Non-stop buzz for some phenomenal January/February releases

The past two weeks have seen quite a few of our books released, and this coming week will see even more! While book releases are always exciting, there's been nearly non-stop buzz for each of the below over the past few weeks. We decided to highlight some of our favorite promotions, publicity, reviews, and more.

Archetype by M.D. Waters (Dutton, February 6, 2014)

Archetype was named an Indie Next Pick for February by the American Booksellers Association (ABA)!  In the Indie Next write-up, Melissa Oates from Fiction Addiction in Greenville, SC, wrote, "This is a great futuristic novel that will lead readers to questions of ethics and provide lots of material for group discussions."

Dutton has also created amazing swag for the book, which was featured at ComicCon, the ABA Winter Institute, and the American Library Association Midwinter Meeting. Below is an image of the t-shirts that made an appearance. There were also tattoos and tote bags!

http://ow.ly/i/3dXjV

The back of the t-shirt says...

ARCHETYPE

 The original pattern from which all things of the same type are copies.

What's yours?

Coming 2/6/2014

www.mdwatersauthor.com

The Swan Gondola by Timothy Schaffert (Riverhead, February 6, 2014)

Tattered Cover Bookstore named The Swan Gondola a V.I.B.--Very Impressive Book!

They say about their V.I.B.'s, "Every now and then we encounter a new book that we're so excited about we want to shout it from the rooftops, so we've created a special tag to distinguish it from the rest: TC VIB (very impressive book)! That means it’s a true stand-out in a season of many excellent and compelling new books."

The Swan Gondola was also named a "Most Anticipated Book of 2014" by The Millions, among great company like Lorrie Moore and Haruki Murakami. Check out The Millions's blurb below:

Worthy Brown's Daughter by Phillip Margolin (Harper, January 21, 2014)

Publishers Weekly featured New York Times-bestselling author Phillip Margolin's latest in a huge, two-page spread! They also interviewed him about the writing process. Check out the first page below:

Worthy Brown's Daughter was also named to USA Today's Hottest Books List! The article said, "This departure for best-selling thriller writer Margolin might appeal to fans of the acclaimed movie 12 Years a Slave."

Dominion by C.J. Sansom (Mulholland Books, January 28, 2014)

The boon of all boons came the day before Dominion's release, when the great Stephen King himself tweeted about how much he loved the book!

 
Someone must have thought his first tweet was a gimmick, because he followed it up with another tweet:

As Stephen King explained above, Dominion is an alternate history of what might have happened had the Nazis won World War II and occupied Great Britain. To play up this idea, Mulholland Books created fantastic mock-ups of the British newspapers The Evening Standard, The Daily Express, and The Times of London as they might have looked had this alternate history really occurred. The papers were giveaways at Bourchercon and went into publicity mailings as well. Check out The Evening Standard below:

The Vanishing by Wendy Webb (Hyperion, January 21, 2014)

The Vanishing was named a Midwest Connections Pick by the Midwest Independent Booksellers Association! In its write-up, the booksellers association called the book "another escapist bit of commercial fiction with a mysterious edge that remains popular with readers."

Webb has also been in the midst of a whirlwind book tour throughout Georgia, North Carolina, and New Orleans, themed "the Southern gothic meets the Northern gothic"--since Webb's books are contemporary gothic novels set in the Midwest and the South is so famous for their own gothic novels.  Unfortunately, given the recent weather that's shut down places like Atlanta, some of Webb's book signings were put in jeopardy.  She tweeted about it below:

A Life in Men by Gina Frangello (Algonquin Books, February 4, 2014)

  
Like The Swan Gondola, A Life in Men was also named to The Millions's list of "Most Anticipated Books of 2014"!  The Los Angeles Times picked up The Millions's list too and gave a great shout-out to Frangello. Check out The Millions's blurb below:

Book Riot also named A Life in Men to its list of "The Best Books We Read in January"!  Contributor Marisa Atkinson wrote, "Frangello has given us one of the most authentic depictions of female friendship that I've ever read...A Life in Men is an important and powerful novel, and one I won't soon forget."

futuristic novel that will lead readers to questions of ethics and provide lots of material for group discussions - See more at: http://www.bookweb.org/node/28301#sthash.t0eKoUtp.dpuf

futuristic novel that will lead readers to questions of ethics and provide lots of material for group discussions - See more at: http://www.bookweb.org/node/28301#sthash.t0eKoUtp.dpuf

futuristic novel that will lead readers to questions of ethics and provide lots of material for group discussions - See more at: http://www.bookweb.org/node/28301#sthash.t0eKoUtp.dpuf

A photo journey through BEA 2013

Last week, book madness descended on New York City for BookExpo America (BEA), an annual publishing conference and book exhibition extravaganza for publishers, industry experts, booksellers, librarians, and book lovers.

