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Wednesday, April 01, 2020

2020 Debut Author Challenge - April Debuts




There are 9 debut novels for April 2020.

Please note that we use the publisher's publication date in the United States, not copyright dates or non-US publication dates.

The April debut authors and their novels are listed in alphabetical order by author (not book title or publication date). Take a good look at the covers. Voting for your favorite April cover for the 2020 Debut Author Challenge Cover Wars will take place starting on April 15, 2020.



Ali Araghi

The Immortals of Tehran
Melville House, April 7, 2020
Hardcover and eBook, 400 pages

As a child living in his family’s apple orchard, Ahmad Torkash-Vand treasures his great-great-great-great grandfather’s every mesmerizing word. On the day of his father’s death, Ahmad listens closely as the seemingly immortal elder tells him the tale of a centuries-old family curse . . . and the boy’s own fated role in the story.

Ahmad grows up to suspect that something must be interfering with his family, as he struggles to hold them together through decades of famine, loss, and political turmoil in Iran. As the world transforms around him, each turn of Ahmad’s life is a surprise: from street brawler, to father of two unusually gifted daughters; from radical poet, to politician with a target on his back. These lives, and the many unforgettable stories alongside his, converge and catch fire at the center of the Revolution.

Exploring the brutality of history while conjuring the astonishment of magical realism, The Immortals of Tehran is a novel about the incantatory power of words and the revolutionary sparks of love, family, and poetry—set against the indifferent, relentless march of time.





Asaf Ashery

Simantov
Angry Robot, April 14, 2020
Trade Paperback and eBook, 392 pages

Women disappear from streets, clubs, and rooftops leaving the police dazed and confused. The mystical Soothsayer Task Force must use their special skills to divine the truth and solve the mystery.

When detective Mazzy Simantov is called up to investigate the case of a missing girl, little does she know it is linked to a series of other mysterious disappearances of women. She is forced to partner with Yariv, her one-time lover and sometimes-colleague, but as the investigation continues, otherworldly clues begin to appear at the crime scenes, including a black feather unlike that of any bird…

As the clues mount, it becomes clear that an apocalypse is looming, as Heaven’s secret orders threaten to collide in a head-on war that imperils everyone on Earth. Can Mazzy and Yariv come together to save the world from being torn apart?

This is the English translation from the original Hebrew text, translated by Marganit Weinberger-Rotman.

File Under: Fantasy [ Bad Omens | Angels & Humans | Apocalypse Now | Big Guns ]





Camilla Bruce

You Let Me In
Tor Books, April 21, 2020
Hardcover and eBook, 256 pages

You Let Me In delivers a stunning tale from debut author Camilla Bruce, combining the sinister domestic atmosphere of Gillian Flynn's Sharp Objects with the otherwordly thrills of Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane.

Cassandra Tipp is dead...or is she?

After all, the notorious recluse and eccentric bestselling novelist has always been prone to flights of fancy—everyone in town remembers the shocking events leading up to Cassie's infamous trial (she may have been acquitted, but the insanity defense only stretches so far).

Cassandra Tipp has left behind no body—just her massive fortune, and one final manuscript.

Then again, there are enough bodies in her past—her husband Tommy Tipp, whose mysterious disembowelment has never been solved, and a few years later, the shocking murder-suicide of her father and brother.

Cassandra Tipp will tell you a story—but it will come with a terrible price. What really happened, out there in the woods—and who has Cassie been protecting all along? Read on, if you dare...





Hao Jingfang
Ken Liu (Translator)

Vagabonds
Gallery / Saga Press, April 14, 2020
Hardcover and eBook, 608 pages

A century after the Martian war of independence, a group of kids are sent to Earth as delegates from Mars, but when they return home, they are caught between the two worlds, unable to reconcile the beauty and culture of Mars with their experiences on Earth in this spellbinding novel from Hugo Award–winning author Hao Jingfang.

This genre-bending novel is set on Earth in the wake of a second civil war…not between two factions in one nation, but two factions in one solar system: Mars and Earth. In an attempt to repair increasing tensions, the colonies of Mars send a group of young people to live on Earth to help reconcile humanity. But the group finds itself with no real home, no friends, and fractured allegiances as they struggle to find a sense of community and identity, trapped between two worlds.

Fans of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go and Naomi Alderman’s The Power will fall in love with this novel about lost innocence, an uncertain future, and never feeling at home, no matter where you are in the universe. Translated by Ken Liu, bestselling author of The Paper Menagerie and translator of Cixin Liu’s The Three-Body Problem, Vagabonds is the first novel from Hao Jingfang, the first Chinese woman to ever win the esteemed Hugo Award.





RB Kelly

Edge of Heaven
Newcon Press, April 14, 2020
Trade Paperback and Kindle eBook, 370 pages

2119: The bi-level city of Creo Basse towers over the wastelands of central France. Built as a permanent relocation centre for the dispossessed, Creo has become a hotbed of simmering resentment and unrest. The authorities keep tight control, not least because outlawed a-nauts (artificial humans) are known to hide among its citizenry.

