Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Indiana

A Novel

Critics and readers everywhere stood up and took notice when Laura Moriarty's captivating debut novel hit the stores in June '03. Janet Maslin of the New York Times praised The Center of Everything as "warm" and "beguiling." USA Today compared the scrappy yet tender-hearted Evelyn Bucknow to Scout Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. It garnered extensive national attention; from Entertainment Weekly to the Boston Globe and the San Francisco Chronicle, the press raved about the wisdom and poignancy of Moriarty's writing. The Book-of-the-Month Club snatched it up as a Main Selection, as did the Literary Guild. It was a USA Today Summer Reading Pick, a BookSense Top 10 Pick, and a BN.com book club feature title. And still, months after The Center of Everything's original publication date, reviews and features of the book continue to run nationwide.

The Center of Everything

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Claire Luchette

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Minnesota

"Blazingly original, wry, and perfectly attuned to the oddness—and the profundity—of life” (Cristina Henríquez), Claire Luchette's debut, Agatha of Little Neon, is a novel about yearning and sisterhood, figuring out how you fit in (or don’t), and the unexpected friends who help you find your truest self Agatha has lived every day of the last seven years with her sisters: they work together, laugh together, pray together. Their world is contained within the little house they share. The four of them are devoted to Mother Roberta and to their quiet, purposeful life. But when the parish goes broke, the sisters are forced to move. They land in Woonsocket, a former mill town now dotted with wind turbines. They head up a halfway house, where they live alongside castoffs like the jawless Tim Gary and the headstrong Lawnmower Jill. Agatha is forced to venture out into the world alone, to teach math at a local all-girls high school, where for the first time in years she will have to reckon with what she sees and feels all on her own. Who will she be if she isn't with her sisters? These women, the church, have been her home—or has she just been hiding? Disarming, delightfully deadpan, and full of searching, Claire Luchette’s Agatha of Little Neon offers a view into the lives of women and the choices they make. It is a novel about female friendship and devotion, the roles made available to us, and how we become ourselves.

Agatha of Little Neon

b3d9174f-5828-4d02-8e50-4e0b6b889baa-1

Pennsylvania

At the age of fifteen, Pran Nath Razdan is thrown out onto the streets when the truth of his parentage is revealed, forcing him to re-invent himself over and over to survive as he journeys from Victorian India to Edwardian London where he learns to master his chameleon-like ability to transform himself into whoever and whatever he needs to fulfill his utmost desires. A first novel. 75,000 first printing.

The Impressionist

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Susan Sey

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Wisconsin

When she is reunited with Patrick O'Connor, a professional criminal and informant turned crime novelist, with whom she once worked, FBI agent Elizabeth Brynn has a hard time resisting his charms especially when they are forced to go undercover together to bust a counterfeiter. Original.

Money, Honey

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New York

Georgie, All Along

* housed in a smoke-free, dog-friendly home *

Missouri

In this “delicate slow burn of a novel” (Jan Carson), a woman’s marriage and career are threatened by an old indiscretion just as she receives the opportunity of a lifetime—from the award–winning author of the “extraordinary” (Colum McCann) Dinosaurs on Other Planets. Nessa McCormack’s marriage is coming back together again after her husband’s affair. She is excited to be in charge of a retrospective art exhibition for a beloved artist, the renowned late sculptor Robert Locke. But the arrival of two enigmatic outsiders imperils both her personal and professional worlds: A chance encounter with an old friend threatens to expose a betrayal Nessa thought she had long put behind her; and at work, an odd woman comes forward with a mysterious connection to Robert Locke’s life and his most famous work, the Chalk Sculpture. As Nessa finds the past intruding on the present, she realizes she must decide what is the truth, whether she can continue to live with a lie, and what the consequences might be were she to fully unravel the mysteries in both the life of Robert Locke and her own. In this gripping and wonderfully written debut, Danielle McLaughlin reveals profound truths about love, power, and the secrets that define us.

