Page One: Where New and Noteworthy Books Begin

“The first thing that went wrong was the emergency landing.” The Isle of Youth (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, November 2013) by Laura van den Berg. Second book, story collection. Agent: Katherine Fausset. Editor: Emily Bell. Publicist: Gregory Wazowicz.
              
“In the country there was nothing / to do some days but make ourselves / scared and nothing haunted us like the silo.” Almanac (Princeton University Press, October 2013) by Austin Smith. First book, poetry collection. Agent: Samantha Shea. Editor: Paul Muldoon. Publicist: Casey LaVela.

“During the war—which Nelson’s father called the anxious years—a few radical students at the Conservatory founded a theater company.” At Night We Walk in Circles (Riverhead Books, November 2013) by Daniel Alarcón. Third book, second novel. Agent: Eric Simonoff. Editor: Megan Lynch. Publicist: Claire McGinnis.

“I was born in Antwerp in 1939, one year before the Germans occupied Belgium in World War II.” Looking for Strangers: The True Story of My Hidden Wartime Childhood (University of Chicago Press, October 2013) by Dori Katz. Second book, first memoir. Agent: None. Editor: T. David Brent. Publicist: Ryo Yamaguchi.

“…I remember when it started.” The End of Love (McSweeney’s Books, October 2013) by Marcos Giralt Torrente, translated from the Spanish by Katherine Silver. Fifth book, second story collection. Agent: Mònica Martín. Editor: Ethan Nosowsky. Publicist: Isaac Fitzgerald.

“My body is / A little / Green sea.” Soul in Space (Wave Books, October 2013) by Noelle Kocot. Sixth book, poetry collection. Agent: None. Editor: Joshua Beckman. Publicist: Brittany Dennison.

“Harlem sleeps late.” The Biology of Luck (Elephant Rock Books, October 2013) by Jacob M. Appel. Third book, novel. Agent: None. Editor: Jotham Burrello. Publicist: Emily Schultze.

“It was there, late into the party, after the birthday cake had been served, after she’d drunk a good deal of red wine and taken too many hits from the joints that floated by her, that the husband told Sabina that he and his wife had been thinking about her, that they’d both been thinking about her since that first night they’d met her a few weeks back.” Make Me Do Things (Four Way Books, October 2013) by Victoria Redel. Seventh book, second story collection. Agent: Bill Clegg. Editor: Martha Rhodes. Publicist: Victoria McCoy.

“My godfather investigated my father for the FBI and had a scar on the palm of his left hand from a machine-gun bullet shot by Baby Face Nelson.” My Mistake (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, November 2013) by Daniel Menaker. Sixth book, first memoir. Agent: Esther Newberg. Editor: Jenna Johnson. Publicist: Stephanie Kim.

“Dixie Clay was squelching through the mud along the creek’s swollen banks, shooing mosquitos with her hat, when she saw a baby coffin bobbing against a sycamore snag.” The Tilted World (William Morrow, October 2013) by Tom Franklin and Beth Ann Fennelly. First collaboration, novel. Agent: Nat Sobel. Editor: David Highfill. Publicist: Sharyn Rosenblum.
                                   
“I’ve heard it said that everything you need to know about life can be learned from watching baseball.” Still Writing (Grove/Atlantic, October 2013) by Dani Shapiro. Eighth book, third memoir. Agent: Jennifer Rudolph Walsh. Editor: Elisabeth Schmitz. Publicist: Justina Batchelor.

“Off-season and in / the burnt forest / of my nightgown, a feral / undergrowth that marks / me as burial site— / to be still enough or / just enough.” Milk and Filth (University of Arizona Press, October 2013) by Carmen Giménez Smith. Fifth book, fourth poetry collection. Agent: None. Editor: Kristen Buckles. Publicist: Holly Schaffer.

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