"Behind White Picket Fences"

New from Lake Union: Behind White Picket Fences: A Novel by Christine Gunderson.

About the book, from the publisher:

Fusing page-turning suspense with keenly observed humor, this homage to female friendship explores the hamster wheel of modern motherhood, and the consequences for jumping off.

Kiersten Cleaver feels like she’s flunking Motherhood 101. Exhausted by travel sports, homework, and her son’s dyslexia, she joins forces with her neighbors, Rosamund and Piper, to drop out of the scholastic rat race for one year.

Together, they start the Beaverbrook Academy for Inquiring Minds in Kiersten’s kitchen, embarking on a journey back to the idyllic life they experienced as children, when phones were attached to the wall and kids played outside until the streetlights came on at dusk.

But the women quickly realize fractions aren’t their only problem. A sixty-year-old diary discovered in Kiersten’s basement raises unsettling questions about their neighborhood, their safety, and the seemingly simpler past.

Their picture-perfect suburb disguises deadly secrets―and someone wants to keep them hidden. As unsettling events rattle their fragile utopia, Kiersten, Rosamund, and Piper face an impossible choice. And if they expose the truth, they put everything at risk: their children, their friendship, and their newfound community.

Visit Christine Gunderson's website.

Q&A with Christine Gunderson.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Artificially Yours"

New from Princeton University Press: Artificially Yours: Real Friendship in a World of Chatbots by Valerie Tiberius.

About the book, from the publisher:

A human perspective on the nature of friendship in the age of artificial intelligence

Is friendship with a chatbot as good as friendship with an actual person? Is there something about human friendships that eludes simulation? If so, what? And how much will the answers to questions like these change as AI develops and becomes more convincingly like us? Artificially Yours explains what friendship is and why it’s valuable—and why there is no perfect substitute for human friends.

Blending insights from philosophy, psychology, and her own entertaining experiences with chatbots, Valerie Tiberius addresses a subject at the heart of our growing reliance on AI companions. She defines the ideal friendship as an enjoyable, close relationship built on shared activities between people who care about each other for their own sake. But few things in life are ever ideal, including friendship. Tiberius demonstrates how different kinds of friendships can be valuable in different ways: they can be pleasurable or useful, they can shape who we are and how we see ourselves, and the best ones are good for their own sakes. Using each of these values as her guide, Tiberius finds that relationships with chatbots do in fact exhibit some of the characteristics of friendship—but cautions that even future relationships with advanced AI are highly unlikely to be good in all the ways human friendships are.

A vital contribution to our ongoing conversation about human-AI relationships, Artificially Yours weighs the ethical risks before us as we look to a future with intelligent machines and affirms the value of human connections.

Visit Valerie Tiberius's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Cupido Cupido"

New from Texas Tech University Press: Cupido Cupido: A Novel by Emily Grandy.

About the book, from the publisher:

When sixteen-year-old Ignatius “Egg” Girard is told he’ll be spending the next three months on his estranged grandfather’s failing farm in Hale Creek, Kentucky, getting the place ready to sell, he foresees chores, isolation, and the erosion of everything he’d planned for his summer vacation.

At first, Egg is resolved simply to endure: the scorching, tedious days; his grandfather’s silences punctuated by harsh outbursts. But then Egg makes two bewildering discoveries. Hidden away in his mother’s childhood bedroom, he unearths a bundle of decades-old letters written in a language he cannot decipher. When he shows them to his grandfather, the reaction is immediate and unsettling: the letters are thrown away without explanation. Then there’s the startling encounter with a secretive ground-dwelling bird thought to have gone extinct in the 1930s, drawing a biologist and her team to the property just as it’s about to be put up for sale.

Blending dry humor with emotional depth, Cupido Cupido navigates family estrangement, cultural inheritance, and the complex act of growing up. As Egg wrestles with questions of identity and legacy, the farm becomes a place of unlikely discoveries—about the people who raised him, the profound weight of their shared histories, and the unspoken ways love persists through distance and time.

Likely to appeal to readers of Ann Patchett, Celeste Ng, and Kazuo Ishiguro, Emily Grandy’s Cupido Cupido is a quietly powerful exploration of memory, belonging, and the fine line between what is lost and what might yet be found.

Visit Emily Grandy's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Resurgence and Revolution"

New from NYU Press: Resurgence and Revolution: The PKK and the Kurdish Fight in Turkey and Syria by Aliza Marcus.

