"Death by the Sea"

New from Thomas & Mercer: Death by the Sea (The Misfit Detectives) by Hannah Ellis.

About the book, from the publisher:

From bestselling author Hannah Ellis comes a windswept mystery of meddling, murder and one very troublesome cat.

Jamie Sinclair is only meant to be minding the cat.

A temporary house-sitting job in a windswept Scottish seaside town feels straightforward enough. Keep the place ticking over. Tackle a few handyman jobs. Enjoy time away from London, with sea views and the steady company of a glossy black cat. What could possibly go wrong?

Quite a lot, as it turns out.

When an elderly client dies after a routine repair, Jamie finds himself at the centre of local gossip and under the watchful eye of Detective Constable Emma MacLeod―who has very firm opinions about civilians meddling in police business. But Jamie knows his handiwork was solid. And in a town where everyone has history, nothing is ever quite that simple.

Drawn into an improbable team by an unlikely pair of locals―a burly gym owner and a sharp-eyed student―Jamie begins pulling at the threads of a family’s buried secrets. And the more they unravel, the more he suspects that solving this mystery might be the start of something far bigger than he bargained for.

Visit Hannah Ellis's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"News Machines"

New from Oxford University Press: News Machines: The Systems of Daily Journalism in Britain, 1785–1885 by Dallas Liddle.

About the book, from the publisher:

British daily newspapers transformed rapidly at the turn of the nineteenth century, ballooning in size and radically reorganizing staffing and production decade by decade. By mid-century, newspapers had grown from the folded single sheets of the previous century to large multi-page broadsheets, so impressive in the quantity of print they held and their speed of production that one of their nicknames was 'the daily miracle'.

Traditional news history has overlooked a key fact for understanding this era of news: that Victorian daily newspapers were high-pressure systems. As demand for newspapers outpaced their original production capacity, newspaper organizations began to build complex technical and production mechanisms to continue to grow and compete. As these systems expanded, newspapers became dependent on them, and decisions about how daily journalism should develop began to pass from editorial choice to systemic necessity. The previously untold story of Victorian daily news is that the personalities of editors and owners and the larger social forces at work in that era were not the only (or even primary) drivers of its history. Once set in motion, the systems of Victorian news gained major shaping agency over their own development.

Combining deep archival research and traditional historical analysis with modern data mining methods, News Machines reconstructs the systemic workings of Victorian daily news in unprecedented detail, offering new and counterintuitive accounts of when and why daily papers expanded, how and why steam-powered printing machines developed, how specialized news discourses evolved, and how newspaper leadership was organized.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Chain House"

Coming October 6 from Crooked Lane Books: The Chain House: A Novel by J. H. Markert.

About the novel, from the publisher:

A dangerous cult leader, days away from execution, reveals he is the famous author behind a bestselling series. With his death, the final, unpublished manuscript—and the crucial evidence it contains—will never see the light of day.

In the tradition of Stephen King, this multi-POV, page-turning horror thriller from author J. H. Markert is packed with mind-bending twists.

Days before his execution, notorious mass murderer Sal Batise, known as the Breaker of Chains by his cult followers, grants an unlikely interview to a young filmmaker, Sam Harper.

This interview could launch Sam’s career. But his carefully planned questions—including the one about the recently kidnapped governor’s wife—fall apart when Batise seizes control.

On live TV, Batise claims that he is Mallard Malone, the anonymous author of a blockbuster thriller series. Stay his execution, and he’ll release the final unpublished manuscript that holds the key to finding his victims’ bodies.

Meanwhile, a ransom note arrives with a single demand to save the governor’s wife: Batise’s execution must go on as planned.

Desperate for more information, Sam teams up with Jennifer Daley, a childhood survivor of Batise’s cult, to locate the missing manuscript and uncover the truth behind their own ties to Batise.

As fiction and reality collide, a deadly chain of events leads to a race against time to stop an execution that could have catastrophic consequences on the world.

Visit J.H. Markert's website.

Q&A with J. H. Markert.

My Book, The Movie: The Nightmare Man.

The Page 69 Test: The Nightmare Man.

My Book, The Movie: Sleep Tight.

The Page 69 Test: Sleep Tight.

Writers Read: J. H. Markert.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Camp Ford's Civil War"

New from Cambridge University Press: Camp Ford's Civil War: Captivity, Community, and Nature in the Dark Corner of the Confederacy by Matthew M. Stith.

