"Neither Land nor Water"

New from the University of Chicago Press: Neither Land nor Water: Planning Through Fringe Ecologies in the Meadowlands (1896–2020) by Şevin Yildiz.

About the book, from the publisher:

An urban and environmental history of the New Jersey Meadowlands, where marsh meets megamall.

The New Jersey Meadowlands, the vast marshes across the Hudson River from New York City, are a mysterious and complex wetland. Both strange and well-known to the millions of people who traverse the northeast corridor every year, this landscape is not well understood despite its familiarity. Seemingly natural and unnatural, human and nonhuman, the Meadowlands has long been shaped by urban development, industry, infrastructure, and countless dreams.

In Neither Land nor Water, Şevin Yıldız offers a close look at the planners, scientists, developers, politicians, industrialists, and others who have engaged with, dreamed about, or damaged this transitional ecology in different ways over the decades. She traces key periods in the area’s rich histories of urban planning and ecological thought, from the dispossession of the Lenape natives, through the dawn of ecological science, and onto both intensive industrial developments and environmental resistance to them. She examines as well how the Meadowlands exposes the inadequacies of today’s approaches to planning in the face of climate change and how they perhaps offer clues to a better future.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Burn of the Everflame"

New from Atria Books: Burn of the Everflame: A Novel (The Kindred's Curse Saga) by Penn Cole.

About the novel, from the publisher:

The highly anticipated never-before-published final book in the Kindred's Curse Saga, a slow-burn, epic romantasy series following one woman who must risk everything to save her family—and all of mortalkind.

War has overtaken Emarion. In the north, Ophiucae and his army of bloodthirsty mortals seek to eradicate all Descended from the continent. In the south, the Guardians of the Everflame lie in wait, plotting a rebellion generations overdue.

In Lumnos, Realm of Light and Shadow, the Crowns are gathering. Caught between two deadly foes, they must form an unlikely alliance to save their people.

But the Crowns have a secret—and a heart without its mate will burn the world down to fulfill its fate.

Hatred reigns. Hope seems lost. With the future in darkness, can a flame emerge to bring the light?

Visit Penn Cole's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Brass Band Story"

New from Yale University Press: The Brass Band Story by Trevor Herbert.

About the book, from the publisher:

A lively and engaging history of the brass band in Britain and beyond

Brass bands have played a unique role in the cultural history of Britain. Amidst the industrial revolution, an increasingly urban population turned to music for mass entertainment. Brass bands became intimately associated with working men and spread across the country at breathtaking speed. At their height in the late Victorian era, there were thousands of them.

Trevor Herbert reveals the story of these bands, from their working-class origins and the enormous popularity of Victorian contests to their sophistication in modern times. It is a tale of the survival of tradition and the embrace of change. Victorian brass bands solidified communities and promoted shared local identities. As new modes of popular culture posed existential threats in the twentieth century, they reinvented themselves. The model British bands created is now replicated throughout the world.

This is a fascinating and revealing history of a much-loved aspect of Britain’s musical heritage.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Hidden Currents"

New from Severn House: Hidden Currents (A Sheriff Hank Worth Mystery, 8) by Claire Booth.

About the novel, from the publisher:

Another outstanding book in an ever-evolving police procedural series perfect for fans of Terry Shames and Steven F. Havill.

When the new owner of a local fishing store is found murdered, Sheriff Hank Worth has plenty of suspects. The owner was in the middle of a highly acrimonious divorce, had fallen out with his stepson, and was being threatened by the abusive ex-boyfriend of one of his employees.

As Hank delves deeper into the increasingly complicated crime, his professional life is also taking a toll. His deputy sheriff Sheila is in court testifying against the men who had left her for dead in a brutal attack, and the defense will do whatever it takes to win their case.

As tensions grow, it becomes clear there are hidden currents just under the surface everywhere Hank turns.

A skillful blend of character, plot, and mystery laced with a streak of dry humor.

Visit Claire Booth's website.

My Book, The Movie: Another Man's Ground.

The Page 69 Test: Another Man's Ground.

My Book, The Movie: A Deadly Turn.

The Page 69 Test: A Deadly Turn. 

Writers Read: Claire Booth (March 2019).

My Book, The Movie: Fatal Divisions.

