"Woven From Clay"

New from Wednesday Books: Woven From Clay: A Novel by Jenny Birch.

About the book, from the publisher:

In this fresh and imaginative contemporary fantasy, a golem must master the magic that binds her together and finds an unexpected ally in the mysterious boy sent to ensure her demise.

Terra Slater might not know anything about her birth family or where she comes from, but that’s never stopped her, and she fully intends her senior year to be her best yet. Until the dark and mysterious Thorne Wilder—a magical bounty hunter—moves to town, bringing revelations that wreck all of her plans.

When Terra learns she is a golem, not born but crafted from mud and magic by a warlock, her world is upended. Worse, Cyrus Quill, the warlock who made her, is a fugitive, on the run from the witches who want to hold him accountable for his past crimes. But Quill’s sentence is death, which would unravel the threads of magic that hold Terra—and all of the other golems that he crafted—together.

Desperate to save herself and her friends, Terra strikes a deal with Thorne and his coven to preserve the warlock’s life and his magic. If she can prove her worth to the coven by mastering the magic within her, the golems will survive. If she can’t, they’ll perish along with Cyrus. As Thorne helps her to see and manipulate the tapestry of magic that surrounds them, their unexpected alliance evolves into something more and Terra comes to understand the depths of her magic, her humanity, and her love for the people most important to her.

Visit Jenny Birch's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"A Blacklist Education"

New from Rutgers University Press: A Blacklist Education: American History, a Family Mystery, and a Teacher Under Fire by Jane S. Smith.

About the book, from the publisher:

In A Blacklist Education, a mysterious file of family papers triggers a journey through the dark days of political purges in the 1950s. Jane S. Smith tells the story of the anticommunist witch hunt that sent shockwaves through New York City’s public schools as more than a thousand teachers were targeted by Board of Education investigators. Her father was one of them—a fact she learned only long after his death.

Beginning in 1949, amid widespread panic about supposed communist subversion, investigators questioned teachers in their homes, accosted them in their classrooms, and ordered them to report to individual hearings. The interrogations were not published, filmed, open to the public, or reported in the news. By 1956, hundreds of New York City teachers had been fired, often because of uncorroborated reports from paid informers or anonymous accusers.

Most of the targeted teachers resigned or retired without any public process, their names recorded only in municipal files and their futures never known. Their absence became the invisible outline of an educational void, a narrowing of thought that pervaded classrooms for decades. In this highly personal story, family lore and childhood memory lead to restricted archives, forgotten inquisitions, and an eerily contemporary campaign to control who could teach and what was acceptable for students to learn.

Visit Jane S. Smith's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Garden of Invention.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Always the Quiet Ones"

Coming soon from Lake Union: Always the Quiet Ones: A Novel by Jamie Lee Sogn.

About the book, from the publisher:

Fantasy and reality clash in a twisted novel of psychological suspense, where a shared moment of female outrage changes one woman’s career overnight―and her life forever.

Beatrice “Bea” Ku is sure this is it. The moment she finally receives her hard-earned promotion at the Seattle law firm where the young Filipina American attorney has toiled for five years. She can’t wait to tell her parents―and Allegra, her annoyingly perfect childhood friend. So when her boss betrays her, again, promoting a male colleague instead, she’s so angry she could kill.

Bea tries to suppress that anger, just like her anxiety. But she’s branded “too emotional,” dredging up old memories from high school and her unhealthy coping mechanisms. Allegra and her husband, Caleb, Bea’s former crush, were largely responsible for getting Bea hooked. And her family and friends paid dearly.

Tired of all the gaslighting and toxic masculinity, and emboldened by liquid courage, Bea vows to change things. When a kindred spirit suggests a murder pact, she jokingly agrees. But nobody’s laughing when their deal turns out to be all too real…

Visit Jamie Lee Sogn's website.

Q&A with Jamie Lee Sogn.

My Book, The Movie: Salthouse Place.

The Page 69 Test: Salthouse Place.

--Marshal Zeringue

"That Book Is Dangerous!"

New from The MIT Press: That Book Is Dangerous!: How Moral Panic, Social Media, and the Culture Wars Are Remaking Publishing by Adam Szetela.

About the book, from the publisher:

An alarming exposé of the new challenges to literary freedom in the age of social media—when anyone with an identity and an internet connection can be a censor.

In That Book Is Dangerous!, Adam Szetela investigates how well-intentioned and often successful efforts to diversify American literature have also produced serious problems for literary freedom. Although progressives are correct to be focused on right-wing attempts at legislative censorship, Szetela argues for attention to the ways that left-wing censorship controls speech within the publishing industry itself.

The author draws on interviews with presidents and vice presidents at the Big Five publishers, literary agents at the most prestigious agencies, award-winning authors, editors, marketers, sensitivity readers, and other industry professionals to examine the new publishing landscape.

What he finds is unsettling: mandatory sensitivity reads; morality clauses in author contracts; even censorship of “dangerous” books in the name of antiracism, feminism, and other forms of social justice. These changes to acquisition practices, editing policies, and other aspects of literary culture are a direct outgrowth of the culture of public outcries on X, Goodreads, Change.org, and other online platforms, where users accuse authors—justifiably or not—of racism, sexism, homophobia, and other transgressions. But rather than genuinely address the economic inequities of literary production, this current moral crusade over literature serves only to entrench the status quo. “While the right is remaking the world in its image,” he writes, “the left is standing in a circular firing squad.”

Compellingly argued and incisively written, the book is a much-needed wake-up call for anyone who cares about reading, writing, and the publication of books—as well as the generations of young readers we are raising.

--Marshal Zeringue