"What Kind of Mother"

Coming September 12 from Quirk Books: What Kind of Mother: A Novel by Clay McLeod Chapman.

About the book, from the publisher:

After striking out on her own as a teen mom, Madi Price is forced to return to her hometown of Brandywine, Virginia, with her seventeen-year-old daughter. With nothing to her name, she scrapes together a living as a palm reader at the local farmers market.

It’s there that she connects with old high school flame Henry McCabe, now a reclusive local fisherman whose infant son, Skyler, went missing five years ago. Everyone in town is sure Skyler is dead, but when Madi reads Henry’s palm, she’s haunted by strange and disturbing visions that suggest otherwise. As she follows the thread of these visions, Madi discovers a terrifying nightmare waiting at the center of the labyrinth—and it’s coming for everyone she holds dear.

Combining supernatural horror with domestic suspense into a visceral exploration of parental grief, What Kind of Mother cements Clay McLeod Chapman’s reputation as a “star” (Vulture) and “the twenty-first century’s Richard Matheson” (Richard Chizmar, Chasing the Boogeyman.)

Visit Clay McLeod Chapman's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Remaking.

The Page 69 Test: The Remaking.

My Book, The Movie: Whisper Down the Lane.

Q&A with Clay McLeod Chapman.

The Page 69 Test: Whisper Down the Lane.

Writers Read: Clay McLeod Chapman (September 2022).

--Marshal Zeringue

"Animal Rights and the Hebrew Bible"

New from Oxford University Press: Animal Rights and the Hebrew Bible by Saul M. Olyan.

About the book, from the publisher:

Does the Hebrew Bible ascribe an implicit form of legal personhood or legal rights to animals? If so, which animals--domesticated or wild, or both--receive which rights, and for what purpose? Scholars have been slow to consider these questions, and animal-oriented research as a whole, in the field of biblical studies. For the first time, author Saul M. Olyan addresses these questions in detail and explores how the evidence of the Hebrew Bible might contribute to contemporary debates about animal rights in the academy, in the courts, in the public square, and in religious communities.

In this book, Olyan demonstrates that seven different biblical texts extend both legal personhood and rights to animals. The rights conferred upon them are mainly specific and situational, and the legal personhood associated them is in most cases best characterized as limited. Nonetheless, he argues that the animal rights described by these texts are genuine because they are not contingent on the needs or demands of others, they do not disappear or give way because of conflict with the interests of another legal person, and they may not be violated with impunity. Finally, Olyan considers how the biblical texts examined in his analyses might be used to extend or strengthen the arguments of those advocating for animals in judicial, academic, political, or religious settings.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Wonder State"

New from MCD: The Wonder State: A Novel by Sara Flannery Murphy.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the author of Girl One comes a spellbinding adventure about a strange power lurking in the Arkansas Ozarks, and the group of friends obsessed with finding it.

Five friends arrive back in Eternal Springs, the small town they all fled after high-school graduation. Each of them is drawn home by a cryptic, scrawled two-word letter: You promised.

It has been fifteen years since that life-changing summer, and they're anxious to find out why Brandi called them back, especially when they vowed never to return.

But Brandi is missing. She'd been acting erratically for months, in and out of rehab, railing at whoever might listen about magic all around them. About a power they can't see. And strange houses that appear only when you need them . . .

Told in two enthralling time lines, The Wonder State is a stunning, immersive follow-up to Girl One. Sara Flannery Murphy has created another dazzling, genre-blurring novel—an adventure story laced with nostalgia and magic, exploring belonging and the lasting power of community.

Visit Sara Flannery Murphy's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Possessions.

The Page 69 Test: The Possessions.

Writers Read: Sara Flannery Murphy (March 2017).

--Marshal Zeringue

"Rendered Obsolete"

New from The University of North Carolina Press: Rendered Obsolete: Energy Culture and the Afterlife of US Whaling by Jamie L. Jones.