The Page 69 Test: Fatal Divisions.

Q&A with Claire Booth.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Legal Moves"

New from Stanford University Press: Legal Moves: Choreographies of Race, Law, and Empire by Anna Jayne Kimmel.

About the book, from the publisher:

Legal Moves engages in a project of epistemological disobedience, boldly suturing concepts of dance studies—kinesthetic awareness, fleshly memory, and techniques of the body—to the legal humanities. What opens when we expand our disciplinary methods of law—from the lettered to the embodied? Might we locate a more complete portrait of law, its logic, and impact for construction of the human? Anna Jayne Kimmel combs the laws and law-making logics of French imperial order and its postcolonial legacy to surface the already-embedded corporeal attentions and choreographic features of legal studies. The book moves across analysis of seventeenth-century French legal codes of conduct that structured race and empire within the metropole and its overseas horizons, twentieth-century scenes of police violence during anti-colonial protest in France, twenty-first century anxieties of assembly in postcolonial Algeria, and embodied aesthetics contained within human rights discourse. By tracing disciplined histories of dance notation, Kimmel argues laws have long operated as a societal score which script movements and conscript citizens into racialized categories of (non)being. Drawing upon archival material, legal records, and performance practice, Legal Moves calls to reimagine the human within Western jurisprudence of the body.

Visit Anna Jayne Kimmel's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Coming September 29 from Atria Books: Trad Wife: A Novel by Sarah Langan.

About the book, from the pubisher:

A journalist descends into horror as she uncovers the sinister truth behind a trad wife influencer in this “flat-out brilliant” (Paul Tremblay, New York Times bestselling author) blend of chilling suspense and razor-sharp commentary on modern femininity, pe

rformative domesticity, and social media—perfect for readers of Yesteryear, Mexican Gothic, and The Yellow Wallpaper.

Every day, millions watch Mia Wright, the “trad wife” queen, on her idyllic three-hundred-acre farm. With her handsome husband, seven well-behaved children, and a life of from-scratch meals and pastoral bliss, she’s an icon of modern femininity. But behind e

very perfect image is a secret. And in this case, the secret is a horror.

Desperate to save her tarnished career, journalist Jenny Kaplan arrives at Black Swan Farm to profile Mia. Jenny is ready to write a scathing exposé, determined to expose the deception behind Mia’s curated life. But soon, Jenny has more to contend with than staged videos and camera-ready poses. There’s something wrong at the farmhouse. Something slithers through Jenny’s dreams, and at night, the children sing strange nursery rhymes.

She’s losing time. She’s losing her hair. She starts to worry that she’s losing her mind.

There is a horror at the heart of Black Swan, and it’s waiting just for Jenny. Trad Wife will make you question what’s real and what’s just a perfectly curated deception…

Will you see the lie?

Visit Sarah Langan's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Keeper.

My Book, The Movie: The Missing.

The Page 69 Test: Good Neighbors.

My Book, The Movie: Good Neighbors.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Hidden Scrolls, Buried Bibles"

New from Yale University Press: Hidden Scrolls, Buried Bibles: How We Discover the Sacred Past by Eva Mroczek.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Zohar, this is the untold story behind our enduring fascination with lost and found religious texts

The Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest biblical manuscripts ever found, were discovered in a cave by a shepherd and his goat. This story is mostly true, and it is not the first such tale about long-lost books. Legend has it that the Zohar―the foundational text of Jewish Kabbalah―was lost for centuries before being discovered in a cave by a farmer, who sold it to spice merchants as packing material. It was only when a scholar picked through a trash heap and joined the fragments together that the world recovered its mystical secrets. These are just two of many tales recounting the discovery of ancient religious manuscripts.

Tracing a time-honored pattern of storytelling about lost and recovered sacred texts, Eva Mroczek reveals a surprising feature of Jewish and Christian thought: the idea that scripture is not complete―that it is partly lost, destroyed, or hidden―is not only the stuff of fantasy novels and conspiracy theories. Mroczek shows that modern scholarly mythmaking is more tightly bound with Jewish and Christian legends than we may think. Through the lens of discovery tales, this innovative book explores how traditions live in tension with the possibility of unknown pasts and surprising discoveries.

