"Shakespeare's Tragedies: What Makes Them Great"

New from Stanford University Press: Shakespeare's Tragedies: What Makes Them Great by Robert N. Watson.

About the book, from the publisher:

A lively and provocative introduction to Shakespeare's five major tragedies, revealing their profoundly sympathetic and illuminating exploration of human experience.

Shakespeare's Tragedies illuminates the majestic beauties and subtle insights of the great playwright's greatest works. Building from a helpful introduction of each tragedy, and progressing to advanced new interpretations, Watson reveals what these famous plays offer us as we confront the heartbreaking aspects of life and the redeeming virtues of our flawed humanity.

Watson shows Romeo and Juliet providing dreamy romance, but also exploring the fears of sexual violence that Juliet must heroically overcome, in a play that marries comedy to tragedy, as love and death intertwine. Analyzing Hamlet's centuries-long worldwide fame, Watson shows how it speaks to our Information (and Disinformation) Age, and why the conventional understanding of the most famous six syllables in all of literature―"To be or not to be"―is misguided and even dangerous.

Tracing the intertwined roles of race, religion, and sexuality in Othello, Watson explores the deep psychological roots of villainy, and shows how the play articulates the tragic costs of believing that love (from a person or a deity) must be bought or deserved, rather than embraced as a miracle. King Lear amplifies those warnings, explodes many complacent certainties, and imposes an ending so multiply shocking that it was hidden for 150 years.

Watson demonstrates how the verbal details of Macbeth produce its psychological intensity and its relentlessly haunting aura, while also teaching environmentalist lessons and lamenting the inescapable double-bind of our ambitions, as individuals and as a species. The book concludes with a rousing advocacy for Shakespeare as an enduring force―across races, nations, genders, and generations―for understanding and justice.

The culmination of Robert N. Watson's distinguished career as a scholar and teacher, Shakespeare's Tragedies explains, in fresh, accessible, and moving ways, why multitudes have treasured this playwright's tragic masterpieces for centuries.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Fallout"

New from Red Hen Press: Fallout: A Novel by Liz Kay.

About the novel, from the publisher:

Fallout is a gripping Cold War-era domestic thriller that delves into the hidden tensions, loyalties, and secrets of American military families stationed in 1980s West Germany. The story blends coming-of-age drama with high-stakes suspense and rich historical detail.

For the military families who live in Benjamin Franklin Village, family life isn’t just family life, but a vital front in the Cold War. It’s a patriotic act, a performance of the American Way. They have backyard cookouts and go to high school football games and try to live like they aren't in a perpetual state of almost-war. They smile outwardly, join social clubs, and hide the unhappiness that goes on behind closed doors. That is, until the Vaughns arrive.

Still reeling from the loss of her mother, sixteen-year-old Samantha Vaughn is a wild child looking for trouble, but when she finds it, her father’s rank means she’s the only kid who won’t pay some kind of price for it. When her social circle shrinks overnight to prissy but pretty Becky Jennings and surly, anti-social David Williams, the frictions between the three of them turn to dangers that none of them recognize. For the women, sturdy, seasoned Army wives Madge Williams and Abby Jennings, Colonel Vaughn’s second wife, Joanne, pulls them out of their ’50s-era military culture and into the modern age. As a newly liberated Madge pushes at the boundaries of an unhappy marriage and Abby struggles to find her place in their changing friendship, Abby’s tight grip on old loyalties keep her from recognizing the threats circling her own family and her friend’s. And when a mysterious package is left on the front step of one of their homes, someone won’t survive the explosive fallout.

Visit Liz Kay's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Stabilizing Empire"

New from the University of California Press: Stabilizing Empire: Psychopharmacy in the US War on Terror by Jocelyn Lim Chua.

About the book, from the publisher:

In 2006, the United States Department of Defense for the first time authorized the use of FDA-approved psychiatric medications in the physical and tactical spaces of military operations including active combat. This policy change overturned a century of military psychiatry orthodoxy, which prioritized non-pathologizing, non-medication treatment for combat stress. Amid an ongoing global war, the US military embraced psychopharmacy as a radical and untested tool for keeping soldiers on the counterinsurgency battlefield and deploying them again and again, even with psychiatric diagnoses. Through powerful storytelling and original analysis, Stabilizing Empire uncovers a quiet revolution during the war on terror: the pharmaceuticalization of battlefield mental health care.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Mirror Image"

New from Thomas & Mercer: Mirror Image by Lauren E. Rico.

About the novel, from the publisher:

Award-winning author Lauren E. Rico’s intense psychological thriller plumbs the depths of trauma and identity in an emotional story about twin sisters set against the murky backdrop of the Everglades.

Dr. Jennifer Flores swore she’d never return to Miami―not after her mentor nearly destroyed her career and reputation to save his own. But when he asks the successful psychiatrist to consult on a high-profile case, she reluctantly agrees. This case echoes Jenn’s own twin-related trauma, and no one is better suited for the job.

