"Alt-Right Gangs: A Hazy Shade of White"

New from the University of California Press: Alt-Right Gangs A Hazy Shade of White by Shannon E. Reid and Matthew Valasik.

About the book, from the publisher:

Alt-Right Gangs provides a timely and necessary discussion of youth-oriented groups within the white power movement. Focusing on how these groups fit into the current research on street gangs, Shannon E. Reid and Matthew Valasik catalog the myths and realities around alt-right gangs and their members; illustrate how they use music, social media, space, and violence; and document the risk factors for joining an alt-right gang, as well as the mechanisms for leaving. By presenting a way to understand the growth, influence, and everyday operations of these groups, Alt-Right Gangs informs students, researchers, law enforcement members, and policy makers on this complex subject. Most significantly, the authors offer an extensively evaluated set of prevention and intervention strategies that can be incorporated into existing anti-gang initiatives. With a clear, coherent point of view, this book offers a contemporary synthesis that will appeal to students and scholars alike.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Unspoken"

New from Thomas & Mercer: The Unspoken by Ian K. Smith.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Unspoken is the launch of a new series featuring black Chicago private investigator Ashe Cayne and takes on racism, police brutality and corruption. A former cop, Cayne had stood up to his superiors against a cover-up involving the wrongful death of a young black man and found himself pushed out of the force. He’s determined to persevere on his own terms as a P.I.

When a young white woman named Tinsley Gerrigan goes missing, her wealthy parents from the North Shore hire Cayne to find her. As he looks into her life and past, Cayne finds out that Tinsley and her family have been keeping secrets. Then Tinsley’s boyfriend, Tariq “Chopper” McNair from Chicago’s West Side, is found dead—another disregarded black man murdered on the tough Chicago streets. Cayne is certain that locating the missing girl is the key to finding Chopper’s murderer. But what he discovers is much more: a massive scandal that encompasses race, class and privilege in a city that is home to both the exceedingly prosperous and those who are struggling and disadvantaged.

Visit Ian K. Smith's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"A Stranger at the Door"

Coming January 12, 2021: A Stranger at the Door (A Rachel Marin Thriller) by Jason Pinter.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the Amazon bestselling author of Hide Away comes the gripping second installment of the Rachel Marin Thriller series.

Rachel Marin is in a good place. After years of struggle, the single mother has found both a stable, loving relationship and a new purpose: putting her investigative skills to work solving crimes for the local PD. But just as the pieces of her life are finally starting to fall into place, her teenaged son’s teacher is gruesomely murdered, starting a domino effect that shatters her peaceful existence.

When Rachel discovers an ominous email the teacher sent to her just before his death, she knows she must help bring his killer to justice. But soon a figure from her past reappears, threatening to expose Rachel’s darkest secrets if she doesn’t tread lightly. And when her son is recruited by a shadowy businessman who may be connected to the murder, Rachel knows this has just gotten very, very personal.

Someone out there is dead set on keeping this grisly cover-up good and buried, which means if Rachel’s not careful, it’s only a matter of time before her dream life becomes her worst nightmare.

Visit Jason Pinter's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Step It Up and Go"

New from the University of North Carolina Press: Step It Up and Go: The Story of North Carolina Popular Music, from Blind Boy Fuller and Doc Watson to Nina Simone and Superchunk by David Menconi.

About the book, from the publisher:

This book is a love letter to the artists, scenes, and sounds defining North Carolina’s extraordinary contributions to American popular music. David Menconi spent three decades immersed in the state’s music, where traditions run deep but the energy expands in countless directions. Menconi shows how working-class roots and rebellion tie North Carolina’s Piedmont blues, jazz, and bluegrass to beach music, rock, hip-hop, and more. From mill towns and mountain coves to college-town clubs and the stage of American Idol, Blind Boy Fuller and Doc Watson to Nina Simone and Superchunk, Step It Up and Go celebrates homegrown music just as essential to the state as barbecue and basketball.

Spanning a century of history from the dawn of recorded music to the present, and with sidebars and photos that help reveal the many-splendored glory of North Carolina’s sonic landscape, this is a must-read for every music lover.

Visit the author’s blog.

