"Follow Her"

New from Lake Union: Follow Her by Anna Stothard.

About the novel, from the publisher:

Some call her a cult leader. Others, their salvation. I used to call her my best friend…

Ten years ago, seventeen-year-olds Katie and Frida spent a heatwave summer together on a tidal island and they haven’t spoken since. Katie has tried hard to forget about what happened, all while watching Frida rise to fame as a spiritual influencer with millions of devoted followers.

But then a photograph surfaces: a group of girls bathed in summer light, white t-shirts glowing against marsh water. One figure is the celebrated Frida Rae. One is Katie. The others are girls whose dead bodies recently washed up near the island.

As a determined journalist starts asking questions, Katie’s carefully constructed life as a doctor’s wife and a mother begins to crack. Forced to recall her time with Frida, she is drawn back into a world of obsession, toxic first love and deadly secrets. Frida has many faces: victim, friend, spiritual leader. But how far will both women go to protect their image―and whose story will the world believe?

Visit Anna Stothard's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Pink Hotel.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Politics of Names"

New from Columbia University Press: The Politics of Names: Attitudes, Identity, and the Naming of Children in American History by R. Urbatsch.

About the book, from the publisher:

Since the earliest days of the United States, some parents have felt moved to capture their political moment in their children’s names. A Massachusetts child received the name Federal Constitution in 1790. The nineteenth century saw the name States Rights crop up across the South. A younger brother of a boy called McKinley in the early twentieth century was disproportionately likely to be named Roosevelt. Residents of areas that supported Reagan were prone to choose the spelling “Meagan” over “Megan.” The name Hillary surged in popularity after the Clintons emerged on the political scene―then crashed just as dramatically. What do trends like these tell us about political identities and enthusiasms in the United States?

R. Urbatsch explores the politics of naming across American history, revealing the surprising ways parents’ choices shed light on public opinion past and present. He argues that naming is a weathervane for political attitudes: Names touch on every sort of identity, from race and gender to nationalism and religion. Tracing the rise and fall of names that evoked the leaders, ideas, and issues that fired political imaginations of their times, Urbatsch opens new windows onto a wide range of historical questions. By analyzing when politics-tinged names gained or lost popularity, this book offers an unconventional and illuminating new perspective on identity, public sentiment, and political behavior in the United States.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Strange Animals"

New from Ballantine Books: Strange Animals: A Novel by Jarod K. Anderson.

About the novel, from the publisher:

An ordinary man discovers a hidden world of supernatural creatures—and an unexpected home—in this enchanting contemporary fantasy debut.

Green trips on the curb, falls flat into the street, and sees the city bus speeding toward him. And then . . . blink. He’s back on the curb, miraculously still alive. A five-foot-tall crow watches him from atop a nearby sign, somehow unseen by the rushing crowd of morning commuters.

Desperate for answers and beset by more visions of impossible creatures, Green finds his way to a remote campsite in the Appalachian Mountains, where he meets a centuries-old teacher and begins an apprenticeship unlike anything he could imagine.

Under his new mentor’s grouchy tutelage, Green studies the time-bending rag moth, the glass fawn, and the menacing horned wolf. He begins to see past hidden nature’s terrors and glimpse its beauty, all while befriending fellow misfits—and finding connection and community.

Along the way come clues about the forces that set him on this path—and, most incredibly, a sense of purpose and fulfillment like nothing he’s felt before.

But Green’s new happiness promises to be short-lived, because alongside these marvels lurks a deadly threat to this place he’s already come to love.

Creepy, cozy, and beautiful, Strange Animals is a fantasy about home, belonging, and the fearfully wonderous nature all around us.

Visit Jarod K. Anderson's website.

--Marshal Zerimgue

"Automatic Artistry"

New from the University of California Press: Automatic Artistry: Negotiating Musical Creativity in a Technological Age by Alyssa Michaud.

