"What the Trees Remember"

New from She Writes Press: What the Trees Remember: A Novel by Abigail Cutter.

About the book, from the publisher:

Deeply researched and perfect for fans of Jayne Anne Phillips’s Night Watch, this action-packed coming-of-age tale, set in post–Civil War Appalachia, is part suspenseful mystery, part incisive examination of this nation’s history of racial violence.

Dora Minor, a quirky and fiercely courageous girl, grows up in a remote Virginia mountain community in a family of outliers, thanks to their Quaker beliefs that all people are born equal. After her mother’s death, her indomitable, pipe-smoking grandmother Alma—a revolutionary in her own right—becomes her primary caregiver and protector. With a fierce moral compass, Alma helps shape Dora’s worldview and guides her to question the status quo.

When Dora’s father partners with formerly enslaved Ginny Dudley to open a school for Black children in a place where none would otherwise exist, it sparks a violent backlash. After her father’s death and then a lynching, Dora, with Alma at her side, are forced to look at their community in a new light. Alongside Ginny’s husband Randolph and her closest friend Watcher James, a preacher guided by Nature spirits, Dora confronts hard truths about her neighbors, her father’s death, and, finally, the mysteries of her mother’s life—all of which ultimately leads to healing.

A post–Civil War novel that opens just as Reconstruction is falling apart, What the Trees Remember depicts a time of extreme social unrest and the birth of the Jim Crow era as experienced by strong women constrained by the limitations of the time they live in. Through the devastating loss of loved ones, the destruction of the comfortable life they’ve known, and Nature’s wrath, Dora and Alma strive to rise above their trials by drawing strength from the natural world and never losing faith in themselves.

Visit Abigail Cutter's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"After Belsen"

New from Cornell University Press: After Belsen: Christian Encounters with Holocaust Survivors by Robert Thompson.

About the book, from the publisher:

After Belsen reveals the deeply personal ways in which British and American Christians responded to and were affected by survivors of the Holocaust in the years immediately following the liberation of concentration camps. British and American Christians―men and women, army chaplains and relief workers, government officials and interfaith activists―listened to testimony, confronted postwar issues facing Jews, pioneered the fight against antisemitism, and reapproached their Christian faith as they encountered survivors. At camps like Bergen-Belsen, these encounters forced Christians to confront their long-held beliefs, their complicity, and the meaning of solidarity in the face of atrocity.

Using neglected archives, private correspondence of British and American Christians, and interviews with their families, Robert Thompson pieces together stories that complicate the idea of Christian silence. He highlights the emotional and theological impact of direct witness―moments when Christian and Jewish lives intersected amid the devastation. In doing so, he also reveals the previously unheard voices of women relief workers and chaplains who offered care, challenged antisemitism, and began to reformulate their beliefs from the ground up.

After Belsen is not only a moving contribution that unites Holocaust studies, religious history, and interfaith reflection but also a vital new perspective on how ordinary people responded to extraordinary horror and how their responses resonate today. Their previously untold human stories demonstrate how lived experience―not just institutional declaration―shaped postwar Christianity.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Night Hunter"

New from Berkley: The Night Hunter by Natalie Moss.

About the novel, from the publisher:

In a remote corner of the South African bush, two sisters reunite to bury a family secret once and for all, but when they’re stranded among the wild animals, they find a predator far more dangerous waiting for them in the shadows....

When their conservationist mother passes, Danielle and her estranged sister Grace must return to their isolated family house nestled within a wild-game reserve. While Grace, their mother’s favorite, clings to nostalgia, only Danielle carries the knowledge of her final request: “Find the storehouse . . . Burn everything inside.”

To ease the pain of their homecoming—and the tension between them—each sister invites two friends on the two-day journey into the bush. What starts as a safari adventure, turns into a nightmare when one of them is murdered the first morning at the campsite. In the chaos that follows, they crash their vehicle, stranding them, with no way to call for help.

Now, with dwindling supplies and only one rifle, Danielle must lead them on foot across miles of merciless savannah. They have days of walking ahead…if they survive that long. As the group navigates land where every rustle could mean death, a truth emerges: someone is sabotaging their escape.

Breathtaking and tense, The Night Hunter maps the treacherous terrain of family duty and loyalty as the two sisters confront what they’ve spent years trying to forget.

Visit Natalie Moss's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"How to Control Fire on a Burning Continent"

New from Duke University Press: How to Control Fire on a Burning Continent by Timothy Neale.

About the book, from the publisher:

A critical and ethnographic exploration of wildfire management in Australia, one of Earth’s most fire-prone countries, Timothy Neale’s How to Control Fire on a Burning Continent critiques the colonial logics of control deployed to manage unruly environments and explores alternative forms of environmental stewardship.

