"Crime and Class in Print"

New from Syracuse University Press: Crime and Class in Print: Visual Culture in Nineteenth-Century New York by Wendy Jean Katz.

About the book, from the publisher:

As newspapers and periodicals proliferated in the United States in the nineteenth century, editors seeking to carve out a large and loyal audience hired artists to pair vivid imagery with sensational fiction ripped from the headlines. In Crime and Class in Print, Wendy Jean Katz examines the emergence of a modern visual culture in pre-Civil War New York City around these illustrated stories of crime, swashbuckling, and ordinary and extraordinary characters both rich and poor. Katz documents the life and career of Tompkins H. Matteson (1813–1884), whose drawings were printed alongside these tales, to understand the mass production, reception, and circulation of serialized illustrations. By closely analyzing the images within both their historical and fictional contexts, she interrogates how these cheap, ephemeral periodicals dramatized urban crime but also framed it within class-based concerns. The serial nature of Matteson’s illustrations, which made the coupled stories accessible to a larger swath of readers, represented an investment in industrial progress necessary to reach “mass” audiences. As Katz explores, while the images of city life conveyed nuance regarding ethnicity, temperance, police powers, privacy, sex, labor, aesthetics, reading practices, and masculinity, their paired narrative texts frequently mutated within and across different periodicals and languages to suit their audiences. In the English-language press, Matteson’s illustrations highlighted class struggle yet entwined them within the jingoist politics that advocated against immigration and upheld the white working class in opposition to ethnic diversity. As meaning shifted from one story, newspaper, or language to the next, what was a visual demonstration of progressive values championing proletariat interests became a platform to enforce a petit bourgeois and nativist perspective.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Horny"

Coming December 1 from St. Martin's Griffin: Horny: A Novel (Pan Helsing, 2) by Lucy Lehane.

About the novel, from the publisher:

Paranormal roommates discover that there's a thin line between love and hate in this steamy opposites-attract romantic comedy by Lucy Lehane.

Rachel's death is going about as well as her life. Welcoming a poltergeist to share her body had its challenges, but Rachel has mostly figured those out: She's got good friends, a room in a gorgeous apartment, and she's well on her way to regaining the career her death derailed. What she doesn't need is a strange, inhumanly beautiful new roommate―a unicorn―with a million odd questions about the human world. Especially one who can peer into Rachel's soul and see each of her dark, dirty secrets.

Isolde has been tempted by the human world for longer than she can remember. The land of the unicorns was beautiful, pristine... and as boring as watching moss grow. But taking on human form comes with more complications than she expected. Like a roommate who’s possessed, opinionated, argumentative... and distractingly alluring.

Getting into a magical grudge match with your roommate is a bad idea. Hooking up with your roommate when they're a virgin from another dimension is an even worse one. But since when did the voluntarily haunted make good choices?

Visit Lucy Lehane's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Louise de Keralio, Enlightenment Intellectual"

New from Oxford University Press: Louise de Keralio, Enlightenment Intellectual by Vicki Mistacco.

About the book, from the publisher:

In this first book-length study of prolific polymath Louise de Keralio (1756-1822), Vicki Mistacco offers a comprehensive reading of her entire body of writing and a new understanding of Keralio as an Enlightenment intellectual and a modern feminist thinker. Mistacco adopts a fresh approach to Keralio's published and unpublished writing, undertaking close textual analysis informed by feminist literary criticism and French feminist theory, and carefully reconstructing the historical and cultural context, in order to challenge the critical commonplace that Keralio is a puzzling "sexist republican." She cautions against a piecemeal approach focused almost exclusively on Keralio's writings during the French Revolution. Reading literarily rather than literally, she argues against imposing modern definitions of feminist activism on Keralio and for considering instead the anti-patriarchal, anti-hierarchical, and anti-exclusionary paradigm at the core of her thinking, a both/and rather than either/or paradigm, which Keralio comes to envisage as a maternal one, reflected in the recurring motif of crossing boundaries. Through sustained analysis of works that have hitherto received only scant attention, Keralio's translations of John Carr's travelogues and her late novels (1808-1810), Mistacco sheds light on Keralio's use of "double-voiced discourse" to uphold her feminist ideals while ostensibly endorsing gender norms. The three parts of the book, "Women's Writing: Negotiating a Space," "Philosophizing in the Margins," and "The Missing Mother," trace the evolution in Keralio's thinking about the importance of including a matrimoine or maternal legacy in cultural patrimony, whether it be the contributions of French women writers to national identity and French genius (Collection des meilleurs ouvrages français composés par des femmes), or those of Queen Elizabeth to the history of European sovereignty (Histoire d'Élisabeth, reine d'Angleterre), or her own annotations to her translations, or in her late novels the testimony of women to arrive at historical truth. Mistacco shows how the idea of maternal legacy evolves into that of maternal Enlightenment, arguing that Keralio elevates the maternal to the level of philosophy and theorizes a new social contract based on an ethics of care. Including unpublished and archival texts, this book offers an important contribution to the history of women intellectuals of the Enlightenment.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Rowan and Gemma"

New from Quill Tree Books: Rowan and Gemma by Sally J. Pla.