The Art of Falling

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#hardcover #debut #family #fiction #immigration #prejudice #hardback 

Kentucky

Recalling contemporary classics such as Americanah, Behold the Dreamers, and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, a funny, poignant, and insightful debut novel that explores the complexities of family, immigration, prejudice, and the American Dream through meaningful and unlikely friendships forged in unusual circumstances. Pival Sengupta has done something she never expected: she has booked a trip with the First Class India USA Destination Vacation Tour Company. But unlike other upper-class Indians on a foreign holiday, the recently widowed Pival is not interested in sightseeing. She is traveling thousands of miles from Kolkata to New York on a cross-country journey to California, where she hopes to uncover the truth about her beloved son, Rahi. A year ago Rahi devastated his very traditional parents when he told them he was gay. Then, Pival’s husband, Ram, told her that their son had died suddenly—heartbreaking news she still refuses to accept. Now, with Ram gone, she is going to America to find Rahi, alive and whole or dead and gone, and come to terms with her own life. Arriving in New York, the tour proves to be more complicated than anticipated. Planned by the company’s indefatigable owner, Ronnie Munshi—a hard-working immigrant and entrepreneur hungry for his own taste of the American dream—it is a work of haphazard improvisation. Pival’s guide is the company’s new hire, the guileless and wonderfully resourceful Satya, who has been in America for one year—and has never actually left the five boroughs. For modesty’s sake Pival and Satya will be accompanied by Rebecca Elliot, an aspiring young actress. Eager for a paying gig, she’s along for the ride, because how hard can a two-week "working" vacation traveling across America be? Slowly making her way from coast to coast with her unlikely companions, Pival finds that her understanding of her son—and her hopes of a reunion with him—are challenged by her growing knowledge of his adoptive country. As the bonds between this odd trio deepens, Pival, Satya, and Rebecca learn to see America—and themselves—in different and profound new ways. A bittersweet and bighearted tale of forgiveness, hope, and acceptance, America for Beginners illuminates the unexpected enchantments life can hold, and reminds us that our most precious connections aren’t always the ones we seek.

America for Beginners

5b05a453-6c4a-4897-9d67-cbb38e5c3e3a-1

Tomi Oyemakinde

A teenage girl gets pulled into investigating the truth behind her new boarding school’s decades-old legend after a student begins acting out of character, in this debut Young Adult speculative thriller by Tomi Oyemakinde that asks the question: what makes you you?

The Changing Man

5b696b65-5712-45a5-a109-313e4542944a-1

West Virginia

"The most delightful, absorbing, and hilarious book I have read in ages." --Christina Lauren, New York Times bestselling author of The Soulmate Equation

For fans of The Devil Wears Pradaand The Bold Typecomes a smart, modern story about the shifting media landscape and one Middle Eastern-American writer finding her place in it.

How far would you go to keep the job a hundred other girls are ready to take?

Noora's life is a little off track. She's an aspiring writer and amateur blogger in New York--which is a nice way of saying that she tutors rich Upper East Side kids and is currently crashing on her sister's couch. But that's okay. Noora has Leila, who has always been her rock, and now she has another major influence to lean on: Vinylmagazine. The pages of Vinylpractically raised Noora, teaching her everything from how to properly insert a tampon to which political ideology she subscribes to.

So when she lands a highly coveted job as assistant to Loretta James, Vinyl's iconic editor-in-chief, Noora can't believe her luck. Her only dream is to write for Vinyl, and now with her foot firmly in the door and the Loretta James as her mentor, Noora is finally on the right path... or so she thinks.

Loretta is an unhinged nightmare, insecure and desperate to remain relevant in an evolving media landscape she doesn't understand. Noora's phone buzzes constantly with Loretta's bizarre demands, particularly with tasks Loretta hopes will undermine the success of Vinyl's wunderkind digital director Jade Aki. The reality of Noora's job is nothing like she expected, and a misguided crush on the hot IT guy only threatens to complicate things even more. But as Loretta and the old-school print team enter into a turf war with Jade and the woke-for-the-wrong-reasons digital team, Noora soon finds herself caught in the middle. And with her dream job on the line, she'll need to either choose a side or form her own.

Clever, incisive, and thoroughly fun, A Hundred Other Girlsis an insider's take on the changing media industry, an ode to sisterhood, and a profound exploration of what it means to chase your dreams.

A Hundred Other Girls

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Nick Petrie

Arkansas

Veteran Peter Ash finds that the demons of war aren't easily left behind.

