Armchair BEA: Best of 2012?

For me, aside from the fun of hanging out with all your friends from the computer, the big fun of BEA is the anticipation of all the new books coming out that could be the next big, exciting thing!  I've been enjoying poking around all the BEA galley guides and looking for the books that are supposed to be big at BEA, books that, if I was there, I'd definitely be angling for copies of.  I've narrowed it down to 5 for today's purposes even though there are so many I'd love to have in my hands. 

Future favorites?  We'll see!  

The People of Forever are Not Afraid by Shani Boianjiu (Hogart/September)  - Shani Boianjiu's riveting debut is a revelation-the story of three girls who grow up in a small Israeli village and join the Israeli Defense Forces at eighteen, where they experience a typical coming of age at the same time as preparing for the ever-present threat of war. Yael trains marksmen and flirts with boys. Avishag stands guard, watching refugees throw themselves at barbed-wire fences. Lea, posted at a checkpoint, imagines the stories behind the familiar faces that pass by her day after day. They gossip about boys and whisper of an ever more violent world just beyond view. They drill, constantly, for a moment that may never come. They live inside that single, intense second just before danger erupts.

In Sunlight and In Shadow by Mark Helprin (HMH/October) - Mark Helprin's enchanting and sweeping new novel asks a simple question: can love and honor conquer all? New York in 1947 glows with post-war energy. Harry Copeland, an elite paratrooper who fought behind enemy lines in Europe, returns home to run the family business. In a single, magical encounter on the Staten Island ferry, the young singer and heiress Catherine Thomas Hale falls for him in an instant, too late to prevent her engagement to a much older man. Harry and Catherine pursue one another in a romance played out in postwar America's Broadway theaters, Long Island mansions, the offices of financiers, and the haunts of gangsters. Catherine's choice of Harry over her long-time fiancé endangers Harry's livelihood and eventually threatens his life.Entrancing in its lyricism, In Sunlight and in Shadow so powerfully draws you into New York at the dawn of the modern age that, as in a vivid dream, you will not want to leave.


Every Day by David Levithan (Knopf/August) -  Every day a different body. Every day a different life. Every day in love with the same girl.  Every morning, A wakes in a different person's body, a different person's life. There's never any warning about where it will be or who it will be. A has made peace with that, even established guidelines by which to live: Never get too attached. Avoid being noticed. Do not interfere.  It's all fine until the morning that A wakes up in the body of Justin and meets Justin's girlfriend, Rhiannon. From that moment, the rules by which A has been living no longer apply. Because finally A has found someone he wants to be with-day in, day out, day after day.

Gold by Chris Cleave (July/Simon & Schuster) - Gold is the story of Zoe and Kate, world-class athletes who have been friends and rivals since their first day of Elite training. They’ve loved, fought, betrayed, forgiven, consoled, gloried, and grown up together. Now on the eve of London 2012, their last Olympics, both women will be tested to their physical and emotional limits. They must confront each other and their own mortality to decide, when lives are at stake: What would you sacrifice for the people you love, if it meant giving up the thing that was most important to you in the world?

In the Shadow of the Banyan by Vaddey Ratner (July/Simon & Schuster) - For seven-year-old Raami, the shattering end of childhood begins with the footsteps of her father returning home in the early dawn hours bringing details of the civil war that has overwhelmed the streets of Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital. Soon the family’s world of carefully guarded royal privilege is swept up in the chaos of revolution and forced exodus.  Over the next four years, as she endures the deaths of family members, starvation, and brutal forced labor, Raami clings to the only remaining vestige of childhood—the mythical legends and poems told to her by her father. In a climate of systematic violence where memory is sickness and justification for execution, Raami fights for her improbable survival. Displaying the author’s extraordinary gift for language, In the Shadow of the Banyan is testament to the transcendent power of narrative and a brilliantly wrought tale of human resilience.  

Any BEA books you're looking forward to?

                     

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