
Overbooked specializes in providing timely information about fiction (all genres) and readable nonfiction. Overbooked has been online since 1994. Overbooked is a work in progress . . .
Debuts 2001
Page Modified: June 1, 2007
First Novels: 2001
- Gob's Grief
Author: Adrian, Chris
Publisher: Broadway $ 24.95 ISBN: 0767902815
Kirkus
LJ
In 1863, 11-year-old Tomo Woodhill runs off to fight in the Civil War, during which he takes a bullet in the eye and dies. His brother, Gob, grows up in a state of grief. As an adult studying to be a doctor in New York City, he has an idea to build a machine that might bring Tomo--indeed, all the war dead--back to life.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Civil War Stars
- The Love Artist
Author: Alison, Jane
Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux $ 23 ISBN: 0374231796 Date: 2001
Kirkus
A darkly brilliant first novel that imagines a missing chapter in the life of Ovid, the most popular author of his day. Why do only two lines survive of his play Medea, reputedly his most passionate work? Between the known details of the poet's life and these enigmas, Alison has interpolated a haunting drama of passion and psychological manipulation.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Poets
Updated 1/19/01 - In Beautiful Disguises
Author: Balasubramanyam, Rajeev
Publisher: Bloomsbury $ 14.95 (paper) ISBN: 1582341273
LJ
In this wildly original debut, a 16-year-old Indian girl flees an arranged marriage and runs away to New Delhi to work as a maid. There she falls in with the misfit members of her new household; but even as she embraces this brave new world, she realizes she can't run forever.
- The Salt Letters
Author: Balint, Christine
Publisher: Norton $ 12 (trade paper) ISBN: 0393321606
Kirkus
This beautifully crafted debut novel is the sensuous evocation of a young woman's sea journey in 1854 from refined England to the wilds of Australia.
- The Ash Garden
Author: Bock, Dennis
Publisher: Knopf $ 23 ISBN: 0375413022 Date: 2001
Kirkus
Triangulating the fates of three separate people, this debut novel reveals the true costs of the August 1945 nightmare unleashed in a blinding flash by the Enola Gay.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | World Wars Stars
Updated 8/14/01 - A
False Sense of Wellbeing
Author: Braselton, Jeanne
Publisher: Ballantine $ 23.95 ISBN: 034544311x Date: 2001
Library Journal
Braselton pens a funny, poignant debut about loneliness in marriage, secrets and the power of confession, and the sometimes desperate things women do to inject passion and meaning into their lives.
Updated 9/17/01 - Greetings from
the Golden State
Author: Brenner, Leslie
Publisher: Holt $ 23 ISBN: 0805065644
PW
Updated 12/7/00 - Year of Wonders: A Novel of
the Plague
Author: Brooks, Geraldine
Publisher: Viking $ 24.95 ISBN: 067091021x
PW
A young woman comes of age during an extraordinary year of love and death as she and her community are tested by one of the greatest catastrophes ever to befall England. This gripping historical novel is based on the true story of Eyam, the "Plague Village", in the rugged mountain spine of England in 1666.
- Troublemaker
and Other Saints
Author: Chiu, Christina
Publisher: Putnam $ 23.95 ISBN: 0399147152 Date: 2001
PW
Kirkus
Old and young, East and West, humor and pain collide in this debut novel as the life of one character weaves into that of another, and then another, bringing unlikely figures face to face, strengthening and illuminating each other in surprising ways.
Suggested Reading: Asian American Stars
Updated 2/21/01 - Mirabilis
Author: Cokal, Susann
Publisher: Blue Hen $ 25.95 ISBN: 0399147535
LJ
Villeneuve, France, Anno Domini 1372. The village is under siege and people are starving when Bonne Mirabilis, wet nurse to the wealthiest and most enigmatic woman in town, realizes that she alone has the bounty with which to feed the hungry. With a masterly sense of history and the visceral spirit of The Decameron, newcomer Susan Cokal combines the outrageous and wondrous story of Bonne, a woman born God's bastard, on her way to sainthood with a troop of ascetics, mystics, lovers and jesters who keep her milk flowing. - From the book jacket.
