Prepub Alert

BERRY, BERTRICE. When Love Calls, You Better Answer. Broadway. Jun. 2005. 272p. ISBN 0-385-51083-7. $19.95. Motivational speaker Berry (Redemption Song) crafts the tale of a dedicated social worker good at everything except romance. With a five-city tour.

CHILD, LEE. One Shot: A Jack Reacher Novel. Delacorte. Jun. 2005. 384p. ISBN 0-385-33668-3. $25; lrg. prnt. Random. ISBN 0-375-43338-4. $27. Cassette/CD: Brilliance Audio. Accused of five murders in what looks like an open-and-shut case, the bad guy fires his last shot: he wants to speak to Jack Reacher.

DAI SIJIE. Mr. Muo's Traveling Couch. Knopf. Jun. 2005. 336p. ISBN 1-4000-4259-3. $22. After training as a psychoanalyst in the West, Mr. Muo returns home to China to rescue a girlfriend jailed for her political activities and winds up pedaling throughout the country trying to find a perfect bribe for the judge. In the spirit of the incomparable Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress.

ECO, UMBERTO. The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana. Harcourt. Jun. 2005. 416p. ISBN 0-15-101140-0. $28. Having lost all his memories except for every book and poem he has ever read, rare-books dealer Yambro flees to the old family home to reconstruct his life—which spools by here in graphic-novel format. With a nine-city tour.

EISLER, BARRY. Killing Rain. Putnam. Jun. 2005. 320p. ISBN 0-399-15284-9. $24.95. Trying to assuage a guilty conscience by lending his unique talents to a good cause, expert assassin John Rain begins working for the Mossad—and soon finds himself running from his bosses and the CIA.

HORNBY, NICK. A Long Way Down. Riverhead: Putnam. Jun. 2005. 352p. ISBN 1-57322-302-6. $24.95. CD: Penguin Audio. Three Brits, one Yank: a mother, a teenager, a musician, and a former TV talk-show host. In Hornby's latest, they all come together for a most unusual New Year's Eve.

HOWARD, LINDA. Killing Time. Ballantine. Jun. 2005. 384p. ISBN 0-345-45345-X. $25.95. Cassette/CD: Brilliance Audio. After the theft of a time capsule supposedly sealed until 2085, various contributors start dying.

HUGHES, FINOLA & DIGBY DIEHL. Soapsuds. Ballantine. Jun. 2005. 384p. ISBN 0-345-47082-6. $23.95. Cassette/CD: Brilliance Audio. Of course her heroine is an actress just starting in the soaps; Hughes is an Emmy Award winner you might have seen on General Hospital and All My Children. With an eight-city tour.

KELLERMAN, JONATHAN. Rage. Ballantine. May 2005. 400p. ISBN 0-345-46706-X. $26.95. Just out of prison, where he served time for a child's murder, Rand Duchay is frantic to chat with Alex Delaware but misses his appointment—because someone has killed him.

KOONTZ, DEAN. Velocity. Bantam. May 2005. 352p. ISBN 0-553-80415-4. $27; lrg. prnt. Random. ISBN 0-375-43531-X. $29. Cassette/CD: Random Audio. Bill Wile's nightmare begins when he discovers a note on his windshield demanding that he choose between the murder of a young schoolteacher and a charitable old lady. A companion to the author's Intensity.

LEHRER, JIM. The Franklin Affair. Random. May 2005. 224p. ISBN 1-4000-6198-9. $23.95. Double trouble: a scholar is bequeathed a shocking secret about Benjamin Franklin while sitting on a committee judging accusations of plagiarism. With a seven-city tour.

OYEYEMI, HELEN. The Icarus Girl. Nan A. Talese: Doubleday. Jun. 2005. 352p. ISBN 0-385-51383-6. $23.95. It's intriguing enough that debut novelist Oyeyemi is a 19-year-old Cambridge student who just saw her first play produced, but the plot sounds good, too. The daughter of a British father and a Nigerian mother, little Jess isn't managing well in England, so she's sent off to relatives in Africa and acquires an invisible friend named Tilly Tilly. With a three-city tour.

PARKER, ROBERT B. Appaloosa. Putnam. Jun. 2005. 320p. ISBN 0-399-15277-6. $24.95. Spenser's forebears? Itinerant lawmen Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch encounter a particularly nasty rancher in the town of Appaloosa.

PRICE, REYNOLDS. The Good Priest's Son. Scribner. Jun. 2005. 320p. ISBN 0-7432-5400-7. $26. His ground zero loft uninhabitable after 9/11, art conservator Mabry Kincaid instead tries connecting with his father and then his daughter. More priceless Price.

QUICK, AMANDA. Lie by Moonlight. Putnam. Jun. 2005. 400p. ISBN 0-399-15288-1. $24.95. Cassette/CD: Brilliance Audio. Concordia Glade is hired to teach four orphans at Aldwick Castle but soon suspects that there's evil afoot and decides to spirit away her charges.

REICHS, KATHY. Cross Bones. Scribner. Jun. 2005. 400p. ISBN 0-7432-3348-4. $25. Cassette/CD: S. & S. Audio. Here, forensic anthropologist Tempe Brennan's big concern isn't new bones but old ones: the victim she's examining putatively traded in black-market antiquities, and his case leads her to Israel and what might be the crypt of the holy family. With an eight-city tour.

