A beehive is a place of order, control, maybe even oppression. In Laline Paull’s debut novel, The Bees, Flora 717 is a sterile worker bee from the lowest caste of an orchard hive. Like her sisters, she is bound by the motto to accept, obey and serve. But during a period of famine and environmental crisis, Flora is asked to take on new tasks: first, feeding the newborns in the hive’s nursery and then becoming a forager, flying freely in search of pollen and nectar. Her size and strength make her a formidable worker, and she proves to be a quick learner. But each change in role brings Flora access to new wisdom about the hive—and eventually puts her in conflict with the Queen, as well as the fertility police and the priestesses, an elite group of bees closest to the queen who keep the hive in order. Soon, Flora must decide where her loyalties lie and whether blind obedience to the rules is really in the best interest of her community.

Dystopian fiction only works when there is a character who is able to see the cracks in the system, and Flora is the perfect heroine: resourceful, brave and able to take the kinds of chances that her sisters cannot, a reminder that even nature is ever-changing. Paull has created a credible version of the complex world of the bee: the stunningly complicated hive—part palace, part convent—the countryside, filled with flowers aching to be pollinated, and the Myriad, or foes of the bee, including crows, spiders, wasps and, of course, people. Most impressive of all, even the most extreme actions and concepts in the novel—the expulsion of the drones, the fertility police, the hive mind—are true to known bee behavior, with some poetic license, of course. 

Readers may recognize elements drawn from the work of Atwood, Orwell and even The Hunger Games, but The Bees is very much its own creation: a dystopian thriller, a love story and a plea for the plight of the honeybees. The Bees is a tremendous work of literature, told with suspense and passion. You will never look at the activity in your flower garden the same way again.

This article was originally published in the May 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read a Q&A with Laline Paull about The Bees.

Every now and then, a reader stumbles across a debut novelist and thinks to herself: What took you so long? Bret Anthony Johnston—­current Director of Creative Writing at Harvard University and named one of the National Book Foundation’s 5 under 35 following the publication of his 2004 short story collection—is such an author. His first novel is so spellbinding, so moving, that one’s only complaint is that we had to wait 10 years to read it.

Remember Me Like This opens with a surprise: It begins where most novels would have ended. We meet the Campbells four years after the traumatic ordeal of losing their then 11-year-old son, Justin, to a kidnapper. Laura and Eric (along with their youngest son Griff) are learning how to claw their way out from the darkness of grief. Then they receive the extraordinary news that Justin is coming home.

Even then, Johnston doesn’t focus his novel on the facts behind Justin’s disappearance, but keeps the focus on the repercussions of the family’s loss rather than its details. Though they never stopped combing the Corpus Christi sand dunes or canvassing the town with “missing” flyers, each family member turned to distractions to cope with their grief. Laura has become a shadow of herself, spending most of her time and energy volunteering at Sea Lab, where she cares for hurt or sick marine life. Eric—a high school history teacher who still loves Laura but is unable to connect with her—has found solace in the arms of travel agent Tracy. Griff, now entering his teenage years and unable to bridge the gap between his parents, focuses his energy on skateboarding and daydreams about his best friend, Fiona.

Yet it is the way Johnston reveals Justin’s painful ordeal in increments and through the eyes and ears of his family members that makes this tale so emotionally powerful. Johnston is a master at creating honest portraits of family members that could easily be your neighbor. Make no mistake about it: Bret Anthony Johnston is a writer to watch.

This article was originally published in the May 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Simon Wroe is a former chef, so it’s no surprise that he set his debut novel in a kitchen. What is surprising about Chop Chop, though, is how little Wroe lets this fiendish little book get bogged down in the details of its setting. It’s very much about the chaotic life of a kitchen, but this darkly comic narrative covers so much more, and the result is addictively entertaining.

Wroe’s unnamed narrator (dubbed “Monocle” by his coworkers because of an English degree he isn’t using) sets out for the excitement of London after university and quickly finds himself desperate for a way to pay his rent. He takes a job at a past-its-prime restaurant called The Swan, doing grunt work. It’s a place where anything can happen, and The Swan’s outrageous characters—barbaric head chef Bob, Racist Dave, Ramilov and the beguiling Harmony—push and pull Monocle in different directions, from torture to romance to devilish pranks. Monocle finds himself swept into a world that’s as much battleground as it is kitchen, even as he’s tormented by his past and his parents’ crumbling marriage.

Wroe not only refuses to glamorize what goes on behind this restaurant’s kitchen door, but also refuses to tell his tale with anything but a kind of impish brutality. Bob isn’t just a taskmaster. He’s a slavedriver. Harmony isn’t just a crush. She’s a dream girl. Ramilov isn’t just a comrade in arms. He’s a lifesaver. Everything is amplified in this cramped, sweaty little space, but Wroe still leaves plenty of room for the unexpected, the uncomfortable and the uncommonly funny.

