"Operation Icebreaker"

Coming October 6 from Severn House: Operation Icebreaker (A Rake Ozenna Thriller, 5) by Humphrey Hawksley.

About the novel, from the publisher:

Major Rake Ozenna faces dangerous choices and deadly consequences in this rip-roaring political thriller that takes you from the icy plains of Greenland to Washinton D.C., London and back again . . . Buckle up, this is a thrilling ride!

It was meant to be a routine visit. It became a bloodbath.

Special Forces veteran Major Rake Ozenna lands at America’s remote Arctic base in Greenland. His mission is simple. Build trust between allied communities on the frontline of a changing world. Instead, violence erupts, leaving Rake with a loss he cannot forget.

The devastating attack is blamed on Inuit extremists. Rake knows it’s a lie. There were assassins in the snow. And he will make sure they’re brought to justice.

But when things take a sinister political twist, Rake finds himself on the run from his own country. Someone deep inside in the Pentagon is determined to stop him and turn the base attack into something far bigger.

As global tensions reach breaking point, Rake must expose the truth before a war is ignited at the top of the world—pitting America against its closest allies…

Operation Icebreaker is the fifth Rake Ozenna thriller and will leave readers breathless . . . and eagerly anticipating the next heart-racing adventure!

Visit Humphrey Hawksley's website.

The Page 69 Test: The History Book.

My Book, The Movie: Security Breach.

My Book, The Movie: Man on Ice.

Writers Read: Humphrey Hawksley (May 2018).

The Page 69 Test: Man on Ice.

The Page 69 Test: Man on Fire.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Digital Activism in the Mexican Nations"

New from Rutgers University Press: Digital Activism in the Mexican Nations: Resistance, Catharsis, Transformation by David S. Dalton.

About the book, from the publisher:

Digital Activism in the Mexican Nations analyzes Mexico’s rich history of digital activism, which is among the most vibrant of any country in the Hispanic world. The book begins with a discussion of the Zapatista uprising of 1994―which is widely understood as the first digital social movement in the history of the world―and ends with a discussion of the digital strategies of migrant communities trekking through Mexico into the present.

Conceptualizing (digital) activism as a type of performance, the book opens a dialogue with Brecht’s binary of cathartic and transformative performance. As such, it suggests that activist movements centered on expressive manifestations of emotion tend to stifle a social movement’s revolutionary potential by stifling their ability to resonate with potential allies outside their community. At the same time, it argues that the most successful digital social movements seek strategies to build connections with allies who can help them to shift state policy.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Murder in the Upper Crust"

Coming October 27 from Minotaur Books: Murder in the Upper Crust: A Deep Dish Mystery by Mindy Quigley.

About the book, from the publisher:

The sixth book in the delectable Deep Dish Mystery series, set in a Wisconsin pizzeria.

Chef Delilah O’Leary is going where no deep dish pizza chef has gone before: a swanky wellness retreat, where she's agreed to cater for a crowd of the who’s who. Instead of cashing a fat check for an easy gig, though, she encounters a diabolical plot with more layers than one of her signature pies.

The exclusive event, hosted by superstar guru Rhiannon Frost, promises inner transformation―but when a spiteful attendee turns up dead during the guided meditation, Delilah smells more than incense in the air. Every guest has a motive…and access to a sinister walled garden brimming with exotic poisonous plants.

With her restaurant short-staffed, and her boyfriend, Detective Calvin Capone, splitting his time between bartender duties and undercover sleuthing, Delilah’s got her hands full. Can she slice through the lies before the killer strikes again? Or will this luxe getaway turn into a one-way trip to the great beyond?

Visit Mindy Quigley's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Storytellers"

New from the University of Chicago Press: The Storytellers: Reading the Masterpieces of Nineteenth-Century Short Fiction by Michael Gorra.

About the book, from the publisher'

Tracing the origins of the modern short story, Michael Gorra provides the first fully realized picture of a century’s worth of great tales.

The Storytellers offers a far-reaching account of the rich tradition of short narratives that flourished in nineteenth-century Europe and America, one that both prepared for and eventually gave way to the modern short story. Tracing unexpected resemblances across languages and decades, Michael Gorra restores a wide-angle view of the form in which works usually treated as stand-alone classics reveal themselves as parts of a single, lively conversation.