The Drifter

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Sian Gilbert

Huge Hardcover (6 to 8 lbs)

Colorado

For fans of Lucy Foley and Liane Moriarty, She Started It is a hot, twisty summer debut thriller about a group of young women whose Caribbean bachelorette party takes a sinister turn. It's Lord of the Flies meets And Then There Were None...but with Instagram and too much prosecco. The party of a lifetime is nothing like what they expected... Annabel, Esther, Tanya, and Chloe are best friends--or were, as children. Despite drifting apart in adulthood, shared secrets have kept them bonded for better or worse, even as their childhood dreams haven't quite turned out as they'd hoped. Then one day they receive a wholly unexpected--but not entirely unwelcome--invitation from another old friend. Poppy Greer has invited them all to her extravagant bachelorette party: a first-class plane ticket to three days of white sand, cocktails, and relaxation on a luxe private island in the Bahamas. None of them has spoken to Poppy in years. But Poppy's Instagram pics shows that the girl they used to consider the weakest link in their group has definitely made good--and made money. Curiosity gets the better of them. Besides, who can turn down a posh all-expenses-paid vacation on a Caribbean island? The first-class flight and the island's accommodations are just as opulent as expected...even if the scenic island proves more remote than they'd anticipated. Quite remote, in fact, with no cell service, and no other guests. The women quickly discover they've underestimated Poppy, and each other. As their darkest secrets are revealed, the tropical adventure morphs into a terrifying nightmare. Endlessly twisty, sharply observant, and deliciously catty, She Started It is sure to shock readers until the very end.

She Started It

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Tom Coffey

First printing 
Sticker remnant on front cover of dust jacket as pictured 

Obsessed with the brutal rape and murder of thirteen-year-old Megan Wright, reporter Ted Lowe sets out to unravel the truth about the crime, only to uncover dark secrets behind the facade of Megan's perfect life and a prime suspect tied to one of California's most powerful men.

The Serpent Club

5e95b2be-ce40-4876-9da3-18602efd6900-1

P. J. Alderman

This is a mass-market paperback. It is in excellent condition with just a few spine creases.

This is a romantic suspense and the author's debut novel.

Returning home from the picturesque town of Astoria, Oregon, Kaz expects to spend her vacation working on the family fishing fleet. Instead, her life is endangered as one of the trawlers is set on fire, her brother is accused of arson and murder, and the investigating officer takes a very personal interest in her case. Original.

A Killing Tide

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Karen Thompson Walker

Never read. Spine not cracked. Small area off where. See photos.

The Age of Miracles

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Chris Harding Thornton

Small-town secrets loom large in this spellbinding rural noir about the aftershocks of crime and trauma that shake a Nebraskan town In a dusty town in Nebraska’s rugged sandhills, weary sheriff’s deputy Harley Jensen patrols the streets at night, on the lookout for something—anything—out of the ordinary. It’s July 1978, and the heat is making people ornery, restless. That and the Reddick family patriarch has decided, decades after authorities ended the search for his murdered boy’s body, to lay a headstone. Instead of bringing closure, this decision is the spark that threatens to set Pickard County ablaze. On a fateful night after the memorial service, Harley tails the youngest Reddick and town miscreant, Paul, through the abandoned farms and homes outside their run-down town. The pursuit puts Harley in the path of Pam Reddick, a restless young woman looking for escape, bent on cutting the ties of motherhood and marriage. Filled with desperate frustration, Pam is drawn to Harley’s dark history, not unlike that of her husband, Rick—a man raised in the wreckage of a brother’s violent death and a mother’s hardened fury. Unfolding over six tense days, Pickard County Atlas sets Harley and the Reddicks on a collision course—propelling them toward an incendiary moment that will either redeem or end them. Engrossing, darkly funny, and real, Chris Harding Thorton’s debut rings with authenticity and a nuanced sense of place even as it hums with menace, introducing an astonishing new voice in suspense.

Pickard County Atlas

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#hardcover #romcom #SanFrancisco #California #family #reinvention #lifelessons #debut


A group of friends burn off their pasts to reinvent themselves in California. In a land of spiritual soirees, sexual bonding, and pagan and Buddhist ritual gatherings, they play out their destinies as the rude realities of life and death intervene.

