"Dead First"

New from G.P. Putnam’s Sons: Dead First by Johnny Compton.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the Bram Stoker award-nominated author of The Spite House comes a bone-chilling new novel about a private investigator hired by a mysterious billionaire to discover why he can’t die.

When private investigator Shyla Sinclair is invited to the looming mansion of eccentric billionaire Saxton Braith, she’s more than a little suspicious. The last thing she expects to see that night is Braith’s assistant driving an iron rod straight through the back of his skull. Scratch that—the last thing she expects to see is Braith’s resurrection afterward.

Braith can’t die, it turns out, but he has no explanation for his immortality, and very few intact memories of his past. Which is why he wants to pay Shyla millions to investigate him, and bring his long-buried history to light.

Shyla can’t help but be intrigued, but she’s also trapped by the offer. Braith has made it clear that he knows she’s the only person he can trust with his secret, because he knows all about hers.

Bold, atmospheric, and utterly frightening, Johnny Compton’s Dead First is spine-chilling supernatural horror about the pursuit of power and the undying need for reckoning.

Visit Johnny Compton's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Making Babies in Early Modern England"

New from Cambridge University Press: Making Babies in Early Modern England by Leah Astbury.

About the book, from the publisher:

Early modern English people were obsessed with making babies. In this fascinating new history, Leah Astbury traces this preoccupation through manuscript letters, diaries, recipe books and almanacs, revealing its centrality to family life. Information was plentiful in guides on the burgeoning fields of domestic conduct and midwifery, as well as in the many satirical ballads focused on sex, marriage and family. Astbury utilises this broad source base to explore all aspects of early modern childbearing, from conception to the months after delivery. She demonstrates that, while religious and cultural ideals dictated that women carry out all of this work, men were engaged in its practice through directing medical decisions. With the entire household including servants, wetnurses and other unexpected actors included in the project, childbearing can be situated within the histories of gender, medicine, social status, family and record-keeping.

Visit Leah Astbury's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Inharmonious"

New from Blackstone: Inharmonious by Tammye Huf.

About the book, from the publisher:

A compelling love story—inspired by the author’s own family history—set in the segregated South during and after World War II, perfect for fans of Kristin Hannah’s The Women and Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half.

When three young Black men enlist in the US Army hoping to serve their country with honor, their lives are forever changed.

When Pearl Harbor is attacked in 1941, Cora’s brother, Benny, rushes to enlist against the wishes of Cora and their mother. Able to pass as white due to his pale skin and light eyes, Benny reports for duty only to realize he’s been mistakenly enlisted as a white man in a racially segregated military.

Lee has been friends with Benny ever since he was a troubled teenager, and he’s been sweet on Cora for nearly as long. When Lee enlists without telling Cora, she is heartbroken and feels betrayed by the man she expected to spend the rest of her life with.

Meanwhile, family friend Roscoe, encouraged by Benny, offers to marry Cora in order to ensure that she and her mother—who both remain home—will be provided for should Benny not make it back.

Benny does return, but his new white identity leaves him struggling to find his place in between, in a country that only sees race. As America promises postwar prosperity to white veterans through the GI Bill, Black soldiers are excluded.

While the war may be over, the fight has only just begun for Cora, Lee, Benny, and Roscoe.

Visit Tammye Huf's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Bundy Archive"

New from the University Press of Mississippi: The Bundy Archive: Genealogies of White Masculinity by Bryan J. McCann.

About the book, from the publisher:

Since his first arrest in 1975, Ted Bundy has been the most ubiquitous serial killer in US popular culture. He is the subject of seven feature films and miniseries, several televised documentaries and podcasts, numerous true crime books, and myriad other texts trading in the saga of a man who kidnapped, raped, and murdered at least thirty white women and girls in the Pacific Northwest, Utah, Colorado, and Florida. The Bundy Archive: Genealogies of White Masculinity is the first scholarly study to investigate the deep, unsettling allure of Bundy within the public imagination.