What unites these tales, Gorra argues, is their blend of novelty and unity. The book’s heart lies in a series of accessible readings of great tales by Herman Melville, Nikolai Gogol, Ivan Turgenev, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Guy de Maupassant, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Arthur Conan Doyle, Sarah Orne Jewett, Charles Chesnutt, and many more. Beyond its consideration of individual works, The Storytellers examines the formal and thematic concerns that bind the century together: the use of frame tales, accounts of social marginality, and an abundance of ghosts and uncanny coincidences. Over time, Gorra shows, these qualities yielded to a cooler realism, with Anton Chekhov as the key transitional figure. His compressed studies of ordinary lives inspired the modern short story and consigned the gothic flourishes of earlier tales to genre fiction.

What do we want from a story? What makes a tale worth telling? The nineteenth-century tale sought not the grand “meaning of life” promised by the novel, Gorra shows, but sudden revelations from singular events. The Storytellers gives readers an incomparable guide to a vast body of tales that still has the power to thrill and entertain.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Mistletoe All the Way"

Coming October 6 from Atria Books: Mistletoe All the Way: A Novel by Lauren Blakely.

About the book, from the publisher:

She wants to make him Mr. Holiday. He wants to stay a certified Grinch. From #1 New York Times bestselling author Lauren Blakely comes a small-town spicy holiday romance about a guarded cowboy veterinarian and a Christmas-loving optimist who team up for a town holiday competition.

Dr. Noah Lennox lives by three holiday rules—avoid his hometown, cheerful people, and Christmas itself.

But when his beloved grandfather announces he’s retiring and handing the cherished sleigh-ride farm to either Noah or his slick cousin Stephen, the first rule goes out the window. Back home in Evergreen Falls, the veterinarian vows to fight for the farm that means everything to him. The problem is, the town doesn’t exactly welcome its resident Scrooge with open arms.

Except for one very charming holiday enthusiast. Eloise Langston, a sunny tourism bureau hopeful, needs a win to land her dream job—and to pay the rent. Her holly jolly plan? Turn the broody, broad-shouldered grump into a festive front-runner to help the town’s Mr. Holiday Competition draw record crowds.

Transforming a camera-shy cowboy vet into a small-town sweetheart isn’t exactly in her job description—but neither is falling for him.

Soon, Noah and Eloise find themselves tangled in twinkle lights, fake kisses, and one very real attraction. But with the farm’s future at stake, Stephen’s scheming, and Eloise’s career on the line, there’s a blizzard of reasons to put their feelings on ice.

Or will they fight to turn their holiday fling into forever under the mistletoe?

Visit Lauren Blakely's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The House That Family Money Built"

New from the University of California Press: The House That Family Money Built: How Inequality Governs Debt and Wealth Management by Allison Anna Tait.

About the book, from the publisher:

At both ends of the wealth spectrum, the laws governing credit and debt hardwire patterns of both privilege and poverty. They drive financial extraction by creating a flow of assets from the pockets of low-income families into the bank accounts of high-wealth ones. In short, some families are legally enabled as they accumulate and preserve great fortunes that get passed down through generations―while others are locked into a cycle of scraping by, just hoping to find affordable housing and put food on the table.

This book traces the joint forces of law, geography, and narrative that have built this superstructure of inequality and extraction: "the house of family money." Allison Anna Tait reveals how this monumental piece of economic architecture can be deciphered by the blueprints that guided its construction, navigated by maps that reveal its hidden shortcuts, and ultimately renovated by lasting reforms.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Death by Misadventure"

New from Lake Union: Death by Misadventure: A Novel by Jane Bitomsky.

About the novel, from the publisher:

April 29, 1585. Coroner John Derrick is summoned to the cozy village of Bramley to investigate a naked dead man found beneath a waterwheel. An unfortunate drowning, by all indications. But upon closer inspection, the case takes a macabre turn: The deceased is missing a certain piece of his anatomy.

Impelled by the grisly discovery to uncover the culprit, John must contend with bumbling villagers in his quest for the truth. Only sixteen-year-old maid Rebecca Laurence seems to offer any help.

