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

One of four Baranzelli reps is Regina Lafaire, who has draped fabric samples over everything in Elizabeth Menges' 1908 colonial home in Garden City, New York.

FORBES: Walking a fine line

The worst of it was that her hat (the straw garden hat that had belonged to her dear friend Elizabeth) was whipped off and trundled through the cacti, where it splintered and broke.

ECONOMIST: Doris Haddock