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Fiction Debuts - 2005
Page Modified: June 1, 2007
A list featuring
some selected first novels and debut short story collections (mostly
hardcover). This list may not be comprehensive. First novel information
is collected from a variety of sources. Annotations are from Advance, the Ingram Book Magazine - unless
otherwise noted.
- Garner
Author: Allio, Kristin
Publisher: Coffee House $ 14.95 ISBN: 1566891752 Date: 2005
PW
"Fiercely imagined, alive with incandescent imagery, Kirstin Allio's "Garner is a memorable debut."-John Burnham Schwartz
Landlocked, sail-shaped Garner, New Hampshire is a town delineated by its Puritan ethics and its "Live Free or Die" mentality. Like the forbidding landscape of Wharton's Ethan Frome, this New England outpost is thick with history and tradition. Frances Giddens, a spirited, elusive girl born at the dawn of the twentieth century and now approaching womanhood, moves through the forests and rivers that mark Garner's borders as easily as she befriends its stoic residents. In the summer of 1925, with Garner's economic prospects in decline, a group of wealthy New Yorkers descend on the Giddens farm for summer leisure. Even as Frances is drawn to the romance the newcomers represent, darker forces are unleashed. When her body is found in rain-swollen Blood Creek, this deeply private community begins to unravel. - Publisher Marketing.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction
Updated 7.18.05 - The Grace That Keeps This World
Author: Bailey, Tom
Publisher: Crown $ 24 ISBN: 0307238016 Date: 2005
Booklist
In his first novel, Bailey offers an emotional page-turner, infused with a deep sense of foreboding, that tells the story about a family living in New York's Adirondack wilderness and the tragic events that befall them one hunting season.
Updated 8.15.05 - Please Don't Come Back From the Moon
Author: Bakopoulos, Dean
Publisher: Harcourt $ 23 ISBN: 0151011354 Date: 2005
Kirkus
In this haunting debut novel, Michael Smolij and his friends are unable to leave the blue-collar Detroit neighborhoods abandoned by their fathers. They stumble through their teens into their 20s until the restlessness of the fathers blooms in them, threatening to carry them away.
Updated 10.25.04 - Midnight at the Dragon Cafe
Author: Bates, Judy Fong
Publisher: Counterpoint $ 14 (paper) ISBN: 1582431892 Date: 2005
Booklist Kirkus
Judy Fong Bates's fresh and engaging first novel is the story of Su-Jen Chou, a Chinese girl growing up the only daughter of an unhappy and isolated immigrant family in a small Ontario town in the 1950s.
Updated 2.15.05 - Dear Zoe
Author: Beard, Philiip
Publisher: Viking $ 21.95 ISBN: 0670034010 Date: 2005
Booklist
Beard's stunning debut is an epistolary novel written from 15-year-old Tess DeNunzio to her little sister Zoe. After Zoe's accidental death on September 11, 2001--a day so many others died--Tess's family is numbed by their personal tragedy. Not since The Lovely Bones has there been a study of grief, adolescence, and healing that rings as true as Dear Zoe.
Suggested Reading: 9/11 Stars
Updated 2.15.05 - The Book of the Film of the Story of My Life
Author: Brandt, William
Publisher: Warner $ 12.95 ISBN: 0446693812 Date: 2005
Kirkus
Originally published in New Zealand and in the UK, Brandt's hilarious first novel about life, love, and the film business delves into the mind and mystery of the modern adult male.
Updated 10.25.04 - The Great Stink
Author: Clark, Clare
Publisher: Harcourt $ 25 ISBN: 0151011613 Date: 2005
PW
With extraordinarily vivid characters and unflinching prose that recall Year of Wonders and The Dress Lodger, The Great Stink marks the debut of an outstandingly talented writer in the tradition of the best historical novelists.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction
Updated 6.20.05 - The Mercy of Thin Air
Author: Dominque, Ronlyn
Publisher: Atria $ 24 ISBN: 0743278801 Date: 2005
LJ
This first-time author offers a stunning, imaginative love story that tests the boundaries of time, grief, and death.
