"Every Pretty Thing"

New from Lake Union: Every Pretty Thing: A Novel by Elizabeth Klehfoth.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the author of The Lost Heiress comes a twisty, emotional novel about the fragility of memory, the long arc of betrayal, and the blind spots we protect for love and survival.

Eleanor “Elle” Collins has gone to great lengths to distance herself from the tragedy that reshaped her life as a teenager. Now thirty and struggling to salvage her stalled acting career, she’s given one last chance at her dream when director Jace Wilder asks her to cowrite and star in his next film. But there’s a catch: The movie is about the infamous Hancock Park murders―the tragedy Elle has spent half her life running from.

Then

At fifteen, Eleanor is sent to live with her wealthy relatives in Hancock Park. There, she falls under the thrall of her cousin Liam and his popular friend group at the prestigious Brearly School. But dangerous secrets will lead to a devastating end.

Now

As Elle works with Jace on the film, her growing feelings for him complicate everything―and what she thought was the truth begins to shift.

What really happened that fateful night?

And can she survive it a second time?

Visit Elizabeth Klehfoth's website.

Writers Read: Elizabeth Klehfoth (July 2018).

--Marshal Zeringue

"How Americans Enforce the Law"

New from Stanford University Press: How Americans Enforce the Law by Diego Zambrano.

About the book, from the publisher:

In most countries, bureaucratic agencies handle regulatory enforcement. But the United States does things differently. Embedded in statutes governing consumer protection, antitrust, employment, civil rights, and the environment are more than 10,000 "private rights of action"―legal provisions that empower ordinary citizens and their lawyers to enforce the law through lawsuits. This is how Americans regulate everything from wage theft to air pollution to corporate fraud.

How Americans Enforce the Law tells the story of this distinctively American approach to governance. Diego Zambrano reveals that private enforcement is not a modern innovation but an inherited tradition dating to medieval English "penal statutes" that colonial America adopted and intensified. The book traces how this system evolved through critical junctures and was boosted by twentieth-century procedural innovations like broad discovery rules and class actions that transformed scattered statutory clauses into a mass-litigation engine.

This is the first comprehensive account of private enforcement's origins, operations, and future. Offering both celebration and critique, Zambrano shows why private enforcement works well in employment law, for instance, but has been weaponized in environmental law. He creates a framework for determining when this uniquely American form of governance serves the public interest, and when it can be used to undermine democracy.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Now That We Don't Talk"

New from Berkley: Now That We Don't Talk by Rachel Pologe.

About the novel, from the publisher:

A commitment-phobe finds herself stuck spending Hanukkah with her childhood best friend turned nemesis, only for holiday chaos to ensue and complicated feelings to resurface, in this emotionally resonant debut romance.

Norah Gold is a bolter. She avoids emotional situations at all costs, doesn’t do meaningful relationships, and when things get a little too real, she runs. She hasn’t let herself fall in love in nearly a decade, not since her whole world fell apart when her dad suddenly passed away. Desperate to escape a friends-with-benefits situation gone clingy, she returns home to Chicago for the holidays. Her one goal? Avoid Henry Cole, the boy who blew up her life and broke her heart back in high school. Easier said than done when she discovers that their mothers are dating and insist on celebrating the holidays together.

A decade later, Henry Cole is all custom suits and condescension. He is order to her chaos and absolutely insufferable about it. When Norah and Henry get snowed in together and learn just how serious their moms’ relationship is, they call a truce to make it through all eight nights of Hanukkah without setting each other on fire. As they begin to rediscover the foundation that made them so close growing up, Norah is desperate to keep her distance—the last thing she can handle is reopening decade-old emotional wounds. But even though they’ve tried to escape the past, Norah and Henry have unfinished business too pressing to ignore. Can Norah shake off her deep-seated impulse to bolt, or are they destined to flame out just like they did as teenagers?

Visit Rachel Pologe's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Mothering for Capital"

New from Vanderbilt University Press: Mothering for Capital: Labor, Race, and Child "Value" in Neoliberalism by Maria Kromidas.

