"The Red Grove"

New from Farrar, Straus and Giroux: The Red Grove: A Novel by Tessa Fontaine.

About the book, from the publisher:

When her mother goes missing, a young woman uncovers the secrets beneath her protected community.

What kind of world might we have, who might we become, if everyone were truly safe? What price would we pay for that kind of freedom?

There are secrets beneath every community―even those founded with the purest of intentions―secrets as strong and reaching as the roots that keep us connected to one another and anchored to home.

The Red Grove is a special place, protected. Some say a spell was cast by its founder, Tamsen Nightingale. Some say the mountain lions stalking the nearby hills guard its mysteries and its boundaries. Some say the mighty redwoods keep its people safe.

Visit Tessa Fontaine's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Black Reason, White Feeling"

New from the University of Virginia Press: Black Reason, White Feeling: The Jeffersonian Enlightenment in the African American Tradition by Hannah Spahn.

About the book, from the publisher:

The vital influence of Black American intellectuals on the legacy of Thomas Jefferson’s ideas

The lofty Enlightenment principles articulated by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, so central to conceptions of the American founding, did not emerge fully formed as a coherent set of ideas in the eighteenth century. As Hannah Spahn argues in this important book, no group had a more profound influence on their development and reception than Black intellectuals. The rationalism and universalism most associated with Jefferson today, she shows, actually sprang from critical engagements with his thought by writers such as David Walker, Lemuel Haynes, Frederick Douglass, and W. E. B. Du Bois.

Black Reason, White Feeling illuminates the philosophical innovations that these and other Black intellectuals made to build on Jefferson’s thought, shaping both Jefferson’s historical image and the exalted legacy of his ideas in American culture. It is not just the first book-length history of Jefferson’s philosophy in Black thought; it is also the first history of the American Enlightenment that centers the originality and decisive impact of the Black tradition.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Real Life and Other Fictions"

Coming soon from Harper Muse: Real Life and Other Fictions: A Novel by Susan Coll.

About the book, from the publisher:

Cassie Klein has always used stories to help her fly, but now her plot points aren’t lining up.

In her 50s, Cassie has already weathered more than most. She was orphaned at the age of two and has never fully understood why her DC-based parents were on a bridge in West Virginia that just so happened to collapse as they drove across it. Her search for answers prompted a failed career in journalism, and now she’s an aspiring novelist teaching at a local community college waiting for her literary dreams to finally come true. She stood by her once-doting husband when his meteorology career took a nosedive, and now she has learned that the man who became an internet meme has been cheating on her.

She’s had enough. She scoops up a teething puppy and embarks on a road trip that’s heavy on impulse and light on planning. She’s not sure where she’s going, but she knows she might as well start at the beginning. What really happened to her parents all those years ago?

In this comically surreal, warmhearted journey, she encounters people she never knew existed—chief among them, an enigmatic cryptozoologist, who helps her in the quest to discover her past. And along the way, she looks for answers regarding curious sightings of a creature known as the Mothman in the months before her parents died. As the line between real life and fiction blurs, Cassie finds herself grappling with the nature of stories, myths, and who gets to write the endings.

Learn more about the book and author at Susan Coll's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Susan Coll & Zoe.

The Page 69 Test: Acceptance.

The Page 69 Test: Beach Week.

The Page 69 Test: The Stager.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Breaking the Mold"

New from Princeton University Press: Breaking the Mold: India's Untraveled Path to Prosperity by Raghuram G. Rajan and Rohit Lamba.

About the book, from the publisher:

The new path for economic development that India must create

The whole world has a stake in India’s future, and that future hinges on whether India can develop its economy and deliver for its population—now the world’s largest—while staying democratic. India’s economy has overtaken the United Kingdom’s to become the fifth-largest in the world, but it is still only one-fifth the size of China’s, and India’s economic growth is too slow to provide jobs for millions of its ambitious youth. Blocking India’s current path are intense global competition in low-skilled manufacturing, increasing protectionism and automation, and the country’s majoritarian streak in politics. In Breaking the Mold, Raghuram Rajan and Rohit Lamba show why and how India needs to blaze a new path if it’s to succeed.

India diverged long ago from the standard development model, the one followed by China—from agriculture to low-skilled manufacturing, then high-skilled manufacturing and, finally, services—by leapfrogging intermediate steps. India must not turn back now. Rajan and Lamba explain how India can accelerate growth by prioritizing human capital, expanding opportunities in high-skilled services, encouraging entrepreneurship, and strengthening rather than weakening its democratic traditions. It can chart a path based on ideas and creativity even at its early stage of development.

Filled with vivid examples and written with incisive candor, Breaking the Mold shows how India can break free of the stumbling blocks of the past and embrace the enormous possibilities of the future.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Banana Wars"

New from Dzanc Books: The Banana Wars by Alan Grostephan.

About the book, from the publisher:

Winner of the Dzanc Prize for Fiction

Urabá, Colombia, 1990: A violent strike at plantations across the banana zone leads to crops in flames, managers murdered, and the local economy teetering on the brink. In retaliation, the banana producers finance right-wing paramilitaries to cleanse the zone of guerrillas and their supposed collaborators.

Through the intertwined lives of four characters—a banana worker making a play for power in the guerrillas, a decadent Colombian banana planter who runs his business from the safety of Medellín, a widow in Urabá struggling to stay on the right side of the local paramilitaries, and an American banana executive wading ever deeper into troubled waters—The Banana Wars charts the struggle to survive in impossible conditions, in a place where no one is to be trusted and one false move can lead to death.

