"What It's Like in Words"

New from Henry Holt & Company: What It's Like in Words: A Novel by Eliza Moss.

About the book, from the publisher:

Eliza Moss's intoxicating debut novel is a dark, intense, and compelling account of what happens when a young woman falls in love with the wrong kind of man.

Enola is approaching 30 and everything feels like a lot. The boxes aren’t ticked and she feels adrift in a way she thought she would have beaten by now. She wants to be a writer but can't finish a first draft; she romanticizes her childhood but won’t speak to her mother; she has never been in a serious relationship but yearns to be one half of a couple that DIYs together at the weekends.

Enter: enigmatic writer. Enola falls in love and starts to dream about their perfect future: the wedding, the publishing deals, the house in Stoke Newington. But the reality is far from perfect. He’s distant. But she’s a Cool Girl, she doesn’t need to hear from him every day. He hangs out with his ex. But she's a Cool Girl, she’s not insecure. Is she? He has dark moods. But he’s a creative, that’s part of his ‘process’. Her best friend begs her to end it, but Enola can’t. She's a Cool Girl.

She might feel like she’s going crazy at times, but she wants him. She needs him. She would die without him...That's what love is, isn’t it? Over the next twenty-four hours (and two years), everything that Enola thinks she knows is about to unravel, and she has to think again about how she sees love, family, and friendship and—most importantly—herself.

With notes of Fleabag & I May Destroy You but with the sparseness and emotional accuracy of writers like Ali Smith and Lily King, What It's Like in Words is a close examination of what it means to experience the intense emotional uncertainty of first love.

Visit Eliza Moss's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Treekeepers: The Race for a Forested Future"

New from Basic Books: Treekeepers: The Race for a Forested Future by Lauren E. Oakes.

About the book, from the publisher:

“A frank, probing, but ultimately hopeful book” (Elizabeth Kolbert) that shows how the path from climate change to a habitable future winds through the world’s forests

In recent years, planting a tree has become a catchall to represent “doing something good for the planet.” Many companies commit to planting a tree with every purchase. But who plants those trees and where? Will they flourish and offer the benefits that people expect? Can all the individual efforts around the world help remedy the ever-looming climate crisis?

In Treekeepers, Lauren E. Oakes takes us on a poetic and practical journey from the Scottish Highlands to the Panamanian jungle to meet the scientists, innovators, and local citizens who each offer part of the answer. Their work isn’t just about planting lots of trees, but also about understanding what it takes to grow or regrow a forest and to protect what remains. Throughout, Oakes shows the complex roles of forests in the fight against climate change, and of the people who are giving trees a chance with hope for our mutual survival.

Timely, meticulously reported, and ultimately optimistic, Treekeepers teaches us how to live with a sense of urgency in our warming world, to find beauty in the present for ourselves and our children, and to take action big or small.

Visit Lauren E. Oakes's website.

The Page 99 Test: In Search of the Canary Tree.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Sweet Vidalia"

New from Little, Brown and Company: Sweet Vidalia by Lisa Sandlin.

About the book, from the publisher:

This life-affirming novel follows a fifty-seven-year-old woman forced to rebuild her life, unexpectedly and alone, in 1960s Texas—telling a "wonderfully wise and compassionate story of the extraordinary courage it takes to live a seemingly ordinary life" (Shelley Read, author of Go As a River) and proving "it's never too late to come of age" (Kirkus Reviews).

It’s 1964 and Eliza Kratke is mostly content. Married thirty years, she is long settled in Bayard, Texas with two grown children, a nice house, a little dog, and a routine. But her husband has a secret, and Eliza has not been brave enough to demand to know what it is.

So when her husband dies suddenly, the ground doesn’t just shift under Eliza’s feet—it falls away entirely, revealing that she has known nothing true about her life. How should she come to terms with all that has been a lie?

What emerges from this wreckage is a profoundly compelling portrait of a wonderfully nuanced woman, worn down like a gemstone to a core of durability and self-reliance as she fights for her own path forward. By taking business classes and moving into a hotel filled with aspiring young people, The Sweet Vidalia, Eliza gathers new friends and new possibilities. But with each of these, she finds that it isn't so simple to leave the past behind. Sweet Vidalia not only explores what it means to be honest with ourselves and with one another, but asks: what will we do with the truth when we find it?

