"When Forever Falls Apart"

New from Atria Books: When Forever Falls Apart: A Novel (Cinnamon Springs) by Kat T. Masen.

About the book, from the publisher:

A runaway bride returns to her small town, hoping to let go of the past, and ends up embroiling her best friend’s older brother in a fake-dating plot to make her ex jealous—from the bestselling author of How to Break My Heart.

Maddy Beaumont has been dubbed the runaway bride of Cinnamon Springs after leaving her ex, Myles, jilted at the aisle and escaping to Europe. But she can’t escape the townspeople’s judgment for long. Months later, she’s forced to return home and face reality, and Maddy is surprised by feelings of regret when she learns Myles has a new girlfriend so soon.

Did she make a mistake by calling off the wedding? There’s only one way to find out. When Maddy is invited to an event with Myles in attendance, she strikes a deal with pastry chef Elliot, her best friend’s charming older brother. For one night, Elliot and Maddy are going to pretend they’re dating. Easy, right? Just hold each other’s hand and pretend to look in love.

But the more time Maddy spends with Elliot, the more she realizes what they share might not be so fake after all.

Visit Kat T. Masen's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Napoleon's Closet"

New from Columbia University Press: Napoleon's Closet: The Emperor, the Priest, and the Men Who Invented Modern Fashion by Margaret Waller.

About the book, from the publisher:

Why do the most powerful men in the West wear sober, understated attire? Until the “Great Masculine Renunciation” in the eighteenth century, luxurious and often flamboyant clothing signaled social superiority for men as well as women.

Margaret Waller’s fresh account of this historic recalibration of gender and class centers on an unlikely pair: Napoleon Bonaparte, the Corsican upstart who crowned himself emperor of France, and Pierre Antoine Le Boux La Mésangère, the defrocked priest who became Europe’s premier fashion editor. Looking at knee breeches, schoolboy and officer uniforms, priests’ robes, and imperial regalia, this book shows how misogyny and homophobia helped make Bonaparte, La Mésangère, and their peers men.

Napoleon’s Closet shows when male fashion editors first associated women with fashion and urged men to renounce “feminine” frivolity in their dress. It connects French revolutionaries’ masculinist construction of citizenship to the Church’s long-standing requirement that its rank and file wear plain, modest clothing. It demonstrates that although Napoleon’s reinstitution of sumptuous uniforms for men might seem the exception, he reserved for himself the modern male privilege of dressing down.

A lively and unorthodox exploration of the paradoxical history of male clothing, this book unveils the origins of modern ideas about normative masculinity, queerness, and “the closet.”

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Artful Anna Harris"

New from Viking: The Artful Anna Harris: A Novel by Tracy Maton.

About the novel, from the publisher:

If the talented Mr. Ripley were a young woman today, she might be Anna Harris: charming, changeable, and perhaps not at all what she seems to be.

"You are quite the chameleon, aren't you? You could wear anything, do anything, and yet you choose plain, plain, plain. Or is it all a front for a secret life?"

Anna Harris grew up in a rough part of London, and learned young that she could become whoever she needs to be, moulding herself to get what she needs and wants. Somehow that has led her to a quaint, sleepy English village, swallowed into the lives of her boyfriend and his close and loving family. She's not unhappy, but there are quiet pressures and illicit temptations even in this storybook life.

When the vivacious Sofia Carstairs moves to the village, Anna is reminded of the freedom she once had. She used to be carefree and rebellious. But is she willing to throw away her future for some fun? Anna's not a bad person, she doesn't want to hurt anyone. But perhaps leading two lives is the path to fulfillment. What would happen if she just tried it out...

Full of vivid characters, sharp wit, and shocking twists, The Artful Anna Harris is a brilliantly suspenseful and page-turning debut.

Follow Tracy Maton on Instagram and Threads.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Mapping Medical Modernity"

New from the University of Pittsburgh Press: Mapping Medical Modernity: Urban Space and Public Health in Tokyo, 1868–1920 by Susan L. Burns.

