"A Slant of Light"

New from Severn House: A Slant of Light (A Georgia O’Keeffe Mystery, 3) by Kathryn Lasky.

About the book, from the publisher:

When students of St Ignatius go missing, painter and amateur sleuth Georgia O'Keeffe must infiltrate the school to figure out what's going on in this thrilling historical mystery set in 1930s New Mexico from multi award-winning author Kathryn Lasky.

New Mexico, 1936. Settling in for a harsh winter alone at her house at the Ghost Ranch, painter and occasional amateur sleuth Georgia O'Keeffe makes the most of the weather before a storm rolls in. But when she finds the ideal spot to capture a particularly nice sunset, Georgia discovers a boy - cold, exhausted and desperate...

Joseph Reyes is a student at St Ignatius School, and he claims that sinister Sister Angelica and Father Raphael have raped and killed his sister. And she is not the only one who suddenly went missing!

Georgia is determined to find out what's happening at this seemingly peculiar school, but as she investigates she uncovers even more disturbing machinations that link the school to the newly founded Opus Dei institution and its cult-like practices as well as Nazis and hidden spies - not knowing how much she puts herself in danger.

Visit Kathryn Lasky's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Hoodwinked"

Coming soon from Rowman & Littlefield: Hoodwinked: How Marketers Use the Same Tactics as Cults by Mara Einstein.

About the book, from the publisher:

Powerhouse marketing expert, narrator of Netflix's Buy Now documentary, shows how today's biggest brands are using cult-like tactics to capture not just your wallet, but your devotion.

From viral leggings to must-have apps, Dr. Mara Einstein exposes the hidden parallels between cult manipulation and modern marketing strategies in this eye-opening investigation. Drawing from her unique background as both a former MTV marketing executive and a respected media studies professor, she reveals how companies weaponize psychology to transform casual customers into devoted followers.

This groundbreaking book uncovers:

• How social media platforms use anxiety-inducing algorithms to keep you trapped in a purchase-panic cycle
  
• The secret playbook marketers use to create "brand religions" around everyday products
  
• Why even the most rational consumers fall prey to scarcity marketing and manufactured FOMO
  
• Practical strategies to break free from manipulative digital marketing tactics

With compelling real-world examples and insights from industry insiders, Hoodwinked equips you with the knowledge to recognize and resist these sophisticated manipulation techniques. Dr. Einstein's expertise has been featured in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Harvard Business Review, making her the perfect guide through the maze of modern marketing manipulation.

Break free from the cult of consumerism—discover how to make mindful choices in an increasingly manipulative digital marketplace.

Visit Mara Einstein's website.

The Page 99 Test: Compassion, Inc.

The Page 99 Test: Advertising: What Everyone Needs to Know.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Too Soon"

New from Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster: Too Soon: A Novel by Betty Shamieh.

About the book, from the publisher:

For readers of Pachinko and Queenie, a funny, sexy, and heart-wrenching literary debut that explores exile, ambition, and hope across three generations of Palestinian American women.

Arabella gets an unexpected chance at love when she’s thrust into a conflict and history she’s tried to avoid all her life.

Zoya is playing matchmaker for her last unmarried granddaughter and stirring up buried memories.

Naya is keeping a secret from her children that will change all their lives.

Thirty-five-year-old Arabella, a New York theatre director whose dating and career prospects are drying up, is offered an opportunity to direct a risqué cross-dressing interpretation of a Shakespeare classic—that might garner international attention—in the West Bank. Her mother, Naya, and grandmother, Zoya, hatch a plot to match her with Aziz, a Palestinian American doctor volunteering in Gaza. Arabella agrees to meet Aziz, since her growing feelings for Yoav, a celebrated Israeli American theatre designer, seem destined for disaster...

With biting hilarity, Too Soon introduces us to a trio of bold and unforgettable voices. This dramatic saga follows one family’s epic journey fleeing war-torn Jaffa in 1948, chasing the American Dream in Detroit and San Francisco in the sixties and seventies, hustling in the New York theatre scene post-9/11, and daring to stage a show in Palestine in 2012. Upon learning one of them is living on borrowed time, the three women fight to live, make art, and love on their own terms. A funny, sexy, and heart-wrenching literary debut, Too Soon illuminates our shared history and asks, how can we set ourselves free?

Visit Betty Shamieh's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Contested Environmentalisms"

New from Stanford University Press: Contested Environmentalisms: Trees and the Making of Modern China by Cheng Li.

