3 debut novels - from the wilds of British Columbia to the idyllic Swedish countryside, from WWII Paris to contemporary Williamsburg, Brooklyn, - the stories of sisters.

In Frances Greenslade's Shelter *, living almost off-the-grid with their hippie parents in the Pacific mountains, Maggie and Jenny experience their first blow when their father is killed in a logging accidents. Then their mother disappears, leaving them with almost strangers. It is up to them to build the shelter, both physical and emotional— to sustain themselves as they move into adulthood.

"Heartbreaking and lushly imagined,Shelter celebrates the love between two sisters and the complicated bonds of family. It is an exquisitely written ode to sisters, mothers, daughters, and to a woman's responsibility to herself and those she loves."

I am Forbidden * brings to life four generations of one Satmar family. 1944 Transylvania, little Mila was rescued from certain death and raised with Atara, the daughter of Zalman Stern, a leader in the Satmar community. As the two girls mature, Mila's faith intensifies, while her beloved Atara discovers a world of books and learning that she cannot ignore, and continues to question fundamentalist doctrine. The different choices the two sisters make force them apart until a dangerous secret threatens to banish them from the only community they've ever known.

"A beautifully crafted, emotionally gripping story of what happens when unwavering love, unyielding law, and centuries of tradition collide". Anouk Markovits was raised in France in a Satmar home, breaking from the fold when she was nineteen to avoid an arranged marriage. She went on to receive a Bachelor of Science from Columbia University, a Master of Architecture from Harvard, and a PhD in Romance Studies from Cornell. I Am Forbidden is her English-language debut.

Drowned *, set in the idyllic countryside during a short-lived Swedish summer, Marina, a burnt-out college student visits her older sister Stella who is living with Gabriel, a famous writer as charismatic as he is violent. As Marian gradually comes under Gabriel's spell, she also senses unease in Stella and the many secrets she keeps. With recurrent references to Ophelia, savvy readers could already anticipate the plot that mixes "hothouse sensuality with ice-cold fear". A compelling psychological thriller not to be missed.

Debut novelist Therese Bohman is a magazine editor and a columnist writing about literature, art, culture, and fashion. She lives in Sweden. Translator Marlaine Delargy serves on the editorial board of the Swedish Book Review. She lives in England.

* = starred review

Tessa Harris' The Anatomist's Apprentice (in audio) opens in 1780 London with the death of 19 year-old Sir Edward Crick, a dissolute young man mourned only by his sister Lady Lydia Farrell. Dr. Thomas Silkstone, a young anatomist from Philadelphia, known for his forensic skills and unconventional methods, is asked to investigate when Lydia's husband Capt. Michael Farrell comes under suspicion.

(Debut novelist) "Harris has more than a few tricks up her sleeve, and even veteran armchair puzzle solvers are likely to be surprised".

In the aftermath of the Great War and a devastating family tragedy, Laurence Bartram lives a solitary life in a London attic, devoting all his time and effort to the writing of an architectural history of English churches. When Mary Emmett writes to ask him to look into the suspicious death of his friend John while in the care of a remote veterans' hospital, his investigation forces him to face his own demons, and draws him back into the world of the living.

"At once a compelling mystery and an elegant literary debut, British historian Elizabeth Speller blends the psychological depth of Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy with lively storytelling from the golden age of British crime fiction", in the first of a projected series with The Return of Captain John Emmett (2011). Just released is the follow-up, entitled The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton in which Bartram arrives in the village of Easton Deadall and is embroiled in a dangerous case involving a murdered woman who may be linked to the disappearance of a child years earlier.

Both of these debut mysteries/series will appeal to fans of the Inspector Ian Rutledge series (in audio) by Charles Todd (Charles Todd is the joint pseudonym for the mother-and-son writing team of Charles Todd and Caroline Todd, pseudonyms of David Todd Watjen and Caroline L.T. Watjen); the John Madden series by Rennie Airth; the Nell Bray Series by Gillian Linscott; and the Maisie Dobbs series by Jacqueline Winspear.

