"The Sound of Gravel"

New from Flatiron Books: The Sound of Gravel: A Memoir by Ruth Wariner.

About the book, from the publisher:

A riveting, deeply affecting true story of one girl’s coming-of-age in a polygamist family.

RUTH WARINER was the thirty-ninth of her father’s forty-two children. Growing up on a farm in rural Mexico, where authorities turn a blind eye to the practices of her community, Ruth lives in a ramshackle house without indoor plumbing or electricity. At church, preachers teach that God will punish the wicked by destroying the world and that women can only ascend to Heaven by entering into polygamous marriages and giving birth to as many children as possible. After Ruth’s father—the man who had been the founding prophet of the colony—is brutally murdered by his brother in a bid for church power, her mother remarries, becoming the second wife of another faithful congregant.

In need of government assistance and supplemental income, Ruth and her siblings are carted back and forth between Mexico and the United States, where Ruth’s mother collects welfare and her stepfather works a variety of odd jobs. Ruth comes to love the time she spends in the States, realizing that perhaps the community into which she was born is not the right one for her. As she begins to doubt her family’s beliefs and question her mother’s choices, she struggles to balance her fierce love for her siblings with her determination to forge a better life for herself.

Recounted from the innocent and hopeful perspective of a child, The Sound of Gravel is the remarkable memoir of one girl’s fight for peace and love. This is an intimate, gripping tale of triumph, courage, and resilience.

Visit Ruth Wariner's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Midnight in Broad Daylight"

New from Harper: Midnight in Broad Daylight: A Japanese American Family Caught Between Two Worlds by Pamela Rotner Sakamoto.

About the book, from the publisher:

Meticulously researched and beautifully written, the true story of a Japanese American family that found itself on opposite sides during World War II—an epic tale of family, separation, divided loyalties, love, reconciliation, loss, and redemption—this is a riveting chronicle of U.S.–Japan relations and the Japanese experience in America.

After their father’s death, Harry, Frank, and Pierce Fukuhara—all born and raised in the Pacific Northwest—moved to Hiroshima, their mother’s ancestral home. Eager to go back to America, Harry returned in the late 1930s. Then came Pearl Harbor. Harry was sent to an internment camp until a call came for Japanese translators and he dutifully volunteered to serve his country. Back in Hiroshima, his brothers Frank and Pierce became soldiers in the Japanese Imperial Army.

As the war raged on, Harry, one of the finest bilingual interpreters in the United States Army, island-hopped across the Pacific, moving ever closer to the enemy—and to his younger brothers. But before the Fukuharas would have to face each other in battle, the U.S. detonated the atomic bomb over Hiroshima, gravely injuring tens of thousands of civilians, including members of their family.

Alternating between the American and Japanese perspectives, Midnight in Broad Daylight captures the uncertainty and intensity of those charged with the fighting as well as the deteriorating home front of Hiroshima—as never told before in English—and provides a fresh look at the dropping of the first atomic bomb. Intimate and evocative, it is an indelible portrait of a resilient family, a scathing examination of racism and xenophobia, an homage to the tremendous Japanese American contribution to the American war effort, and an invaluable addition to the historical record of this extraordinary time.

Visit Pamela Rotner Sakamoto's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Restaurant Critic's Wife"

New from Lake Union Publishing: The Restaurant Critic's Wife by Elizabeth LaBan.

About the book, from the publisher:

Lila Soto has a master’s degree that’s gathering dust, a work-obsessed husband, two kids, and lots of questions about how exactly she ended up here.

In their new city of Philadelphia, Lila’s husband, Sam, takes his job as a restaurant critic a little too seriously. To protect his professional credibility, he’s determined to remain anonymous. Soon his preoccupation with anonymity takes over their lives as he tries to limit the family’s contact with anyone who might have ties to the foodie world. Meanwhile, Lila craves adult conversation and some relief from the constraints of her homemaker role. With her patience wearing thin, she begins to question everything: her decision to get pregnant again, her break from her career, her marriage—even if leaving her ex-boyfriend was the right thing to do. As Sam becomes more and more fixated on keeping his identity secret, Lila begins to wonder if her own identity has completely disappeared—and what it will take to get it back.

