"The Road Show" by Braden Bell

“Brother Jenson, you’ve been called as the ward road show specialist. Would you accept that calling?”

“Sure,” Scott answered quietly.

Scott Jenson hates everything he knows about road shows, especially the cheap costumes, silly songs, and bad acting. So when he finds himself agreeing to be the road show specialist, he wonders how he can do it without becoming the biggest fool in the ward. From miscues to missed practices, Scott directs his crew of amateur actors while hoping that no one finds out about his secret.

Is there any way that this trivial road show could have a healing effect on those who participate? A pornography addict, a depressed young mother, a sick older sister, a lonely outcast, and a spiritually numb elders quorum president are about to find out.

Braden Bell is a first-time author and his new book "The Road Show" is trickling into stores now. You can read a sample, find links to reviews and learn more about the author at his website and his blog.

His book trailer is posted below:

"The Route" by Gale Sears

Unlike the previous authors I've highlighted this week, Gale Sears is no newcomer to the world of publishing. Her new book, The Route, is only one of seven books, which includes both novels and picture books. The fifth finalist in this genre is Julie Wright's Eyes Like Mine, which I posted about here.

Here's the blurb from her website:
Zipping along life's highway . . .

Fifty makes you think. Thirty makes you morose, and forty makes you panic, but fifty makes you think. Half a century, and what is my life? Does it resemble anything I dreamed at sixteen, or expected at twenty, or hoped at twenty-five? What am I doing here? . . . I thought of climbing to the top of a high mountain in Tibet to consult a wise man, but I like vacations
where there ís indoor plumbing and vegetation. Since I already attended church, I thought perhaps I could pay closer attention. Maybe I'd been missing a great fundamental truth. Well, come to find out, I had been missing something. . . .

Carol, a middle-aged wife and mother, is pondering the meaning of life. On a trip to the grocery store to find some energizing dark chocolate, she sees a sign asking for volunteers to deliver meals to the elderly. When Carol decides to take a chance and help out, she's in for a life-changing 'and route-altering' experience.

“Absolutely delightful! The Route shows all the depth and talent of Sears' previously published masterpieces in a witty, fun-filled romp full of warmth and humor. This is a book to read in one sitting 'and then run out to buy for all your friends!' ” Kerry Blair

There is scads of information about Gale, her books, and what's coming up in her life on her website.

Gravity vs The Girl by Riley Noehren

Gravity vs The Girl is the first of Riley Noehren's novels, and also up for Best General Fiction.
From the back cover blurb:

Samantha Green has just spent an entire year in her pajamas, and she is beginning to regret it.

What's more, she is haunted by four ghosts that are former versions of herself. First up is the overachieving and materialistic attorney, who is furious with Samantha for throwing away the career she worked so hard to build. Second is the lackadaisical college student who is high on life but low on responsibility. Next is the melodramatic teenager, who is consumed with her social standing, teal eyeliner and teased bangs. Finally, there is the scrappy six-year old, whose only objective is to overcome gravity so that she can fly.

Samantha's ghosts alternate between fighting with each other, rallying around Samantha's budding sanity and falling in love with a string of good-for-nothing drummers. Despite her reluctance to do so, Samantha must rely on these spirits from the past to repair the present and ensure her future.

You can learn more about Riley on her website or her blog.

"No Going Back" by Jonathan Langford

First, my caveat--this book deals with the difficult subject of a teen who is same-gender attracted and his struggle to deal with those feelings without going against the principles he had been taught growing up in the LDS Church. I know several people who read it with some reluctance, but found it a wonderful read and very well done. I haven't read it myself.

Here's what it says about the book on Jonathan's website:

A Coming-of-Age Novel About What It Means to Be Teenage, Mormon — and Gay

A gay teenage Mormon growing up in western Oregon in 2003. His straight best friend. Their parents. A typical LDS ward, a high-school club about tolerance for gays, and a proposed anti-gay-marriage amendment to the state constitution. In No Going Back, these elements combine in a coming-of-age story about faithfulness and friendship, temptation and redemption, tough choices and conflicting loyalties.

You can learn more about Langford and his book, including a sample chapter on his website.

"Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet" by Jamie Ford

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is Jamie Ford's first full-length novel. It's the first of the Whitney Award Best General Fiction finalists that I'll be highlighting this week. He also has some short fiction on his website and contributed some of the script for the graphic novel, Secret Identities.

Here is the book blurb posted on his website:

In the opening pages of Jamie Ford’s stunning debut novel, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, Henry Lee comes upon a crowd gathered outside the Panama Hotel, once the gateway to Seattle’s Japantown. It has been boarded up for decades, but now the new owner has made an incredible discovery: the belongings of Japanese families, left when they were rounded up and sent to internment camps during World War II. As Henry looks on, the owner opens a Japanese parasol.

This simple act takes old Henry Lee back to the 1940s, at the height of the war, when young Henry’s world is a jumble of confusion and excitement, and to his father, who is obsessed with the war in China and having Henry grow up American. While “scholarshipping” at the exclusive Rainier Elementary, where the white kids ignore him, Henry meets Keiko Okabe, a young Japanese American student. Amid the chaos of blackouts, curfews, and FBI raids, Henry and Keiko forge a bond of friendship–and innocent love–that transcends the long-standing prejudices of their Old World ancestors. And after Keiko and her family are swept up in the evacuations to the internment camps, she and Henry are left only with the hope that the war will end, and that their promise to each other will be kept.

Forty years later, Henry Lee is certain that the parasol belonged to Keiko. In the hotel’s dark dusty basement he begins looking for signs of the Okabe family’s belongings and for a long-lost object whose value he cannot begin to measure. Now a widower, Henry is still trying to find his voice–words that might explain the actions of his father; words that might bridge the gap between him and his modern, Chinese American son; words that might help him confront the choices he made many years ago.

Set during one of the most conflicted and volatile times in American history, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is an extraordinary story of commitment and enduring hope. In Henry and Keiko, Jamie Ford has created an unforgettable duo whose story teaches us of the power of forgiveness and the human heart.

You can learn more about Jamie's books, read his blog, and learn about his upcoming titles on his website.