Any chunk of time in the book business is bound to be filled with surprises – otherwise we might not need newspapers. With summer fun officially over, here are some reflections on lingering surprises and mysteries:

The biggest surprise of all – the broad success of The 9/11 Commission Report – shouldn’t have been a surprise at all. Significant government reports have always drawn book readers and political books have been making headlines and topping best-seller lists all year.

Even so, the pace of sales and continued demand for the 567-page report, now with well over a million copies in print, is both a surprise and a major success by any standard. The official sales are only amplified by the bestseller status of the unauthorized mass-market paperback edition from Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s and the New York Times. Also surprising is that the document was so well-written.

Given all that, and with the somber 9/11 anniversary only days away, we still can’t shake another less publicized surprise: the lack of scrutiny over the enormous profit being reaped by the authorized publisher, W.W. Norton.

The company’s officials have repeatedly dodged any specific pledge to donate proceeds from the venture to an appropriate organization (even as many other publishers gave over millions of dollars generated by unofficial commemorative volumes that followed the tragedy). This Saturday would be a meaningful day for the respected publisher to do the right thing and announce where the significant sums generated by the taxpayer-funded analysis will go.

Tied for second in my mind are two missed stories, each obvious in its own way, but apparently subtle to editors and reporters at other newspapers. The alleged – and so far unsatisfactorily explained – fraud of author Norma Khouri in her book, published as “Honor Lost” here in America and “Forbidden Love” in Australia, continues to baffle. At a time when understanding the Muslim word is central, and other journalistic frauds have produced excesses of ink, the American press has been bizarrely out of step in covering and contemplating the full story, even though the author was American.

The other missed tale is perhaps more subtle: Whatever happened to the much-hyped conservative publishing imprints from two of the countries largest trade publishers, Penguin Group (Sentinel), Random House (Crown Forum), along with the conservative-focused editor at Harper and the Conservative Book Club at club giant Bookspan? Announced to much fanfare last year, each of the new initiatives has been noticeably absent from the waves of political books generating news.

The one book to cause a stir, “Unfit for Command,” came from traditional conservative independent publisher Regnery. Which once again raises the question, do the big New York houses really have the stomach for the kind of books on which Regnery prospers? And if Republicans maintain control of the White House, is there really enough left for conservatives to “dissent” about to drive publishing programs?