About the book, from the publisher:

Musicians have access to an ever-growing array of technological tools, creating a world rich with new artistic possibilities. Yet the incursion of automation technology into creative pursuits has long sparked panic about the threat to human creativity and authenticity. Relating a 120-year history of automation in music, this book provides a timely historical demonstration of how older technologies of automation gave rise to initial unease, which was then followed by integration and exploration of their generative potentials. Journeying from the player piano at the turn of the twentieth century, through the introduction of drum machines and synthesizers, to the holographic pop stars of the twenty-first century, Alyssa Michaud shows how musical subcultures have shifted the parameters of debate around the meaning of automation and creativity. In riveting prose, Automatic Artistry directly addresses the choices we now face as we adapt to the newest wave of automated musical tools.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Jills"

New from Ballantine Books: The Jills: A Novel by Karen Parkman.

About the book, from the publisher:

In this propulsive debut, a Buffalo Bills cheerleader will stop at nothing to solve the disappearance of her best friend and teammate, navigating the dark underbelly of a hardscrabble city, the grime and glamour of professional cheerleading, and her own tangled family history.

Virginia is a Jill—a cheerleader for the NFL’s Buffalo Bills—living the life of her dreams: she spends her weekdays practicing, her weekends cheering, and her nights hopping between bars and clubs with her teammates, including the fearless, charismatic Jeanine, whose friendship has given Virginia confidence in spades and helped her forget her troubled past with her estranged sister, Laura.

One Sunday, Jeanine fails to show up for a game, and calls and texts to her go unanswered. Virginia embarks on an investigation into Jeanine’s disappearance, aided by a network of Jills, ex-boyfriends, seedy fixtures of Buffalo’s criminal underground, and unexpected figures from her past. But as her search grows increasingly dangerous and spirals into obsession, disturbing questions about who Jeanine really was begin to emerge.

Soon, Virginia finds herself wondering how well she knew her best friend, if she can trust the people she thought were protecting her, and whether—when trying to save the ones she loves most—she’s capable of saving herself, too.

Part bingeable mystery, part character-driven tale of a woman discovering her own strength in a system built by and for men, The Jills is a page-turning novel that brims with wit and heart while reminding us of the healing power of sisterhood.

Visit Karen Parkman's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Kant's Moral World"

New from Oxford University Press: Kant's Moral World: Ideas and the Real Use of Pure Practical Reason by Jessica Tizzard.

About the book, from the publisher:

Kant's Moral World offers a detailed defense of Immanuel Kant's practical metaphysics. While Kant is widely recognized for his moral philosophy, this study reveals how his ethical framework also serves as a foundation for answering some of the most profound metaphysical questions: Are we truly free? Do we have immortal souls? Can we rationally believe in God?

Through a careful and systematic interpretation of Kant's critical works, the book grounds his approach to these questions in the broader development of the concept of pure reason, which begins in the Critique of Pure Reason and stretches through the Groundwork and Critique of Practical Reason. Jessica Tizzard argues that our practical cognition of the moral law and transcendental freedom exemplifies pure reason's real use, which ultimately explains the primacy of practical over theoretical reason. This primacy, in turn, provides rational grounds for affirming the existence of the soul and God as necessary conditions for the realization of a moral world, encapsulated in Kant's idea of the highest good.

Combining rigorous textual analysis with philosophical clarity, this monograph offers a compelling new interpretation of Kant's metaphysical project. It invites scholars and students alike to reconsider the depth and coherence of Kant's vision, where morality and metaphysics are not separate domains, but mutually reinforcing aspects of human reason.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Alphabet Sleuths"

New from Severn House: The Alphabet Sleuths by Laura Jensen Walker.

About the book, from the publisher:

Disposing of a body is as easy as A, B, C! Introducing the Alphabet Girls, four senior gal pals turned accidental sleuths―The Thursday Murder Club meets The Golden Girls, with a splash of Killers of a Certain Age

At sixty-nine years old, Claire Reynolds is changing things up. She’s volunteering. Learning to rollerblade. She’s rescued a shelter dog. And today, she’s killed a man. It wasn’t on her to-do list, but stuff happens.

Besides, the man in question was strangling her good friend Daphne, and what’s a gal to do? Scream, possibly. Call the cops. Or―at retired officer Daphne’s insistence―call in the rest of their senior gal pals, roll up the body in a blanket, and toss it off a cliff.

