"Cattle Trails and Animal Lives"

New from the University of Georgia Press: Cattle Trails and Animal Lives: The Founding of an American Carceral Archipelago by Karen M. Morin.

About the book, from the publisher:

Cattle Trails and Animal Lives remaps the historical and empirical geography of the emergent cattle industry as a series of carceral sites and nodes in the American West, focusing on the experiences of animals living and eventually dying under intense carceral structures, practices, technologies, and tools. This work shifts the narratives of the Old West cattle kingdoms from cowboys, ranchers, and cattle barons to the lived experiences of cattle caught within the rural “carceral archipelago” of the emergent U.S. beef industry. The work focuses on these animals’ forced movement over land and sea—their experiences, lives, and agency as formerly free—roaming animals who were captured, enclosed, moved, and eventually shipped by railroad to slaughterhouses in Chicago and beyond. The spatial nodes and sites of the carceral archipelago include the open range, the ranch, the cattle trail, and the cattle town and the intense human carceral controls enacted within them. The work further interprets how these animal lives are culturally renarrated to contemporary audiences through living history sites, other touristic and artistic re—creations of historic cattle drives, Hollywood westerns, and museum exhibits featuring material carceral artefacts. Together these not only perpetuate heroic myths of the Old West but normalize and even celebrate the carceral experiences of animals.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Soft Launch"

New from Little A: Soft Launch: A Coming-of-Adulthood Novel by Sarah Vacchiano.

About the novel, from the publisher:

In her captivating debut, author Sarah Vacchiano tells an exciting “coming of adulthood” story about a young woman who takes a bold new path in her early thirties, leaving her old life―and starter marriage―behind.

When Sam walked herself down the aisle at the age of twenty-two, she never imagined wanting more than the life she had in that moment. Seven years later, with the ink still drying on both her law degree and her divorce papers, she arrives in Manhattan ready to start adulthood over and chase her dreams of becoming an entertainment lawyer, determined to prove to herself that upending her life was worth it.

As Sam navigates the high-pressure world of Big Law―heady and demanding, and full of magnetic and powerful people―she finds an unexpected ally in her charming, supportive officemate, Charlie. But just as he begins to tear down the walls Sam has built around herself, she lands her first big client, a “Poker Princess” facing federal charges for running high-stakes games for Hollywood’s elite, and discovers just how high stakes “fake it till you make it” can be when you’ve given up everything to become someone new.

Emotionally nuanced and delightfully frothy, Soft Launch is a sharp, witty novel that explores the messy reality of starting over and finding yourself.

Visit Sarah Vacchiano's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Sails and Shadows"

New from the University of California Press: Sails and Shadows: How the Portuguese Opened the Atlantic and Launched the Slave Trade by Patricia Seed.

About the book, from the publisher:

How the early Portuguese Empire facilitated the modern slave trade.

The Portuguese conquered the challenges of sailing the unforgiving Atlantic Ocean, extending their colonial empire along Africa's western shores. With their dedication to developing new sailing techniques and groundbreaking new knowledge of weather patterns and ocean currents, Portuguese mariners set the tone for the Age of Exploration. But their navigational achievements had horrific consequences for the people of western Africa: subjection to the slave trade.

Patricia Seed examines the historical and climatic odds that Portuguese seafarers overcame to be the first Europeans to tame the Atlantic. Using insights from fields ranging from oceanography to ethnography, she recounts how the Portuguese rapidly innovated and achieved profound new understandings of the ocean and sailing. At the same time, she foregrounds the reality that these innovations enabled them to inflict unimaginable cruelty as, against sometimes violent resistance, they forged what became their spoils of empire: the lucrative trade in human cargo that enslaved millions across Africa and beyond. Sails and Shadows is a history of incredible ingenuity outweighed and overshadowed by the horrors it wrought.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Evil Genius"

New from Ecco: Evil Genius: A Novel by Claire Oshetsky.

About the book, from the publisher:

An exuberant, brutally hilarious novel about a young woman’s insatiable quest to carve her own path—even if she needs to step over a few dead bodies along the way

It’s 1974 and San Francisco is full of mystery and menace. Nineteen-year-old Celia Dent keeps telling herself how lucky she is to be working at the phone company and to be married to her Drew, a man who says he loves her. Celia’s contentment with her little life is shattered, though, when a woman she knows from work is murdered in a love tryst gone awry. What would that be like, Celia wonders, to die for love—or to kill for love? What would it be like to live each moment passionately and with full awareness that each breath is bringing her closer to her last?

Before Celia knows it, her musings about love-and-death happenings are bleeding into daily life. Suddenly she’s playing hooky from work and searching for a love tryst of her very own. She’s practicing her marksmanship at a local gun range and thinking about how good it would feel to bury something sharp inside her domineering husband’s ear. It’s all pretend, though, until the night comes when Celia finally goes too far, and she and Drew are set on a deadly collision course.

