"No Ashes in the Fire"

New from Nation Books: No Ashes in the Fire: Coming of Age Black and Free in America by Darnell L. Moore.

About the book, from the publisher:

From a leading journalist and activist comes a brave, beautifully wrought memoir.

When Darnell Moore was fourteen, three boys from his neighborhood tried to set him on fire. They cornered him while he was walking home from school, harassed him because they thought he was gay, and poured a jug of gasoline on him. He escaped, but just barely. It wasn’t the last time he would face death.

Three decades later, Moore is an award-winning writer, a leading Black Lives Matter activist, and an advocate for justice and liberation. In No Ashes in the Fire, he shares the journey taken by that scared, bullied teenager who not only survived, but found his calling. Moore’s transcendence over the myriad forces of repression that faced him is a testament to the grace and care of the people who loved him, and to his hometown, Camden, NJ, scarred and ignored but brimming with life. Moore reminds us that liberation is possible if we commit ourselves to fighting for it, and if we dream and create futures where those who survive on society’s edges can thrive.

No Ashes in the Fire is a story of beauty and hope-and an honest reckoning with family, with place, and with what it means to be free.

Visit Darnell L. Moore's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Questions I Want to Ask You"

New from HarperTeen: Questions I Want to Ask You by Michelle Falkoff.

About the book, from the publisher:

A mystery about family, secrets, and how to move forward when the past keeps pulling you back, perfect for fans of David Arnold and Jeff Zentner.

Patrick “Pack” Walsh may not know where he’s going in life, but he’s happy where he is. Then, on his eighteenth birthday, a letter from his past changes everything.

As Pack begins a journey to uncover the truth about the parents he thought he knew, the family he didn’t know he had, and the future he never realized he wanted, he starts to have a whole different understanding of his life—and where he wants to go from here.

Visit Michelle Falkoff's website.

Writers Read: Michelle Falkoff (March 2015).

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Dante Chamber"

New from Penguin Press: The Dante Chamber by Matthew Pearl.

About the book, from the publisher:

From Matthew Pearl, the New York Times bestselling author of The Dante Club, a masterful tale of literature, obsession, and murder

The year is 1870. Five years after a series of Dante-inspired killings disrupted Boston, a man is found murdered in the public gardens of London with an enormous stone around his neck etched with a verse from the Divine Comedy. When more mysterious murders erupt across the city, all in the style of the punishments Dante memorialized in Purgatory, poet Christina Rossetti fears her brother, the Dante-obsessed artist and writer Gabriel Rossetti, will be the next victim.

Christina enlists poets Robert Browning and Alfred Tennyson, and famous scholar Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, to assist in deciphering the literary clues. Together these unlikely investigators rush to unravel the secrets of Dante’s verses in order to find Gabriel and stop the killings. Racing between the shimmering mansions of the elite and the dark corners of London’s underworld, they descend further and further into the mystery. But when the true inspiration behind the gruesome murders is finally revealed, Christina realizes that the perpetrator has even bigger and more horrific plans than she had initially thought.

A dazzling tale of intrigue from the writer Library Journal calls “the reigning king of popular literary historical thrillers,” The Dante Chamber is a riveting adventure across London and through Dante. Expertly blending fact and fiction, Pearl gives us a historical mystery like no other, captivating and enthralling until the last page.

Visit Matthew Pearl's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Poe Shadow.

The Page 99 Test: The Last Dickens.

The Page 69 Test: The Technologists.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Arctic Gambit"

New from Forge Books: Arctic Gambit: A Jerry Mitchell Novel (Volume 6) by Larry Bond.

About the book, from the publisher:

Jerry Mitchell returns in Arctic Gambit, an explosive military thriller by New York Times bestselling author Larry Bond

Jerry Mitchell, now the commodore of submarine Development Squadron Five, is dismayed when USS Toledo is reported missing in Arctic waters, close to Russian territory. The vessel is captained by his former shipmate and close friend, Lenny Berg. Eager to investigate, Jerry convinces the Navy to redirect one of his squadron’s boats to find out what happened.

It turns out Toledo was sunk just outside of Russian territorial waters by a torpedo launched from a naval mine. Even more disturbing is the discovery that Russia is building a deadly weapon. Engineers have modified the STATUS-6, a strategic nuclear-propelled, nuclear armed torpedo that is already operational, into a stealthy first strike weapon: Drakon. This new tool would allow the Russians to launch a completely covert nuclear decapitation strike on the USA.

The new Russian president has plans for Europe, and is more than willing to use nuclear blackmail—or an actual attack—to keep the Americans from interfering. To avoid a Russian war in Europe, and a nuclear catastrophe at home, Mitchell must find a way to destroy the Drakon launcher before it’s too late.

Visit Larry Bond's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"It Started in June"

New from Kensington: It Started in June by Susan Kietzman.

About the book, from the publisher:

Susan Kietzman’s engrossing and thought-provoking novel explores the choices and revelations that come with life’s most unexpected events.

Grace Trumbull’s after work drink with Bradley Hanover, a handsome younger colleague, on a warm summer night turns into an impulsive, intimate encounter. After a few weeks of exhilarating secret dates, Grace—forty-two and divorced—realizes she’s pregnant.

For Grace, whose estranged mother refers to her own teenage pregnancy as her biggest mistake, the prospect of parenthood is daunting. She’s just been made vice president of a media relations company and is childfree by choice. Still, something deeper than her fear makes her want to keep the baby. She knows she can be a better, more capable parent than her mother was to her.

As months pass and seasons change, Grace questions her decision to include Bradley in her plans. But they continue to navigate their complicated relationship, each struggling with what it means to make a commitment to someone. Most importantly, Grace begins trusting her instincts—maternal and otherwise—finding courage that will guide her through an uncertain future ripe with new possibilities...

