The Fields—the first novel by Kevin Maher, a journalist originally from Dublin—stars Jim Finnegan, a 14-year-old with a potty mouth and a heart of tarnished silver. He hangs with a gang of toughs who swill lager and try to trump each other’s sexual conquests. Yet the lasses are no shrinking violets. Jim’s five (count ’em) sisters are as ominous as the witches in Macbeth.

During the course of this somewhat picaresque story, Jim faces some serious challenges, including the accidental pregnancy of his girlfriend, Saidhbh, and an unfortunate relationship with an abusive priest. Though Jim’s studies suffer, as does his relationship with Saidhbh, he endures these with incredible fortitude, and despite its sordid subject matter, The Fields is brimming with humor and cheer. This is particularly true of Jim’s outrageous family, whose determination to be joyful amid gloom—or gloomy amid joy—is integral to the Irish sensibility, as when Jim’s “mam” and her friends gleefully deplore lives cut short: “Cancer, death, only twenty! It’s music to their ears, like the sound of a starter gun.”

Maher’s prose has a manic, scabrous quality, like the ravings of a Guinness-fueled publican. He writes less like Joyce and more like Céline. Indeed, the only reference to Joyce is when a character suggests that a companion volume to Dubliners could be called “Ireland’s a Bit Rubbish and Has No Jobs.”

It’s a small miracle whenever any adolescent survives, and Jim emerges with all his chakras intact (after another zany subplot involving New Age training in London). But one hopes for Jim what Larkin hoped for: “No God any more, or sweating in the dark / About hell and that, or having to hide / What you think of the priest.”

A shockingly hilarious debut, Crazy Rich Asians will carry the reader to a civilization comparable to Lilliput, Wonderland or Narnia. Except that the inhabitants are faithful Methodists and the setting is only a plane ride away.

The characters here aren’t just “crazy rich”; they’re grotesquely, monstrously rich. These offshore Chinese, the high society of Singapore, are so moneyed that clans live in a separate world replete with their own memes, dreams and extremes. Their expectations, their shopping habits—the most spectacular excess since 18th-century France—create a backdrop that boots this novel into must-read territory.

Rachel Chu’s dating relationship with Nicholas Young takes a serious turn when he invites her to accompany him to Singapore, where he is to be best man in a friend’s wedding. Though he wants her to meet his family, Nick doesn’t think to enlighten Rachel about the extraordinary qualities of Singapore’s ultra-wealthy. She is thrown into a lions’ den of ingrown gossip and intrigue, which takes a vicious twist when Nick’s mother Eleanor decides Rachel is unworthy of the family.

A native of Singapore now living in New York, Kevin Kwan knows this relatively hidden culture inside and out, yet he is distant enough to appreciate its uniqueness and hubristic appeal to American readers. For we are all suckers for legendary troves of jewels and 70-carat earrings that brush majestically against our shoulders.

Readers who insist that characters must be “likable” for them to enjoy a story had best steer clear of Alissa Nutting’s debut novel, Tampa, a black comedy whose protagonist’s soul is as dark as a thunderstorm at midnight. But for those of a more adventuresome literary bent who are looking for a frank—and often, frankly funny—glimpse into the troubled mind of a female sexual predator, this swiftly paced novel will generate as many intriguing questions about contemporary sexual mores as it does laughs.

Inspired by the true story of Debra Lafave, a Tampa middle-school teacher charged in 2004 with “lewd and lascivious battery” for engaging in sex with a student, the novel is narrated by her fictional doppelgänger, Celeste Price, a 26-year-old teacher who’s entered the profession solely to gain access to sexual prey. She soon fixes on Jack Patrick, a 14-year-old student in her English class, where most of the tutelage involves works of literature with strong sexual themes. It doesn’t take long for them to begin a lust-fueled affair, one that unsurprisingly provokes strong emotions in Jack, while allowing Celeste to sate an appetite for sex that’s like “seafood with the shortest imaginable half-life, needing to be peeled and eaten the moment the urge ripened.”

Take note: Nutting’s descriptions of Celeste’s frequent sexual encounters with her adolescent lover are graphic, even shocking. Equally disturbing is the darkness at the core of Celeste’s being, a depravity that allows her to watch impassively as a character dies of a heart attack or coolly assess how she’ll bring her affair with Jack to what she knows from the beginning will be its inevitable end.

Nutting has taken a considerable risk in tackling such a transgressive subject at a point in her career when she’s being discovered by most readers for the first time. But a novel can’t succeed based only on a bold premise. It’s a tribute to Nutting’s considerable talent that she adds style and wit to make this a convincing, if deeply troubling, story.

“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.

The first pages of Natalie Brown’s debut novel might bring a reader to groan, “Not another story about a ninny falling for her college professor!” But The Lovebird proves to be more than the story of an ill-fated romance between a timid co-ed with a Strawberry Shortcake suitcase and a predatory teacher. The affair between the diffident Margie Fitzgerald and her Latin professor fades out almost as quickly as it begins. As a parting gift, however, he makes her the head of the fanatical animal rights group he founded and is now washing his hands of.

Feeling useful and included at last, Margie does something stupid and spectacular enough for her to be wanted by the FBI. With the help of one of her animal activist friends, she flees to a Crow reservation in Montana. Specifically, she’s deposited, like one of the stray bunnies she likes to save, at the home of a wise and elderly Crow woman and her family. Yes, yes, haven’t we had enough of authors bringing out old, patient, sagacious Native American women—to the point where we may secretly long for a matriarch who’s mean, irresponsible, potty-mouthed and can’t tell one herb or root from another? But that’s for another novel.

