Five Debut Novelists to Watch in 2013

Perhaps great writing runs in the family: Liza Klaussmann, whose first novel Tigers in Red Weather has been winning raves for its innovative structuring and subtle narration, is the great-great-great granddaughter of Herman Melville. Though Klaussmann, like her legendary ancestor, found literary inspiration in Martha's Vineyard, this debut novel is much more reminiscent of another American giant: F. Scott Fitzgerald. Rather than write a novel about the epic exploits of an insane... whaler, Klaussmann has instead told a riveting, insightful story of a gin-soaked, upper-crust brood crumbling beneath the pressure of forging a family narrative. In order to embody how competing truths pull this family apart, Klaussmann narrates the novel in five sections, each from the perspective of a different family member. The result is a complex narrative that artfully embodies the totality of family life.

Klaussmann, a longtime New York Times journalist, moved to London in 2008 to pursue a creative writing degree, and this is the first fruit of that labor. With the accolades Tigers has been racking up, it's hardly going to be her last — after an eight-way bidding war for the book, Klaussmann was reportedly offered a six-figure contract for two novels, of which Tigers is the first. The second is said to deal with artists in 1920s France and will also owe a debt to Fitzgerald, whom Klaussmann has recognized as a major influence.

As a longtime contributor to NPR, Outside Magazine, and Men's Journal, Peter Heller is used to describing some of the most amazing things on Earth. He's explored Tsangpo Gorge in China (three times as deep as the Grand Canyon) and interdicted Japanese whalers with an eco-pirate ship in Antarctica. Now, with The Dog Stars, Heller enters the realm of fiction in order to write about something not even an adventurer like him... can see firsthand: a post-apocalyptic world in which a killer flu has eliminated 99 percent of humanity and climate change has utterly transformed the environment.

No doubt Heller would relish the challenge of going it alone after the apocalypse, but hopefully he wouldn't be quite as gruff as his protagonist, Hig, who feeds human carcasses to his pet dog and commits murder from time to time. Hig flies a small airplane, and one day receives a signal from far away – farther away, in fact, than he could fly with enough gas for the return trip. He is thus faced with a decision: live out his years in relative solitude or risk seeing what's left (if anything) of humanity.

With an MFA from the famed Iowa Writers Workshop and two books of poetry on the way, The Dog Stars won't be Heller's last venture outside the realm of nonfiction. He told the Denver Post that he's halfway through a second novel, adding, "Once you start making it up, there's no going back." And with raves from everyone from Oprah to Junot Diaz, how could a thrill-seeker like Heller turn down the challenge of exceeding his fiction debut?

With a first name inspired by a character from Lord of the Rings, it's hardly surprising that Eowyn Ivey tends toward the fantastical; the seed for her first novel was planted by a Russian fairy tale. That book has since topped bestseller lists, been translated into more than 20 languages and was a Washington Post Notable Book for 2012. Ivey here uses her decade as a journalist for the Frontiersman, as well... as her experiences shooting moose and raising turkeys in Alaska's wilds, to imbue The Snow Child with an intimate understanding of life in cold climates. These gritty details ground a sometimes magical story of parents who try to construct a daughter out of snow. Ivey's descriptions of the Alaskan wilderness — equal parts beautiful and deadly — set this book apart, as does her carefully balanced plot, which skips over sentimentality in favor of pathos and subtle surrealism.

Ivey's already at work on a second novel, concerning three men who attempt to travel up Alaska's Copper River in the 19th century. She's said that it will be "more adventurous and more epic," than The Snow Child. That's easy to believe: She and her husband traveled 100 miles of the river — the United States's tenth largest — in an inflatable raft in order to research the forbidding terrain. It's that kind of deep, personal knowledge of the land that will likely make Ivey's second book stand out as much as her first.

Garnering a National Book Award nomination and a fat advance from David Foster Wallace's legendary editor, Michael Pietsch, isn't too bad for a first novel. Drawing on Kevin Powers's 2004-05 tour of duty in Iraq, The Yellow Birds is an in-your-face account of the war that centers around a young man who's just trying to keep up with the chaos. It's a tall order for a soldier who got beat up in... high school for reading poetry, and here Powers makes it into a lyrical, singular coming-of-age in the most demanding crucible imaginable. Though his next book likely won't draw so directly on his war experience, look to Powers, who was a Michener Fellow in Poetry while earning his MFA at the University of Texas at Austin, to again utilize his capacity for language and shifting narration to great effect. With Pietsch on the editorial duties and Powers just 32 years old, the sky's the limit.

Random House reportedly paid $1 million for this debut from Simon and Schuster editor-turned-novelist Karen Walker, who plugged away at The Age of Miracles in the morning before work for three years. In this spare, well-observed novel, the rotation of the Earth is slowing, forcing massive changes to humanity's way of life. Walker here steps confidently into the decade-old trend of American authors writing novels about the apocalypse, yet, like Tom Perrotta's... The Leftovers, Walker is less concerned with the fire and brimstone of the end times than with how such a fundamental event would impact daily life; the voice of her 11-year-old narrator casually blends observations about the trials of growing up with ones about dealing with much more cosmic happenings.

In interviews, Walker has admitted to being hard at work on a follow-up to her bestselling debut, but she's reticent to give details out of superstition. Regardless of just what she's up to (Walker has said it will, like Miracles, deal with "people facing an extreme situation" and will feature "science fiction elements"), with a husband enrolled in the Iowa Writer's Workshop, she'll be in the right environment to produce a fitting follow-up.