Sloane Crosley's debut, I Was Told There'd Be Cake, an outrageously funny collection of wry and knowing essays on the struggles and unexpected beauty (and utter strangeness) of modern urban life, will be published by Riverhead Books in April 2008. Crosley's work has appeared in publications such as The New York Times, Teen Vogue, The Village Voice, and Black Book Magazine, where she is also a contributing editor.

Poppy Adams’ The Sister, to be published by Knopf in the U.S. in June 2008 and by Virago in the U.K. in May 2008, introduces a remarkable new talent. Set in a sprawling, crumbling Victorian estate, Adams creates an eerie atmosphere reminiscent of Patricia Highsmith as she tells the story of sisters reuniting after a 40-year estrangement. The mysteries of an eccentric family that have been dedicated lepidopterists (moths in particular) for generations are gradually revealed and, ultimately, one sees what people are capable of doing to each other—especially in the name of love. Adams has been a TV documentary filmmaker for the BBC and Discovery Channel. (Poppy Adams’s primary literary agent is Judith Murray at Greene & Heaton, London. For inquiries regarding film, foreign or other rights to this title, contact info@greeneheaton.co.uk.)

Goldengrove, which HarperCollins will publish as a lead title in September 2008, is Francine Prose's extraordinary new novel, a story of a teenage girl plunged into adult grief and obsession after the drowning death of her older sister. The book captures the sense of restless sexual tension that is so characteristic of teenage life and charts a nearly soul-destroying but irresistible first love. Francine Prose, whose past novels include A Changed Man and Blue Angel, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, is also the author of the New York Times bestseller Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and Those Who Want to Write Them. Also a distinguished critic and essayist, Prose was recently named president of the PEN American Center.

Lucia Nevai has built a stellar reputation with her short stories, having been published in The New Yorker, Zoetrope, The Iowa Review and Glimmer Train. Soon she will gain a whole crop of new readers for her novel Salvation, which Tin House Books will publish in June 2008. The novel opens with a first-person account of narrator Crane Cavanaugh’s birth, and it is her quest to become fully human despite the grimness of her Iowa childhood that provides one of the book’s most appealing threads.

National Magazine Award-winning essayist Mark Slouka is pulling together his most noted essays in a collection titled Blood on the Tracks: Intersections and Collisions in American Life, which University of California Press will publish next year. His pieces offer compelling observations on a wide range of topics, including the meaning of God, the place of silence, the virtues of idleness, and the impact of technology on memory and authenticity. A contributing editor at Harper's Magazine, Slouka's essays have been selected three times for inclusion in The Best American Essays.

In Aftermath, journalist Nir Rosen will tell the story of Iraq and the Middle East after the U.S. withdrawal and takes up the question of who is responsible for destroying Iraq. The book will challenge the U.S. administration narrative that failure in Iraq is the fault of Iraq, and it will also highlight the terrible impact the Iraq War has had on the region. Nir Rosen was the first Western journalist to penetrate the insurgency. His articles have been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Harper's, Time Magazine and The New Republic. His home base moves between New York, Istanbul and Beirut. The book will be published by Nation Books/Perseus in late 2008.

In Second Lives, Tim Guest, author of the bestselling memoir My Life in Orange, takes us on a revelatory journey through the electronic looking-glass, as he investigates one of the most bizarre phenomena of the 21st century. Each week, between 35 and 50 million people worldwide abandon reality for virtual worlds. In Boston, Massachusetts, a group of nine disabled men and women inhabit one virtual body, which frees them from their lifelong struggle to be seen and heard. The Pentagon has begun to develop virtual worlds to help in real-world battles. In Korea, where one particular game has 8 million residents, virtual violence has spread into the real world. Hutchinson published in the UK in Spring 2007 and Random House will publish in the US in 2008.

In January 2007, Time magazine placed Gustav Flaubert's Madame Bovary second in their list of The 10 Greatest Books of All Time. Award-winning translator Lydia Davis has been commissioned by Viking/Penguin to prepare a new translation of this universally-acknowledged masterpiece, delivery of which is expected in 2008. Of her translation of Swann's Way (published in 2005), Frank Wynne of Irish Times wrote, "What soars in this new version is the simplicity of language, and fidelity to the cambers of Proust's prose . . . Davis's translation is . . . magnificent, precise."