"The Award"

New from Harper: The Award: A Novel by Matthew Pearl.

About the book, from the publisher:

The author of Save Our Souls and The Dante Club makes his eagerly awaited return to fiction with this irreverent and propulsive novel about a young writer trying to make his way through a cutthroat literary scene that turns deadly.

David Trent is an aspiring novelist in Cambridge, Massachusetts, trying to navigate his ambitions in a place that has writers around every corner.

He lives in an apartment above a Very Famous Author named Silas Hale who, beneath his celebrated image, is a bombastic, vindictive monster who refuses to allow his new neighbor even to make eye contact with him.

Until young David wins a prestigious award for his new book.

Suddenly Silas is interested—if intensely spiteful.

But soon, the administrator of the award comes to David with alarming news, forcing the writer into a desperate set of choices.

Fate intervenes—with shocking consequences. . . .

With the wit and psychological wisdom of The Plot and The Winner, The Award is a timely, razor-sharp, and unputdownable novel about writing groups, publishing, ambition, human foibles, and the dangerous things we will do to get ahead.

Visit Matthew Pearl's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Poe Shadow.

The Page 99 Test: The Last Dickens.

The Page 69 Test: The Technologists.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Devil’s Own Purgatory"

New from LSU Press: The Devil’s Own Purgatory: The United States Mississippi River Squadron in the Civil War by Robert H. Gudmestad.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Devil’s Own Purgatory is the first complete history of the Union navy’s Mississippi Squadron, a fleet that prowled the Mississippi River and its tributaries during the American Civil War. The squadron battered Confederate forts, participated in combined operations with the army, obliterated the Confederate fleet, protected Union supply lines, fought a river-based counterinsurgency war, raided plantations, and facilitated the freedom of thousands of enslaved people.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Daughter of Genoa"

New from Harper Perennial: Daughter of Genoa: A Novel by Kat Devereaux.

About the book, from the publisher:

The author of Escape to Florence returns with a thrilling adventure set in the war-torn 1940s and inspired by true events, about a young woman who risks everything to help Jewish Italians flee the fascists, and falls in love with the brave aviator behind a daring secret rescue operation.

Anna's family fled to America years ago, to escape the Fascist regime, but Anna had stayed behind. Alone and terrified of discovery, Anna meets Father Vittorio, a Jesuit priest who takes her to shopkeepers Bernardo and Silvia, an older couple who offer shelter and safety without question. But when Anna discovers that this kind, quiet couple is part of a network of ordinary people daring to help Father Vittorio smuggle Jewish citizens, stripped of their status and rights, out of Italy, she is determined to help.

Anna offers skills essential to the cause: she has a deft hand at ledgers and forgery, talents she learned at the high-powered job she held before the Racial Laws were passed—a past she conceals. Working in secrecy, not knowing others’ real names or sharing her own, Anna begins producing fake identity cards and soon meets another member of the operation: a man known as Mr. X., whom she recognizes instantly as the wealthy aviator Massimo Teglio. And suddenly, without warning—despite the threat of imprisonment, torture, and death—Anna finds herself taking the most dangerous of risk of all: falling in love. And she's not the only one.

Based on the true story of the DELASEM—the Delegation for the Assistance of Jewish Emigrants, an organization of brave volunteers working tirelessly to save innocent lives from the concentration camps—Daughter of Genoa is a poignant look at those who loved and lost yet continued to risk everything to create a better world.

Visit Kat Devereaux's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Early Modern Merchants and their Books"

New from Oxford University Press: Early Modern Merchants and their Books by Angus Vine.

About the book, from the publisher:

Early Modern Merchants and their Books offers the first dedicated study of the literary and intellectual lives of the merchants of seventeenth-century Britain. Drawing primarily on unpublished manuscript material, but also on a range of rarely discussed printed texts, the book reveals for the first time the importance of this 'mercantile humanism'. A contribution principally to the field of 'book history', but with significance for early modern literary studies, cultural and intellectual history, global history, and history of science too, this volume examines mercantile account books, letter-books, anthologies, and manuals, as well as mercantile libraries and archives, and mercantile poetic and pedagogical works, to document this now little-known literary and intellectual culture.