Visit Elizabeth LaBan's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Thicker Than Water"

New from HarperTeen: Thicker Than Water by Kelly Fiore.

About the book, from the publisher:

Perfect for fans of Ellen Hopkins—a heartbreaking tale of family tragedy and drug addiction where sometimes the best intentions lead to the worst possible outcomes.

Cecelia Price killed her brother. At least, that's what the police and the district attorney are saying. Although CeCe is now locked up and forced into treatment, she knows the story is much more complicated. Cyrus wasn't always a drug-addled monster. He used to be a successful athlete, but when an injury forced Cyrus off the soccer field and onto pain medication, his life became a blur of anger, addiction, and violence.

All CeCe could do was stand by and watch, until she realized an effective way to take away her brother's drugs while earning the money she needed for college: selling the pills. Only she never expected what happened next.

Visit Kelly Fiore's website.

Writers Read: Kelly Fiore (July 2014).

--Marshal Zeringue

"Mr. Splitfoot"

New from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: Mr. Splitfoot by Samantha Hunt.

About the book, from the publisher:

A contemporary gothic from an author in the company of Kelly Link and Aimee Bender, Mr. Splitfoot tracks two women in two times as they march toward a mysterious reckoning.

Ruth and Nat are orphans, packed into a house full of abandoned children run by a religious fanatic. To entertain their siblings, they channel the dead. Decades later, Ruth’s niece, Cora, finds herself accidentally pregnant. After years of absence, Aunt Ruth appears, mute and full of intention. She is on a mysterious mission, leading Cora on an odyssey across the entire state of New York on foot. Where is Ruth taking them? Where has she been? And who — or what — has she hidden in the woods at the end of the road?

In an ingeniously structured dual narrative, two separate timelines move toward the same point of crisis. Their merging will upend and reinvent the whole. A subversive ghost story that is carefully plotted and elegantly constructed, Mr. Splitfoot will set your heart racing and your brain churning. Mysteries abound, criminals roam free, utopian communities show their age, the mundane world intrudes on the supernatural and vice versa.

Learn more about the book and its author at Samantha Hunt's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Invention of Everything Else.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Terror at Bottle Creek"

New from Farrar, Straus and Giroux: Terror at Bottle Creek by Watt Key.

About the book, from the publisher:

In this gritty, realistic wilderness adventure, thirteen-year-old Cort is caught in a battle against a Gulf Coast hurricane. Cort's father is a local expert on hunting and swamp lore in lower Alabama who has been teaching his son everything he knows. But when a deadly Category 3 storm makes landfall, Cort must unexpectedly put his all skills-and bravery-to the test. One catastrophe seems to lead to another, leaving Cort and two neighbor girls to face the storm as best they can. Amid miles of storm-thrashed wetlands filled with dangerous, desperate wild animals, it's up to Cort to win-or lose-the fight for their lives.

Visit Watt Key's website.

The Page 99 Test: Among the Swamp People.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Cyclops Initiative"

New from William Morrow: The Cyclops Initiative: A Jim Chapel Mission by David Wellington.

About the book, from the publisher:

To save an innocent friend, soldier and spy Jim Chapel will risk his own life and reputation to stop a deadly conspiracy from threatening the country in this relentless, non-stop action adventure from the author of the acclaimed thrillers Chimera and The Hydra Protocol.

Jim Chapel pledged his life to protect his country from its enemies. But now, the one-armed Special Forces soldier turned spy is on the wrong side of the law. The person he trusts most in the world, the brilliant hacker known only as Angel, is suspected of terrorism. When his boss calls for Angel’s arrest, Chapel—certain it’s a frame job—has only one option: to go rogue.

To protect Angel—a woman he’s never actually met—Chapel must clear her name. But first he has to find her, before a deadly Marine sniper, a drone aircraft gone feral, and the entire intelligence community closes in. With the aid of old friends and his ex-lover Julia, the search to find who framed Angel leads Chapel deep into the dark and lethal underbelly of the covert intelligence world . . . to a conspiracy with deep roots that shocks even this hardened veteran—and a plan that will destroy the United States as we know it if it succeeds.

