"The Nile Revealed"

New from Princeton University Press: The Nile Revealed: A Deep History of Earth’s Longest River by Martin Williams.

About the book, from the publisher:

The untold story of an iconic river, from its origins to its possible futures on a rapidly warming planet

The Nile River has captivated explorers and scientists for centuries, and its age and origins have been the subject of intense speculation since at least the days of Herodotus. The Nile Revealed is an authoritative account of how Earth’s longest river came into being, how its flow has changed dramatically and at times almost ceased altogether, and how these changes affected human societies in the Nile valley down through the centuries.

An internationally renowned expert on the Nile and its extraordinarily rich geological history, Martin Williams has traveled the length and breadth of the river during his career. In this book, he draws on his own experiences to explain how scientists reconstruct and date past environments in the Nile basin and offers vivid descriptions of the river and its three major tributaries—the White Nile, the Blue Nile, and the Atbara. He guides readers from the Ethiopian Highlands and downstream to the Nile delta and deep-sea fan, where soils and sediments preserve the record of the Nile’s eventful life. Williams visits prehistoric sites in the Nile valley and considers how its inhabitants adapted to floods, droughts, and other climatic changes—and how the river itself might respond to climate change in the future.

Blending evocative storytelling with the latest science, The Nile Revealed provides an incomparable look at a majestic river whose course has fluctuated widely over time, and whose waters have sustained diverse ecosystems and humankind for millions of years.

Visit Martin Williams's website.

The Page 99 Test: When the Sahara Was Green.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Hate and Other Acts of Fiction"

Coming November 10 from Berkley: Hate and Other Acts of Fiction by Megan Oliver.

About the book, from the publisher:

Former lovers turned rival tour guides must join forces to overcome scandal—in this steamy second-chance romance from the author of Secret Nights and Northern Lights.

Sadie Stockton has the almost-perfect job leading tours through the former home of her favorite author, the enigmatic recluse Hazel Wilmont. But when the owners of the Wilmont House announce plans to increase the estate’s revenue by hosting an overnight murder mystery set in a cocktail lounge, Sadie is less than thrilled. Yet again, Hazel’s legacy is being tarnished by the fictitious, decades-old rumors she poisoned her husband(s).

Worse? The new tour will mean working with none other than Ryan Pearson—local mixologist, owner of Pearson’s Pub Crawls, and Sadie’s long-standing professional rival and personal regret. She can’t stand him. Or his smug grin. Or his boastful T-shirt declaring his pub crawl the city’s number-one rated tour. And no, she doesn’t still think about their short-lived, meaningless college fling. Ever.

With a potential promotion on the line, Sadie must play nice with Ryan in order to make the “Mixtures & Murder” tour a success. But over late nights and cocktail tastings, all clues indicate a reigniting attraction between the two. And as new discoveries at the mansion unfold, Sadie is forced to confront her own narratives about Ryan, about Hazel, and about the past she’s tried for years to bury.

Visit Megan Oliver's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The World of Markets"

New from Georgetown University Press: The World of Markets: A Theology of Moral Agency in Economic Life by Christina McRorie.

About the book, from the publisher:

A theological map of markets as ambiguous―and improvable―moral contexts

Do markets corrupt us, or support our character? They do both, argues Christina McRorie in The World of Markets. She engages empirical research on economic decision-making to identify both the conditions under which markets encourage selfish and opportunistic behaviors and those under which markets do the opposite, encouraging just and even generous actions. This influence over our decisions suggests that markets may also shape our agency itself, over time. How should Christians make theological sense of this?

Highlighting the tensions woven into the theological concept of "the world"―given that it is beloved by God and yet also a dangerous realm of moral darkness―The World of Markets builds a case for viewing markets as ambiguous worlds that mediate both sin and grace in our daily lives by influencing our moral agency. In light of God's own love for the world, it proposes that Christians are called to approach markets with an attitude that balances critique with appreciation and to collaborate with others to make markets more grace-filled contexts. Toward this end, The World of Markets identifies concrete ways that markets can become a world where it is easier to be good.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Seduction"

Coming November 24 from Montlake: The Seduction (Arlington Hall Revisited) by Jodi Ellen Malpas.

About the book, from the publisher:

She’s a London florist who can’t resist an enigmatic man of mystery―or escape his dark past in a blistering-hot romance by the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the This Man series.

Abbie Pearson has spent three years trying to forget the night that ruined her for other men―a tryst in France with a dominant stranger who bent her to his will and disappeared by morning. Now a successful florist in London, she meets her best friend’s future brother-in-law…and her world stands still. It’s him. From the Paris hotel. The man who still prowls her fantasies.

