"The Fist of Memory"

Coming soon from DAW: The Fist of Memory by Wole Talabi.

About the book, from the publisher:

A strange alien spacecraft suddenly appears in the sky in this electrifying, action-packed first contact novel set in near-future Nigeria from award-winning author Wole Talabi

A hard science-fiction novel featuring an assassin-for-hire, a witchdoctor, and an astronomer, this fast-paced thriller is perfect for fans of Arrival

When a non-communicative alien spacecraft suddenly appears in the sky, global powers are thrown into turmoil.

But for Tope, a principled Nigerian assassin with a talent for lethality in the employ of the mysterious witchdoctor known as "Baba," it’s all just business as usual. At least until a job goes wrong, and Tope is caught in the scramble—a high stakes game of power and politics for the future that is to come. Joined by Itumeleng, a South African astronomer plagued by mysterious dreams, they must find a way to survive, navigate their complicated pasts, and come to understand how they, and all of humanity, are connected to the alien craft before it lands and the world changes forever. But it won’t be easy. There are sinister forces marshalled against them, including a strange assassin obsessed with a single memory.

The Fist Of Memory is a first contact thriller unlike any other; a meditation on the nature of reality, memory and connectedness.

Visit Wole Talabi's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Echoes of Brazil"

New from Oxford University Press: Echoes of Brazil: The Musical Experiences of Brazilian Ancestry in West Africa by Juan Diego Díaz.

About the book, from the publisher:

The stretch of coast between Accra and Lagos is home to four distinct national communities who identify as descendants of Brazilians: the Tabom in Ghana, the Brésiliens in Togo, the Agudas in Benin, and the Amaros in Nigeria. These communities were established by people who migrated from Brazil to West Africa in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, forming what is arguably Brazil's oldest diaspora. Despite their historical, cultural, and physical separation from Brazil, they maintain a strong sense of Brazilianness through music, dance, and religious practices. Echoes of Brazil explores how these communities use music and dance to preserve, celebrate, and negotiate their complex allegiances--to Brazil, to the ethnic groups they have integrated into, to their West African nations, and to the broader Black Atlantic community.

Juan Diego Díaz argues that music is an ideal medium for the emergence of experiences where sound, emotion, and discourse about Brazilian ancestry can coalesce and reinforce one another. The diasporic condition of Brazilian-descendant communities in West Africa is therefore primarily grounded in deeply embodied experiences, rather than solely in discourse. To support this argument, Díaz adopts a phenomenological approach, focusing on people's embodied experiences during both inter- and intra-community musical encounters. He documents how musicians from these communities deploy their signature genres--agbe, burrinha, and the characteristic combination of gbókùs and meboi--at home, during visits to each other, and even on trips to Brazil.

This is the first study to examine these four communities in tandem rather than separately. Echoes of Brazil underscores the importance of transnational connections within West Africa, Brazil, and the Black Atlantic, challenging conventional notions of home and diaspora.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Way We Become"

New from Margaret K. McElderry Books: The Way We Become (Part of The Way I Used to Be) by Amber Smith.

About the book, from the publisher:

Eden and her fellow survivors look to the future in this powerful story of justice, autonomy, and healing told in multiple points of view—the powerful conclusion to the Way I Used to Be trilogy from internationally bestselling author Amber Smith.

Eden struggled to find her voice for years after her brother’s friend Kevin raped her. It wasn’t until Kevin’s ex-girlfriend Gen and his sister, Amanda, came forward, that Eden knew she wasn’t alone. Determined to do everything in their power to pursue justice, Eden, Amanda, and Gen testified against Kevin in a trial that turned their lives inside out.

In the wake of the judge’s decision, they are now expected to move on—all while grappling with the hurt and grief that are never far behind. Amanda is adrift finishing high school, Eden is still learning what it means to be in a healthy relationship, and college dropout Gen is struggling to find direction at all. On three different paths toward healing, each girl has to chart her own course forward to discover the woman she’ll become.

Visit Amber Smith's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Country House at War"

New from Yale University Press: The Country House at War: A Story of Loss, Reinvention and the Birth of a New Britain by Judith S. Lewis.

About the book, from the publisher:

The story of how English country houses were repurposed during the Second World War, told through the lives of those who lived and worked in them

In the Second World War, country houses across England were requisitioned by the government for the war effort. These homes opened their doors to evacuated children, were transformed into hospitals, and played host to training camps for the armed forces. The care of the estates was often left to young women and the elderly, who had to completely change the running of their homes to accommodate essential wartime activities.