Besides, Brown’s skill pulls us into Granma’s warm, nurturing orbit in spite of ourselves. One reason we love her is the goodness she’s passed on to her son Jim, a chap who’s manly enough to rebuild a car engine and sensitive enough to cry when he shoots a buffalo. Another reason we love Granma is that she’s such a refreshing contrast to the watery Margie. Motherless, raised by a loving but sad and ineffectual father, Margie has been blown hither and yon all of her life like so much of the fluff that blows from the Montana cottonwoods. The rootedness of Granma and her family is what she deeply needs.

Skating so close to cliché and stereotype, then subverting them a little; making you feel for and believe in her characters and care about what happens to them—these are signs of real talent. Natalie Brown is a real talent.

Love has many forms. It’s the bond between a parent and a child. It shows up in sibling relationships. It’s the connective tissue that unites sweethearts. It’s a lasting friendship.

And all too often, love is a complex web of emotion, commitment and uncertainty. That’s certainly the case for the characters in Ten Things I’ve Learnt About Love, a debut novel by Londoner Sarah Butler.

At nearly 30, Alice is the youngest of three daughters, and she has always felt as though her parents should have stopped with just two children. Her mother died in a car wreck en route to pick up 4-year-old Alice from ballet. Ever since, Alice thinks it has been difficult for her father to look at her. That paranoia has resulted in difficult relationships with him and her sisters. Alice has spent most of her adulthood as a globetrotting nomad.

Daniel is similarly adrift, wandering the streets of London in search of the daughter he never knew. Both of his parents have died, and the woman he loved was never his to begin with. Life has dealt him a difficult hand, leaving him homeless and, save for finding his child, without purpose. “You can’t miss someone you’ve never met. But I miss you,” he says to her.

As Butler shifts between—and eventually links—Alice’s and Daniel’s stories, the novel explores the intricacies of familial relationships and what an individual is willing to sacrifice to preserve the relationships and the people in his or her life. Combining detailed storytelling with character-revealing lists of 10 things her protagonists have learned to treasure, Butler establishes herself as a talent to watch.

Elizabeth L. Silver’s gripping and introspective first novel analyzes capital punishment from the intertwined viewpoints of those involved in a murder trial that took place years before the novel opens. Noa P. Singleton, now 35, has been in the Pennsylvania Institute for Women for a decade, found guilty of killing Sarah Dixon, a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania.

The mystery posed by the author is not whether Noa committed the crime, for she begins her story with: “I know I did it. The state knows I did it, though they never really cared why.” Instead, the book revolves around the “why”—and all the factors, past and present, that eventually led to a tragic and senseless outcome.

The main narrative is in Noa’s words—a first-person journal written in the months before her scheduled execution, which she calls X-day. She writes of her mother, who has not visited her in prison, and her non-relationship with her father—a one-night stand whom her mother calls a sperm donor, a man Noa never heard from growing up. She writes of childhood friends, and of the women who surround her on death row, whose stories she knows well. X-day is six months away, when out of the blue Noa is visited by Marlene Dixon, mother of the murder victim and a high-profile Philadelphia lawyer. Marlene claims to have had a change of heart—she no longer believes in the death penalty, and is in the process of filing a clemency petition that would reduce Noa’s sentence to life in prison. All Noa has to do is reveal why she committed the crime—something she refused to discuss during the trial, or since.

By means of chapters written in Noa’s words and letters written by Marlene Dixon to her deceased daughter, the reader gradually pieces together the puzzle of what happened the day Sarah died. It is an emotion-packed style, similar to that used by Lionel Shriver in her acclaimed novel We Need to Talk About Kevin (2003), as the reader tries to come to grips with how much weight should be given to mitigating circumstances in determining guilt or innocence.

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.

Rose Baker is the kind of girl who prides herself on the knowledge that the only remarkable thing about her is just how very plain she is. Often overlooked, prizing moral rectitude above all else and fastidious to a fault, Rose is a natural at her somewhat outré job as a typist in a 1920s New York City police station, where she dutifully types up the confessions and reports that put guilty men behind bars. Upon the hiring of a vivacious new typist named Odalie, Rose’s perch on her principled pedestal becomes precarious when she falls under the spell of this magnetic and irresistible young woman. Swept into an opulent but forbidden world of bootleggers and back-alley drinking halls, Rose starts to loosen her grip on her precious rules, only to find that reality and her own sense of self are soon to follow.

A prim typist finds her dark side in Rindell’s devilish, delicious debut.

The Other Typist is Suzanne Rindell’s debut novel, but what a deliciously devilish debut it is! Rindell’s prose is rich with vivid turns of phrase and imagery that dazzles like the tassels on a flapper’s frock, but her real coup is the creation of meek little Rose—who is actually anything but. In contrast to her drab exterior, Rose’s inner monologue is satisfyingly tart and her world view slyly subversive. Readers will swiftly realize that she is more than what she seems—but the one thing she is not, is to be trusted. With shades of Notes on a Scandal and a dash of The Great Gatsby thrown in for pizzazz, Rindell has concocted a potent psychological thriller that is downright addictive and more than a little twisted. The Other Typist is an excellent game of cat and mouse, one made all the better for never knowing exactly who is the hunter and who is the prey. Only one thing is for certain: Few readers will escape the mind-bending trap Rindell has set—and even fewer will be interested in trying.