"City Lights"

New from the University of Nevada Press: City Lights: Lawrence Ferlinghetti and the Biography of a Bookstore by Gioia Woods.

About the book, from the publisher:

On a San Francisco street corner in 1953, aspiring painter and poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti shook hands with sociology instructor and magazine editor Peter Martin. Their handshake sealed Ferlinghetti’s five-hundred-dollar investment in a small retail space above a North Beach flower shop that would become City Lights Bookstore and Press. Since the mid-twentieth century, the bookstore and its press have continued to shape the way literature is produced and consumed. As the first-ever all-paperback bookstore in the nation, sponsor of the Beat Movement and the San Francisco Renaissance, home of the Pocket Poets series, torchbearer for free speech movements, and promoter of global comparative literature and human rights, City Lights has continuously been at the avant-garde of literary experimentation and cultural revolution.

City Lights: Lawrence Ferlinghetti and the Biography of a Bookstore is the seminal story of the bookstore, its press, and the inimitable Ferlinghetti.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Fourth Princess"

New from William Morrow: The Fourth Princess: A Gothic Novel of Old Shanghai by Janie Chang.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the internationally bestselling author of The Porcelain Moon comes a haunting Gothic novel set in 1911 China. Two young women living in a crumbling, once-grand Shanghai mansion face danger as secrets of their pasts come to light, even as the mansion’s own secret threatens the present.

Shanghai, 1911. Lisan Liu is elated when she is hired as secretary to wealthy American Caroline Stanton, the new mistress of Lennox Manor on the outskirts of Shanghai’s International Settlement. However, the Manor has a dark past due to a previous owner’s suicide, and soon Lisan’s childhood nightmares resurface with more intensity and meld with haunted visions of a woman in red. Adding to her unease is the young gardener, Yao, who both entices and disturbs her.

Newly married Caroline looks forward to life in China with her husband, Thomas, away from the shadows of another earlier tragedy. But an unwelcome guest, Andrew Grey, attends her party and claims to know secrets she can’t afford to have exposed. At the same party, the notorious princess Masako Kyo approaches Lisan with questions about the young woman’s family that the orphaned Lisan can’t answer.

As Caroline struggles with Grey’s extortion and Thomas’s mysterious illness, Lisan’s future is upended when she learns the truth about her past, and why her identity has been hidden all these years. All the while, strange incidents accelerate, driving Lisan to doubt her sanity as Lennox Manor seems unwilling to release her until she fulfills demands from beyond the grave.

Visit Janie Chang's website.

The Page 69 Test: Three Souls.

Writers Read: Janie Chang (February 2017).

--Marshal Zeringue

"Stealing from the Gods"

New from the University of Michigan Press: Stealing from the Gods: Temple Robbery in the Roman Imagination by Isabel K. Köster.

About the book, from the publisher:

Stealing from the Gods investigates how authors writing between the first century BCE and second century CE addressed the issue of temple robbery or sacrilegium. As a self-proclaimed empire of pious people, the Romans viewed temple robbery as deeply un-Roman and among the worst of offenses. On the other hand, given the constant financial pressures of warfare and administration, it was inevitable that the Romans would make use of the riches stored in sanctuaries. In order to resolve this dilemma, the Romans distinguished sharply between acceptable and unacceptable removals of sacred property. When those who conducted themselves as proper Romans plundered the property of the gods, their actions were for the good of the state. In contrast, the temple robber was viewed as a stranger to the norms of Roman society and an enemy of the state.

Ancient authors including Cicero, Caesar, Livy, Appian, and Pausanias present isolated, grotesque individuals whose actions have no bearing on the conduct of Romans as a whole, rendering temple robbery not a matter of collective responsibility, but of individual moral failure. By revealing how narratives of temple robbery are constructed from a literary perspective and how they inform discourses about military conquest and imperial rule, Isabel K. Köster shines a new light on how the Romans coped with the more pernicious aspects of their empire.

--Marshal Zeringue

"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