- The Muse Asylum
Author: Czuchlewski, David
Publisher: Putnam $ 23.95 ISBN: 0399147454
Kirkus
PW
In this breath-snatching first novel of love, madness and artistic identity, a young genius's obsession with a reclusive writer consumes those around him, as they begin to learn the dark truths that lurk beneath the surface of the relationship.
Who is Horace Jacob Little? Check out the Muse Asylum web site.
- Moon Women
Author: Duncan, Pamela
Publisher: Dell $ 23.95 ISBN: 0385335180
LJ
From debut novelist Duncan comes a mesmerizing tale of family and love, revelation and forgiveness--a portrait of three generations of women, separated by a secret only one of them can tell.
- Gabriel's Story
Author: Durham, David Anthony
Publisher: Doubleday $ 23.95 ISBN: 0385498144
PW
Booklist
Kirkus
In this literary debut, Durham recounts the adventures and trials of a black pioneer family in the late 1870s. At the center of the story is Gabriel, a young man who moves reluctantly from the urban North with his mother and younger brother to join his stepfather, a homesteader in Kansas. When he runs away to become a cowboy, his search for excitement brings trouble and danger.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Western Stars
- Rides of the Midway
Author: Durkee, Lee
Publisher: Norton $ 25.95 ISBN: 039304971x
Kirkus
Funny and dark, Rides of the Midway is a brilliantly told story about a boy whose life spins completely out of control. He is haunted by the specter of the boy he knocked into a coma while sliding into home in Little League and by the spirit of his father who died in Vietnam. But Noel is equally haunted by his embarrassing failures with girls and his own dark secrets.
- The Crusader
Author: Eisner, Michale Alexander
Publisher: Doubleday $ 24.95 ISBN: 0385502818
Booklist
Set in 1275 Spain, this work is a rousing historical novel about Francisco Montcada, a Crusader with a heavy heart. Eisner makes history come to life as he writes of knights, torture, romance, religious fervor, vows, quests, sieges and villainy.
- Peace Like a River
Author: Enger, Leif
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly $ 24 ISBN: 087113795x
Booklist
PW
Through the voice of 11-year-old Reuben Land, an asthmatic boy obsessed with cowboys living in 1960s Minnesota, the story is told of the Land family's cross-country search for Reuben's outlaw older brother, who has been charged with murder.
- The Ten Thousand: A Novel of Ancient
Greece
Author: Ford, Michael Curtis
Publisher: Thomas Dunne (St Martins) $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312269463
LJ
In the spring of 400 B.C., ten thousand battered Greek soldiers stagger out of the frozen mountains of Armenia into a small Hellenic trading post on the eastern Black Sea. Their stunning tale of survival is the source of this epic debut in the tradition of Gates of Fire.
- Rising Sun: Being the True Account
of the Voyage of the Great Ship of That Name, the Author's Adventures
in the Wastes of the New World . . .
Author: Galbraith, Douglas
Publisher: Atlantic $ 25 ISBN: 087113781x
Kirkus
In 1698, five vessels led by the flagship Rising Sun embarked on a perilous voyage for what is now Panama, where the passengers intended to found a colony at Darien. With them went the hopes and fortunes of the nation of Scotland, which sought to build an overseas empire so that it could compete on the world stage with England. Galbraith's debut novel is the story of this mission and its tragic outcome, as recorded by the ship's superintendent of cargoes, Roderick Mackenzie.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Sea Stories
- Carter Beats the Devil
Author: Gold, Glen David
Publisher: Hyperion $ 24.95 ISBN: 0786867345
Booklist
PW
Filled with historical references that evoke the excesses and enthusiasm of postwar, pre-Depression America, Carter Beats the Devil is the complex and illuminating story of one man's journey through a magical, and sometimes dangerous world.
Guardian First Book Award Nominee.
Carter Beats the Devil web site
- Kissing
the Virgin's Mouth
Author: Gershten, Donna M.
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 23 ISBN: 0060185678 Date: 2001
Kirkus
Gershten pens a stunning debut novel and the first winner of Barbara Kingsolver's Bellwether Prize for a work of socially or politically engaged fiction. Magda climbs from the poor barrio of a Mexican town to American affluence, from wide-eyed childhood to worldly courtesan life, from full-blooded youth to oncoming blindness in middle age.