Chop Chop might be fiction, but the truth of the author’s experience shines through. The result is a compelling debut from a mischievous new voice.

This article was originally published in the May 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Author Heather Brittain Bergstrom has won awards for her short fiction from the Chicago Tribune and Atlantic Monthly, among others. Her outstanding debut novel, Steal the North, is almost guaranteed to add to Bergstrom’s award collection. Narrated from multiple perspectives, the novel is a heartbreaking tale of family secrets, unrequited love and the unbreakable bond of family. 

Sixteen-year-old Emmy Nolan is a sheltered only child living with her mother in Sacramento, California. Emmy knows very little about her mother Kate’s childhood, with good reason: Kate wishes to leave her past in the past. Until the day Kate receives a phone call from her estranged sister, Beth, summoning Emmy to her home in rural Washington—the town Kate had fled 15 years earlier, with baby Emmy, after her boyfriend abandoned her and her own father and the fundamentalist church they attended shunned her. 

The passion, spiritual connection and once-in-a-lifetime love that Reuben and Emmy share makes the reader’s heart ache—and could secure Steal the North a spot on the bookshelves of discerning teens. 

But now Beth, the only person who stood up for Kate during that time, is begging for her help. She is pregnant for what she believes is the final time; Beth and her husband Matt have experienced too many miscarriages to count during their marriage. She wants Kate to send Emmy to participate in a faith healing ceremony to help ensure a safe delivery. 

Though angry with her mother for keeping secrets and dubious about moving in with an aunt she doesn’t remember, Emmy reluctantly goes. While living with Matt and Beth, she makes discoveries about her mother’s past that are painful, but her life is broadened and awakened in ways that she had never imagined. Bergstrom’s knowledge of eastern Washington, the Colville and Yakama Reservations and the lives of the Native Americans who live there are central to this novel—especially her careful construction of Emmy’s relationship with Reuben Tonasket, the Native American who lives in the trailer next door. The passion, spiritual connection and once-in-a-lifetime love that Reuben and Emmy share makes the reader’s heart ache—and could secure Steal the North a spot on the bookshelves of discerning teens. 

Bergstrom has delivered a debut novel with deep emotional ties, linking the reader to Emmy as she navigated her relationship with Reuben, struggled to understand her mother’s past and discovered her own identity. I ached for Emmy as I used up the last of my tissues, and I trust that anyone who embarks on this journey will do the same. 

In Vintage, author and secondhand store enthusiast Susan Gloss weaves together the lives of three very different women in a story filled with humor and heart.

Violet Turner, the 30-something proprietor of Hourglass Vintage, has a passion for making something out of the hand life has dealt. Growing up in small-town Wisconsin, she was always a bit offbeat but found safety in dating a popular boy. With dogged determination, Violet continued to live the life she thought she should live. But when she realized that she wanted more from life and that her husband was a good-for-nothing alcoholic, Violet took off for the state capital and a new life.

That’s exactly what she’s found in Madison, with her vintage-focused consignment shop drawing clientele from the university and the city’s eclectic professional community alike. It also draws in 18-year-old high-school graduate April Morgan, who is five months pregnant and is selling the vintage wedding dress she won’t need after breaking things off with her fiancé. April seems an unlikely companion for Violet, but regular customer Betsy, an elderly woman whose friendship with Violet is nearly familial, sees that the pair needs each other. Indian immigrant Amithi Singh also finds comfort in the shop and its proprietor, following a betrayal that has left her questioning her adult life.

Vintage is a sweet and comforting debut that celebrates the families we make. It will remind readers not only that they are never alone, but also that happiness often returns when it seems all hope is gone.

The women came from all over the nation—even the world—with little or no idea why they were moving to a remote New Mexico town with only a post office box for an address. They were the wives of scientists working at a secret research laboratory to build the first atomic bomb.

The Manhattan Project is a storied chapter in American history, its products used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Less well recorded are the voices of the women who lived there in the early 1940s, raising families and struggling to build a community in the harsh climate and secretive environment of Los Alamos.

The Wives of Los Alamos is written in the first person plural (“we”), a surprisingly effective choice by Nesbit. It helps paint the picture of a generation of women who, while diverse in many ways, were still products of their time, following their husbands virtually without question.

“What did we think our husbands were doing in the lab?” Nesbit writes. “We suspected, because the military was involved, that they were building a communication device, a rocket, or a new weapon. We ruled out submarines because we were in the desert—but we closely considered types of code breaking.”

The conditions were stark: a dusty, windy, mysterious military base where food was rationed and showers were a luxury. Some families buckled under the harsh conditions. Yet Nesbit shows that the women found ways to adapt and even have fun, with morning neighborhood coffees and evening dances giving shape to their social lives.