Visit Susan Kietzman's website.

The Page 69 Test: Every Other Wednesday.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Hitler and Film: The Führer's Hidden Passion"

New from Yale University Press: Hitler and Film: The Führer's Hidden Passion by Bill Niven.

About the book, from the publisher:

An exposé of Hitler’s relationship with film and his influence on the film industry

A presence in Third Reich cinema, Adolf Hitler also personally financed, ordered, and censored films and newsreels and engaged in complex relationships with their stars and directors. Here, Bill Niven offers a powerful argument for reconsidering Hitler’s fascination with film as a means to further the Nazi agenda.

In this first English-language work to fully explore Hitler’s influence on and relationship with film in Nazi Germany, the author calls on a broad array of archival sources. Arguing that Hitler was as central to the Nazi film industry as Goebbels, Niven also explores Hitler’s representation in Third Reich cinema, personally and through films focusing on historical figures with whom he was associated, and how Hitler’s vision for the medium went far beyond “straight propaganda.” He aimed to raise documentary film to a powerful art form rivaling architecture in its ability to reach the masses.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Little Disasters"

New from Viking: Little Disasters by Randall Klein.

About the book, from the publisher:

A gripping novel about two young married couples–expectant parents and new friends–whose lives collide in a pile-up of deceits and indiscretions

It was the exhilaration of new parenthood that first united Michael and Paul, outside the Brooklyn hospital where their wives, Rebecca and Jenny, had exiled them from the delivery room. For Paul, though, tragedy swiftly followed that euphoria. Hoping to speed his and Jenny’s recovery, he turns to Michael for a favor, unwittingly kindling the spark of connection between these couples into the affair that will blow them apart.

One year later, on the same morning that the catastrophes of their personal lives come to an explosive head, a mysterious crisis in Midtown Manhattan all but shuts down the city, leaving both men stranded–Michael at the northernmost tip of the island and Paul in a dark subway tunnel under the East River. Each must make the arduous trek home through record-breaking heat, nervously eyeing the thin plume of smoke above the skyline, though it’s their private turmoils that loom largest. Told in the alternating voices of these charismatic but deeply flawed men, Little Disasters deftly cuts between the suspense of the citywide disaster and the history of secrets, lies, and losses that has brought these four intertwined lives to the brink. Smart, unsparing, and bitingly funny, Randall Klein’s debut is an engrossing story of the bonds of love and family–and our unending urges to test them, even when we need them most.

Visit Randall Klein's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Sign of the Cross"

New from Severn House: Sign of the Cross: A religious conspiracy thriller by Glenn Cooper.

About the book, from the publisher:

Summoned by the Vatican, Harvard professor Cal Donovan flies to Italy to interview a young priest who has developed the stigmata of the crucifixion. Stunned to discover the priest's condition may be genuine, Cal comes to realize that the priest holds the key to an earth-shattering secret: a secret which others are desperate to control.

Visit Glenn Cooper's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"All the Ever Afters"

New from William Morrow: All the Ever Afters: The Untold Story of Cinderella’s Stepmother by Danielle Teller.

About the book, from the publisher:

We all know the story of Cinderella. Or do we?

As rumors about the cruel upbringing of beautiful newlywed Princess Cinderella roil the kingdom, her stepmother, Agnes, who knows all too well about hardship, privately records the true story....

A peasant born into serfdom, Agnes is separated from her family and forced into servitude as a laundress’s apprentice when she is only ten years old. Using her wits and ingenuity, she escapes her tyrannical matron and makes her way toward a hopeful future. When teenaged Agnes is seduced by an older man and becomes pregnant, she is transformed by love for her child. Once again left penniless, Agnes has no choice but to return to servitude at the manor she thought she had left behind. Her new position is nursemaid to Ella, an otherworldly infant. She struggles to love the child who in time becomes her stepdaughter and, eventually, the celebrated princess who embodies everyone’s unattainable fantasies. The story of their relationship reveals that nothing is what it seems, that beauty is not always desirable, and that love can take on many guises.

Lyrically told, emotionally evocative, and brilliantly perceptive, All the Ever Afters explores the hidden complexities that lie beneath classic tales of good and evil, all the while showing us that how we confront adversity reveals a more profound, and ultimately more important, truth than the ideal of "happily ever after."

Visit Danielle Teller's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Ascendant"

New from Ace: Ascendant by Jack Campbell.

About the book, from the publisher:

A young fleet officer and a Marine stand together to defend their colony in the continuation of the powerful and action-packed Genesis Fleet saga from New York Times bestselling author Jack Campbell.

In the three years since former fleet officer Rob Geary and former Marine Mele Darcy led improvised forces to repel attacks on the newly settled world of Glenlyon, tensions have only gotten worse.

When one of Glenlyon’s warships is blown apart trying to break the blockade that has isolated the world from the rest of human-colonized space, only the destroyer Saber remains to defend it from another attack. Geary’s decision to take Saber to the nearby star Kosatka to safeguard a diplomatic mission is a risky interpretation of his orders, to say the least.

Kosatka has been fighting a growing threat from so-called rebels–who are actually soldiers from aggressive colonies. When a “peacekeeping force” carrying thousands of enemy soldiers arrives in Kosatka’s star system, the people of that world, including Lochan Nakamura and former “Red” Carmen Ochoa, face an apparently hopeless battle to retain their freedom.

It’s said that the best defense is a good offense. But even if a bold and risky move succeeds, Geary and Darcy may not survive it…

Visit Jack Campbell's website.

--Marshal Zeringue