Visit Lisa Sandlin's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Blacks against Brown"

New from the University of North Carolina Press: Blacks against Brown: The Intra-racial Struggle over Segregated Schools in Topeka, Kansas by Charise L. Cheney.

About the book, from the publisher:

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (1954) is regarded as one of the most significant civil rights moments in American history. Historical observers have widely viewed this landmark Supreme Court decision as a significant sign of racial progress for African Americans. However, there is another historical perspective that tells a much more complex tale of Black resistance to the NAACP's decision to pursue desegregating America's public schools.

This multifaceted history documents the intra-racial conflict among Black Topekans over the city's segregated schools. Black resistance to school integration challenges conventional narratives about Brown by highlighting community concerns about economic and educational opportunities for Black educators and students and Black residents' pride in all-Black schools. This history of the local story behind Brown v. Board contributes to a literature that provides a fuller and more complex perspective on African Americans and their relationship to Black education and segregated schools during the Jim Crow era.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Good Bride"

Coming soon from Crooked Lane Books: The Good Bride: A Novel by Jen Marie Wiggins.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Wedding of the Year turns disastrous in this twisty family drama full of lies and betrayals, perfect for fans of Laura Dave, Lucy Foley, and Ruth Ware.

One year after a devastating hurricane, bride-to-be Ruth Bancroft is marrying her perfect groom in a quaint fishing village on the Gulf Coast. The weekend is carefully curated, with the displays of pomp and social media magic meant to promote an area still struggling to rebuild as well as bring Ruth’s estranged family back together.

Yet as good intentions often go, this road to wed is hell and paved in complications. With tensions rising between the family and the bridal party, long-buried secrets come to light, and accusations start flying. Things officially spiral out of control when the oceanfront rehearsal dinner is rocked by a series of gunshots, and a high-profile guest goes missing. As the investigation gets underway, it turns out that everyone has something to hide.

Big Little Lies meets The Guest List in this gripping page turner that asks the big questions about messy family liaisons, modern media, and the lies we tell the world.

Visit Jen Marie Wiggins's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Cervantine Blackness"

New from Penn State University Press: Cervantine Blackness by Nicholas R. Jones.

About the book, from the publisher:

There is no shortage of Black characters in Miguel de Cervantes’s works, yet there has been a profound silence about the Spanish author’s compelling literary construction and cultural codification of Black Africans and sub-Saharan Africa. In Cervantine Blackness, Nicholas R. Jones reconsiders in what sense Black subjects possess an inherent value within Cervantes’s cultural purview and literary corpus.

In this unflinching critique, Jones charts important new methodological and theoretical terrain, problematizing the ways emphasis on agency has stifled and truncated the study of Black Africans and their descendants in early modern Spanish cultural and literary production. Through the lens of what he calls “Cervantine Blackness,” Jones challenges the reader to think about the blind faith that has been lent to the idea of agency―and its analogues “presence” and “resistance”―as a primary motivation for examining the lives of Black people during this period. Offering a well-crafted and sharp critique, through a systematic deconstruction of deeply rooted prejudices, Jones establishes a solid foundation for the development of a new genre of literary and cultural criticism.

A searing work of literary criticism and political debate, Cervantine Blackness speaks to specialists and nonspecialists alike―anyone with a serious interest in Cervantes’s work who takes seriously a critical reckoning with the cultural, historical, and literary legacies of agency, antiblackness, and refusal within the Iberian Peninsula and the global reaches of its empire.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Nobody's Hero"

New from Flatiron Books: Nobody's Hero: A Novel by M. W. Craven.

About the book, from the publisher:

A man who can't feel fear is in a race against time to find a woman who knows a secret that could take down the United States

The man who can’t feel fear is back. . .

When a shocking murder and abduction on the streets of London leads investigators to open a safe in Langley for the first time in ten years, they find a note directing them to a few key individuals. Three of the people on the list are dead. The fourth is Ben Koenig.

Koenig has no idea why his name is on the list. Then he realizes that he knows the woman who carried out the killings. Ten years earlier, without being told why, he was tasked with helping her disappear. Far from being a deranged killer, she is the gatekeeper of a secret that could take down America, and for the safety of the country, she has been in hiding for years—until now. And if she has resurfaced, the danger may be closer and more terrifying than anyone can imagine.