About the book, from the publisher:

In this new middle grade novel by Schneider Award-winning author Sally J. Pla, two neurodivergent tweens, one of whom is nonverbal, forge a friendship against the backdrop of their feuding families.

Rowan Monahan has lived in the town of Friendship Prairie forever. He knows everyone, and they know him. Some folks judge him, too, for being a slow learner. But Rowan knows in his heart that he's capable of more than people think.

Gemma Caplan is new in town. Back in the city, people understood she used her assistive device (AAC) to speak. But here in tiny Friendship Prairie, she's afraid she won't fit in.

When Rowan and Gemma meet, they form an instant, magic bond. But just as the two are growing close, their mothers start a feud: they're running terribly nasty campaigns against each other for school board.

Since their moms detest each other, Gemma and Rowan feel they must keep their connection a secret.

When they’re discovered and punished, Rowan and Gemma decide it’s time to take a stand -- and show their families what a place called Friendship Prairie is supposed to be about.

Visit Sally J. Pla's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Sally J. Pla & Leo.

The Page 69 Test: The Fire, the Water, and Maudie McGinn.

Q&A with Sally J. Pla.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Border Land"

New from Yale University Press: Border Land: Frontiers of Early England by Ryan Lavelle.

About the book, from the publisher:

An innovative and thought-provoking exploration of the edges of England from their earliest days to the Norman Conquest

The earliest written record of a political boundary in England dates from around 880, when King Alfred and Danish warlord Guthrum formalised a legal treaty to divide lands between them. How did Alfred and his descendants think about the borders of “English” territory? And what can these markers tell us about the English kingdom itself?

Ryan Lavelle takes readers on a journey around the borders and edges of early medieval England. From an oak tree used as a marker by St Augustine, through Alfred’s famous treaty, to 1066 and beyond, Lavelle explores how land was divided and the ways in which boundaries were perceived. He argues that there was no one unified “England” until after the Norman Conquest―and in fact the lands were divided several times between the death of Æthelstan and the invasion of William the Conqueror. This is a fascinating account that reshapes our thinking about the origins of the “lands of the English.”

--Marshal Zeringue

"All the Beastly Things"

New from Atria Books: All the Beastly Things: A Novel by Eilish Quin.

About the novel, from the publisher:

In a post-apocalyptic matriarchy that has erased men, a young novitiate faces a crisis of faith when her best friend begins receiving mysterious visions of an archangel—and must choose between the faith that shaped her and the forbidden longings that could destroy it.

The year is 2171, and the Earth is not what it once was. After climate collapse, plague, fascism, artificial intelligence, and nuclear fallout reduced civilization to ash, nature has reclaimed the Earth. Small monastic communities have emerged from the carnage—self-sufficient, female-only religious utopias governed by a strict codex and surrounded by walls to keep the wilds at bay. The new world is harmonious, and blissfully free from structures of oppression such as hierarchy, capitalism, and time.

Seventeen-year-old Igraine has never known life beyond the cloistered walls of the Field or seen a human male. Brilliant and devout, she spends her days in the gardens and scriptorium beside her closest companion, Ophelia. Their studies will culminate in twin posts at the Lunar Abbey—a gothic cathedral on the Moon reserved for the most venerated Sisters.

Their futures fracture when Ophelia begins receiving visions of a mysterious, alluring, and damningly masculine archangel. As the girls contend with cryptic fragments of revelation and devastating rumors about the Order’s darker origins, their bond becomes precarious and Igraine must confront her unraveling faith in a system that demands her complete surrender.

Visit Eilish Quin's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Endurance of the Mare"

New from Cornell University Press: The Endurance of the Mare: Tales of Violence and Resilience from the Eastern Borderlands of Gender and Europe by Alyosxa Tudor.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Endurance of the Mare unravels the complex and layered histories of belonging and nonbelonging that emerge from family archives shaped by classed, sexual, state, and border violence. It asks: How might retelling the past enable a radical transformation of the present? How do we grapple with the enduring legacies of systemic violence and intergenerational trauma without reenacting wounded attachments that justify nationalisms and further violence?

