BY JEFFREY A. TRACHTENBERG

Debut novelist Chris Pavone used Facebook to keep in touch with his pals when he lived in Luxembourg, which became the setting of his coming novel "The Expats." Now his publisher is counting on Facebook and other social-media sites to transform the 43-year-old publishing insider into the country's next hot thriller writer.

"The Expats," a serpentine tale of greed and espionage as seen through the prism of a complicated marriage, is being published March 6 by Crown Publishers, an imprint of Bertelsmann AG's Random House Inc. Pre-publication reviews have been excellent, including starred reviews in Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist ...