Carolyn Turgeon (right) was in a celebratory mood at the Unbridled Books party last Saturday night, and why not? Her forthcoming debut novel, Rain Village, was a surprise breakout among the hundreds of ARCs floating around the convention floor—the buzz was so strong that all the copies Unbridled had planned to have Turgeon sign for booksellers during a Sunday morning meet-and-greet had already been scooped up. Or maybe it wasn't such a surprise: "Carolyn has one of the freshest, most resonant voices I've come across in a long while," says Unbridled co-publisher Greg Michalson (I caught up with him later in e-mail). "Her storytelling echoes the masters but is not quite like anyone else you've read. She writes with a breathless, turbulent emotional rush that surrounds our senses and threatens to overwhelm... She takes us through a fictional world full of myth and fable wrapped in the down-to earth, bravely earned personal wisdom of her heroines, all spun with a beautiful, lush prose that makes us believe."

People gave me a lot of good-natured ribbing about my plans to attend the Harlequin reception, but I had a hunch that with Mira making so much hoopla about the publication of its anthology of suspense stories from International Thriller Writers (called, aptly enough, Thriller), there'd be a lot more cool writers joining the party's usual fun mix—and as usual it was just the right size to mingle without feeling like you were caught up in a circus. As it was, while I caught up with many of my favorite chick-lit writers, Sarah (who recently wrote a PW story about the ITW) kept running into somebody else she knew in the mystery scene every five minutes, including Julia Spencer-Fleming (left) and Chris Mooney, who I convinced to pose for a picture before my camera's memory ran out.