"A Good Animal"

New from St. Martin's Press: A Good Animal: A Novel by Sara Maurer.

About the book, from the publisher:

A heart-wrenching coming-of-age debut novel by a stunning new voice in fiction, for readers of Barbara Kingsolver and Ann Patchett.

Staying is his dream. Leaving is hers. One secret threatens them both.

In the farm country outside Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan—a border town where life moves slow and dreams run fast—most kids want out. Not Everett Lindt. He’s set on staying put, rebuilding his family’s sheep farm, and carving a future from the land he loves.

Then he meets Mary, a new girl in town with restless energy and bigger plans. When their relationship reaches a crossroads, Everett sees a life together. Mary, however, is desperate to find a way out. Together, they make an impulsive choice—one that could change everything.

Tense, lyrical, and deeply felt, Sara Maurer's unforgettable debut breathtakingly captures the ache of first love, the beauty and brutality of rural life, and how one decision can echo through generations and shape who we become.

Visit Sara Maurer's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"When the Good Life Goes Bad"

New from the University of Illinois Press: When the Good Life Goes Bad: The US and Its Seven Deadly Sins by Stacey M. Floyd-Thomas.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Seven Deadly Sins have become the seven markers of success in America. Lust, pride, greed, sloth, envy, gluttony, wrath―these once-condemned principles now guide people’s pursuit of the good life.

Stacey M. Floyd-Thomas examines how the Seven Deadly Sins have shaped the moral strivings and sociopolitical condition of American society and culture in the twenty-first century. Drawing on a multidimensional approach, Floyd-Thomas uses race, gender, class, and other lenses to break down the moral crises that define the American Dream. Her critique exposes the harm done by individual and collective practices of sexual objectification, capitalist materialism, wealth inequality, and technological hubris before pivoting to the rise of right-wing populism, white Christian nationalism, and the politics of cruelty. But Floyd-Thomas also proposes an ethic that emphasizes truth-telling, community engagement, and values rooted in humility, justice, and mercy―a new path for the US to overcome systemic oppression and create a more just society.

Evocative and ambitious, When the Good Life Goes Bad takes readers on a wide-ranging journey through US life and culture to explain what corrupted the American dream.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Disappointment"

New from Catapult: The Disappointment: A Novel by Scott Broker.

About the book, from the publisher:

Set during a doom-fated vacation to the Oregon coast, The Disappointment follows a couple trying to hold close to one another while a bent reality—warped by personal losses and an ever-increasing drift toward the surreal—threatens to unravel them

It’s the night before a much-needed vacation, and Jack—a former playwright mourning his failed career—catches his husband, Randy, packing his mother’s urn. They had agreed: no mother on this trip. Parents, living or otherwise, aren’t the ideal guests for romantic getaways. But Randy has been carrying his mother’s remains everywhere since her death, and he isn’t ready to let go now.

Despite its natural beauty and kitschy charm, the Oregon coast does not provide the respite the couple seeks. Instead, their surroundings and encounters with locals grow increasingly surreal as the days pass. An overly -dedicated Method actor, tantra-obsessed neighbors, and a child environmentalist who may be able to communicate with the dead are but a few of the characters whose presence exposes long-simmering tensions that threaten to undo Jack and Randy’s marriage—to say nothing of their hold on reality.

Told with sly, irreverent humor, and shot through with dark currents of envy and longing for something other than what one has, The Disappointment explores the mutual exhilaration and terror of being placed center stage in one’'s own life.

Visit Scott Broker's website.

--Marshal Zerimgue

"Networking Putinism"

New from Cornell University Press: Networking Putinism: The Rhetoric of Power in the Digital Age by Michael S. Gorham.

About the book, from the publisher:

Networking Putinism explores the internet's impact on political discourse in Russia and the strategies adopted both by Vladimir Putin and his associates to secure and legitimate their authority, as well as by the regime's most determined critics. Michael S. Gorham shows that despite Putin's famously dismissive attitude toward the internet, the Russian leader, his political team, and a motley array of web-savvy sympathizers have been consistently fixated on the medium, deeply invested in its development, and keenly aware of its ability to shape public political discourse.

The success of the regime's opponents in leveraging social media to criticize the regime forced Putin and his allies to find ways to more effectively exploit the new medium. In telling the story of these rhetorical online battles, Networking Putinism shows how, even in the most authoritarian of regimes, public language still matters, and digitally mediated communication remains a highly contested instrument of power.

