Charles Elton’s funny, strange and often surprisingly insightful debut, Mr. Toppit, is a book about a series of best-selling children’s books, the details of which are kept conspicuously vague. We know that The Hayseed Chronicles follow the adventures of Luke Hayseed in a magical land called “Darkwood,” and that they combine fantasy with allegory and philosophy—à la The Chronicles of Narnia or even the Harry Potter books. But beyond that, we are at a loss, most notably concerning Mr. Toppit, Darkwood’s fickle Godot-like overlord, who appears only briefly at the end of the final Hayseed installment and for whom all the characters in Elton’s “real” world seem to be searching.

Indeed, Mr. Toppit’s true stars are these “real” characters. And its true focus is the story of the Chronicles’ rise to cult fame—a story marked by events both absurd and tragic, the first of which is when Arthur Hayman, the books’ relatively unsuccessful author, is hit by a cement truck in the middle of London and spends his dying moments with Laurie Clow, an overweight and equally misunderstood American tourist.

Laurie is so moved by the encounter that she goes on to (almost serendipitously) bring the series to renown, and in the process fundamentally alters the lives of Arthur’s children: Luke, who is reluctantly immortalized as the oeuvre’s famous hero, and Rachel, who markedly makes no appearance at all. As Hayseed mania grows, the siblings confront the mess their father—the true Mr. Toppit, some might say—has left for them, and in turn confront larger issues of family and obligation, celebrity and privacy, and the vast gulf between British and American sensibilities.

From the comically bland sitting rooms of middle-class England to the boozy shenanigans of modern-day Los Angeles, Mr. Toppit shows the effects of legacy on its inheritors, while at the same time exploring the way in which we use fantasy worlds to better understand our own.

Benjamin Percy’s first novel, The Wilding, exhibits the broad range of ambition expected of the debut writer: a keen and almost preening attention to language, a careful consideration of character, a nod towards the political and worldly and an attempt to tackle issues of the greatest moral importance. And yet, for all this, it is also a good, fun read and a book that suggests its author has only begun to flex his writerly muscle.

At the novel’s start, readers meet Justin and Karen and their 12-year-old son, Graham, an Oregon family so bored by that specific breed of West Coast yuppyish malaise (organic food, expensive running gear) that they seem predestined for a shakeup. That shakeup comes courtesy of Justin’s bad-seed father, Paul, who takes Justin and Graham on a weekend hunting trip in Echo Canyon, which will soon be turned into a golf resort. The excursion is doomed almost from the get-go by Paul’s hardheaded masculinity and Justin’s crippling cowardice, not to mention an angry redneck and a hungry grizzly bear who both seem to have it out for them. Meanwhile, Karen has problems of her own, as she considers an affair with the canyon’s developer and becomes the object of creepy obsession for a troubled Iraq War veteran—a man who wears a body suit he has fashioned from bear hide, it’s worth noting.

In short, each character must confront the age-old problem of negotiating civility and desire, conformity and savagery. There is very little veiling our basest instincts, Percy seems to say (at one point the hunting party gruesomely and joyously plays with the innards of their kill), and often it’s easier than one might think to give up decorum.

Such messages do, at times, come across as heavy-handed, and it’s certainly clear that Percy wrote with his themes in mind. Still,The Wilding emerges as creative, unique and deeply thought-provoking. More so, it speaks of an author with many more tricks up his sleeve.

Michelle Hoover’s debut novel is a haunting, beautifully told story that explores the hardships of the Great Depression by focusing on two families—neighbors who are in many ways complete opposites of one another. The Quickening unfolds gradually, beginning in 1913, and is told in alternating chapters by the family matriarchs, Enidina (Eddie) Current and Mary Morrow.

