"The Glowing Life of Leeann Wu"

New from Crooked Lane Books: The Glowing Life of Leeann Wu: A Novel by Mindy Hung.

About the book, from the publisher:

A seemingly inexplicable magic takes over the lives of three generations of women in this gripping and romantically steamy novel sure to captivate readers of At the Coffee Shop of Curiosities and The Change.

Leeann Wu’s hands have started glowing at the most inconvenient times, and the single mother and midwife doesn’t know why. Could it be perimenopause? A hallucination brought on by a lack of sleep? On top of that concerning development, her daughter is off to university in a few months, her tenuous relationship with her ob-gyn mother is in peril of cracking, and she’s attracted the attention of a younger man who sees far more than she’s comfortable with. Her hands, glowing or not, are already full.

But as widespread insomnia plagues the town and life-threatening accidents begin to pile up, Leeann discovers the glow is not an anomaly at all—rather, she’s part of a long line of women who possess a power unlike anything Leeann’s ever known. Yet, even with the cryptic clues left by her great aunt before her untimely death, Leeann has no idea how to use her new skills.

With her town in imminent danger, Leeann doesn’t have time to waste. She’ll need to make peace with her magical heritage and do whatever it takes to find out if her glow means something more—before it’s too late.

Readers who loved Practical Magic will find lots to love in The Glowing Life of Leeann Wu.

Visit Mindy Hung's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Road to Nowhere"

New from the University of Chicago Press: Road to Nowhere: How a Highway Map Wrecked Baltimore by Emily Lieb.

About the book, from the publisher:

Traces the birth, plunder, and scavenging of Rosemont, a Black middle-class neighborhood in Baltimore.

In the mid-1950s Baltimore’s Rosemont neighborhood was alive and vibrant with smart rowhouses, a sprawling park, corner grocery stores, and doctor’s offices. By 1957, a proposed expressway threatened to gut this Black, middle-class community from stem to stern.

That highway was never built, but it didn’t matter—even the failure to build it destroyed Rosemont economically, if not physically. In telling the history of the neighborhood and the notional East–West Expressway, Emily Lieb shows the interwoven tragedies caused by racism in education, housing, and transportation policy. Black families had been attracted to the neighborhood after Baltimore’s Board of School Commissioners converted several white schools into “colored” ones, which had also laid the groundwork for predatory real-estate agents who bought low from white sellers and sold high to determined Black buyers. Despite financial discrimination, Black homeowners built a thriving community before the city council formally voted to condemn some nine hundred homes in Rosemont for the expressway, leading to deflated home values and even more predatory real estate deals.

Drawing on land records, oral history, media coverage, and policy documents, Lieb demystifies blockbusting, redlining, and prejudicial lending, highlighting the national patterns at work in a single neighborhood. The result is an absorbing story about the deliberate decisions that produced racial inequalities in housing, jobs, health, and wealth—as well as a testament to the ingenuity of the residents who fought to stay in their homes, down to today.

Visit Emily Lieb's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Hollywood Hit Men"

New from Thomas & Mercer: Hollywood Hit Men: A Thriller (Cassidy Clarke) by Michele Domínguez Greene.

About the book, from the publisher:

In this gritty police procedural set in sunny Los Angeles, one detective retires just as his daughter joins the force―but when a serial killer case goes awry, they both have work to do.

When Cassidy Clarke joins the LAPD, she doesn’t plan on following in her father’s footsteps. Veteran detective Bill Clarke has big shoes to fill, but Cassidy has her own path to forge through the department’s tarnished reputation.

She’s just getting started when a string of murders plagues the city: Young women are being strangled in their homes. The media incites an uncontainable frenzy. And no matter how many newspapers they’re splashed across, the Hollywood Hit Men are no closer to being found.

While Cassidy takes to the streets, Bill is knee-deep in cold cases―and conversation with another killer. He’s sure that Tyler Derby committed more murders than they’ve pinned on him, and Derby’s convinced that, without his badge, Bill is no different from him.

As their investigations escalate, Cassidy and Bill find themselves embroiled in a dangerous game without a playbook. And if they can’t figure out the rules, their reputations aren’t all they could lose…

--Marshal Zeringue

"Mobilizing Hope"

New from the University of Nebraska Press: Mobilizing Hope, Fighting for Change: Food Sovereignty Movements and Alliance Making in the United States by Anthony R. Pahnke.

