Dateline BEA: What to read, who to pitch

By Sarah on April 19, 2006 9:29 AM

So if you’re doing business at BEA, who do you contact? PW also provides a handy list of those parking themselves for hours each day at the International Rights Center, a ridiculously comprehensive guide of each exhibitor (start with A, click here and scroll down for the rest) and most importantly of all, which galleys are smokin’ hot, whether meant for kids or for adults.

Some of the ones I know I’ll be on the lookout for (or at least, watching closely to see if others are if I don’t have copies already):

Edward P. Jones’s All Aunt Hagar’s Children (Harper, September)
Jed Rubenfeld’s THE INTERPRETATION OF MURDER (Holt, September)
George Pelecanos’s THE NIGHT GARDENER (Little, Brown, August)
Kate Atkinson’s ONE GOOD TURN (Little, Brown, October)
Nell Freudenberger’s THE DISSIDENT (Ecco, September)
Erik Larson’s THUNDERSTRUCK (Crown, October)
Adrian McKinty’s THE LIGHTHOUSE LAND (Amulet)
Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie’s HALF OF A YELLOW SUN (Knopf, September)

Ron adds: “There was little consensus on what 2006′s great novel might be,” PW notes, “or even how well the fiction market will perform, given that many of last year’s big novels by writers like E.L. Doctorow and Rick Moody didn’t really catch fire.” Man, if I ever finish my novel, I hope it “doesn’t really catch fire” like The March (although I’m just going by the awards and haven’t really seen the Bookscan numbers). As for the galleys they’ll be handing out on the BookExpo floor, I’ve got my heart set on David Quammen’s The Long Follow, a science-tinged travelogue across Africa, and that Jed Rubenfeld novel Sarah mentioned, which has Sigmund Freud hunting down a serial killer in New York City.