Working across geographical contexts, as well as institutional structures, the book examines merchants as accountants, record-keepers, authors, collectors, and compilers, and reveals the creative interplay between financial, commercial, administrative, archival, memorial, and devotional categories and practices in the early modern mercantile world. Through a series of mercantile microhistories, each based on a single document or group of associated documents, the book traces the range and extent of this 'mercantile humanism' and identifies its signature textual and material forms, as well as its key subjects and concerns, and some of its most important actors. Early Modern Merchants and their Books in this way challenges long held assumptions about knowledge-making in the seventeenth century and pushes back against equally persistent beliefs about merchants in the period. As such, it not only offers a revisionist history of the early modern merchantry, and a major new account of learning in the seventeenth century, but also constitutes a significant methodological intervention in 'book history' itself.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Bed Chemistry"

New from Crooked Lane Books: Bed Chemistry: A Novel by Elizabeth McKenzie.

About the book, from the publisher:

One bed. One (very awkward) shared past. What could go wrong?

With a fun and steamy twist on the only-one-bed trope, this debut contemporary romance will delight fans of The Love Hypothesis and The Paradise Problem.

Chemistry teacher Ashleigh Hutchinson knows better than anyone that love and lust don’t mix. The feelings come from different hormones, they trigger different responses, and they demand different reactions. Which is why she doesn’t date. She hooks up. No catching-of-feels required.

When Ashleigh is fired from her job without notice, she signs up to participate in a month-long sleep study, which will pay her enough to cover rent while she job hunts. It seems easy enough—until she walks into the clinic and finds herself staring right into the gorgeous eyes of Xander Miller, the only man to have ever tempted her to abandon her no relationships rule.

When Xander and Ashleigh realize the study is only looking for couples, they agree to pretend to be together—which means sleeping in the same bed every night for the next few weeks. How hard can it be to keep their cool under the covers?

With steamy “will they or won’t they” tension and plenty of hilariously awkward moments, Bed Chemistry is sure to appeal to fans of Christina Lauren, Ali Hazelwood, and Meghan Quinn.

Visit Elizabeth McKenzie's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Bêtes Noires"

New from Duke University Press: Bêtes Noires: Sorcery as History in the Haitian-Dominican Borderlands by Lauren Derby.

About the book, from the publisher:

In Bêtes Noires, Lauren Derby explores storytelling traditions among the people of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, focusing on shape-shifting spirit demons called baka/bacá. Drawing on interviews with and life stories of residents in a central Haitian-Dominican frontier town, Derby contends that bacás—hot spirits from the sorcery side of vodou/vodú that present as animals and generate wealth for their owners—are a manifestation of what Dominicans call fukú de Colón, the curse of Columbus. The dogs, pigs, cattle, and horses that Columbus brought with him are the only types of animals that bacás become. As instruments of Indigenous dispossession, these animals and their spirit demons convey a history of trauma and racialization in Dominican popular culture. In the context of slavery and beyond, bacás keep alive the promise of freedom, since shape-shifting has long enabled fugitivity. As Derby demonstrates, bacás represent a complex history of race, religion, repression, and resistance.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Far from the A-List"

New from MIRA: Far from the A-List: A Novel by Stephanie Burns.

About the book, from the publisher:

In this fresh, propulsive take on fame in the tabloid era of the ’00s, a former child star struggles to figure out who she is beyond the characters she's played—on television and in relationships.

Former child star Michaela Turner is ready for her next big role—she just doesn’t know what it is yet. As someone whose days were once filled with bright lights, never—ending rehearsals, and adoring fans from around the world, Michaela now struggles to define herself beyond the glitz and glamour of her past. She tries hard to stay out of the tabloids, but fading into the background isn’t quite as easy as it sounds. Not when her manipulative momager, Caroline, is dead set on launching her daughter’s big comeback, no matter how many old wounds it tears open. And especially not when Michaela’s attempts at “normal” relationships fail spectacularly at every turn, from the toxic ex she can’t seem to escape to the nice guy she wishes she could see a future with.