While educational panels, subsidiary rights meetings, and more take place throughout the conference, the most dazzling feature of BEA is always the Exhibition Hall, where publishers showcase the books they are most excited about for the upcoming fall season or that they have recently published.  JVNLA's books were featured prominently, so of course we hunted them down and snapped some photos in order to bring a part of BEA 2013 to our blog! 

To give you a sense of what the Exhibition Hall looks like, check out the photo below, showing conference attendees milling around several publishers' booths, including Algonquin and Workman.  Now, imagine this multiplied over 760,000 square feet of exhibition space! 

Clearly, many, many eyes were on the look out for exciting, new books.  We were pleased that so many of JVNLA's books were a part of the spotlight!

According to reports from the front at Sourcebooks, the line for a signed galley of Dianne Dixon's newest novel, THE BOOK OF SOMEDAY (September 2013), was long and didn't end until the last copies were given away!  THE BOOK OF SOMEDAY is the story of three women, each caught up in a web of secrets, and one haunted by a nightmare of a beautiful woman in a silver dress.  While we didn't get a picture of the galley line, we did snap one of Dixon standing beneath her cover as it presided over the Sourcebooks exhibition area.

One woman got started reading THE BOOK OF SOMEDAY right away!

The Lyons Press exhibition booth featured ONE PUNCH FROM THE PROMISED LAND: Leon Spinks, Michael Spinks, and the Myth of the Heavyweight Title by John Florio and Ouisie Shapiro (September 2013).  The book is a narrative nonfiction account of the two famous boxing brothers and the divergent paths their lives took.
 

At the Skirt! Books display table, Linda Hundt's recipe book based on her award-winning bakery of the same name, SWEETIE-LICIOUS PIES: Eat Pie, Love Life (October 2013), made passersby salivate.

C.J. Sansom's newest novel, DOMINION (Mulholland Books, January 2014), was an eagerly anticipated giveaway over at Hachette's booth. DOMINION sets readers in an alternate history in which Britain surrendered to Nazi Germany in 1940, and, twelve years later, a spy for the Resistance must rescue a man with a secret from a British mental hospital and smuggle him from the country.

Soft Skull Press's booth showcased Berlin Reed's just-released part-food memoir, part-argument for sustainable living, THE ETHICAL BUTCHER: How Thoughtful Eating Can Change Your World (April 2013). 

At the Penguin exhibition area, Jillian Cantor signed galleys of her new novel MARGOT (Riverhead, September 2013).  The novel is a reimagining of the life of Margot Frank, Anne Frank's sister, had she not died in a concentration camp in 1945.

Conference attendees were so excited about snagging a copy of MARGOT that even a baby rifled through the pages to get a quick glimpse of the story!

At Smithsonian Books, YOUR TICKET TO THE UNIVERSE: A Guide to Exploring the Cosmos by Kimberly K. Arcand and Megan Watzke (April 2013) stood out on a display table.

PASSION BLUE by Victoria Strauss (November 2012), a YA novel about a seventeen-year-old in Renaissance Italy sentenced to live in a convent when all she wants is true love, graced the display tables at the Amazon Children's Publishing booth.

BEYOND THE BEAR (March 2013), a memoir about surviving a bear attack and learning to live and love again, written by Dan Bigley and co-author Debra McKinney, was featured in the display racks over at Lyons Press.

Meanwhile, Algonquin arranged its featured books on the walls of its booth.  Just to the right and below the center, you'll find A LIFE IN MEN by Gina Frangello (February 2014), a novel of a woman diagnosed with debilitating cystic fibrosis who takes up her best friend's adventurous lifestyle across many countries and with many men after her friend's tragic death.

Jeryl Brunner signed copies of her newest celebrity travel book, MY CITY, MY LOS ANGELES: Famous People Share Their Favorite Places (March 2013) at the Globe Pequot Press booth.  We snapped a photo of her (center) with her agent Jessica Regel (left) and editor Amy Lyons (right).

In addition to Brunner, Slash Coleman was another JVNLA author selected by Globe Pequot Press to sign books at this year's BEA. Below is the sign announcing the times of the signings for Brunner's MY CITY, MY LOS ANGELES and Coleman's THE BOHEMIAN LOVE DIARIES (Lyons Press, July 2013).

And, here, check out Brunner's and Coleman's books on display at the Globe Pequot Press booth.

As you can see in the previous photo, the cover of Coleman's THE BOHEMIAN LOVE DIARIES features a young boy, shirtless and shoeless, wearing a motorcycle helmet.  Well, that boy made a special guest appearance at BEA.  Here he is below, pictured with the author.  Together, they took the BEA by storm!