"The White Pedestal"

New from Yale University Press: The White Pedestal: How White Nationalists Use Ancient Greece and Rome to Justify Hate by Curtis Dozier.

About the book, from the publisher:

How white nationalist thought leaders use ancient Greece and Rome to claim historical precedent for their violent and oppressive politics

It is difficult to ignore the resurgence of white nationalist movements in the United States, many of which employ symbols and slogans from Greco-Roman antiquity. A long-established neo-Nazi website incorporates an image of the Parthenon into its logo, and rioters wore Spartan helmets in the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. These juxtapositions may appear incongruous to people who associate the ancient world with enlightened political ideals and sophisticated philosophical inquiry. But, as Curtis Dozier points out in this thought-provoking book, it’s hard to imagine a historical period better suited to rhetorical use by white nationalists. Indeed, some of the most widely admired voices from ancient literature and philosophy endorsed ideas that modern white supremacists promote, and the social and political realities of the ancient world provide models for political systems that white supremacists would like to establish today.

Part introduction to contemporary white nationalist thought, part exploration of ancient racism and xenophobia, and part intellectual history of the political entanglements of academic study of the past, this book reveals that contemporary white nationalist intellectuals know much more about history than many people assume—and they deploy this knowledge with disturbing success.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Rage of Swords"

New from Bloomsbury USA: Rage of Swords by David Gilman.

About the book, from the publisher:

In this thrilling historical adventure, Master of War Sir Thomas Blackstone must travel into enemy lands with a price on his head as he seeks gold and alliances for King Edward's war with France.

THE MASTER OF WAR RIDES AGAIN.

1368, Northern Italy. As the Hundred Years' War smoulders, the Duke of Clarence, second son of Edward III, sets out from Paris to wed the Lord of Milan's daughter. The union could forge an alliance as vital as any victory on the battlefield.

But the road to Milan is a road to betrayal.

Riding ahead is Sir Thomas Blackstone, the legendary Master of War. Blackstone is tasked with securing the gold that, together with the marriage alliance, will fuel the House of Plantagenets' fight against France. But with a bounty on his head, Blackstone will have to outthink and outfight foes deadlier than any he has faced before.

Yet the gravest threat may lie closer to home. Blackstone's son, Henry, has inherited his father's unerring fate to walk where peril waits...

Visit David Gilman's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Modernism, Media, and the Politics of Common Life"

New from Johns Hopkins University Press: Modernism, Media, and the Politics of Common Life by Aleksandr Prigozhin.

About the book, from the publisher:

Explores how modernist fiction interrogated the many promises of ubiquitous media connectivity as key to collective life.

In Modernism, Media, and the Politics of Common Life, Aleksandr Prigozhin explores how modernist fiction responded to its changing media environment in the early twentieth century. Modernist writers used diverse forms of media, broadly conceived—from print, architecture, and radio to soil and infrastructure—as metaphors for the contradictions of common life, while highlighting both the promises and failures of media modernity.

Media's complex relationship to affect and sociality allowed modernists to imagine how disparate lives might be linked together through modes of impersonal intimacy. Through close readings of Virginia Woolf, D. H. Lawrence, Andrei Platonov, and Sylvia Townsend Warner, among others, Prigozhin reveals how their works leverage media's ability to connect and divide. These texts grapple with the challenges of mass democracy, imperial decline, and the growing ubiquity of media communication, offering a nuanced vision of the difficulties of mediated human connection.

This interdisciplinary study bridges literature, media theory, and cultural history, showing how modernist novels illuminate the entangled relationship among materiality, affect, and social structures. Tracking their engagement with media and matter, Modernism, Media, and the Politics of Common Life reveals a politics of the common at the heart of modernist fiction.

--Marshal Zeringue

"You'll Never Forget Me"

New from Bantam: You'll Never Forget Me: A Novel by Isha Raya.

About the book, from the publisher:

In this captivating cat-and-mouse thriller, a struggling actress is only just beginning to enjoy the life sheʼs always wanted after inadvertently killing her rival—but now she must contend with the woman who threatens to take it all away.

Struggling actress Dimple Kapoor wouldn’t call herself a murderer, per se—she’d prefer the term “opportunist.” Years ago, she did what had to be done to get herself out of a bad situation. And now, after accidentally killing her Hollywood rival, Irene Singh, at a party, she’s simply seizing the chance to nab her dream leading role and resuscitate her career in the process. Thereʼs only one problem: Someone else at the event witnessed the crime . . . and caught it all on camera.

