"Kennedy’s Only Hero"

New from PublicAffairs: Kennedy’s Only Hero: How JFK’s Obsession with Winston Churchill Defined His Presidency by Joel Nelson.

About the book, from the publisher:

The surprising story of how John F. Kennedy’s obsession with Winston Churchill defined his life, transformed his politics, and helped elevate him to the nation’s highest office.

Winston Churchill remains one of the modern age’s most revered leaders. His life has been the subject of decades of mythmaking and scrutiny, and yet few know the powerful sway he had over another twentieth-century political icon―John F. Kennedy. Drawing on deep wells of unpublished archival material, Kennedy's Only Hero uncovers Kennedy’s obsession with Churchill, whose career, policies, writings, and even daily habits profoundly shaped the future president.

Kennedy discovered Churchill’s books as a teenager and by his early twenties had become an unswerving believer in his brilliance. Under Churchill’s influence, Kennedy rejected his own youthful isolationism and adopted the approach to national and international politics that propelled him to the presidency. Although they would not meet until late in their lives, Churchill’s influence on Kennedy’s campaign tactics, speeches, and worldview was overwhelming. Kennedy’s conviction in the power of peace through strength, his faith in summits, his understanding of the importance of rhetoric, and his deep commitment to service and global engagement―all came from Churchill.

Kennedy's Only Hero is an enlightening and deeply human story of an admiration and aspiration that changed the course of history.

Visit Joel Nelson's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"O Now!"

New from Bloomsbury: O Now! by Niall Williams.

About the novella, from the publisher:

From novelist Niall Williams, bestselling author of Time of the Child and This Is Happiness, a new story set in the small Irish town of Faha, exploring love, loss, and the "why" of life

Mossie Crowe, known as "Ganga," is that rare man who is beloved by everyone who knows him and is particularly cherished by his best friend, Bat. On one ordinary October day, Bat interrupts their usual evening tea to ask Ganga why God created the earth. But when Ganga passes away that night, Bat finds himself at a loss, without his friend and without an answer to his question. Over the next days, as all of Faha comes to care for and honor the body of the man they loved, Bat begins a new journey towards understanding life, death, and love.

A tender exploration of life's many meanings, O Now! is a perfect gift for readers who loved Niall Williams' previous Faha novels and features an all-new essay from Niall exploring Faha's creation and legacy.

Visit Niall Williams's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Forms of Utopia"

New from Princeton University Press: The Forms of Utopia: Paradox, Labyrinth, and Recursion in the Renaissance by Jenny C. Mann.

About the book, from the publisher:

A new analysis of utopia as a literary form, with recursive patterns that draw from early modern logic and mathematics

In this ingenious and provocative book, Jenny Mann asks us to shift our understanding of utopia from its politics to its form. Beginning with Thomas More’s Utopia (1516), one of the most influential books of all time, Mann shows that utopia’s recursive patterns—its frames, folds, knots, meanders, and turns—enable the perpetual invention of limitless artificial worlds.

Mann demonstrates how paradox, labyrinth, and recursion, in the hands of More, William Shakespeare, and Margaret Cavendish, become techniques of utopian invention. Drawing on concepts from logic and mathematics, including the Liar’s Paradox and the conundrum of squaring the circle, to make sense of utopia’s impossible geometries, she offers fresh and illuminating considerations of More’s Utopia, Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and Cavendish’s The Blazing World, each representing a different form of utopia. These sections are framed by interludes that feature an artwork or artifact—an intarsia-paneled door, a turf maze, a silver coin—that materially expresses an element of utopia’s puzzling structure. To study utopia, she argues, we must enter its structure and follow the disorienting paths. Utopia works by transforming enclosed spaces—a book, a play—into sites of infinite possibility.

Visit Jenny C. Mann's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Trials of Orpheus.

--Marshal Zeringue

"What We Promised"

Coming November 24 from Montlake: What We Promised by Q.B. Tyler.

About the novel, from the publisher:

Twelve years of silence shattered by one truth: The best man has always loved the bride. Now she must choose between her vows and her heart.

Minutes before I walk down the aisle, I discover my fiancé, Elijah, cheated on me.

He slept with someone else at his bachelor party three months ago.

When his brother, Julian―my best friend since college―learns I know the truth, he confesses a secret of his own, something that changes everything: He’s been in love with me for twelve years.

I’ve always felt the same, but I buried those feelings, convinced he’d never love me back.