Exhilarating, surreal, and bitingly clever, Evil Genius is a comic noir exploring obsession and desire—and what happens when a sweetly seditious young woman dares to imagine a better life.

Visit Claire Oshetsky's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Currencies of Cruelty"

New from NYU Press: Currencies of Cruelty: Slavery, Freak Shows, and the Performance Archive by Danielle Bainbridge.

About the book, from the publisher:

Uncovers a haunting yet vital record of bodies commodified, archived, and performed

Currencies of Cruelty is a bold and incisive reconsideration of the relationship between enslavement, disability, and performance in 19th- and early 20th-century America. Danielle Bainbridge traces how the transition from slavery to legal freedom became entangled with the spectacle of the freak show stage, where disabled and racialized performers―often denied traditional labor opportunities―became highly lucrative attractions.

At the heart of this powerful study are conjoined twins Millie Christine McKoy, born into slavery and later emancipated, and the so-called “original Siamese Twins,” Chang and Eng Bunker, who navigated the freak show circuit not only as performers but also as enslavers. Their stories reveal how archival practices surrounding enslavement and performance labor worked in tandem, creating a system where unfree and newly freed bodies were simultaneously valued and devalued―exploited for their spectacle yet rendered abject within traditional labor economies.

Blending historical analysis with innovative archival theory, Currencies of Cruelty challenges conventional narratives of labor, freedom, and human worth. Bainbridge introduces the concept of the “future perfect” archive―one that anticipates what will have been rather than merely recording the past―offering a radical new way to engage with histories of enslavement, disability, and performance. A gripping exploration of race, commerce, and bodily spectacle, this book sheds crucial light on how histories of subjugation continue to shape our understanding of value and visibility today.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Hooked"

New from Thomas & Mercer: Hooked: A Thriller (Katrina & Goode) by Caitlin Rother.

About the book, from the publisher:

In this suspenseful thriller by Caitlin Rother, a journalist and cop fight a sexual attraction as they join forces to expose a layered scheme of dark and dangerous secrets.

When investigative reporter Katrina Chopin and surfing homicide detective Ken Goode lock eyes, there’s an immediate attraction. Sparks fly as they bond over cocktails, sharing their common experiences of being orphans and losing loved ones to suicide.

But the next time they meet, it’s from opposing sides of a high-profile case. Two biotech execs, whose company is developing a groundbreaking sexual enhancement drug, turn up dead in the wealthy seaside enclave of La Jolla Farms, where Goode can readily see that the forensic evidence doesn’t add up.

As they work their own angles, sometimes together and sometimes at odds, their growing attraction threatens to cost them their jobs―and their lives. As Katrina and Goode pursue answers behind these mysterious events, a secret stalker taunts Katrina with details of her tragic past, which takes her to the brink of death. But once the duo rips the mask away from this beautiful paradise, the corrupt underbelly behind all that glitters is revealed.

Visit Caitlin Rother's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Oberammergau"

New from Oxford University Press: Oberammergau: The Passion Play and Its Audiences from the Enlightenment to the Nazis by Robert D. Priest.

About the book, from the publisher:

The passion play at Oberammergau in Bavaria is one of the oldest theatrical spectacles in the world, with a history of regular performance that dates back to 1634. By the dawn of the twentieth century, each season drew hundreds of thousands of spectators from Europe, North America, and beyond. Thomas Cook's first package tourists rubbed shoulders with luminaries ranging from Henry Ford to Rabindranath Tagore and Sylvia Pankhurst to Franz Liszt. This book provides a new account of Oberammergau's surprising rise from local curiosity to global celebrity that weaves its development into the course of European and transnational history. Beginning in 1770, when the play's survival was threatened by a government ban, the book traces Oberammergau's story across the next century and a half, ending with the Nazi government's sponsorship of the tercentenary season in 1934. Combining close analysis of the community's archives and an analysis of the kaleidoscopic cultural and intellectual resonances of the play in Europe and North America, the book shows how the passion play's success hinged on the way its performers channelled the turbulence of modern European history and the shifting fascinations of their international audiences during the long nineteenth century. Not simply a religious relic serving devout spectators a dose of Catholic kitsch, the Oberammergau passion evolved in close connection with shifts in European culture. As the village transformed into an international destination, a diverse and growing crowd of artists, writers, actors, journalists, politicians, musicians, tourists, and pilgrims from across Europe and America took their experiences at Oberammergau back home to intervene in pressing debates of the time. Admirers used Oberammergau to think about unity in a divided Germany, the role of theatre in society, and the waning of religious belief; critics saw an example of commercialisation, cultural decline, and prejudice. This book shows that to explain the extraordinary prominence of Oberammergau in nineteenth- and twentieth-century European and American culture, we need to understand the vast array of meanings that viewers drew from the play's content and survival, and recognise that these extended far beyond the religious.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Hard Line"

New from Berkley: The Hard Line by Mark Greaney.

