After a fierce auction, lots of in-house enthusiasm for this debut novel, which blends Jewish and Arab mythologies to create a magical novel set in 1899 New York. A golem named Chava, brought to life by a renegade rabbi, loses the husband who had commissioned her on the voyage from Poland, while the jinni Ahmad is released by a tinsmith from captivity in a copper flask (where hed been put centuries before by a Bedouin wizard). As Chava and Ahmad unite against a terrible threat, denizens of their lower Manhattan neighborhood swirl about them intriguingly. With a reading group guide and a 75,000-copy first printing; Im betting on this one.