In this fascinating history, Judith S. Lewis explores the lives of country houses during the Second World War. Some homes were requisitioned for intelligence operations, like Audley End, which was used as the headquarters of the Polish Section of SOE, whereas others, like West Wycombe, were used to house artefacts of national importance. Examining the long legacy of the war, Lewis reveals why some houses survived, whether as family homes, museums, or public parks, while others simply disappeared altogether.

Follow Judith S. Lewis on Facebook.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Dark Messiah"

Coming soon from Navigator: Dark Messiah: A Novel by Sara Z. Carson.

About the novel, from the publisher:

A riveting debut novel telling the story of a teenage girl and her mother caught in the web of a sinister cult leader whose optimistic vision of hope descends into apocalyptic horror in the jungles of South America.

In 1975 San Francisco, 15-year-old Nell’s world has been ripped apart by her younger sister’s sudden, tragic death and her parents’ subsequent divorce. As her mother desperately reaches out for solace from any quarter―new hobbies, new philosophies, new relationships―a boyfriend leads her into the cult of a charismatic man known as Father. His message of peace and healing proves irresistible, and soon Nell and her mother join his mysterious Church of the People.

As they are drawn increasingly into the vortex of the Church, the community comes to consume their lives, and Nell’s concerns begin to build. She becomes enrolled in the school they operate, is intimidated into adopting their ways of dressing and acting, and is removed from her home.

At the same time, the dangers lurking in the cult’s shadows emerge: threats, physical abuse, and the sudden disappearances of members to Father’s new “utopian” community deep in the jungles of South America. When Nell is secreted there alongside their fellow followers, they come under Father’s power as never before―with horrific and devastating consequences.

By turns sensitive and shocking, powerful and poignant, Dark Messiah is a story of a girl becoming a woman as her life is stolen from her―and a mesmerizing debut from a new voice in contemporary fiction.

Visit Sara Z. Carson's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Chekhov's Antidotes"

New from Stanford University Press: Chekhov's Antidotes: Prescriptions for an Age of Unrest by Yuri Corrigan.

About the book, from the publisher:

A rousing tour through Chekhov's stories and plays, with lessons for managing troubled times

For all his immense literary fame, Anton Chekhov is underappreciated as a thinker. Widely regarded as a purveyor of gloom and indecision, Chekhov was in fact a reparative moral philosopher who fought back against the pathologies of a divided and dysfunctional age. In the face of emergent revolution and civil war, Chekhov wrote about the polarization, apathy, and fanaticism that were driving his society towards self-destruction. In Chekhov's Antidotes, Corrigan offers a bold reassessment of why Chekhov's thought matters, both for his own time and for ours.

Telling the story of Chekhov's career in a new light, Corrigan approaches the plays, letters, and short stories as puzzle pieces in larger reparative meditations. New readings of "House with a Mezzanine" and Uncle Vanya yield practical reflections on how to heal and resist culture war. In "The Student" and The Cherry Orchard, Corrigan probes Chekhov's thoughts for alleviating modern strains of sloth, loneliness, and despair. And, tracing Chekhov's monumental study of the dangers of unskilled empathy through such works as "Breakdown," "Ward Six," and "The Wife," Corrigan discerns a call for a new concept of activism in the face of what cannot be repaired. Chekhov emerges from these readings as a voice of sanity and wisdom for an age of unrest.

Chekhov offers no panaceas for the pathologies of modern life, only pragmatic meditations on how to salvage an irreparably broken world, and on how to cultivate meaning, dignity, and integrity as incurably fragmented human subjects―lessons we can all use in our current divisive era, in the shadow of our own looming crises.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Night of the Mallrats"

New from Harper Perennial: Night of the Mallrats: A Novel by Nicolina Torres.

About the book, from the publisher:

Five friends travel back to the 1990s to solve the brutal murder and disappearance of two of their high school peers in this thrilling debut novel from a promising new voice in horror—a murderous, nightmarish romp that is nostalgic, terrifying, and impossible to put down.

Shop ’til you drop . . . dead

Colleen’s life feels as hollow as the abandoned Beechnut Mall—the 90s hangout where neon lights and endless laughter defined her teens thirty years before. When her old high school clique reassembles for one last night of rebellion inside the now condemned building, she joins them, never expecting the mall to give something back. The reunited friends do not know that inside its darkened halls, the past is waiting, and it’s not all Glamour Shots, Beanie Babies, and Lisa Frank.

