C.C.’s isn’t your typical rags-to-riches story. She remembers growing up in a single-wide with her older sister, stay-at-home mom and car salesman dad. But she also remembers when they moved to Florida after everything in the car lot burned down — including their home — launching them into a comfortable middle-class life and a fresh start in a state her dad proudly brags has fireworks every night.

“Fireworks Every Night” is Beth Raymer’s debut novel, but not her first book. Following her 2010 memoir “Lay the Favorite,” she borrows from her life to create a deeply personal story of a dysfunctional family.

If the gorgeous cover isn’t enough to draw you in, let the heartbreakingly determined main character and the promise of an earnest look at the skeletons in her closet convince you.

In adulthood, C.C. is engaged to a well-educated and absurdly wealthy man — a far cry from the childhood in which she learns what it means to fight for survival. Hopping between the two timelines in stark juxtaposition, the full picture of C.C.’s life emerges.

As kid C.C.’s home life comes completely unraveled, the story morphs from tragicomedy to horror, revealing how her family fell apart and left her sister struggling with addiction, her mother chronically absent and her father homeless. All the while, adult C.C. is juggling a host of modern stresses: the viability of having children, climate change and reconciling your self-worth with the balance in your bank account.

Raymer launches addiction, homelessness, neglect and poverty shamelessly into the lexicon, treating C.C. and her family with nothing less than respect.

A nature motif runs throughout the story. Animals play a quiet but pivotal role throughout “Fireworks Every Night,” shaping Raymer’s engrossing novel into a bittersweet celebration of the scrappy Americans who are finding a way to survive even as the elite push humans and animals alike out of their habitats. — Donna Edwards, Associated Press

Ruth Ware, the author of “The Woman in Cabin 10” and “In a Dark, Dark Wood,” is back with another page-turning thriller. But while readers will surely turn the pages until the end, “Zero Days” doesn’t quite ascend to the level of those previous bestsellers.

The star of the story is Jacintha “Jack” Cross. Jack is a penetration specialist who breaks into offices with the help of her hacker hubby to test the security of British companies. The novel begins with Jack on the job, flirting with her husband, Gabe, on a headset as she navigates a corporate headquarters. By page 34, Gabe is dead, and Jack is the No. 1 suspect.

Ware has a knack for creating female protagonists worth rooting for, and Jack, “five foot two” and a fan of eyeliner, is no exception. It’s the plot that gets in the way. Despite chapter headings that count backward to zero (“Minus Eight Days”) and suggest something big at the end of the countdown, a majority of the book is spent entirely inside Jack’s head as she ponders and plans her next move. There’s not enough interaction with other characters to make it feel more propulsive and up the sense of danger. When she does speak, Jack sometimes sounds a little too one-note. “It’s that or rot in prison for the murder of the man I love!” she tells Gabe’s best friend as she hatches a scheme to try to uncover the real killer. With Gabe gone, she still hears his voice in her head — “You’ve got this!” — and it all feels just a little too predictable.

The best scenes are near the end, when Jack finally gives herself more than a moment to grieve. Along the way, there are some fun twists and turns, and Ware fans, or fans of quickie thrillers in general, will probably finish it in a weekend. First-time samplers of the genre would be better off reading something from the writer Ware has mentioned often as an influence, Agatha Christie. — Rob Merrill, Associated Press