Academy-Award-nominated animated film producer Jerry Levitan's I MET THE WALRUS, an illustrated account of his relationship with John Lennon begun in 1969 when the author was fourteen years old, including audio interview with Lennon. (Collins Design/HarperCollins)
Stephen Weissman's CHAPLIN: A Life, an authoritative new biography of the life and times of the greatest comedian of all time. (Arcade)
Author of BETWEEN THE LINES and THE WRITER'S I CHING, Jessica Morrell's DEAR BAD WRITER, a tell-it-like-it-is handbook that fills in the blanks in those polite rejection letters, finally explaining to unpublished writers why they're really getting rejected and what to do about it. (Tarcher/Penguin Group)
Consumer psychologist Kit Yarrow and USA Today retail columnist Jayne O'Donnell's GEN BUY: HOW TWEENS, TEENS AND 20-SOMETHINGS ARE REVOLUTIONIZING THE WAY WE ALL SHOP, explaining the forces driving today's most sought-after consumers, and their far-reaching impacts on all markets. (Jossey-Bass/Wiley)
Former headmaster of a Maryland private school Libby Cataldi's SMACKED, a harrowing yet hopeful mother's account of a son's descent into near-fatal drug, adding a new dimension to the addiction bookshelf. (St. Martin's)
Author of WHAT A WOMAN NEEDS, WHAT A GENTLEMAN WANTS and WHAT A ROGUE DESIRES, Caroline Linden's trilogy of historical romances, billed as the Regency era meets James Bond, starting with A VIEW TO A KISS. (Avon)
CollegeStories.com's Ben Applebaum and GetBombed.com's Dan DiSorbo and Porter McKinnon's THE BOOK OF BEER PONG, the first and only official illustrated guide to America's real favorite pastime, featuring accepted rules and variations, insider tips ("The Claw Grip aka The Stinky Pinky") and distraction techniques ("The Other Rack") to improve your game, and interviews with seasoned beer pong experts (when coherent) (Chronicle)
Shanthi Sekaran's THE PRAYER ROOM, about an Indian woman who marries a British man, has triplets, and loses her cool when her father-in-law shows up unannounced to her California home, prompting an identity crisis that spans three continents. (MacAdam/Cage)
THE DEVIOUS BOOK FOR CATS: A Parody By Fluffy & Bonkers, by the team who wrote THE DANGEROUS BOOK FOR DOGS, a how-to for cats by cats with helpful information like "Getting Even When You're Declawed," "The Laws of Petting," "Undermining Allergy Sufferers," and "Famous Cats of the Funny Pages." (Villard/Random House)
Karen Solomon's DIY KITCHEN: 25 Edible Crafts for the Weekend Warrior (Make, Don't Buy -- Olives, Ketchup, Cheese, Salami, Crackers, Dressings, and More). (Ten Speed Press)
Photojojo.com founder Amit Gupta's PHOTOJOJO PROJECT BOOK, for DIY photographers with a crafty edge. (Potter Craft/Random House)
Debra Webb's next three novels to follow up TRACELESS, NAMELESS and FEARLESS, set in a small town in Maine where people think an old evil has come back to claim more victims, and a paranormal investigator courts danger when she sets out to prove them wrong. (St. Martin's Press)
Michele Bardsley's sequel to DON'T TALK BACK TO YOUR VAMPIRE and BECAUSE YOUR VAMPIRE SAID SO, featuring the undead moms and dads that make up the Paranormal Parent-Teacher Association (PPTA) of Broken Heart, OK. (NAL/Penguin Group)
Allen Anderson and Linda Anderson's ANGEL HORSES WITH A MISSION, the eighth book in the ANGEL ANIMALS series, a collection of true stories about horses who found purpose through giving service or heroism and the people they inspired. (New World Library)
MASTER OF THE HIGHLANDS and SWORD OF THE HIGHLANDS author Veronica Wolff's WARRIOR OF THE HIGHLANDS, again based on real-life historical heroes. (Berkeley Nooks/Penguin Group)
GOOD LITTLE WIVES author Abby Drake's PERFECT LITTLE LADIES, featuring four new women with a host of secrets to keep - and one blackmailer about to ruin things. (Avon)
Jessica Brody's THE KARMA CLUB, in which three high school seniors with a skewed understanding of "karma" band together to get revenge on the ex-boyfriends who broke their hearts. (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux)
The AV Club's INVENTORY, a compendium of pop culture lists and trivia from The Onion's entertainment and culture publication, expanding on their most popular weekly feature (Scribner/Simon & Schuster).