--Marshal Zeringue

"A Deadly Entanglement"

New from Minotaur Books: A Deadly Entanglement: A Harriman & Mancini Mystery by Cathy Pegau.

About the novel, from the publisher:

In A Deadly Entanglement, two queer women in turn-of-the-century New York must work together to uncover the rotten truth.

The truth isn’t always easy…

Margot Baxter Harriman has just survived her deadliest scandal as President of B&H Foods, and now there’s nowhere to go but up. Which is why she’s organizing a fundraiser for the crowded, overworked city charity hospital, where she hopes to do good and give back–until a body falls past a second-floor window.

The nurse’s death is quickly ruled a suicide, but fellow nurse CeeCee Foxmoor, Margot’s friend and the live-in partner of investigator Rett Mancini, isn’t so sure: this isn’t the hospital's first suspicious death. CeeCee’s concerns draw both Margot and Rett into an undercover scheme to untangle the threads behind the deaths everyone else is ready to overlook.

Then another death catches their attention: Margot's old classmate checked into the Caspian, a luxury clinic catering to the New York elite, but never checked out. And the circumstances surrounding her death feel eerily familiar...

As both the secrets and bodies pile up, Rett and Margot realize that while money can buy anything, behind ward doors, everyone pays a price. This time, their search for the truth might cost the people they love.

Cathy Pegau’s A Deadly Entanglement is the captivating follow-up to A Murderous Business, where two women’s determination challenges the cost of greed–and the price of failure.

Visit Cathy Pegau's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Corporate Forms of Antebellum US Literature"

New from Oxford University Press: The Corporate Forms of Antebellum US Literature by Peter Jaros.

About the book, from the publisher:

Through close examination of legal and literary texts, The Corporate Forms of Antebellum US Literature tells the story of the corporation in antebellum US law, literature, and culture. It unfolds a rich and varied corporate imaginary that both illuminates the prehistory of today's corporations and captures forgotten and unrealized conceptions of personhood, politics, and collectivity. Centered on an era during which both person and corporation were contested terms, this book shows how a seemingly instrumental legal category spurred reflection on human identity, mortality and immortality, slavery and freedom, and the possibilities of social and political belonging.

In the wake of Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819), the corporation was recognized as a flexible and powerful form for enterprises ranging from banks to mutual aid societies to utopian communities, even as its status as a legal person spurred reflection on natural and artificial personhood. Antebellum American writers took on corporate personhood and reframed it as literary personification; they explored and reimagined the tropes at the heart of the legal doctrine of the corporation, including artificiality, immortality, multiplicity, and succession; and they experimented with social and literary forms derived from the corporation.

By examining the ways writers theorized, figured, and deployed the corporate form within and beyond the law, this study both elucidates dominant conceptions of the corporation and reveals a multitude of paths not taken. It wagers that attending to the corporation as a form--or collection of forms--at the intersection of antebellum US law, literature, and culture can both inform our contemporary entanglements with the corporation and bring an unfamiliar perspective to recent debates about form.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Jenny Will Eat You Now"

Coming September 29 from Gallery Books: Jenny Will Eat You Now: A Meat Cute by Gillian Daniels.

About the book, from the publisher:

Sometimes you want to eat the ones you love…right? In this gorgeous horror-romance, river monster Jenny Greenteeth stalks a handsome academic through Boston after a chance encounter leaves her hungry and curious about the world she’s been hiding from.

Jenny Greenteeth prefers to keep her own company beneath the streets of Boston, where she’s lived for hundreds of years. With a conviction that she is far superior to humans—who are petty, dangerous, and fragile—she has no qualms about satisfying her hunger with their flesh. That is, until she comes face to face with a human man who, for the first time, she doesn’t want to eat (but also…she kind of does). Confused by these conflicting feelings, Jenny is intrigued.

So, when two city-dwelling cryptids take up residence in her station, she (begrudgingly) asks them to help her find this mystery man. Along the way, Jenny experiences the modern world for the first time—discovering catcalling, pigeons, protests, fashion, friendship, and Dunkin’ Donuts. On her quest to find the man she couldn’t eat at first sight, Jenny finds herself falling in love. And as she falls in love, two conflicting hungers grow within her—the hunger to be seen and understood and the hunger for human flesh.

Visit Gillian Daniels's blog.

--Marshal Zeringue