The Page 99 Test: Ryan Adams: Losering.

My Book, The Movie: Ryan Adams: Losering.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Conspiracy"

New from Pegasus Books: Conspiracy (Giordano Bruno Series #5) by S. J. Parris.

About the book, from the publisher:

A gripping murder mystery set in 16th-century France, as Giordano Bruno fights against multiple factions manipulating the succession of King Henry III.

December 1585: King Henry III of France is the last of his line. He has appointed a Protestant as his successor, which has caused a three-way war in his country. As a result, the king is in mortal fear of a coup being orchestrated by the ultra-conservative Catholic League.

Radical philosopher, ex-monk and spy Giordano Bruno, forced to return to Paris, is called upon by King Henry to unearth the motivation behind several mysterious but linked deaths. Each victim is connected to a larger plot to manipulate the royal succession; what they knew and who killed them is a mystery to be solved.

Meanwhile, Bruno makes an uneasy alliance with Charles Paget, a key figure in the community of English Catholics who tried to assassinate Queen Elizabeth. When Bruno is implicated in the death of Leonie, a member of the Queen Mother's "Flying Squadron," he is forced to call on Paget and his connections for help—and finds that it comes with a price, involving an old enemy.

Visit S.J. Parris's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Silver Box"

New from the University of Minnesota Press: The Silver Box: An Enchantment Lake Mystery by Margi Preus.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the final Enchantment Lake mystery, Francie’s search for the truth about her mother—and herself—plunges her into danger during a North Woods winter

When she wakes in her aunts’ cold cabin on the shore of Enchantment Lake, Francie remembers: everything about her life has changed. Or is about to. Or just might. Everything depends on the small, engraved silver box that she now possesses—if only she can follow its cryptic clues to the whereabouts of her missing mother and understand, finally, just maybe, the truth about who she really is.

Francie, it turns out, has a lot to learn, and this time the lessons could be deadly. Her search for answers takes her and her best friends Raven and Jay as far afield as an abandoned ranch in Arizona and as close to home as a sketchy plant collector’s conservatory and a musty old museum where shadows lurk around every display case. At the heart of it all is a crime that touches her own adopted North Woods: thieves dig up fragile lady’s slippers, peel bark from birches, strip moss off trees, cut down entire forests of saplings to sell for home décor. But Francie is up against no ordinary plant theft. One ominous clue after another reveal that she possesses something so rare and so valuable that some people are willing to do anything to get it. When Francie’s investigation leads her into the treacherously cold and snowy North Woods, she finds out that she too is being pursued.

Visit Margi Preus's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Eventide"

New from Tor Teen: Eventide by Sarah Goodman.

About the book, from the publisher:

MADNESS, SECRETS, AND LIES

Wheeler, Arkansas, 1907

When their father descends into madness after the death of their mother, Verity Pruitt and her little sister Lilah find themselves on an orphan train to rural Arkansas.

In Wheeler, eleven-year-old Lilah is quickly adopted, but seventeen-year-old Verity is not. Desperate to stay close to her sister, Verity indentures herself as a farmhand. But even charming farm boy Abel Atchley can’t completely distract her from the sense that something is not quite right in this little town. Strange local superstitions abound, especially about the eerie old well at the center of the forest. The woods play tricks, unleashing heavy fog and bone-chilling cold…and sometimes visions of things that aren’t there.

But for Verity, perhaps most unsettling of all is the revelation that her own parents have a scandalous history in this very town. And as she tries to unearth the past, sinister secrets come with it—secrets that someone will go to violent lengths to protect….

A haunting tale of long-buried secrets, small-town scandal, and single-minded vengeance by talented debut novelist Sarah Goodman.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Chicago’s Great Fire"

New from Atlantic Monthly Press: Chicago’s Great Fire: The Destruction and Resurrection of an Iconic American City by Carl Smith.