About the book, from the publisher:

Mobilizing Hope, Fighting for Change analyzes an unusual development in social movement studies and food politics more generally: the formation of an interracial alliance of farmers and farm workers who together demand transformative changes to U.S. agriculture by calling for food sovereignty. Such an alliance, as Anthony R. Pahnke shows, is unusual given how social movement alliances in the United States, particularly those related to agrarian issues, have historically been deeply divided by race and occupation.

Pahnke’s study offers a novel theory for social movement alliance formation, focusing especially on the dynamics of learning. He documents how since the 1980s there have been unprecedented openings for people to work together due to the rise of transnational activist networks, changes in the international political economy, and evolving forms of state authority.

Foregrounding the voices of activists, Mobilizing Hope, Fighting for Change compares the trajectories of four U.S.-based movements over time—the Mvskoke Food Sovereignty Initiative based in Oklahoma, the Family Farm Defenders of Wisconsin, the Farmworker Association of Florida, and the Mississippi Association of Cooperatives—documenting how they have united in demanding food sovereignty while remaining distinct from one another.

Visit Anthony R. Pahnke's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Hotel Melikov"

New from CamCat Publishing: Hotel Melikov by Jonathan Payne.

About the book, from the publisher:

Not every fishmonger can be a double agent.

Return to an unnamed mountainous country in central Europe on the cusp of civil war. Enter once again Citizen Orlov, a former fishmonger who is now the Minister of Security for a government teetering on collapse. When tensions between the government and revolutionaries erupt, Orlov, hoping to escape the conflict and return to his normal life, is instead recruited by both sides to spy on the other.

With war raging around them, the new king and his ministers are whisked away for safety to the highest point in the kingdom, the convent at the peak of Mount Zhotrykaw. But all is not what it seems at the convent, including the nuns, and Orlov discovers a sinister plot that forces him to choose whose side he is on.

Visit Jonathan Payne's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Melville's Maritime Politics"

New from Oxford University Press: Melville's Maritime Politics: Enlightenment at Sea by David Mence.

About the book, from the publisher:

Melville's Maritime Politics: Enlightenment at Sea offers a new account of the political thought of Herman Melville (1819-1891). Reading Melville in dialogue with Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and Kant, it shows how his works spoke back to the Founders' competing visions of America, as well as to the more immediate and pressing concerns of his own period. Tracing the ship of state metaphor throughout Melville's oeuvre, it charts the evolution of his views on the theory and practice of American democracy, beginning with the Romantic Federalism of Typee and Omoo and ending in the 'tragic pragmatism' of Battle-Pieces and Billy Budd, Sailor.

The book argues that Melville's vision of politics was shaped by the early Republican-Federalist debate, which sought to construe the meaning of the American Revolution in light of the French Revolution. Melville's works are frequently hostile towards the idea of a 'natural republic' (a polity based on 'virtue' and 'natural right' rather than 'sovereignty' or 'the rule of law'). This is nowhere more evident than in Moby-Dick, which dramatizes the shipwreck of the American Republic, a catastrophe wrought by Ahab's quest to slay the Leviathan (i.e. the State). Across six chapters, Mence presents Melville's political vision as one of "perpetual upkeep at sea": the ship of state must be sailed and repaired on the open ocean even as, to borrow from Moby-Dick, the "wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore."

--Marshal Zeringue

"Leave It on the Track"

New from Dutton Children’s Books: Leave It on the Track by Margot Fisher.

About the book, from the publisher:

From Reese's Book Club LitUp Fellow Margot Fisher, a moving debut about healing, self-acceptance, and queer first love, set on a roller derby team

Morgan “Moose” Shaker barely survived the fire that killed her fathers in their beloved roller rink in small-town Utah. Now she has to move to Portland, Oregon to live with her much older half sister, Eden. Eden’s doing her best, but she’s hardly ready to be a parent to a sixteen-year-old she hasn’t seen in years. Plus, barely-out-of-the-closet Moose worries that she’s not ready for super-affirming, rainbow-flags-everywhere Portland. Her anxiety and frustration are at peak levels.

Fortunately, Moose finds an outlet for her emotions and a surprising group of friends in roller derby. Her teammates help her grieve her dads and confront her queer imposter syndrome. And even though it's against league rules, she might be falling for a teammate.

