Author: Devin Service

Today’s Riot Rundown is sponsored by the University of Iowa Press, publisher of Outside Is the Ocean, 2017 Iowa Short Fiction Award-winning collection by Matthew Lansburgh.

Three days after her twentieth birthday, a woman who grew up in WWII Germany travels to America for a new beginning. Outside Is the Ocean traces Heike’s struggle to find love and happiness. After two marriages and a troubled relationship with her son, Heike adopts Galina, a disabled child from Russia, hoping for the affection and companionship she craves. As Galina grows, Heike’s grasp on reality frays. She writes a series of letters to the son she thinks has abandoned her. It isn’t until Heike’s death that her son finds these letters and realizes how skewed her perceptions actually were.

Today’s Riot Rundown is sponsored by Scout Press.

Catherine Burns’s debut novel explores the complex truths we are able to keep hidden from ourselves and the twisted realities that can lurk beneath even the most serene of surfaces.
Marion Zetland lives with her domineering older brother John in a crumbling mansion on the edge of a northern seaside resort. A timid spinster in her fifties, Marion does her best to live by John’s rules, even if it means turning a blind eye to the noises she hears coming from behind the cellar door…and turning a blind eye to the women’s laundry in the hamper that isn’t hers….

Today’s Riot Rundown is sponsored by TarcherPerigee, publisher of Rescue Road by Peter Zheutlin.

In the follow-up to his New York Times bestseller Rescue Road, acclaimed journalist Peter Zheutlin offers a heartwarming and often humorous new look into the world of rescue dogs. Sharing lessons from his own experiences adopting Labs with large personalities as well as stories and advice from dozens of families and rescue advocates, Zheutlin reveals the surprising and inspiring life lessons rescue dogs can teach us. For anyone who loves, lives with, or has ever wanted a dog, this charming book shows how the dogs whose lives we save can change ours for the better too.

Today’s Riot Rundown is sponsored by The Wonderling by Mira Bartok.

Welcome to the Home for Wayward and Misbegotten Creatures, an institution run by evil Miss Carbunkle, a cunning villainess who believes her terrified young charges exist only to serve and suffer. Part animal and part human, the groundlings toil in classroom and factory, forbidden to enjoy anything regular children have, most particularly singing and music. For the Wonderling, an innocent-hearted, one-eared, fox-like eleven-year-old with only a number rather than a proper name — a 13 etched on a medallion around his neck — it is the only home he has ever known.

Richly imagined, with shimmering language, steampunk motifs, and gripping, magical plot twists, this high adventure fantasy is the debut novel of award-winning memoirist Mira Bartók and has already been put into development for a major motion picture.

Today’s Riot Rundown is sponsored by Seconds Acts by Teri Emory.

An unshakeable rapport among three women takes root in a college dorm in the 1960s. At midlife, they find themselves re-examining choices and compromises they have made over the years. Sustained by their abiding friendship, the three women move to relinquish past regrets and make peace with present circumstances in order to flourish in the second acts of their lives.

Today’s Riot Rundown is sponsored by ACHILLES Book One of the Deep Sky Saga, by Greg Boose, from Diversion Books.

Stay up all night with this “action-packed…survivalist series starter” in the vein of The 100 with “a compelling cast of supporting characters that keeps the pages moving.” (Booklist)

In the year 2221, humans have colonized an Earth-like planet called Thetis. After a tragic accident kills dozens of teenage colonists, Thetis’ leaders are desperate to repopulate. So, Earth sends 177 new homesteaders across the universe in the Mayflower 2. For Jonah Lincoln, an orphaned teen, this is a chance to reinvent himself, to be strong and independent and brave, the way he never could be on Earth. But their ship crash lands, killing half the passengers, and leaving the rest stranded on a moon, Achilles. When all the adult survivors suddenly disappear, leaving the teenage recruits to fend for themselves, Jonah worries for their fate, especially since it appears Achilles isn’t as uninhabited as they were lead to believe.