Ben Koenig has to find her before it’s too late. But Ben suffers from a syndrome that means he can’t feel fear. He doesn’t always know when he should walk away . . . or when he’s leading others into danger. Fast, brutal, smart, and violent, Nobody’s Hero is an engrossing story of contract killers, international terrorism, hard choices, and the future of the country—and the world as we know it.

Visit M. W. Craven's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Carmen in Diaspora"

New from Oxford University Press: Carmen in Diaspora: Adaptation, Race, and Opera's Most Famous Character by Jennifer M. Wilks.

About the book, from the publisher:

Carmen in Diaspora is a cultural history of Carmen adaptations set in African diasporic contexts. It explores the phenomenon of the connection between the story of Carmen, which originally appeared in Prosper Mérimée's eponymous 1845 novella and came to prominence through Georges Bizet's 1875 opera, with prolific popular recreations in African diasporic settings. The source texts for Carmen not only suggest nineteenth-century French negotiations of Blackness via the Romani community, but also provide provocative frameworks through which to examine conceptions of Black womanhood and self-determination in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Through analyses of Mérimée and Bizet, the Harlem Renaissance novels The Blacker the Berry (1929), Banjo (1929), and Romance in Marseille (2020); the U.S. movie musicals Carmen Jones (1954) and Carmen: A Hip Hopera (2001); the Senegalese and South African feature films Karmen Geï (2001) and U-Carmen eKhayelitsha (2005), respectively; and the Cuban-set stage musical Carmen la Cubana (2016), Carmen in Diaspora examines how these works illuminate the cultural currents of the nineteenth-century European context in which the character was born. The book also interrogates social categories, particularly gender, race, and sexuality, in contemporary Europe, North America, Africa, and the Caribbean. Carmen is Diaspora is an adaptation study that emphasizes connections formed through the transposition rather than imposition of European culture as it considers how artists have brought - and continue to bring - new energy, vision, and life to the story of opera's most famous character.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Alter Ego"

New from Flatiron Books: Alter Ego: A Novel by Alex Segura.

About the book, from the publisher:

Alex Segura, award–winning author of Secret Identity, returns with a clever and escapist standalone sequel set in the world of comic books. In the present day, a comics legend is given the chance to revive a beloved but forgotten character. But at what price?

Annie Bustamante is a cultural force like none other: an acclaimed filmmaker, an author, a comic book artist known for one of the all time best superhero comics in recent memory. But she’s never been able to tackle her longtime favorite superhero, the Lethal Lynx. Only known to the most die-hard comics fans and long out of print, the rights were never available—until now.

But Annie is skeptical of who is making the offer: Bert Carlyle's father started Triumph Comics, and has long claimed ownership of the Lynx. When she starts getting anonymous messages urging her not to trust anyone, Annie’s inner alarms go off. Even worse? Carlyle wants to pair her with a disgraced filmmaker for a desperate media play.

Annie, who has been called a genius, a sell-out, a visionary, a hack, and everything else under the sun, is sick of the money grab. For the first time since she started reading a tattered copy of The Legendary Lynx #1 as a kid, she feels a pure, creative spark. The chance to tell a story her way. She's not about to let that go. Even if it means uncovering the dark truth about the character she loves.

Sharply written, deftly plotted, and with a palpable affection for all kinds of storytelling, Alter Ego is a one-of-a-kind reading experience.

Visit Alex Segura's website.

The Page 69 Test: Blackout.

Writers Read: Alex Segura (May 2018).

--Marshal Zeringue

"From Colonial Cuba to Madrid"

New from Cambridge University Press: From Colonial Cuba to Madrid: Litigating Collective Freedom and Native Rights in the Spanish Empire, 1780–1814 by María Elena Díaz.

About the book, from the publisher:

From Colonial Cuba to Madrid examines the largest and most complex freedom suit litigated in the highest court of the Spanish empire at the end of the eighteenth century. Filed by hundreds of re-enslaved Afro descendant people who had lived in quasi-freedom in eastern Cuba for more than a century, this action drew on local customary practices and broader cultural, political, and legal discourses rooted in the Spanish Atlantic world to put forward novel claims to collective freedom and native based rights at a time when questions of slavery, freedom, and citizenship were igniting in many parts of the Atlantic world. Intersecting law, society studies, and the history of slavery, María Elena Díaz offers a carefully researched study of one of the few communities of Afro descendants that managed to secure freedom and political and legal recognition from the Spanish crown during the colonial period.

--Marshal Zeringue