Suggested Reading: Ghosts
Updated 7.12.05 - The Loss of Leon Meed
Author: Emmons, Josh
Publisher: Scribner $ 24 ISBN: 0743267184 Date: 2005
Kirkus
Emmons pens a highly imaginative debut novel about a town full of varied characters whose lives converage and change when they encounter a mysterious, disappearing man.
Updated 3.25.05 - Snobs
Author: Fellowes, Julian
Publisher: St Martins $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312336926 Date: 2005
Kirkus LJ
From the Oscar-winning screenwriter of Gosford Park comes a brilliant and revealing comedy of manners.
Updated 1.23.05 - Metropolis
Author: Gaffney, Elizabeth
Publisher: Random $ 24.95 ISBN: 1400061504 Date: 2005
Booklist LJ
A brilliant novel of epic proportions, Metropolis tells the story of a young man's struggle to find love and create a life in late 19th-century New York.
Updated 1.23.05 - Widow of the South
Author: Hicks, Robert
Publisher: Warner $ 24.95 ISBN: 0446500127 Date: 2005
Booklist LJ
This debut novel is based on the true story of Carrie McGavock. During the Civil War's Battle of Franklin, a five-hour bloodbath with 9,200 casualties, McGavock's home was turned into a field hospital where four generals died. For 40 years she tended the private cemetery on her property where more than 1,000 were laid to rest.
Suggested Reading: Civil War Stars
Updated 6.29.05 - The Center of Winter
Author: Hornbacher, Marya
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 23.95 ISBN: 0060192267 Date: 2005
Booklist LJ
From the author of the acclaimed memoir Wasted comes a powerful debut novel about family, tragedy, and love.
Updated 1.23.05 - Drive Like Hell
Author: Hudgens, Dallas
Publisher: Scribner $ 24.95 ISBN: 0743251638 Date: 2005
Kirkus
Set in the 1979 outside Atlanta, this "thoroughly enjoyable" ("Publishers Weekly") debut tells the story of 16-year-old Luke Fulmer, who grows up in a difficult family with a stockcar-racing, absentee father, an alcoholic mother, and a delinquent brother.
Updated 11.25.04
Suggested Reading: Driven - John Crow's Devil
Author: James, Marlon
Publisher: Akashic $ 19.95 ISBN: 1888451823 Date: 2005
LJ
This debut novel tells the story of a biblical struggle in a remote Jamaican village in 1957. In the village of Gibbeah, magic coexists with religion, and good and evil are never as they seem in this tale of religious mania, redemption, and sexual obsession.
Updated 10.11.05 - The Historian
Author: Kostova, Elizabeth
Publisher: Little Brown $ 25.95 ISBN: 0316011770 Date: 2005
PW Kirkus Booklist
In this riveting debut novel, a young girl discovers her father's darkest secret and embarks on a harrowing journey across Europe to complete the quest he never could--the quest to find history's most legendary fiend: Dracula.
Updated 4.25.05 - Somebody's Daughter
Author: Lee, Marie Myung-Ok
Publisher: Beacon $ 23.95 ISBN: 0807083887 Date: 2005
Booklist
Adopted by a Midwest couple, 19-year-old Sarah Thorson studies one summer in Korea and eventually embarks on a crusade to find her birth mother. Paralleling Sarah's story, Kyung-sook, a Korean woman, reflects on the child she was forced to give away.
Suggested Reading: Asian American Stars
Updated 3.3.05 - The Ha-Ha
Author: King, Dave
Publisher: Little Brown $ 23.95 ISBN: 0316156108 Date: 2005
LJ
The Ha-Ha marks the beginning of what is sure to be a stellar career for Pushcart Prize nominee Dave King--a debut novel of extraordinary emotional power. When a mute war veteran opens his home to a young boy, he gets a glimpse of life outside his shell--with all its exuberant joys and crushing sorrows.