Working at the intersection of cultural criticism, true crime, and memoir, author Bryan J. McCann argues that Bundy’s ubiquity is not a function of his depravity and strangeness, but of his familiarity and resonance. McCann considers cultural artifacts, rhetoric, and popular texts surrounding Bundy—collectively constructing what he terms “the Bundy archive”—and demonstrates how these elements reveal public anxieties about and investments in white masculinity and gendered violence.

The Bundy Archive maps the pervasive and disturbing ways that white masculinity is intertwined with sadistic violence, urging readers to confront the anxieties and societal investments that perpetuate this brutal legacy. McCann’s work is a critical examination of how public culture grapples with the dark specter of white male violence, offering profound insights into the intersections of race, gender, and violence in modern America.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Follow Her"

New from Lake Union: Follow Her by Anna Stothard.

About the novel, from the publisher:

Some call her a cult leader. Others, their salvation. I used to call her my best friend…

Ten years ago, seventeen-year-olds Katie and Frida spent a heatwave summer together on a tidal island and they haven’t spoken since. Katie has tried hard to forget about what happened, all while watching Frida rise to fame as a spiritual influencer with millions of devoted followers.

But then a photograph surfaces: a group of girls bathed in summer light, white t-shirts glowing against marsh water. One figure is the celebrated Frida Rae. One is Katie. The others are girls whose dead bodies recently washed up near the island.

As a determined journalist starts asking questions, Katie’s carefully constructed life as a doctor’s wife and a mother begins to crack. Forced to recall her time with Frida, she is drawn back into a world of obsession, toxic first love and deadly secrets. Frida has many faces: victim, friend, spiritual leader. But how far will both women go to protect their image―and whose story will the world believe?

Visit Anna Stothard's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Pink Hotel.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Politics of Names"

New from Columbia University Press: The Politics of Names: Attitudes, Identity, and the Naming of Children in American History by R. Urbatsch.

About the book, from the publisher:

Since the earliest days of the United States, some parents have felt moved to capture their political moment in their children’s names. A Massachusetts child received the name Federal Constitution in 1790. The nineteenth century saw the name States Rights crop up across the South. A younger brother of a boy called McKinley in the early twentieth century was disproportionately likely to be named Roosevelt. Residents of areas that supported Reagan were prone to choose the spelling “Meagan” over “Megan.” The name Hillary surged in popularity after the Clintons emerged on the political scene―then crashed just as dramatically. What do trends like these tell us about political identities and enthusiasms in the United States?

R. Urbatsch explores the politics of naming across American history, revealing the surprising ways parents’ choices shed light on public opinion past and present. He argues that naming is a weathervane for political attitudes: Names touch on every sort of identity, from race and gender to nationalism and religion. Tracing the rise and fall of names that evoked the leaders, ideas, and issues that fired political imaginations of their times, Urbatsch opens new windows onto a wide range of historical questions. By analyzing when politics-tinged names gained or lost popularity, this book offers an unconventional and illuminating new perspective on identity, public sentiment, and political behavior in the United States.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Strange Animals"

New from Ballantine Books: Strange Animals: A Novel by Jarod K. Anderson.

About the novel, from the publisher:

An ordinary man discovers a hidden world of supernatural creatures—and an unexpected home—in this enchanting contemporary fantasy debut.

Green trips on the curb, falls flat into the street, and sees the city bus speeding toward him. And then . . . blink. He’s back on the curb, miraculously still alive. A five-foot-tall crow watches him from atop a nearby sign, somehow unseen by the rushing crowd of morning commuters.

Desperate for answers and beset by more visions of impossible creatures, Green finds his way to a remote campsite in the Appalachian Mountains, where he meets a centuries-old teacher and begins an apprenticeship unlike anything he could imagine.

Under his new mentor’s grouchy tutelage, Green studies the time-bending rag moth, the glass fawn, and the menacing horned wolf. He begins to see past hidden nature’s terrors and glimpse its beauty, all while befriending fellow misfits—and finding connection and community.

Along the way come clues about the forces that set him on this path—and, most incredibly, a sense of purpose and fulfillment like nothing he’s felt before.

