Elizabeth Ironside, she learned, is a pseudonym for Catherine Manning, wife of the British ambassador to the U.S. The rights to Garden had reverted to Manning once the book went out of print in the U.K. Lady Manning was thrilled to be published in America, and her husband, Sir David Manning, wound up hosting a book party at the British embassy in Washington, D.

FORBES: Publish or Perish

Those curious to relive the spill's details should get hold of the excellent, out-of-print book by Art Davidson, In the Wake of the Exxon Valdez (Sierra Club Books).

FORBES: Good as New, Almost

Pedro Menezes de Correa's Trilhas do Rio is another good out-of-print book on hiking in the Tijuca Forest and beyond.

BBC: Trekking in Rio de Janeiro

That sensibility led Topkis to her first winner, a 1995 British detective story called Death in the Garden, by Elizabeth Ironside. (In January Garden briefly beat out The Da Vinci Code as the top mystery seller on Amazon.com.) To publish this out-of-print title, Topkis had to track down the book's rights.

FORBES: Publish or Perish