“During this year’s four-day BookExpo America, which ended Sunday at the Los Angeles Convention Center, the hunt was on for the next ‘The Lovely Bones,’ the debut novel and publishing sensation by Long Beach writer Alice Sebold, who was a breakout star at last year’s BookExpo in New York. In Los Angeles, the gathering drew more than 25,000 booksellers, librarians, publishers and others who traded the latest industry news (John Grisham’s next novel, about a high school football team in Texas, is due in September) and gathered up the giveaways. (Only supremely disciplined book lovers kept walking past the stacks of free books cluttering the aisles.) Part of the fun was to pluck a jewel from the 20,000 titles being unveiled.”