Americans still fascinated with exotic Asian girls

From the Publishers Marketplace rundown of last week's book deals, these were the only two books listed in debut fiction:

Malaysian writer and recent Michigan MFA grad Preeta Samarasan's EVENING IS THE WHOLE DAY, set in post-colonial Malaysia, the story of an upper-class Malaysian-Indian family, with a mystery at its heart (and winner of two prizes at Michigan, to Anjali Singh at Houghton Mifflin, in a pre-empt, for publication in spring 2008, by Ayesha Pande at Lyons & Pande (NA).

Wendy Lee's HAPPY FAMILY, about the complicated relationship between a young woman from China and the well-to-do New York couple who hire her as the nanny to their adopted Chinese daughter, to Jamison Stoltz at Black Cat, by Shana Kelly at William Morris Agency (NA).

In other words:

Also, if you click on the graphic to the upper right, you'll see all the deals for the month -- a new feature of this blog! -- and that the one deal signed today was for a book about a heteronormative family facing -- what else -- terror.