Debut Novel

All great fiction writers start with a first novel - the seed of a flourishing literary career. Read and enjoy! Plant a seed, read!

Updated May 17, 2026
LINCC (Libraries in Clackamas County) Milwaukie Ledding Library
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Debut Novel

All great fiction writers start with a first novel - the seed of a flourishing literary career. Read and enjoy! Plant a seed, read!

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Things fall apart
Achebe, Chinua
CD
With over eight million copies in print world wide, Achebe's work is a definitive novel in African literature. Filled with powerful language and finely drawn characters, Things Fall Apart also shimmers with the sounds and sights of village life. Okonkwo is born into poverty, with a wastrel for a...
Jane Eyre
Bronte, Charlotte
Paper Book
Catch-22
Heller, Joseph
Paper Book
Catch-22 is like no other novel. It is one of the funniest books ever written, a keystone work in American literature, and even added a new term to the dictionary. At the heart of Catch-22 resides the incomparable, malingering bombardier, Yossarian, a hero endlessly inventive in his schemes to save...
The dog stars
Heller, Peter
Paper Book
"Leave it to Peter Heller to imagine a postapocalyptic world that contains as much loveliness as it does devastation. His hero, Hig, flies a 1956 Cessna (his dog as copilot) around what was once Colorado, chasing all the same things we chase in these pre-annihilation days: love, friendship, the...
The outsiders
Hinton, S. E.
Paper Book
One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World' The bestselling American classic of youthful rebellion and coming of age on the streets, adapted into an award-winning film by Francis Ford Coppola The Greasers and the rich-kid Socs are at war on the...
The snow child
Ivey, Eowyn
Paper Book
In this magical debut, a couple's lives are changed forever by the arrival of a little girl, wild and secretive, on their snowy doorstep. Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead, and especially tough for recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, they are drifting...
To kill a mockingbird
Lee, Harper
Paper Book
Look for The Land of Sweet Forever, a posthumous collection of newly discovered short stories and previously published essays and magazine pieces by Harper Lee, coming October 21, 2025. Voted America's Best-Loved Novel in PBS's The Great American Read Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize...
The heart is a lonely hunter
McCullers, Carson
Paper Book
The beloved classic that turned Carson McCullers into an overnight literary sensation and one of the Modern Library's top 20 novels of the 20th century. "A remarkable book...From the opening page, brilliant in its establishment of mood, character, and suspense, the book takes...
The time traveler's wife
Niffenegger, Audrey.
Paper Book
THE MULTI-MILLION COPY INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER Henry and Clare meet, fall in love, and build a life together. Just not in that order. A dazzling novel in the most untraditional fashion, this is the remarkable story of Henry DeTamble, a dashing, adventuresome...
The god of small things
Roy, Arundhati
Paper Book
A beautiful reissue of the Booker Prize-winning, New York Times bestselling novel about an Indian family in tragic decline. Likened to the works of Faulkner and Dickens, this extraordinarily accomplished debut novel is a brilliantly plotted story of forbidden love and...
The catcher in the rye : a novel
Salinger, J. D.
Paper Book
The "brilliant, funny, meaningful novel" (The New Yorker) that established J. D. Salinger as a leading voice in American literature--and that has instilled in millions of readers around the world a lifelong love of books.     "If you...
The thirteenth tale
Setterfield, Diane
Paper Book
Biographer Margaret Lea returns one night to her apartment above her father's antiquarian bookshop. On her steps she finds a letter. It is a hand-written request from one of Britain's most prolific and well-loved novelists. Vida Winter, gravely ill, wants to recount her life story before it is too...
The help
Stockett, Kathryn.
Paper Book
The #1 New York Times bestselling novel and basis for the Academy Award-winning film--a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don't--nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read. Aibileen is a...
The secret history : a novel
Tartt, Donna.
Paper Book
ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE'S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME * INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER * A contemporary literary classic and "an accomplished psychological thriller ... absolutely chilling" (Village Voice), from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Goldfinch. ...
Maisie Dobbs : a novel
Winspear, Jacqueline
Paper Book
After the Armistice in the spring of 1929, Maisie hangs out her shingle: M. Dobbs, Trade and Personal Investigations. Her very first case involves suspected infidelity but turns up something else, a tombstone with only a first name. The deceased had lived on a cooperative farm called The Retreat, a...
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