A self-made millionaire and London’s most enigmatic new celebrity chef, Casey Harrison is used to getting what he wants. It’s Abbie. As they reconnect with a thousand bolts of pleasure, she can’t resist being drawn deeper into Casey’s world of wealth and wicked sensations. He claims he wants it all―love, marriage, and a future. For Abbie, surrendering to a powerful man never felt so good. This is the second chance she’s dreamed of. But can she trust him? Because Casey comes with secrets.

And when his past finally catches up to them, it could shatter everything between Abbie and Casey forever.

Visit Jodi Ellen Malpas's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Thinkers and Believers"

New from Oxford University Press: Thinkers and Believers: The Making of Modern Islam by Fitzroy Morrissey.

About the book, from the publisher:

It is related that the Prophet Muhammad announced that God would send someone to renew Islam--a concept called tajdid--at the beginning of every century. Over the last two centuries, Islam has been transformed through its encounter with modernity. Yet that transformation was not simply something that happened to Muslims; it was brought about by Muslim thinkers through a process of engagement with their religious tradition. In reforming Islam to meet the challenges of their time, they were able to draw on tajdid. Often claiming to be renewers of the faith themselves, these thinkers set the contours of modern Islam by calling for an end to the blind emulation of juristic authority and fanatical devotion to the schools of law, while also challenging key features of popular piety and introducing the egalitarian idea that ordinary believers could interpret and understand their religion for themselves. They were in fact calling for a return to the Qur'an and Hadith.

Thinkers and Believers traces the development of these ideas, from 'Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi and Shah Wali Allah in the 18th century through to Muhammad 'Abduh and Abu A'la Mawdudi in the 20th century. In so doing, it highlights the relevance of classical traditions of Islamic mysticism, theology, philosophy, and law to modern Islamic reform. Covering such topics as the role of dreams and visions in inspiring projects of religious renewal, the rise of Wahhabi and Salafi scripturalism, modern developments in legal theory and philosophy among the Shi'ah, and competing interpretations of the relationship between Islam and politics in the modern Middle East and South Asia, it offers both a comprehensive survey of Islamic reformist thought and a detailed dive into the texts that have defined modern Islam.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Other Kind of Lion"

New from Lake Union: The Other Kind of Lion: A Novel by Catherine Ryan Hyde.

About the book, from the publisher:

A war widow and a neglected boy form a chosen family in a profoundly moving multigenerational saga about the transformative power of kindness by New York Times bestselling author Catherine Ryan Hyde.

It’s 1970 in rural California where Shirley Bennett, a forty-year-old Vietnam War widow, lives with her two sons. It’s a routine life until she sees Cash Pierce, a scruffy eleven-year-old boy, trailing the fence alongside her Appaloosa, Phoenix. The horse has never given such a welcoming nicker to anyone but her late husband. Even her stubborn old dog Edsel takes to the boy. Out of curiosity and compassion, so does Shirley.

Abandoned by his father, his mother in jail, and being raised by his teenage brother, Cash is lonely, bullied, but smart as a whip and starved for attention. Shirley begins inviting him for dinners, providing lunch money, sewing his shirts, and offering the maternal care he desperately needs. Neither realizes that such simple acts of kindness create a bond that will span five decades and redefine family itself. No matter where life takes Cash, he will never forget her.

Through war, loss, grief, illness, second chances, and years of separation, they will meet again. Shirley was there for Cash. Now it’s his turn to be there for Shirley when she needs him the most.

Visit Catherine Ryan Hyde's website.

Q&A with Catherine Ryan Hyde.

The Page 69 Test: Brave Girl, Quiet Girl.

The Page 69 Test: My Name is Anton.

The Page 69 Test: Seven Perfect Things.

The Page 69 Test: Boy Underground.

The Page 69 Test: Dreaming of Flight.

The Page 69 Test: So Long, Chester Wheeler.

The Page 69 Test: A Different Kind of Gone.

The Page 69 Test: Life, Loss, and Puffins.

The Page 69 Test: Rolling Toward Clear Skies.

The Page 69 Test: Michael Without Apology.

The Page 69 Test: Falling Apart and Other Gifts from the Universe.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Class Politics and the Creation of the American State"

New from the University of Michigan Press: Class Politics and the Creation of the American State by James Parisot.

About the book, from the publisher:

Why does the American federal government seem to prioritize elite capitalist interests over those of other groups? Class Politics and the Creation of the American State draws on a wide range of sources—personal letters, official government documents, private notes, and newspaper articles—to reveal that the federal government was built to give the emerging capitalist elite a way to consolidate and institutionalize their power. Challenging both liberal and conservative interpretations about what the US Constitution means, this book tells a new story about how the American state took shape.

