For our fourteenth annual roundup of the summer’s best debut fiction, we asked five established authors to introduce this year’s group of debut writers. Read the July/August 2014 issue of the magazine for interviews between Maggie Shipstead and Courtney Maum, Victor Lavalle and Scott Cheshire, Ru Freeman and Celeste Ng, Chad Harbach and Yelena Akhtiorskaya, and Amanda Eyre Ward and Mira Jacob. But first, check out these exclusive excerpts from their debut novels.

I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You (Touchstone, June) by Courtney Maum
High as the Horses' Bridles [3] (Henry Holt, July) by Scott Cheshire
Everything I Never Told You [4] (Penguin Press, July) by Celeste Ng
Panic in a Suitcase [5] (Riverhead Books, July) by Yelena Akhtiorskaya
The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing [6](Random House, July) by Mira Jacob

I Am Having So Much Fun Without You
By Courtney Maum

I remember the moment I decided I wanted to ask Anne-Laure to be my wife. For some people, the realization probably builds gradually, but for me, I was as sure in a single moment as I was ever going to be in my life.

It was because of a toy-filled chocolate egg. It was a weekend, a warm weekend in Providence, and we were on our fourth date—except the use of the term date is anachronistic because with Anne studying in Boston, she had come down for entire weekends at a time. In the beginning she stayed with her cousin Esther, but once I learned to be a bit handier with the mop and the broom, she started staying at my place.

It was one of those early weekends when simply being in each other’s presence could occupy us for hours, when her every gesture seemed contagious and new. Her smile contained multitudes. Her hair held constellations. The mere act of her pointing out something that she found funny struck me as a gesture of extreme import and grace.

I’d pick her up from the bus station and she’d be in these outfits. Silk trousers, silk blouses, wide-legged pants. I don’t think I saw her with her shirt untucked for months, except, of course, when we made love. And holy hell, when that happened did the good-girl walls come down.

On that particular Sunday, she’d suggested a bike ride out to Barrington beach and promised me a picnic. We met at India Point Park and biked twelve miles until we reached our destination, an elegant, narrow stretch of rocky beach along the coast. In common Anne fashion, she had everything prepared: a blanket, towels, a small umbrella just in case, a cooler full of treats.

In tiny jars and Tupperwares, an array of perfect things: peppered herrings, deviled eggs with paprika-spiked mayonnaise, wasabi peas, curried chicken salad, chilled grapes—all things that she had managed, in the time- and space-defying way that Anne has, to prepare in the three hours between our rendez-vous at the park and the moment she’d left my bed.

Excerpted from I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You: A Novel by Courtney Maum. Copyright 2014 © Courtney Maum. Reprinted with permission of Touchstone, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

High as the Horses' Bridles
By Scott Cheshire

The year I turned eighteen, Mom finally decided she was better. She sat up in bed one day, came marching down the stairs, and said she had to go for a special session at the hospital. Dad took her, and they came home with tremendous smiles on their faces; I don’t know whose was bigger.

“Full remission,” Mom said.

Dad took her face in his hands, and he kissed her. Never saw anything like that before. He kissed her so hard, she started pushing him off, and she was laughing, but he wouldn’t let her go, she was laughing so much. Then he stopped, and picked her way up in his arms, and she was up there almost to the ceiling, and laughing, while he played biting at her belly. This is my most favorite memory. Not just because of how lovely, but because it woke me up to their lives in such an unexpected way. Like a bucket of cold water over my head. I’d been living peripherally, in my own home, walking along the walls like a mouse, following the same daily paths in hopes of avoiding direct contact with the people who owned this home.

But here they were, right in front of me. Mom was back, and fully charged, and she swore she would set this house aright because this was a churchgoing family. I have to say there was a welcome sense of security in having her back and taking the lead, and we returned to church as a family. Dad was reluctant to go. He’d since taken to calling the Brothers in the Lord apostates.

But he went anyway, for her. We all did, arrived just as service started, and left as it drew to a close. We spoke with no one. Mom also somehow managed to ignore the fact that I’d had a serious girlfriend for the last few years.

Excerpted from High as the Horses' Bridles by Scott Cheshire, published July 8, 2014, by Henry Holt and Company, LLC. Copyright © by Scott Cheshire. All rights reserved.

Everything I Never Told You
By Celeste Ng

When the children have gone, she takes a mug from the cupboard, trying to keep her hands still. Long ago, when Lydia was a baby, Marilyn had once left her in the living room, playing on a quilt, and went into the kitchen for a cup of tea. She had been only eleven months old. Marilyn took the kettle off the stove and turned to find Lydia standing in the doorway. She had started and set her hand down on the hot burner. A red, spiral welt rose on her palm, and she touched it to her lips and looked at her daughter through watering eyes. Standing there, Lydia was strangely alert, as if she were taking in the kitchen for the first time. Marilyn didn’t think about missing those first steps, or how grown up her daughter had become. The thought that flashed through her mind wasn’t How did I miss it? but What else have you been hiding? Nath had pulled up and wobbled and tipped over and toddled right in front of her, but she didn’t remember Lydia even beginning to stand. Yet she seemed so steady on her bare feet, tiny fingers just peeking from the ruffled sleeve of her romper. Marilyn often had her back turned, opening the refrigerator or turning over the laundry. Lydia could have begun walking weeks ago, while she was bent over a pot, and she would not have known.

She had scooped Lydia up and smoothed her hair and told her how clever she was, how proud her father would be when he came home. But she’d felt as if she’d found a locked door in a familiar room: Lydia, still small enough to cradle, had secrets. Marilyn might feed her and bathe her and coax her legs into pajama pants, but already parts of her life were curtained off.

From Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng. Reprinted by arrangement with The Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA) LLC, A Penguin Random House Company. Copyright © Celeste Ng, 2014.

Panic in the Suitcase
By Yelena Akhtiorskaya

Take the Q to 14 St/Union Square, keep to the front of the train, get out the narrow exit behind a long-haired man tango-ing with a life-size doll, cross to the Virgin Megastore side of Broadway, go in director away from George Washington on horse (numbers get smaller) until E. 4 Street, cross to corner with Tower Records, summon willpower to resist revolving doors, find door a bit farther down, tell Jamaican doorman with lazy eye you’re there for Mikhail Davidovich Nasmarkin, confirm you mean Meesha in the loft, sigh with relief as he directs you to an elevator and illuminates a button, launch up to some preposterous floor, shut eyes to avoid surfaces busy with your decrepitude.

The blob of color at the end of the hall was Misha. Gold sneakers consumed his ankles, denim shorts fell almost to those ankles, and a yellow carnation peeked out of the breast pocket of his camouflage T-shirt. Flattened by their embrace. His corkscrew brown hair could’ve been apportioned into five poodles. I can’t believe you’re actually here, he said in a way that made Pasha wonder, Why not? The next half hour was spent getting the atmosphere just right. What was Pasha’s beverage of choice? There were cocktail mixes, espresso varieties, iced herbal teas, fresh-squeezed juices, and vintage wines. Bob Dylan was laid on the gramophone but, failing to satisfy, was replaced by Charles Mingus. Misha announced them as if they were coming out onstage to perform. Pasha took a seat on a stiff couch but was moved to a stiffer couch, closer to the skylight.

Excerpted from Panic in the Suitcase by Yelena Akhtiorskaya, published in July by Riverhead Books. Copyright © 2014 by Yelena Akhtiorskaya. All rights reserved.