About the book, from the publisher:

For decades, tree planting and forestry have been pivotal to Chinese environmentalism. During the Mao era, while forests were razed to fuel rapid increases in industrial production, the "Greening the Motherland" campaign promoted conservationist tree-planting nationwide. Contested Environmentalisms explores the seemingly contradictory rhetoric and desires of Chinese conservation from the early twentieth century through to the present. Drawing on literary, cinematic, scientific, archival, and digital media sources, Cheng Li investigates the emergence, evolution, and devolution of Chinese conservationist ideas. Combining literary, historical, and environmental studies approaches, he shows that these ideas acquired their value and assumed their power precisely because of their malleability and adaptability. Li historicizes authoritarian environmentalism and probes the global-local dynamics underlying conservationist ideas that energize environmental impulses in China. Examining ethnic borderlands, the Beijing political center, and China's growth on the world stage, this book demonstrates the strength of Chinese environmentalism to adapt and survive through tumultuous change lies in what seems to be a weakness: its inconsistency and contestation.

Visit Cheng Li's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Old Soul"

New from G. P. Putnam & Sons: Old Soul by Susan Barker.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Historian meets Under the Skin in this searingly provocative literary horror novel about one woman’s determination to stay alive at any terrifying cost.

In Osaka, two strangers, Jake and Mariko, miss a flight, and over dinner, discover they've both brutally lost loved ones whose paths crossed with the same beguiling woman no one has seen since.

Following traces this mysterious person left behind, Jake travels from country to country gathering chilling testimonies from others who encountered her across the decades—a trail of shattered souls that eventually leads him to Theo, a dying sculptor in rural New Mexico, who knows the woman better than anyone—and might just hold the key to who, or what, she is.

Part horror, part western, part thriller, Old Soul is a fearlessly bold and genre-defying tale about predation, morality and free will, and one man’s quest to bring a centuries-long chain of human devastation to an end.

Visit Susan Barker's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Tangled Fortunes"

New from Basic Books: Tangled Fortunes: The Hidden History of Interracial Marriage in the Segregated South by Kathryn Schumaker.

About the book, from the publisher:

A “brilliantly researched and surprising” (Hendrik Hartog, Princeton University) history of Southern segregationists’ long war against interracial relationships, and the century-long fight to restore the freedom to love, marry, and inherit

Interracial marriage was already illegal in some American colonies as early as the 1690s. But long before the Supreme Court declared that interracial couples had the right to marry in 1967, these families were far from rare. It took decades of hard work by Southern lawmakers and judges to create the illusion that they were, as Tangled Fortunes reveals in this new history of the rise and fall of the domestic color line.

In Tangled Fortunes, historian Kathryn Schumaker narrates how the prohibition of interracial marriage became a priority in segregated states like Mississippi. To prevent white wealth falling into Black hands, state and local authorities papered over the reality of interracial relationships, steered inheritances away from those who did not pass as white, and hardened the lines of racist exclusion. But they could neither erase the longer history of interracial relationships nor suppress the inheritance claims of biracial descendants dating back to the era of slavery.

Tangled Fortunes sheds new light on the ways that interracial families overcame racist laws, uncovered closely kept Southern secrets, and battled to reclaim Black wealth—a fight that continues to this day.

Visit Kathryn Schumaker's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The English Problem"

New from Crown: The English Problem: A Novel by Beena Kamlani.

About the book, from the publisher:

A young Indian man is tapped to help his country’s fight for freedom—but his heart engages him in a different war.

Shiv Advani is an eighteen-year-old growing up in India. But he is no ordinary young man. Shiv has been personally chosen by Mahatma Gandhi to come to England, learn their laws, and then return home and help drive the British out of India. Before he leaves, his family insists he fulfill his arranged marriage, and he is hastily betrothed to a young woman he hardly knows.

He arrives in London and soon discovers a world he is both repelled by and drawn to. Shiv knows his duty: get in, learn the letter of the law, get out. But as anyone who has ever lived in a British colony can tell you, “the English Problem” is multifaceted. The racist colonialism of “the empire on which the sun never sets” seeps into everything—not just landed territories, but territories of the mind: literature, language, religion, sexuality, self-identity. Soon the people Shiv sought to be liberated from will be the people he desperately wants to be a part of. In the end, Shiv must fight not only for his country’s liberation but also his own.