Separated at birth, identical twins Mary Langston and Samantha Kinski met by chance in college five years ago. Today, they were found deep in the Florida Everglades, one barely alive and the other deceased. Jenn’s evaluation of survivor Mary’s mental status reveals more of the sisters’ extraordinary backstory. They experienced two vastly different childhoods: While adopted Mary thrived in the lap of luxury, Sam faltered in the brutal foster system.

As Jenn digs deeper into the twins’ turbulent bond, a dark picture emerges. Psychological manipulation. Family secrets. Mistaken identity. And as she gets closer to uncovering the truth, she finally confronts her own devastating loss.

Visit Lauren E. Rico's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Hidden Terrors"

New from Oxford University Press: Hidden Terrors: The Scourge of Cholera in Jackson's America by Paul Kelton.

About the book, from the publisher:

Drawing on accounts of ordinary Americans, Hidden Terrors offers the first comprehensive history of the enigmatic illness behind the 1830s cholera pandemic--and its profound consequences for the nation.

From 1832 to 1836, cholera erupted across US cities as well as in small towns, rural farms, prisons, and plantations. Its victims experienced ghastly symptoms--vomiting, explosive diarrhea, painful spasms, turning blue, and collapsing into comas--and often perished within hours of first becoming sick. They frequently woke up healthy, began to feel ill by nightfall, and did not live to see another day. Cholera killed people much more quickly than other diseases with which Americans were familiar, and its causes would not be discovered until the later development of bacteriology. It afflicted rich and poor, people of every race, religion, and region.

As Hidden Terrors reveals, many powerful people in the 1830s wanted their contemporaries to understand cholera as anything but a frightful and unknowable predator that took its prey indiscriminately. American moral reformers and medical authorities, among others, attributed the deaths of the impoverished, enslaved, and exploited to individual failings--eating rotten foods, drinking alcohol, neglecting to seek treatment, and living in filth. The experience of these victims, in their view, was a natural consequence of immorality and called for minimal sympathy. Authorities ignored and even covered up the deaths of enslaved African Americans, Indigenous peoples, and Irish immigrants. The disease particularly exploded in crowded housing, work camps, poor houses, hospitals, prisons, along the routes Indigenous people were forced to travel on the Trail of Tears, and within slave coffles. However, the universal nature of the pandemic became more apparent as deaths of supposedly respectable people became shockingly numerous, apparent, and undeniable. It was that terror--the idea of everyone being equally subject to an invisible and mysterious killer--that elites struggled most to keep hidden.

Drawing on family papers, letters, and newspaper accounts written during the pandemic, Hidden Terrors tells the comprehensive story of the first cholera pandemic in the United States. Paul Kelton humanely captures the experiences of ordinary Americans living in fear of a mysterious disease and exposes the disastrous consequences of a deadly germ intersecting with the great injustices of Jacksonian America.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Undercover Lies"

Coming November 3 from Severn House: Undercover Lies (A Secret Lives Mystery, 4) by Mark de Castrique.

About the novel, from the publisher:

Badass 75-year-old former FBI agent Ethel Fiona Crestwater goes undercover tracking down a ruthless network of criminals in this fun and pacy installment in the Secret Lives mystery series.

WWED—What Would Ethel Do?

Seventy-five-year-old retired FBI agent Ethel Fiona Crestwater is almost getting too old for a secret FBI mission—almost! Her expert investigation skills are needed again when her elderly neighbor and close friend Sarah Phelps is found dead at her home, shot in the heart, and with an unknown male body next to her.

Turns out Sarah had a secret boyfriend who apparently killed both her and himself, but evidence points to a more serious crime. Someone is targeting wealthy senior citizens, but as far as Ethel is concerned death is too high a price to pay just for being old.

Seeking justice for her friend and capitalizing on her extensive connections—law enforcement and mobsters alike—Ethel goes undercover to expose an intricate network of lies, threats, and deadly schemes that will put her at high risk—one that might cost her her life .

Visit Mark de Castrique's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Sandburg Connection.

Writers Read: Mark de Castrique (October 2011).

Coffee with a Canine: Mark de Castrique & Gracie.

My Book, The Movie: The Sandburg Connection.

The Page 69 Test: The 13th Target.

My Book, The Movie: The 13th Target.

Writers Read: Mark de Castrique (July 2012).

--Marshal Zeringue

"Voicing Aspiration"

New from Wesleyan University Press: Voicing Aspiration: Bollywood Songs and Dreamwork in Contemporary India by Anaar Desai-Stephens.

