The Buzz on Fall Titles for Adults

Last Monday afternoon at BookExpo America’s Adult Editors Buzz Forum, six publishing executives shared their favorite books for the upcoming season with a roomful of booksellers, journalists, and other show attendees. The panel was moderated by Paul Yamazaki, chief book buyer at City Lights Books, in San Francisco, California, who said that one of the most important curatorial elements for a bookseller is knowing who the editors are and how they acquired each book.

The forum began as Denise Roy, a senior editor at Dutton, spoke highly of Seré Prince Halverson’s debut novel, The Underside of Joy, which, she said, “leapt out of the slush pile and into a publishers’ bidding war,” with rights to her book selling at simultaneous auctions in North America and 13 countries across the world.

The book centers on a family living in the Northern California town of Elbow. Ella lives with her husband, Joe, and his children, Zack and Annie. After Joe dies suddenly at sea, Ella meets Paige, the children’s biological mother. As the family mourns, secrets of Joe’s past quickly surface.

“This is not a fairytale version of step-motherhood,” said Roy. “But an exploration of a complex relationship of two mothers.” The women, who are living parallel journeys, have to face painful secrets that were buried for generations.

Roy was drawn to the novel for reasons “beyond the magnificent writing and compelling storyline.” She too is a widow, and as the first anniversary of her husband’s death approached, The Underside of Joy came across her desk and called to her “like a siren song.” And she knew it was “a book I was destined to publish.”

Algonquin Books Senior Editor Kathy Pories then described her experience with Running the Rift by Naomi Benaron, winner of the prestigious 2010 Bellwether Prize for Fiction, awarded to a manuscript that addresses issues of social justice.

“In my 15 years of being an editor, I can’t remember a book that I’ve ever been as moved by as this one,” said Pories. She compared it to one of her favorite books, A Fine Balance, by Rohinton Mistry, because in the same way Mistry’s four characters provided a window into the state of emergency in 1970s India, Running the Rift draws readers into the beauty and the tragedy of Rwanda through the story of Jean Patrick, a Rwandan boy who focuses all of his attention on training for the Olympics while ignoring the horror that is occurring in his own country — a genocide that left 800,000 people dead.

The book was inspired by Benaron’s trip to Rwanda, where she worked with African refugees. The author immediately fell in love with the country and everything it had to offer — from the people and the mountains, to the native gorillas and birds. While walking through town, she stepped on something hard, and soon discovered it was a human bone.

Jean Patrick’s political ignorance is tested when he falls in love with Baya, a political woman, and furthermore, when he hears the names of friends and family being called on the radio — a list of Tutsis that the Hutus are encouraged to kill. Eventually, he realizes he must run, and not just to improve his performance, but to save his life.

“It forces us to recognize the implications of being apolitical, with a very clear understanding of the stakes,” said Pories.

Michael Pietsch, an executive vice president of the Hachette Book Group and the publisher of Little, Brown and Company discussed his pick, The Art of Fielding, by Chad Harbach, a book that opens in baseball, but encompasses much more.

“This is a novel about perfection, about striving,” said Pietsch. “About figuring out who you are and who you might become.”

It follows two men as they enter college, where they play for their school’s baseball team. The book contains “two love stories, a death, and a championship season,” said Pietsch. “Who could ask for anything more?”

Alane Mason, vice president and senior editor at W.W. Norton, told the Buzz crowd that Diana Abu-Jaber’s new novel, Birds of Paradise, has “absolutely universal” appeal.

The story begins with Avis, a compulsive pastry chef, whose daughter, Felice, ran away at the age of 13. As Felice approaches her 18^th birthday, Avis hopes to reunite with her daughter. The perspective then shifts to the Felice’s point of view, “and this is a Diana Abu-Jaber we haven’t seen before,” said Mason.

The novel spends time on every member of the family, including Felice’s brother, who has to make due when all the emotional energy is focused on the problem child, and Avis’ husband, who is trying to run a business and handle a fragile marriage.

“It’s the story of how the members of a family who have lost one another can find a way to come back together again,” said Mason. “This is Diana Abu-Jaber’s breakout book.”

When Jenna Johnson, senior editor at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, first read We the Animals by Justin Torres, she immediately reread it.

“This book overcomes you,” she said, adding that it is powerful in an emotional and visceral way.

Torres captures the essence of childhood in his story about three young boys growing up in upstate New York. It explores the deep bond of siblings, and how “they love each other with a kind of awesome frightening power,” said Johnson, and how the intense family unity inevitably breaks.

“This book creates hardcore fans,” said Johnson.

Alison Callahan, executive editor at Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, was clad in black with a hint of red, a nod to The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, her pick for the fall. Characters that follow this dress code in the book are revuers — followers of Le Cirque des Rêves, or The Night Circus, “a unique amazement unlike anything you’ve seen before,” which pops up in cities around the world without warning.

At the same time, there’s a duel underway between two magicians. Celia and Marco have been trained solely for the purpose of playing a centuries-old game devised by Prospero, an illusionist, and “The Man in the Grey Suit.” Unbeknownst to Celia and Marco, who meet and fall in love, the only way the game can end is for one person to be left standing.

“Reading this novel is like reading in 3D,” said Callahan. “You can smell the caramel, hear the fireworks... When you turn the last page, you have a heavy heart because it’s not real, and you can’t go there.”