What happens next in the bridal suite is reckless. Impulsive. Forbidden. Everything I’ve wanted since the day we met. One moment of passion that makes an impossible situation even more complicated.

Now I’m facing an unthinkable choice: the man I made promises to, or the one I’ve wanted all along. Walking away from either brother means destroying more than just a marriage―it means tearing a family apart.

But Elijah’s betrayal runs deeper than I know.

And nothing can prepare me for what he’ll do to keep me.

Visit Q.B. Tyler's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Experience: A History"

New from the University of California Press: Experience: A History by Lawrence Kramer.

About the book, from the publisher:

A lyrical, provocative journey into the art, memory, and meaning of experience.

What does it mean to have an experience? When did we begin to believe we could “have" one at all? In Experience: A History, Lawrence Kramer traces the cultural birth of experience as a singular, life-defining event. Moving lyrically between criticism and memoir, he guides readers from Petrarch and Nietzsche to Virginia Woolf and Anne Carson; from Haydn’s luminous Creation to Billie Holiday's searing “Strange Fruit.” Along the way we encounter Niagara Falls and the Galápagos, Parisian department stores and Manhattan nightclubs, and luminaries such as Franz Schubert, Henry and William James, and Benjamin Britten.

As early as the fourteenth century and accelerating after the eighteenth, records of concentrated, unforgettable moments begin to proliferate―until the possibility of having an experience becomes a demand for one. Experience turns into something to seek, curate, even consume. Yet its power lies in its particulars: the convergence of history, art, memory, and self. At once personal and tender, challenging and vulnerable, Experience fuses philosophical argument with intimate recollection. The result is both a sweeping intellectual history and a deeply human reckoning with the experiences that shape and unsettle modern life.

Visit Lawrence Kramer's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Alma Vampires"

New from Berkley: Alma Vampires (The Icarus University Series) by Elena Armas.

About the book, from the publisher:

An unsuspecting heiress with a target on her back must enlist the protection of a vampire whose wealth and secrets rival her own, in a brand-new paranormal romance series from New York Times bestselling author Elena Armas.

Valle Cepeda's life changes drastically over the course of a winter break, when she goes from being an Ivy League scholarship student one day to inheriting a fortune from the mother she’s never met by the next. The fate of Alma, a coveted fashion empire, is now in Val's hands.

Hadrian Cruz presents himself as a calculating, self-serving player in the game of who takes over Alma, but that isn't his true aim. A blood debt that chains him to a hundred-year-old wound is finally being collected, and it involves Val.

Furious at everyone who has tried to manipulate her, Val returns to Icarus University, only to see her world has changed shape dramatically, and Hadrian is now at the center of it. She doesn’t trust him, but there are things only Hadrian can provide: protection, and a way to satiate the longing she craves more than fears.

Plagued by nightmares, can Val decipher the secrets of her legacy? And can she accept that what she feels for Hadrian runs deeper than attraction? Answers always come at a cost, and these could shatter her heart...or bind her soul to the monster she desires the most.

Visit Elena Armas's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Glass Houses"

New from Oxford University Press: Glass Houses: Choosing Grace in a Judgmental World by Jason Brennan.

About the book, from the publisher:

Most of us believe we should judge others less. Few of us manage it. The problem isn't simply a lack of kindness or willpower. The deeper problem is that we are bad at moral judgment. We are biased, self-deceived, tribal, and often more interested in protecting our own status than in discovering the truth. We exaggerate our virtue and inflate the faults of others. We are not impartial referees of the moral life; we are players quick to call fouls on one another.

In Glass Houses, Jason Brennan defends the neglected virtue of grace. Grace means not merely forgiving others after the fact, but often refusing to rush to judge their character in the first place. It means extending goodwill as a default-treating people well without first auditing whether they deserve it-and resisting the urge to publicize every fault or turn disagreement into moral exile.

Grace is not naïveté or moral apathy. It begins with a simple recognition: flawed people judging flawed people should proceed with humility. Given our cognitive limits and our incentives to posture and punish, restraint is often wiser-and more just-than righteousness.

Drawing on moral psychology and political philosophy, Brennan shows that grace is not weakness but strength: a disciplined refusal to weaponize moral certainty. In a world eager to throw stones, he invites us to look again at our own glass houses-and set the stones down.

Visit Jason Brennan's website.

The Page 99 Test: In Defense of Openness.

The Page 99 Test: The Ethics of Voting.