About the book, from the publisher:

Mothering for Capital offers a bold new interpretation about the crisis of motherhood in neoliberalism. It documents how the drive of capital stealthily subsumes mothering, tethering women’s work, care, and socialization of children, as well as their wishes, fears, and understandings of themselves as mothers, to the imperatives of value accumulation. Through the framework of “good” parenting that maximizes the odds of a child’s “success” in a precarious future, capital orients mothers to cultivate a set of specific cognitive, social, emotional, and psychological traits that shape children as future labor power, the ideal manageable yet self-managed subject. The child is the site of capital’s most audacious aspirations―to flatten and empty human life of all that is superfluous or dangerous to capital. What is ultimately at stake, Kromidas argues, is the subordination or emancipation of the human subject, and Mothering for Capital tracks this hidden terrain of struggle.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Ghost Orchid"

New from Lake Union: Ghost Orchid: A Novel by Dani Cessna.

About the novel, from the publisher:

Deep in the swamps of Florida, a grieving park ranger forms a friendship with a mysterious recluse―and uncovers long-rumored secrets about a plant that raises the dead.

Once ambitious and spontaneous, all park ranger Miranda wants after losing her best friend is stillness. Her new job at Everglades National Park and the rekindled connection with an old flame offer some stability and comfort. But everything changes after a rash decision brings her face-to-face with the so-called swamp witch.

In Estelle, Miranda finds an unexpected friendship. The old woman is feisty, independent, and extraordinarily green-thumbed. Plants, Estelle tells her, have a language of their own. Miranda learns to listen to the whispers of peace lilies and desert roses, and witnesses their uncanny power to heal or reveal hidden truths.

But a hurricane brews off the coast, and tensions rise. Rumors spread about Estelle’s abilities, including her knowledge of the rare ghost orchid said to resurrect the dead―bringing the most dangerous kind of grief to Estelle’s doorstep.

In the lush Everglades, the swamp can grow, transform―or destroy. Miranda discovers that true growth means releasing the grief that keeps us rootbound. And somewhere, in the tangled heart of the swamp, the ghost orchid waits.

Visit Dani Cessna's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Wireheads"

New from Yale University Press: Wireheads: An Unnatural History of Technology in the Brain by Mike Jay.

About the book, from the publisher:

The story of the mavericks and scientists, crackpots and artistic visionaries who imagined a future where machines fuse with our minds

As humanity and technology become ever more tightly interwoven, Wireheads explores the final and most intimate frontier: the brain, and the electronic devices, magnetic signals, implants, and computer interfaces that promise to merge it with the world of the machine. Will these technologies eventually direct our thoughts and behaviour―or are they doing so already? Will they maintain us in states of artificial bliss, or connect us to higher intelligences, or replace the world of our senses with simulated realities?

Mike Jay, acclaimed author of Psychonauts, now traces the tangled, paranoid history of these real and fantastical brain technologies. From the fictions of H. G. Wells and Philip K. Dick to The Matrix, the CIA’s Cold War experiments and Elon Musk’s Neuralink, scientists and visionaries have long chased the dream of neural enhancement and control, with wildly varying degrees of success.

Encompassing covert military operations and psychedelic art, moral philosophy and cybernetic theory, Jay has assembled a thrilling narrative out of our attempts to understand and rewire the brain―and a brilliant meditation on what it means to be human in a posthuman age.

Visit Mike Jay's website.

The Page 99 Test: Mescaline.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Eight Ways to Say I Love You"

New from Berkley: Eight Ways to Say I Love You by Amanda Elliot.

About the book, from the publisher:

A spark of attraction burns brighter each year between childhood friends in this sweeping Hanukkah romance by USA Today bestselling author Amanda Elliot.

This Hanukkah, Shira Levinson is returning home to New Jersey riding the high of achieving major milestones. Though she only just graduated from college, she's got her dream job and a perfect Los Angeles apartment—an actual miracle in the city of dreams.

Life has not been quite as kind to Leo David. Not only did he fail out of college, he was forced to move in with his estranged dad, who he still hates for cheating on his mom years ago. The only silver lining? Getting to see Shira, his childhood friend (and crush, though he’ll never tell her that) while she’s home for her family's holiday party.

But that's just the beginning. Over the next eight years, Shira's and Leo's lives spin them in all sorts of directions as they grow and change, taking them places they never imagined going. Sometimes those paths take them farther away from each other, and other times closer together. If they can only time it right, they might uncover a love that burns forever.

Visit Amanda Elliot's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Shakespeare's Tragedies: What Makes Them Great"

New from Stanford University Press: Shakespeare's Tragedies: What Makes Them Great by Robert N. Watson.

