In “Simon Says: A True Story of Boys, Guns and Murder,” journalist Kathryn Eastburn turns her news coverage into a full-length nonfiction book that, commendably, never seems to collapse under its own detail.

To enthusiastic purveyors of contemporary literature, the debut novel is … well, a novel thing.

Remove the unfortunate-but-true factor of acclaimed authors coasting on their brand and what do you have? A novel with virtually nothing to recommend it other than what’s on the pages, ideas that may have been rolling around in the writer’s head since childhood. In a literary world that can be choked with hype, a debut novel brings a do-or-die excitement.

The time following the American Civil War and the beginning of World War I was a period with a power to tease the imagination like no other. This is primarily so because of a pervasive and seemingly credible interest in spooks.

“Like you’d understand, anyway” by Jim Shepard
Knopf, 211 pages, $23