Three More Debut Authors, Three Great Books

In the tradition of Robert Goolrick's A Reliable Wife and Karl Marlantes's Matterhorn, P. S. Duffy's astonishing debut showcases a rare and instinctive talent emerging in midlife. Her novel leaps across the Atlantic, between a father at war and a son coming of age at home without him. When his beloved brother-in-law goes missing at the front in 1916, Angus defies his pacifist upbringing to join the war and find him. Assured a position as a cartographer in London, he is instead sent directly into the visceral shock of battle. Meanwhile, at home, his son Simon Peter must navigate escalating hostility in a fishing village torn by grief. With the intimacy of The Song of Achilles and the epic scope of The Invisible Bridge, The Cartographer of No Man's Land offers a soulful portrayal of World War I and the lives that were forever changed by it, both on the battlefield and at home.

The Last Animal by Abby Geni is that rare literary find—a remarkable series of stories unified around one theme: people who use the interface between the human and the natural world to contend with their modern challenges in love, loss, and family life. These are vibrant, weighty stories that herald the arrival of a young writer of surprising feeling and depth.

Terror Birds tracks the dissolution of a marriage set against an ostrich farm in the sweltering Arizona desert; Dharma at the Gate features the tempest of young love as a teenage girl must choose between man’s best friend, her damaged boyfriend, and a beckoning future; and Captivity follows an octopus handler at an aquarium still haunted by the disappearance of her brother years ago. The Girls of Apache Bryn Mawr details a Greek chorus of Jewish girls at a summer camp whose favorite counselor goes missing under suspicious circumstances, and In the Spirit Room centers on a scientist suffering the heartbreaking loss of a parent from Alzheimer’s while living in the natural history museum where they both worked. In Fire Blight, a father grieving over his wife’s recent miscarriage finds comfort in their backyard garden and makes a surprising discovery on how to cherish living things; and in the title story, a retired woman traces the steps of the husband who left her thirty years ago, burning the letters he had sent along the way, while the luminous and exotic wildlife of the Pacific Ocean opens up to receive her. 

Unflinching, exciting, ambitious and yet heartfelt, The Last Animal guides readers through a menagerie of
settings and landscapes as it underscores the connection among all living things.

A brawny, brilliant debut novel about an irrepressible Jewish boy and his indelible mother in 1930s South Africa, reminiscent of The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz and perfect for lovers of Cutting for Stone.

Set in the tough streets of Doornfontein, Johannesburg, in the years leading up to the Second World War, The Lion Seeker tells the coming-of-age story of Isaac Helger, the son of Jewish immigrants, whose mother, Gitelle, suffuses his young life with an overpowering sense of his mission. But it is the terrible unspoken secrets of the family's past that form another more enduring legacy for Isaac, one that haunts him even as he makes his way in the world, one that will lead to the moment when he must face the starkest moral choice of his life as the threat of war looms like a storm cloud over the Jews of Europe.

The Lion Seeker brilliantly brings to life the world of South African Jewry in all its raw energy and ribald vernacular. Comedic, searing, lyrical and with a snap-perfect ear for dialogue, The Lion Seeker is a profoundly moral exploration of how wider social forces act on families and individuals with lasting relevance for the present moment.

Indies Introduce Debut Authors!

Mitchell S. Jackson grew up black in a neglected neighborhood in America’s whitest city, Portland, Oregon. In the ’90s, those streets and beyond had fallen under the shadow of crack cocaine and its familiar mayhem. In his commanding autobiographical novel, Mitchell writes what it was to come of age in that time and place, with a break-out voice that’s nothing less than extraordinary.

The Residue Years switches between the perspectives of a young man, Champ, and his mother, Grace. Grace is just out of a drug treatment program, trying to stay clean and get her kids back. Champ is trying to do right by his mom and younger brothers, and dreams of reclaiming the only home he and his family have ever shared. But selling crack is the only sure way he knows to achieve his dream. In this world of few options and little opportunity, where love is your strength and your weakness, this family fights for family and against what tears one apart.

Honest in its portrayal, with cadences that dazzle, The Residue Years signals the arrival of a writer set to awe.

Dining alone in an elegant Parisian brasserie, accountant Daniel Mercier can hardly believe his eyes when President François Mitterrand sits down to eat at the table next to him.

Daniel’s thrill at being in such close proximity to the most powerful man in the land persists even after the presidential party has gone, which is when he discovers that Mitterrand’s black felt hat has been left behind.

After a few moments’ soul-searching, Daniel decides to keep the souvenir of an extraordinary evening. It’s a perfect fit, and as he leaves the restaurant Daniel begins to feel somehow … different.

A journalist explores his family’s history to reveal the hybrid cultural and political landscape of Pakistan, the world’s first Islamic democracy.

Shahan Mufti’s family history, which he can trace back fourteen hundred years to the inner circle of the prophet Muhammad, offers an enlightened perspective on the mystifying history of Pakistan. Mufti uses the stories of his ancestors, many of whom served as judges and jurists in Muslim sharia courts of South Asia for many centuries, to reveal the deepest roots—real and imagined—of Islamic civilization in Pakistan.

More than a personal history, The Faithful Scribe captures the larger story of the world’s first Islamic democracy, and explains how the state that once promised to bridge Islam and the West is now threatening to crumble under historical and political pressure, and why Pakistan’s destiny matters to us all.