Megan Fishmann

Is there anything that Koren Zailckas can’t write? The young author first crashed onto the literary scene with her iconic best-selling memoir, Smashed, which chronicled her years of teenage alcoholism. Now, she is making her fiction debut, and it is just as captivating as her memoirs.

Mother, Mother introduces the Hurst family, living in upstate New York. There’s William, the 12-year-old autistic (and highly intelligent) son, who spends his days being homeschooled. Violet, his teenaged sister, would rather get high with her friends than spend another minute at home. Their father, Douglas, is an alcoholic programmer who’d prefer to hide behind office doors instead of showing his face at the dinner table. And there’s Josephine, the controlling, manipulative matriarch.

But there’s a family member on the periphery of this portrait that the rest are unable to think—let alone talk—about. Rose, a struggling perfectionist, had a budding career as a stage actress. However, when Rose runs away from home with her mysterious boyfriend Dante, breaking all contact with her family, it sets off a chain of events that threatens to tear the Hursts apart.

As the novel opens, Violet has been committed to a psychiatric hospital. Josephine claims that Violet stabbed William while high on acid, yet Violet has no recollection of having attacked her brother. Violet and William recount their memories of that chaotic evening in alternating chapters. As they struggle to uncover their family’s darkest secret, the siblings begin to question everything, especially their mother’s motives. Is William as ill as Josephine claims? Is Violet really dangerous? And what was the true impetus for Rose’s escape?

Mother, Mother is an exquisitely written psychological thriller. Readers will root for Violet and William as the siblings struggle to escape their mother’s terrifying clutches.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read a Q&A with Koren Zailckas for Mother, Mother.

Part psychological mystery and part love story, Tracy Guzeman’s captivating debut novel follows the journeys of several people affected—and nearly ruined—by the brilliant painter Thomas Bayber.

Traveling back and forth from the 1960s to the early 2000s, the novel begins in 1963 with the story of two teen sisters, Alice and Natalie Kessler. Once extremely close, the sisters have abruptly drifted apart. That summer, their vacation rental cabin is near to that of Thomas Bayber, a precocious and talented young painter. Alice, an awkward 14-year-old ornithologist in training, falls under Bayber’s charismatic spell, while her older—and gorgeous—sister, Natalie, refuses to yield to his charm. Their interactions with Bayber over the course of that summer set off a chain of events that alters the sisters’ lives forever.

Fast-forward 44 years, to 2007. Bayber is a reclusive alcoholic who hasn’t picked up a paintbrush for nearly 20 years. He reaches out to his biographer and close friend, art history professor and recent widower Dennis Finch. After unveiling a never-before-seen painting of a young Bayber, Alice and Natalie, he requests that Finch team up with the eccentric, and recently ruined, art authenticator Stephen Jameson to sell it. But before the odd pair can cash in on the commission, they must locate the Kessler sisters, who seem to have dropped off the map.

Will Finch and Jameson discover the secret behind Bayber’s evocative painting? Will Natalie ever explain to Alice why their relationship fell apart? And why is Bayber so intent on including Jameson in his search for the Kesslers? Readers (and art lovers) will find themselves plowing through the novel so that they can get to the bottom of these mysteries. The Gravity of Birds is a seductive novel, out to prove that a powerful secret will ultimately bury its keeper unless the truth—like a bird—is set free.

“I want to see your book collection.” So goes a classic pickup line from Nathaniel (Nate) Piven, an up-and-coming literary star in Brooklyn whose relationships populate Adelle Waldman’s The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. Reminiscent of classic realist novels from authors like Graham Greene or Henry James, this delightful debut jumps headfirst into the mind of one man, revealing what he really thinks about women, dating and success.

From the beginning, readers know that Nate Piven is an anxious guy. He’s anxious about his upcoming book (which sold for a considerable advance, but not quite as much as the sexually explicit memoir from fellow hot, young writer Greer Cohen). He’s anxious about the dinner party thrown by his ex-girlfriend Elisa (who definitely is still in love with him) and he’s anxious about asking out Hannah, Elisa’s good friend. Meanwhile, he’s constantly bumping into his flock of exes, beautiful and brainy literary assistants who seem to come off some sort of assembly line—one can’t help but wonder if Nate’s struggle to commit stems from his having too much nostalgia for his own past.

