Debut Novels

Ahern, Cecilia. PS I Love You. Hyperion, 2004.

Cecelia Ahern's novel is the story of a young wife, Holly, who loses her 30- year old husband, Gerry. He has left Holly a series of lists to help her face the year ahead. We watch Holly heal and grow as she finds a new job, takes a holiday with friends, and goes through Gerry's belongings. Though her writing style has the earmarks of a novice, Ahern has a wonderful story- telling ability and the cast of family and friends that she assembles adds an extra dimension to this sweet and witty tale that is only occasionally sentimental. This book would be enjoyed by the readers of Marianne Keyes, Helen Fielding, and Sophie Kinsella for its light breezy writing style and young British and Irish protagonists.

Clark, B. Powell. Forgiving Sam. NewSouth Books, 2002.

This powerful story of guilt and redemption revolves around Sam MacCauley, Alabama-roving action reporter and primetime TV news anchor. Abducted at age nine, Sam was tortured and brutally sodomized by Ralph Sommers, a man who had already raped and killed another boy. When Ralph's wife, Deb, helps free Sam, it appears that the love of his mother and father will eventually heal his emotional wounds. Unfortunately, these wounds fester during the course of Sam's adolescence and adulthood. Neither professional success, marriage to the woman he's loved since her infancy, nor two gifted children can erase Sam's nightmares and guilt. Believing that he somehow caused his own trauma, he suffers from asthma and mood swings. After many poignant crises and some answers from his therapist, family members, and Deb, Sam finally forgives himself and moves forward, although he is unable to complete the process until a final, potentially heartbreaking calamity occurs. A story of love (not a love story) that chronicles the responsibilities and benefits of that precarious emotion, this first novel by Clark, a retired nurse, is highly recommended.

Clarke, Susanna. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. Bloomsbury, 2004.

English magicians were once the wonder of the known world, with fairy servants at their beck and call; they could command winds, mountains, and woods. But by the early 1800s they have long since lost the ability to perform magic. They can only write long, dull papers about it, while fairy servants are nothing but a fading memory. But at Hurtfew Abbey in Yorkshire, the rich, reclusive Mr. Norrell has assembled a wonderful library of lost and forgotten books from England's magical past and regained some of the powers of England's magicians. He goes to London and raises a beautiful young woman from the dead. Soon he is lending his help to the government in the war against Napoleon Bonaparte, creating ghostly fleets of rain-ships to confuse and alarm the French. All goes well until a rival magician appears. Jonathan Strange is handsome, charming, and talkative--the very opposite of Mr. Norrell. Strange thinks nothing of campaigning with Wellington's army and performing magic on battlefields. Astonished to find another practicing magician, Mr. Norrell accepts Strange as a pupil. But it soon becomes clear that their ideas of what English magic ought to be are very different. For Mr. Norrell, their power is something to be cautiously controlled, while Jonathan Strange will always be attracted to the wildest, most perilous forms of magic. He becomes fascinated by the ancient, shadowy figure of the Raven King, a child taken by fairies who became king of both England and Faerie, and the most legendary magician of all. Eventually Strange's heedless pursuit of long-forgotten magic threatens to destroy not only his partnership with Norrell, but everything that he holds dear. Very well written and extremely well thought out, this book will hold your interest from the first page to the very last.

Corder, Zizou. Lion Boy. Dial Books, 2004.

Lionboy is a wonderful adventure story written as a first novel by the mother and young daughter team of Louisa Young and Isabel Adomakoh under the penname of Zizou Corder. Aimed at older children and young adults it can also be enjoyed by adults with a sense of imagination. The young hero of the book, Charlie Ashanti, has the unusual ability to speak Cat, which means he can communicate with domestic or wild cats. Set in London of the near future, the story quickly plunges into Charlie’s escape from a kidnapper and his hiding on a fabulous circus ship en route to Paris, while attempting to locate his scientific parents who have also been kidnapped. Charlie is assigned to assist with the performing lions on the circus ships and learns by speaking with them that they are trying to escape from a cruel lion tamer. Through messages sent by domestic cats Charlie learns the direction that his parents are being taken to by their kidnappers. Charlie plans a clever method of escaping with the lions on his way to finding his parents. Lionboy, the first in a trilogy of books, is a suspenseful read filled with danger, action, and adventure.