About the book, from the publisher:

Through the mid-nineteenth century, the US whaling industry helped drive industrialization and urbanization, providing whale oil to lubricate and illuminate the country. The Pennsylvania petroleum boom of the 1860s brought cheap and plentiful petroleum into the market, decimating whale oil's popularity. Here, from our modern age of fossil fuels, Jamie L. Jones uses literary and cultural history to show how the whaling industry held firm in US popular culture even as it slid into obsolescence. Jones shows just how instrumental whaling was to the very idea of "energy" in American culture and how it came to mean a fusion of labor, production, and the circulation of power. She argues that dying industries exert real force on environmental perceptions and cultural imaginations.

Analyzing a vast archive that includes novels, periodicals, artifacts from whaling ships, tourist attractions, and even whale carcasses, Jones explores the histories of race, labor, and energy consumption in the nineteenth-century United States through the lens of the whaling industry's legacy. In terms of how they view power, Americans are, she argues, still living in the shadow of the whale.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Tell Me What I Am"

New from Harper: Tell Me What I Am: A Novel by Una Mannion.

About the book, from the publisher:

Two women wrenched apart by a family member’s disappearance must find a way back to each other in this haunting page-turner by the author of A Crooked Tree.

Nessa Garvey’s sister Deena vanished without a trace in Philadelphia in 2004. In all that time, Nessa has never once doubted what her instincts told her: her sister’s ex-husband has gotten away with an unspeakable crime.

Nessa’s niece, Ruby, is raised by her father, the man Nessa suspects, in rural Vermont, on the shores of Lake Champlain. Ruby learns how to hunt, how the plants and trees grow, how to avoid making her father angry. The one question she longs to ask is the one she knows she cannot voice: What really happened to her mother?

Over fourteen years, four hundred miles apart, these two women slowly begin to unearth the family history of insidious power and control that has shaped them both in such different ways. But can they reach each other in time?

Tell Me What I Am is a riveting, indelible tour de force of buried secrets and unlikely resilience.

Visit Una Mannion's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"War on the Ballot"

New from Columbia University Press: War on the Ballot: How the Election Cycle Shapes Presidential Decision-Making in War by Andrew Payne.

About the book, from the publisher:

The president of the United States is at once holder of the highest elected office and commander in chief of the armed forces. How do upcoming elections influence presidents’ behavior during wartime? How do presidents balance perceptions of the national interest with personal political interests?

War on the Ballot examines how electoral politics shaped presidential decisions on military and diplomatic strategy during the wars in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq. Drawing on a wealth of declassified documents and interviews with senior officials and military officers, Andrew Payne reveals the surprisingly large role played by political considerations during conflicts. He demonstrates how the exigencies of the electoral cycle drove leaders to miss opportunities to limit the human and financial costs of each war, gain strategic advantage, or sue for peace, sometimes making critical decisions with striking disregard for the consequences on the ground. Payne emphasizes the importance of electoral pressures throughout the full course of a conflict, not just around the initial decision to intervene. He shows how electoral constraints operate across different phases of the political calendar, going beyond the period immediately preceding a presidential election.

Offering a systematic analysis of the relationship between electoral politics and wartime decision-making, this book raises crucial questions about democratic accountability in foreign policy.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Killing It"

New from Polis Books: Killing It by Mike Bockoven.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the twisted and imaginative mind of Mike Bockoven, author of the cult classic FANTASTICLAND, comes a wholly original and witty new novel of terror, perfect for fans of FROM DUSK TIL DAWN and SHAUN OF THE DEAD.

Since the late 1980's, The Square had been one of the most important clubs in New York for the alt-comedy scene. But before that it was something much darker and is now a place where evil lingers, waiting for a chance to spill blood.

After a night of killing on stage, four comics find themselves in a desperate situation as the spirits of the past come out to play, and a fight for laughs becomes a fight for survival in the most unlikely of places.

Visit Mike Bockoven's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Sound Writing"

New from Oxford University Press: Sound Writing: Voices, Authors, and Readers of Oral History by Shelley Trower.