Heartfelt, funny, and romantic, this debut will make you want to lace up your skates, pull on your pads, and hit the track.

Visit Margot Fisher's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Almond Paradox"

New from the University of California Press: The Almond Paradox: Cracking Open the Politics of What Plants Need by Emily Reisman.

About the book, from the publisher:

Almonds have become a poster crop for agriculture's environmental controversies. Notorious for consuming vast volumes of water and trucking honeybees across the continent, California's almond orchards appear extraordinarily needy. In Spain, however, almond trees have long epitomized the exact opposite: rain-fed resilience. Often planted at the margins of agricultural viability, almonds are championed for their ecological thrift rather than their thirst. How is it that a crop can be known in such radically different ways? The Almond Paradox explores a captivating contrast between divergent ways of knowing not only how much water or pollination almond trees need, but also which trees should be grown and where. Charting the buildup to a global almond boom, the book exposes how situated histories of capitalism, land, science, and the state profoundly shape the most fundamental ways of understanding agriculture. A recognition of knowledge as place based further reveals how seemingly placeless efficiency deepens ecological precarity.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Falling Apart and Other Gifts from the Universe"

New from Lake Union: Falling Apart and Other Gifts from the Universe: A Novel by Catherine Ryan Hyde.

About the book, from the publisher:

Two disparate people―lost in their own way―find an unexpected healing connection in a poignant novel about redemption and chosen family by New York Times bestselling author Catherine Ryan Hyde.

An army veteran with a career as a beat cop behind her, security guard Addie Finch is tough―on the outside. Internally, she’s in crisis mode. She’s lonely, introverted, struggling through AA, estranged from her son, and, at sixty-two years old, questioning her role as a protector. She also has a soft spot for the underdog that’s about to change her life.

Addie finds Jonathan, a homeless teenager abandoned by his mother, holed up in a warehouse and vulnerable to the elements and to predators. Touched by the boy’s gentle nature and a wisdom beyond his years, Addie offers him temporary shelter in her garden shed in exchange for maintaining the sprawling property. It’s an act of kindness and purpose that means the world to Jonathan. But when Addie faces a situation that sends her internal world tumbling, the emotional connection with Jonathan, once the unlikeliest of strangers, becomes her lifeline as well.

As both process past traumas, Addie and Jonathan forge a surrogate grandmother-grandson bond―a chosen family that could restore trust and heal hearts they thought were broken forever.

Visit Catherine Ryan Hyde's website.

Q&A with Catherine Ryan Hyde.

The Page 69 Test: Brave Girl, Quiet Girl.

The Page 69 Test: My Name is Anton.

The Page 69 Test: Seven Perfect Things.

The Page 69 Test: Boy Underground.

The Page 69 Test: Dreaming of Flight.

The Page 69 Test: So Long, Chester Wheeler.

The Page 69 Test: A Different Kind of Gone.

The Page 69 Test: Life, Loss, and Puffins.

The Page 69 Test: Rolling Toward Clear Skies.

The Page 69 Test: Michael Without Apology.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Borícua Muslims"

New from the University of Texas Press: Borícua Muslims: Everyday Cosmopolitanism among Puerto Rican Converts to Islam by Ken Chitwood.

About the book, from the publisher:

The stories and struggles of Puerto Rican Muslims in modern day America.

Among Puerto Rican converts to Islam, marginalization is a fact of daily life. Their “authenticity” is questioned by other Muslims and by fellow Borícua on the island and in the United States. At the same time, they exist under the shadow of US colonization and as Muslims in the context of American empire. To be a Puerto Rican Muslim, then, is to negotiate identity at numerous intersections of diversity and difference.

Drawing on years of ethnographic research and more than a hundred interviews conducted in Puerto Rico, New York, Florida, Texas, New Jersey, and online, Ken Chitwood tells the story of Puerto Rican Muslims as they construct a shared sense of peoplehood through everyday practices. Borícua Muslims thus provides a study of cosmopolitanism not as a political ideal but as a mundane social reality—a reality that complicates scholarly and public conversations about race, ethnicity, and religion in the Americas. Expanding the geography of global Islam and recasting the relationship between religion and Puerto Rican culture, Borícua Muslims is an insightful reckoning with the manifold entanglements of identity amid late-modern globalization.

Visit Ken Chitwood's website.

--Marshal Zeringue