Nate is a nearly unlikable, yet frighteningly realistic, character—the sort of neurotic, conceited, selfish boor who might have sprung from the mind of Woody Allen. At one point in the novel, Nate’s friend questions why women always want to be in a serious relationship while men rarely do, and it’s this perplexing thought that permeates the story. Does Nate date Hannah because he’s terrified of being alone with his own company? Will he ever have the capacity to develop feelings for another person?

Much of the strength of The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. lies in Waldman’s attention to detail, which builds a completely believable depiction of the New York 20- and 30-something dating scene. Although the novel’s ending unfortunately trails off, leaving readers curious about Nate’s ultimate fate, Waldman succeeds in revealing one man’s narcissistic impulses and shortcomings as a boyfriend.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE
Read an interview with Adelle Waldman about The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.

For a first-time novelist, Anthony Marra has a lot going for him. Currently a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, Marra holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has won The Atlantic’s Student Writing Contest, the Pushcart Prize and the Narrative Prize. If that isn’t enough to convince you of Marra’s extraordinary talents, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena has already been awarded the 2012 Whiting Writers’ Award.

Set in contemporary Chechnya—a republic in southern Russia—the novel opens with 8-year-old Havaa hiding in the freezing-cold forest. She is forced to witness the burning down of her home and the abduction of her fingerless father by Russian soldiers. When Havaa’s father’s lifelong friend and neighbor Akhmed discovers her, he decides that the only guarantee for her safety is to take her to a physician he has only heard rumors about: Dr. Sonja Rabina.

For Sonja, her day-to-day life is a furious routine of staying hopped up on methamphetamines, running the town’s bombed-out hospital and desperately searching for her heroin-addicted sister, Natasha. Akhmed—a doctor as well, although his passion lies in portraiture—offers his assistance to Sonja, in exchange for her harboring Havaa. The Russians have already begun hunting down the girl, and Akhmed has sworn to protect her, for reasons deeper than Sonja initially suspects.

Marra delicately weaves together several narratives against the backdrop of this bleak, war-ravaged country. Over five days filled with dying rebels, mysterious black-market con men, friends-turned-traitors and ghostly visitors, Marra allows the stories of Sonja, Natasha, Akhmed and Havaa’s father to intersect in incredibly imaginative ways. Readers will become convinced that each subsequent piece in the puzzle of Marra’s narrative is not coincidence but surely must be fate.

If you’re a fan of beautifully composed, internationally set fiction like The Tiger’s Wife or The Orphan Master’s Son, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena is a worthy next pick. The Whiting Writers’ Award selection committee dubbed Marra’s ambitions “Tolstoyan,” and there could not be a better word to describe his all-too-real cast of characters. This is an exquisite debut.

These days, polygamous sects are dominating the news and entertainment headlines. Playwright Peggy Riley feeds that fascination with her debut novel, Amity & Sorrow, the suspenseful story of a mother and her two daughters after their escape from a polygamous, fundamentalist cult.

Amity & Sorrow hooks readers from its riveting opening: Amaranth has just escaped the cult with Sorrow and Amity, fleeing across the country by car. Hysterical and sleep deprived, Amaranth totals the car when they reach rural Oklahoma, leading her older daughter Sorrow to flee from the wreckage. When Amaranth, Amity and a widowed farmer named Bradley discover Sorrow locked in Bradley’s gas station bathroom, she is miscarrying. Who could have gotten Sorrow pregnant? Without a car or provisions, where will Amaranth and her daughters go? And what exactly are they running from?

Told from the viewpoints of all three women, the novel gradually reveals a troubling history of abuse. Amaranth is terrified that her husband will hunt them down. Sorrow—the most religious of the three and a zealous pyromaniac—not only demands to return to the compound, but also is convinced that she is an oracle, set forth on earth to deliver God’s message. Amity is merely attempting to join the real world by learning how to read, with Bradley’s aging father acting as her teacher. And then there is Bradley, who must ultimately decide what to do with these women who refuse to leave his front porch.

However, Sorrow will stop at nothing to return to what she sees as her rightful place by her father’s side. But the reasoning behind her desire to go back is more complicated than it appears.

What makes Amity & Sorrow so fascinating is Riley’s compassionate portrayal of these women. Whether she’s explaining the pull that drew Amaranth to her husband in the first place, the power he holds over his many wives or the shock that both daughters face when dealing with the outside world, each emotion is captured exquisitely. This novel is not sensationalist, but rather realistic and frightening as it captures the horrors of real-life cults.