Debut Novels by Authors You’ll Love
Writing a novel is no easy feat. But sometimes you find a debut novel that feels as if the author is a seasoned pro. With elegant prose and unique plot lines, these authors have the ability to transport you to new worlds with characters that stay with you long after you’ve finished the last page. Plus, as an added bonus, when you find an exceptional debut novelist, you feel as if you’ve discovered their immense talents, which connects you to them as they publish more and more books. Enjoy these debut novels by authors we know you’ll love and find out just how good they are at first impressions.
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Add to BookshelfHeadshot
by Rita Bullwinkel
Longlisted for the Booker Prize, an electrifying debut, from an “unusually gifted writer” (Lorrie Moore) about the radical intimacy of physical competition. Frenetic, surprising, and strikingly original, Headshot is a portrait of the desire, envy, perfectionism, madness, and sheer physical pleasure that motivate young women to fight — even, and perhaps especially, when no one else is watching.
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$18.00Buy from Other Retailers:
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2
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Love Can’t Feed You
by Cherry Lou Sy
A beautiful, tender yet searing debut novel about intergenerational fractures and coming of age, following a young woman who immigrates to the United States from the Philippines and finds herself adrift between familial expectations and her own burning desires.
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$28.00Buy from Other Retailers:
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3
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Brat
by Gabriel Smith
From a provocative new literary talent, a hilarious and haunted novel featuring an unlikable protagonist grappling with grief, inheritance, and the ghosts of his past.
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$18.00Preorder from:
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4
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Oye
by Melissa Mogollon
A coming-of-age comedy. A telenovela-worthy drama. A moving family saga. All in a phone call you won’t want to hang up on. A rollicking, heartfelt, and utterly unique novel that celebrates the beauty revealed and resilience required when rewriting your own story.
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5
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Whoever You Are, Honey
by Olivia Gatwood
What happens when what was once considered dystopia is now reality? This darkly brilliant debut novel explores how women shape themselves beneath the gaze of love, friendship, and the algorithm — by a thrilling feminist voice for the age of AI.
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6
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Ours
by Phillip B. Williams
In this ingenious, sweeping novel, Phillip B. Williams introduces us to an enigmatic woman named Saint, a fearsome conjurer who, in the 1830s, annihilates plantations all over Arkansas to rescue the people enslaved there. She brings those she has freed to a haven of her own creation: A town just north of St. Louis, magically concealed from outsiders, named Ours … From a writer of singular voice and vision, a mesmerizing epic that reimagines the past to explore the true nature of freedom.
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$22.00Buy from Other Retailers:
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7
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Martyr!
by Kaveh Akbar
A newly sober, orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, guided by the voices of artists, poets, and kings, embarks on a remarkable search for a family secret that leads him to a terminally ill painter living out her final days in the Brooklyn Museum. Electrifying, funny, and wholly original, Martyr! heralds the arrival of an essential new voice in contemporary fiction.
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8
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The Volcano Daughters
by Gina María Balibrera
A searingly original debut about two sisters and their flight from genocide — which takes them from Hollywood to Paris to San Francisco’s Cannery Row — each haunted along the way by the ghosts of their murdered friends, who are not yet done telling their stories.
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$19.00Preorder from:
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9
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To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods
by Molly X. Chang
She has power over death. He has power over her. When two enemies strike a dangerous bargain, will they end a war … or ignite one?
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10
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Victim
by Andrew Boryga
There’s a fine line between bending the truth and telling bold-faced lies, and Javier Perez is willing to cross it. Victim is a fearless satire about a hustler from the Bronx who sees through the veneer of diversity initiatives and decides to cash in on the odd currency of identity.
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$18.00Buy from Other Retailers:
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11
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Hombrecito
by Santiago Jose Sanchez
Hombrecito is a queer coming-of-age story about a young immigrant’s complex relationship with his mother and his motherland. It is a moving portrait of a young person between cultures and between different ideas of himself. From an extraordinary new talent, this is a story told with startling beauty and intensity, a story for anyone searching for home, searching for a way to love.
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$19.00Preorder from:
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12
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Redwood Court (Reese’s Book Club)
by DéLana R. A. Dameron
“[A] richly textured and deeply moving debut” (The New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice) about one unforgettable Southern Black family and its youngest daughter’s coming of age in the 1990s.
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13
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Black Butterflies
by Priscilla Morris
A timeless story of strife and hope set during the conflict in the Balkans in the early ‘90s — a searing debut novel about a woman who faces the war on her doorstep with courage, fierceness, and an unshakable belief in the power of art.
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$28.00Buy from Other Retailers:
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14
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The Tower
by Flora Carr
A bold, feminist debut novel, reimagining Mary, Queen of Scots’s darkest hour, when she was held hostage in a remote Scottish castle with a handful of loyal women while plotting a daring escape to reclaim her country and her freedom.
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$17.00Buy from Other Retailers:
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15
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The Husbands: A Read with Jenna Pick
by Holly Gramazio
“A bottomless champagne flute of a novel” (The Washington Post), The Husbands delights in asking: How do we navigate life, love, and choice in a world of never-ending options?
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16
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Housemates
by Emma Copley Eisenberg
Two young housemates embark on a road trip to discover themselves in this “exceptional, keenly observed meditation on art and love” (People) in a fractured America, by the award-winning author of The Third Rainbow Girl.
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17
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Cinema Love
by Jiaming Tang
A staggering, tender epic about gay men in rural China and the women who marry them. Cinema Love is an “exceptional” and “moving” (Alice Hoffman) epic about men and women who find themselves in forbidden relationships; the weight of secrets, and the way memory forever haunts the present.
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$28.00Buy from Other Retailers:
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18
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The Book of Love
by Kelly Link
In the long-awaited first novel from short story virtuoso and Pulitzer Prize finalist Kelly Link, three teenagers become pawns in a supernatural power struggle. The Book of Love showcases Link at the height of her powers, channeling potent magic and attuned to all varieties of love — from friendship to romance to abiding family ties — with her trademark compassion, wit, and literary derring-do. Readers will find joy (and a little terror) and an affirmation that love goes on, even when we cannot.
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$20.00Buy from Other Retailers:
