Bookseller buzz is one of the most important predictors of success for any book and, thanks to you, Viking has tremendous success getting your early feedback, particularly on fiction, year in and year out. Now, we'd like to build word-of-mouth by reaching out to YOUR customers, and, we hope, giving your most influential readers and reading club members another reason to come into your store. With our new Early Bird program, we're offering you extra galleys to give to your key customers, to get people talking in your community in the months before a title actually goes on sale. To sign up for this promotion, simply email us your name and address to viking.marketing@us.penguingroup.com and we'll mail you the galleys. Quantities are limited and requests will be filled on a first-come, first-serve basis.
	My Name Is Mary Sutter By Robin Oliveira On Sale May 17, 2010 ISBN: 9780670021673 Listen to Audio Clip Reading Group Guide An enthralling historical novel about a young woman's struggle to become a doctor during the Civil War Mary Sutter is a brilliant, headstrong midwife from Albany, New York, who dreams of becoming a surgeon. Determined to overcome the prejudices against women in medicine—and eager to run away from her recent heartbreak—Mary leaves home and travels to Washington, D.C. to help tend the legions of Civil War wounded. Under the guidance of William Stipp and James Blevens—two surgeons who fall unwittingly in love with Mary's courage and stubbornness in the face of suffering—Mary resists her mother's pleas to return home to help with the birth of her twin sister's baby, and instead pursues her medical career in the desperately overwhelmed hospitals of the capital. Rich with historical detail (including marvelous depictions of Lincoln, Dorothea Dix, General McClellan, and John Hay among others), and full of the tragedies and challenges of wartime, My Name Is Mary Sutter brings to life a truly unforgettable heroine whose unwavering determination and vulnerability will resonate with readers everywhere. Robin Oliveira received an MFA in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts and was awarded the James Jones First Novel Fellowship for a work-in-progress for My Name Is Mary Sutter. She lives in Seattle, Washington.
Days of Grace By Catherine Hall On Sale May 31, 2010 ISBN: 9780670021765 Listen to Audio Clip Reading Group Guide "Sarah Waters meets Daphne du Maurier" (Harper's Bazaar UK) in this suspenseful novel of repressed passion and WWII tragedy At the beginning of World War II, twelve-year-old Nora Lynch is one of thousands of London children sent away to the safety of the English countryside. Her surrogate family, Reverend and Mrs. Rivers and their daughter Grace, are like no-one she has ever met, offering shelter, affection, and the sister she never had. But Nora is too young and too naïve to understand the cracks beneath the surface of her idyllic new life at the rectory, or the disappointments of the Riverses' marriage. And as her friendship with Grace grows more intense, she aches to become even closer. What happens next is a secret that she keeps for more than fifty years, a secret that she can begin to reveal only when, elderly and alone, Nora knows that she is close to the end. Catherine Hall was born in the Lake District in 1973. Now based in London, she worked in documentary film production before becoming a freelance writer and editor for a range of organizations specializing in human rights and development. This is her first novel.
	The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay By Beverly Jensen On Sale June 28, 2010 ISBN: 9780670021666 Listen to Audio Clip A tale of two sisters over seventy years that recovers the vibrant and unforgettable voice of Beverly Jensen In 1916, Idella and Avis Hillock live on the edge of a chilly bluff in New Brunswick, Canada—a hardscrabble world of potato farms and lobster traps, rough men, hard work, and stunning beauty. From "Gone," the heartbreaking story of their mother's medical crisis in childbirth, to the darkly comic "Wake," which follows the grown siblings' catastrophic efforts to escort their father, "Wild Bill" Hillock's body to his funeral, the stories of Idella and Avis offer a compelling and wry vision of two remarkable women. The vivid cast includes Idella's philandering husband Edward, her bewilderingly difficult mother-in-law—and Avis, whose serial romantic disasters never quell her irrepressible spirit. Jensen's work evokes a time gone by and reads like an instant American classic. Beverly Jensen died of cancer at the age of forty-nine without publishing her work. Since her death, her fiction has been championed by a dedicated group of supporters, including Stephen King and Joyce Carol Oates. Beverly Jensen earned an MFA in drama from Southern Methodist University. After her death in 2003, her story "Wake" was published in the New England Review, included in The Best American Short Stories 2007, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is survived by her husband, Jay Silverman, and their two children.
Bill Warrington's Last Chance By James King On Sale August 9, 2010 ISBN: 9780670021611 Listen to Audio Clip Reading Group Guide A magnificent debut about a man's odyssey toward family redemption—with his granddaughter along for the ride Bill Warrington has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's and his lucid days are numbered. Determined to repair a lifetime of damage with his estranged adult children, Bill takes off with his rebellious fifteen-year-old granddaughter April on a cross-country odyssey, bound for San Francisco where she dreams of becoming a rock star. As the unlikely pair head west, Bill leaves clues intended to force his three children—including April's frantic mother—to overcome their grievances to work together to find them. Author James King masterfully explores themes of aging, sibling rivalry, family dysfunction, and coming of age, against a backdrop of the American heartland. Unflinching, funny, and poignant, Bill Warrington's Last Chance speaks to that universal longing for redemption and familial reconciliation, love and forgiveness. James King lives in Wilton, Connecticut, with his wife and two children. This is his first novel.
	The Personal History of Rachel Dupree By Ann Weisgarber On Sale August 16, 2010 ISBN: 9780670022014 Listen to Audio Clip A "brave, lovely novel"* about "a singular heroine"† whom "you will not soon forget"‡ *Larry Watson, author of Montana 1948 †Susan Straight, National Book Award finalist for Highwire Moon ‡Robert Morgan, author of Gap Creek In exchange for a wedding ring, Rachel, hired help in a Chicago boarding house, agrees to give Isaac, the boarding house owner's son, her share of 160 acres from the Homestead Act, and together they stake a claim in the South Dakota Badlands. But fourteen years later, during the summer of 1917, Rachel is pregnant again and struggling to feed her family, and it hasn't rained in months. Somehow she must find the strength to stake another, altogether different claim—for herself, and for her children. Reminiscent of The Color Purple as well as the frontier novels of Willa Cather and Laura Ingalls Wilder, The Personal History of Rachel DuPree celebrates an extraordinary heroine who embodies the quiet determination and pioneering spirit that built America. Ann Weisgarber was born and raised in Kettering, Ohio. She was a social worker before earning a master's degree in sociology at the University of Houston and becoming a teacher. She divides her time between Sugar Land and Galveston, Texas. Visit her Web site: www.annweisgarber.com.