"The Art of Secrets"

New from Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill: The Art of Secrets by James Klise.

About the book, from the publisher:

A Fire Destroys ...
A Treasure Appears ...
A Crime Unfolds ...

When Saba Khan’s apartment burns in a mysterious fire, possibly a hate crime, her Chicago high school rallies around her. Her family moves rent-free into a luxury apartment, Saba’s Facebook page explodes, and she starts (secretly) dating a popular boy. Then a quirky piece of art donated to a school fund-raising effort for the Khans is revealed to be an unknown work by a famous artist, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and Saba’s life turns upside down again. Should Saba’s family have all that money? Or should it go to the students who found the art? Or to the school? And just what caused that fire? Greed, jealousy, and suspicion create an increasingly tangled web as students and teachers alike debate who should get the money and begin to point fingers and make accusations. The true story of the fire that sets events in motion and what happens afterward gradually comes together in an innovative narrative made up of journal entries, interviews, articles, letters, text messages, and other documents.

Learn more about the book and author at James Klise's website and Twitter perch.

The Page 69 Test: The Art of Secrets.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Ruin Falls"

New from Ballantine: Ruin Falls: A Novel by Jenny Milchman.

About the book, from the publisher:

In a suspenseful follow-up to her critically acclaimed Cover of Snow, Jenny Milchman ratchets up the tension with this edge-of-your-seat story of a mother determined to find her missing children.

Liz Daniels has every reason to be happy about setting off on a rare family vacation, leaving behind her remote home in the Adirondack Mountains for a while. Instead, she feels uneasy. Her children, eight-year-old Reid and six-year-old Ally, have met their paternal grandparents only a handful of times. But Liz’s husband, Paul, has decided that, despite a strained relationship with his mother and father, they should visit the farm in western New York where he spent his childhood.

On their way to the farm, the family stops at a hotel for the night. In the morning, when Liz goes to check on her sleeping children, all her anxiety comes roaring back: Ally and Reed are nowhere to be found. Blind panic slides into ice-cold terror as the hours tick by without anyone finding a trace of the kids. Soon, Paul and Liz are being interviewed by police, an Amber Alert is issued, and detectives are called in.

Frantic worry and helplessness threaten to overtake Liz’s mind—but in a sudden, gut-wrenching instant she realizes that it was no stranger who slipped into the hotel room that night. Someone she trusted completely has betrayed her. Though she knows that Ally and Reid are safe, Liz will stop at nothing to find them and get them back. From her guarded in-laws’ unwelcoming farmhouse to the deep woods of her own hometown, Liz follows the threads of a terrible secret to uncover a hidden world created from dreams and haunted by nightmares.

Learn more about the book and author at Jenny Milchman's website.

My Book, The Movie: Cover of Snow.

The Page 69 Test: Cover of Snow.

Writers Read: Jenny Milchman.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Exodus: A Memoir"

New from Blue Rider Press: Exodus: A Memoir by Deborah Feldman.

About the book, from the publisher:

In 2009, at the age of twenty-three, Deborah Feldman packed up her young son and their few possessions and walked away from her insular Hasidic roots. She was determined to forge a better life for herself, away from the rampant oppression, abuse, and isolation of her Satmar upbringing in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Out of her experience came the incendiary, bestselling memoir Unorthodox, and now, just a few years later, Feldman has embarked on a triumphant journey of self-discovery—a journey in which she begins life anew as a single mother, an independent woman, and a religious refugee.

Taking her cues from favorite childhood books read in secret and the modern classics only recently introduced to her, Feldman explores the United States, from San Francisco to Chicago, New Orleans, and the Southwest. In her travels, and at home, Feldman redefines her sense of identity—no longer Orthodox, she comes to terms with her Jewishness by discovering a world of like-minded outcasts and misfits committed to self-acceptance and healing. Inwardly, Feldman has navigated remarkable experiences: raising her son in the “real” world, finding solace and solitude in a writing career, and searching for love. Culminating in an unforgettable trip across Europe to retrace her grandmother’s life during the Holocaust, Exodus is a deeply moving exploration of the mysterious bonds that tie us to family and religion, the bonds we must sometimes break to find our true selves. Feldman proves herself again to be a captivating storyteller, and her singular life has been an inspiration to countless others and for readers everywhere.