With everything she’s ever wanted within reach, Dimple will stop at nothing to keep stardom in her grasp. But Irene’s parents have hired Saffi Mirai Iyer, one of the best private investigators in the business. Living up to her reputation, Saffi immediately zeroes in on Dimple, who feels she has no choice but to raise the stakes. Playing along with Dimple’s facade, Saffi invites her on to the case, suggesting she act as bait to draw out the killer—and as the two women’s cat-and-mouse game intensifies, Saffi starts to wonder if she may have finally met her match.

With their careers at risk, both women must fight the potent chemistry drawing them closer together. Dimple needs Saffi dead and for her theories to die with her. And Saffi needs Dimple behind bars, but catching her elusive prey won’t be so easy—especially as emotions begin to cloud her judgment. When ambition and desire collide, only the most cunning will survive.

Visit Isha Raya's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Stolen Representation"

New from Cambridge University Press: Stolen Representation: Black Disfranchisement and State Legislative Politics in the American South by Michael P. Olson.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the decades after Reconstruction, African Americans were systematically removed from the electorate in the American South using tools such as poll taxes and literacy tests. Stolen Representation draws on significant amounts of new historical data to explore how these tools of Black disfranchisement shaped state legislative politics in the American South. The book draws on contemporary scholarship to develop theoretical arguments for how disfranchisement plausibly affected roll-call voting, committee assignments, and policymaking activity in southern state legislatures, and uses rich data on each of these areas to demonstrate disfranchisement's profound effects. By analyzing state legislative data and drawing on historical sources to help characterize the nature of politics in each state in the period around disfranchisement, Olson offers a nuanced, context-driven exploration of disfranchisement's effects, making a major contribution to our understanding of the relationship between racial discrimination at the ballot box and public policymaking in the United States.

Visit Michael Olson's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Lost Lambs"

New from Farrar, Straus and Giroux: Lost Lambs: A Novel by Madeline Cash.

About the book, from the publisher:

Rippling with humor, warmth, and style, Lost Lambs is a new vision of the charms and pitfalls of family dysfunction.

The Flynn family is coming undone. Catherine and Bud's open marriage has reached its breaking point as their daughters spiral in their own chaotic orbits: Abigail, the eldest, is dating a man in his twenties nicknamed War Crime Wes; Louise, the middle child, maintains a secret correspondence with an online terrorist; the brilliant youngest, Harper, is being sent to wilderness reform camp due to her insistence that someone—or something—is monitoring the town’s citizens.

Casting a shadow across their lives, and their small coastal town, is Paul Alabaster, a billionaire shipping magnate. Rumors of corruption circulate, but no one dares dig too deep. No one except Harper, whose obsession with a mysterious shipping container sends the family hurtling into a criminal conspiracy—one that may just bring them closer together.

Irreverent and addictive, pinging between the voices of the Flynn family and those of the panorama of characters around them, Madeline Cash’s Lost Lambs is a debut novel of quick-witted observation and surprising tenderness. With it, Cash has crafted a family saga for the twenty-first century, all held together with crazy glue.

Visit Madeline Cash's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Forms and Fictions of Victorian Art Instruction"

New from Oxford University Press: The Forms and Fictions of Victorian Art Instruction by Kimberly J. Stern.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Victorian period gave rise to revelatory new approaches to art instruction. A growing investment in standardized education, the rise of exhibition culture, and an expanding body of literature devoted to the teaching of art all contributed to very public and sometimes contentious debates about art pedagogy. Surveying a range of instructional scenarios-from the schoolroom to the Royal Academy - The Forms and Fictions of Victorian Art Instruction reveals the creative and even radical methods nineteenth-century writers brought to questions that inform educational debate to this day. What is the role of art in the learning process? Should art instruction provide students with practical skills, or does art defy such instrumental concerns? Above all, is it possible for art instruction to impose structure on the learning process while also nurturing the creative autonomy art demands? Through an interdisciplinary and deeply historical account of art instruction that incorporates fiction, poetry, art manuals, and innovative hybrid genres, this book contends that nineteenth-century writers defended the educational value of art by abandoning expository writing in favor of highly experimental literary forms. In this way, The Forms and Fictions of Victorian Art Instruction supplies a new history of art teaching―one that sheds light on the educational and cultural dilemmas we continue to face today.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Last of Earth"

New from Random House: The Last of Earth: A Novel by Deepa Anappara.