If I had to pick a favorite this publishing season, it would have to be debut author Francesca Segal's The Innocents * *, a captivating recast of Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence, set this time in Temple Fortune, a swanky, and close-knit Jewish enclave in North West London.

28 year-old Adam Newman considers himself very lucky - newly engaged to sweet Rachel Gilbert with her traditional values, embraced by her loving family, and assured as heir-apparent in her father's prestigious law firm. Turning his world upside down is Rachel's younger cousin Ellie who arrives from New York discredited (Columbia University), disgraced (for the less than above-board arrangements with a married man), and scandalized (for her starring role in an "art house" film).

Adam does try to keep clear of Ellie but their mutual attraction and Ellie's fiercely independent thinking and reckless behavior keep drawing them together. "While the basic plot will not surprise Wharton readers, this new version of a classic is appealingly fresh and brisk, taking on issues of love, community, and compromise as unforeseen events alter the courses of lives", coming most appropriately on the 150th anniversary of the birth of Edith Wharton.

Francesca Segal "writes elegantly and thoughtfully about Adam's growing sense of entrapment... (and) ties in family Holocaust lore and high-holiday gatherings to show that those long-standing bonds are tough to break. Even if the plot and themes are second-hand, this is an emotionally and intellectually astute debut." Francesca was born in London and studied at Oxford and Harvard University before becoming a journalist and critic. Her work has appeared in Granta, The Guardian, and The Observer. She is daughter of author Erich Segal.

Flying lower on the media radar is another Edith Wharton recast this summer - Gilded Age: A Novel by another debut novelist Claire McMillan, inspired by The House of Mirth, and set in contemporary Cleveland. A little darker and more demanding, but engaging just the same. Former English majors should feast on them.

* * =Starred reviews

For the adrenaline junkies, here's one for you. Matthew Quirk, DC reporter for The Atlantic, no stranger to crimes and the seedier side of politics and corruption, brings to you a gripping debut thriller.

Mike Ford (Harvard Law) lands a dream job at the Davies Group, Washington's most powerful consulting firm, thus rubbing shoulders daily with "The 500 * " , the elite men and women who really run Washington -- and the world. Thinking that he has put enough distance from the small-time con man father and his blue-collar roots, he is unprepared for the demands of his new job - to cheat, steal, and this time, maybe even kill, as he finds himself staring down the barrel of a gun, pursued by two of the world's most dangerous men, one of them a trained killer, and the other, closest to his heart.

"Combining the best elements of political intrigue and heart-stopping action" this debut calls to mind classic thrillers by John Grisham, David Baldacci and Brad Meltzer. Film rights sold to 20th Century Fox.

* = starred review

This memorable debut collection Happiness is a Chemical in the Brain: stories * * * by award-winning (MacArthur Fellow, and Pulitzer Prize finalist) poet Lucia Perillo (author website) is not be missed.

Critics and reviewers are calling it "bleakly funny and harrowing", "unpredictable, relentlessly frank and incisive with stunning imagery", Perillo's denizen from a small town in the Pacific Northwest will earn your admiration, if not your respect. Bonnie Jo Campbell remarked that while these "working-class mothers, daughters, and sisters, who don't bitch or ask for sympathy from anyone... they may work shitty jobs, fool around with men they don't love, and sport unfortunate tattoos, but they triumph by inhabiting their bodies fully".

Among them, you will have your favorites - whether it is the self-medicated housewife, stranded and marginalized, who finds solace in state-of-the art vacuum cleaners and their door-to-door salesmen (in "Doctor Vicks"); or Jill, the sweater-and-pearls variety who recounts tales of armed robbery (in "Report from the Trenches"); or Louisa, a 30 year-old with Down syndrome who serves as an accomplice to her younger sister's sexual exploits (in "Bad Boy Number Seventeen") and her aging mother's fantasies of revenge. The one thread that runs through them might well be the way they heroically, though not always wisely, "wanting to flaunt the way all the rest of us think that we're stuck with the cards that we've been dealt".

