2012 Debut Author Challenge - April 2012 Debuts

There are 8 debuts in April.  Please note that I use the publisher's publication date in the United States.

Take a good look at the covers. Voting for the your favorite April cover for the 2012 Debut Author Challenge Cover Wars will take place later this month.

The April debut authors and their novels are listed in alphabetical order by author (not book title or publication date). 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.


White Horse
Author:  Alex Adams
Series:  White Horse
Format:  Hardcover , 320 pages
Publisher:  Atria/Emily Bestler Books, April, 17, 2012
Price:  $19.99
Language:  English
Genre:  Fantasy/Post-apocalyptic
ISBN:  9781451642995

The world has ended, but her journey has just begun.

Thirty-year-old Zoe leads an ordinary life until the end of the world arrives. She is cleaning cages and floors at Pope Pharmaceuticals when the president of the United States announces that human beings are no longer a viable species. When Zoe realizes that everyone she loves is disappearing, she starts running. Scared and alone in a shockingly changed world, she embarks on a remarkable journey of survival and redemption. Along the way, Zoe comes to see that humans are defined not by their genetic code, but rather by their actions and choices. White Horse offers hope for a broken world, where love can lead to the most unexpected places.

Royal Street
Author:  Suzanne Johnson
Series:  Sentinels of New Orleans
Format:  Trade Paperback, 336 pages
Publisher:  Tor Books, April 10, 2012
Price:  $14.99
Language:  English
Genre:  Urban Fantasy
ISBN:  9780765327796

As the junior wizard sentinel for New Orleans, Drusilla Jaco’s job involves a lot more potion-mixing and pixie-retrieval than sniffing out supernatural bad guys like rogue vampires and lethal were-creatures. DJ's boss and mentor, Gerald St. Simon, is the wizard tasked with protecting the city from anyone or anything that might slip over from the preternatural beyond.

Then Hurricane Katrina hammers New Orleans’ fragile levees, unleashing more than just dangerous flood waters.

While winds howled and Lake Pontchartrain surged, the borders between the modern city and the Otherworld crumbled. Now, the undead and the restless are roaming the Big Easy, and a serial killer with ties to voodoo is murdering the soldiers sent to help the city recover.

To make it worse, Gerry has gone missing, the wizards’ Elders have assigned a grenade-toting assassin as DJ’s new partner, and undead pirate Jean Lafitte wants to make her walk his plank. The search for Gerry and for the serial killer turns personal when DJ learns the hard way that loyalty requires sacrifice, allies come from the unlikeliest places, and duty mixed with love creates one bitter gumbo.

The Reason is You
Author:  Sharla Lovelace
Format:  Trade Paperback, 336 pages
Publisher:  Berkley, April 3, 2012
Price:  $15.00
Language:  English
Genre:  Romance w/ Paranormal Elements
ISBN:  9780425247129

Anything but Normal…
Dani Shane just wants her daughter to have what she never did—a normal life. But “normal” leaves the equation when sixteen year old Riley is found talking to Dani’s only friend, Alex—who’s been dead for forty years.
In the small river town of Bethany, Dani never fit in. Being different pushed her to the fringes of society, and even leaving town for two decades didn’t stop the talk. Now that she’s back, so is Alex. Mischievous and sexy and still hot enough to melt her shoes. Between his popping in at inopportune moments and having to hide her daughter’s new talent, Dani fears that her plans for staying under the radar may be short lived .
As Dani scrambles to get solid footing under her family, secrets buried for forty years begin to unearth themselves. She and Alex have always been connected, but he is hiding something. The computer is making her hear things. Weird memories that she doesn’t recognize keep popping up in her mind. Then there’s that little thing she’s not telling her daughter yet. Like that some of the people she sees aren’t breathing…

Coveted
Author:  Shawntelle Madison
Series:  Coveted
Format:  Mass Market Paperback, 304 pages
Publisher:  Ballantine Books, April 24, 2012
Price:  $7.99
Language:  English
Genre:  Urban Fantasy
ISBN:  978-0-345-52918-3

SOMETIMES WHAT YOU COVET IS IMPOSSIBLE TO KEEP.

For werewolf Natalya Stravinsky, the supernatural is nothing extraordinary. What does seem strange is that she’s stuck in her hometown of South Toms River, New Jersey, the outcast of her pack, selling antiques to finicky magical creatures. Restless and recovering from her split with gorgeous ex-boyfriend, Thorn, Nat finds comfort in an unusual place: her obsessively collected stash of holiday trinkets. But complications pile up faster than her ornaments when Thorn returns home—and the two discover that the spark between them remains intense.

