The Qwillery

Each month you will be able to vote for your favorite cover from that month's debut novels. At the end of the year the 12 monthly winners will be pitted against each other to choose the 2019 Debut Novel Cover of the Year. Please note that a debut novel cover is eligible in the month in which the novel is published in the US. Cover artist/illustrator/designer information is provided when we have it.

I'm using PollCode for this vote. After you the check the circle next to your favorite, click "Vote" to record your vote. If you'd like to see the real-time results click "View". This will take you to the PollCode site where you may see the results. If you want to come back to The Qwillery click "Back" and you will return to this page. Voting will end sometime on January 31, 2019, unless the vote is extended. If the vote is extended the ending date will be updated.

Vote for your favorite January 2019 Debut Cover!

The Gutter Prayer

Here and Now and Then

The Lost Puzzler

The Post

The Water Cure

 

pollcode.com free polls

Happy Monday!

There are 2 debuts this week:

The Lost Puzzler by Eyal Kless;

and

The Water Cure by Sophie Mackintosh




From formerly feature DAC Authors:

Lipstick Voodoo (Kincaid Strange 2) by Kristi Charish;

The Fall of Io (Io 2) by Wesley Chu;

A Cathedral of Myth and Bone: Stories by Kat Howard

Ninth Step Station (Episode 1) by Malka Older, Fran Wilde, Jacqueline Koyanagi, and Curtis Chen.

Debut novels are highlighted in blue. Novels, etc. by formerly featured DAC Authors are highlighted in green.

January 7, 2019

TITLE	AUTHOR	SERIES
Game Changers of the Apocalypse (e)	Mark Kirkbride	PA/H
To Free a Captured Heart (e)	R.L. Naquin	FR - Djinn Haven 3

January 8, 2019

TITLE	AUTHOR	SERIES
The Power (h2tp)	Naomi Alderman	SF/AP/PA/CoA/Dys/LF
The Coming Storm	Mark Alpert	TechTh/SF/AP/PA
The Winter of the Witch	Katherine Arden	F/MR/LF - Winternight Trilogy 3
Lipstick Voodoo	Kristi Charish	UF/P/M - Kincaid Strange 2
The Perilous Adventures of the Cowboy King: A Novel of Teddy Roosevelt and His Times	Jerome Charyn	MR
Emergence (h2mm)	C. J. Cherryh	SF/AC/SO/HSF - Foreigner 19
Alliance Rising: The Hinder Stars I	C. J. Cherryh Jane S. Fancher	SF/HSF/SO - Alliance-Union Universe
Regenesis (ri)	C. J. Cherryh	SF/GenEng/CyP - Alliance-Union : Cyteen 4
The Fall of Io	Wesley Chu	SF/AC - Io 2
Bones Behind the Wheel	E. J. Copperman	PCM - A Haunted Guesthouse Mystery 10
The Outlaw and the Upstart King	Rod Duncan	SP/AH - Map of Unknown Things 2
It Devours! (h2tp)	Joseph Fink Jeffrey Cranor	F/HU - A Welcome to Night Vale Novel
48 Hours	William R. Forstchen	TechTh/SF/AP/PA
Inferno! #2	Guy Haley	F - Tales from the Worlds of Warhammer
For the Winner: A Novel of Jason and the Argonauts (h2tp)	Emily Hauser	Hist
Mephiston: Revenant Crusade	Darius Hinks	SF - Mephiston 2
A Cathedral of Myth and Bone: Stories	Kat Howard	F - Collection
Warrior of the World	Jeffe Kennedy	F - Chronicles of Dasnaria 3
Serpent in the Heather (h2tp)	Kay Kenyon	HistF - A Dark Talents Novel 2
The Lost Puzzler (D)	Eyal Kless	SF/HSF - Tarakan Chronicles 1
The Water Cure (D)	Sophie Mackintosh	Psy/CoA/Dys
Star Trek: Discovery: The Way to the Stars	Una McCormack	SF - Star Trek: Discovery 4
In an Absent Dream	Seanan McGuire	CF/DF/FairyT/FolkT/LM - Wayward Children 4
The Uriel Ventris Chronicles	Graham McNeill	SF
The Night Market (h2tp)	Jonathan Moore	PsyTh
The Outcasts of Time (h2tp)	Ian Mortimer	Hist
Mouthful of Birds: Stories	Samanta Schweblin Megan McDowell (Tr)	F/MR - Collection
Through Fiery Trials	David Weber	SF - Safehold 10
The Heart of What Was Lost (tpmm)	Tad Williams	F - A Novel of Osten Ard 1
War of the Flowers (ri)	Tad Williams	F/DF
The Void Protocol	F. Paul Wilson	MedTh/SupTh