Daswani, Kavita. For Matrimonial Purposes. G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2003.

Breaking News, Bombay, India--Anju is without a husband and her childhood friends are all getting married and starting their families. Everyone she knows is 'helping' her look for the right man. In fact her mother, father, brothers, aunt and friends are all trying to match her with someone. Birth charts, horoscopes, matchmakers and holy men have all been consulted. Somewhere there must be a suitable man for the somewhat heavyset, medium complexioned daughter of a jeweler. Anju convinced her parents to let her study in America for a short time. After graduation, she worked in fashion marketing. One business trip even took her to Paris. Soon after that one of her suitor's asked if she could operate a vacuum cleaner. He didn't ask if she could make all the arrangements for a fashion show. Just if she could manage a vacuum cleaner and the household help. For Anju, the main goal in life is to find that certain someone to marry. She knows, as do her parents and relatives, that he must exist for Anju. This is a funny debut novel. The quest gets a little tedious for the reader but probably also for Anju. (Kavita may have had similar life experiences). Kavita's next book is The Village Bride of Beverly Hills. Can you imagine being newly married and living with your husbands parents? Life can be difficult.

Jones, Tamara Siler. Ghosts in the Snow. Bantam, 2004.

Although the plot at times moves as sluggishly as congealing blood, this was a great first novel and I am eagerly awaiting the second. The book portrays an England-type medieval society with typical social classes and structure, but with the presence (and illegality) of sorcery. Dubric Bryerly is head of security at Castle Faldorrah and he is very serious about his job, but he has to be. Dubric is haunted by the ghosts of all people who are murdered in the castle. These ghosts do not go away until their murders are solved and soon Dubric has more ghosts than he can handle. The problem is, the longer it takes to solve the crime, the more active, substantial, and dangerous they become. Soon Dubric is facing as much danger from the angry ghosts as he is from the illusive killer. With no end in sight, conflicting suspects, and skimpy clues, Dubric is in a race to stop the brutal slayings before the ghosts take their rage out on him. There is also a romance angle between a noble of the household and a servant girl being stalked by the killer but it is so entwined with the murders that I would be abridging the book by going into it. The murders are very explicitly detailed and the ghosts tend to play with each other's dismemberments and entrails so I wouldn't recommend it to your light mystery readers but those the only limitations to recommendation I can envision.

Koryta, Michael. Tonight I Said Goodbye. New York, St. Martin's, 2004.

Tonight I said goodbye." These words were written by an eight-year-old girl the night she and her mother disappeared and her father was shot, an apparent suicide. But her grandfather does not believe that her father killed himself or that the girl and her mother are dead and hires ex-cop PI Lincoln Perry and his partner to investigate. Perry soon learns that there is more going on with the dead man than first met the eye. As a private investigator, the victim was apparently setting people up for one of Cleveland's prominent businessman to commit extortion in buying up properties. And somehow the Russian mob is involved. A quick, fun read from a new voice in the genre. The book won the 2003 PWA Prize for Best First PI novel and as the author is 21 years old, there should be more Lincoln Perry novels to follow.

Lowery, S.W. Into the Twilight. FirstWorks, 2005.

Into The Twilight is an anthology of Gothic short stories by S.W. Lowery who invites his readers to "Come with me... into the twilight and Southern nights of dreams and fantasies." Lowery has a unique style which lures the reader and who realizes that Lowery's seemingly innocuous tales have packed a punch-right between the eyes. His stories are filled with a haunting curiosity and creativity which the reader senses as inexhaustible. Lowery is a local author who currently lives in Grayson Valley near Trussville.

Niffenegger, Audrey. The Time Traveler's Wife. MacAdam/Cage Publishing, 2003.