Updated 1/19/01
- Juno and Juliet
Author: Gough, Julian
Publisher: Doubleday $ 23.95 ISBN: 0385501722
PW
LJ
Booklist
Written by the fresh, new Irish voice of Julian Gough, Juno & Juliet is an intelligent and lighthearted tale of two beautiful sisters who experience university life in Galway and the radiance of newfound love.
- Field Guide
Author: Gross, Gwendoline
Publisher: Henry Holt $ 23 ISBN: 0805064923
Kirkus
- Staircase of a
Thousand Steps
Author: Hamilton, Masha
Publisher: Blue Hen $ 23.95 ISBN:039914725x
Kirkus
In a remote desert village of storytellers and seers, the accidental revelation of long-held secrets, including a forbidden love affair, unravels a young girl's world.
- Watch by Moonlight
Author: Hawks, Kate
Publisher: Morrow $ 24 ISBN: 038081465x
Inspired by Alfred Noyes's poem, The Highwayman, this bittersweet tale of romance, triumph and tragedy is set against the shadowy backdrop of 18th-century England.
- Student of
Weather
Author: Hay, Elizabeth
Publisher: Counterpoint $ 24 ISBN: 158243123x Date: 2001
Booklist
PW
Kirkus
On the prairie of Dust Bowl Canada, two sisters fall down the same well, and the well is named Maurice Dove. Spanning 30 years, this brilliant first novel is a Canadian bestseller about the rivalry between Lucinda and Norma-Joyce and the stranger who changes both of their lives forever.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 12/7/00 - Bread Alone
Author: Hendricks, Judith Ryan
Publisher: Morrow $ 25 ISBN: 0060188952
A mouth-watering novel from new author Hendricks rises to the occasion as a woman devastated by divorce finds redemption working at a small-town bakery.
- The Drink and Dream
Teahouse
Author: Hill, Justin
Publisher: Little Brown $ 23.95 ISBN: 0316824003
Kirkus
From a spellbinding storyteller comes a luscious novel set in contemporary rural China that explores the tumult of life post-Tiananmen Square.
- Ill Met By Moonlight
Author: Hoyt, Sarah A.
Publisher: Ace $ 21.95 ISBN: 0441008607
This enchanting fantasy debut begins with the disappearance of young Will Shakespeare's wife and newborn daughter--a mystery that draws the Bard into a realm beyond imagination. - Lick Creek
Author: Kessler, Brad
Publisher: Scribner $ 24 ISBN: 0743201604
PW
Kirkus
- The Cheese Monkeys: A Novel
in Two Semesters
Author: Kidd, Chip
Publisher: Scriber $ 24 ISBN: 0743214927
Booklist
A witty debut novel that could only be described as a portrait of the designer as a young man.
- The Rich Part of Life
Author: Kokoris, Jim
Publisher: St Martins $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312274793
PW
After Teddy loses his mother to a car accident, his father plays the lottery, with his wife's old numbers, and wins $190 million, immediately transforming their lives forever. For the first time, the family must learn what "the rich part of life" really is.
- Justus Girls
Author: Lambright, Slim
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 24 ISBN: 0060184760
In her debut novel, Lambright spins an engaging tale about four African-American pre-teens who band together to form the Justus Girlz, a crack drill team in the 1960s. Decades later, the sudden death of one reunites the others to investigate what happened to their fallen friend.
- A Man and a Woman and
a Man
Author: Liebrecht, Savyon
Publisher: Persea $ 24.95 ISBN: 0892552662
Kirkus
Intertwining mourning and passion, this critically acclaimed bestseller from Israel follows a married woman who has an affair with a stranger she meets in the nursing home where her mother and his father are dying.
- Juniper Tree Burning
Author: Long, Goldberry M.
Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 25 ISBN: 0743202031
LJ
PW
This debut novel captures the unadulterated legacy of the 1960s counter-culture as it is lived three decades later by the flower children's children.