About the book, from the publisher:

The concept that oral history can give voice to people or allow "hidden voices" to become part of history is one of its most celebrated achievements. However, the standard practice of transcribing or summarizing interviews has meant that oral historians have had to grapple with questions of how to translate the oral into written form. What is lost or gained during this process of mediation? These re-creations can be wonderful and illuminating works of scholarship and art, and this book explores a wide range of the different forms they have taken-from John and Alan Lomax's transcriptions of African American songs for the Federal Writers Project to Svetlana Alexievich's polyphonic novels. Such works can give their subjects the necessary latitude to convey their narratives on their own terms, but there is also, always, the danger that their voices will be distorted or lost during the process of mediation.

Sound Writing offers a thorough review of the varying arguments about editing for transcription and publication and reflects on how digital technologies enable much wider access to "raw" oral data. It examines how oral histories are co-created by speakers, the authors who mediate them, and readers, and it brings into sharp focus questions about how memory takes on subjective, narrative form. Finally, it examines the interplay between written literature and sound recordings, or orality, using a diverse range of examples-from the work of William Wordsworth and George Ewart Evans to Studs Terkel, Alex Haley, Luisa Passerini, Amrit Wilson, and Stacy Zembrzycki. As an interdisciplinary study, Sound Writing takes a broad approach to the written word to encompass not only transcriptions and other texts derived from oral history interviews but also literary precursors such as epic poetry and folklore, along with various related textual forms such as biography, autobiography, and blogs. It argues that the recording of oral traditions in print by poets, folklorists, anthropologists, and postcolonial writers is comparable to practices of recording, transcribing, and publishing familiar to oral historians. Literary genres have long influenced oral history narratives, and, in turn, oral history has helped shape literary forms.

Visit Shelley Trower's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The One That Got Away"

New from St. Martin's Press: The One That Got Away: A Novel by Charlotte Rixon.

About the book, from the publisher:

Two years together.
Twenty years apart.
One day to change their story.

2000. Benjamin’s world is turned upside down the night he meets Clara. Instinctively, he knows that they are meant for each other, but a devastating mistake on their last night at university will take their lives in very different directions.

20 years later, Clara has a high-profile job and a handsome husband. But despite the trappings of success, she isn't happy, and she knows that a piece of her heart still belongs to Benjamin, the boy she fell in love with years earlier. The boy whose life she fears she ruined.

When a bombing is reported in the city where they first met, Clara is pulled back to a place she tries not to remember and the first love she could never forget. Searching for Benjamin, Clara is forced to confront the events that tore them apart. But is it too late to put right what went wrong?

Across the miles and spanning decades, Charlotte Rixon's The One That Got Away is a sweeping, poignant story about growing up, growing apart, the people who first steal our hearts, and the surprising, winding roads that love can take us on, for readers of Jill Santopolo, Rosie Walsh, and Colleen Hoover.

Visit Charlotte Rixon's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"A Man of Bad Reputation"

New from The University of North Carolina Press: A Man of Bad Reputation: The Murder of John Stephens and the Contested Landscape of North Carolina Reconstruction by Drew A. Swanson.

About the book, from the publisher:

Five years after the Civil War, North Carolina Republican state senator John W. Stephens was found murdered inside the Caswell County Courthouse. Stephens fought for the rights of freedpeople, and his killing by the Ku Klux Klan ultimately led to insurrection, Governor William W. Holden’s impeachment, and the early unwinding of Reconstruction in North Carolina. In recounting Stephens's murder, the subsequent investigation and court proceedings, and the long-delayed confessions that revealed what actually happened at the courthouse in 1870, Drew A. Swanson tells a story of race, politics, and social power shaped by violence and profit. The struggle for dominance in Reconstruction-era rural North Carolina, Swanson argues, was an economic and ecological transformation. Arson, beating, and murder became tools to control people and landscapes, and the ramifications of this violence continued long afterward. The failure to prosecute anyone for decades after John Stephens's assassination left behind a vacuum, as each side shaped its own memory of Stephens and his murder.

The malleability of and contested storytelling around Stephens's legacy presents a window into the struggle to control the future of the South.

--Marshal Zeringue