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Booklists
Lists of books, many of which received at least one starred review (indicating a work of unusual merit) from the following review sources: Booklist , Publisher's Weekly (PW), Kirkus and Library Journal (LJ). Additional titles of interest may be included on the lists. Titles are generally listed alphabetically by author.
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Booklists and Suggested Reading
Fiction Debuts - 2007
Page Modified: February 11, 2008
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.
- Skylark Farm
Author: Arslan, Antonia
Publisher: Knopf $ 23.95 ISBN: 9781400044351 Date: 2007
Kirkus
A beautiful, wrenching debut novel chronicling the life of a family struggling for survival during the Armenian genocide in Turkey, in 1915. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 10.25.06 - The Teahouse Fire
Author: Avery, Ellis
Publisher: Riverhead $ 24.95 ISBN: 9781594489303 Date: 2007
PW
This sweeping debut novel drawn from a history shrouded in secrets follows two women--one American, one Japanese--whose fates become entwined in the rapidly changing world of late-19th-century Japan.
Updated 10.31.06 - The Saffron Kitchen
Author: Crowther, Yasmin
Publisher: Viking $ 23.95 ISBN: 9780670038114 Date: 2007
PW
This passionate and timely debut is about mothers and daughers, roots and exile, from the remote mountains and riotous streets of Iran to the rain-soaked suburbs of London.
Updated 10.23.06 - Got (Seven Weapon Arsenal)
Author: D
Publisher: Akashic $ 13.95 ISBN: 9781933354163 Date: 2007
LJ
The debut title from The Armory, a new high-quality street-lit imprint edited by Bed-Stuy's Kenji Jasper.There a young man living in the infamous Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. He is an orphaned college student trying to get through his sophomore year at age twenty-three, years behind the traditional undergraduates. His two best friends, Will and Chief, are an ex-drug dealer and a computer hacker. And his boss, Tony Star, is the most dangerous man in Brooklyn, an arch-criminal with enterprises legal and illegal across New York City and beyond. - Publisher Marketing
Suggested Reading: African American Stars
Updated 12.27.06 - Still Water Saints
Author: Espinoza, Alex
Publisher: Random $ 23.95 ISBN: 9781400065394 Date: 2007
Kirkus
"Fresh, magical, beautiful, evocative" says Lisa See, about this wonderful first novel by Alex Espinoza. Still Water Saints chronicles a momentous year in the life of Agua Mansa, a largely Latino town beyond the fringes of Los Angeles and home to the Botanica Oshun, where people come seeking charms, herbs, and candles. Above all, they seek the guidance of Perla Portillo, the shop's owner. Theirs are stories of faith and betrayal, love and loss, the bonds of family and community, and the constancy of change.
Updated 10.16.06 - The Rhythm of the Road
Author: Hall, Albyn
Publisher: Thomas Dunne $ 24.95 ISBN: 9780312359447 Date: 2007
LJ
A mesmerizing debut novel about driving trucks, loving music, and growing up.With shades of Zadie Smith and Mark Haddon, Albyn Leah Hall's powerful debut is a page-turning study of what frightens us about one another and ourselves; of how we run away and what we can't, ultimately, escape from. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 11.16.06 - The Solitude of Thomas Cave
Author: Harding, Georgina
Publisher: Bloomsbury $ 23.95 ISBN: 9781596912724 Date: 2007
PW
In 1616, in the north Atlantic, an English whaling ship prepares to head back toward home. Thomas Cave, however, bets the rest of the crew that he can spend a winter on an Arctic island. From his post at the edge of the known world, Cave sees his own past and begins to reflect on man's relationship with God and the wilderness in this stirring debut.
Suggested Reading: Arctic Stars
Updated 10.16.06 - Heart-Shaped Box
Author: Hill, Joe
Publisher: Morrow $ 24.95 ISBN: 9780061147937 Date: 2007
LJ
Sooner or later the dead catch up, as Judas Coyne buys a ghost for sale on the Internet. This pulse-pounding supernatural thriller is a remarkable debut novel from a blazing new talent.
Updated 12.27.06 - Man Gone Down
Author: Thomas, Michael
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic $ 14 ISBN: 9780802170293 Date: 2007
Booklist
Evoking the work of great American masters such as Ralph Ellison, but distinctly original, Michael Thomas' first novel is a beautifully written, insightful, and devastating account of a young black father of three in a biracial marriage trying to claim a piece of the American Dream. On the eve of the unnamed narrator's thirty-fifth birthday, he finds himself broke, estranged from his white Boston Brahmin wife and three children, and living in the bedroom of a friend's six-year-old child. With only four days before he's due in to pick up his family, he must make some sense out of his life. Alternating between his past--as an inner city child bused to the suburbs in the 1970's--and a present where he is trying mightily to keep his children in private schools, we learn of his mother's abuses, his father's abandonment, and the best and worst intentions of a supposedly integrated America. This is an extraordinary debut about what it feels like to be pre-programmed to fail in life--and the urge to escape that sentence. - Publisher Marketing
Suggested Reading: African American Stars
Updated 11.16.06
More Debuts
Hotlists
Stars
Fiction: Jan-June | July-Dec Crime Fiction: Jan-June | July-Dec
Speculative Fiction Romance Historical Nonfiction | YA
Hotlists
Hotlists: Fiction | Crime Fiction
Genre Hotlists: Christian Fiction | African American Fiction
Stars
Fiction: Jan-June | July-Dec Crime Fiction: Jan-June | July-Dec
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