In the dark, honeycomb districts of the lower city, Boston Turrow is searching desperately for black-market meds for his epileptic sister when he encounters one of the many ways Creo can kill a person. His unlikely rescuer is Danae Grant, a woman recently made homeless when the bloc she lived in was condemned. Danae knows people, Boston knows where she can stay...

The tinderbox that is Creo catches light when a deadly plague erupts among the populace. Is it really a terrorist weapon unleashed by the a-nauts as the authorities claim, or does that just hide a deeper, darker secret? Danae and Boston are determined to survive, if only to discover the truth; of course, that might be easier said than done...

RB Kelly's stunning debut novel, Edge of Heaven, is the winner of the Irish Writers Centre Novel Fair Award.





Corry L. Lee

Weave the Lightning
Solaris, April 7, 2020
Trade Paperback and eBook, 400 pages

Russian-inspired epic of magical revolution & romance

Empire. Revolution. Magic.

Gerrit is the son of Bourshkanya’s Supreme-General. Despite his powerful storm-affinity and the State’s best training, he can’t control his magic. To escape the brutal consequences, he flees.

Celka is a travelling circus performer, hiding both her link to the underground and her storm-affinity from the prying eyes of the secret police. But Gerrit’s arrival threatens to expose everything: her magic, her family, and the people they protect.

The storms have returned, and everything will change.





Molly Pohlig

The Unsuitable
Henry Holt, April 14, 2020
Hardcover and eBook, 288 pages

Molly Pohlig's The Unsuitable is a fierce blend of Gothic ghost story and Victorian novel of manners that’s also pitch perfect for our current cultural moment.

Iseult Wince is a Victorian woman perilously close to spinsterhood whose distinctly unpleasant father is trying to marry her off. She is awkward, plain, and most pertinently, believes that her mother, who died in childbirth, lives in the scar on her neck.

Iseult’s father parades a host of unsuitable candidates before her, the majority of whom Iseult wastes no time frightening away. When at last her father finds a suitor desperate enough to take Iseult off his hands—a man whose medical treatments have turned his skin silver—a true comedy of errors ensues.
As history’s least conventional courtship progresses into talk of marriage, Iseult’s mother becomes increasingly volatile and uncontrollable, and Iseult is forced to resort to extreme, often violent, measures to keep her in check.

As the day of the wedding nears, Iseult must decide whether (and how) to set the course of her life, with increasing interference from both her mother and father, tipping her ever closer to madness, and to an inevitable, devastating final act.





Veronica Roth

The Chosen Ones
John Joseph Adams/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, April 7, 2020
Hardcover and eBook, 432 pages
(D - Adult)

SAVING THE WORLD ONCE MADE THEM HEROES. SAVING IT AGAIN MAY DESTROY THEM.

Fifteen years ago, five ordinary teenagers were singled out by a prophecy to take down an impossibly powerful entity wreaking havoc across North America. He was known as the Dark One, and his weapon of choice—catastrophic events known as Drains—leveled cities and claimed thousands of lives. Chosen Ones, as the teens were known, gave everything they had to defeat him.

After the Dark One fell, the world went back to normal . . . for everyone but them. After all, what do you do when you’re the most famous people on Earth, your only education was in magical destruction, and your purpose in life is now fulfilled?

Of the five, Sloane has had the hardest time adjusting. Everyone else blames the PTSD—and her huge attitude problem—but really, she’s hiding secrets from them. secrets that keep her tied to the past and alienate her from the only four people in the world who understand her.

On the tenth anniversary of the Dark One’s defeat, something unthinkable happens: one of the Chosen Ones dies. When the others gather for the funeral, they discover the Dark One’s ultimate goal was much bigger than they, the government, or even prophecy could have foretold—bigger than the world itself.

And this time, fighting back might take more than Sloane has to give.





Matthew Ward

Legacy of Ash
The Legacy Trilogy 1
Orbit, April 7, 2020
Trade Paperback and eBook, 800 pages

Legacy of Ash is an unmissable fantasy debut–an epic tale of intrigue and revolution, soldiers and assassins, ancient magic and the eternal clash of empires.

A shadow has fallen over the Tressian Republic.

Ruling families — once protectors of justice and democracy — now plot against one another with sharp words and sharper knives. Blinded by ambition, they remain heedless of the threat posed by the invading armies of the Hadari Empire.

Yet as Tressia falls, heroes rise.

Viktor Akadra is the Republic’s champion. A warrior without equal, he hides a secret that would see him burned as a heretic.

Josiri Trelan is Viktor’s sworn enemy. A political prisoner, he dreams of reigniting his mother’s failed rebellion.

And yet Calenne Trelan, Josiri’s sister, seeks only to break free of their tarnished legacy; to escape the expectation and prejudice that haunts the family name.

As war spreads across the Republic, these three must set aside their differences in order to save their home. Yet decades of bad blood are not easily set aside. And victory — if it comes at all — will demand a darker price than any of them could have imagined.
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