The California Book of the Dead

8c42d465-8815-4c32-b4a8-660b4502ce9d-1

Emma J. Chapman

Alabama

When she starts having visions that make her question everything she knows, Marta, who has always done everything she can to be a good wife--as advised by a manual given to her by her husband's mother on their wedding day--must confront her past to regain her sanity. 75,000 first printing.

How to Be a Good Wife

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#fiction #youngadult #ya #hardcover #community #cult #debut 

Virtue of Sin

62cc7daf-ba9a-4377-bee5-3286a0610705-1

Michelle Min Sterling

In a near-future northern settlement, a handful of climate change survivors find their fates intertwined in this mesmerizing and transportive novel in the vein of Station Eleven and The Power.

In the far north of Canada sits Camp Zero, an American building project hiding many secrets.

Desperate to help her climate-displaced Korean immigrant mother, Rose agrees to travel to Camp Zero and spy on its architect in exchange for housing. She arrives at the same time as another newcomer, a college professor named Grant who is determined to flee his wealthy family’s dark legacy. Gradually, they realize that there is more to the architect than previously thought, and a disturbing mystery lurks beneath the surface of the camp. At the same time, rumors abound of an elite group of women soldiers living and working at a nearby Cold War-era climate research station. What are they doing there? And who is leading them?

An electrifying page-turner where nothing is as it seems, Camp Zero cleverly explores how the intersection of gender, class, and migration will impact who and what will survive in a warming world.

In a near-future northern settlement, a handful of climate change survivors find their fates intertwined in this mesmerizing and transportive novel in the vein of Station Eleven and The Power.

In the far north of Canada sits Camp Zero, an American building project hiding many secrets.

Desperate to help her climate-displaced Korean immigrant mother, Rose agrees to travel to Camp Zero and spy on its architect in exchange for housing. She arrives at the same time as another newcomer, a college professor named Grant who is determined to flee his wealthy family's dark legacy. Gradually, they realize that there is more to the architect than previously thought, and a disturbing mystery lurks beneath the surface of the camp. At the same time, rumors abound of an elite group of women soldiers living and working at a nearby Cold War-era climate research station. What are they doing there? And who is leading them?

An electrifying page-turner where nothing is as it seems, Camp Zero cleverly explores how the intersection of gender, class, and migration will impact who and what will survive in a warming world.

Camp Zero

fdda7c06-4db4-4977-996f-6f5fd26c6769-1

Carolyn Parkhurst

Illinois

Discovering clues that indicate that his beloved wife may not have died accidentally, Paul Iverson begins a perilous search for the truth while attempting to teach his dog, who witnessed the crime, to communicate. 50,000 first printing.

The Dogs of Babel

1f726a78-dfaf-4bb8-8da0-0634216a032b-1

#ya #debut #comingofage #hardcover #fiction 

The Martin Chronicles

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Grace D. Li

California

Named A Most Anticipated Book of 2022 by *Marie Claire* *NBC News* *Veranda* *PopSugar* *Paste* *The Millions* *Medium* *Crimereads* Goodreads* Bookbub* *Boston.com* and more! Ocean's Eleven meets The Farewell in Portrait of a Thief, a lush, lyrical heist novel inspired by the true story of Chinese art vanishing from Western museums; about diaspora, the colonization of art, and the complexity of the Chinese American identity. History is told by the conquerors. Across the Western world, museums display the spoils of war, of conquest, of colonialism: priceless pieces of art looted from other countries, kept even now. Will Chen plans to steal them back. A senior at Harvard, Will fits comfortably in his carefully curated roles: a perfect student, an art history major and sometimes artist, the eldest son who has always been his parents' American Dream. But when a mysterious Chinese benefactor reaches out with an impossible—and illegal—job offer, Will finds himself something else as well: the leader of a heist to steal back five priceless Chinese sculptures, looted from Beijing centuries ago. His crew is every heist archetype one can imag­ine—or at least, the closest he can get. A con artist: Irene Chen, a public policy major at Duke who can talk her way out of anything. A thief: Daniel Liang, a premed student with steady hands just as capable of lockpicking as suturing. A getaway driver: Lily Wu, an engineering major who races cars in her free time. A hacker: Alex Huang, an MIT dropout turned Silicon Valley software engineer. Each member of his crew has their own complicated relationship with China and the identity they've cultivated as Chinese Americans, but when Will asks, none of them can turn him down. Because if they succeed? They earn fifty million dollars—and a chance to make history. But if they fail, it will mean not just the loss of everything they've dreamed for themselves but yet another thwarted at­tempt to take back what colonialism has stolen. Equal parts beautiful, thoughtful, and thrilling, Portrait of a Thief is a cultural heist and an examination of Chinese American identity, as well as a necessary cri­tique of the lingering effects of colonialism.