- Schooling
Author: McGowan, Heather
Publisher: Doubleday $ 24.95 ISBN: 0385501382
Booklist
Catrine Evans, a young American, is sent to an English boarding school after her mother dies of cancer. Memories of Isabelle, the best friend she left behind in Maine, give way to dreams haunted by images of an accidental death she believes they caused before she left for England.
- Edgewater Angels
Author: Meallet, Sandro
Publisher: Doubleday $ 22.95 ISBN: 038550151x
LJ
For Sunny Toomer, growing up in the projects of San Pedro, California, is not easy. In Toomer's uninhibited, often amusing first-person narrative, Meallet conveys the authentic voices of the street in lush, uniquely poetic prose.
- The Far Field: A Novel of Ceylon
Author: Meidav, Edie
Publisher: Houghton $ 25 ISBN: 0618013660
PW
Meidav explores the tragedy of colonialism in an epic first novel of stirring intensity. It's 1936, the world is sliding into war, and Henry Fyre Gould has left behind the salons and sheepish spiritualists of New York City for the British Colony of Ceylon. Expecting to win the people's hearts, Henry instead begins to slowly unravel on a hallucinatory journey through madness and ultimately to salvation.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
- In
Cuba I Was a German Shepherd
Author: Menendez, Ana
Publisher: Grove $ 23 ISBN:0802116884 Date: 2001
Booklist
This debut collection of tales about Cuban immigrants attempting to make new lives in America is presented by a Pushcart Prize winner, touching on themes of the hopes and disappointments of post-revolutionary Castro Cuba, cultural ties that bind family, and more.
Suggested Reading: Latino/Latina Stars
Updated 4/26/01 - Grand Ambitions
Author: Michaels, Lisa
Publisher: Norton $ 23.95 ISBN: 0393050475
LJ
A first novel about love, adventure, and one couple's reckless daring. A pair of young newlyweds sets out to run the rapids of the Grand Canyon in a homemade boat. A month later they vanished without a trace.
- Personal Velocity
Author: Miller, Rebecca
Publisher: Grove $ 23 ISBN: 080211699x Date: 2001
Library Journal
In a powerful debut, Miller's collection of edgy, modern stories explores the multifaceted lives of women in seven arresting portraits. These women of different classes and ages struggle with sexuality, fate, motherhood, infidelity, desperation, and an overriding will to survive.
Updated 7/5/01 - Kit's Law
Author: Morrissey, Donna
Publisher: Mariner $ 13 (trade paper) ISBN: 0618109277 Date: 2001
PW
Kirkus
Booklist
Kit Pitman lives with her unstable mother in a cottage on the outer banks of Newfoundland. Her life is compounded by the mystery that surrounds her illegitimate birth. Morrissey depicts the way the lines between mother and daughter, although blurred, are deeply felt. Kit's Law marks the debut of a new talent.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 4/19/01 - My Dream of You
Author: O'Faolain, Nuala
Publisher: Riverhead $ 25.95 ISBN: 1573221775 Date: 2001
Booklist
When a travel writer realizes the painful cost of her refugee existence, she returns to Ireland to investigate the true story of a scandalous affair between the wife of an English landlord and an Irish servant during the latter years of the famine. The greatly anticipated first novel by the author of the bestselling Are You Somebody? is a love story within a love story and a historical novel within a contemporary one. This grand debut tells of parallel lives, 150 years apart, driven by a hunger for passionate love.
Updated 12/7/00 - After You'd Gone
Author: O'Farrell, Maggie
Publisher: Viking $ 24.95 ISBN: 0670894486
LJ
Alice Raikes lies in a coma in Scotland after an accident that may or may not have been a suicide attempt. With her life hanging in the balance, Alice's family gathers. As they wait, argue, and remember, long-buried tensions rise. Alice, meanwhile, slides between different levels of consciousness, recalling her past and a recent love affair.
- Leaving Disneyland
Author: Parsons, Alexander
Publisher: St Martins $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312278551
Kirkus
- The Rag and Bone Shop
Author: Rackham, Jeff
Publisher: Zoland $ 25 ISBN: 1581951051
PW
Rackham pens a novel of Charles Dickens's very real, but little known, excursion outside the bounds of Victorian morality; an engrossing tale that illuminates the warring demands of public property and private libertinism.
