"The Cursed Diamond:

Coming November 3 from Park Row Books: The Cursed Diamond: A Novel by Anna Rasche.

About the novel, from the publisher:

In New York City a century apart, two women’s fates are bound by the dark legacy of the Midnight Diamond

2010. Jennie is working as a runner in the Diamond District when a friend’s sudden death leaves her with a cryptic note: “Not Safe.” Her search for answers leads her to an antique jewelry box, a clue to a century-old mystery and the legend of the Midnight Diamond—a rare blue gem rumored to bring ruin to all who possess it. As Jennie is pulled deeper into a world of secrets and danger, she realizes she is not just chasing a lost treasure; she is uncovering a story that was meant to stay buried.

1910. On an ocean liner bound for New York, heiress Marcella Porter returns home after being disgraced by scandal in London. Her path collides with a charismatic nobleman and the magnificent Midnight Diamond, which she unknowingly smuggles into the city. Mesmerized by its brilliance, Marcella feels an irresistible pull toward the diamond, and when the glittering façade of her charmed life begins to crack, Marcella must decide whether the Midnight Diamond is her salvation—or her doom.

Can Jennie break the centuries-old curse before it brings more ruin? Inspired by history’s most captivating gemstone, The Cursed Diamond is a thrilling mystery about fate, obsession, and the deadly costs of ambition.

Visit Anna Rasche's website.

Q&A with Anna Rasche.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Home Team Away"

New from the University of Michigan Press: Home Team Away: Watching European Football in Urban China by Yuan Gong.

About the book, from the publisher:

Home Team Away calls for a rethinking of sport fandom that is divorced from an attachment to location. As the first comprehensive account of the European football fandom in China, this book explores how the Chinese middle class subjectivity is formed through the cross-cultural, digital consumption of the Big Five leagues. Yuan Gong captures the embodied experiences of fans and fan clubs, fan discourses and activities unfolding on digital platforms on Weibo, Weixin, and Hupu, combining fieldwork in Shanghai and virtual ethnography. Gong argues that Chinese fans’ decisions to follow and engage with European football result from their material conditions, ideological contestation, and technology appropriation as a new demographic bloc arising during China’s transition to authoritarian digital capitalism. By engaging with their home teams away, the Chinese middle class fans perform as citizens with a global vision despite the resurgence of the nationalist and anti-Western sentiments.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Sutra Americana"

Coming October 20 from the University of Wisconsin Press: Sutra Americana by Monona Wali.

About the novel, from the publisher:

In 1960 S. K. Sharma, a brilliant young astrophysicist at the beginning of his academic career, has finally succeeded in bringing his wife, Sushila, from India to America. Intensely drawn to one another as star university students, the couple pursue an unlikely affair and marriage that crosses caste lines. Their sweeping, decades-long story of love, forgiveness, and coming of age takes place in a country that is both fascinated by and shuns them. The United States, with its exaltation of individualism, offers immense opportunities, but its looser sexual mores threaten to undermine the family’s happiness and devotion to one another.

As their three daughters become young women, they must navigate the tumultuous decades of the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, and the women’s liberation movement. In their journeys of self-discovery, they upend their parents’ hold on them to craft radically new identities for themselves. As they discover their parents’ faults they grow increasingly puzzled by their devotion to one another, eventually learning how love and forgiveness have the power to overcome the most uncomfortable truths.

Visit Monona Wali's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Legacies of War"

New from Oxford University Press: Legacies of War by Kathrin Bachleitner.

About the book, from the publisher:

Legacies of War explores how war transforms societies. To map these legacies, the book focuses on three populations currently living through war: Ukrainians, Syrians, and Palestinians. Its empirical sections explore, first, people's narratives of conflict; second, their sense of national attachment; and third, their visions of a peaceful future. Together, these elements constitute a war legacy: as individuals interpret conflict, process collective emotions, and imagine the future, new political and social visions emerge that outline possible horizons for peace.

Visit Kathrin Bachleitner's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Void Dragon"

New from Orbit: The Void Dragon (The Shattered Lands, 2) by Annabel Campbell.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Void Dragon continues the epic fantasy tale that began with The Outcast Mage, following a young woman whose strange powers may destroy the world, and packed with intrigue, adventure and dragonfire.

Naila has escaped the chaos that engulfed her home city of Amoria, but at a terrible cost. Her allies have splintered and there’s a power growing inside of her that she doesn’t understand. It feels dangerous. It feels hungry.

Hunted by dragonriders, Naila must seek sanctuary at the great library of Awasef. Perhaps here she will find some answers―if they don’t kill her first.

But the land of Dahran is on a knife edge. The Queen’s advisor, the Wazira, is abducting mages and forcing them to join her cause. Worse still, Haelius Akana – Naila’s friend and the greatest wizard of his age―is among them.

As political conspiracies slide towards civil war, Naila’s power threatens to consume her and everyone she holds dear. Haelius may be the only person who can help her.

But only if he betrays his new master to stand at Naila’s side.

Visit Annabel Campbell's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"White Knuckling"

New from Cambridge University Press: White Knuckling: Holding On in America's Racialized Political Economy by Tess Wise.

