2011 Debut Author Challenge - September Debut Authors

Here are the September debut authors and their novels (in alphabetical order). Pick one or more and let us know in the comments which one(s) you'll be reading. If I've missed any, let me know in the comments.

This month I simply can't pick one. I'm going to read all of them!

Those Across the River
Author: Christopher Buehlman
Format: Hardcover, 368 pages
Publisher: Ace (September 6, 2011)
Price: $24.95
Language: English
Genre: Horror
ISBN: 9780441020676

Failed academic Frank Nichols and his wife, Eudora, have arrived in the sleepy Georgia town of Whitbrow, where Frank hopes to write a history of his family's old estate-the Savoyard Plantation- and the horrors that occurred there. At first, the quaint, rural ways of their new neighbors seem to be everything they wanted. But there is an unspoken dread that the townsfolk have lived with for generations. A presence that demands sacrifice.

It comes from the shadowy woods across the river, where the ruins of Savoyard still stand. Where a longstanding debt of blood has never been forgotten.

A debt that has been waiting patiently for Frank Nichols's homecoming...

No Proper Lady
Author: Isabel Cooper
Series:
Format: Mass Market Paperback, 352 pages
Publisher: Sourcebooks (September 1, 2011)
Price: $6.99
Language: English
Genre:  Historical Fantasy Romance/ Time Travel Romance
ISBN:  9781402259524

It’s Terminator meets My Fair Lady in this fascinating debut of black magic and brilliant ball gowns, martial arts, and mysticism.

England, 1888. The trees are green, the birds are singing, and no one has any idea that in a few hundred years, demons will destroy it all. Joan plans to keep it that way. All she has to do is take out the dark magician responsible—before he summons the demons in the first place. But as a rough-around-the-edges assassin from that bleak future, she’ll have to learn how to fit into polite Victorian society to get close to her target.

Simon Grenville has his own reasons for wanting to destroy Alex Reynell. The man used to be his best friend—until his practice of the dark arts almost killed Simon’s sister. The beautiful half-naked stranger Simon meets in the woods may be the perfect instrument for his revenge. It will just take a little time to teach her the necessary etiquette and assemble a proper wardrobe. But as each day passes, Simon is less sure he wants Joan anywhere near Reynell. Because no spell in the world will save his future if she isn’t in it.

The Savage Knight
Author:  Paul Lewis
Series:  Malory's Knights of Albion
Format:  Trade Paperback, 288 pages
Publisher:  Abaddon (September 13, 2011)
Price:  $9.99
Language:  English
Genre:  Historical Fantasy / Arthurian Legend
ISBN:  9781907992346

Sir Dodinal the Savage is more at home in the wild forest than in the tilting yard or the banquet hall. Keenly attuned to the natural world, but burdened with a terrible rage, he turns his back on Camelot to find peace, or a just death.

In a quiet village on the Welsh border, Dodinal believes he may have finally found a home, but the village is struck by child-stealing raiders from the hills, and he must take up arms once again in his new friends' aid. His quest will take him into the belly of darkness, as the terrible secret hidden in the hills comes to light...

Stone Cold Seduction
Author:  Jess Macallan
Series:  Set in Stone
Format: Trade Paperback, 256 pages
Publisher:  Entangled Publishing (September 6, 2011)
Price:  $14.99
Language:  English
Genre:  Urban Fantasy Romance
ISBN: 978-1-937044-25-1

“Elle. It’s just Elle.”

When a regular night of Robin Hood-ery results in the manifestation of some, um, unusual paranormal abilities, perfume-maker Elleodora Fredricks realizes the normal world she lives in isn’t quite… normal. And neither is she, thanks to her father, king of the shadow elves. Not only is he evil incarnate and the reason Elle moonlights as a burglar—someone has to take care of all his victims—he’s stolen her memories.

And only reading her fate can fix that.

Good thing she’s got a trio of hotties willing to help her find said fate. Saving her oracle BFF’s fiancée, falling in love with the gargoyle, and making up for breaking the phoenix’s heart ought to be a piece of cake for the princess of the shadow elves.

If only the king didn’t want his daughter dead…

The Night Circus
Author:  Erin Morgenstern
Format: Hardcover, 400 pages
Publisher:  Doubleday (Septemeber 13, 2011)
Price:  $26.95
Language:  English
Genre:  Fantasy
ISBN: 978-0-385-53463-5

The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night.

But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway—a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them, this is a game in which only one can be left standing, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will. Despite themselves, however, Celia and Marco tumble headfirst into love—a deep, magical love that makes the lights flicker and the room grow warm whenever they so much as brush hands.

True love or not, the game must play out, and the fates of everyone involved, from the cast of extraordinary circus per­formers to the patrons, hang in the balance, suspended as precariously as the daring acrobats overhead.

Written in rich, seductive prose, this spell-casting novel is a feast for the senses and the heart.

Sins of the Angels
Author:  Linda Poitevin
Series:  The Grigori Legacy
Format:  Mass Market Paperback, 336 pages
Publisher:  Ace (September 27, 2011)
Price:  $7.99
Language:  English
Genre:  Urban Fantasy
ISBN: 978044102091

When homicide detective Alexandra Jarvis is assigned a new partner in Aramael, a Guardian Angel who doubles as a hit man, they have only one thing in common: a fallen angel hell-bent on triggering the apocalypse. Now they have no choice but to work together-relentlessly, fearlessly, intimately. Because only they can stop the rogue angel from ushering in the end of days.

The Panama Laugh
Author:  Thomas S. Roche
Format:  Trade Paperback, 300 pages
Publisher:  Night Shade Books (September 6, 2011)
Price:  $14.99
Language:  English
Genre:  Science Fiction/Apocalyptic
ISBN:  978-1-59780-290-1

Ex-mercenary, pirate, and gun-runner Dante Bogart knows he's screwed the pooch after he hands one of his shady employers a biological weapon that made the dead rise from their graves, laugh like hyenas, and feast upon the living. Dante tried to blow the whistle via a tell-all video that went viral -- but that was before the black ops boys deep-sixed him at a secret interrogation site on the Panama-Colombia border.

When Dante wakes up in the jungle with the five intervening years missing from his memory, he knows he's got to do something about the laughing sickness that has caused a world-wide slaughter. The resulting journey leads him across the nightmare that was the Panama Canal, around Cape Horn in a hijacked nuclear warship, to San Francisco's mission district, where a crew of survivalist hackers have holed up in the pseudo-Moorish-castle turned porn-studio known as The Armory.

This mixed band of anti-social rejects has taken Dante's whistle blowing video as an underground gospel, leading the fight against the laughing corpses and the corporate stooges who've tried to profit from the slaughter. Can Dante find redemption and save civilization?

Shadow Kin
Author:  M. J. Scott
Series:  Half-Light City
Format:  Mass Market Paperback, 336 pages
Publisher:  Roc (September 6, 2011)
Price:  $7.99
Language:  English
Genre:  Dark Fantasy / Paranormal Romance
ISBN:  9780451464040

On one side, the Night World, rules by the Blood Lords and the Beast Kind. On the other, the elusive Fae and the humans, protected by their steadfast mages...

Born a wraith, Lily is a shadow who slips between worlds. Brought up by a Blood Lord and raised to be his assassin, she is little more than a slave. But when Lily meets her match in target Simon DuCaine, the unlikely bond that develops between them threatens to disrupt an already stretched peace in a city on the verge of being torn apart...