"Beignets and Big Feelings"

Coming October 13 from Lake Union: Beignets and Big Feelings: A Novel by Leslie Gray Streeter.

About the novel, from the publisher:

A grandma’s dying wish results in a weeklong scavenger hunt designed to reunite a family in a heartfelt and hilarious journey by the author of Family & Other Calamities.

When Grandma Olivia Hollis passes away, her funeral reunites four generations of heirs, complete with a surprise will. Grandma has orchestrated a New Orleans scavenger hunt for her female relatives, determined to bring her family back together if it’s the last thing she does. Everyone game? If not, no one gets a dime.

Of course, Grandma, bless her meddling heart, has other motives in mind for all of them. Especially for her guarded sister, Mona, who fled decades ago and never looked back. Following a preplanned itinerary for one revelatory week, the women find themselves on a Mississippi River jazz cruise, braving a bayou swamp tour, uncovering forgotten histories in old cemeteries, rekindling former flames, and, just as Grandma planned, unlocking what they’ve hidden from each other for far too long.

Amid beignets, popcorn shrimp, and chicory coffee―so bitter and sweet―these women just might discover that no matter what awaits them at the end, the real treasure is becoming the family they were meant to be.

Visit Leslie Gray Streeter's website.

My Book, The Movie: Family & Other Calamities.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Action Bodies"

New from the University of Texas Press: Action Bodies: VFX, Identity, and Embodiment in Blockbuster Cinema by Drew Ayers.

About the book, from the publisher:

Exploring how digital visual effects have changed the representations of the body and identity in action films.

When Harrison Ford appeared digitally de-aged in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, audiences witnessed more than a technical feat; they saw how visual effects are reshaping what bodies can be on screen. In Action Bodies, Drew Ayers examines how the contemporary action genre redefines embodiment across human, superhuman, animal, and machine forms. Ayers argues that action films are a crucial site for understanding how popular media both reflect and shape cultural debates about identity, citizenship, disability, and ethics in the era of big data and algorithmic culture.

Through case studies including Top Gun: Maverick, The Woman King, The Fast & the Furious franchise, and Avatar: The Way of Water, Ayers explores how VFX-altered bodies carry ideological weight. While the action genre has long leaned conservative in its politics of identity, its digitally mediated bodies also generate unexpected opportunities: glimpses of more inclusive and flexible modes of embodiment. As artificial intelligence and synthetic imagery continue to transform film production, Action Bodies demonstrates why careful attention to action cinema is essential for understanding how contemporary culture imagines and engineers the future of the body.

--Marshal Zeringue

"A Dangerous Bargain"

Coming September 22 from Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers: A Dangerous Bargain by Erin Cotter.

About the book, from the publisher:

A young artist who has bargained away most of his life for divine inspiration pairs up with fellow apprentice Leonardo da Vinci to infiltrate the Medici family and find out the truth about his missing brother in this Renaissance-set young adult mystery perfect for fans of F.T. Lukens.

It’s the height of the Italian Renaissance. In the golden city of Florence, art is equal to holiness—and angels walk among us, bestowing their talents…for a price.

Seventeen-year-old artist Virgil is in trouble. To support his family, he’s bargained most of his life away to an angel—only to discover that his missing brother is in danger, and nothing but magic can rescue him. Now, with just a few months left to live, Virgil is desperate enough to try the one thing he swore he would never, ever do—team up with the infuriating, annoyingly talented, and most notorious playboy in all of Florence, the charming Leonardo da Vinci.

As the two journey through Florence’s gilded streets, luxurious cathedrals, and glorious Medici palaces, they unearth dark truths beneath the city’s facade.

Those in power will do anything to keep their deadly secrets safe, but with his feelings for Leonardo giving him new life, Virgil is determined to expose their lies before he runs out of time.

Even if it might cost him his soul.

Visit Erin Cotter's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Mis(s) Communication"

New from Rutgers University Press: Mis(s) Communication: Stigma and the Miss America Organization by Rebecca J. Meisenbach.