Updated 11.2.04 - The Historian
Author: Kostova, Elizabeth
Publisher: Little Brown $ 25.95 ISBN: 0316011770 Date: 2005
PW Kirkus
In this riveting debut novel, a young girl discovers her father's darkest secret and embarks on a harrowing journey across Europe to complete the quest he never could--the quest to find history's most legendary fiend: Dracula.
Updated 4.25.05 - Music Through the Floor: Stories
Author: Puchner, Eric
Publisher: Scribner $24 ISBN: 0743270460 Date: 2005
Kirkus
From an acclaimed young Wallace Stegner Fellow and Pushcart Prize winner comes an exceptional first collection of stories about cultural outcasts attempting to navigate mainstream America.
Updated 9.20.05 - Zanesville
Author: Saknussemm, Kris
Publisher: Villard $ 14.95 ISBN: 0812974166 Date: 2005
Booklist
A first novel by an award winner in poetry and short fiction, Zanesville reads like Gulliver's Travels as seen through the eyes of Terry Gilliam.
Updated 9.23.05 - First Love
Author: Sharp, Adrienne
Publisher: Riverhead $ 24.95 ISBN: 1573223107 Date: 2005
Booklist
Set in the world of the New York City ballet in the early 1980s, this first novel by a former ballet dancer tells the story of two young dancers, passionately in love but ill-prepared to handle the demands, seductions, and expectations that put them on the dangerous precipice of fame.
Suggested Reading: Ballet Stars
Updated 6.20.05 - More Like Not Running Away
Author: Shepherd, Paul
Publisher: Sarabande $ 14.95 (paper) ISBN: 1932511288 Date: 2005
Booklist
Tender and frightening, this debut novel takes readers across America, through the eyes and ears of a child whose family is haunted by a past they can't outrun. From a boy lost in a world of imaginary voices and chilling destruction to a young man who can rebuild steeples, the story Levi tells is the triumph of persistence over moments of isolation and despair. - Publisher Marketing.
Updated 10.11.05 - Pretty Birds
Author: Simon, Scott
Publisher: Random $ 24.95 ISBN: 1400063108 Date: 2005
Kirkus PW
This mortal chess game of guile and manipulation plays out against the backdrop of beautiful, war-torn Sarajevo as two high school friends--one Muslim, one Christian--struggle to survive the Serbs' ethnic cleansing.
Updated 4.19.05 - Misfortune
Author: Stace, Wesley
Publisher: Little Brown $ 23.95 ISBN: 0316830348 Date: 2005
PW
This unforgettable debut is a rich, outrageous Dickensian novel in the comic tradition of The Crimson Petal and the White about a boy raised as a girl in the richest home in 19th-century England.
Updated 2.1.05 - Maybe a Miracle
Author: Strause, Brian
Publisher: Ballantine $ 21.95 ISBN: 1400064643 Date: 2005
LJ
Comic and heartbreaking, intimate and universal, familiar and extraordinary, Strause's captivating debut novel about a family in crisis takes readers on a miraculous emotional journey into America's heartland.
Updated 8.24.05 - The Illuminator
Author: Vantrease, Brenda
Publisher: St Martins $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312331916 Date: 2005
PW LJ
Fourteenth-century England was a time of plague, political unrest, and the earliest stirrings of the Reformation. Richly detailed and irresistibly compelling, this first novel is a glorious work of love, art, religion, and treachery at this extraordinary turning point in history.
Updated 3.10.05 - Controlled Burn: Stories of Prison, Crime and Men
Author: Wolven, Scott
Publisher: Scribner $ 22 ISBN: 0743260112 Date: 2005
Kirkus PW
Signaling the arrival of a stunning new talent, this novel is "the most exciting, authentic collection of short stories I have read in years," says George Pelecanos of these raw, blistering tales of hard-bitten convicts, dodgy informers, and criminals running from the law.
Suggested Reading: Debuts
Updated 2.21.05
Mystery,
Suspense, Thrillers & Crime Fiction: First Novels 2005
More Debut/First Look information
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