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Indies Introduce Debut Authors Spring 2014 Titles

Special Feature

Indies Introduce Debut Authors Spring 2014 Titles

The American Booksellers Association (ABA) has selected their "Indies Introduce Debut Authors" spring 2014 titles, and we’re happy to be sharing their adult picks with you. All of the books were selected by booksellers and written by first-time authors. See their choices below, and think about which ones you may want to add to your reading list.

Badluck Way: A Year on the Ragged Edge of the West by Bryce Andrews - Memoir

January 7, 2014


In this gripping memoir of a young man, a wolf, their parallel lives and ultimate collision, Bryce Andrews describes life on the remote, windswept Sun Ranch in southwest Montana. Here, he recounts marathon days and nights of building fences, riding, roping, and otherwise learning the hard business of caring for cattle. But when wolves suddenly begin killing the ranch’s cattle, Andrews has to shoulder a rifle, chase the pack, and do what he’d hoped he would never have to do.

Faces in the Crowd by Valeria Luiselli - Fiction

May 13, 2014


In Mexico City, a young mother is writing a novel of her days as a translator living in New York. In Harlem, a translator is desperate to publish the works of Gilberto Owen, an obscure Mexican poet. And in Philadelphia, Gilberto Owen recalls his friendship with Lorca, and the young woman he saw in the windows of passing trains. As the voices of these narrators overlap and merge, they drift into one single stream, an elegiac evocation of love and loss.

If Only You People Could Follow Directions: A Memoir by Jessica Hendry Nelson - Memoir

December 31, 2013


In linked autobiographical essays, Jessica Hendry Nelson has reimagined the memoir with her thoroughly original voice, fearless writing and hypnotic storytelling. At its center, the book is the story of three people: Nelson’s mother Susan, her brother Eric, and Jessica herself. These three characters are deeply bound to one another, not just by the usual ties of blood and family, but also by a mother's drive to keep her children safe in the midst of chaos.

The Kept by James Scott - Historical Fiction

January 6, 2015


In the winter of 1897, a trio of killers descends upon an isolated farm in upstate New York. Midwife Elspeth Howell returns home to the carnage: her husband and four of her children are murdered. Before she can discover her remaining son Caleb, alive and hiding in the kitchen pantry, another shot rings out over the snow-covered valley. Twelve-year-old Caleb must tend to his mother until she recovers enough for them to take to the frozen wilderness in search of the men responsible.

Pigs Can't Swim: A Memoir by Helen Peppe - Memoir

February 4, 2014


With everything happening on Helen Peppe’s backwoods Maine farm --- ferocious sibling rivalry, rock-bottom poverty, feral male chauvinism, sex in the hayloft --- life was out of control, even for the animals. Despite the chaos, in telling her family’s story, Peppe manages deadpan humor, an unerring eye for the absurd, and a touching compassion for her utterly overwhelmed parents.

Point of Direction by Rachel Weaver - Psychological Thriller

May 13, 2014


Hitchhiking her way through Alaska, a young woman named Anna is picked up by Kyle, a fisherman. Anna and Kyle quickly fall for one another and agree to become caretakers of a remote lighthouse that has been uninhabited since the last caretaker mysteriously disappeared two decades ago. An uncertain danger lurking in the surrounding waters, as well as painful secrets from their pasts, threatens to end their relationship...and maybe even their lives!

Shotgun Lovesongs by Nickolas Butler - Fiction

February 3, 2015


Hank, Leland, Kip and Ronny were all born and raised in the same Wisconsin town --- Little Wing --- and are now coming into their own (or not) as husbands and fathers. Seamlessly woven into their patchwork is Beth, whose presence among them --- both then and now --- fuels the kind of passion one comes to expect of lovesongs and rivalries. Now all four are home, in hopes of finding what could be real purchase in the world.

Stringer: A Reporter’s Journey in the Congo by Anjan Sundaram - Memoir

November 4, 2014


In August 2005, Anjan Sundaram abandoned his path to a Yale Ph.D. in mathematics to travel to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and refashion himself as a journalist. He found a country that was diseased, corrupt, and poised on the cusp of war. When Sundaram is engaged as a “stringer” for the Associated Press, he becomes a chronicler for a country he’s just beginning to experience. STRINGER is his searing portrait of life in this broken, lawless place, an account of the rocky education of a reporter.

The UnAmericans: Stories by Molly Antopol - Fiction/Short Stories

February 3, 2014


THE UNAMERICANS, a stunning exploration of characters shaped by the forces of history, is the debut work of fiction by Molly Antopol, a 2013 National Book Foundation "5 Under 35" Honoree. Again and again, Antopol’s deeply sympathetic characters struggle for footing in an uncertain world, hounded by forces beyond their control.

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December 31, 1969