About the book, from the publisher:

Camp Ford's Civil War tells the story of Union and Confederate soldiers and civilians, enslaved people and refugees, and the natural world around them during the Civil War. The focal point is a ten-acre piece of land where over 5,000 Union prisoners of war sat out of battle while fighting their own distinctive kind of war. The narrative also explains the conflict in the wider southern Trans-Mississippi theater, a place that remains in the historical and historiographical shadow of the Civil War elsewhere. This is a story of what became of the largest prisoner of war camp west of the Mississippi River, but it is also a story about the war in the 200-mile radius around the prison camp - the geographic medium in and through which a remarkably diverse range of human and nonhuman communities swirled and overlapped to create a fascinating, if understudied, narrative of the Civil War.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Blues for the Dead"

New from Severn House: Blues for the Dead (A Trevor Finnegan Novel, 4) by Aaron Philip Clark.

About the book, from the publisher:

When a notorious investigation into Los Angeles’s darkest criminal network thrusts private investigator Trevor Finnegan into the national spotlight, the fallout is immediate—and lethal.

Evil just got an upgrade.

Haunted by his past as a cop and driven by an obsession with justice for the dead, Finnegan has spent years hunting the powerful men who profited from torture and murder on the dark web. But when a billionaire suspect dies in federal custody and the agents involved turn up dead under suspicious circumstances, Finnegan finds himself facing a far more insidious enemy. One that doesn’t just silence people but drives them to the edge.

As Finnegan digs deeper, his search leads him into the orbit of a brilliant, charismatic tech mogul promising a cleaner, safer future through artificial intelligence. And the line between progress and cruelty blurs beyond recognition.

With his pregnant wife at risk, his agency on the brink of collapse, and his own moral compass under siege, Finnegan must decide how far he’s willing to go—and what he’s willing to lose—to stop a force that claims it can conquer death itself.

The new shocking, completely gripping Trevor Finnegan thriller by an author at the top of his game. Blues for the Dead is perfect for fans of S.A. Cosby.

Visit Aaron Philip Clark's website.

My Book, The Movie: Under Color of Law.

The Page 69 Test: Blue Like Me.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Black Sojourner Press"

New from Columbia University Press: The Black Sojourner Press: Experiments in Black Periodical Culture Between Emancipation and Decolonization by Marina Bilbija.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Black periodical editors roved across oceans and between empires, bearing newspaper texts, formats, and genres with them. As they migrated, they also exported and adapted broader ideas about the distinctive role of the Black journal from one part of the Black world to another.

The Black Sojourner Press traces the travels of multiple generations of itinerant Black editors, demonstrating how they transformed Black political and literary culture in the United States, West Africa, and Britain. Reading Nigerian, African American, Ghanaian, and Black British newspapers side by side, Marina Bilbija reconstructs how wandering journalists connected print cultures across what she calls the Black Anglosphere. Wherever they traveled, these sojourners founded experimental journals that addressed Black readers as members of new global communities. Over and over again, they mobilized periodicals to critique the violent and coordinated spread of two “Anglo-Saxon” empires and, likewise, to speculate about the entwined political destinies of these “Anglo” overlords and their Black imperial subjects.

Bilbija explores cases including a Jamaican editor in 1860s Lagos who reprinted US writers, journals in 1880s Britain that disseminated texts from the African American press, editors in 1920s New York who reframed Ghanaian literature for American readerships, and a pan-African news magazine in 1930s Lagos that serialized a speculative novel set in the United States. Revealing the links between seemingly disparate histories across the Black diaspora, this groundbreaking book offers a new understanding of the Black periodical as a world literary genre.

--Marshal Zeringue

"So It Grows"

New from St. Martin's Griffin: So It Grows: A Novel by Andie Burke.

About the book, from the publisher:

From USA Today bestselling author Andie Burke comes this cozy small town business-rivals-to-lovers romance about finding joy where you least expect it.

Felicity Gallagher thought inheriting her aunt’s plant shop would be the fresh start she needed after the worst year of her life. She never expected that the trendy, mac and cheese themed restaurant next door–and its inconveniently hot chef–might be her downfall.

