Afghanistan, 1952. Abdullah and his sister Pari live with their father and stepmother in the small village of Shadbagh. Their father, Saboor, is constantly in search of work and they struggle together through poverty and brutal winters. To Abdullah, Pari – as beautiful and sweet-natured as the fairy for which she was named – is everything. More like a parent than a brother, Abdullah will do anything for her.

Benjamin Percy’s extraordinary new thriller is a blend of alternate history and supernatural fiction that holds a mirror up to contemporary America to reflect its fears and biases. The antagonists here are not jihadists, though, but lycans: humans infected with a prion-based illness which has turned them into a creature something like a werewolf. These lycans have lived among regular humans since prehistoric times, and in 21st-century America are now a stigmatized subclass, forced to suppress their true nature pharmacologically.

Here are 10 debut novels that the publishing world is buzzing about for spring 2013.  You can read more about each novel on Publishers Weekly's site. 

Above All Things by Tanis Rideout

The Andalucian Friend by Alexander Söderberg

Autobiography of Us by Aria Beth Sloss

The Alex Awards are given to ten books written for adults that have special appeal to teens. They were first given annually beginning in 1998 and became an official American Library Association award in 2002.  For more information about current and previous winners, click here.  The 2013 Alex Award winning books are:

Caring is Creepy by David Zimmerman

Girlchild by Tupelo Hassman

The 2013 Pulitzer Prize for fiction is awarded to The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson.  About the hidden world of North Korea with all of its misery, this novel is part political thriller, part romance, and part coming-of-age. 

For a list of all of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize winners in each category, click here.