The dead man is a member of the local crime family, and if the police get involved it’s not just Daphne at risk, it’s them all.

But the body’s just the start. Soon the Alphabet Girls―Atsuko, Barbara, Claire, and Daphne―must transform into the Alphabet Sleuths, if they’re to keep both their liberty . . . and their lives.

Meet Atsuko Kimura (75, retired journalist), Barbara Wright (age redacted, retired actress), Claire Reynolds (69, retired paralegal), and Daphne Cole (62, retired cop) in the first funny, fast-paced Alphabet Girls Mystery from award-winning author Laura Jensen Walker.

Visit Laura Jensen Walker's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Climate Change, Human Rights, and Adaptive Mobility"

New from Oxford University Press: Climate Change, Human Rights, and Adaptive Mobility by Lauren Sakae Nishimura.

About the book, from the publisher:

The potential for climate change to cause vast human movement is a major global issue. Dominant approaches to climate-related migration take mobility as the starting point, exploring legal frameworks that tend to provide protection for migrants only after they move and overlooking measures that could help avoid forced movement in the first place. In contrast, Climate Change, Human Rights, and Adaptive Mobility provides a new conceptual and legal approach to human mobility in the context of climate change, one that seeks to compel and shape more proactive, anticipatory action.

The author anchors her arguments in the international climate change regime, turning to obligations on adaptation found in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement. These obligations, though understudied and underutilized, have the potential to be a powerful legal tool. The book therefore seeks to lend them concrete legal meaning. It draws on international climate change and human rights law to weave together doctrinal analysis that considers treaty interpretation, regime interaction, and principles of environmental law with case studies in Bangladesh, the Pacific Islands, and the Sahel.

At its core, the book argues that adaptation obligations require states to take measures to address foreseeable risks and ensure human rights. It further argues that developed countries that have contributed most to climate change have legal duties to support others in adapting to its effects, adding a collective dimension to the problem of climate change and mobility.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Good Intentions"

New from St. Martin's Press: Good Intentions: A Novel by Marisa Walz.

About the book, from the publisher:

Even the best intentions can grow into obsession...

On the surface, Cady has the perfect life. She has a thriving luxury event-planning business, the man she’s loved since she was seventeen, and a social calendar she can barely keep up with. She also has Dana, her identical twin, her most trusted confidante. But when Dana dies suddenly, before Cady can say goodbye, everything shatters.

Yet to her family’s alarm, it isn’t grief for Dana that consumes her. It’s Morgan, a stranger Cady meets in the hospital waiting room that same day—a grieving mother whose tragedy mirrors her own. Cady doesn’t believe in coincidences. She becomes convinced that helping Morgan is the key to facing her sister’s death.

But is that really what she wants? Or is Cady drawn to Morgan for reasons far more complicated—and dangerous—than she’s willing to admit?

Sly, twisted, and irresistibly provocative, Good Intentions explores the moral gray zones we enter when the unthinkable happens—and the dark places obsession can take us.

Visit Marisa Walz's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Take Freedom"

New from The University of North Carolina Press: Take Freedom: Recovering the Fugitive History of the Denmark Vesey Affair by James O'Neil Spady.

About the book, from the publisher:

In 1822, Black Charlestonians attempted to overthrow slavery. They were exposed before they could strike, and many were tried and executed in what has come to be known as the Denmark Vesey Affair. Take Freedom reinterprets these events on the basis of new evidence and methods. James O’Neil Spady narrates the roles of a variety of Black men and women, arguing that the uprising was a broadly based, African-influenced social movement that marshaled radical love and fugitive practices of freedom to ignite a revolution that sought to liberate beloved friends, families, and communities from increasingly aggressive and racializing slaveowners.

Uncovering never-before-consulted, unpublished documents, Spady names the clerk who made the trial records and settles old arguments about their reliability. Take Freedom demonstrates the realism of the uprising movement’s strategy and uses social network mapping to illustrate the social dynamics within the Black community, emphasizing the roles of women and relationships among enslaved people. Ultimately, this book offers a more inclusive and expanded portrayal of this pivotal revolutionary movement.

--Marshal Zeringue