While there may be many novels that deal with the theme of love withstanding the test of time, none have dealt with it in quite the same manner as Audrey Niffenegger in The Time Traveler's Wife. This highly original debut novel tells the tale of a love that endures time, after time, after time. It's the story of Chicago librarian Henry DeTamble, who suffers from a genetic condition called Chrono-Displacement Disorder. CDD causes him to involuntarily travel through time, alighting at arbitrary points in his past or his future. It is also the story of Clare, the woman who loves him and tries desperately to endure the complications that loving someone with CDD can entail. This story of life's uncertainty and love's tenacity is told through a series of dated entries as seen through the narrative eyes of each of the protagonists.. Niffenegger has successfully interwoven the humorous and tragic aspects of love over time in a casual and fluent writing style that engages the reader right from the start. An ambitious first novel by a promising new author, The Time Traveler's Wife is a suitable read for fans of romance and fantasy alike.

Parkhurst, Carolyn. The Dog’s of Babel. Little, Brown, 2003. When his wife dies in a fall from a tree in their backyard, linguist Paul Iverson is wild with despair. In the days that follow, Paul becomes certain that Lexy's death was no accident. Strange clues have been left behind: unique, personal messages that only she could have left and that he is determined to decipher. So begins Paul's fantastic and even perilous search for the truth, as he abandons his everyday life to embark on a series of experiments designed to teach his dog Lorelei to communicate. Is this the project of a madman? Or does Lorelei really have something to tell him about the last afternoon of a woman he only thought he knew? At the same time he pursues search for answers, Paul obsessively recalls the early days of his love for Lexy and the ups and downs of life with the brilliant, sometimes unsettling woman who became his wife. Fascinating, disturbing yet poignant, a brilliant debut!

Pearl, Matthew. The Dante Club. Random House, 2003. American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow lost his beloved wife in very tragic circumstances. To assuage his grief, he set to work translating Dante’s epic poem The Divine Comedy into English, and with the aid of such prominent figures as Oliver Wendell Holmes and James Russell Lowell he formed The Dante Club—a literary group for the translation and appreciation of Dante. This much is historical fact, and serves as the starting point for Matthew Pearl’s novel The Dante Club. The setting of Pearl’s novel is Boston in 1865, and the whole city is alarmed by a series of gruesome murders. The members of the Dante Club are quick to recognize that the deaths are patterned after the torments of the damned souls in Dante’s Inferno, but they are hesitant to contact the police—for are they not, after all, prime suspects? Who but they could know so much about Dante, a poet who is all but unknown at this time in the English-speaking world? Who but they could have plotted these murders in such horrifying detail? Tension mounts as the police search for the killer and the members of the club conduct their own discreet investigation. Can they stop the murders without drawing suspicion on themselves as Dante experts? This is Pearl’s first novel and he has crafted a very satisfying literary thriller, though sensitive readers should be warned that there are some extremely graphic descriptions of the murder victims. I have read Thomas Harris without flinching, yet there were some scenes that made me wince and shudder. Still, it was an exceptional read and I’m looking forward to Pearl’s next novel.

Sebold, Alice. The Lovely Bones. Little, Brown, 2002.

Alice Sebold's haunting and heartbreaking debut novel, The Lovely Bones, unfolds from heaven, where "life is a perpetual yesterday" and where Susie narrates and keeps watch over her grieving family and friends, as well as her brazen killer and the sad detective working on her case. As Sebold fashions it, everyone has his or her own version of heaven. Susie's resembles the athletic fields and landscape of a suburban high school: a heaven of her "simplest dreams," where "there were no teachers.... We never had to go inside except for art class.... The boys did not pinch our backsides or tell us we smelled; our textbooks were Seventeen and Glamour and Vogue." The Lovely Bones works as an odd yet affecting coming-of-age story. Susie struggles to accept her death while still clinging to the lost world of the living, following her family's dramas over the years like an episode of My So-Called Afterlife. Her family disintegrates in their grief: her father becomes determined to find her killer, her mother withdraws, her little brother Buckley attempts to make sense of the new hole in his family, and her younger sister Lindsey moves through the milestone events of her teenage and young adult years with Susie riding spiritual shotgun. Random acts and missed opportunities run throughout the book--Susie recalls her sole kiss with a boy on Earth as "like an accident--a beautiful gasoline rainbow." Though sentimental at times, The Lovely Bones is a moving exploration of loss and mourning that ultimately puts its faith in the living and that is made even more powerful by a cast of convincing characters. Sebold orchestrates a big finish, and though things tend to wrap up a little too well for everyone in the end, one can only imagine (or hope) that heaven is indeed a place filled with such happy endings.