Laura Fitzgerald's untitled novel, the follow-up to VEIL OF ROSES, exploring the cross-cultural love story of an American single mom and a Persian man, in a two-book deal, for publication in February 2009 (NAL/Penguin).
Stand-up comic, Daily Show "youth" correspondent, and star of an upcoming self-titled Comedy Central program Demetri Martin's first book, a mix of observations, essays, charts, palindromes, puzzles, and doodles, pitched as the Godel Escher Bach of humor books (Grand Central).
Blogger, ex-pat and mom of four Maya Frost's THE WORLD IS YOUR CAMPUS: How to Skip the SAT, Save Thousands on Tuition, and Get an Outrageously Relevant Global Education, showing parents and teens how to increase their Innovation Quotient (IQ) by engaging in outside-the-box-education. (Three Rivers Press/Random House)
Bridie Clark's novel I THINK SHE'S GOT IT, a modern retelling of Pygmalion, the story of a shy, young Midwesterner who is transformed into a sophisticated socialite by a dashing but arrogant man-about-town who is convinced he can turn anyone -- even the most awkward wallflower -- into this year's "it" girl, also optioning film and TV rights (Weinstein Company)
Homa Tavangar's GROWING UP GLOBAL, a hands-on book about preparing kids for a "world that is flat" that helps parents to raise children with a global perspective. (Ballantine/Random House)
This American Life contributor Cheryl Wagner's HANG & FLOAT, about two surreal and shocking years rebuilding her flooded life, home, and community in bohemian New Orleans. (Citadel/Kensington)
Web 2.0 expert Tara Hunt's HOW TO BE A SOCIAL CAPITALIST: Winning with the New Currency of Online Communities. (Crown Business)
Defense attorney Robert Rotenberg's debut OLD CITY HALL, about the murder of a radio personality's wife, and a second legal thriller. (Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Fan-favorite and finalist on season two of Project Runway, Daniel Vosovic (aka Daniel V's) FASHION INSIDE OUT: How Style Happens from Inspiration to Runway and Beyond, an inside look at the creative process of fashion, from inspiration to execution to promotion, including tips and how-to for aspiring designers and anecdotes from his TV experience. (Watson-Guptill)
Onion writers's and a Daily Show producer's THE DANGEROUS BOOK FOR DOGS, a how-to for dogs by dogs with helpful information like "Escaping a Fenced-In Area," "Begging: a Primer," and "A Connoisseur's Guide To Shoes." (Villard/Random House)
Green-living expert Linda Sivertsen's and son Tosh Sivertsen's GREEN BOOK FOR TEENS, an everything-you-need-to-know teen guide to living green and being environmentally aware. (Simon Pulse/Simon & Schuster)
Amir Levine, M.D. and Rachel Heller's GET ATTACHED, STAY ATTACHED, a research-based relationship guide that helps adults discover their attachment style - secure, anxious or avoidant - explains how this affects their interactions with others, and gives strategies for how to finding lasting love no matter which style you are. (Tarcher/Penguin Group)
Gourmet chef and coauthor of Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen Bryant Terry's VEGAN SOUL: 150 Organic and Sustainable Recipes Inspired by African American Cooking, fresh, healthy vegan soul food recipes, for publication in spring 2009. (Da Capo/Perseus)
Heather Swain's ME, MY ELF AND I, a fish-out-of-water story pitched as Mean Girls meets Elf, about an elf who moves to Brooklyn and runs afoul of the popular clique at her performing arts high school. (Puffin/Penguin Group)
Kate Hanley's MS MINDBODY, pitched as a cousin of the Woman's Comfort Book combined with The Worst Case Scenario Survival Guide, providing 75 easy "recipes" for fixing the things that can ruin your day. (Skirt! Books)
NYT Circuits columnist David Pogue's ABBY CARNELIA'S ONE AND ONLY MAGICAL POWER, his first children's book. (Roaring Brook Press)
Wes Marshall's wino's version of WHAT'S A COOK TO DO?, wine-buying advice as well as wine trivia. (Artisan)
SKYMAUL: HAPPY CRAP YOU CAN BUY FROM A PLANE authors Kasper Hauser Comedy Group's WEDDINGS OF THE TIMES, a send-up of the New York Times wedding section. (Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press)
Amanda Barden's BABY NAMES MADE EASY, a listing of more than 10,000 modern and classic names organized by meaning (Love & Affection, Nature, Royalty) for easy reference. (Touchstone Fireside/Simon & Schuster)