About the book, from the publisher:

A lively and provocative introduction to Shakespeare's five major tragedies, revealing their profoundly sympathetic and illuminating exploration of human experience.

Shakespeare's Tragedies illuminates the majestic beauties and subtle insights of the great playwright's greatest works. Building from a helpful introduction of each tragedy, and progressing to advanced new interpretations, Watson reveals what these famous plays offer us as we confront the heartbreaking aspects of life and the redeeming virtues of our flawed humanity.

Watson shows Romeo and Juliet providing dreamy romance, but also exploring the fears of sexual violence that Juliet must heroically overcome, in a play that marries comedy to tragedy, as love and death intertwine. Analyzing Hamlet's centuries-long worldwide fame, Watson shows how it speaks to our Information (and Disinformation) Age, and why the conventional understanding of the most famous six syllables in all of literature―"To be or not to be"―is misguided and even dangerous.

Tracing the intertwined roles of race, religion, and sexuality in Othello, Watson explores the deep psychological roots of villainy, and shows how the play articulates the tragic costs of believing that love (from a person or a deity) must be bought or deserved, rather than embraced as a miracle. King Lear amplifies those warnings, explodes many complacent certainties, and imposes an ending so multiply shocking that it was hidden for 150 years.

Watson demonstrates how the verbal details of Macbeth produce its psychological intensity and its relentlessly haunting aura, while also teaching environmentalist lessons and lamenting the inescapable double-bind of our ambitions, as individuals and as a species. The book concludes with a rousing advocacy for Shakespeare as an enduring force―across races, nations, genders, and generations―for understanding and justice.

The culmination of Robert N. Watson's distinguished career as a scholar and teacher, Shakespeare's Tragedies explains, in fresh, accessible, and moving ways, why multitudes have treasured this playwright's tragic masterpieces for centuries.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Fallout"

New from Red Hen Press: Fallout: A Novel by Liz Kay.

About the novel, from the publisher:

Fallout is a gripping Cold War-era domestic thriller that delves into the hidden tensions, loyalties, and secrets of American military families stationed in 1980s West Germany. The story blends coming-of-age drama with high-stakes suspense and rich historical detail.

For the military families who live in Benjamin Franklin Village, family life isn’t just family life, but a vital front in the Cold War. It’s a patriotic act, a performance of the American Way. They have backyard cookouts and go to high school football games and try to live like they aren't in a perpetual state of almost-war. They smile outwardly, join social clubs, and hide the unhappiness that goes on behind closed doors. That is, until the Vaughns arrive.

Still reeling from the loss of her mother, sixteen-year-old Samantha Vaughn is a wild child looking for trouble, but when she finds it, her father’s rank means she’s the only kid who won’t pay some kind of price for it. When her social circle shrinks overnight to prissy but pretty Becky Jennings and surly, anti-social David Williams, the frictions between the three of them turn to dangers that none of them recognize. For the women, sturdy, seasoned Army wives Madge Williams and Abby Jennings, Colonel Vaughn’s second wife, Joanne, pulls them out of their ’50s-era military culture and into the modern age. As a newly liberated Madge pushes at the boundaries of an unhappy marriage and Abby struggles to find her place in their changing friendship, Abby’s tight grip on old loyalties keep her from recognizing the threats circling her own family and her friend’s. And when a mysterious package is left on the front step of one of their homes, someone won’t survive the explosive fallout.

Visit Liz Kay's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Stabilizing Empire"

New from the University of California Press: Stabilizing Empire: Psychopharmacy in the US War on Terror by Jocelyn Lim Chua.

About the book, from the publisher:

In 2006, the United States Department of Defense for the first time authorized the use of FDA-approved psychiatric medications in the physical and tactical spaces of military operations including active combat. This policy change overturned a century of military psychiatry orthodoxy, which prioritized non-pathologizing, non-medication treatment for combat stress. Amid an ongoing global war, the US military embraced psychopharmacy as a radical and untested tool for keeping soldiers on the counterinsurgency battlefield and deploying them again and again, even with psychiatric diagnoses. Through powerful storytelling and original analysis, Stabilizing Empire uncovers a quiet revolution during the war on terror: the pharmaceuticalization of battlefield mental health care.

--Marshal Zeringue