Faced with their lost youth, they are drawn back into the mystery of Beth Packard—a schoolmate who vanished in 1994—and without warning, they find themselves transported to the mall in its heyday on the very night Beth disappeared. Thrust back three decades, the former mallrats must unravel the secrets hidden beneath memories, lies, and betrayals before time snaps shut around them. But each step closer to the truth of Beth’s disappearance brings them within reach of exposing ugly, fatal truths about each other.

Haunting, wistful, pulse-pounding fun, Night of the Mallrats is a time-travel thriller that asks a question with an unforgettable answer: What really happened to Beth Packard?

Visit Nicolina Torres's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Recognizing Reality"

New from Northwestern University Press: Recognizing Reality: German Realism and the Mediation of Presence by Jessica C. Resvick.

About the book, from the publisher:

Reveals how literary scenes of recognition stage the process of coming to know reality

In this deeply researched and thought-provoking study, Jessica C. Resvick traces nineteenth-century German realist writing’s paradoxical investment in mediated accounts of the world and the direct, unfiltered experience of reality. Focusing on the motif and operation of recognition in its Aristotelean sense, Resvick examines self-reflexive narratives in which the authors struggle to resolve this tension between the media they choose and the immediacy they hope to create.

Through close readings of key works by canonical authors such as E. T. A. Hoffmann, Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, Adalbert Stifter, Gottfried Keller, and Wilhelm Raabe, Resvick demonstrates the medially influenced and historically contingent ways in which they represent reality. Each chapter focuses on a different form of recognition, reconstructing the techniques that allow these authors to generate an effect of presence. Exploring the history and poetics of knowledge exchange, Recognizing Reality: German Realism and the Mediation of Presence expands on recent media histories of realism, examining the material bases for realist aesthetics while also investigating media’s epistemological accomplishments, and astutely elaborates the role of recognition as a medium-specific tool.

Visit Jessica C. Resvick's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Beneath the Edelweiss"

Coming October 20 from Little A: Beneath the Edelweiss: A Novel by Elizabeth Noel.

About the book, from the publisher:

From a poetic new voice in historical fiction comes a story of resistance, community, and survival set against the breathtaking backdrop of the Austrian Alps and the heartbreaking onset of World War II.

Growing up on a farm, high among the flowering slopes of Carinthia, Mitzi Hausler has never fit in―not even with her own family. At thirteen, she’s no taller than a six-year-old, and her peers’ taunts of “Witchy Mitzi” follow her everywhere. Thankfully, she has her loyal pup for comfort. And Oma, the grandmother who raised her.

But Oma, a gifted herbalist, won’t be around forever. She vows to pass on her knowledge before it’s too late, sharing her mysterious alpine remedies with Mitzi. With no marriage prospects, herbs may be Mitzi's only path forward. Indeed, when resources grow tight, her resentful older sister sends Mitzi away to Talend to care for a grieving widower and his sickly young child.

In the town, against all odds, Mitzi’s life gradually blooms into something unexpected and she discovers she belongs. But when political violence and Nazi eugenic policies come to town, she’s forced to make a life-altering choice.

Visit Elizabeth Noel's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Walden Experiments"

New from Princeton University Press: The Walden Experiments: The Science of Henry David Thoreau by Robert Thorson.

About the book, from the publisher:

Reading Thoreau as a scientist for modern times

Henry David Thoreau’s Walden stands as the foundational text for the environmental movement and as a model for the practice of nature writing. In The Walden Experiments, Robert Thorson tells the story of how, after several discarded drafts of social critique, Thoreau resuscitated Walden with a sharp swerve toward science. Thorson invites us to read—or reread—Walden to discover the observations, empirical thinking, and scientific explanations supporting this canonical work of literature. Chapter by chapter, he guides us through Walden’s relevance for such contemporary scientific concerns as climate change, ecological collapse, water supply, agriculture, artificial intelligence, and technology.

Thoreau's first “experiment” of living deliberately took place in a one-room house at Walden Pond from 1845 to 1847. This was followed from 1851 to 1852 by a little-known second experiment of trying to live deliberately in the midst of society as a sojourning scientist. Thorson’s account of a science-revitalized version of Walden helps us appreciate Thoreau's masterpiece not only for its prophetic, lyrical, uplifting, witty, and timeless advice on living sustainably, but also as a historic benchmark for anchoring our modern solutions. Exploring the science that underlies Walden enhances our understanding of the deeper meanings Thoreau draws from nature.

Visit Robert Thorson's website.

--Marshal Zeringue