As her mother’s demands grow more draining and her love life takes hit after hit, she learns a few hard truths about the significance of self—worth and the beauty of letting go. Now, with her ex—boyfriend—turned—best—friend Josh as her only support, Michaela is ready to rebuild herself, one misstep at a time. And maybe, if she’s lucky, after all these years of pretending, she’ll finally have the chance to discover who she really is.

Visit Stephanie Burns's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Crush: Close Encounters with Gravity"

New from The MIT Press: Crush: Close Encounters with Gravity by James Riordon.

About the book, from the publisher:

The fascinating story of gravity, from its intimate role in our daily lives to its cosmic significance.

Gravity is at once familiar and mysterious. It’s the reason for the numbers on your bathroom scale, the intricate dance of the stars and planets, and the evolution and eventual fate of the universe. In Crush, James Riordon takes readers on a tour of gravity from its vanishing insignificance on the microscopic scale to its crushing extreme inside black holes.

From the moment we lift our heads as infants until the moment we lie down and ultimately surrender to its pull at the end of our lives, we labor under the burden of gravity. It has guided the shape and structure of our bodies over eons of evolution and sculpted the Earth as it cooled from a blob of molten rock. As Riordon explains, the stars couldn’t shine without gravity holding them together. Even the atoms that form you and everything around you were forged in stellar furnaces that gravity built. It took Einstein to realize that gravity is not, in fact, a force at all, but instead the curvature of space and time.

A fascinating and memorable read, Crush examines our personal relationships with gravity, explores gravity’s role in making the universe uniquely hospitable for life, and even reveals how the mundane flow of water in your kitchen sink offers a glimpse into the secrets of black holes.

Visit James Riordon's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"A Grave Deception"

New from Crooked Lane Books: A Grave Deception: A Kate Hamilton Mystery by Connie Berry.

About the book, from the publisher:

Antiques expert Kate Hamilton dives into the past to solve a fourteenth-century mystery with disturbing similarities to a modern-day murder in the sixth installment of the Kate Hamilton mystery series.

Kate Hamilton and her husband, Detective Inspector Tom Mallory, have settled into married life in Long Barston. When archaeologists excavating the ruins of a nearby plague village discover the miraculously preserved body of a fourteenth-century woman, Kate and her colleague, Ivor Tweedy, are asked to appraise the grave goods, including a valuable pearl. When tests reveal the woman was pregnant and murdered, the owner of the estate on which the body was found, an amateur historian, asks Kate to identify her and, if possible, her killer. Surprised, Kate agrees to try.

Meanwhile, tensions within the archaeological team erupt when the body of the lead archaeologist turns up at the dig site with fake pearls in his mouth and stomach. Then a third body is found in the excavations. Meanwhile, Kate’s husband Tom is tracking the movements of a killer of his own.

With the help of 700-year-old documents and the unpublished research of a deceased historian, Kate must piece together the past before the grave count reaches four.

Visit Connie Berry's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Art of Betrayal.

My Book, The Movie: The Art of Betrayal.

Q&A with Connie Berry.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Star-Spangled Republic"

New from the University of Virginia Press: The Star-Spangled Republic: Political Astronomy and the Rise of the American Constellation by Eran Shalev.

About the book, from the publisher:

Examining the cosmic conceit at the heart of early American political rhetoric

Why does the American flag use stars to represent the states? In The Star-Spangled Republic, Eran Shalev answers this and many other questions, considering the cosmic imagery—so familiar today but so peculiar on reflection—that suffused the United States’ early political culture. In this comprehensive study, Shalev uncovers how “political astronomy”—the discussion and representation of politics through astronomical models, allusions, and metaphors—reflected and facilitated the emerging worldview that enabled Americans to justify and find meaning in the country’s new democratic modes of governance and its federal system. No other scholar has looked at American political rhetoric through this lens; in so doing, Shalev is able to explain in fascinating detail how Americans turned away from the sun of heliocentric monarchy toward the night sky full of federated constellations, and to discover republicanism imprinted in the firmament.

--Marshal Zeringue