FICTION
Released: Oct. 23, 2012
"The setup is wonderfully engrossing; the denouement doesn't deliver quite enough. But this is stylish work by an author of real promise."
Elegant and multifaceted, Engelmann's debut explores love and connection in late-18th-century Sweden and delivers an unusual, richly imagined read.
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FICTION
Released: Sept. 11, 2012
"Powers writes with a rawness that brings the sights and smells as well as the trauma and decay of war home to the reader. "
FICTION
Released: Sept. 11, 2012
"A great cure for the blues, especially for anyone who might feel bad about growing older."
FICTION
Released: Aug. 21, 2012
"Superb work from an abundantly gifted young writer."
Set in early-20th-century Washington state, Coplin's majestic debut follows a makeshift family through two tragic decades.
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FICTION
Released: Aug. 7, 2012
"World War II Germany may be familiar ground, but Gillham's novel—vividly cinematic yet subtle and full of moral ambiguity, not to mention riveting characters—is as impossible to put down as it is to forget."
In his debut about 1943 Berlin, Gillham uses elements common to the many previous movies and books about World War II—from vicious Nazis to black marketeers to Jewish children hiding in attics to beautiful blond German women hiding their sexuality inside drab coats—yet manages to make the story fresh.
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FICTION
Released: July 31, 2012
"Often lyrical, sometimes a bit ponderous: a painful, personal record of Cambodia's holocaust."
Ratner's avowedly autobiographical first novel describes her family's travails during the genocide carried out by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia in the late 1970s.
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FICTION
Released: June 26, 2012
"Riveting, heartbreaking, profoundly moving."
In Walker's stunning debut, a young California girl coming-of-age in a dystopian near future confronts the inevitability of change on the most personal level as life on earth withers.
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FICTION
Released: June 19, 2012
"A wonderfully executed debut novel, so rich as to inspire rereading, right down to its inevitable resolution, both ironic and existentialist."
In Kiefer's debut literary novel, astronaut Keith Corcoran returns from the International Space Station to a house populated by a bare mattress, random canned goods and a gray leather sofa.
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FICTION
Released: May 15, 2012
"Immediate, poignant and rarely predictable, this searchingly observant work captures a huge terrain of personal aspiration against a shifting historical and social background. Impressive. "
The architecture of a family, constructed over decades, through relationships, wars and secrets, is assembled with fine detail and insight in an exceptional 20th-century saga.
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FICTION
Released: May 8, 2012
"A gripping thrill ride that's also a thoughtful coming-of-age story. "
Journalist Miller (
Inheriting the Holy Land, 2005) makes her fiction debut with a smoldering mystery set in a New England prep school.
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FICTION
Released: April 17, 2012
"An evocative work about love, fate and redemption."
Up beyond Asheville, near where Gunter Mountain falls into Tennessee, evil has come to preach in a house of worship where venomous snakes and other poisons are sacraments.
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FICTION
Released: April 12, 2012
"Failed by the adults in her life and forced to be the grown-up when she should be experiencing first dates and football games, Liz is a wise, wry, wonderful heroine."
First-time author Thorne wears her heart on her sleeve in this semiautobiographical tale about a 14-year-old who juggles equal amounts of hope and despair in her chaotic daily life.
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FICTION
Released: April 12, 2012
"Complex in theme, complex in narrative, this is a masterful literary exploration of the specter of conscience and the formidable cost of reconciliation."
In Flanery's debut literary fiction, Sam Leroux has a publisher's assignment to write the biography of a famous South African author, Clare Wald, imperious, reticent, evasive about her writing and disinclined to discuss her catastrophic personal life.
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FICTION
Released: March 29, 2012
"Let's hope Laukkanen writes more thrillers like this one."
FICTION
Released: March 15, 2012
"A literary tour de force."
In Dau's debut fiction, Younis, a perceptive, observant boy in a nameless Central Asian land, is caught up in the war on terror.
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FICTION
Released: Jan. 9, 2012
"Engaging and accessible, thoughtful without being daunting: This may be the novel that brings Muslim-American fiction into the commercial mainstream."
Actor/playwright/filmmaker Akhtar makes a compelling debut with a family drama centered on questions of religious and ethnic identity.
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