Starkly drawn from the true history of Urabá and this period of conflict, including the unseen role of US corporate interests, celebrated author Alan Grostephan’s latest is an incandescent historical novel for fans of Jesmyn Ward, Roberto Bolaño, and Fernanda Melchor.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Agents of Empire"

New from Cambridge University Press: Agents of Empire: English Imperial Governance and the Making of American Political Institutions by Sean Gailmard.

About the book, from the publisher:

To understand the foundations of American political institutions, it's necessary to understand the rationale for British colonial institutions that survived the empire. Political institutions in England's American colonies were neither direct imports from England, nor home-grown creations of autonomous colonists. Instead, they emerged from efforts of the English Crown to assert control over their colonies amid limited English state and military capacity. Agents of Empire explores the strategic dilemmas facing a constrained crown in its attempts to assert control. The study argues that colonial institutions emerged from the crown's management of authority delegated to agents-first companies and proprietors establishing colonies; then imperial officials governing the polities they created. The institutions remaining from these strategic dynamics form the building blocks of federalism, legislative power, separation of powers, judicial review, and other institutions that comprise the American polity today.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Flyboy"

New from Balzer + Bray: Flyboy by Kasey LeBlanc.

About the book, from the publisher:

Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda meets The Night Circus in this standout debut YA novel, about a boy who visits a magic-filled circus in his dreams in order to escape reality, where his trans identity remains a secret. An ideal next read for fans of Cemetery Boys.

After an incident at his school leaves closeted trans teenager Asher Sullivan needing stitches, his mother betrays him in the worst possible way—she sends him to Catholic school for his senior year. Now he has to contend with hideous plaid skirts, cranky nuns, and #bathroomJesus.

Nighttime brings an escape for Asher when he dreams of the Midnight Circus—the one place where he is seen for the boy he truly is. Too bad it exists only in his sleep. At least, that’s what he believes until the day his annoyingly attractive trapeze rival, Apollo, walks out of his dreams and into his classroom. On the heels of this realization that the magical circus might be real, Asher also learns that his time there is limited.

In his desperation to hang onto the one place he feels at home, Asher sets both worlds on a collision course that could destroy all the relationships he cares about most. Now he must decide how far he’ll go to preserve the magical circus, even if it means facing his biggest challenge yet—coming out.

Visit Kasey LeBlanc's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Accountability in Academic Life"

New from Duke University Press: Accountability in Academic Life by Margaret Price.

About the book, from the publisher:

In Crip Spacetime, Margaret Price intervenes in the competitive, productivity-focused realm of academia by sharing the everyday experiences of disabled academics. Drawing on more than three hundred interviews and survey responses, Price demonstrates that individual accommodations—the primary way universities address accessibility—actually impede access rather than enhance it. She argues that the pains and injustices encountered by academia’s disabled workers result in their living and working in realities different from nondisabled colleagues: a unique experience of space, time, and being that Price theorizes as “crip spacetime.” She explores how disability factors into the exclusionary practices found in universities, with multiply marginalized academics facing the greatest harms. Highlighting the knowledge that disabled academics already possess about how to achieve sustainable forms of access, Price boldly calls for the university to move away from individualized models of accommodation and toward a new system of collective accountability and care.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Someplace Like Home"

Coming soon from Little A: Someplace Like Home: A Novel by Bobi Conn.

About the book, from the publisher:

A mother and daughter in Appalachia unpack the traumas of the past in a powerful and reflective novel about family, healing, and moving on by the author of A Woman in Time.

Jenny Caudill grows up in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in a home that feels more like a trap. Shy, ignored by boys, and wearing her sisters’ hand-me-downs, Jenny spends her time lost in the promises of romantic pop songs and daydreaming in the back seat of her daddy’s junked Bel Air. There’s got to be more to life.

When she catches the eye of the older Rob Lewis, a dangerous relationship begins. Her mother’s warnings go ignored. After a brush with death and an impulsive marriage in Tennessee, Jenny becomes a mother herself. But her love story is far from the one she envisioned. Trading one trap for another darker one, she is stuck between trying to avoid her husband’s violent moods and taking an unknown risk by grabbing her children, running, and trying to find a way forward.

Visit Bobi Conn's website.

The Page 69 Test: A Woman in Time.

Q&A with Bobi Conn.

--Marshal Zeringue

"A Neurophilosophy of Libertarian Free Will"

New from Oxford University Press: A Neurophilosophy of Libertarian Free Will by Peter Tse.

About the book, from the publisher:

This book offers an intellectually fierce defence of Libertarian Free Will seen from a neuroscientific and biological perspective. Tse argues that causation in living systems is dominated by non-linear goal-seeking automatic feedback loops and a continual criterial reparameterization of what will count as an adequate solution to goal fulfilment. For this reason, outcomes are neither determined nor random. That is, for each cycle, outcomes could have turned out differently than they actually did.

Humans, he argues, have two kinds of libertarian free will. One type concerns the ability to choose freely and is shared with other highly developed animals. Second-order free will, in contrast, is uniquely human, and concerns envisioning a new self, then working toward the realization of that vision over a long period of time. As such, free will is understood to be centrally realized in acts of imagining and deliberation, whether free actions follow or not.

A Neurophilosophy of Libertarian Free Will discusses these key philosophical issues considering the latest data and theories of neuroscience and will be of interest to academics, students, and anyone interested in the issue of Free Will.

--Marshal Zeringue