--Marshal Zeringue

"After The Fall"

New from St. Martin's Press: After The Fall: A Novel by Edward Ashton.

About the book, from the publisher:

Part alien invasion story, part buddy comedy, and part workplace satire, After The Fall by Edward Ashton, author of Mickey7 (inspiration for the film Mickey 17), asks an important question: would humans really make great pets?

Humans must be silent. Humans must be obedient. Humans must be good.

All his life, John has tried to live by those rules. Most days, it’s not too difficult. A hundred and twenty years after The Fall, and a hundred years after the grays swept in to pick the last dregs of humanity out of the wreckage of a ruined world, John has found himself bonded to Martok Barden nee Black Hand, one of the "good" grays. Sure, Martok is broke, homeless, and borderline manic, but he’s always treated John like an actual person, and sometimes like a friend. It’s a better deal than most humans get.

But when Martok puts John’s bond up as collateral against an abandoned house in the woods that he hopes to turn into a wilderness retreat for wealthy grays, John learns that there are limits to Martok’s friendship. Soon he finds himself caught between an underworld boss who thinks Martok is something that he very much is not, a girl who was raised by feral humans and has nothing but contempt for pets like John, and Martok himself, whose delusions of grandeur seem to be finally catching up with him.

Also, not for nothing, something in the woods has been killing people.

John has sixty days before Martok’s loan comes due to unravel the mystery of how humans wound up holding the wrong end of the domestication stick and find a way to turn Martok’s half-baked plans into profit enough to buy back his life, all while avoiding getting butchered by feral humans or having his head crushed by an angry gray. Easy peasy, right?

Visit Edward Ashton's website.

The Page 69 Test: Mickey7.

Q&A with Edward Ashton.

The Page 69 Test: Antimatter Blues.

Writers Read: Edward Ashton (March 2023).

The Page 69 Test: Mal Goes to War.

Writers Read: Edward Ashton (April 2024).

The Page 69 Test: The Fourth Consort.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Between Worlds"

New from LSU Press: Between Worlds: John A. Broadus, the Southern Baptist Seminary, and the Prospects of the New South by Eric C. Smith.

About the book, from the publisher:

John A. Broadus (1827–95) was a highly influential Southern Baptist leader, preacher, scholar, and educator during the latter half of the nineteenth century. He cofounded the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, which today is among the largest seminaries in the world. Broadus’s enduring impact on American preaching stems in part from his 1870 homiletics manual, a widely adopted textbook that ministers continue to use today. A prominent southerner before and after the Civil War, Broadus actively shaped his region during the shift from the Old South to the New. Eric C. Smith’s Between Worlds―the first scholarly biography of Broadus―joins recent historical scholarship in reevaluating Broadus’s legacy.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Citizens of the Earth"

New from Oxford University Press: Citizens of the Earth: Pagans and Their Gods in Augustine's North Africa by Mattias P. Gassman.

About the book, from the publisher:

Citizens of the Earth presents the first comprehensive account of Augustine's engagement with traditional Roman religion. A multifaceted case-study in the Christianization of the Roman Empire, it anchors Augustine's works in their intellectual and social context, narrating political and intellectual renegotiation of the public cults of North Africa from the 390s until after Augustine's death in 430. At the same time, it tests modern conceptions of the role of religious conviction and religious difference in late antique society against the ideas of one of the most influential late Roman thinkers.

Approaching Augustine simultaneously as thinker, practical preacher, and observer of his North African world, Citizens of the Earth synthesizes Augustine's ideas about religion from sermons and treatises, describes how his polemical approach to the Roman gods developed across his career, and reconstructs competing ideas developed by his interlocutors. It emphasizes pagan conviction and lay religiosity, argues that we should see Augustine's polemics as attempts at practical outreach and persuasion, and stresses the importance of conversion for understanding the pagan-Christian boundary.

The book closes with both historical and theoretical conclusions. After proposing that the Vandalic conquest of Carthage (439) marked a final ending point for traditional, public religiosity in North Africa, it considers how Augustine's contributions can still inform modern approaches to late antique religion.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Brighter the Light, the Darker the Shadow"

New from Wild Rose Press: The Brighter the Light, the Darker the Shadow by Verlin Darrow.

