettably overstuffed.” They end with this blow; “Lehane has tried to write a gripping novel and honorably fallen short.”

Lehane shouldn’t be too upset; he has elsewhere to turn for comfort:

USA Today; Dennis Lehane in top form on ‘The Given Day’

Janet Maslin, New York Times; A Vision of Old Boston in All Its Angry Power

The Given Day

Dennis Lehane

• Hardcover: $27.95; 720 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow (September 23, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 0688163181
• ISBN-13: 978-0688163181

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