I found some more debuts for you, courtesy of the Edelweiss catalog search tool, which I will be making great use of from this day forward. For now, I’m including paperback debuts where the novel has already released in hardcover. Mostly, because I had a bunch of these before I realized they were there. But that’s ok. When these hardcovers came out, this blog didn’t exist.
The Piano Teacher: A Novel by Janice Y. K. Lee
Amazon USA – UK – Canada
Penguin (Non-Classics)
November 17, 2009
$15.00
Paperback
Genre – Literary
IN THE SWEEPING TRADITION of The English Patient, Janice Y. K. Lee’s debut novel is a tale of love and betrayal set in war-torn Hong Kong. In 1942, Englishman Will Truesdale falls headlong into a passionate relationship with Trudy Liang, a beautiful Eurasian socialite. But their affair is soon threatened by the invasion of the Japanese as World War II overwhelms their part of the world. Ten years later, Claire Pendleton comes to Hong Kong to work as a piano teacher and also begins a fateful affair. As the threads of this spellbinding novel intertwine, impossible choices emerge—between love and safety, courage and survival, the present, and, above all, the past.
The Piano Teacher came out in hardcover earlier this year. There is an article about the author in the Wall Street Journal.
Scurvy Goonda by Chris McCoy (no author site found)
Amazon USA – UK – Canada
Knopf Books for Young Readers
November 10, 2009
$16.99/$21.00 Can.
Hardback
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
In Book One of this two-part story, an endearing misfit embarks on an amazing adventure in search of his friend Scurvy Goonda, an outrageous invisible pirate with an insatiable love for bacon.
Part friendship story, part madcap adventure, readers who love stories in which almost-ordinary kids travel to fantastical lands and become heroes will revel in the imaginative landscape and characters featured in this original debut. While adventure-loving vegetarians will find much to savor, this is a must-read for all who love bacon—which plays a key role in the story’s sizzling climax!
This novel is begging for an author or title website. I did find one, but it is still in a parked state from the web host provider.
College Girl by Patricia Weitz (no website found)
Amazon USA – UK – Canada
Riverhead Trade
November 3, 2009
$15.00
Paperback / softback
Genre: Contemporary Women’s Fiction
College senior Natalie Bloom is beautiful and ambitious, but also painfully insecure. At twenty, she’s still a virgin, never even having had a boyfriend. At school, Natalie hides out most weekends in the library—until she meets Patrick, her fantasy (she thinks) of a cultured, intellectual Prince Charming. But the more time they spend together, the more Patrick brings out her worst insecurities. And before Natalie’s ready, she winds up losing her virginity— and her sense of direction, as her emotional responses take a dangerously self-destructive turn. Soon it’ll take only the most extreme measures to reclaim her sense of self, her confidence, and her ambition.
Insightful, moving, and achingly self-aware, College Girl is an intensely real portrait of a character whose insecurities are recognizable to us all, and of a time of life that changes everything.
Not wild about books that make twenty-year-old virgins seem freaky. It looks like the author did good things with the concept, but crikey, let’s encourage virtue in our young women, not stigmatize it. From what I’ve heard, virginity is not as rare as everyone makes it out to be. And what’s with all the authors without websites? If she has one, it’s danged hard to find.
College Girl has been out in trade paperback and hardcover formats.
Tempest Rising by Nicole Peeler
Amazon USA – UK – Canada
Orbit
November 2009
$7.99/$9.99 Can.
Mass market paperback
Genre: Fantasy
Living in small town Rockabill, Maine, Jane True always knew she didn’t quite fit in with so-called normal society. During her nightly, clandestine swim in the freezing winter ocean, a grisly find leads Jane to startling revelations about her heritage: she is only half-human.
Now, Jane must enter a world filled with supernatural creatures alternatively terrifying, beautiful, and deadly- all of which perfectly describe her new “friend,” Ryu, a gorgeous and powerful vampire.
It is a world where nothing can be taken for granted: a dog can heal with a lick; spirits bag your groceries; and whatever you do, never-ever-rub the genie’s lamp.
The dog healing by licking is certainly something I haven’t seen before. Looks lighthearted, but vampires truly aren’t my thing.
Far from Home by Anne Degrace
Amazon USA – UK – Canada
Avon A
November 10, 2009
$14.99
Paperback
Genre: General
When circumstances set Jo on the road, she doesn’t quite know where she is going—she’s just going. But due to the kindness of strangers, she finds her way to Cass’s Roadside Café, a side-of-the-road diner on a mountain pass in the middle–of–nowhere.
There, during one extraordinary, windy day in 1977, she meets an odd mix of travelers: an old woman who, informed she only has a few weeks to live, tells everyone exactly what she thinks of them—and then doesn’t die; a water-witcher who has had to come to terms with his unusual talent; a hippie who travels wherever the wind takes him; a friendly trucker; and a cast of local characters whose pasts have taught them invaluable lessons, and whose stories give Jo the strength and courage to face her past and depart on her own journey, once again.
The author has had novels published in Canada. It seems to me that the blurb gives away the ending. Sounds like a Canterbury Tales sort of thing.
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All of these are now in my Recent Debuts widget on the far right sidebar, where I decided to keep recent debuts for two months.
Enjoy! I’ll have some more debuts for you next week.