About the book, from the publisher:

Mapping Medical Modernity explores the history of medical modernization and public health in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Tokyo, a city undergoing rapid transformation from the seat of power of the Tokugawa shoguns of the Edo period to the capital of a modern nation-state and its expanding empire in the Meiji period. Tracing the development of institutions and policies designed to improve medical care and public health in a dense urban environment, Susan L. Burns examines tensions between the involved parties―including doctors and policymakers, police and civil officials, residents and those who governed them―and provides case studies focused on three of the city’s major challenges in public health: syphilis, cholera, and mental illness. Drawing upon a wide range of archival materials and contemporary accounts, Burns also employs geographic information system analysis in mapping the complicated relationships interlinking aspects of the urban environment, social life, public policy, and commercialized medical culture to demonstrate visually how policy decisions and medical capitalism gradually reshaped existing spatial arrangements in the city as well as the social relations that unfolded within them.

Visit Susan L. Burns's University of Chicago homepage.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Blacktail"

New from Crown: Blacktail by Scott Hawkins.

About the book, from the publisher:

A visceral dark fantasy novel, Blacktail is the long-awaited second novel from Scott Hawkins, the critically acclaimed author of The Library at Mount Char.

Who does your dog pray to?

Blacktail is a half-breed wolf, born to hunt. When he finds love beyond a garden wall, he dares to imagine a peaceful life – until men butcher his mate and unborn pups in a surgical act of cruelty. His grief ignites a rampage of torn throats and shattered bone, a slaughter so absolute it draws the gaze of an ancient feline witch. She sends him south to wake the sleeping Forest God and end the age of reason.

Fuelled by a rage that frightens Hell itself, Blacktail wages war against men and the beasts who dare defend them. From a gore-soaked wilderness to a burning confrontation with Heaven, Blacktail is a feral odyssey of vengeance.

The Forest God sleeps. But what will be the price of waking him?

Visit Scott Hawkins's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Terrible Stuff Damaging Everybody"

New from NYU Press: Terrible Stuff Damaging Everybody: The True Story of Lies and Libel in Dominion v. Fox by Ian Rosenberg.

About the book, from the publisher:

The definitive story of Dominion v. Fox, the battle over election lies that changed the future of democracy

Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News Network is the watershed media case of the century. After an onslaught of attacks by several Fox News hosts and guests insisting that Dominion’s voting machines were rigged to steal the 2020 presidential election from Donald Trump, the previously little-known voting technology company decided to fight back. Over the next two years, their libel litigation laid bare the inner workings of the seemingly unassailable Fox Corporation and the thoughts of the media conglomerate’s most high-profile stars, guests, and executives.

On the morning the trial was set to begin, the parties reached an unprecedented settlement of $787.5 million. The media lamented that secrets from Fox’s top talent and owners would never come to light, but now the full, shocking truth has finally been revealed. Terrible Stuff Damaging Everybody exposes the true story of the election lies that shook Fox News and the nation. Media lawyer and author Ian Rosenberg transforms thousands of pages of legal documents into a compelling behind-the-scenes narrative. He presents the saga as a riveting three act drama that answers the vital questions: why Fox News broadcasted flagrantly false claims about election fraud; what the legal action uncovered about Fox’s power structure and the actual malice standard; and how the aftermath will fundamentally impact the future of libel law, the media, and our democracy.

Terrible Stuff Damaging Everybody provides a clear-eyed, expert analysis of this history-making lawsuit, and what it means for our country today.

Visit Ian Rosenberg's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Hearth Witch's Guide to Spite & Spellwork"

Coming soon from Poisoned Pen Press: The Hearth Witch's Guide to Spite & Spellwork (The Hemlock Saga, 2) by Kiri Callaghan.

About the novel, from the publisher:

"I suggest you brush up on your hexes, babes. Sounds like you got a nasty one on your hands."

As the bastard child of the late Erlking, Detective Avery Hemlock is used to being alone. Two-hundred years ago, she preferred it. But after endangering Saga Trygg's life by involving her in a case, Avery must choose solitude for Saga's safety. For once, alone is starting to feel a lot more like lonely.

Following her grandmother's murder, and the discovery of the fey world, Saga is trying to find direction, heal, and figure out where she fits in in this new version of normal. Though she longs to enlist Avery's help, after jeopardizing their last case together and nearly getting herself killed, she knows it's best she stay out of the detective's way.

But when the death of a local witch might be the result of a vicious revenge hex, the enigmatic circumstances and puzzle are too curious to keep them apart. With a case bigger than it appears, the two must uncover secrets even the Winter Council wants to keep.

Nothing is initially as it seems, even the truths they themselves have held for years.