"Emotionally unflinching stories of considerable power, wonder and humor", like their protagonists, they will move you and steal your heart. For readers who enjoy the short stories of Alice Munro, William Trevor, and Thomas Lynch.

* * * = starred reviews

STOP!!! If you are an adrenaline junkie, go no further. This WWII espionage by Laurent Binet will leave you wanting. But if you are a patient reader of literary fiction and a student of history, then you would find HHhH * * * quite a little gem. (Also available in the original French in our World Language Collection).

HHhH = Himmlers Hirn heisst Heydrich ("Himmler's brain is called Heydrich" ) - the most dangerous man in Hitler's cabinet, Reinhard Heydrich : "The Blonde Beast", "The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia", "The Butcher of Prague", "The Man with the Iron Heart" - implacable cruel and seemingly indestructible, until two men, a Slovak and a Czech recruited by the British secret service, tried to kill him in broad daylight on a bustling street in Prague, in a most daring assassination plot, codenamed Operation Anthropoid.

In this debut novel, winner of the 2010 Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman, though we know the outcome of this historic event, we willingly agreed to be led, by the seasoned hand of a master storyteller to follow Jozef Gabcik and Jan Kubis from their dramatic escape of Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia to England; from their recruitment to their harrowing parachute drop into a war zone, from their stealth attack on Heydrich's car to their own brutal death in the basement of a Prague church. A parallel storyline is the narrator/author's effort to capture this heroic act on paper. A "zealous amateur historian", disarmingly honest with his mistakes, but relentless and dogged with his subject and materials, attempts to lay the whole affair in geopolitical context.

"A seemingly effortlessly blend of historical truth, personal memory, and remarkable imagination... a work at once thrilling and intellectually engrossing", Paris born Laurent Binet, is the author of La Vie professionnelle de Laurent B., a memoir of his experience teaching in secondary schools in Paris. He is a professor of French Literature at the University of Paris III. The fluid translation by Sam Taylor is a superb choice for lovers of historical literary works and WWII fiction, especially The Girl in the Blue Beret.

Watch-alike: Valkyrie, and Army of Crime.

* * * = starred reviews

The Green Shore opens in Athens, on an April evening in 1967, when a military coup in Greece ushered in a period of devastating brutality and repression. Told from the multiple perspectives of one family that share strong political conviction, it is "a family saga and revolutionary romance."

Eleni, a widowed doctor, struggles with the latest challenge to democracy when the hospitals are forbidden to treat torture victims. While son Taki chooses to emigrate, 21 year-old Sophie, a student of French literature, gets swept up in the dangerous resistance movement, partly inspired by her uncle (Eleni's brother) the poet Mahalis. The youngest, Anna, watches events unfold with increasing anxiety.

"As Eleni's family and their circle of friends and lovers fight for their ancient country's history, tradition, beauty, and future, they also discover hidden strengths and harbor secret longings that will have unforeseen repercussions. Deeply imbued with the passion and honor synonymous with Greek culture, abundant with sensuous imagery and stimulating discourse, this debut novel is a sumptuous and provocative portrait of the nexus of the personal with the political."

Debut novelist Natalie Bakopoulos is a graduate and current faculty of the University of Michigan. A recipient of a 2010 O. Henry Award, a Hopwood Award, and Platsis Prize for Work in the Greek Legacy, she is a contributing editor for the online journal Fiction Writers Review. Each summer she teaches creative writing at the Aegean Arts Circle in Andros, Greece.

On Tuesday, June 5th @ 7 pm, Natalie Bakopoulos will be at Nicola's Books for a reading and signing of her novel. For more info.

Three weeks is a long time to fuss with a blog and it's time to let go. I still don't think I am doing this book justice but I hope you will trust me about this "luminous, haunting, and unforgettable" debut novel by Karen Thompson Walker. The premise is rather simple while the narrative voice is not.

