See the cover for The Light in Other Houses by Anna Marschalk-Burns

See the cover for The Light in Other Houses by Anna Marschalk-Burns

In her debut novel, The Light in Other Houses, Anna Marschalk-Burns explores motherhood, infertility, desire, and found family. The novel follows Zoe, who returns to her hometown of Minneapolis after years of failed fertility treatments and finds herself drawn into the lives of her new neighbor Danni and her five-year-old daughter.

Marschalk-Burns is a graduate of the Brooklyn College MFA program, where she received a Truman Capote fellowship and the Himan Brown Award. Her short fiction has appeared in SLICE, Joyland, and Literary Hub. Her debut novel is set to be published by Zando on March 9, 2027.

Debutiful is honored to reveal The Light in Other Houses’s cover, designed by Lucy Kim and featuring a painting by Jeremy Miranda, along with a Q&A with Marschalk-Burns about its creation.

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See the cover for Ripples into the Wild by Abby Manzella

See the cover for Ripples into the Wild by Abby Manzella

In her debut short story collection, Ripples into the Wild, Abby Manzella explores man-made disasters, climate change, the pandemic, and imagined future catastrophes. Moving between realism and the speculative, the collection features everything from children telling ghost stories to characters confronting actual monsters while considering what might exist beyond loss and grief.

Manzella is a Pushcart Prize winner whose writing has appeared in The Threepenny Review, Literary Hub, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. Her debut collection is set to be published by Cornerstone Press on February 23, 2027.

Debutiful is honored to reveal Ripples into the Wild’s cover, designed by Paige Biever and Ross Tangedal, along with a Q&A with Manzella about its creation.

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See the cover and read an exclusive excerpt of The Joplin Horror by Jason Kaleko

Debutiful is excited to reveal the cover of The Joplin Horror, the debut novel from award-winning screenwriter Jason Kaleko. This cinematic psychological horror follows a crew of graverobbers who descend into an ancient mausoleum expecting an easy score, only to find an impossible labyrinth, disappearing memories, and something hunting them from just beyond the light.

Perfect for readers of Mark Z. Danielewski, Chuck Wendig, and Paul Tremblay, The Joplin Horror is a claustrophobic descent into buried trauma, fractured reality, and a place that seems determined to keep its visitors forever. It will be published by DAW on May 25, 2027. It is available for preorder now.

Debutiful is honored to reveal The Joplin Horror‘s cover, designed by Adam Auerbach, along with an exclusive excerpt from the novel.

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See the cover for All of Us Wildflowers by Tria Wen

See the cover for All of Us Wildflowers by Tria Wen

Tria Wen’s All of Us Wildflowers is an intergenerational memoir about grief, inheritance, and breaking the cycle of women living for others before themselves. Following her mother’s death, Wen begins dismantling the careful life she has built, including her seemingly perfect marriage. Searching for guidance in her mother’s journals and letters, she discovers versions of the woman she never knew: an immigrant who left part of herself behind, an artist constrained by the role of housewife, and a woman whose unrealized dreams continue to echo through her daughter’s life. Moving between generations and across time, All of Us Wildflowers asks where a mother’s story ends and a daughter’s begins.

Wen is a California-based writer whose work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Rumpus, and Narratively, among others. She is a finalist for the St. Lawrence Book Award and Chautauqua Janus Prize and a recipient of the California Arts Council Emerging Artist Fellowship. All of Us Wildflowers will be published by Counterpoint Press on March 9, 2027.

Debutiful is honored to reveal the cover of All of Us Wildflowers, designed and art directed by Nicole Caputo. Below, Wen discusses the wildflowers and other visual motifs that inspired her, how her mother’s journals helped give the memoir its title, and how the final design captures a life that can be fragmented and messy while still remaining whole.

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See the cover for Talented and Gifted by Kelly Kearsley

See the cover for Talented and Gifted by Kelly Kearsley

Kelly Kearsley’s debut novel, Talented and Gifted, is a funny, sharp look at failure, reinvention, and the strange promises of startup culture. Molly Wells was once the queen of mom blogging—until an ill-advised post about her ex-husband’s affair tanked her career. Three years later, a ghostwriting gig at a buzzy Portland startup that makes apps and assessments for gifted kids offers Molly a shot at professional redemption. But as the company’s money troubles, questionable personalities, and hidden agendas pile up, Molly’s midlife reboot becomes increasingly complicated.

Kearsley began her career as a business journalist before becoming a ghostwriter for Fortune 500 tech and finance companies. Her work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Money Magazine, Forbes, and elsewhere, and she writes the humor newsletter Does That Make Sense? Talented and Gifted will be published by Grand Central Publishing on April 27, 2027.

Debutiful is honored to reveal Talented and Gifted’s cover, designed by Sandra Chiu, along with a Q&A with Kearsley about its creation.