About the book, from the publisher:

The role of popular music in shaping subjectivity and aspiration in neoliberal India

Voicing Aspiration: Bollywood Songs and Dreamwork in Contemporary India explores how Bollywood music has become a powerful medium for dreaming, striving, and self-making in twenty-first-century India. Once dismissed as escapist fantasy, Bollywood's emotionally charged songs now serve as tools for self-transformation in what has been dubbed "Aspirational India." Drawing on more than two years of fieldwork in Mumbai's playback singing schools, reality television studios, and the broader music industry, Anaar Desai-Stephens shows how singers, teachers, producers, and everyday amateurs use film songs to imagine new futures and craft an aspirational selfhood. Through vivid ethnographic stories and sharp cultural analysis, the book reveals how music is a site of both imaginative potential and precarity, promising social mobility while reinscribing inequalities of caste, class, and gender. Desai-Stephens argues that we must take musical dreamwork seriously in order to understand the cultural dynamics of emerging neoliberal economies. Blending media studies, anthropology, and ethnomusicology, Voicing Aspiration offers a compelling account of how popular culture shapes both individual lives and collective futures.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Queen of the Spirit Woods"

Coming November 3 from Atheneum Books for Young Readers: The Queen of the Spirit Woods by Sharon Choe.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea meets The Cruel Prince in this “propulsive” (Publishers Weekly, starred review)dual-POV young adult romantic fantasy following a royal kitchen maid and a prince who get swept up in dangerous palace intrigue, a forbidden love triangle, and the plight of thousands of displaced spirits and deities.

A kingdom on the brink of colonization.
Ten thousand nature spirits and deities seeking a vessel.
A genial nobleman and a grumpy prince uncovering the secrets at Court…
And the girl at the center of it all.

Mirae has a dangerous secret: She has faked her way into a job as a royal kitchen maid with the hope of sending money to her family. And life in the kitchens isn’t easy. The palace is in an uproar after a recent assassination attempt on the king, and Mirae nearly gets fired after inadvertently getting in the crosshairs of Jae, the prickly crown prince, during his investigation.

Her position gets even more precarious when a chance encounter with a witch in the mysterious spirit woods makes her the vessel of ten thousand spirits and deities. When her new powers spill out into the palace kitchens, Wonshik, a kind nobleman, lends a helping hand. Soon Mirae finds herself embroiled in a power struggle between the queen and Wonshik’s best friend, Prince Jae.

With the help of a fellow kitchen maid and a meddlesome ghost, Mirae must untangle the web of lies to find the traitor within the palace. But an encroaching threat from the empire to the east looms ever closer, and the palace is rife with lies and shadowy allegiances. Who can Mirae trust?

Visit Sharon Choe's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Wharfed Out"

New from the University of Virginia Press: Wharfed Out: Gentrification and Resistance on the Early American Waterfront by Kathryn K. Lasdow.

About the book, from the publisher:

How urban waterfront development in the early republic displaced working-class communities, creating lasting patterns of inequality and resistance

In the early years of American nationhood, civic leaders undertook the construction of thousands of acres of man-made land along urban coastlines―a process known colloquially as “wharfing out,” in which landfilled blocks increased a city’s surface area by pushing outward into deep water. Workers cleared wetlands and dredged harbors in service of ever-expanding ports and waterfront workspace in cities such as Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston. But not everyone shared in the benefits of these so-called improvements. Poor and working-class people, many of whom had done the hard labor, became physically displaced and economically dispossessed. Many pushed back against this gentrification, organizing protests and launching reclamation efforts.

Drawing on an innovative combination of architectural, social historical, and material culture methods, Kathryn Lasdow is the first scholar to delineate both the gentrification and the contestation of American waterfront landscapes in the early republic. In so doing, she reveals how conflicts over design, development, and access ― and over who gets to tell the story of these places today ― represent not new phenomena but rather the latest iteration of a centuries-old struggle over who should control the future of urban space in America.

Visit Kathryn K. Lasdow's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Village of Noobtown"

Coming November 24 from Harper Voyager: The Village of Noobtown: book two of the Noobtown LitRPG series by Ryan Rimmel.

About the book, from the publisher:

Jim and his shoulder demon, Shart, return in the second installment of Ryan Rimmel’s acclaimed LitRPG series Noobtown, battling not just monsters this time, but also villagers who want little things like food, shelter, and clean water.

Well, it could be better.

Jim and his literal shoulder demon have survived in this new fantasy world--so far--by the skin of their teeth.

After finding a long-abandoned starter village in this gamified land, Jim has begun the process of rebuilding his town. He’s even renamed it Windfall, which feels like a pretty big accomplishment.

Unfortunately for our favorite adventurer, the threats he now faces are far more complicated than bands of monsters assaulting his gates. No, now the poor Noob has to deal with angry townsfolk lined outside his office demanding everything under the sun, trade negotiations with towns disinclined to dealing with this low-level mayor…and a talking badger.

He's not sure if he’d rather fight off the mob of dissatisfied (and, he might say, pretty ungrateful) villagers or the goblins and bandits always sniffing around. The truth is, if Noobtown Windfall is to survive, he’s going to have to do both, and his only advice is going to come from a demon that needs him alive—for now—but wouldn’t be too sad to see him die.

Follow Ryan Rimmel on Facebook.

--Marshal Zeringue