January 9, 2019

TITLE	AUTHOR	SERIES
Beyond the El: A Tor.com Original (e)	John Chu	SF
Ninth Step Station	Malka Older Fran Wilde Jacqueline Koyanagi Curtis C. Chen	NF/M

January 10, 2019

TITLE	AUTHOR	SERIES
Junction	Daniel M. Bensen	SF/SE - Fiction Without Frontiers
The Haunting of Henderson Close	Catherine Cavendish	GH - Fiction Without Frontiers
Savage Species (ri)	Jonathan Janz	H - Fiction Without Frontiers

January 11, 2019

TITLE	AUTHOR	SERIES
Sins of the Angels (e)	Lydia M. Hawke	UF - Grigori Legacy 1

D - Debut
e - eBook
Ed - Editor
h2mm - Hardcover to Mass Market Paperback
h2tp - Hardcover to Trade Paperback
ri - reissue or reprint
tp2mm - Trade Paperback to Mass Market Paperback
Tr - Translator



AC - Alien Contact
AH - Alternate History
AP - Apocalyptic
CF - Contemporary Fantasy
CoA - Coming of Age
Cr - Crime
CulH - Cultural Heritage
CyP - Cyberpunk
DF - Dark Fantasy
Dys - Dystopian
F - Fantasy
FairyT - Fairy Tales
FL - Family Life
FolkT - Folk Tales
FR - Fantasy Romance
GenEng - Genetic Engineering
GH - Ghost(s)
H - Horror
Hist - Historical
HistF - Historical Fantasy
HSF - Hard Science Fiction
Hu - Humor
LF - Literary Fiction
LM - Legend and Mythology
M - Mystery
MedTh - Medical Thriller
MR - Magical Realism
MTI - Media Tie-In
NF - Near Future
Occ - Occult
P - Paranormal
PA - Post Apocalyptic
PCM - Parnormal Cozy Mystery
PM - Paranormal Mystery
PNR - Paranormal Romance
PolTh - Political Thriller
PopCul - Popular Culture
Psy - Psychological
PsyTh - Psychological Thriller
Sc - Science
SE - Space Exploration
SF - Science Fiction
SFR - Science Fiction Romance
SO - Space Opera
SP - Steampunk
Sup - Supernatural
SupTh - Supernatural Thriller
Sus - Suspense
TechTh - Technological Thriller
Th - Thriller
TT - Time Travel
UF - Urban Fantasy

Note: Not all genres and formats are found in the books, etc. listed above.

Mike Chen

Here and Now and Then
MIRA, January 29, 2019
Hardcover and eBook, 336 pages

To save his daughter, he’ll go anywhere—and any-when…

Kin Stewart is an everyday family man: working in IT, trying to keep the spark in his marriage, struggling to connect with his teenage daughter, Miranda. But his current life is a far cry from his previous career…as a time-traveling secret agent from 2142.

Stranded in suburban San Francisco since the 1990s after a botched mission, Kin has kept his past hidden from everyone around him, despite the increasing blackouts and memory loss affecting his time-traveler’s brain. Until one afternoon, his “rescue” team arrives—eighteen years too late.

Their mission: return Kin to 2142, where he’s only been gone weeks, not years, and where another family is waiting for him. A family he can’t remember.

Torn between two lives, Kin is desperate for a way to stay connected to both. But when his best efforts threaten to destroy the agency and even history itself, his daughter’s very existence is at risk. It’ll take one final trip across time to save Miranda—even if it means breaking all the rules of time travel in the process.

A uniquely emotional genre-bending debut, Here and Now and Then captures the perfect balance of heart, playfulness, and imagination, offering an intimate glimpse into the crevices of a father’s heart and its capacity to stretch across both space and time to protect the people that mean the most.

Gareth Hanrahan

The Gutter Prayer
The Black Iron Legacy 1
Orbit, January 22, 2019
Trade Paperback and eBook, 560 pages

A group of three young thieves are pulled into a centuries old magical war between ancient beings, mages, and humanity in this wildly original debut epic fantasy.