Visit Deborah Feldman's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"How I Got Skinny, Famous, and Fell Madly in Love"

New from Running Press: How I Got Skinny, Famous, and Fell Madly in Love by Ken Baker.

About the book, from the publisher:

"Thick. Heavy. Big boned. Plump. Full figured. Chunky. Womanly. Large. Curvy. Plus-size. Hefty." To sixteen-year-old Emery Jackson, these are all just euphemisms for the big "F" word—"fat." Living on a Southern California beach with her workout fiend dad, underwear model sister, and former model mother, it is impossible for Emery not to be aware of her weight.

Emery is okay with how things are. That is, until her "momager" signs her up for Fifty Pounds to Freedom, a reality show in which Emery will have to lose fifty pounds in fifty days in order to win the million dollars that will solve her family's financial woes. Emery is skeptical of the process, but when the pounds start to come off and the ratings skyrocket, she finds it hard to resist the adoration of her new figure and the world of fame. Emery knows that things have changed. But is it for the better?

Visit Ken Baker's website and Facebook page.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Summer State of Mind"

New from Little, Brown Books for Young Readers: Summer State of Mind by Jen Calonita.

About the book, from the publisher:

Summer has finally arrived and fifteen-year-old Harper McCallister intends to spend her days at the mall shopping or by the pool at her country club. But after receiving her latest heart-stopping credit card bill, Harper's parents makes other plans, and ship her off to camp.

Suddenly, the clueless yet ever-popular Harper is the new girl at the bottom of a social ladder she can't climb in wedge sandals and expensive clothes. She seems to be winning over super-cute camp "Lifer" Ethan, though, and if she can manage to make a few friends--and stay out of trouble--she just might find a whole new summer state of mind.

A fresh and funny summer-camp companion novel to Jen Calonita's hit Sleepaway Girls.

Visit Jen Calonita's website.

Read--Coffee with a Canine: Jen Calonita and Captain Jack Sparrow.

Writers Read: Jen Calonita (March 2011).

Writers Read: Jen Calonita.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Hotel Florida"

New from Farrar, Straus and Giroux: Hotel Florida: Truth, Love, and Death in the Spanish Civil War by Amanda Vaill.

About the book, from the publisher:

A spellbinding story of love amid the devastation of the Spanish Civil War

Madrid, 1936. In a city blasted by a civil war that many fear will cross borders and engulf Europe—a conflict one writer will call “the decisive thing of the century”—six people meet and find their lives changed forever. Ernest Hemingway, his career stalled, his marriage sour, hopes that this war will give him fresh material and new romance; Martha Gellhorn, an ambitious novice journalist hungry for love and experience, thinks she will find both with Hemingway in Spain. Robert Capa and Gerda Taro, idealistic young photographers based in Paris, want to capture history in the making and are inventing modern photojournalism in the process. And Arturo Barea, chief of Madrid’s loyalist foreign press office, and Ilsa Kulcsar, his Austrian deputy, are struggling to balance truth-telling with loyalty to their sometimes compromised cause—a struggle that places both of them in peril.

Hotel Florida traces the tangled wartime destinies of these three couples against the backdrop of a critical moment in history. As Hemingway put it, “You could learn as much at the Hotel Florida in those years as you could anywhere in the world.” From the raw material of unpublished letters and diaries, official documents, and recovered reels of film, Amanda Vaill has created a narrative of love and reinvention that is, finally, a story about truth: finding it out, telling it, and living it—whatever the cost.

Visit Amanda Vaill's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Afterparty"

New from Tor Books: Afterparty by Daryl Gregory.

About the book, from the publisher:

It begins in Toronto, in the years after the smart drug revolution. Any high school student with a chemjet and internet connection can download recipes and print drugs, or invent them. A seventeen-year-old street girl finds God through a new brain-altering drug called Numinous, used as a sacrament by a new Church that preys on the underclass. But she is arrested and put into detention, and without the drug, commits suicide.

Lyda Rose, another patient in that detention facility, has a dark secret: she was one of the original scientists who developed the drug. With the help of an ex-government agent and an imaginary, drug-induced doctor, Lyda sets out to find the other three survivors of the five who made the Numinous in a quest to set things right.

