It is not for everyone but it will richly reward the patient reader.

The stream-of-consciousness narrative in Love Burns, the debut novel by noted Israeli playwright Edna Mazya, and the experimental writing style might feel like sand between the toes, but this "surprisingly fresh, deeply sardonic" (Publishers Weekly) tale of obsessive-love-turns-homicidal would keep you turning pages, and the provocative blend of sly humor and suspense might just win you over.

Ilan, a middle-aged astrophysics professor at a Haifa university is obsessed with his beautiful young wife while life is spiraling out of control. A fateful encounter with his wife’s sexy Russian lover proves to be his undoing. Thank heavens there is mother to take charge.

Already a bestseller in Europe.

Poet Elizabeth Rosner gives us in The Speed of Light a powerful debut about three unforgettable souls who overcome tragedies of the past to reconnect with one another and the world around them.

“With a sumptuous voice resonating with wisdom, Rosner's lyrical debut novel is a spellbinding tribute to the revelations that redeem us and the emotions that ennoble us.” (Booklist)

Elizabeth Rosner will join Jacquelyn Mitchard (Cage of Stars); Rebecca Johns(Icebergs); and Lisa Tucker (Once Upon a Day) at this year’s Ann Arbor Book Festival’s panel discussion entitled “The Female Perspective”, (May 13th, 12:00 noon). Rosner will be reading from her new novel Blue Nude, .

Dean Bakopoulos whose Please Don't Come Back from the Moon is one of only three first novels selected as one of 100 Notable Books of 2005 by The New York Times.

A Michigan native, Dean set the novel in fictitious Maple Rock, based on a stretch of Michigan Avenue between Lonyo and Livernois (in Detroit), where his family went to church, and the Warrendale neighborhood, where his grandparents lived.

This debut novel is ”A beautifully smart, comic, and moving narrative about the fathers who disappear and the sons who take their place”. (Charles Baxter).

Meet Dean on May 13th at the Ann Arbor Book Festival, Young Writers’ panel. In the meantime, here is Dean’s personal list of recommendations.

So it is not new, but decidedly it is ”first rate” (Booklist)!

Ken Kalfus’ debut novel is a “sweeping, quasihistorical fiction spanning two tumultuous decades in Russia” (PW). It traces the rise of a young cinematographer at Tolstoy's deathbed, to a high post in The Commissariat of Enlightenment (2003), Stalin’s powerful agency in charge of propaganda. The intricate plot brings to life many minor-and major-characters with double identities and secret agenda.

Ken Kalfus will be at this year’s Ann Arbor Book Festival on May 13. Besides reading from his new novel A Disorder Peculiar to the Country, he will be joined by his agent on a panel discussion on how to get published, a primer for aspiring writers.

For Wendy Wasserstein fans, her passing this past January was deeply mourned. (Blog)

However, we could somehow feel a little comforted with the release of her first (and sadly also her last) novel The Elements of Style.

This dishy satire in the wake of 9/11, centers around Frankie Weissman, the down-to-earth pediatrician who treats the children of Manahattan's A-list, but is herself little affected by their excesses. Chock-full of shopping, private preschool worries, anxiety of maintaining a perfect image, or the scrambling simply to be top of the heap, “Wasserstein gets the trappings and tribulations of friendship and of romance right, making her depiction of the rich and fab trying to connect with one another witty and entertaining”. Enjoy.

Winner of the 1994 Swedish Crime Writer’s Academy Prize for Best Novel Borkmann’s Point (hint - it’s not a place) is Hakan Nesser’s the first Inspector Van Veeteren mystery to be translated into English.

In a measured pace and conversational tone, almost as serene as the small seaside town that he is summoned to, Chief Inspector Van Veeteren narrates the painstaking process of trying to find a serial ax-murderer. When the disappearance of his best detective coincides with discovery of the next victim, he worries that this case might join the only other unsolved one in his 30-year career.

This gripping and atmospheric whodunit will endear Van Veeteren to police procedural fans the world over. Let's hope the next one is already in the capable hands of the translator.

“Unexpected, unrehearsed, unconventional” – that’s how Meg Mullins describes the relationships between the main characters in her sparkling debut novel.

At the center of the story is Iranian Ushman Khan, The Rug Merchant. Middle-aged, and feeling abandoned by a wife who refuses to join him in New York, he runs a small rug store on Madison Avenue by day and endures a solitary existence. A chance meeting with a beautiful Barnard student during his nocturnal wanderings at JFK, blossoms into a serious affair.

Then, there is wealthy and demanding socialite Mrs. Roberts - one of his best customers, who seems to be reaching out to Ushman in the most unexpected way.

A quiet and complex novel of “many extraordinary pleasures”, Mullins's auspiciously wonderful debut is not to be missed. My bet is you will be hand-selling it to your friends. Reviews.

Mystery Writers of America 2006 Edgar (Allan Poe) Nominees for Best First Novel by an American author are:

Die A Little by Megan Abbott
Immoral by Brian Freeman (see blog)
Run the Risk by Scott Frost
Hide Your Eyes, by Alison Gaylin
Officer Down by Theresa Schwegel

The winner will be announced on April 27th, in New York City.

Not straightly a debut novel (though first in our collection)...
The Priest's Madonna is of the flesh-and-blood variety. It refers to Marie Dernanaud who is the housekeeper and secret lover to a charismatic village priest in Rennes-le-Chateau, France.
A set of curious artifacts unearthed during church renovations link this 19th century romance to Mary Magdalene and the Knights Templar.

Loosely based on a hazy historical event, Amy Hassinger's second novel is not just another Holy Grail want-to-be. It's "marvelously written, ...a rich fabric of love, mystery, anguish and faith". Starred review in Library Journal. Amy will be reading and signing April 6th and April 8th at these Michigan locations.
For fans of The Birth of Venus and Girl with a Pearl Earring.

Starred reviews in Booklist and Library Journal, Debra Dean’s debut novel The Madonnas of Leningrad, moves back and forth between the two worlds of Marina – an elderly woman on the eve of her granddaughter’s wedding and the young docent at the Hermitage Museum during the Siege of Leningrad, 1941. As the grasp of the present becomes elusive, the lovely paintings in Marina’s “memory palace” remain just as lush and vivid as when she made her daily walk through the abandoned galleries of empty picture frames.

“Dean eloquently depicts the ravages of Alzheimer’s disease and convincingly described the inner world of the afflicted”. A lovely journey, almost as good as a real tour of the Hermitage.