The world awakes one Saturday morning in October to find the rotation of the Earth on its axis slowing down (thus The Slowing). Days and nights grow longer. Gravity is affected. Birds can't fly and people are getting sick. In a California suburb, 11 yr. old Julia is dealing with the catastrophe utterly "unimagined, unprepared for, unknown", with stoic determination and optimistic innocence.

The Age of Miracles * * is middle school - "the time when kids shot up three inches over the summer, when breasts bloomed from nothing, when voices dipped and dove". While some girls turn beautiful, a few boys grow tall, Julia still looks like a child. Apart from the usual adolescent angst of friendship, first love, budding sexuality, Julia must navigate her family's volatile dynamics and secrets; learn the meaning and demands of loyalty, honesty, kindness, and responsibility, against the backdrop of an ever-shifting reality.

"Walker (a former Simon & Schuster editor) captures each moment, intimate and universal, with magical precision. Riveting, heartbreaking, profoundly moving".

Inspired by the Tsunami which packed a force powerful enough to shorten the length of the day by microseconds, the rights to this debut have been sold to 25 countries, with an initial print run of 100,000 - HUGE.

* * = starred reviews

The colorful notes taken by Evangeline (Eva) English for A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar *, the working title of a travel guide, make up one of two story lines in this debut novel by Suzanne Joinson.

In 1923, sisters Eva and Lizzie, missionaries in the ancient Silk Road city of Kashgar are met with suspicion and hostility (no surprise there), but when a humanistic endeavor gone wrong places them under house arrest, their safety is seriously compromised. Eva, however, continues to capture her adventures in this insular and exotic locale at the brink of war on her glorious, green BSA Lady's Roadster.

In present day London, solitary Frieda befriends Tayeb, a displaced Yemeni sleeping outside her door, and discovers an artist with an exquisite talent with birds. When Frieda learns she has inherited the contents of an apartment belonging to a dead woman she has never heard of, they embark on an unexpected journey together.

"Beautifully written, and peopled by a cast of unforgettable characters, the novel interweaves the stories of Frieda and Eva, gradually revealing the links between them and the ways in which they each challenge and negotiate the restrictions of their societies as they make their hard-won way toward home".

For more tales of intrepid women adventurers, try Lulu in Marrakech by Diane Johnson; The Tattoo Artist by Jill Ciment; and The Lost Girls : three friends, four continents, one unconventional detour around the world by Jennifer Baggett.

Suzanne Joinson works in the literature department of the British Council, specializing in the Middle East, North Africa, and China.

* = starred review

Wife 22 * * is "smart, fresh, entertaining, moving and incredibly funny" (I can't say it any better) and perhaps, one of the best Women's Fiction titles this year.

Let's see how YOU would answer the following questions:

#10 Do you believe love can last?
#44 What do you believe should NOT be done in public?
#50 If your spouse gave you one free pass to have sex with another person, who would you choose?
#80 Define passion in one sentence
#88 Has your life turned out the way you would hoped it would?

Like these? Thankfully, debut novelist Melanie Gideon (author of The Slippery Year: A meditation on happily ever after: a memoir, and 2 YA novels: Pucker and The Map That Breathed) provides in an appendix these 110 questions - some survey-generic, some philosophical & probing, some downright invasive but all seriously provocative.

Alice Buckle: spouse of William, mother to Zoe and Peter, part-time drama teacher and Facebook chatter, downloader of memories and Googler of solutions is also "Wife 22". Readers will be privy to her honest and witty response to an anonymous survey on marital satisfaction. Over time, her correspondence with Researcher 101 has taken an unexpectedly personal turn, and soon, she comes dangerously close to making a decision that will affect more than her happiness.

Rights sold to 19 countries and optioned for film. Perfect escapism and a breezy, delightful summer read.

* * = starred reviews