In Elizabethan England, servants rarely get a second glance. Rebecca prefers it that way, moving quietly through her world, picking up secrets like dirty clothing. Knowledge is power at a time when women are afforded little, and she deftly wields hers to protect her own clandestine affairs.

Visit Jane Bitomsky's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Business of Bigotry"

New from The University of North Carolina Press: The Business of Bigotry: John Van Evrie's Nineteenth-Century Racist Media Empire by Michael E. Woods.

About the book, from the publisher:

Amid nineteenth-century America’s fierce battles over slavery and freedom, few proslavery partisans argued more vehemently for the supremacy of the white race than John Van Evrie (1814–96). A New York–based propagandist, writer, book publisher, and editor of the New York Day Book, Van Evrie leveraged the era’s rapidly expanding media and communications landscape to advance his cause. Throughout his career, he promoted pseudoscientific justifications for racism, proclaimed slavery as beneficial to society, and created a media network criticizing abolitionists, Republicans, and Democrats alike. Despite the Civil War’s defeat of Van Evrie’s cause, his success in cultivating an audience and market for his views allowed him to continue publishing during Reconstruction, rallying support among white readers for policies and practices that would continue to subordinate Black Americans.

Tracing Van Evrie’s failures and chilling successes over a career of some forty years, Michael E. Woods reveals the stunning resilience of racist ideology before and after the Civil War. In doing so, Woods demonstrates how the era’s print media, business systems, and political alliances allowed ideas like Van Evrie’s to flourish, even as Reconstruction promised a new birth of freedom for Americans of all races.

The Page 99 Test: Arguing until Doomsday.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Whale Harbor"

Coming October 20 from Scribner: Whale Harbor: A Novel by Mary Beth Keane.

About the book, from the publisher:

From New York Times bestselling author of the “magnificent” (Fresh Air), “propulsive” (People), and “profound” (Vogue) Ask Again, Yes, a sweeping multigenerational saga inspired by the author's own family history, following eleven brothers as they are set on different paths between Ireland, England, Montana, and New York.

1960s, Ireland. In the wake of tragedy, a father makes choices for his eleven grieving sons. The older brothers will emigrate to England for work, while the younger ones will stay behind. The second eldest, Macdara, is offered a job on a Montana cattle ranch and sets off. His spirited younger brother Rian begs to come along and Mac promises to bring Rian to America as soon as he’s old enough. But then one day Mac gets a call that Rian has gone missing. His disappearance will haunt Mac and his family across decades.

Spanning lifetimes and continents, Whale Harbor is “tender, immersive, and exquisitely written” (Florence Knapp, author of The Names) with award-winning author Mary Beth Keane’s signature wit, eloquence, and attention to the emotional resonance of family, brotherhood, and the choices that echo across generations.

Visit Mary Beth Keane's website.

The Page 69 Test: Fever.

Writers Read: Mary Beth Keane (March 2013).

--Marshal Zeringue

"Empire by Association"

New from Yale University Press: Empire by Association: Agriculture and the Reorganization of the Rural Economy in Colonial Korea by Holly Stephens.

About the book, from the publisher:

How governmental associations shaped agricultural production in Korea during Japan’s colonization

Drawing on the diaries of everyday farmers, Holly Stephens examines the introduction of scientific and commercial agriculture in Korea from the late nineteenth century through liberation from Japanese rule in 1945. After Japan annexed Korea in 1910, colonial bureaucrats introduced numerous agricultural policies as they sought to turn Korea into a useful imperial possession. In particular, the colonial government hoped to establish Korea as a source of raw materials. To support the necessary increase in cultivation, it created policies introducing new cultivars, new farming methods, and new procedures for crop sales. Yet nature and farmers alike defied the expectations of colonial planners.

To demonstrate how the colonial infrastructure of scientific agriculture was experienced and interpreted by ordinary farmers, Stephens traces the implementation of colonial agricultural policies through a series of semi-governmental associations, which were the main agents of the colonial state in the rural economy. As these associations became embedded within the rural economy, they took on significance not just as a representation of the government but also as a conduit of new exchange networks and understandings of agriculture based on scientific and commercial principles, issues that would continue to influence agricultural production even after liberation.

--Marshal Zeringue