- The Music of the Spheres
Author: Redfern, Elizabeth
Publisher: Putnam $ 24.95 ISBN: 0399147632
Kirkus
In the London of 1795, intrigue and death walk the dark streets. England is at war with its neighbor and nemesis, France, and espionage is rampant. It is the job of Jonathan Absey at the Home Office to catch the spies, but his mind is elsewhere, his dreams haunted by the unsolved murder of his fifteen-year-old daughter in these same streets. - From the book jacket.
- The Third Witch
Author: Reisert, Rebecca
Publisher: Washington Square Press $ 25 ISBN: 0743417712
Reisert's mesmerizing first novel re-imagines Macbeth, Shakespeare's classic tragedy of power and madness, through the eyes of a mysterious young girl on a dangerous quest for vengeance. - Speed of Light
Author: Rosner, Elizabeth
Publisher: Ballantine $ 23.95 ISBN: 0345442245
Booklist
From a prize-winning poet, The Speed of Light is a compelling novel of remembrance in which the sorrows of the past inspire a love story for the present.
- The Dark Room
Author: Seiffert, Rachel
Publisher: Pantheon $ 24 ISBN: 0375421041
Kirkus
LJ
A debut work of major importance, this novel retells the history of 20th-century Germany through the experiences of three ordinary Germans before, during and after World War II.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars & World Wars Stars
- Aria
Author: Segal, Susan
Publisher: Bridge Works $ 23.95 ISBN: 1882593456
PW
A woman's tragedy, unwanted celebrity and an opera star benefactor with less than noble motives all figure into this unusual tale of chance, fate and operatic lives.
- The Savage Girl
Author: Shakar, Alex
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 26 ISBN: 0066209870
Booklist
A magical, mysterious novel explores the effects of consumerism on individuals and society as a whole. Ursula Van Urden arrives in the volcano-shadowed metropolis of Middle City in the wake of her fashion model sister and attempts to "find the future".
- White Swan,
Black Swan
Author: Sharp, Adrienne
Publisher: Random $ 21.95 ISBN: 0375504206 Date: 2001
Booklist
An assured fiction debut that finds in the rarefied world of ballet a metaphor for yearning, ambition and desire. Each bittersweet story plants the reader amid a cast of dancers and choreographers who struggle to find in the rigorous discipline and beauty of ballet a counterbalance to the chaos of unscripted life.
Updated 6/20/01 - The Dark Room
Author: Seiffert, Rachel
Publisher: Pantheon $ 24 ISBN: 0375421041Date: 2001
Kirkus
LJ
A debut work of major importance, this novel retells the history of 20th-century Germany through the experiences of three ordinary Germans before, during and after World War II.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | World Wars Stars
Updated 5/10/01 - Lightning Field
Author: Spiotta, Dana
Publisher: Scribner $ 23 ISBN: 0743212614
PW
Mina's chosen way of slowing down, of sifting through the rubble of her complex life, is to do the thing that is unthinkable in L.A.: walk. Exploring the fetishes that hold the City of Angels in their grip--movies, restaurants, self-image, sex--Spiotta delves into the language, humor, and beauty of obsession, and into the varied ways in which women cope, or don't, with their particular relationship to contemporary culture.
- Death of Vishnu
Author: Suri, Manil
Publisher: Norton $ 24.95 ISBN: 0393050424
PW
Suffused with Hindu mythology, this story of one apartment building becomes a metaphor for the social and religious divisions of contemporary India, and Vishnu's ascent of the staircase parallels the soul's progress through the various stages of existence. As Vishnu closes in on the riddle of his own mortality, readers ponder whether he might not be the god Vishnu, guardian not only of the fate of the building and its occupants, but of the entire universe.
Updated 11/15/00 - The Huntsman
Author: Terrell, Whitney
Publisher: Viking $ 25.95 ISBN: 0670894656
Kirkus
PW
When a young debutant's body washes up in the Missouri River, her death--and the ensuing investigation--forces the Kansas City's inhabitants to examine their own buried history. This debut novel is authored by a writer-in-residence at Rockhurst University.