Enter a city of saints and thieves . . .

The city of Guerdon stands eternal. A refuge from the war that rages beyond its borders. But in the ancient tunnels deep beneath its streets, a malevolent power has begun to stir.

The fate of the city rests in the hands of three thieves. They alone stand against the coming darkness. As conspiracies unfold and secrets are revealed, their friendship will be tested to the limit. If they fail, all will be lost, and the streets of Guerdon will run with blood.

The Gutter Prayer is an epic tale of sorcerers and thieves, treachery and revenge, from a remarkable new voice in fantasy.

Eyal Kless

The Lost Puzzler
The Tarakan Chronicles 1
Harper Voyager, January 8, 2019
Trade Paperback and eBook, 528 pages

A brilliantly written, page-turning, post-dystopian debut from Eyal Kless, about a society hoping to salvage the technology of a lost generation, a mysterious missing boy who can open doors no one else can, and a scribe who must piece together the past to determine humanity’s future.

More than a hundred years have passed since the Catastrophe brought humanity to the brink of extinction. Those who survived are changed. The Wildeners have reverted to the old ways—but with new Gods—while others place their faith in the technology that once powered their lost civilization.

In the mysterious City of Towers, the center of the destroyed Tarakan empire, a lowly scribe of the Guild of Historians is charged with a dangerous assignment. He must venture into the wilds beyond the glass and steel towers to discover the fate of a child who mysteriously disappeared more than a decade before. Born of a rare breed of marked people, the child, Rafik—known as “The Key”—was one of a special few with the power to restore this lost civilization to glory once again.

In a world riven by fear and violence, where tattooed mutants, manic truckers, warring guilds and greedy mercenaries battle for survival, this one boy may have singlehandedly destroyed humanity’s only chance for salvation—unless the scribe can figure out what happened to him.

Sophie Mackintosh

The Water Cure
Doubleday, January 8, 2019
Hardcover and eBook, 288 pages

“A gripping, sinister fable!”–Margaret Atwood, via Twitter

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2018 MAN BOOKER PRIZE l The Handmaid’s Tale meets The Virgin Suicides in this dystopic feminist revenge fantasy about three sisters on an isolated island, raised to fear men

King has tenderly staked out a territory for his wife and three daughters, Grace, Lia, and Sky. He has lain the barbed wire; he has anchored the buoys in the water; he has marked out a clear message: Do not enter. Or viewed from another angle: Not safe to leave. Here women are protected from the chaos and violence of men on the mainland. The cult-like rituals and therapies they endure fortify them from the spreading toxicity of a degrading world.

But when their father, the only man they’ve ever seen, disappears, they retreat further inward until the day two men and a boy wash ashore. Over the span of one blistering hot week, a psychological cat-and-mouse game plays out. Sexual tensions and sibling rivalries flare as the sisters confront the amorphous threat the strangers represent. Can they survive the men?

A haunting, riveting debut about the capacity for violence and the potency of female desire, The Water Cure both devastates and astonishes as it reflects our own world back at us.

Kevin A. Muñoz

The Post
Diversion Books, January 15, 2019
Trade Paperback and eBook, 254 pages

Zone One meets Station Eleven in this chilling, post-apocalyptic debut, perfect for fans of The Walking Dead and The Handmaid’s Tale.

Ten years after the world’s oil went sour and a pandemic killed most of the population, Sam Edison is the chief of police of The Little Five, a walled-in community near Atlanta, Georgia. Those who survived share the world with what are known as hollow-heads: creatures who are no longer fully human.

A man and a pregnant teenager arrive at the gate and are welcomed into the town. They begin to settle in when suddenly both are murdered by an unknown assailant. In the course of investigation, Chief Edison discovers that the girl was fleeing a life of sexual slavery, and that some members of the Atlanta community were complicit in the human trafficking network that had ensnared her.

In retaliation for Edison’s discoveries, agents of the network abduct the stepdaughter of the town’s mayor. Sam Edison and three companions track the kidnappers to Athens, Georgia, where they discover that the entire city is engaged in human trafficking. By the time Edison has recovered the kidnapped girl, the other three rescuers have been killed, leaving Edison alone to bring the mayor’s stepdaughter home. Further complicating their return is Sam’s realization that a prominent member of the community is in truth the ringleader of the slave-trading network. Against such great odds, will Sam ever make it to Little Five alive?