Grand Entrance

Keep calm and kick off the year with these brand-spankin'-new debuts.

Keziah Weir

THE PROPHETS by Robert Jones Jr. (Putnam) A polyphonic novel, with exactingly rendered characters, about the love between two men enslaved on a Mississippi plantation.

DETRANSITION, BABY by Torrey Peters (One World) A visceral, funny exploration of sex and gender through a triad of people—trans and cis—rocked by an unexpected pregnancy.

A CROOKED TREE by Una Mannion (Harper) An affecting story of the fissures formed in a Pennsylvania family following a nighttime car ride, when a frustrated mother makes her daughter walk home alone.

HADES, ARGENTINA by Daniel Loedel (Riverhead) A New Yorker revisits his Buenos Aires past—med student days; a former crush—in this complex tale of guilt, love, and revolution.