About the novel, from the publisher:

The Gray Man, the world’s deadliest assassin and apex predator, discovers he’s really the prey in the most shocking entry of this #1 New York Times bestselling series.

Family means different things to different people, but in the Gray Man’s world, family is defined by blood—the blood you share with some and the blood you shed with others.

Court Gentry’s current family operates out of an office park in Norfolk, Virginia. The Ghost Town is an off-the-books direct action team run by Matt Hanley, former CIA Deputy Director. They take on the jobs the Agency needs handled “discretely,” and those jobs are rolling in.

Somewhere at the top of the US Intelligence apparatus, security experts and intelligence operations worldwide are threatened.

It starts with a blown safe house in Tunis. Then Court himself barely escapes from an ambush in the jungles of Nicaragua. Now key members of the U.S. counterintelligence community are being assassinated in their own neighborhoods. With the feds compromised, it’s up to Court and his team to stop the hit squads.

But eliminating professional kill teams may be the least of the Gray Man’s worries when he finds himself targeted by the legendary assassin codenamed Whetstone—a man driven out of retirement by a very personal quest to rain down hellfire on Court and everyone he’s ever loved, starting with the father he hasn’t seen in twenty years.

Visit Mark Greaney's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Gray Man.

My Book, The Movie: The Gray Man.

The Page 69 Test: Dead Eye.

Writers Read: Mark Greaney (Novemebr 2013).

--Marshal Zeringue

"The War That Made the Middle East"

New from Princeton University Press: The War That Made the Middle East: World War I and the End of the Ottoman Empire by Mustafa Aksakal.

About the book, from the publisher:

A new history that tells the story of how European imperial ambitions destroyed the Ottoman Empire during the Great War and created a divided and unstable Middle East

The Ottoman Empire’s collapse at the end of the First World War is often treated as a foregone conclusion. It was only a matter of time, the story goes, before the so—called Sick Man of Europe succumbed to its ailments—incompetent management, nationalism, and ethnic and religious conflict. In The War That Made the Middle East, Mustafa Aksakal overturns this conventional narrative. He describes how European imperial ambitions and the Ottoman commitment to saving its empire at any cost—including the destruction of the Armenian community and the deaths of more than a million Ottoman troops and other civilians—led to the empire’s violent partition and created a politically unstable Middle East.

The War That Made the Middle East shows that, until 1914, the Ottoman Empire was a viable multiethnic, multireligious state, and that relations between the Arabs, Jews, Muslims, and Christians of Palestine were relatively stable. When war broke out, the Ottoman government sought an alliance with the Entente but was rejected because of British and French designs on the Eastern Mediterranean. After the Ottomans entered the fight on the side of Germany and were defeated, Britain and France seized Ottoman lands, and new national elites in former Ottoman territories claimed their own states. The region was renamed “the Middle East,” erasing a robust and modernizing 600—year—old empire.

A sweeping narrative of war, great power politics, and ordinary people caught up in the devastation, The War That Made the Middle East offers new insights about the Great War and its profound and lasting consequences.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Vermilion Sea"

New from Lake Union: The Vermilion Sea: A Novel by Megan Chance.

About the novel, from the publisher:

From the author of Glamorous Notions comes a harrowing tale set aboard a yacht in the 1920s, where luxury borders on lunacy and mysteries of the deep blur the lines between science and the occult.

The Great War may be over, but brilliant scientist Billie McKennan continues the fight to be taken seriously. When a deliberate omission wins her a marine biologist position aboard an expedition funded by a wealthy eccentric, she quickly discovers she’s not the only one keeping secrets.

The opulent Eurybia sets sail for the Gulf of California with a handful of well-to-do passengers and talented scientists on board. To Billie’s surprise, her ex-husband counts among them. The true mission of the voyage comes into question when a mysterious specimen is captured. And then science unexpectedly gives way to wild rumors and superstition.

Soon, a sinister force takes hold of the vessel―and everyone on it. Billie must reconcile her beliefs with the reality of what she encounters in the vermilion sea. But how much is she willing to sacrifice in order to survive?

Visit Megan Chance's website.

My Book, The Movie: A Splendid Ruin.

The Page 69 Test: A Splendid Ruin.

Q&A with Megan Chance.

The Page 69 Test: A Dangerous Education.

My Book, The Movie: A Dangerous Education.

Writers Read: Megan Chance (February 2023).

Writers Read: Megan Chance (January 2025).

My Book, The Movie: Glamorous Notions.

The Page 69 Test: Glamorous Notions.

--Marshal Zeringue