About the book, from the publisher:

Kade Tobin needs every bit of his wisdom as the leader of a rural spiritual community to remain true to his core values as murders pile up around him. Drawn into helping to solve the mystery by a sheriff's detective, Kade sorts through the array of quirky seekers on the community's land, only to end up as the defendant in a suspense-filled trial. He struggles to maintain a stance of kindness while he endures bullies in the jail, a vengeful DA, and the pending judgment of twelve strangers. As the prosecution parades witness after witness, the mounting evidence against Kade becomes alarmingly damning. If he were a juror, Kade believes he might vote to convict himself at this stage of his trial. But he also trusts the universe. Kade remains confident that a force greater than himself--and the justice system--has other plans for him. Or does it?

Visit Verlin Darrow's website.

Writers Read: Verlin Darrow (May 2023).

My Book, The Movie: Murder for Liar.

The Page 69 Test: Murder for Liar.

The Page 69 Test: The Not Quite Enlightened Sleuth.

Writers Read: Verlin Darrow (April 2024).

My Book, The Movie: The Not Quite Enlightened Sleuth.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Black Light"

New from the University of Minnesota Press: Black Light: Revealing the Hidden History of Photography and Cinema by Christophe Wall-Romana.

About the book, from the publisher:

A radical assessment of the racial motives underlying the conception of photography and cinema

Conventional histories have long traced the origins of photography and cinema to the goal of reproducing the visible world. Black Light offers a radical counter to this understanding. Investigating the optical, cosmological, and racial thought that surrounded their conception, Christophe Wall-Romana argues that these media developed out of a desire to visualize what cannot be seen.

Taking as its starting point the concurrent invention of the telescope and industrialization of the transatlantic slave trade, Black Light shows how photography and cinema are entangled with two key preoccupations of the Enlightenment: visualizing the mysteries of the cosmos and managing Blackness. Wall-Romana uses literary and technological sources to demonstrate how racial and astronomical thinking interwove throughout the long development of our modern visual media. Retracing the impulses behind nonmimetic photoimaging and dynamic modeling, he exposes the racial underpinnings of research on photosensitive compounds such as silver nitrate and the racist lenses applied in post-Copernican cosmology.

Black Light charts the pivotal period from the seventeenth through the nineteenth century when Europeans were reckoning with “multiple worlds” and natural philosophy was giving way to “mechanical objectivity.” Wall-Romana shows how engagement with the nature of light was always entangled with racist discourses on Blackness―especially after the 1801 discovery of the invisible spectrum and its paradox of “black light.” Deprovincializing media archaeology, this book presents a groundbreaking historical framework with which to reenvision our dominant modes of seeing and understanding the world.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Murder Most Delicious"

Coming May 26 from Harper Perennial: Murder Most Delicious: A Novel by Danielle Postel-Vinay.

About the book, from the publisher:

In Paris, murder is a dish best served with chocolate éclairs.

Starting over in Paris was supposed to be the opportunity of a lifetime for American sommelier Olivia Beech—until her dream job ends in murder.

Once a rising star in the wine world, Olivia was one of a handful of women in the world to hold the distinction of being a Master Sommelier before COVID stole her sense of taste—and her career. Adrift and depressed, she gets a second chance when beloved celebrity chef Jacques de Bizet invites her to Paris for a job interview. But as the interview begins, he collapses, poisoned, making Olivia the prime suspect.

Olivia is in trouble, but she has an advantage: her extraordinary nose is still sharp enough to detect the subtlest of scents, including the poison that killed Jacques. Olivia knows she’s innocent, but how can she prove it?

Enter the Paris Neighborhood Watch, an eccentric circle of locals determined to protect their quartier. At the helm is the mysterious Augusta Dupin, a brilliant but agoraphobic detective, aided by her intuitive British shorthair cat, Chateaubriand. Olivia and Augusta join forces with a group of neighborhood amateur sleuths—a pâtissier, a café owner, a part-time librarian, a florist and a kind-hearted cop who may be falling for Olivia—to solve the crime, a search that helps them find not only the killer but fresh purpose in their lives.

Warm, witty, and brimming with food, friendship, and intrigue, Murder Most Delicious transports you to a cozy Parisian neighborhood where the comforts of French daily life soothe the soul even in the darkest times.

Visit Danielle Postel-Vinay / Danielle Trussoni's website.

--Marshal Zeringue