About the book, from the publisher:

A riveting current history of the Kurdish rebel PKK group

Aliza Marcus’ new book tells the remarkable story of Kurdish revolution in the Middle East led by the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party)―the rebel group whose insurgency in Turkey has impacted countries, conflicts, and Kurdish demands throughout the region.

Combining reportage and scholarship, Resurgence and Revolution explores the PKK’s resurgence from the brink of defeat after the capture of its leader, Abdullah Ocalan, in 1999, and the brutal internal split that followed. The book tells the story of how Ocalan―operating from prison―reshaped the PKK to extend the group’s influence beyond Turkey’s borders, setting the stage for the group’s dominance of northeastern Syria and the unlikely partnership between its allied forces and the U.S. in the fight against ISIS. Based on interviews with PKK fighters, their supporters, and opponents in Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Europe, Marcus traces the group’s ability to maintain power in Turkey and extend its activities across borders, using PKK rebels’ own voices to show why young people join and fight for the group and its affiliates in Syria and Iran.

For the more than 30 million Kurds in Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria―and for the leaders of these countries―the PKK is a force that cannot be ignored. Understanding the PKK and what drives its supporters is crucial for understanding Kurdish demands and potential solutions.

The fall of the Assad regime, and a new peace process between Turkey and the PKK has changed the dynamics for Kurdish demands and their control over territory in Syria. Resurgence and Revolution is a compelling and necessary read for understanding the impact of a resurgent PKK, the future of the Middle East, and the enduring struggle of the Kurds to rule themselves.

Visit Aliza Marcus's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Sometime This Century"

Coming soon from Harper Perennial: Sometime This Century: A Regency Rom-Com by Samantha Silva.

About the novel, from the publisher:

A riotous rom-com meets a swoon-worthy Regency comedy of manners in this heartfelt time-travel story about sisters, love, identity—and how Jane Austen just might change your life.

Annabel Blake was born in the wrong century. An Austen-loving book nerd, she dreams of being a writer herself, with a just-penned Regency novel to prove it. Her hopes sink when her hot author crush rejects her: The novel reads like she’s never been in love. Ouch.

Annabel sees a chance to rewrite it when her ex-pat boss sends her to England to sort out her family’s “crumbling old pile” of a country house. Tempted by an invitation tucked in an antique writing desk and a “period” coachman at her door, Annabel’s whisked away to a local Regency Society ball—cue candlelight, costumes, dancing—that might be just the inspiration she needs. There’s even the achingly perfect—and wildly out of her league—Henry Leighton D’Evercy.

When Annabel’s audacious influencer sister crashes the party with her super-chill ex-boyfriend, the unlikely trio wake to find themselves trapped in the actual Regency era. No Wi-Fi, lattes, cellphones—just a world where manners, money, and marriage rule.

As Annabel falls deeply for D’Evercy, she must decide: write her perfect love story…or live it.

Visit Samantha Silva's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Shakespeare's Scholars"

New from Princeton University Press: Shakespeare's Scholars: Three Lessons from the Liberal Arts by Sean Keilen.

About the book, from the publisher:

What Love’s Labor’s Lost, Hamlet, and The Tempest can teach us about discovery, growth, and change

Shakespeare was a keen and discerning reader who was mocked by writers who, unlike him, had been to university—so it’s not surprising that his portrait of scholarly life is critical. As Sean Keilen shows in this engaging book, Shakespeare’s scholars lack humility, shun wisdom, underestimate people who are not scholars, and, by keeping aloof from society, fail to see themselves clearly. In examining Shakespeare’s scholars, Keilen finds parallels in the modern academy.

Keilen examines three plays with scholars as protagonists, tracing these characters’ arduous paths to self-knowledge and meaningful connection with others. In Love’s Labor’s Lost, four noblemen, seeking fame for knowledge and virtue, establish an academy—but the real purpose of their studies is to exclude women, scorn men of inferior standing, and treat each other with hostility. In Hamlet, the prodigiously intelligent Prince of Denmark retreats to the solitude of his own thoughts, with unfortunate results. And in The Tempest, Prospero abandons his duty to others for the rapture of secret studies, a choice that leads him to seek the false consolation of self-protective bitterness. In each play, Keilen finds important lessons about humility, wisdom, and self-knowledge. Inspired by these, he argues for a new approach to teaching literature—one that views literary education not as an esoteric discipline but as the renewal of an intellectual heritage all readers hold in common.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Confession Artist"

New from Thomas & Mercer: The Confession Artist: A Thriller by Christine Carbo.

About the novel, from the publisher:

A Montana ex-cop becomes the target of a vengeful killer’s viral guessing game in a propulsive novel of suspense by a bestselling and award-winning author.