A mind-bending and violent chase across Canada and the US, Daryl Gregory's Afterparty is a marvelous mix of William Gibson’s Neuromancer, Philip K. Dick’s Ubik, and perhaps a bit of Peter Watts’s Starfish: a last chance to save civilization, or die trying.

Visit Daryl Gregory's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"From the Charred Remains"

New from Minotaur Books: From the Charred Remains by Susanna Calkins.

About the book, from the publisher:

It’s 1666 and the Great Fire has just decimated an already plague-ridden London. Lady’s maid Lucy Campion, along with pretty much everyone else left standing, is doing her part to help the city clean up and recover. But their efforts come to a standstill when a couple of local boys stumble across a dead body that should have been burned up in the fire but miraculously remained intact—the body of a man who died not from the plague or the fire, but from the knife plunged into his chest.

Searching for a purpose now that there’s no lady in the magistrate’s household for her to wait on, Lucy has apprenticed herself to a printmaker. But she can't help but use her free time to help the local constable, and she quickly finds herself embroiled in the murder investigation. It will take all of her wits and charm, not to mention a strong stomach and a will of steel, if Lucy hopes to make it through alive herself, in From the Charred Remains by Susanna Calkins.

Visit Susanna Calkins's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Eighth Day"

New from HarperCollins: The Eighth Day by Dianne K. Salerni.

About the book, from the publisher:

When newly orphaned Jax Aubrey awakes to a world without people the day after his thirteenth birthday, he thinks it's the apocalypse. But then the next day is a regular old Thursday. Has Jax gone crazy? What's going on?

Riley Pendare, Jax's sort of clueless eighteen-year-old guardian, breaks the news: Jax just experienced the Eighth Day, an extra twenty-four-hour period between Wednesday and Thursday. Some people, like Jax and Riley, have the ability to live in all eight days. But others, like Evangeline, the teenage girl who's been hiding in the house next door for years, exist only on this special day.

At first it's awesome to have a secret day. But as Jax gets to know the very guarded Evangeline, he discovers that she is the sought-after key to an ancient spell rooted in Arthurian legend. And Riley—who forgets to pay bills and buy groceries!—is sworn to keep her safe from those who want to use her to eliminate the seven-day world and all who live there.

Jax tries to protect Evangeline, but with his new friend's life on the line, as well as the threat of human destruction, he is faced with an impossible choice: trigger a real apocalypse or sacrifice Evangeline.

With a whole extra day to figure things out, it couldn't be too hard ... right?

Visit Dianne K. Salerni's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Don't Ever Look Back"

New from Minotaur/Thomas Dunne Books: Don't Ever Look Back: A Mystery by Daniel Friedman.

About the book, from the publisher:

DON'T EVER GET OLD was one of mystery-publishing's biggest critical successes last year, earning starred reviews from every major trade publication, garnering nominations for the Edgar, Thriller, and Anthony awards, and winning the Macavity Award for Best First Novel. The producer of four Harry Potter films and the Sherlock Holmes sequel, Lionel Wigram, is set to produce the film version.

In Daniel Friedman's new novel, set in Memphis, Tennessee, and four months after the events of DON'T EVER GET OLD, eighty-eight-year-old Buck Schatz is reluctantly coming to terms with the fact that he can only move around with the aid of a walker, and his dementia seems to be getting worse.

So when one of Buck’s long-time foes, a bank-robber named Elijah, comes to Buck looking for protection from mysterious pursuers, Buck wavers. In the end, his desire to cement his legacy by closing out a series of long-unsolved robberies overwhelms his usual antipathy toward doing favors for people he dislikes. Buck agrees to broker Elijah's surrender to the authorities, if Elijah will promise to confess to his long-ago crimes.

But nothing involving Elijah, or Buck, is ever simple, and Elijah's plans for Buck are more sinister than they first appeared.

Written in Buck's signature voice and featuring a mystery that will knock your socks off, DON'T EVER LOOK BACK takes a decades-old feud between two dangerous—and now elderly—men and brings it to a final, explosive conclusion.

Visit Daniel Friedman's blog.

--Marshal Zeringue