Tommy Tenney with Mark Andrew Olsen. Hadassah: One Night With the King. Bethany House, 2004.

In his first attempt at writing fiction, Tommy Tenney introduces his reader to a very imaginative and descriptive, but not always believable account of the life of biblical heroine, Queen Esther. The book begins with a modern day Hadassah, being led by her father through the secret corridors of a museum the day before her wedding. Once reaching their destination, Hadassah and her father are met by the matriarchs of the family and introduced to a historical document written by Queen Esther herself. The document is the door by which Tenney and Olsen tell Queen Esther’s story of how she became queen and later with her uncle, Mordecai, saved the Jews from destruction during the reign of King Xerxes. As the authors craft a brilliantly imaginative tale, vivid descriptions of murders, palace life and war are inter-woven throughout the novel. The novel begins to fall short as Tenney attempts to smooth over some of the problematic details related to the biblical account. For example in the biblical account of the villain, Haman’s lineage, we find that he is a descendant of Agag, the Amalekite king who before his death by the prophet Samuel, is King Saul’s prisoner of a war. To tie Agag to Haman, Tenney offers an unbelievable explanation of how an Amalekite woman crept into a bound Agag’s guardhouse, conceived and escaped to later bear Agag’s child. This is just one example of how some of Tenney’s twists in plot are unbelievable. Despite these problems, the book is still a good read. It concludes with the modern day Hadassah realizing how important her aunt was and the reader is left to compare the Queen’s role to Hadassah’s whose new husband is the Prime Minister of Israel. Tenny and Olsen have succeeded in introducing wonderful characters not mentioned in the biblical account to make the story more engaging. Also, they have skillfully managed to make these characters seem as if they were part of the original biblical text. Readers of Christian fiction will applaud this first time effort.

Williams, Adam. The Palace of Heavenly Pleasure. Thomas Dunn Books (St. Martin’s Press), 2004.

There is a lot of information in this novel and it is presented in over 600 pages of 10 point font. It is not a light read and I have struggled the entire way, but what a struggle it has been. The novel describes the beginnings of the Boxer Rebellion in China just after the turn of the 20th century. The Palace of Heavenly Pleasure is an upscale (if you can use that word to describe this type of establishment) brothel in the town of Shishan and all sorts of political indiscretions are taking place within its walls. The Palace is a central point in the story and most of the other action flows out from it, much like the center of a wagon wheel with the plot lines as the spokes, each separate from the other but connected to the center. There is the abuse of the peasants by the Mandarin class, the Chinese society's conflict with and fear of the missionaries and "ocean devils" with their steam engines and other "magical" ways, even conflict amongst the "ocean devils" themselves as some of them imbibe more of the culture than others with the lure of opium and concubines an umbrella over it all. A phrase in the book which is prominent in my mind and which describes this book as whole is "patient hatred". The plot seethes with the slow build up of the conflict. The politics are vast and the names confusing, but the imagery of this exotic culture and time are indelibly branded in the reader's mind.

Woodworth, Stephen. Through Violet Eyes. Dell, 2004.

In this society, those born with violet eyes channel the dead, whether they want to or not. The government has been quick to "recruit" them into a crime fighting unit all their own, the North American Afterlife Communications Corp, but the police just call them Violets. They are able to channel murder victims in order to accuse the offenders but now someone is targeting the Violets by wearing a mask so that they cannot be identified by their victims later. One Violet in particular, Natalie Lindstrom, is being taken over by the murder victims as they try to warn other Violets of the attacks. Although there are few clues, what evidence they can gather shows a connection to Lindstrom.