Learn more about the book and author at David Wellington's website.

The Page 69 Test: Chimera.

The Page 69 Test: The Hydra Protocol.

The Page 69 Test: Positive.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Travelers Rest"

New from Little, Brown and Company: Travelers Rest: A Novel by Keith Lee Morris.

About the book, from the publisher:

A chilling fable about a family marooned in a snowbound town whose grievous history intrudes on the dreamlike present.

The Addisons-Julia and Tonio, ten-year-old Dewey, and derelict Uncle Robbie-are driving home, cross-country, after collecting Robbie from yet another trip to rehab. When a terrifying blizzard strikes outside the town of Good Night, Idaho, they seek refuge in the town at the Travelers Rest, a formerly opulent but now crumbling and eerie hotel where the physical laws of the universe are bent.

Once inside the hotel, the family is separated. As Julia and Tonio drift through the maze of the hotel's spectral interiors, struggling to make sense of the building's alluring powers, Dewey ventures outward to a secret-filled diner across the street. Meanwhile, a desperate Robbie quickly succumbs to his old vices, drifting ever further from the ones who love him most. With each passing hour, dreams and memories blur, tearing a hole in the fabric of our perceived reality and leaving the Addisons in a ceaseless search for one another. At each turn a mysterious force prevents them from reuniting, until at last Julia is faced with an impossible choice. Can this mother save her family from the fate of becoming Souvenirs-those citizens trapped forever in magnetic Good Night-or, worse, from disappearing entirely?

With the fearsome intensity of a ghost story, the magical spark of a fairy tale, and the emotional depth of the finest family sagas, Keith Lee Morris takes us on a journey beyond the realm of the known. Featuring prose as dizzyingly beautiful as the mystical world Morris creates, Travelers Rest is both a mind-altering meditation on the nature of consciousness and a heartbreaking story of a family on the brink of survival.

The Page 69 Test: The Dart League King.

The Page 69 Test: Call it What You Want.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Thief of Lies"

New from Entangled Teen: Thief of Lies by Brenda Drake.

About the book, from the publisher:

Gia Kearns would rather fight with boys than kiss them. That is, until Arik, a leather clad hottie in the Boston Athenaeum, suddenly disappears. While examining the book of world libraries he abandoned, Gia unwittingly speaks the key that sucks her and her friends into a photograph and transports them into a Paris library, where Arik and his Sentinels—magical knights charged with protecting humans from the creatures traveling across the gateway books—rescue them from a demonic hound.

Jumping into some of the world’s most beautiful libraries would be a dream come true for Gia, if she weren’t busy resisting her heart or dodging an exiled wizard seeking revenge on both the Mystik and human worlds. Add a French flirt obsessed with Arik and a fling with a young wizard, and Gia must choose between her heart and her head, between Arik’s world and her own, before both are destroyed.

Visit Brenda Drake's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Locker"

New from Midnight Ink: The Locker: A Novel of Suspense by Adrian Magson.

About the book, from the publisher:

Hello, Nancy.

You’re at your usual locker at Fitness Plus. The time is 09:15.

Your cell phone is dead, your home phone won’t answer and your daughter, Beth, is home with the nanny.

It will take you 18 minutes to get home. If you drive fast.

Shame. You’re already 18 minutes late...

The kidnappers' only stipulation is that Nancy must tell her husband, Michael.

Her only problem is, she doesn’t know where he is. But she recalls him mentioning a number she should call if anything unusual happens. This triggers a Code Red at specialist security company Cruxys Solutions, who send investigators Ruth Gonzales and Andy Vaslik to track him down.

But they can't find a single trace of him.

What do you do when a child’s life depends on finding a man who doesn't seem to exist?

Learn more about the book and author at Adrian Magson's website.

The Page 69 Test: Tracers.

The Page 69 Test: Deception.

--Marshal Zeringue