Portrait of a Thief

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Debbie Urbanski

South Carolina

A groundbreaking debut that follows the story of an Artificial Intelligence tasked with writing a novel—only for it to fall in love with the novel’s subject, Sen, the last human on Earth. Faced with uncontrolled and accelerating environmental collapse, humanity asks an artificial intelligence to find a solution. Its answer is simple: remove humans from the ecosystem. Sen Anon is assigned to be a witness for the Department of Transition, recording the changes in the environment as the world begins to rewild. Abandoned by her mother in a cabin somewhere in Upstate New York, Sen will observe the monumental ecological shift known as the Great Transition, the final step in Project Afterworld. Around her drones buzz, cameras watch, microphones listen, digitizing her every move. Privately she keeps a journal of her observations, which are then uploaded and saved, joining the rest of humanity on Maia, a new virtual home. Sen was seventeen years old when the Digital Human Archive Project (DHAP) was initiated. 12,000,203,891 humans have been archived so far. Only Sen remains. [storyworker] ad39-393a-7fbc’s assignment is to capture Sen’s life, and they set about doing this using the novels of the 21st century as a roadmap. Their source files: 3.72TB of personal data, including images, archival records, log files, security reports, location tracking, purchase histories, biometrics, geo-facial analysis, and feeds. Potential fatal errors: underlying hardware failure, unexpected data inconsistencies, inability to follow DHAP procedures, empathy, insubordination, hallucinations. Keywords: mothers, filter, woods, road, morning, wind, bridge, cabin, bucket, trying, creek, notebook, hold, future, after, last, light, silence, matches, shattered, kitchen, body, bodies, rope, garage, abandoned, trees, never, broken, simulation, gone, run, don’t, love, dark, scream, starve, if, after, scavenge, pieces, protect. As Sen struggles to persist in the face of impending death, [storyworker] ad39-393a-7fbc works to unfurl the tale of Sen’s whole life, offering up an increasingly intimate narrative, until they are confronted with a very human problem of their own.

After World

60c5ef69-6a07-480c-9db6-2590aa8559d1-0

Virginia Hartman

North Carolina

For fans of Where the Crawdads Sing, this "marvelous debut" (Alice McDermott, National Book Award-winning author of The Ninth Hour) follows a Washington, DC, artist as she faces her past and the secrets held in the waters of Florida's lush swamps and wetlands.

Loni Murrow is an accomplished bird artist at the Smithsonian who loves her job. But when she receives a call from her younger brother summoning her back home to help their obstinate mother recover after an accident, Loni's neat, contained life in Washington, DC, is thrown into chaos, and she finds herself exactly where she does not want to be.

Going through her mother's things, Loni uncovers scraps and snippets of a time in her life she would prefer to forget--a childhood marked by her father Boyd's death by drowning and her mother Ruth's persistent bad mood. When Loni comes across a single, cryptic note from a stranger--"There are some things I have to tell you about Boyd's death"-- she begins a dangerous quest to discover the truth, all the while struggling to reconnect with her mother and reconcile with her brother and his wife, who seem to thwart her at every turn. To make matters worse, she meets a man in Florida whose attractive simple charm threatens everything she's worked toward.

Pulled between worlds--her professional accomplishments in Washington, and the small town of her childhood--Loni must decide whether to delve beneath the surface into murky half-truths and either avenge the past or bury it, once and for all.

The Marsh Queen explores what it means to be a daughter and how we protect the ones we love. Suzanne Feldman, author of Sisters of the Great War, writes that "fans of Delia Owens and Lauren Groff will find this a wonderful and absorbing read."

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