About the book, from the publisher:

In White Knuckling, Tess Wise combines political economy, political development, and ethnography to develop a theory of systemic racism as a political process. Using a Racialized Political Economy (RPE) lens, she links institutions, material conditions, culture, and contestation to demonstrate how systemic racism both benefits and harms white middle-class families. Drawing on interviews with families and bankruptcy court records, she follows individuals under economic strain and experiencing 'white knuckling' as they work through debt to explore how financialization turns hardship into revenue. She reveals that the promised rehabilitation often fails, operating as hidden public-private welfare that can preserve some assets while entrenching precarity. Tracing scripts of deservingness and responsibility, Wise demonstrates how racism in political economy helps and hurts white middle-class Americans, blinding them to their racial privilege and undermining the mechanisms that would lead to race and class solidarity.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Spiral"

Coming October 27 from Crooked Lane Books: The Spiral: A Thriller (A Nina Esposito Mystery) by Rosanne Limoncelli.

About the novel, from the publisher:

When Nina finds the dead body of a woman who could easily be her twin, she must divide the men in her life into two groups: the ones she can trust and the ones who might be the killer.

A refreshing new take on the noir-thriller genre, The Spiral is perfect for fans of Tana French and Stieg Larsson.

It’s 1979, and nineteen-year-old Nina Esposito survives gritty Greenwich Village by tending bar with plenty of sarcasm and elbow grease. She can navigate the lewd customers, dirty streets, and danger-after-dark of NYC until a serial killer arrives on the scene targeting women who look exactly like her. Now survival for Nina means finding the killer before he finds her.

She has the constant feeling that she is prey surrounded by predators and every man she meets could be the killer: the guy following her on the subway, her leering acting coach, the restaurant owner pressuring her for a date. But is she really a target, or are the demons of her past clouding her judgment? Detective Frankie Lopez seems to be on her side—but she knows that trusting the wrong person could make her the next victim.

Set in crime-ridden New York City, when the subways were covered in graffiti and the burned-out buildings of the East Village were homes for squatters and punk rock teens, this psychological thriller is a dark murder mystery, one that will keep you guessing until the very end when the final twist is revealed.

Visit Rosanne Limoncelli's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Four Queens of Crime.

The Page 69 Test: The Four Queens of Crime.

Q&A with Rosanne Limoncelli.

Writers Read: Rosanne Limoncelli (July 2026).

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Medieval Art of Fear"

New from the University of Chicago Press: The Medieval Art of Fear by Ravinder S. Binning.

About the book, from the publisher:

A bold new approach to medieval art and architecture’s shaping of psychosomatic experience.

In the medieval world, experiences of fear attained a mystical significance: monks, urban publics, and even emperors pursued horror and grief to explore the limits of fantasy, sensation, and catharsis. In this book, Ravinder S. Binning examines an expansive archive ranging from poetry and scientific treatises to artistic works in ivory and crystal to recover an aesthetic tradition centered on optical tension, spatial suspense, and tactile experience.

Moving between early monastic spaces in Egypt and major urban centers like Constantinople from the fourth through the thirteenth centuries, The Medieval Art of Fear shows how the psychosomatic experience of fear became the deliberate object of mystical practices, meditation, and other embodied techniques across the medieval world. The result is a powerful exploration of the aesthetic effects behind some of the medieval world’s most ambitious works, whose influence extends well beyond the Middle Ages.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Rally"

New from Union Square & Co.: The Rally: A Novel by Carla Vass.

About the novel, from the publisher:

A young tech entrepreneur―ousted from her start-up and reeling―escapes to Europe for a glamorous car rally, where she must contend with the excesses of the über-rich, betrayal, and love. Perfect for fans of The Wedding People and The White Lotus.

Charlotte "Charlie" Walker has spent the last four years building the dating app Flutter. Despite her own lack of dating experience (!), Flutter is instantly successful. Perhaps too successful. After rejecting the romantic advances of her cofounder, Charlie finds herself unceremoniously ousted. Dispirited, she impulsively joins her BFF on the Rally―an extravagant European road trip featuring luxury cars, lavish parties, and breathtaking destinations.

Although she feels out of place, Charlie embraces her new freedom, indulging in the Rally’s hedonism. But just as she begins to regain her footing, Charlie realizes she can’t outdrive her past: Instead she must reckon with the fallout from her ouster, her company’s buried secrets, and an unexpected attraction that complicates everything.

Visit Carla Vass's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Old in the Game"

New from the University of California Press: Old in the Game: Aging in and with Hip-Hop by Murray Forman.

About the book, from the publisher:

The first study of hip-hop and aging, featuring insights from over twenty hip-hop pioneers and veterans.

Hip-hop is now in its sixth decade. How are the culture’s oldest innovators aging in, and with, hip-hop? In In Old in the Game, Murray Forman examines how hip-hop artists, audiences, and entrepreneurs negotiate the cultural process of aging.

Featuring commentary from hip-hop pioneers Grandmaster Caz, Grandwizzard Theodore, and Sha-Rock as well as veterans like Chuck D, LL Cool J, Ice-T, Pepa, and Yo-Yo, Forman reveals age as an essential component of identity and a mode of expression through which hip-hop–identified heads comprehend the world and present themselves. The book covers themes of generational difference and dissonance, ageism, memory and nostalgia, and retirement and death and offers a new way of understanding hip-hop as generations of hip-hop elders come of age, mature, and learn to grow old within the culture.

--Marshal Zeringue