The Page 99 Test: Against Democracy.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Out, Damned Scot"

Coming December 1 from Severn House: Out, Damned Scot (A Last Ditch Mystery, 9) by Catriona McPherson.

About the book, from the publisher:

Pregnant Lexy Campbell races to hunt down a killer before she goes into labour in this hilarious cosy mystery from award-winning author Catriona McPherson. A Burns Night to die for . . . literally. Pregnant and a week overdue, Lexy Campbell’s hope for a quiet Burns Supper at the Cuento Celtic Society is dashed in minutes. The haggis is ceremonial only. The actual dinner is disappointing. And then the haggis cutter’s missing dagger turns up in the back of a dead guest no one can identify ― because of course it does. With a room full of potential suspects, and contractions potentially minutes away, Lexy together with the rest of Trinity for Trouble must untangle a mystery involving old grudges, family feuds, and some very convincing magical misdirection. But as the trio race to uncover a killer, Lexy’s running out of patience, time, and possibly all dignity. A Burns Night celebration, a mysterious dead guest, and an extremely overdue Lexy Campbell who came for haggis but left with a murder to solve. Perfect for fans of Janet Evanovich, M.C. Beaton, and Clare Chase who love laugh-out-loud cosy mysteries featuring chaotic heroines, awkward situations and messy murder cases.

Visit Catriona McPherson's website.

The Page 69 Test: Go to My Grave.

Writers Read: Catriona McPherson (November 2018).

My Book, The Movie: The Turning Tide.

The Page 69 Test: The Turning Tide.

My Book, The Movie: A Gingerbread House.

The Page 69 Test: Hop Scot.

The Page 69 Test: Deep Beneath Us.

Q&A with Catriona McPherson.

The Page 69 Test: The Witching Hour.

Writers Read: Catriona McPherson (September 2024).

Writers Read: Catriona McPherson (December 2024).

The Page 69 Test: Scotzilla.

My Book, The Movie: Scotzilla.

The Page 69 Test: Scot's Eggs.

Writers Read: Catriona McPherson (November 2025).

The Page 69 Test: The Dead Room.

Writers Read: Catriona McPherson (May 2026).

--Marshal Zeringue

"Unmaking Eden"

New from Cambridge University Press: Unmaking Eden: Genesis and the Domestication of the World by David M. Carr.

About the book, from the publisher:

Domestication is not just something that humans impose on animals, but an ancient structure binding both creatures within shared systems of subjugation. Advancing trenchant new ideas, David Carr unpacks Genesis 1–11 to reveal ways in which embedded human–animal, gender, and group hierarchies constitute our world. Drawing on animal studies and Indigenous perspectives alike, he treats the Bible's origin stories as an invitation to rethink inter-species flourishing and re-imagine community based on intrinsic worth rather than mere utility. Tracing human rule over creation in Eden to slavery and concentrated human power at Babel, the author exposes an escalating trajectory of domination. Yet these foundational stories also suggest that global subjugation is not inevitable, but instead the consequence of a fall from an earlier relational, reciprocal mode of living. Here is a hopeful framework that recognizes this crisis while offering alternatives rooted in respectful relations and multispecies kinship.

The Page 99 Test: Holy Resilience.

Writers Read: David M. Carr (November 2014).

--Marshal Zeringue

"Revenge Plot"

Coming November 10 from Berkley: Revenge Plot by Stephanie Wrobel.

About the book, from the publisher:

A desperate writer’s pursuit of a powerful literary agent takes a dark turn in this new novel from the internationally bestselling author of The Hitchcock Hotel and Darling Rose Gold.

All Arnie Tenderton wants this Christmas—all he’s ever wanted—is to be a published author. For decades he has toiled over one novel after another. Each was missing something. Until now.

He’s finally written his perfect book.

What he needs next is a literary agent, someone who can get his book into publishers’ hands. Not just any agent will do, of course. Arnie wants the best. Arnie wants Claudia Conley.

She already rejected him once, and Arnie has never forgiven her. He could move on. Instead, he finds out where Claudia is spending the holidays: alone in a remote house in the Catskill Mountains. He decides to show up there to make his pitch.

Claudia may try to turn him down again, but this time Arnie won’t take no for an answer.

Because his book is about her.

And he’s not leaving until the story ends the way he wants.

Visit Stephanie Wrobel's website.

The Page 69 Test: Darling Rose Gold.

My Book, The Movie: Darling Rose Gold.

Q&A with Stephanie Wrobel.

The Page 69 Test: The Hitchcock Hotel.

--Marshal Zeringue