A killer dubbed the Confession Artist is posting sketches of potential victims on social media. And paranoia spreads as strangers across the nation admit to their sins―fearing the consequences: You have six days to confess or die.

Then former cop and first-year PI Crosbie Mitchell sees a sketch that bears a striking resemblance to her. How can that be? She’s a nobody from Flathead Valley, Montana. Crosbie dismisses it as an unnerving coincidence. If not for one unmistakable detail that makes the threat hard to ignore. When the FBI is contacted, they are convinced that Crosbie is the next target. So is she.

Crosbie has six days left to fess up online to something plaguing her conscience. But even if she wanted to play the killer’s game, she has more than one secret. And if she ever dares to expose them for the world to see, the truth will destroy her. That’s exactly what the Confession Artist wants.

Visit Christine Carbo's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Becoming Boundless"

New from Stanford University Press: Becoming Boundless: Indian Transnational Entrepreneurs in the Global Economy by Manashi Ray.

About the book, from the publisher:

How do Indian men and women migrant entrepreneurs play a part in repositioning India as a pivotal actor in the twenty-first century's multipolar world order? In Becoming Boundless, Manashi Ray draws on ethnographic and archival research to uncover how they create and participate in transnational networks, and how these networks in turn drive the growth of global capitalism. Ray pays particular attention to the expansive global networks of transnational Indian entrepreneurs between the United States and India and across several other nations.

Covering a 10-year period in India's post-reform era, Ray deftly highlights complex connections between the social and spatial mobility of this diverse, bi-cultural population, and uniquely theorizes the intersection of class, caste, and gender. She questions whether migration reinforces dominant forms of social inequality or transforms it through the redistribution of valued goods and life chances, especially for women in male-dominated sectors. The book therefore recasts contemporary migration as a crucial part of the emergence of transnational economic spaces, and analyzes the ways that these spaces are fragmented and hierarchical.

Visit Manashi Ray's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"We Want So Much to Be Ourselves"

Coming June 9 from Bellevue Literary Press: We Want So Much to Be Ourselves by Stephen O'Connor.

About the novel, from the publisher:

A German psychoanalyst, his Jewish wife, and their young daughter are swept up in the rising tide of fascism

Günter Zeitz, psychoanalyst-in-training and the son of a Catholic country doctor, and Josine Rosen, Sigmund Freud’s patient and the daughter of a Jewish shipping magnate, first meet in 1924, in Freud’s Viennese waiting room. As their intense affair develops, Freud arranges for Günter’s appointment to the newly created Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute. Shortly after the move, their daughter Hannah is born. But less than a decade later, all their hopes and ideals are profoundly challenged by political realities so horrific that they are, initially, beyond comprehension.

A heartrending story of love in a time of hatred, an absorbing investigation into the Nazis’ exploitation of psychoanalysis, and a cautionary tale about self-deception and the failures of a people to recognize the lies of their charismatic leader, We Want So Much to Be Ourselves examines the ways science can be corrupted and one’s very identity transformed by historical circumstance.

Visit Stephen O'Connor's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Cultivated: Plants, Hair, and the Aesthetic of Control"

New from Yale University Press: Cultivated: Plants, Hair, and the Aesthetic of Control by Jeffrey Hoelle.

About the book, from the publisher:

An exploration of the concept of cultivation, as conducted on both the land and the body, which expands our understanding of it as practice, aesthetic, and ideology. In this book, Jeffrey Hoelle traces the imprint of cultivation across the naturally growing covers of the land and body—plants and hair. The book builds from research in the agricultural fields and cattle pastures at the edge of the Amazon rainforest to domestic landscapes and hair salons and shops in the frontier cities of Brazil and beyond. In spaces where the tangled forest once stood, clean pastures and ordered rows of crops now sit on properties with geometric edges. From rural spaces to immaculate lawns and cemeteries in the city, the imprint leads to the body, where hair, like plant growth, is cut, trimmed, and otherwise managed. Seemingly separate domains of agriculture, landscaping, and personal grooming are governed by a similar aesthetic of control. This unique pairing of land and body expands our understanding of cultivation as a practice and as an ideology that operates in frontier Amazonia—but also closer to home, influencing how we conceptualize and interpret the covers that grow on and around us, and our imagined relations with nature in the future. Hoelle argues that we must understand this system of thought and the overlooked role it plays in environmental destruction and social inequality.

Visit the Hoelle Lab website.

--Marshal Zeringue