Year-End Picks List Showcases 2007 Highlights

Based on the thousands of nominations received from independent booksellers nationwide, Book Sense has again compiled a year-end Book Sense Picks Highlights list featuring 60 titles, as well as an additional eight Book Sense hardcover selections that will be available in paperback in early 2008. The Picks Highlights list will be shipped to stores in the November Children's White Box mailing, which is scheduled to arrive around Thanksgiving.

The four-page, tabloid-format flier features strong fiction and nonfiction selections for a wide spectrum of reading tastes, making it an especially useful holiday season marketing opportunity. The 2007 Picks range from such fiction favorites as The Abstinence Teacher (Tom Perrotta/St. Martin's), The Pirate's Daughter (Margaret Cezair-Thompson/Unbridled), The Rest of Her Life (Laura Moriarty/Hyperion), and Away (Amy Bloom/Random House), to remarkable debut works like The Septembers of Shiraz (Dalia Sofer/Ecco) and Landsman (Peter Charles Melman/Counterpoint), to nonfiction standouts like The Year of Living Biblically (A.J. Jacobs/S&S), Here If You Need Me (Kate Braestrup/Little, Brown), and -- yes! -- How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read (Pierre Bayard/Bloomsbury).

"A recent survey has shown that, once again, books will be a top holiday gift selection," said Dan Cullen, Book Sense Picks editor-in-chief, "and we hope that this roundup of the year's outstanding writing -- especially if teamed up with a display of titles -- will give booksellers in the Book Sense program an effective gift-giving list that will help put the books they are most passionate about into the hands of readers."

In addition, other important holiday shopping season preparations are reviewed in a recent BTW story , and Book Sense shelf-talkers are available on BookWeb.org.