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See the cover for Magic in the Land of Eternal Spring by Jared Lemus

See the cover for Magic in the Land of Eternal Spring by Jared Lemus

Jared Lemus’s debut novel, Magic in the Land of Eternal Spring, is a suspenseful, mythic story about survival, devotion, greed, and the inescapable pull of the past. In the remote Guatemalan town of Huecotenango, outcasts and wanderers have built lives alongside residents with extraordinary abilities, including a woman who can shapeshift into a jaguar, a healer who absorbs the ailments of others, and a young woman indebted to the god of the underworld. When two brothers arrive after a crash on the outskirts of town, their illicit work threatens to disrupt the community and sets its residents on a dangerous collision course.

Lemus is the author of Guatemalan Rhapsody, which won the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, Story, and elsewhere. Magic in the Land of Eternal Spring will be published by Ecco on April 20, 2027.

Debutiful is honored to reveal Magic in the Land of Eternal Spring’s cover, designed by Vivian Rowe, along with a Q&A with Lemus about its creation.

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See the cover for Don’t Cure Me by Catherine Foulkrod

See the cover for Don’t Cure Me by Catherine Foulkrod

Don’t Cure Me, the debut novel by Catherine Foulkrod, follows a young woman navigating a world where illness determines every aspect of life, from social status to where people are allowed to live. As doctors race toward a medical breakthrough and society reduces human worth to blood-test numbers, a group of outsiders begins to challenge the very foundations of the system. Inspired by the history of the autoimmune disorder thrombocytopenia, the novel examines illness, surveillance, gender, and the violence of measuring human value.

Don’t Cure Me will be published on January 26, 2027 by McSweeney’s and is available for preorder now.

Catherine Foulkrod is a writer based in Naples, Italy. Her fiction and essays have appeared in The Believer, New York Tyrant, Unsaid, Bookforum, Forever Magazine, El Malpensante, and exhibition catalogs for Thomas Dane Gallery and Contemporary Fine Arts Berlin. She is also the co-founder and director of The Giancarlo DiTrapano Foundation for Literature of the Arts.

Debutiful is honored to reveal the cover of Don’t Cure Me, designed by Daniele Catellano, along with a Q&A with Foulkrod about its creation.

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See the cover and read an excerpt from Not a Good Mother by Karabi George

See the cover and read an excerpt from Not a Good Mother by Karabi George

Every parent has imagined the unthinkable, if only for a fleeting moment.

In Karabi George‘s debut thriller, Not a Good Mother, that nightmare becomes reality when a new mother’s infant daughter disappears during a playdate, turning a frantic search into a relentless examination of guilt, suspicion, and the impossible expectations placed on mothers. George, whose short fiction has appeared in Litro Magazine and other publications, was shortlisted for the 2024 CWA Debut Dagger and is a recipient of the 2024 ThrillerFest scholarship.

Not a Good Mother will be published by Harper Perennial on April 6, 2027, and is available for pre-order now.

Debutiful is excited to reveal the cover of Not a Good Mother, designed by Molly von Borstel of Faceout Studio, and share an exclusive excerpt from this gripping debut.

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See the cover for The Flowers Along the Way by Claudia Castro Luna

See the cover for The Flowers Along the Way by Claudia Castro Luna

Claudia Castro Luna, the former Washington State Poet Laureate, and Seattle’s inaugural Civic Poet, is publishing her debut memoir, The Flowers Along the Way (Northwestern University Press) on September 15, 2026.

The memoir follows the poet as she reckons with the lasting effects of war, displacement, and inherited trauma after surviving a shooting in Oakland decades after fleeing civil war in El Salvador. Moving between personal memory and family history, it is a powerful exploration of PTSD, resilience, motherhood, and the long journey toward healing and belonging.

The Flowers Along the Way is available for preorder now and Debutiful is honored to reveal the cover, designed by José Cándido Pineda, along with a Q&A with Luna about its creation.

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See the cover for The Younger and Other Stories by Daniel J. O’Malley

See the cover for The Younger and Other Stories by Daniel J. O’Malley

The Younger and Other Stories, the debut short story collection by Daniel J. O’Malley, gathers haunting stories that trace the moments when ordinary life begins to drift into the uncanny, when circumstances shift, reality dissolves, and the familiar world reveals itself to be far stranger than it first appeared. By turns tender and unsettling, the collection explores the unstable spaces between connection, consequence, and uncertainty in prose that is elemental, precise, and quietly unnerving.

The Younger and Other Stories will be published on April 13, 2027, by Hub City Press.

Daniel J. O’Malley’s fiction has appeared in The Atlantic, The Kenyon Review, Granta, Subtropics, Alaska Quarterly Review, and The Best American Short Stories, among other publications, and has been featured on NPR’s Selected Shorts. He grew up in Missouri and currently lives in West Virginia, where he teaches at Marshall University.

Debutiful is honored to reveal the cover of The Younger and Other Stories, which features art by Nancy Friedland, along with a Q&A with O’Malley about its creation.

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