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Jeff Abbott is our guest blogger during the week of July 14th. If you have any questions for him, add a comment to any of his posts. Here is some brief information about Collision:

The international bestseller returns with his most ambitious, multidimensional, and tightly crafted thriller yet, a breakout achievement featuring his hallmark blend of ordinary people in extraordinary danger.

Already an international sensation, with his books translated into fifteen languages—in the UK alone, Panic has more than 400,000 copies in print—Jeff Abbott is a master of the action-packed thriller. Now, with Collision, he delivers a meaty, twisty, white-knuckle ride designed to propel him onto the bestseller lists in his home country.

Collision is the story of two men living very different lives—one, a successful corporate consultant who is mourning the murder of his new bride; the other, a former CIA agent known only as “Pilgrim,” whose current assignment for a fringe espionage agency is so treacherous he doesn’t trust even his own boss. When they are thrown together in a violent, unexpected event, the two men realize that they’ve been framed in an elaborate setup. Unsure who to trust and who may just be trying to draw them into the open, the unlikely partners have no choice but to work together. But with everything at stake, Ben has no idea that Pilgrim is harboring some shocking secrets of his own—secrets that will soon force Ben to confront just how blurred the line has become between best friends and bitter enemies.

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This week I've been in New York City promoting Confidence is Queen so that young women all over the country know it exists, they can get one and begin to feel inspired (which is what I pray this book will do for each of you). Just like anything worthwhile, it's been very difficult. The news making headlines these days is almost all negative; what celebs are going to rehab or splitting up, the war in Iraq, gas prices and worse and worse it gets. Anything positive makes the news less and less.

After completing the book months ago, the next step was to spread the word about it so that magazines and television and radio shows will want to have me on to discuss it and raise awareness. If I don't do the press, nobody will ever know it exists.

At first, nobody seemed to care about it. TV shows didn't want me on, radio wasn't interested and I was feeling pretty bummed about it. I thought that they'd be all for spreading such a positive message. Not the case. But then one day, because we didn't give up, people came around. A bunch of radio shows said they wanted me on...then TV shows. Before I knew it, I was sitting at NBC studios talking to Kathy Lee Gifford on "The Today Show" in NYC, which I am so incredibly grateful for!

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Today Judi Powers muses on some of her favorite books that are coming out this summer, and takes a quick glimpse as to what is coming down the line. Read on, and see if you don't get as excited as she is!

The hot summer days we've been having in New York make me want to do two of my favorite things: cook with friends and go to the movies! And, it seems that I'm like a lot of other people if I look at DK's biggest books of the summer season.

The awesome DK PR team has gotten so much media coverage of our cookbook, Grill It! (by the dynamic barbecuing team Doc Willoughby and Chris Schlesinger), that I wake up almost daily to see yet another Google Alert with a rave review of the book. It's gotten to the point that I don't actually read the reviews, listen to radio clips, or watch videos where the authors are cooking until around lunchtime because if I look at them in the morning, I'm craving barbecued chicken for breakfast!

Another hot DK book puts me in the same type of jeopardy for selecting my first meal of the day: it's called He Said Beer, She Said Wine by Sam Calagione and Marnie Old. Their interesting and sometimes-surprisingly delicious pairings of wine and beer with some of my favorite foods (ice cream!) have not only sparked some fun conversations with friends and colleagues about which drink is better, they've actually turned me on to beer (and I used to never drink beer).