Eddie is a large, down-to-earth woman who throws herself into even the dirtiest farm jobs and is devoted to her hard-working husband Frank, with whom she moved to a farm “a day’s wagon ride” away from the family farm where she grew up. The Morrow family, she says, were “a worry to ours from day one.” Mary Morrow, raised in a city, distances herself from the rigors of farm work, preferring to play the piano and attend services at the nearby chapel. Different as they are, the two women bond, if only to have another voice to help stave off their isolation.

Eddie suffers two miscarriages, and when she next feels a quickening, she doesn’t want to admit it, afraid she will lose another baby. But she gives birth to twins, Donny and Adaline, whose lives become inextricably tied to Mary’s youngest boy, Kyle. As the twins grow, the farms suffer their worst years, with alternating drought and floods, a drop in crop prices and the raising of mortgages caused by the Depression. Misfortune drives a wedge between the families, culminating in a tragedy that severs the neighborly ties for good.

Hoover writes with such emotional clarity about these two women, their fierce maternal instincts and their determination to survive in spite of impossible hardships that the reader can almost feel their presence. Hoover is the granddaughter of four generations-old farming families, so perhaps this empathy is in her genes, resulting in a captivating and heartfelt first novel.

In her first novel, Helen Simonson has created a charming and engaging story of the hazards of English country life. The residents of the village of Edgecombe St. Mary are realistic and sharply defined, including Major Ernest Pettigrew (retired), who at first appears to be a curmudgeon but turns out to have a heart of gold.

We meet Major Pettigrew as he has been told of his only brother’s demise. This shock brings him in close contact with Mrs. Ali, the proprietor of the village shop. As they get to know each other, Major Pettigrew begins to feel more warmly toward Mrs. Ali than he would have thought possible after the death of his wife six years earlier. Along the way, they both must deal with mean gossip and the expectations of their families.

In getting to know Mrs. Ali better, Major Pettigrew becomes acquainted with her nephew, Abdul Wahid, a stoic man in a difficult situation—and suddenly, Major Pettigrew’s life becomes rather complicated. Before long, he has bigger things to worry about than reuniting a pair of guns that had been his father’s. He finds his very way of life threatened by a new building development and literally has a life-or-death situation on his hands when Abdul Wahid reaches his breaking point.

Major Pettigrew will have you rooting for the English countryside, hissing at the nasty American business of carving it up and longing to give his financier son Roger a box on the ears for his impertinence and self-absorption. By the end, it is possible that even Roger has grown up a little, and certainly Major Pettigrew and Mrs. Ali have learned what is really important.

Well-researched and authentic (Simonson spent her teenage years in West Sussex), each note in this novel rings true and takes the reader on a lovely vacation to the pastoral English countryside. Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand succeeds in showing the depth behind the veneer; it explores the rift not only between generations, but between cultures, and delves deeply into the notion of progress and home. You’ll laugh, you’ll wipe away a tear or two and you certainly will enjoy time spent with Major Pettigrew.

Linda White is a writer and editor in St. Paul, Minnesota.

In his debut novel, Michael J. White has crafted an affecting story of first love and first loss. It’s an observant and often lyrical tale of its protagonists’ efforts to navigate some of the early, stumbling steps on the road to adulthood.

Seventeen-year-old George Flynn has moved with his parents and older brother to Des Moines. Apart from a murder in the Holiday Inn where he and his family spend their first night in town, life for earnest and awkward George, a dedicated if only intermittently successful wrestler, settles into a predictable groove. That is, until he meets Emily Schell, his St. Pius High School classmate and an aspiring actress. George’s “only real ambition was to love Emily in the same fierce and noble way [he’d] loved her from the beginning,” but his infatuation is complicated when he meets her 13-year-old sister, Katie, wise beyond her years and suffering from multiple sclerosis. They form an odd triangle that’s shattered by a tragic accident.