Before Nat can sort out their relationship, she must face a more immediate and dangerous problem. Her pack is under attack from the savage Long Island werewolves—and Nat is their first target in a turf war. Toss in a handsome wizard vying for her affection, a therapy group for the anxious and enchanted, and the South Toms River pack leader ready to throw her to the wolves, and it’s enough to give anybody a panic attack. With the stakes as high as the full moon, Nat must summon all of her strength to save her pack and, ultimately, herself.

Faustus Resurrectus
Author:  Thomas Morrissey
Series:  Donovan Graham
Format:  Trade Paperback, 300 pages
Publisher:  Night Shade Books, April 3, 2012
Price:  $14.99
Language:  English
Genre:  Urban Fantasy
ISBN:  978-1-59780-405-9

Unholy murder is just the beginning of the ritual...

When Donovan Graham, newly-graduated occult scholar, helps the NYPD investigate a man killed by scorpions in a midtown hotel, he learns the world is far stranger and deadlier than his studies ever suggested. Evidence forces his academic skepticism to give way to astonished belief that ancient evil exists, and the more he investigates, the higher it rises to overshadow the normality of his life. Can he save those he loves from its power?

In a Central Park overrun with madness, a suave sociopath seeks to achieve his darkest desires by tearing apart the world. Battling him through death and beyond, Donovan risks his soul to learn reality is flexible, and even the impossible can be had if a high enough price is paid...

Blackbirds
Author:  Chuck Wendig
Series:  Miriam Black
Format:  Mass Market Paperback, 320 pages
Publisher:   Angry Robot,  April 24. 2012 US/CAN, May 3, 2012 UK/RoW
Price:  $7.99
Language:  English
Genre:  Urban Fantasy
ISBN:  9780857662309

Miriam Black knows when you will die. She’s foreseen hundreds of car crashes, heart attacks, strokes, and suicides.

But when Miriam hitches a ride with Louis Darling and shakes his hand, she sees that in thirty days Louis will be murdered while he calls her name. Louis will die because he met her, and she will be the next victim.

No matter what she does she can’t save Louis. But if she wants to stay alive, she’ll have to try.

File Under: Urban Fantasy [ Touch Of Death | The Future Is Written | Free Way | Surviving ]

Summoning
Author:  Carol Wolf
Series:   Moon Wolf Saga
Format:  Trade Paperback, 300 pages
Publisher:  Night Shade Books, April 3, 2012
Price:  $14.99
Language:  English
Genre:  Urban Fantasy
ISBN:  978-1-59780-398-4

The World Snake is coming, devourer of Thrace and Atlantis... and the only one standing in its way is Amber, a sixteen-year-old runaway, recently arrived in Los Angeles.

Amber is more than just a girl with a stolen ID and an attitude; she is a daughter of the wolf-kind, a shapeshifter able to change forms at will. One night, as Amber prowls the Hollywood Hills in wolf form, she stumbles onto an occult ceremony, interrupting the ritual. As a result, Amber finds herself the unwilling mistress of a handsome demonic servant, Richard.

Appearing as a fair youth of eighteen years, Richard is a demon accidentally summoned, then captured, by Dr. John Dee, court magician to Queen Elizabeth I. Richard has been trying for four centuries to free himself from a succession of masters and mistresses, but finds himself bound to Amber, the only one who can protect him from his greatest fear, the herald of the World Snake, the Eater of Souls.

The last thing a girl of the wolf-kind needs is a boy following her around like a lap-dog, but Amber agrees to help Richard reclaim his soul from two of his old foes, hopings soul from two of his old foes, hoping to grant Richard his freedom. But all hell is about to break loose, and Amber and Richard are going to need some allies to stop the Eater of Souls and avert the World Snake, and the battle has only begun.
From Carol Wolf comes the urban fantasy debut Summoning, a novel of a wolf girl, a demon boy, and a city on the edge of disaster.

The Return Man
Author:  V.M. Zito
Format: Premium Mass Market Paperback, 448 pages
Publisher:  Orbit, April 1, 2012
Price:  $9.99
Language:  English
Genre:  Horror/Thriller/Zombies
ISBN:  9780316218283

The outbreak tore the US in two. The east remains a safe haven. The west has become a ravaged wilderness, known by survivors as the Evacuated States. It is here that Henry Marco makes his living. Hired by grieving relatives, he tracks down the dead and delivers peace.

Now Homeland Security wants Marco for a mission unlike any other. He must return to California, where the apocalypse began. Where a secret is hidden. And where his own tragic past waits to punish him again.

But in the wastelands of America, you never know who - or what - is watching you.