"Culture and Containment"

New from The University of North Carolina Press: Culture and Containment: Race, Geographic Mobility, and Popular Culture in Nineteenth-Century America by Colin Anderson.

About the book, from the publisher:

Movement—who moves, where they move, and how they move—has long been perceived as a racial threat in the United States. To better understand why, Colin Anderson examines how popular culture played a central role in shaping these perceptions during the transformative period of Greater Reconstruction (1845–1900). From sheet music and lithographs to plantation reenactments and Wild West shows, white cultural producers depicted Black and Native mobility as destabilizing. These depictions normalized fears of movement and justified the rise of systems designed to confine these communities, such as Jim Crow segregation and Native American reservations. Using a trans-regional framework spanning the North, South, and West, Anderson places these histories side by side, revealing the shared logic of racial spatial control and reframing nineteenth-century US history as a story of nation-building intertwined with segregation and capitalism.

Yet popular culture was a contested space. Black and Native performers, writers, and activists used the same platforms as white creators to assert agency, resist confinement, and challenge dominant narratives of mobility. By illuminating these dynamics, Culture and Containment reshapes our understanding of nineteenth-century race relations while offering vital insight into enduring legacies—from residential segregation to mass incarceration—that continues to define the racial landscape through the twenty-first century.

--Marshal Zeringue

"An Embodiment of Souls"

New from Union Square & Co.: An Embodiment of Souls: A Novel by Julia Laurel.

About the novel, from the publisher:

In this queer political necromantasy, a secret marriage pact for suvival might undo a kingdom...

As the daughter of a foreign ambassador, Rissa hoped living abroad would protect her from home’s puritanical customs where women are forbidden to walk at night or use magic except to support a necromancer’s dual identity.

Alek, the youngest prince of the Memric Isle, hasn’t yet taken his Second body. Fearing he’ll be accused of sin and his body claimed as a Second himself, Alek lives piously while studying abroad, even though he’s distracted by magic―and his handsome roommate, Gable.

When Alek meets Rissa by chance, his quiet life is thrown into chaos. One of Rissa’s fathers has been abducted, and Alek and Gable are witnesses. Alek and Rissa form a secret alliance to find her father and uncover the truth behind the conspiracy, risking life and freedom as they follow clues straight to the heart of the Memric Isle’s government.

Visit Julia Laurel's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Settling: Women Who Sued the News"

New from the University of Massachusetts Press: Settling: Women Who Sued the News by Ashley Walter.

About the book, from the publisher:

A history of courage and collective action inside the most powerful newsrooms in America

In 1971, Susan Smith, a young researcher at Reader’s Digest, dared to imagine herself as an editor. Her ambition was swiftly dismissed by a hiring manager who told her, “Single girls just don’t do well in this job.” Crushed―and then furious―Smith sought out Harriet Rabb, the attorney who had successfully sued Newsweek for sex discrimination just a year earlier. Their meeting helped spark a class-action lawsuit that ultimately united two thousand women at the magazine and became part of a broader revolt inside American newsrooms. Smith’s experience was far from unique. For much of American history, journalism has been rigidly segregated by gender, with women confined to research, clerical work, or the “women’s pages,” while men dominated reporting, editing, and leadership. That system began to crack in the 1970s, as the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the women’s liberation movement emboldened newswomen to challenge daily discrimination. Yet this development has remained largely hidden, buried by editors reluctant to document inequities within their own institutions. Settling recovers this lost story.

Tracing class-action sex discrimination lawsuits at some of the most powerful news organizations in the United States―including The Washington Post, the Associated Press, The New York Times, and Time―Ashley Walter draws on oral histories and long-forgotten documents to reconstruct legal battles at eight major outlets. She argues that meaningful change came not from institutional goodwill but from the courage of women who organized, testified, and risked their careers to demand equality. Their victories reshaped journalism itself. As women assumed reporting and editorial roles, they broadened the scope of who counted as newsworthy, covering women as workers, political leaders, and authoritative sources. With this new illumination of women’s full participation in public life, newswomen shifted social norms and helped build women’s power across American society. By recovering these accounts, Settling reveals how newsroom struggles for gender equality transformed both journalism and the nation, offering urgent lessons for our present moment.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Family Friends"

Coming November 17 from Pegasus Books: Family Friends: A Novel by Chloë Ashby.

About the book, from the publisher:

A "sultry and evocative" novel about the secrets and entanglements between a group of friends holidaying in the south of France.

Since they first met at university twenty years ago, Maggie and Will have spent the last two weeks of every summer in France with their close friends, Lydia and Roland. Both families always look forward to this annual ritual—but this summer things are different.

Will has been hiding something from his wife, and is struggling to keep his deceit from seeping into the cracks in their marriage. Maggie is worried about their withdrawn teenage son. Roland is grappling with how to grieve the death of his first wife. Lydia is trying to ignore past chemistry with an old friend while learning to play second fiddle to a ghost.