About the book, from the publisher:

Mis(s) Communication: Stigma and the Miss America Organization explores the one-hundred-year history of the Miss America Organization (MAO) as a site of stigma management. Through five years of ethnographic, archival, and interview-based research, Rebecca J. Meisenbach shows how pageant participation is both valorized and stigmatized―making MAO a key lens for studying stigma as a dynamic, power-laden communication process. The book examines stigma across individual, organizational, and societal levels, focusing on moments like Rule Seven, which once barred nonwhite participants, and the 1968 protest by the New York Radical Women alongside the first Miss Black America pageant. Meisenbach also investigates how contestants navigate stigma tied to intelligence, body image, and the sexualization of women. She analyzes MAO’s 2018 elimination of the swimsuit competition as a stigma management move and its recent shift to a for-profit model under Miss America Opportunity. The book ultimately argues for understanding stigma as communicative and deeply intersectional.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Broken Glass Houses"

New from Lake Union: Broken Glass Houses by Lorna Lewis.

About the book, from the publisher:

When secrets are unleashed, two women must navigate a friendship tested to the extreme in an emotional novel of psychological suspense by the author of A Sky Full of Love.

In an affluent Louisiana community, Parker Montgomery has reached the pinnacle of success. Wealthy, influential, and unimpeachably respected, she’s attending a gala in her honor. Amid the applause Parker sees a ghost from her past―a ghost who knows her daughter’s dark secret. In a heartbeat, Parker’s carefully constructed life begins to unravel. Hers isn’t the only one.

Parker’s best friend, Carmen, consumed by her own family tragedy, is at a breaking point. Parker is Carmen’s last remaining anchor to sanity. She’s willing to do anything to protect her, to save her from what’s hidden in the past, and to make Parker see what’s truly important. All it takes for Carmen is one shocking decision that sends both of them spiraling.

Two women, two families under threat, and one desperate act that forces Parker and Carmen to confront whether their bond can survive the painful truths about identity, loyalty, and a friendship built on lies.

Visit Lorna Lewis's website.

The Page 69 Test: A Sky Full of Love.

Q&A with Lorna Lewis.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Speaking Parts"

New from Princeton University Press: Speaking Parts: Conversation, Character, and Social Worlds in Nineteenth-Century British Novels by Tara Menon.

About the book, from the publisher:

How direct speech in the novel shapes our understanding of literary characters and their social worlds

For many readers, to think of nineteenth-century fiction is to recall characters speaking: Elizabeth refusing Darcy in Pride and Prejudice; Jane excoriating Rochester in Jane Eyre; Dorothea and Celia discussing Mr. Casaubon in Middlemarch. And yet literary critics have had surprisingly little to say about the narrative effects of dialogue. In Speaking Parts, Tara Menon shows how direct speech—words enclosed in quotation marks that appear to be the exact utterances of characters—shapes our understanding of fictional characters and the social worlds they inhabit. Combining computational tools and close literary analysis, Menon reinstates direct speech to its rightful place in narrative theory, worthy of the critical seriousness afforded to such other features of narrative as free indirect discourse.

After quantifying direct speech in nearly one thousand British novels written between 1789 and 1901, Menon turns her attention to several canonical nineteenth-century works of fiction by Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, and George Eliot. She considers, among other things, the ways that Austen establishes sympathy for certain characters through her allotment of speech; the narrative significance of speaking characters not given proper names in Jane Eyre; and the social isolation of Dorothea in Middlemarch, as revealed by speech networks. Menon shows not only how the study of direct speech allows us to make new arguments about these well-known texts but also that data analysis of speech can change the way we think about characters, individual novels, and even genres.

Visit Tara Menon's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"#AuthorLife"

New from Bad Hand Books: #AuthorLife by Joe Zagets.

About the book, from the publisher:

Writing novels wasn't supposed to be a blood sport. After selling his first thriller novel for six figures, Mackenzie "Mack" Lane quit his job as a journalist to become a full-time author. But now, a few years later, his career is spiraling downward. With each book doing worse than the last, he fears his status as a Boring White Dude is partly to blame. With his bank accounts dwindling, Mack has to find a way to make more money: his ex-wife wants to send their son to a private high school, and his current wife wants to have a baby. Mack begs his agent and editor to sing the praises of his new novel and do everything in their power to encourage his publisher's marketing team to make the book a bestseller. But as Pub Day for his fourth novel approaches—without the interviews and publicity he'd so hoped for—Mack knows his book is in trouble. And with it, his career and personal life. Growing more desperate, Mack concocts a risky and more-or-less unethical idea for a publicity stunt. His agent, Wallis Wallace, reluctantly goes along with it—after all, if it works, she stands to gain 15% of his windfall. And if it doesn't work, Mack is the one who will suffer the consequences of being ridiculed and cancelled. #AuthorLife is a satire about an author who gets the wrong sort of inspiration from his dying career—because publishing is a bloody hard business.