Visit Kiri Callaghan's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Extra! Extra!: A History of America's Girl Newsies"

New from the University of Nebraska Press: Extra! Extra!: A History of America's Girl Newsies by Autumn Lorimer Linford.

About the book, from the publisher:

American pop culture loves newsies. The children who bawled out headlines and sold newspapers on city streets in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have been depicted countless times in movies, Broadway shows, books, music, and more, but somehow it’s only ever the stories of newsboys that are told. Scholarly literature too has focused mostly on boy newsies. Yet for nearly as long as there were newspapers in the United States, there were also newsgirls. Girl newsies were photographed, interviewed, studied, argued over, and eventually absorbed into the collective “newsboys” and forgotten.

Extra! Extra! A History of America’s Girl Newsies offers a corrective, demonstrating the importance of newsgirls as early news workers and as symbols of child labor and gender reform efforts. Sometimes younger than ten years old and from impoverished families, girl newsies were already vulnerable to exploitation from the newspaper publishing industry, which relied heavily on child labor during the “golden age” of journalism. However, the newsgirls of this period contributed much to news labor, and they were important to the discussions concerning childhood, child labor reform, and women’s changing societal roles. Properly integrating newsgirls into the history of newsies dismantles archetypes and enables a deeper understanding of child news labor.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Spellstruck"

New from Atria Books: Spellstruck: A Novel by Martha Waters.

About the novel, from the publisher:

Chemistry isn’t only for cocktails in this lightly magical, enemies-to-lovers rom-com about the owner of a speakeasy supplying magical drinks and an enforcer of the ban on magic who must team up when potions begin to go awry—from acclaimed author Martha Waters.

In an alternate version of 1920s London, vestiges of England’s magical past exist, but the use of magic has been outlawed, leading families still with powers to operate illegal speakeasies for a public still hungry for magic. Vesper Holloway runs her family club, where a dash of spell powder or an enchanted cocktail can add a little extra intrigue to the evening. But when a spate of accidents strikes these establishments, she worries patrons will flee her family’s business.

Enter Maxwell Ashbridge, a onetime friend of Vesper’s brother, who has joined the government agency tasked with enforcing the ban, and who has a personal vendetta against the magical elite. But he does not have a vendetta against Vesper; in fact, he finds her rather enticing. He promises immunity for her club if she teams up with him to investigate, which does little to quell the growing chemistry they share. As accidents continue and the fight to repeal the ban gains ground in Parliament, Vesper and Max will have to decide—is the magic between them worth fighting for?

Visit Martha Waters's website.

Writers Read: Martha Waters (April 2020).

The Page 69 Test: To Have and to Hoax.

--Marshal Zeringue

"American Sophistication"

New from Princeton University Press: American Sophistication: How the Casual Became Cool by Ross Posnock.

About the book, from the publisher:

The fascinating story of sophistication in the United States, from the founding to the present

Is there such a thing as “American sophistication”—or is it a contradiction in terms? Those questions have been up for grabs since America’s founding. The idea of sophistication has always left Americans uneasy. Devoted to a self-image of sincerity and plain-dealing, Americans are suspicious of sophistication’s playfulness and ease, which look like symptoms of European elitism, snobbery, and decadence. In this entertaining and enlightening account of American sophistication from the eighteenth century to today, Ross Posnock tells the story of how Americans’ anxiety about style and elegance led them to develop their own casual and cool style of sophistication.

From the start, American sophistication has been distinctive because it is mixed, improvised, and shape-shifting: guilty and smooth, game and nervous, vulgar and poised. Each chapter of this sparkling, wide-ranging narrative examines the evolution of American sophistication by exploring key figures in the story, including Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, Walt Whitman, Duke Ellington, Dorothy Parker, Mary McCarthy, the Kennedys, Mike Nichols and Elaine May, Eartha Kitt, Susan Sontag, Frank O’Hara, Jasper Johns, Lorraine Hansberry, James Baldwin, and Leonard Bernstein. The book ends by sketching the changing fortunes of American sophistication since John F. Kennedy by looking at some of his key presidential successors—Reagan, Obama, and Trump.

The first account of a compelling and timely subject, American Sophistication brings together film, fashion, literature, design, art, and musical theater to present a fresh synthesis of cultural history.

--Marshal Zeringue