Into this already conflicted fray steps Issy, Roland’s beguiling, irrepressible daughter from his first marriage. And as the August heat beats down, and the children behave in unexpected ways, the two couples find that tensions they have been trying their best to temper have begun to bubble over…

Family Friends is a deeply atmospheric, sophisticated and compelling novel about what happens when the ties of love and loyalty are stretched to the breaking point, how relationships change (and don’t change) over time, and how we navigate the challenges thrown at us in every season of life.

Visit Chloë Ashby's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Toxic Fear"

New from the University of Georgia Press: Toxic Fear: Pollution Anxieties in the American 1980s by Michael Egan.

About the book, from the publisher:

Toxic Fear explores how fear shaped the public and private lives of those seeking to make sense of pollution in the 1980s. Driving Egan’s interest in environmental anxieties is an exploration of the social and political infrastructure that took shape during the final quarter of the twentieth century. Egan ties the uncertainties rippling through American communities and across mainstream media to the neoliberal project and its deference to self-interest as the only path to prosperity. In the 1980s, that meant less government intervention, lower taxes, more privatization, and fewer controls. Above and beyond any economic or social theory, fear unsettled established ways of American life. Just as toxic chemicals became a prominent feature of the American social and physical landscape in the 1980s, traditional forms of state oversight designed to provide security for its people were eroded. Social problems and public safety were outsourced to individuals. The onus of responsibility moved from government and government agencies to a public that had, in the previous decade, abdicated environmental oversight and the necessary scientific literacy to experts no longer equipped for the job.

--Marshal Zeringue

"A Grim Reaper's Guide to Living Twice"

New from Berkley: A Grim Reaper's Guide to Living Twice (A S.C.Y.T.H.E. Mystery) by Maxie Dara.

About the novel, from the publisher:

He’s been charged with possession before, but never like this.

Jack McCoy was a thief and a liar. Then he died.

Margaret Chen transported souls for the biggest afterlife collection company in North America. Then she met Jack.

Possession isn’t really supposed to be possible, but Jack McCoy never let a little thing like reality stop him. Now he’s committing the ultimate identity theft, living a new life in Margaret’s body while his own lies six feet under. Keeping up appearances as a geriatric grim reaper for S.C.Y.T.H.E. is a full-time job, but when Jack is sent to collect the soul of an old friend, his criminal past catches up with him and suddenly he’s planning the heist of his (after)life with a gang of misfits he never thought he’d see again.

Now the only woman he’s ever loved depends on his success in stealing a priceless list of souls from S.C.Y.T.H.E., but someone keeps beating him at his own game. Time is running out. If Jack puts one bunioned foot out of line it will cost him not only the people who matter most but also his second chance at life...

Visit Maxie Dara's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Original City, Original Sin"

New from Cambridge University Press: Original City, Original Sin: King, the Klan, and the Fight for Civil Rights in St. Augustine, Florida by Martin Dobrow.

About the book, from the publisher:

A Klan rally where four Black men were almost burned alive. A hotel manager pouring acid into a pool to chase out Black swimmers. Brutal assaults of peaceful demonstrators at the site of a former slave market downtown. A shooting into the cottage rented for Martin Luther King, Jr. Each form part of a rarely told and riveting story of civil rights in the nation's oldest city, St. Augustine, Florida. At the height of his fame, King found his treasured doctrine of nonviolence challenged as never before-all as the fate of the Civil Rights Act, the most consequential legislation of the twentieth century, hung in the balance. In this intimate exploration based on hundreds of interviews, Martin Dobrow introduces an extraordinary collection of idealists-Black and white, young and old, gay and straight-who were drawn into the movement, putting their lives on the line for racial justice.

Visit Martin Dobrow's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Tribes"

New from Dutton: The Tribes: A Novel by Mari Howes.

About the novel, from the publisher:

A dark and daring debut thriller exploring power, control and resilience against all odds, The Tribes tells the story of a cult member accused of a shocking crime and the lawyer who chooses to defend her.

One quiet night in a rural Vermont town, a panicked woman calls 9-1-1 on a gas station payphone to report that a newborn baby has died. Local police respond to the call and charge Heather Garner, a college drop-out and member of fringe religious community The Messiah’s Tribes, with the murder of her son. Heather’s future is in the hands of her family: but they haven’t seen or heard from her in almost 20 years.

Lawyer Abby Harris’s friends and colleagues are puzzled by her choice to take on the case, especially given she’s pregnant with her first child. But Abby is convinced that there’s more to Heather’s story than meets the eye. The investigation leads her to understand that the community Heather belonged to may not be a peaceful, eccentric bunch of hippies, but a well-organized, exploitative criminal enterprise.

Engrossing and suspenseful, The Tribes reveals the mystery of Heather’s past piece by piece, until a jury must decide: does her indoctrination make her a victim, or a perpetrator?

Visit Mari Howes's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"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