Nicolas Holm-Bozic is arrogant and presumptuous and just flat-out gets under her skin. Felicity has made ignoring him an art form―until the exploding popularity of his restaurant leads to renewed interest in Felicity’s quirky corner of Kansas. Now, a greedy developer is threatening both their businesses with a towering parking garage that could steal the sunlight from her plants. With her shop’s future in jeopardy, Felicity must join forces with her least favorite neighbor.

As the pair fight back, Nic and Felicity’s formerly contentious relationship blooms into something new, but hidden battle scars, old secrets, and a devastating storm threaten everything they’ve built. Will they choose to cut and run, or are they finally ready to put down permanent roots?

Andie Burke’s So It Grows is chock-full of heat, heart, emotion, humor, and everything in between.

Visit Andie Burke's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Echoes of a Distant Republic"

New from the University of Virginia Press: Echoes of a Distant Republic: Italian Perspectives on the American and French Revolutions by Anna Vincenzi.

About the book, from the publisher:

How the American and French Revolutions were interpreted in the Italian states and how that understanding helped redefine the concept of revolution itself

In Echoes of a Distant Republic, Anna Vincenzi explores the evolving meaning of “revolution” in the eighteenth century by surveying the reactions in Italy to the upheavals in America and later France. Drawing on a wide range of sources―from periodicals and gazettes to diplomatic correspondence, ecclesiastical documents, and private letters―Vincenzi reveals how observers in Venice, Florence, Rome, and Naples made sense of events across the Atlantic from the 1770s to the 1790s.

Italian political thinkers at first did not treat the American experience as a revolution in the modern sense―a radical break with the past meant to establish an egalitarian society―but rather as the culmination of a long age of reform. It was the French Revolution, Vincenzi shows, that made the American Revolution appear, only in retrospect, as the beginning of a new age. What had once seemed a circumscribed, reformist movement within the anglophone world came to be understood as an epoch-making event―an invitation to revolution in Europe against the monarchies of the Old Regime.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Beignets and Big Feelings"

Coming October 13 from Lake Union: Beignets and Big Feelings: A Novel by Leslie Gray Streeter.

About the novel, from the publisher:

A grandma’s dying wish results in a weeklong scavenger hunt designed to reunite a family in a heartfelt and hilarious journey by the author of Family & Other Calamities.

When Grandma Olivia Hollis passes away, her funeral reunites four generations of heirs, complete with a surprise will. Grandma has orchestrated a New Orleans scavenger hunt for her female relatives, determined to bring her family back together if it’s the last thing she does. Everyone game? If not, no one gets a dime.

Of course, Grandma, bless her meddling heart, has other motives in mind for all of them. Especially for her guarded sister, Mona, who fled decades ago and never looked back. Following a preplanned itinerary for one revelatory week, the women find themselves on a Mississippi River jazz cruise, braving a bayou swamp tour, uncovering forgotten histories in old cemeteries, rekindling former flames, and, just as Grandma planned, unlocking what they’ve hidden from each other for far too long.

Amid beignets, popcorn shrimp, and chicory coffee―so bitter and sweet―these women just might discover that no matter what awaits them at the end, the real treasure is becoming the family they were meant to be.

Visit Leslie Gray Streeter's website.

My Book, The Movie: Family & Other Calamities.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Action Bodies"

New from the University of Texas Press: Action Bodies: VFX, Identity, and Embodiment in Blockbuster Cinema by Drew Ayers.

About the book, from the publisher:

Exploring how digital visual effects have changed the representations of the body and identity in action films.

When Harrison Ford appeared digitally de-aged in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, audiences witnessed more than a technical feat; they saw how visual effects are reshaping what bodies can be on screen. In Action Bodies, Drew Ayers examines how the contemporary action genre redefines embodiment across human, superhuman, animal, and machine forms. Ayers argues that action films are a crucial site for understanding how popular media both reflect and shape cultural debates about identity, citizenship, disability, and ethics in the era of big data and algorithmic culture.

Through case studies including Top Gun: Maverick, The Woman King, The Fast & the Furious franchise, and Avatar: The Way of Water, Ayers explores how VFX-altered bodies carry ideological weight. While the action genre has long leaned conservative in its politics of identity, its digitally mediated bodies also generate unexpected opportunities: glimpses of more inclusive and flexible modes of embodiment. As artificial intelligence and synthetic imagery continue to transform film production, Action Bodies demonstrates why careful attention to action cinema is essential for understanding how contemporary culture imagines and engineers the future of the body.

--Marshal Zeringue