City of Veils
by Zoë Ferraris
(Little, Brown & Co.)
"Stellar...a searing portrait of the religious and cultural veils that separate Muslim women from the modern world." —Publisher's Weekly (starred review)
"[Ferraris] expertly weaves an excellent whodunnit into an engrossing portrait of a vibrant society, full of sexual, religious, political and moral contradictions. " —The Times (UK)
The Boy Who Loved Tornadoes
by Randi Davenport
(Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill)
"[An] unforgettable memoir of a shattered family, a mother's abiding love, and the frightening permutations of the human mind.—Elle Magazine
"A heartbreaking, disturbing, and truly courageous story of one mother's fight to save her son." —Alice Hoffman
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand
by Helen Simonson
(Random House)
A New York Times Bestseller, a #1 Indie Next Pick, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Pick, and an Amazon Best Book of the Month
"A beautiful little love story...Deserves all available prizes." —The New York Times Book Review
"With her crisp wit and gentle insight, Simonson...knows just what delicious disruption romance can introduce to a well-settled life." —The Washington Post
The House of Tomorrow
by Peter Bognanni
(Amy Einhorn Books)
A Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Pick, an Indie Next Pick, and a Borders Original Voices Selection
"I adore this book, not only for its ability to love our ludicrous hearts, but also for the way it makes dividing questions about whether good literature comes from the heart or the mind seem like nonsense." —Rivka Galchen, author of Atmospheric Disturbances
"Delightful...Bognanni captures that breath we take before we jump out into our life, the moment when, as he puts it, we 'brace for the noise.'" —Minneapolis Star Tribune
The Russian Dreambook of Color and Flight
by Gina Ochsner
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Longlisted for The Orange Prize for Fiction, a New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice
"[Ochsner] manages...to capture our sundry human moments and make raw and unforgettable music of them" —Colum McCann, National Book Award winning author of Let the Great World Spin
Ochsner's characters have an Atlas-like ability to hold up their own blackened piece of sky. And it's the unremarkable tremors of daily life that gradually shake off the mud to reveal something infinite and hopeful...Ochsner is a true artist.—The Times (UK)
The Summer We Fell Apart
by Robin Antalek
(Harper Perennial)
"A preoccupied playwright father and a cult-actress mother are the stars of the Haas family in Antalek's well-crafted and cunning debut novel ... a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and to the importance of family ties regardless of family history, making this an endearing and easy-to-relate-to dysfunctional family drama." —Publisher's Weekly
"Antalek captures the love-hate sibling dynamic perfectly in this absorbing novel, and she conveys an understanding that, while family is vital, you can't ever truly expect them to be what you want them to be." —BookPage
The Unnamed
by Joshua Ferris
(Reagan Arthur Books)
A #1 Indie Next Pick, an Amazon Best Book of the Month, and A New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice
"The Unnamed is an accomplished and daring work by a writer just now realizing what he is capable of creating...The Unnamed lays bare the fabric of families, the lengths people will go for the ones they love and the lack of value we place on the simple ability to pause, to stop and to reconsider all the steps we've made." —The LA Times
"At once riveting, horrifying and deeply sad, "The Unnamed," like Tim's feet, moves with a propulsion all its own. This is fiction with the force of an avalanche, snowballing unstoppably until it finally comes to rest..."—San Francisco Chronicle
A Friend of the Family
by Lauren Grodstein
(Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill)
An Indie Next Pick, an Amazon Best Book of the Month, and A New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice
"...such an incisive diagnosis of aspirational America that someone should hand out copies at Little League games and ballet recitals." —The Washington Post
"Unfolds with suspense worthy of Hitchcock...[Grodstein] is a terrific storyteller and an even better ventriloquist. She beautifully captures Pete's sly self-deceptions...Ultimately, though, this is less a novel about one imperfect citizen than a sharp account of the status-driven suburban culture that turned him into a monster of conformity." —The New York Times Book Review
Tunneling to the Center of the Earth
by Kevin Wilson
(Ecco/HarperCollins)
Winner of the ALA Alex Award, an Indie Next Pick, and a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award
"Wilson offers fabulous twists and somersaults of the imagination… As Wilson continues to dig into the texture and mystery of the world, his fiction should grow, like his best characters, in strange and remarkable ways."—The New York Times Book Review
"Acute and uniformly unsettling, these fictions explore themes of loss and loneliness with fresh young insight, and occasionally with a faint rainbow at the end."—The Boston Globe
"[A] dazzling and important new writer." —Ann Patchett
A Disobedient Girl
by Ru Freeman
(Atria Books/Simon & Schuster)
"Evocative and moving. Ru Freeman is a marvelous storyteller who sees deeply into the complex layers of compassion and love, of sorrow and betrayal. An amazing first novel." —Ursula Hegi, New York Times bestselling author of The Worst Thing I've Done and Stones From the River
"A thrilling debut: Ru Freeman has given us a wonderfully bold and determined protagonist in a richly drawn, complex, fascinating story. I loved it." —Lynn Freed
"A heartbreaking and ultimately uplifting novel that celebrates our ability to transcend tragedy." —Rishi Reddi
The Heretic's Daughter
by Kathleen Kent
(Little, Brown & Co.)