Alyoxsa Tudor follows Pena, born in 1911 in the Budjak (then the Russian Empire, now Ukraine), who in the 1930s traveled as a seasonal migrant worker to the Dobruja (Romania) and was forced to stay. Tudor traces Pena's life to examine how the traumas of migration, hunger, sexual violence, and heterosexual kinship travel across generations and national space. Mobilizing autotheory, speculative fiction, and historical materialist analysis, Tudor proposes a paradigmatic intervention into transnational histories, memory discourse, and political responsibility.

The Endurance of the Mare connects struggles from Eastern Europe to Palestine across feminist, queer, trans, and antiracist movements. Tudor rejects claims to epistemic innocence rooted in experiences of past violence and instead envisions different ways to politicize the present.

--Marshal Zeringue

"This Knight Topples Empires"

New from The Dial Press: This Knight Topples Empires: A Minor Character on a Major Quest: A Novel (The Minor Character Chronicles) by Ry Herman.

About the book, from the publisher:

In this raucous, tongue-in-cheek spin on the Eastern European fairy tale “The Girl Who Pretended to Be a Boy,” a knight attempts to thwart an invasion, save the most beautiful woman in the world, and finally get away from their sisters.

Jules is tired of running low-stakes errands with their five magically mismatched sisters, whose skills include killing plants, inducing sneezing, and making smaller windows . . . slightly larger. Blessed with a poorly controlled ability to make flowers bloom, Jules longs for a mission where they can actually prove themself. And when the siblings stumble upon a rival kingdom’s plot to overthrow their royal family, Jules sees an opportunity.

What follows is a whirlwind of botched disguises, accidental heroics, talking animals with surprisingly strong opinions, and one very inconvenient crush on the most sought-after princess in the land. And through all this, Jules learns that happy endings are indeed possible, even if you’re not quite Prince Charming. A cozy yet epic retelling of a Romanian fairy-tale, This Knight Topples Empires proves that the greatest victories of all are love and self-acceptance.

Visit Ry Herman's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"This Came to You from Chicago"

New from Syracuse University Press: This Came to You from Chicago: Local Television in the Twentieth Century by Jason J. Nebergall.

About the book, from the publisher:

This Came to You from Chicago explores the unique traits, style, and practices of “Chicago Television” from World War II to the 1990s. Jason J. Nebergall traces how, unlike mainstream stations, city-based broadcasters, who often worked day jobs, provided a platform for underrepresented groups to share their perspectives and allowed citizens to experiment with storytelling, representation, and engagement. In analyzing the idea and follow-through of “to and from Chicagoans,” Nebergall also illuminates how Chicago Television promoted civic engagement, fostered a sense of belonging and solidarity among residents, and contributed to the evolution of technological advances through the artistic risks of local and independent producers. This Came to You from Chicago presents an ideological framework that analyzes Chicago Television as being deeply rooted in the political beliefs of its creators. Issues involving labor rights, women’s liberation, the civil rights struggle, LGBTQ+ communities, and anti-capitalist activism appeared throughout the history of television in the Windy City. By bringing attention to the locality and widespread function of this programming system, Nebergall reveals how independent television developed with the vibrancy and diversity of Chicago’s cultural landscape and local advocacy for social justice.

Visit Jason J. Nebergall's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Murder Unabridged"

Coming December 1 from Minotaur Books: Murder Unabridged: An Old Juniper Bookshop Mystery by P. J. Nelson.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Old Juniper Bookstore is the scene for an unexpected mystery when a late night visitor confesses to a long-ago unsolved murder, then turns up dead by morning.

Madeline Brimley is still getting used to running The Old Juniper Bookstore in Enigma, Georgia. When she inherited it from her aunt, it came at an opportune time. Madeline's acting career had slowed down to the point that it was exhibiting no signs of life so returning home to the small Georgia college town of Enigma actually sounded like a good idea. And, except for a murder, arson, and a long-dead body found in the front garden, it's actually turned out well. But when an old man, claiming to be a distant relative named Trilby, shows up in the middle of the night, then confesses to an unremembered murder that happened in the Victorian house that is now The Old Juniper Bookstore, Madeline is...to put it mildly...poleaxed. Given the inclement weather and time of night, Madeline puts him up for the night, hoping to turn him over to the local police in the morning. A plan that goes wrong when, next morning, Trilby is found to have died overnight. And not of natural causes - he was poisoned. Now the bookstore is a crime scene and Madeline a possible suspect.

Now Madeline has both an old and a new mystery to solve if she is to clear her own name before she finds herself taking the fall for this unusual and unexpected death.

My Book, The Movie: All My Bones.

The Page 69 Test: All My Bones.

Q&A with P. J. Nelson.

--Marshal Zeringue