- The Good
People of New York
Author: Nissen, Thisbe
Publisher: Knopf $ 23 ISBN: 06705411453 Date: 2001
Booklist
In this luminous first novel from a gifted writer, Roz Rosenzweig experiences a love so fierce for her infant daughter that it might crowd out everything else in her life, including her marriage.
Updated 4/26/01 - The Heart of the Beast
Author: Weatherford, Joyce
Publisher: Scribner $ 25 ISBN: 0743211790
Kirkus
To save her family ranch, 28-year-old Iris Steele must delve into her family history, unearthing not only her own ancestry, but also the tangled relationships between generations of homesteaders and Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest. A debut novel inspired by the author's family history.
- Lit Life
Author: Wenzel, Kurt
Publisher: Random $ 24.95 ISBN: 0375505512
Set in Manhattan and the Hamptons, Lit Life is a romp through the world of two writers: Kyle Clayton, a "once hot" young author, and Richard Whitehurst, his literary hero. As these two collide, each finds in the other the crutch he has been seeking. - The Catsitters
Author: Wolcott, James
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 25 ISBN: 0060194146
LJ
Renowned for his barbed wire wit, Vanity Fair literary critic Wolcott turns his wicked eye on the vagaries of romance in this viciously funny debut novel about the ways men and women communicate--and don't--in the never-ending search for a soulmate.
Short Story Debut Collections: 2001
- The Brutal Language of
Love: Stories
Author: Erian, Alicia
Publisher: Villard $ 21.95 ISBN: 0375504788
PW
Updated 2/8/01 - Come Up and See Me
Sometime: Stories
Author: Krouse, Erika
Publisher: Scribner $ 22 ISBN: 0743202449
Kirkus
PW
Each of the 13 stories in this collection is underscored by the brassy spirit of Mae West. Come Up and See Me Sometime is a thought-provoking rant, surprising readers with mirror images of the fears, foibles, and facades of their own lives.
Updated 5/10/01 - Sap Rising
Author: Lincoln, Christine
Publisher: Pantheon $ 20 ISBN: 0375421408
LJ
A powerful debut collection of wise and assured stories includes tales of bedeviled and struggling young African Americans whose lives unfold in rural settings as distinctive as the characters themselves.
- Personal Velocity
Author: Miller, Rebecca
Publisher: Grove $ 23 ISBN: 080211699x
LJ
In a powerful debut, Miller's collection of edgy, modern stories explores the multifaceted lives of women in seven arresting portraits. These women of different classes and ages struggle with sexuality, fate, motherhood, infidelity, desperation, and an overriding will to survive.
- White Swan, Black Swan
Author: Sharp, Adrienne
Publisher: Random $ 21.95 ISBN: 0375504206
Booklist
An assured fiction debut that finds in the rarefied world of ballet a metaphor for yearning, ambition and desire. Each bittersweet story plants the reader amid a cast of dancers and choreographers who struggle to find in the rigorous discipline and beauty of ballet a counterbalance to the chaos of unscripted life.
More First Fiction
Overbooked is a volunteer project undertaken by Ann Chambers Theis: Collection Management Administrator, Chesterfield County (VA) Public Library. 9501 Lori Rd. or P.O. Box 297, Chesterfield, VA, 23832. Phone: 804.748.1760.
Overbooked is not an official Chesterfield County Public Library service. Overbooked.org is a nonprofit web site hosted by CVCO - Central Virginia's Community Online. Overbooked.com is a nonprofit website in experimental mode. Overbooked does not endorse any commercial providers (or their products and services) linked to from this web site.
Join the Overbooked List - A quiet list for readers to share recent reads, keep up to date with details about new books, discuss favorite authors/titles, etc.
Comments, suggestions, corrections: Ann Chambers Theis (AKA Ann/ACT): Ann (ann_overbooked@earthlink.net) or Ann (ann@overbooked.com)
I really appreciate all the e-mail I receive from avid readers and writers and regret that I am not able to respond to all correspondents.