SHARP, ADRIENNE. First Love. Riverhead: Putnam. Jun. 2005. 304p. ISBN 1-57322-310-7. $23.95. A former dancer and author of the collection White Swan, Black Swan, Sharp envisions George Balanchine's creation of Sleeping Beauty—which never came to be—as seen from the perspective of an aspiring ballerina caught between art and love.

SHEAR, LEANNE & TRACEY TOOMEY. The Perfect Manhattan. Broadway. Jun. 2005. 416p. ISBN 0-7679-1849-5. $21.95. Having bartended in Manhattan and the Hamptons, erstwhile journalist Shear and actress Toomey are well prepped to cowrite the story of a college grad who decides to pay off her burdensome loans by mixing drinks. With a national tour.

SPIEGELMAN, PETER. Death's Little Helpers. Knopf. Jun. 2005. 352p. ISBN 1-4000-4079-5. $22.95. Black Maps P.I. John March is after a ruined Wall Street analyst who has literally fallen off the map. With a five-city tour.

TRIGIANI, ADRIANA. Notes from the Villa di Crespi. Random. Jun. 2005. 288p. ISBN 1-4000-6007-9. $24.95. Look what happens when a gorgeous hunk of a painter blows into town to restore Our Lady of Fatima church. With a ten-city tour.

TWELVE HAWKS, JOHN. The Traveler. Doubleday. Jun. 2005. 400p. ISBN 0-385-51428-X. $24.95; lrg. prnt. Random. ISBN 0-375-43440-2. $26.95. Cassette/CD: Random Audio. Fantasy or fable? London designer Maya, a Harlequin—sworn to defend the Travelers, prophets who seek enlightenment—learns that American Travelers Gabriel and Michael Corrigan are in danger from the Tabulas, who want to stomp out Travelers and control the world. Like the Corrigans, the mysterious Twelve Hawks claims to live "off the grid." A BOMC main selection.

BELL, MADISON SMARTT. Lavoisier in the Year One: The Birth of a New Science in an Age of Revolution. Atlas Bks: Norton. Jun. 2005. 256p. ISBN 0-393-05155-2. $22.95. A lauded novelist retells the story of the man who gave us chemistry as we know it today but didn't manage to survive the Terror in revolutionary France. With a three-city tour.

BIEL, STEVEN. American Gothic: A Life of America's Most Famous Painting. Norton. Jun. 2005. 160p. ISBN 0-393-05912-X. $21.95. Just in time for the 75th anniversary: a meditation on the multiple meanings of Grant Wood's much-parodied painting. With a three-city tour.

CASEY, SUSAN. The Devil's Teeth: A True Story of Survival and Obsession Among America's Great White Sharks. Holt. Jun. 2005. 304p. ISBN 0-8050-7581-X. $25. Casey, a Time, Inc., developmental editor, takes us to the Farollon Islands (dubbed "devil's teeth"), 27 miles from San Francisco, a major watering hole for great white sharks and, consequently, a few dedicated "surfer-scientists." With a national tour.

CRAWFORD, JOHN. What We Are Now: A Soldier's Stories of the Iraq War. Riverhead: Putnam. Jun. 2005. 240p. ISBN 1-57322-314-X. $23.95. Report from the front: newly married and just short of graduating, a young man who joined the Florida National Guard to pay for his college education finds himself in Iraq, where an embedded journalist encourages him to disseminate the stories he's writing about his experience.

DIAMOND, LARRY. Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort To Bring Democracy to Iraq. Times Bks: Holt. Jun. 2005. 288p. ISBN 0-8050-7868-1. $25. A Stanford professor who opposed the war also finds himself in Iraq, serving as senior adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority and trying to establish democracy. With a national tour.

HOWARD, JOHNETTE. The Rivals: Chris Evert vs. Martina Navratilova; Their Epic Duels and Extraordinary Friendship. Broadway. Jun. 2005. 304p. ISBN 0-7679-1884-3. $24.95. Howard, a New York Newsday sports columnist, puts friends/ rivals Evert and Navratilova back on the court.

LYNCH, THOMAS. Booking Passage: We Irish and Americans. Norton. Jun. 2005. 320p. ISBN 0-393-04206-5. $24.95. You might think that revisiting Ireland has been done to death in the rush to publish following Angela's Ashes, but think again— poet/essayist Lynch is always excellent. With a seven-city tour.

PAMUK, ORHAN. Istanbul: Memories and the City. Knopf. Jun. 2005. 320p. ISBN 1-4000-4095-7. $26.95. Getting to know Istanbul, then and now, with the author of the celebrated Snow.

SCHULTHEIS, ROB. Waging Peace: A Special Operation Team's Battle To Rebuild Iraq. Gotham: Putnam. Jun. 2005. 304p. ISBN 1-59240-127-9. $26. The last embedded journalist allowed in Iraq, Schultheis traveled with a Civil Affairs team charged with repairing waterways, hospitals, and American-Iraqi relationships.

SLATER, LAUREN. Blue Beyond Blue: Extraordinary Tales for Ordinary Dilemmas. Norton. Jun. 2005. 224p. ISBN 0-393-05959-6. $23.95. The author of Opening Skinner's Box explores contemporary problems (e.g., our hunt for chemical solutions to emotional problems) through fairy tales.