“We felt the freedom of living in isolation,” she writes, “and so, on the weekends, fenced in as we were, we celebrated and square-danced, we let go. We often work the next morning with no water and spent the day reeking of rum, and our lungs burned from smoking so many cigarettes. We wanted what we could many times not have: coffee, a shower.”

Nesbit made use of oral histories and archival documents to detail for the first time the lives of these young women who until now were forgotten in the history books. It is a stunningly original and thought-provoking debut novel.

An epistolary tale told through emails, interoffice memos, legal documents and handwritten notes, The Divorce Papers is a witty and engaging first novel from author Susan Rieger. As is obvious from the title, the book features a divorce at its center. However, Rieger makes it about much more as she covers topics ranging from childhood trauma and fresh romances to office politics and literary theory.

Sophie Diehl is a criminal law associate living in New England and apprehensively approaching her 30th birthday. She is horrified when her boss hands her a divorce case on a week when the firm’s experienced divorce lawyers are away; she prefers the minimal-contact work she specializes in and, as a child of divorce herself, wants nothing to do with handling one. But when her efforts to extricate herself from the case fail, she finds herself immersed in the extremely bitter marriage dissolution of Mia Meiklejohn (her client) and her wealthy oncologist husband, Dr. Daniel Durkheim. The case involves not only infidelity and dramatic clashes, but also a troubled 10-year-old daughter.

While this plot might sound like an overwrought soap opera with a chick-lit slant, the execution is funny and intelligent. Rieger herself went to Columbia Law School and has worked as an attorney and university administrator, and her prose—peppered with literary, historical and philosophical references—is whip smart. And although there is no traditional narration, the reader becomes well acquainted with Sophie and her inner world, particularly through emails sent to her best friend Maggie, her new boyfriend, her parents and her charmingly erudite boss, David Greaves.

The narrative flow does stumble at times, particularly when several pages of full legal documents are presented; while Rieger obviously has a great enthusiasm for the intricacies of the law, some readers might find these sections tough to slog through. But overall, The Divorce Papers is a sharp read and an impressive debut.

Kim Church has created an unforgettable and gripping tale about a young woman’s passage to adulthood in a small town in North Carolina in her excellent debut novel, Byrd. There are books we like to read because they provide a window to a world wholly unfamiliar, but there are others like Byrd that give insight into our own lives: our hopes and dreams, what we’ve done right, opportunities missed. The simple fact is few of us live the lives we dreamed of when we were young, or as the young heroine Addie says, “I have learned it is possible to become satisfied with your life too soon.” She falls in love early, not realizing it will not last forever. Throughout the book Addie is looking to recapture the intensity of that first love, “the deep down panic of real love, the jolt she felt with Roland.” The intensity of first love compared to the pleasures of mature love is one of the abiding themes of the book. How do these forms of love compare? Which is real, which lasts—and can the earlier intensity ever be recaptured?

Years after their original love affair, Addie and Roland fumble their way back toward each other. One of their meetings results in a pregnancy that Addie will keep secret, something she regrets deeply. The book is interspersed with poignant unsent letters from Addie to the child she gave up, whom she calls Byrd. Will Roland, Addie and Byrd reunite?

The reader comes to know the characters in Byrd extraordinarily well. Through this knowledge, we come to care deeply about their successes and failures.

Reimagining a well-trodden fairy tale is tricky business. Rely too much on the tropes of the original story, and the plot becomes wooden, predictable and dull. Drift too far, and it’s easy to lose the point of the exercise. Few writers can pull off this balance, but with While Beauty Slept, Elizabeth Blackwell proves she’s one of them.

For her take on the Sleeping Beauty story, Blackwell—a former journalist—shifts focus from the titular Beauty to Elise, an attendant to the queen when the Beauty, a girl named Rose, is born. When we first meet Elise, she’s an old woman with great-grandchildren, and the memory of the real story of Sleeping Beauty has long been buried in her mind. One night, hearing her great-grandchild tell the fantastical version of the tale, the tale of a princess who slept for a hundred years, Elise decides it’s finally time to tell the real story: the story of a queen desperate for a daughter, a treacherous aunt and the curse she brought to the palace, a war, a plague, a king striving to save his heir. Elise was at the center of it all, protecting her queen, her princess and her own chance at survival.

Blackwell succeeds at deftly weaving her own elements into a classic story without ever doing either a disservice, but there’s perhaps a more important balancing act she pulls off that makes the novel even more rewarding: the balance between Elise’s place in the fairy tale, and her own personal journey. This is not Sleeping Beauty’s story, though she is vital to it. This is Elise’s story, and not as a supporting character. It’s the story of her love life, her fears, her hopes, her mysterious past and her determination, and Blackwell makes sure it matters by rendering Elise as a powerful, vulnerable and inviting voice. The strength of Elise as a character is the reason this novel works.

Fans of novels like Wicked and lovers of fairy tales will no doubt find something new to love in While Beauty Slept, as will anyone who enjoys a layered drama rich with juicy palace intrigue.