Set against the backdrop of the Indian independence movement, with appearances by historical figures such as Virginia and Leonard Woolf and Mahatma Gandhi, The English Problem is so self-assured and ambitious, it is hard to believe it is a debut.

Visit Beena Kamlani's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Three Years Our Mayor"

Coming April 8 from University of Nevada Press: Three Years Our Mayor: George Moscone and the Making of Modern San Francisco by Lincoln A. Mitchell.

About the book, from the publisher:

Those who recognize Mayor George Moscone’s name may think of him as the career politician who was assassinated along with Harvey Milk, but there was much more to this influential and fascinating man’s story. He was a trailblazing progressive and powerful state legislator who was instrumental in passing legislation on issues ranging from LGBT rights to funding for school lunches. Moscone’s 1975 campaign for mayor was historically significant because it was the first time a major race was won by a candidate who campaigned aggressively for expanding civil rights for both African Americans and LGBT people. He won his campaign for mayor chiefly because of huge support from those two constituencies.

Moscone was also a very colorful character who, in addition to being a successful politician, was a charming and charismatic bon vivant who was deeply embedded in the fabric and culture of San Francisco. He grew up the only son of a single mother in Cow Hollow when it was a working class, largely Italian American neighborhood, and he became the kind of politician who knew bartenders, playground attendants, small business owners, and neighborhood activists in every corner of the city. Moscone’s life and the history of San Francisco during the middle half of the twentieth century are deeply intertwined.

Through illustrating the life of Moscone, author Lincoln A. Mitchell explores how today’s San Francisco came into being. Moscone—through his work in the State Senate, victory in the very divisive 1975 mayor’s race, and brief tenure as mayor—was a key figure in the city’s evolution. The politics surrounding Moscone’s election as mayor, governance of the city, and tragic death are still relevant issues. Moscone was a groundbreaking politician whose life was cut short, but his influence on San Francisco can still be felt today.

Visit Lincoln Mitchell's website.

The Page 99 Test: San Francisco Year Zero.

The Page 99 Test: The Giants and Their City.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Dead Money"

New from Bantam Books: Dead Money: A Novel by Jakob Kerr.

About the book, from the publisher:

Don’t call me a fixer. This isn’t HBO.

In her job as unofficial “problem solver” for Silicon Valley’s most ruthless venture capitalist, Mackenzie Clyde’s gotten used to playing for high stakes. Even if none of those tech-bro millions she’s so good at wrangling ever make it into her pockets.

But this time, she’s in way over her head—or so it seems.

The lightning-rod CEO of tech’s hottest startup has just been murdered, leaving behind billions in “dead money” frozen in his will. As the company’s chief investor, Mackenzie’s boss has a fortune on the line—and with the police treading water, it’s up to Mackenzie to step up and resolve things, fast.

Mackenzie’s a lawyer, not a detective. Cracking this fiendishly clever killing, with its list of suspects that reads like a who’s-who of Valley power players, should be way out of her league.

Except that Mackenzie’s used to being underestimated. In fact, she’s counting on it.

Because the way she sees it, this isn’t an investigation. It’s an opportunity. And she’ll do anything it takes to seize it.

Anything at all.

Featuring jaw-dropping twists and a wily, outsider heroine you can’t help rooting for, Dead Money is a brilliant sleight-of-hand mystery. Written by a longtime insider, it is also a dead-on snapshot of the Valley’s rich and famous—and a glimpse at the darkness lurking behind the tech world’s cheery facade.

Visit Jakob Kerr's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Moral Issues"

New from the University of Chicago Press: Moral Issues: How Public Opinion on Abortion and Gay Rights Affects American Religion and Politics by Paul Goren and Christopher Chapp.

About the book, from the publisher:

A new perspective on how beliefs about abortion and gay rights reshaped American politics.

Many believe that religious and partisan identities undergird American public opinion. However, when it comes to abortion and gay rights, the reverse may be closer to the truth.

Drawing on wide-ranging evidence, Paul Goren and Christopher Chapp show that views on abortion and gay rights are just as durable and politically impactful—and often more so—than political and religious identities. Goren and Chapp locate the lasting strength of stances on abortion and gay rights in the automatic, visceral emotions that the media has primed since the late 1980s. Moral Issues examines how attitudes toward these moralized issues affect, and can sometimes even disrupt, religious and partisan identities. Indeed, over the last thirty years, these attitudes have accelerated the rise of the religious “nones,” who have no religious affiliation, and promoted moral sorting into the Democratic and Republican parties.

--Marshal Zeringue