Fabulous Fiction Firsts #654

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Librarian Extraordinaire and NPR books commentator Nancy Pearl's debut novel George & Lizzie *, is a loving tribute to Ann Arbor and her Alma mater (UM, AMLS, 1967).

In this "astute, nimble, funny, and affecting love story" (Booklist), a stoned Lizzie sabotaged George's near-perfect game and a dream date at the Bowlarama when they met. Weeks later, they shared a tuna fish sandwich at Drake's on their first date. Almost against all odds, they married despite radically different upbringing and understandings of what love and marriage should be.

Fabulous Fiction Firsts #652 and #653

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Conversations with Friends * * * by Sally Rooney (Trinity College, Dublin) is drawn largely from conversations with the author's own friends.

Frances, a poet and aspiring writer performs at spoken-word poetry events around the college with her best friend and former lover Bobbi. At one of these events, Melissa, a well-known photojournalist proposes to do a piece on them. Invited to her Monkstown home, Bobbi falls under Melissa's spell while Frances is more impressed with the trappings of wealth and success, and instantly drawn to Melissa's gorgeous and standoffdish husband, Nick, an actor.

Fabulous Fiction Firsts #651

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Fabulous Fiction Firsts #651

Marin County, across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco, is one of the swankiest locales in the United States. Yet it is there that this gem of a contemporary western The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo * by Ian Stansel is set.

Brothers Frank and Silas Van Loys, the best horse trainers in San Geronimo and former partners in the ranching business, have been feuding for years: drunken brawls, nasty pranks, poisoning each other's livestock, and they are not above shooting each other, often for nothing more than a Stetson hat.

Fabulous Fiction Firsts #649 & #650

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Fabulous Fiction Firsts #649

With the melancholic lyrics of one of Japan's top singles threading through the narrative of Blue Light Yokohama * *, debut novelist Nicolás Obregón introduces Inspector Iwata in an atmospheric and hauntingly beautiful series opener. The story was inspired, in part, by an actual unsolved crime in 2000.

Fabulous Fiction Firsts #648

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Balli Kaur Jaswal was named Best Young Australian Novelist by Sydney Morning Herald for her hardcover debut, Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows. The book is set in the Sikh community of Greater London.

A great disappointment to her Punjabi immigrant family, a "westernized" Nikki Grewa tends bar at the local pub after dropping out of law school. She is bewildered that her sister Mindi, a nurse, is willing to try arranged marriage. While at the community center to post Mindi's dating profile, she impulsively answers an ad for a creative writing teacher.

Fabulous Fiction Firsts #647

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Denver's Tattered Cover Bookstore alum and winner of the Robert Olen Butler Fiction Prize, Matthew Sullivan has been named Goodreads Debut Author of the Month, and Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore, an Indie Next Pick. What's not to love -- a suicide in a bookstore, a 20-year-old triple-murder cold case, and a survivor who turns to clues hidden in books to solve the mystery.

Fabulous Fiction Firsts #646

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World Fantasy Award–winner Theodora Goss's debut The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter * is reworked from an earlier short story, bringing her "Gothic-inflected fantasies roaring into the steampunk era." (Publishers Weekly)

Mary Jekyll, alone and penniless after her mother's death, found among her mother's ledger monthly payment to the Magdalen Society for the upkeep of "Hyde". Curious and eager to claim the reward for the capture of Edward Hyde, her father’s former friend and a murderer, Mary enlisted the help of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, who were somewhat distracted in consulting for Inspector Lestrade in a series of gruesome murders of Whitechapel prostitutes.

Fabulous Fiction Firsts #645

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The Reminders *, a debut novel by writer, singer-songwriter, and actor Val Emmich (Vinyl and Ugly Betty) is the unlikely friendship between a gifted child who remembers everything and a grieving man who is trying to forget.

The 10-year-old Joan Lennon Scully (named after her father's favorite songwriter) has HSAM: highly superior autobiographical memory. While she can recall every minute detail of her life, she is frustrated that everyone else forgets, even the most important things and people in their lives. She thinks winning a local songwriting contest might make her unforgettable.

Fabulous Fiction Firsts #644

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Michigan author Karen Dionne's hardcover debut The Marsh King's Daughter * transports her readers to the wilderness of Michigan's Upper Peninsula where a woman must risk everything she has and use every skill she learned to hunt down the dangerous criminal who taught her everything she knew - her father.

When Helena Pelletier heard on the news that the notorious murderer/kidnapper known as "The Marsh King" has killed two guards and escaped from Marquette maximum security prison, she knew she could no longer outrun her past.

Fabulous Fiction Firsts #642 & #643

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Fabulous Fiction Firsts #642

The Garden of Small Beginnings * by Abbi Waxman is a story of loss but also the joy of second chances.

It has been three years since Lilian watched her husband died in a car accident 50 feet from her front door. After a breakdown and hospitalization, she is back at her job as a textbook illustrator in a small LA publishing house and making a life with her two young daughters, Annabel and Clare.