Carol Snow's SWITCH, pitched as a cross between Freaky Friday and The Prince and the Pauper that tells the story of a plain but athletic high school freshman with the unusual - but involuntary - skill of switching bodies during electrical storms, in a two book-deal. (Harper Teen/HarperCollins)
Kristina Springer's debut THE ESPRESSOLOGIST, in which Jane, a teenage coffee barista, starts a love and latte craze by matching customers based upon which coffee drinks they choose, in a two book deal. (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)
Author of Why God Won't Go Away and director of the Center for Spirituality and the Mind at the University of Pennsylvania Andrew Newberg, M.D. and Mark Robert Waldman's HOW GOD CAN CHANGE YOUR BRAIN, presenting a neuroscientific argument that religion is good for us-both as individuals and as a society-and revealing how different practices affect and alter different parts of the brain. (Ballantine/Random House)
Comic and Seinfeld, Larry Sanders and SNL writer Carol Leifer's WHEN YOU LIE ABOUT YOUR AGE, THE TERRORISTS WIN, a humorous exploration of marriage, divorce, aging boomers, and finally finding true love (and a baby!) all after forty -- with special attention to her recently passed, wise-cracking dad and psychotherapist mother. (Villard/Random House)
Alan Black's KICK THE BALLS, about soccer, coaching, hell-fire, and damnation in P.C. suburban CA. (Hudson Street Press/Penguin Group)
Based on the website stuffonmycat.com, MORE STUFF ON MY CAT, SOMC PRESENTS WET CATS, and SOMC PRESENTS A IS FOR ALLIGATOR, an alphabet book featuring photos of cats with appropriately lettered things on them, with all three featuring calendars, journals, sticker sets, postcards and other merchandise. (Chronicle)
Diana Rodriguez Wallach's FIRST CLASS CHICA, about a suburban Latina who gets more than she bargains for when she is sent kicking and screaming to Puerto Rico for her cousin's Quinceneara. (Kensington)
Vanity Fair contributor and LA Times writer Richard Rushfield's DON'T FOLLOW ME, I'M LOST: A Memoir of Hampshire College at the Twilight of the 80s, the story of a pure-bred LA teen who abandons the west coast sunshine and mentality to discover the unique "slacker" culture found on this Western Massachusetts campus just as it is being eclipsed by the rise of political correctness. (Gotham/Penguin Group)
Founders of the Selfish Moms Online Forum Susan Callahan, Anne Nolen and Katrin Schumann's WHEN MOM'S HAPPY, EVERYONE'S HAPPY: How Being Selfish Will Make You a Better Mother, a call to action, guidebook, and support group for overwhelmed moms, told through the voices of real women who offer real solutions. (McGraw-Hill)
Head entertainment writer at "The Onion A.V. Club," Nathan Rabin's THE BIG REWIND, tracing the author's life with an absentee mother, a hard-luck dad, group homes, foster families, college in Wisconsin, a second-rate cable TV show, and writing for the non-satirical section of a satirical newspaper -- all told through the prism of the films, songs, books and TV shows that got him through the day. (Scribner/Simon & Schuster)
LA Times contributor Jenn Garbee's SUPPER UNDERGROUND: RECIPES AND ENTERTAINING SECRETS FROM GUERILLA GOURMETS, exploring the secret, underground restaurants and dinner gatherings that are popping up around the country -- with recipes, reportage, and culinary philosophy. (Sasquatch Books)
Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams’s STICK TO DRAWING COMICS, MONKEY BRAIN will include musings, stories, drawings, and essays that range far beyond the normal turf of Dilbert, which is carried in more than 2000 newspapers worldwide. (Portfolio/Penguin)
Julia Moberg's SKIES OVER SWEETWATER, based on the true story of a group of girls during WWII who flew military aircraft, and "Byrd" Thompson in particular -- who leaves her family in Iowa soon after witnessing the death of her father in an airplane crash -- determined to prove to him, and herself, that she can be as good a pilot as he hoped she would be. (Moo Press)
William and Mary anthropology professor Barbara King’s BEING WITH ANIMALS: How Animals Help Us Discover Our Humanity, which challenges our everyday assumption that humans are unique and separate from other animals, and which follows from her recently published EVOLVING GOD: A Provocative View on the Origins of Religion. (Doubleday/Random House)