At first George and Emily drift apart, but inevitably they act on their mutual attraction, cemented on an impromptu road trip from Iowa to Colorado. George scraps his plans to attend college and Emily abandons Northwestern University to return home, where the two tumble into a passionate relationship that seems fueled as much by sorrow as by lust. White explores the complex and ever-shifting dynamics of their relationship in a way that’s both intensely realistic and psychologically astute, building a strong foundation on which the novel rests. Though White is nearly two decades removed from his own high school days, he displays an acute recall, and his wit and tenderness leaven the novel’s autumnal sensibility of the events and emotions that cause most people’s memories of those years to range from bittersweet to appalling.

While they’re familiar to all, the territories of love and grief have no signposts. In Weeping Underwater Looks a Lot Like Laughter, Michael J. White has marked out a memorable path through this often forbidding landscape.

Harvey Freedenberg writes from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Brian DeLeeuw’s smart, haunting debut is unlike any novel I’ve ever read. A coming-of-age story and a literary thriller in equal parts, In This Way I Was Saved is a story of friendship and betrayal, violence, madness, lust and power that will keep you guessing until the very last page—and leave you gasping for air.

From the moment six-year-old Luke meets Daniel in a playground near the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the two are constant companions. Daniel plays with Luke’s toys, sleeps in his bedroom and distracts Luke from the painful realities of his parents’ divorce. He even follows Luke and his mother, Claire, to Fire Island, where Luke’s attentions to Claire and his new puppy gnaw incessantly at Daniel. Fiercely jealous of Luke’s other relationships and fearful a day will come when Luke forgets him entirely, Daniel’s attempts to regain his position grow increasingly sinister—and even violent.

Once you’ve seen the lengths to which Daniel is willing to go to keep Luke by his side—or rather, under his influence—you won’t be able to put this book down. Daniel accompanies Luke to high school, feeding him the right answers during class, and helping him call plays on the football field. But Daniel’s motives are far from innocent. The more Luke needs him, the stronger Daniel grows, until he begins to be able to make choices for Luke—choices he would never make on his own. And in the battle to control the life they share, only one of them can emerge the victor.

In This Way I Was Saved is an impressive debut—fascinating, suspenseful and controlled—and it will chill you to the bone. In Daniel, DeLeeuw has created an unforgettable character with a voice that is both highly intelligent and deeply unsettling. After seeing the world through Daniel’s eyes, there may be no turning back.

Lindsey Schwoeri is an Assistant Editor at the Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc. 

With Going to See the Elephant, first-time novelist Rodes Fishburne has created a fantastical world that exists in the middle of San Francisco. Featuring characters that are frequently over-the-top and a plot that covers everything from the world of journalism to mad-science weather manipulation, the book is a canvas for Fishburne's colorful imagination. But the cartoonish images and wild storyline aren't all the reader gets from the tale; by the time the novel ends, one thing that stands out is its real, very human sentiment.

As the book opens, we meet Slater Brown, an overeager and laughably naive 25-year-old with one goal: to be recognized as the greatest writer in the world. He has come from the East Coast to San Francisco in order to realize that goal, although he has no real idea how to do so. Scribbling furiously in his notebook as he scours the city for inspiration, dressed absurdly in a linen suit and Panama hat, he is the perfect parody of the affected, starry-eyed young scribe found in many a graduate school English class.

Needing a paycheck, Slater applies to struggling local newspaper The Morning Trumpet, only to hilariously bomb his first assignment. But after he chances upon a resident "answer man" who leaves him with a very special parting gift, Slater is suddenly San Fran's scoop magnet.

As Slater's sensational stories singlehandedly revive the Trumpet and his celebrity skyrockets, the reader is introduced to a rich cast of supporting characters, including the crooked mayor out to destroy Slater after he digs up a damaging story on him (his emotional overeating binge and enormous weight gain following the story's release is a comic highlight); the scientist whose weather-changing experiments could give Slater his best story yet; and the gorgeous female chess prodigy who ultimately changes the direction of Slater's life.

