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gift card for a future purchase at Selkirk.com. Welcome to Miles of Books. I'm your host, Sarah Bowen-Shay. And on episodes like this one, when we focus on fiction, I'm joined by Ellison Weist. Hello.

Hello, Sarah. Yeah, so this is our second fiction episode of the month because first one came out so early and it's a long month. So lucky us. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly

right. Yeah. So in early July, we focused our attention on thrillers. And today we decided to talk about

a favorite of yours, Alison, debut novels. There are five of them. So I want to know, what is it about debuts that seem to so often

captivate you? I would have to say that it's sort of the thrill of the discovery, you know, where you

read about this new author, sometimes young, sometimes not, and you sort of feel like

you're getting in on the ground floor. And there's just nothing that excites me as much as

hearing, reading, you know, hearing a review, reading a review, getting very excited about it,

and then, you know, lo and behold, it's wonderful. And there's just this feeling of excitement,

not only for readers, but you also have to feel great for the author as well. But I just think

of some of the great debuts that I remember, particularly Anne Patchett,

was the patron saint of liars.

And my mother, this was back in, I don't know, maybe the 90s, called me one day and she said,

you've got to get this book.

It's a debut.

And I just read it.

It's fantastic.

Then the secret history,

Donna Tart. Just these, you know, you think about it and you think what they've done since and

it's just very exciting to me. I'm a nerd that way. And you're, you're such an early adopter,

...