About the novel, from the publisher:

From the award-winning author of Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line comes a stunning historical novel set in nineteenth-century Tibet that follows two outsiders—an Indian schoolteacher spying for the British Empire and an English “lady” explorer—as they venture into a forbidden kingdom.

1869. Tibet is closed to Europeans, an infuriating obstruction for the rap­idly expanding British Empire. In response, Britain begins training Indians—permitted to cross borders that white men may not—to undertake illicit, dangerous surveying expeditions into Tibet.

Balram is one such surveyor-spy, an Indian schoolteacher who, for several years, has worked for the British, often alongside his dearest friend, Gyan. But Gyan went missing on his last expedition and is rumored to be imprisoned within Tibet. Desperate to rescue his friend, Balram agrees to guide an English captain on a foolhardy mission: After years of paying others to do the exploring, the captain, disguised as a monk, wants to personally chart a river that runs through southern Tibet. Their path will cross fatefully with that of another Westerner in disguise, fifty-year-old Katherine. Denied a fellowship in the all-male Royal Geographical Society in London, she intends to be the first European woman to reach Lhasa.

As Balram and Katherine make their way into Tibet, they will face storms and bandits, snow leopards and soldiers, fevers and frostbite. What’s more, they will have to battle their own doubts, ambitions, grief, and pasts in order to survive the treacherous landscape.

A polyphonic novel about the various ways humans try to leave a mark on the world—from the enduring nature of family and friendship to the egomania and obsessions of the colonial enterprise—The Last of Earth confirms Deepa Anappara as one of our greatest and most ambitious storytellers.

Visit Deepa Anappara's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Between Dung and Blood"

New from the University of California Press: Between Dung and Blood: Purity, Sainthood, and Power in the Early Modern Western Mediterranean by Manuela Ceballos.

About the book, from the publisher:

Between Dung and Blood investigates the stories of two sixteenth-century saints: the Spanish Christian Teresa de Jesús and the Moroccan Sufi Sīdī Riḍwān al-Januwī, both from families of converts. Through the stories of these saints, Manuela Ceballos reveals the roles played by blood and bodily pollution as substances and symbols in the religious and political fabric of the early modern Western Mediterranean. Drawing primarily on Arabic and Spanish sources, the author argues that in Morocco and Iberia, ideas about blood and bodily pollution helped shape processes of bodily differentiation as well as social hierarchies based on notions of ritual purity and impurity. Providing an inside look at the dynamics within Moroccan and Iberian societies as they grappled with the social and religious upheaval of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Ceballos shows that the real and imagined border between geographies and religious traditions could, at times, be porous and conducive to shared beliefs.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Scavengers"

Coming soon from Viking: Scavengers: A Novel by Kathleen Boland.

About the novel from the publisher:

A rollicking debut novel about a cautious daughter and her eccentric, estranged mother venturing west in search of buried treasure—and a way back to each other—before they run out of patience, money, and options

After being fired for taking an uncharacteristic risk at her commodities trading job, Bea Macon sublets her New York apartment and books a one-way ticket to stay with her mother, Christy, a free spirit who has been living in Salt Lake City on Bea’s dime.

Usually the responsible one, Bea isn’t about to admit exactly why she’s suddenly decided to visit, but she isn’t the only one keeping secrets: Christy has a man. She has a map. She has . . . a username on a forum devoted to unearthing $1 million in buried treasure that an antiquities dealer claims to have hidden somewhere in the western U.S.?

Bea is convinced this is just another one of her mother’s wild larks, an elaborate way to refuse, as she has for Bea’s entire life, to finally grow up. But Christy believes she’s onto something—and she’s arranged a rendezvous in a rural town called Mercy with the guy she’s been obsessively trading theories with online to prove it. Out in the desert that one woman believes to be a promised land, the other a wasteland, they find themselves barreling toward a more high-stakes, transformative escapade than either of them could have imagined.

Populated with unforgettable characters and set against one of the world’s most oddly enrapturing landscapes, Scavengers is a funny and heartbreaking novel about old injuries, new beginnings, and the lengths to which we’ll go to find, escape, and reinvent ourselves.

Visit Kathleen Boland's website.

--Marshal Zerigue