The Philly books, popping out in L.A.

Judy Blume. Dean Koontz. Jon Krakauer. Ted Turner.

Big names that get big attention. Especially when book people get together.

At the annual BookExpo America that took place in Los Angeles this month - the echo chamber where publishers pitch their wares to booksellers and literary journalists - huge publicity campaigns can make it seem as if book publishing is only about marquee names.

But many books most appealing to particular regions of the country lie back in the expo's hundreds of modest booths, awaiting discovery.

In every publishing season, books about the Philadelphia area, and writers from it, far outstrip the space available to note them, let alone evaluate them at length. But here are 30 either headed our way or recently arrived:

A Week in October by Elizabeth Subercaseaux (August, Other Press). The first novel translated into English from a Chilean-born great-great-granddaughter of composer Robert Schumann who now lives outside Philadelphia.

Restructuring the Philadelphia Region by Carolyn Adams, David Bartelt, David Elesh and Ira Goldstein, with Joshua Freely and Michelle Schmitt (August, Temple University Press). Comprehensive look at the region's uneven development.

Deception's Daughter by Cordelia Frances Biddle (August, St. Martin's). Her new Martha Beale mystery.

Happy Hour Is for Amateurs by "The Philadelphia Lawyer" (September, William Morrow). The "anonymous mind behind the popular blog Philadelphia Lawyer" - he attracted more than 500,000 unique visitors this year - lets loose on being a litigator here.

Yehuda Amichai: The Making of Israel's National Poet by Nili Scharf Gold (September, Brandeis University Press). Study by an assistant professor at Penn.

Literature, Life and Modernity by Richard Eldridge (September, Columbia). A meditation on how literature reflects modern life, by the Swarthmore College aesthetician.

Digging in the City of Brotherly Love by Rebecca Yamin (October, Yale). What excavations in Philadelphia have taught us, by an archaeologist who has worked extensively here.

Loren Eiseley: Commentary, Biography and Remembrance Edited by Hilda Raz (October, University of Nebraska Press). Personal pieces on the great thinker, scientist and poet who taught at Penn.

Philadelphia Freedom by David Kairys (October, University of Michigan Press). Memoir by the noted civil rights attorney.

Same Sex, Different Politics by Gary Mucciaroni (October, University of Chicago Press). Examination of gay-rights struggles by a Temple political science scholar.

Big Wheel at the Cracker Factory by Mickey Hess (October, Garrett County Press). A Philadelphian who teaches English at Rider University recalls his odd jobs.

The Bitter Road to Freedom by William I. Hitchcock (October, Free Press). A Temple historian recounts the liberation of Europe from the European point of view.

The Arts and the Definition of the Human by Joseph Margolis (October, Temple). How our place in history determines us, by Temple philosophy's eminence grise.

Iron Rails in the Garden State by Anthony J. Bianculli (October, Indiana). Everything you wanted to know about New Jersey railroading, from a retired engineer.

Robert Clifton Weaver and the American City by Wendell E. Pritchett (October, University of Chicago Press). Biography of the first African American to hold a U.S. cabinet position, by the current director of Philadelphia's Office of Research, Planning and Policy.

Arthur Penn: Interviews Edited by Michael Chaiken and Paul Cronin (November, University Press of Mississippi). Philadelphian Chaiken is the head of film and new media at the Maysles Institute.

Truth and History by Murray G. Murphey (November, SUNY). Retired Penn scholar of American civilization asks: Do historians get it right?

Liberty and Tyranny by Mark R. Levin (November, Threshold Editions). Conservative manifesto from a syndicated talk-show host who, surprisingly, got both his B.A. and J.D. from Temple.

Foul Bodies: Cleanliness and the Making of the Modern Body by Kathleen M. Brown (January, Yale). A Penn history professor on why we started washing more regularly by the mid-1800s.

And here are some already available works with local links:

The Hard Way by Julie Luongo (Tor/Forge, $13.95). First novel about a young lady who lacks focus, by a Stroudsburg graduate of Temple's M.A. program in creative writing.

Remembering Kensington & Fishtown by Kenneth W. Milano (History Press, $19.99). Detailed look at a place Native Americans called "Shackamaxon."

Whose Torah? by Rebecca T. Alpert (The New Press, $23.95). Temple's chair of religious studies offers a guide to progressive Judaism.

Racial Paranoia: The Unintended Consequences of Political Correctness by John L. Jackson Jr. (Basic, $26). Penn professor of anthropology and communication on lingering forms of racial thinking in America.

Unnatural History by Robert Aronowitz (Cambridge, $30). A local medical scholar's expert cultural history of breast cancer and its effect on us.

Savoring the Salt Edited by Linda Holmes and Cheryl Wall (Temple, $23.95) Essays on the late Philadelphia-based writer Toni Cade Bambara.

Wonderful Girl by Aimee LaBrie (University of North Texas Press, $12.95). Short stories by a Philadelphia writer that won the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction.

Philadelphia's Rittenhouse Square by Robert Morris Skaler and Thomas H. Keels (Images of America, $19.99). Old photos and new text by two local archive-sleuths.

Violence by Randall Collins (Princeton, $45). Penn sociologist's magisterial analysis of cliches about violence.

Throes of Democracy by Walter A. McDougall (Harper, $34.95). Pulitzer Prize-winning Penn historian on America's Civil War era.

The Diplomat's Wife by Pamela Janoff (Mira, $13.95). Follow-up tale to the Philadelphia novelist's The Kommandant's Girl.