Visit Joe Zaget's Instagram page.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Psychopath and the Twentieth-Century American Novel"

New from Cambridge University Press: The Psychopath and the Twentieth-Century American Novel by Frederick Whiting.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Psychopath and the Twentieth-Century American Novel examines the psychopath as a new kind of monster. Frederick Whiting reads novels – ranging from pulp fiction to belles lettres – that draw on science, law, and popular journalism to try to explain this threatening new creature. Through these readings, this book uncovers the ways in which the figure of the psychopath that populated so many twentieth-century American novels expressed cultural anxieties about sexuality, race, gender, and class – even as the psychopath marked the shifting boundaries of the category of 'the human.' Whiting offers an interdisciplinary analysis showing how literature, science, law, and popular journalism inform each other. Ultimately, he concludes, this episode in the genealogy of monstrosity amounts to a transformation in the evolving concept of the monstrous itself – from a violation of our nature to a violation of our narratives.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The River Runs Black"

Coming October 6 from Severn House: The River Runs Black (A North Country Novel, 2) by Tessa Wegert.

About the book, from the publisher:

James Patterson meets Louise Penny: New York’s Thousand Islands are set to lose their battle against drugs in this pulse-pounding police procedural from acclaimed author Tessa Wegert.

A small town on the water where things aren’t as perfect as they look...

After the recent death of a teenager by overdose, a record drug seizure along the Canadian border is a game changer for New York State’s criminal investigation team. The detectives are relieved that the haul will never make it to the idyllic small-town streets of Alexandria Bay.

But drugs are still circulating, and the lab results confirm it: the cocaine that killed the teenager and the cocaine from the bust are not the same.

Investigator Tim Wellington and his team seem to be chasing a network of ghosts who use the North Country as their criminal playground.

How long will it be until another Thousand Islands youth becomes not just a victim, but a target? Because the dangerous players won’t shy away from violence when protecting their valuable goods―even if it means gambling with innocent lives...

This twisty mystery coupled with heart-pounding suspense will appeal to fans of the Chief Inspector Gamache Mysteries and the Alex Cross thrillers, as well as books by Meg Gardiner, Ann Cleeves, and Ruth Ware.

Visit Tessa Wegert's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Dead Season.

The Page 69 Test: The Dead Season.

Q&A with Tessa Wegert.

The Page 69 Test: Dead Wind.

Writers Read: Tessa Wegert (April 2022).

Writers Read: Tessa Wegert (December 2022).

The Page 69 Test: Devils at the Door.

The Page 69 Test: The Coldest Case.

Writers Read: Tessa Wegert (November 2025).

--Marshal Zeringue

'The Literary Agency of Medieval Women"

New from Oxford University Press: The Literary Agency of Medieval Women: Kunigund Niklasin and the Library of St. Catherine's in Nuremberg by Sara S. Poor.

About the book, from the publisher:

What do we miss when we see women's agency only through the lens of transgression? What happens when we expand our notion of authorship to include women who were writing books but not necessarily composing 'original' texts? To answer these questions, Sara Poor explores the writing work of the prolific nun, Kunigund Niklasin (d. 1457), scribe and compiler of at least thirty-one books by the 1450s, and the librarian for her convent's large and singular library (close to 600 German-language manuscripts). Appointed to the office of librarian sometime after the convent underwent observant reform in 1428, Niklasin created two inventories of the convent's books, one of privately owned books, the other of the convent library. The latter was part of a unique manual designed to facilitate table reading, the reading (aloud) that took place during daily meals. The analysis of this table reading manual reveals that there is in fact a wide range of writing activity attributable to women in this period.

Building on scholarship about women's literacy, as well as about the connections between women in fifteenth-century reformed convents and what has been called an explosion of literary production in German-speaking areas, The Literary Agency of Medieval Women explores the wider implications of this rich resource for a more inclusive theory of female agency, an expanded notion of authorship, and a nuanced appreciation of the important roles of medieval women as writers--and authors--in the history of the book.

--Marshal Zeringue