Nicole and I are here at BEA, and the first event we attended is a perennial favorite: the BEA Adult Editor’s Buzz Panel. This session was insane this year – the stampede to grab books at the end was unlike anything we’ve experienced before at BEA! Thankfully, we lived to tell… and we have the books to show as reward for our effort.
Here are the titles that adult fiction editors presented as among the most exciting releases coming out this fall and next year:
A sociopathic narrator is the character at the heart of Liz Nugent’s Unraveling Oliver, due out in August. It’s a psychological thriller about a man “seemingly without a conscience” who has beat up his wife and left her in a coma. But why? How did they get to this place? Looks like a good, fast-paced thriller that will keep the pages turning. (Simon & Schuster/Scout Press)
Ayobami Adebayo’s Stay With Me is a novel about a Nigerian woman who has not yet produced an heir for her husband. Despite his promises not to, he takes on a second wife to bear him a child. This sets into motion a series of events that will challenge their relationship. (Knopf)
My Absolute Darling by Gabriel Tallent is about a 14-year daughter of a survivalist who grows up under harsh physical and emotional circumstances in California. It was described as a novel that will “consume and challenge readers”. (Riverhead)
History fans will enjoy The World of Tomorrow by Brendan Mathews, which is sweeping epic set in pre-World War II on the eve of the World’s Fair. It follows a wide cast of characters, including Irish immigrants on the run from the IRA. It’s a doorstop of a book at 560 pages, but the Little Brown editor who presented it promised that it read like a book that was much shorter. (Little Brown)
Chloe Benjamin’s The Immortalists follows the lives of four siblings who visit a fortune-teller in New York City who tells them the days of their deaths. The book looks at fate vs. free will as it tracks each sibling’s choices in the face of the fortuneteller’s predictions. (Putman)
The final book of the panel was The Woman In The Window by A.J. Finn, a thriller about an agoraphobic woman who spends her days in her apartment spying on her neighbors. When she witnesses what she thinks is a murder, reality and imagination start to blend together. (Morrow)
Of these books, I am most excited about Stay With Me and The Immortalists. I’ll report back once I’ve read them!
Tomorrow: we walk the floor!