But Green’s new happiness promises to be short-lived, because alongside these marvels lurks a deadly threat to this place he’s already come to love.

Creepy, cozy, and beautiful, Strange Animals is a fantasy about home, belonging, and the fearfully wonderous nature all around us.

Visit Jarod K. Anderson's website.

--Marshal Zerimgue

"Automatic Artistry"

New from the University of California Press: Automatic Artistry: Negotiating Musical Creativity in a Technological Age by Alyssa Michaud.

About the book, from the publisher:

Musicians have access to an ever-growing array of technological tools, creating a world rich with new artistic possibilities. Yet the incursion of automation technology into creative pursuits has long sparked panic about the threat to human creativity and authenticity. Relating a 120-year history of automation in music, this book provides a timely historical demonstration of how older technologies of automation gave rise to initial unease, which was then followed by integration and exploration of their generative potentials. Journeying from the player piano at the turn of the twentieth century, through the introduction of drum machines and synthesizers, to the holographic pop stars of the twenty-first century, Alyssa Michaud shows how musical subcultures have shifted the parameters of debate around the meaning of automation and creativity. In riveting prose, Automatic Artistry directly addresses the choices we now face as we adapt to the newest wave of automated musical tools.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Jills"

New from Ballantine Books: The Jills: A Novel by Karen Parkman.

About the book, from the publisher:

In this propulsive debut, a Buffalo Bills cheerleader will stop at nothing to solve the disappearance of her best friend and teammate, navigating the dark underbelly of a hardscrabble city, the grime and glamour of professional cheerleading, and her own tangled family history.

Virginia is a Jill—a cheerleader for the NFL’s Buffalo Bills—living the life of her dreams: she spends her weekdays practicing, her weekends cheering, and her nights hopping between bars and clubs with her teammates, including the fearless, charismatic Jeanine, whose friendship has given Virginia confidence in spades and helped her forget her troubled past with her estranged sister, Laura.

One Sunday, Jeanine fails to show up for a game, and calls and texts to her go unanswered. Virginia embarks on an investigation into Jeanine’s disappearance, aided by a network of Jills, ex-boyfriends, seedy fixtures of Buffalo’s criminal underground, and unexpected figures from her past. But as her search grows increasingly dangerous and spirals into obsession, disturbing questions about who Jeanine really was begin to emerge.

Soon, Virginia finds herself wondering how well she knew her best friend, if she can trust the people she thought were protecting her, and whether—when trying to save the ones she loves most—she’s capable of saving herself, too.

Part bingeable mystery, part character-driven tale of a woman discovering her own strength in a system built by and for men, The Jills is a page-turning novel that brims with wit and heart while reminding us of the healing power of sisterhood.

Visit Karen Parkman's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Kant's Moral World"

New from Oxford University Press: Kant's Moral World: Ideas and the Real Use of Pure Practical Reason by Jessica Tizzard.

About the book, from the publisher:

Kant's Moral World offers a detailed defense of Immanuel Kant's practical metaphysics. While Kant is widely recognized for his moral philosophy, this study reveals how his ethical framework also serves as a foundation for answering some of the most profound metaphysical questions: Are we truly free? Do we have immortal souls? Can we rationally believe in God?

Through a careful and systematic interpretation of Kant's critical works, the book grounds his approach to these questions in the broader development of the concept of pure reason, which begins in the Critique of Pure Reason and stretches through the Groundwork and Critique of Practical Reason. Jessica Tizzard argues that our practical cognition of the moral law and transcendental freedom exemplifies pure reason's real use, which ultimately explains the primacy of practical over theoretical reason. This primacy, in turn, provides rational grounds for affirming the existence of the soul and God as necessary conditions for the realization of a moral world, encapsulated in Kant's idea of the highest good.

Combining rigorous textual analysis with philosophical clarity, this monograph offers a compelling new interpretation of Kant's metaphysical project. It invites scholars and students alike to reconsider the depth and coherence of Kant's vision, where morality and metaphysics are not separate domains, but mutually reinforcing aspects of human reason.

--Marshal Zeringue