About the book, from the publisher:

Between October 8–10, 1871, much of the city of Chicago was destroyed by one of the most legendary urban fires in history. Incorporated as a city in 1837, Chicago had grown at a breathtaking pace in barely three decades, from just over 4,000 in 1840 to greater than 330,000 at the time of the fire. Built hastily, the city was largely made of wood. Once it began in the barn of Catherine and Patrick O’Leary, the Fire quickly grew out of control, twice jumping branches of the Chicago River on its relentless northeastward path through the city’s three divisions. Close to one of every three Chicago residents was left homeless and more were instantly unemployed, though the death toll was miraculously low.

Remarkably, no carefully researched popular history of the Great Chicago Fire has been written until now, despite it being one of the most cataclysmic disasters in US history. Building the story around memorable characters, both known to history and unknown, including the likes of General Philip Sheridan and Robert Todd Lincoln, eminent Chicago historian Carl Smith chronicles the city’s rapid growth and place in America’s post-Civil War expansion. The dramatic story of the fire—revealing human nature in all its guises—became one of equally remarkable renewal, as Chicago quickly rose back up from the ashes thanks to local determination and the world’s generosity and faith in Chicago’s future.

As we approach the fire’s 150th anniversary, Carl Smith’s compelling narrative at last gives this epic event its full and proper place in our national chronicle.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Trowbridge Road"

New from Candlewick Press: Trowbridge Road by Marcella Pixley.

About the book, from the publisher:

It’s the summer of ’83 on Trowbridge Road, and June Bug Jordan is hungry. Months after her father’s death from complications from AIDS, her mother has stopped cooking and refuses to leave the house, instead locking herself away to scour at the germs she believes are everywhere. June Bug threatens this precarious existence by going out into the neighborhood, gradually befriending Ziggy, an imaginative boy who is living with his Nana Jean after experiencing troubles of his own. But as June Bug’s connection to the world grows stronger, her mother’s grows more distant — even dangerous — pushing June Bug to choose between truth and healing and the only home she has ever known.

Trowbridge Road paints an unwavering portrait of a girl and her family touched by mental illness and grief. Set in the Boston suburbs during the first years of the AIDS epidemic, the novel explores how a seemingly perfect neighborhood can contain restless ghosts and unspoken secrets. Written with deep insight and subtle lyricism by acclaimed author Marcella Pixley, Trowbridge Road demonstrates our power to rescue one another even when our hearts are broken.

In a stunning novel set in the 1980s, a girl with heavy secrets awakens her sleepy street to the complexities of love and courage.

Visit Marcella Pixley's website.

My Book, The Movie: Ready to Fall.

Writers Read: Marcella Pixley (November 2017).

--Marshal Zeringue

"Santa Monica"

Coming soon from Harper Perennial: Santa Monica by Cassidy Lucas.

About the book, from the publisher:

A debut novel in the vein of Liane Moriarty and Tom Perrotta, about dark secrets brought to life after the mysterious death of a handsome and charismatic trainer to the elite women in Santa Monica.

On the western edge of Los Angeles is the gorgeous beachside city of Santa Monica, where the sun-kissed, wealthy residents seem to inhabit real-life California dreams. When movie-star-handsome heartthrob fitness coach Zack Doheny, is found dead on the floor of his gym, the tragedy shocks the elite community, especially those who’d spent many hours each week exercising with the charismatic trainer.

As the narrative flashes back to the months leading up to Zack’s death, it quickly becomes clear that things in this coastal paradise are not as glittering as they seem. Lettie – Zack’s secret half-sister and an undocumented housekeeper for the toned, entitled women of Santa Monica – holds her brother responsible for a horrific family accident, and desperately needs his money to prevent her deportation. Regina, type-A exercise addict and entrepreneur, will do anything to get out of debt and to claim Zack for herself. And Mel – a New York City transplant who finds herself forty pounds heavier and far more cynical than the lithe women of Santa Monica – discovers an electric attraction to Zack that threatens to disrupt his bond with Regina and upend Mel’s own marriage. As these residents of Santa Monica begin to crack under the stress of their secrets, one question hangs above it all: what really happened to Zack Doheny?

As addictively suspenseful as it is sharply observed, hilarious, and compassionate, Santa Monica is the rare novel that captures readers with propulsive storytelling alongside emotional urgency, irresistible characters, ambitious themes, and a vivid sense of place.

Follow Cassidy Lucas on Twitter.

--Marshal Zeringue