A National Bestseller
"Kent excels at showing both the horrors and petty injustices the imprisoned endured...an eminently readable novel, and a tribute to a woman who held steadfastly to the courage of her convictions." —Christian Science Monitor
"It is the fundamental outrageousness of these tragic events that Kathleen Kent portrays to great effect in her debut novel, The Heretic's Daughter...Kent tells a heart-wrenching story of family love and sacrifice. Its warnings about the dire consequences of intolerance and fundamentalism still have meaning in the modern world." —USA Today
Finding Nouf
by Zoë Ferraris
(Houghton Mifflin)
Winner of the LA Times Award for First Fiction, Winner of an ALA Alex Award, A San Francisco Chronicle Bestseller, A Book Sense Pick, and a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Pick.
"[An] imaginative and closely observed murder mystery set in the Saudi port town of Jeddah … a literary detective novel that balances the pleasure of plot with finely milled prose." —San Francisco Chronicle
"What's remarkable about this debut is that its mystery takes place within a culture that has itself largely been under wraps….it's the individual journeys of Nayir and Katya, who abide by their society's strictures even as they are frustrated by them, that elevate Finding Nouf to a larger human drama." —Entertainment Weekly
Then We Came to the End
by Joshua Ferris
(Little, Brown & Co.)
Winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Barnes & Noble Discover Award and a National Book Award Finalist
"expansive, great-hearted and acidly funny….[a] perceptive and darkly entertaining novel." —New York Times Book Review
"Ferris brilliantly captures the fishbowl quality of contemporary office life.…a masterwork of pitch and tone…" —The New Yorker
What You Have Left
by Will Allison
(Free Press)
A Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick, Borders Original Voices selection and a Book Sense Pick.
"Mr. Allison's novel is plainspoken and eloquent in the way that So Long, See You Tomorrow is plainspoken&mdashand eloquent. It's worked up right out of the American grain and speaks to me, direct and true." —Richard Ford
"A remarkable, understated novel. … Allison has a precocious knack for detail … and for plain, old-fashioned storytelling…. [O]ne of the year's best fiction debuts." —Entertainment Weekly
A Ticket to Ride
by Paula McLain
(Ecco)
"McLain is a poet and it shows in the way she uses language here. Her depiction of Jamie, in Jamie's own words, is sensitive and compelling…" —Booklist
"In this beautifully written book about the bad decisions we make on the way to growing up, Paula McLain creates a teenage heroine whose struggle to define herself is both heartbreaking and redemptive. A Ticket to Ride is deeply felt and engrossing—an immense pleasure to read." —Leah Stewart, author of The Myth of You and Me
Still Life With Husband
by Lauren Fox
(Alfred A. Knopf)
"An intimate, emotionally articulate, and technically deft anatomy of family, friendship, and love. It is also the debut novel of a meticulous, compassionate, and gifted young writer." —Lorrie Moore
"A delightful new voice in American fiction, a voice that instantly recalls the wry, knowing prose of Lorrie Moore crossed with the screwball talents of the cartoonist Roz Chast." —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
"Read Still Life with Husband for its funny, winning voice and an ending that could be debated by book clubs for months to come." —USA Today
Last Seen Leaving
by Kelly Braffet
(Houghton Mifflin)
"A compelling tale of mother-daughter estrangement…Braffet convincingly depicts prickly Miranda's escape from her past—and the frenzy of Anne's delayed search for her…" —Entertainment Weekly
"[A] deft second novel….Braffet has a gift for creating an atmosphere of suspicion —and suspense." —People Magazine
"[a] literary thriller that deepens rather than solves the most elusive mystery of all: the mystery of human nature." —San Francisco Chronicle
The Time It Takes to Fall
by Margaret Lazarus Dean
(Simon & Schuster)
"Affecting, original debut about a girl's coming of age, set against the backdrop of the NASA space-shuttle program….An accomplished first novel about the American family." —Kirkus Reviews *starred*
"A deft reflection on the loss of personal and national innocence." — Bookpage
"[A] gripping judgment of American culture with a harrowing depiction in the epilog of the last few minutes in the lives of the Challenger's seven astronauts." —Library Journal