Each year, Australia faces increasingly unprecedented wildfires, marked both by their scale and by the intense public disagreements about their political, cultural, and ecological causes. How to Control Fire on a Burning Continent is a critical and ethnographic exploration of wildfire management in Australia and the technoscientific systems of control that shape its current and future possibilities. Timothy Neale observes how two seemingly opposing forces—an entrenched sense of crisis and widespread normalization—combine to form an apparatus of institutional fire management that increasingly centers technical control and militarization. While sympathetic to the double binds many fire management professionals find themselves in, Neale ties contemporary wildfire problems to ongoing colonization and Indigenous dispossession, exploring Indigenous-led land management and cultural burning as a practical assertion of sovereignty. Through dialogue and collaboration with professional fire managers and Indigenous environmental stewards, Neale calls for a collective movement beyond control thinking by fostering new alliances and modes of coping with, rather than commanding, our flammable world.

Visit Timothy Neale's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Free Girls"

New from Flatiron Books: Free Girls by Kristen McCallum.

About the book, from the publisher:

A heartfelt coming-of-age debut about a girl starting over while keeping secret that she’s spent the last year in juvenile detention. Perfect for fans of Nicola Yoon and Leah Johnson.

Sixteen-year-old Jasmine Cooper is back after twelve months at Guiding Hearts Home for Troubled Girls, and nothing is the way it was. Her mom has remarried and now there’s a big new house, a shiny new family, and a fancy new school. Jas feels completely out of place, and things only get more complicated when her mom insists that her “fresh start” include hiding the truth of where she’s been and cutting off people from her past.

As Jas settles into her new life bonding with her seemingly perfect stepsister, making a close-knit group of besties, and maybe even falling for the cute girl in class, it starts to feel like her second chance might actually be real.

But when a friend from the detention center reaches out to reconnect, Jas worries that everything she’s built could fall apart. How long can she keep her past a secret? And how many times can she spin the truth before she forgets who she really is?

Visit Kristen McCallum's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Henry Tudor Must Die"

New from Berkley: Henry Tudor Must Die by Jillian Laine.

About the novel, from the publisher:

One queen exiled. Another headed for the gallows. Both hungry for revenge. England’s most infamous queens unite in vengeance against Henry VIII.

Anne Boleyn is going to die, and neither her cleverness nor her witchery can save her. So when her late rival, Catalina de Aragón, miraculously appears in her cell at the Tower of London on the eve of her execution, very much alive and offering a daring escape plan, no one is more surprised than Anne.

Lina doesn’t have Anne’s magic—but she has just as much hate for England’s wretched king. Severed from her daughter and stripped of all her influence, Lina breathes only for the Hellebore Sisterhood, a clandestine and powerful society with a vested interest in keeping both queens alive . . . and using their particular skills to advance womankind.

Anne and Lina’s old rivalries pale in comparison to a common enemy. And they're not alone. Anna von Kleve, Kat Howard, and even Catherine Parr all have their own bones to pick with the king. One by one, they capture their pawns, infiltrating the court and eliminating the men who plotted against them. Always inching closer to their true target...

And they want his head.

Visit Jillian Laine's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Territorializing Democracy"

New from the University of Georgia Press: Territorializing Democracy: Strategies of Popular Participation in Buenos Aires by Sam Halvorsen.

About the book, from the publisher:

Territorializing Democracy argues that the political control of space is key to understanding political participation in the city. Drawing on a decade of research in Buenos Aires, this book shows that participation is not simply a response to innovations in urban governance; it is a strategy rooted in the relational context of territory. Examining key sites of activism over recent years―campaigning for a people’s park, upgrading an informal settlement, the “national-popular” movement of Kirchnerism, and struggles over urban redevelopment―the analysis contributes to pressing democratic debates around autonomy and self-management, populism and clientelism, and democratic innovation and “participatory articulations.” Through the lens of space and geography, this book offers a relational analysis of popular participation, working between multiple neighborhoods and scales, across different struggles, and between the streets and political institutions, activists, and politicians. In doing so, Halvorsen proposes a dual understanding of the territorialization of democracy: a reflection of the changing political conditions shaping cities today and a tool for assessing how democratic practices emerge from specific, grounded struggles over space.

--Marshal Zeringue

"No One Leaves the Manor"

New from Little, Brown Books for Young Readers: No One Leaves the Manor by Kelly McWilliams.

About the novel, from the publisher:

A deliciously twisted, fast-paced YA horror, where debutante dreams become bloody nightmares—perfect for fans of House of Hollow and Their Vicious Games.