The framers of the Constitution constructed an image of the state, enshrined in the Constitution, that presented their power as universal: a system meant to serve all Americans equally. This image helped legitimize the new order, even if the rising capitalist class stood to benefit most of all. Since the United States of the late 1780s was not yet a fully capitalist society, the state that was built opened space for less capitalistically incorporated social classes, including some artisans and yeoman farmers, to have limited representation. Class Politics and the Creation of the American State shows how the structure of the early American state worked primarily to advance capitalist interests, while incorporating other groups enough to maintain a sense of broad representation and inclusion.

Visit James Parisot's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"When the Night Comes Knocking"

New from Berkley: When the Night Comes Knocking by Katherine Daniel.

About the novel, from the publisher:

In this Appalachian horror novel, two estranged siblings become trapped in a convenience store under attack by a monster from the mountains who feasts on guilty hearts.

Rattle, rattle in the dark…
The mountain’s bones seek out a heart. Jane has not spoken to her brother Thomas since the accident that nearly killed them both. Their drive from college through the North Georgia mountains is uncomfortably silent, until they stop at a roadside convenience store, where a man stumbles in with a mutilated body, claiming to have been attacked by a monster.

At first, no one believes the man’s ravings, but when the next person to leave the store is brutally killed, they fear that local legend might be true:

There’s a beast in these mountains who feasts on guilty hearts… and someone among them has lured it out of hiding.

Jane and Thomas each harbor secrets, but so do the other patrons, and as the monster claims more hearts, the survivors turn on each other, desperate to save themselves by uncovering the guiltiest among them.

If the siblings can’t overcome the rift between them, they’ll surely become the monster’s next victims…or worse, become monsters themselves.

Visit Katherine Daniel's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Prizefighter"

New from the University of Virginia Press: Prizefighter: Yankee Sullivan and the Hands That Built the Modern World by Patrick Griffin.

About the book, from the publisher:

The globetrotting champion of the oppressed who shook his fist at the world in an era of profound change

Prizefighter is the extraordinary saga of James “Yankee” Sullivan, who, in the first half of the nineteenth century, traveled the globe as a refugee, convict, laborer, and pugilist―and helped bring our modern world into being. Sullivan was born as Francis Ambrose in Ireland in 1813, ventured to London as a boy, was arrested for thieving and shipped to Australia (where he learned to box), escaped from New Zealand on a whaler, won his first match out of Liverpool, reigned as a prizefighter and leading political figure in New York City in the 1840s, moved to Gold Rush California, coached the king of Hawaii in boxing, and spent his last days in a jail cell in San Francisco in 1856. But Sullivan’s life story is much more than a tale of adventure. He helped tie together a world being redefined by free trade, mass migration, industrialization, and democracy, becoming both a champion in the ring and a champion of the people. In this first era of globalization, as the life of Yankee Sullivan attests, prizefighters were world-makers.

The Page 69 Test: American Leviathan: Empire, Nation, and Revolutionary Frontier.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Killer Abyss"

Coming November 24 from Kensington: Killer Abyss (An FBI K-9 Novel) by Sara Driscoll.

About the book, from the publisher:

For FBI handler Meg Jennings and her K-9 partner, Hawk, the search for a missing girl leads to the underground caves of Kentucky—ones darker than she ever fathomed.

No descent into the unknown has ever been too treacherous for Meg Jennings and her colleagues in the FBI K-9 unit. They are prepared for anything. But when 14-year old Larissa Whorlow disappears on her way home from school in Nashville, Tennessee, Meg may be proved wrong.

Their only hope is a tracker tag on Larissa’s shoe, worn at her protective mother’s insistence. Unfortunately, the trail stops dead at Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky. Meg and her black Labrador, Hawk, are among four teams scrambling to solve a kidnapping that has crossed state lines. All Meg can do is follow Hawk, who’s on the scent of the missing girl—right through a narrow break in a limestone rise and straight into a cavernous labyrinth.

With all communication cut off and miles of undiscovered passages and subterranean rivers to navigate, Meg’s search gets deeper and darker with every uncertain move forward. Then, at the edge of a dangerous abyss, Meg makes a shocking discovery and realizes that Larissa’s vanishing was no random snatch and grab. It’s the work of a serial killer who’s pulling Meg into a terrifying game of hide-and-seek. And the only way out is through the blackness below.

Visit Sara Driscoll's website.

The Page 69 Test: Lone Wolf.

The Page 69 Test: Storm Rising.

The Page 69 Test: No Man's Land.

The Page 69 Test: Leave No Trace.

The Page 69 Test: That Others May Live.

The Page 69 Test: Echoes of Memory.

The Page 69 Test: Deadly Trade.

--Marshal Zeringue