The book's many layers could use some fine-tuning, and the dramatic climactic scene is something of an eye-roller, but it is refreshing to see Fishburne reveal the more grounded, less outrageous aspects of each character as the story's surprisingly simple message is uncovered. It will be interesting to see where he might go with a second novel.

Rebecca Stropoli writes from Brooklyn, New York. 

If someone close to you were replaced by a doppelganger, one who looked and spoke exactly like your loved one, would you know, in your heart, that the person was an imposter? This question pervades Atmospheric Disturbances, Rivka Galchen’s inventive debut novel.

The story begins at the apartment of middle-aged New York psychiatrist Leo Liebenstein, the novel’s narrator. His young wife, Rema, a charming, beautiful Argentine with oft-mentioned “cornsilk hair,” has just walked through the door. Leo notes that she looks like Rema, she walks like Rema, she talks like Rema and her mannerisms are identical to Rema’s. But instantly, he knows—this woman is not his wife.  From that moment on, he refers to this ersatz Rema as the simulacrum.

Thus begins a journey both physical and psychological, as Leo embarks on a desperate search for his “missing” wife, scouring every location from the New York pastry shop where they first met to Argentina to Patagonia.

This journey is not a simple one; Galchen treats it as a puzzle, weaving in intriguing clues along the way. Also tied into the voyage is Leo’s patient Harvey, who believes he is a weather-controlling member of the Royal Academy of Meteorology (amusingly, he claims to receive messages on Page Six of the New York Post). As his search continues, Leo, who once tried to cure Harvey, incorporates his patient’s delusions (or are they?) into his own theories of Rema’s disappearance.

So, has the doctor become the insane one, or are his seemingly paranoid fantasies the true reality? And what, exactly, is the nature of reality? Galchen has crafted a smart, involving tale that keeps the reader guessing on these matters throughout. The novel seems an ideal book club pick, as its complex story allows for many interpretations and could likely spark heated debate.

But Atmospheric Disturbances is more than a brain-teasing mystery complete with cryptic dialogue, erudite sentence construction, charts, bizarre photos and visual-perception exercises. There is ultimately a very human side to the story, one which explores the nature of love and its permutations over time. Perhaps we can never really know our loved ones as well as we think we do, and maybe full trust in another (including in their very identity) is an impossibility.

The television show “Seinfeld” was famous for being a “show about nothing.” Joanna Smith Rakoff’s debut novel, on the other hand, is a book about everything. A Fortunate Age covers the gamut of life experience as her characters deal with everything from careers, children and marriage to mental illness and death.

This epic novel follows six friends, each a freshly minted Oberlin graduate, starting adult lives in New York City: Sadie, who is rising through the ranks at her publishing house; Emily, a struggling actor who can’t afford to quit her day job; Tal, also an actor, but one who is successfully breaking into the movies; Dave, who is poised to trade one kind of musical success for another; Beth, an academic floating from one university to another as an adjunct; and Lil, a poetry scholar whose wedding opens the book.

Put together, this mélange of stories is part of something larger. A Fortunate Age is about a generation finding its way at a certain time in a certain place—New York City in the years just before and after 9/11—and Rakoff has brilliantly captured the mood of the era and the energy of a city. Members of Generation X will enjoy picking out her many pop culture references.

When the Twin Towers are attacked, Rakoff forgoes a dramatic recounting of the events of that day. Instead, we see her characters sit slack-jawed in front of the TV like so many of us did. As time passes, they go back to their desks, walk their children to the park—but these normal, everyday actions are infused with the notion that everything has changed.

That Rakoff covers so much ground is at once the book’s blessing and its curse. At times the sheer number of characters and their hangers-on can become overwhelming and, despite the length of the novel, the ending of the book seems to come quite abruptly. But these flaws are forgiven in favor of recognizing Rakoff’s successful portrayal of a generation coming of age in a period when the explosion of the Internet fundamentally changed the way we live and war changed the way we see ourselves in the world.

Kim Schmidt writes from Champaign, Illinois.