It’s 1921, and Mrs. Caroline Reginald Kane, the last surviving descendant of a family of oil barons, has invited four young debutantes to visit her at Greystone Manor. There, they'll compete for the ultimate prize: to become heir to her unspeakably vast fortune.

But only one girl can win.

And the manor is watching.

Dorothea is a thief, and the best liar in the American Northeast. Her mother vanished at Greystone years ago, and she’s determined to find out why—so long as no one uncovers her secrets first.

Vaughn isn’t crazy. She was born for this life—and she won’t let anyone come between her and the fortune she deserves.

Birdie doesn’t know why she’s been invited, but she believes everything happens for a reason…and that reason just might be divine.

Elspeth is called “pretty as a peach, dim as a doorknob.” But she sees things that the others can't: whispering birds, shifting doors, and a language that should never be spoken.

And there’s something else hidden behind these walls. Something sinister.

It doesn’t plan to let them leave alive.

Visit Kelly McWilliams's website.

The Page 69 Test: Agnes at the End of the World.

Q&A with Kelly McWilliams.

The Page 69 Test: Your Plantation Prom Is Not Okay.

--Marshal Zeringue

"American Pogroms"

New from Oxford University Press: American Pogroms: How Forgotten Massacres Shape America by Daniel Byman.

About the book, from the publisher:

Amidst heightened rhetoric and increasing polarization in the United States, American Pogroms chronicles the causes and consequences of two centuries of mob violence in American history, highlighting exactly what's at stake when we allow leaders to legitimate violence and the mob to rule.

For much of American history, members of the majority population of the United States indiscriminately attacked and terrorized minority communities. In some parts of the country, mob violence seemed a near-constant part of the region's history, while in others it was a brief, horrific spasm that perpetrators--but not victims--quickly forgot.

In American Pogroms, terrorism expert Daniel Byman argues that there is a word for this type of communal violence: pogrom. Although pogroms are historically associated with the orchestrated campaigns of anti-Jewish violence in Tsarist Russia, Byman asserts that pogroms have been an all-too-frequent feature of American history. Tracing two centuries of communal violence, Byman recounts cases of attacks against American religious minorities such as Catholics and Mormons, the killing of thousands of ethnic Mexicans in Texas, the murder and wholesale expulsion of Chinese workers from the American West, and the repeated attacks on the Black community that killed thousands and enabled decades of brutal discrimination. In all these cases, pogroms helped cement a system of injustice that left religious, ethnic, and racial minorities politically and economically marginalized. While the idea of mob violence now strikes most Americans as unthinkable, Byman warns that increased polarization and selective news consumption in recent years has coarsened discourse and legitimized violence, raising the risk that at least some violence will return.

A broad-ranging synthesis of how and why majorities have so frequently resorted to community-level violence to restore or cement their power, American Pogroms illustrates the outsized role of violence in U.S. history and how it shapes the country today.

The Page 69 Test: The Five Front War.

The Page 99 Test: A High Price.

Writers Read: Daniel Byman (June 2011).

The Page 99 Test: Spreading Hate.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Fire Must Burn"

New from Severn House: Fire Must Burn (A Sparks and Bainbridge Mystery, 8) by Allison Montclair.

About the novel, from the publisher:

The owners of The Right Sort Marriage Bureau are back, and more determined than ever to bring love matches to the residents of Post-WWII London . . . so something as trivial as being dragged into a spy mission isn’t going to stop them!

Sparks fly when an old friend comes to town...

London, 1947. After recent events have left the normally steadfast Iris Sparks thoroughly shaken, she’s looking forward to some peace. With The Right Sort doing well, she and business partner Gwen Bainbridge are due a holiday. Until Iris’s former boss enlists their help for a secret mission.

Iris, who left British intelligence after the war, is being recruited for her Cambridge connection to one Anthony Danforth. She hasn’t seen Tony in almost ten years, yet she and Gwen must manipulate him into hiring their marriage service.

Tony’s suspected of being a Soviet operative, and an undercover agent posing as his perfect match could discover the truth. Despite her reluctance at being dragged back into the world of espionage, Iris agrees. After all, Tony was once a very good friend. If he’s innocent, she’ll happily prove it. If not? Well, no one ever said being a spy was easy...

Those who enjoy reading Kerry Greenwood's Phryne Fisher Mysteries and Dorothy Sayers will adore this warm and witty historical mystery!

Visit Alan Gordon's website.

The Page 69 Test: An Excellent Thing in a Woman.

Q&A with Allison Montclair.

My Book, The Movie: An Excellent Thing in a Woman.

--Marshal Zeringue