Veronica Wolff's LORD OF THE HOUNDS, in the venerable tradition of Diana Gabaldon, is the story of a highland laird and a disenchanted 21st century dot-commer who is accidentally transported back in time while vacationing in Scotland. (Berkley/Penguin Group)
Founders of Sacred Center New York Rev. August Gold and Penguin executive Joel Fotinos's THE PRAYER CHEST: A Story of Hope, in the tradition of The Christmas Box and The Alchemist that reveals the three secrets of prayers that work. (Doubleday/Random House)
Blogger and designer Michelle Lamar's THE WHITE TRASH MOM GIVES ADVICE: Or Why Perfection is Overrated, a humorous but practical guidebook for every woman who's every struggled with baking, making Halloween costumes from scratch, or the pervasive evil known as school volunteering. (St. Martin's Press)
Linda and Allen Anderson's ANGEL DOGS AT WORK: Divine Messengers Who Found Their Life's Purpose, a continuation of the Angel Animals series that further explores the spiritual connection people have with their pets through stories gathered from around the world. (New World Library)
James Braly's LIFE IN A MARITAL INSTITUTION, capturing 20 terrifying years of holy matrimony and family life, based on his Grand Slam Championship storytelling for The Moth and his off-Broadway solo show. (Algonquin)
VIKINGS INVADE THE KITCHEN: WHAT TO EAT, DRINK, AND HOW TO BE MERRY WHEN THE MERCURY DROPS, by Anne Bramley, founder and host of the internationally acclaimed food podcast Eat Feed. (Stewart, Tabori & Chang)
Writer/Producer Jessica Brody’s debut novel THE FIDELITY INSPECTOR, about a young, sexy L.A.woman hired by the rich to test their spouses of the intention to cheat and the problems her alter-ego causes in her everyday life. (St. Martin’s Griffin)
Baby Name Wizard author Laura Wattenberg’s NAMEROLOGY, about how class and culture influence names. (St. Martin’s Press)
GQ, New Yorker, and New York Observer contributor -- also consultant to former Iranian president Khatami and UN translator for current president Ahmadinejad -- Hooman Majd's THE AYATOLLAH BEGS TO DIFFER, part humorous travelogue, part insider expose, which makes sense of the paradox of the Iranian character (Doubleday/Random House)
Journalist David Giffels' memoir about his quest to rebuild a Gilded Age mansion in Akron -- where he finds an octogenarian living in one of the rooms and $40,000 in Depression-era cash in the floorboards in another -- to find a stable home for his growing family and to lose himself in an epic renovation. (William Morrow/HarperCollins)
MIT behavioral economist, Dan Ariely's PREDICTABLY IRRATIONAL , showing how the world often works according to principles of irrationality in the places where we expect rationality, with research that shows people make the same types of mistakes over and over, in a predictable manner -- which means understanding this behavior can improve decision-making. (Harper/HarperCollins)
Based on her cover story, Business Week writer Sarah Lacy's ONCE YOU'RE LUCKY, TWICE YOU'RE GOOD: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0, drawing on inside access to the explosive growth of sites such as Facebook, Digg, and YouTube and entrepreneurs like Marc Andressen and Paypal's Max Levchin, to pick up the story where the "dot.bomb" books left off, arguing that much of the futuristic sounding hyperbole of dot.com era wasn't wrong, just several years too early. (Gotham)
Geri Buckley's STORMY WEATHER, the story of a 50-year-old and her cheatin' husband, mixed-up daughters, cantankerous mother-in-law and hey-don't-you-have-one-more-spare-room father-in-law and the hurricane that turns them all upside-down. (Berkley)
Teacher and journalist Malina Saval's THE SECRET LIVES OF BOYS: What They Don't Tell You, an examination of male adolescence in America that offers parents and educators alike the Rosetta stone they need to better understand the complex lives of boys and young men. (Basic)
Dina K. Poch's I [HEART] MY IN-LAWS: Falling in Love with His Family, One Passive-Aggressive, Over-Indulgent, Grandkid-Craving, Streisand-Loving, Bible-Thumping In-Law at a Time, a humorous guide to getting "in" with your man's family, from your first date to your first born. (Henry Holt)
Menace in Europe and Loose Lips author and journalist Claire Berlinski's WHY THATCHER MATTERS, an examination of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's career and why she is such a key (and underrated) figure in the ongoing conflict between free enterprise and its enemies. (Basic)