"Girl's Girl"

New from The Dial Press: Girl's Girl: A Novel by Sonia Feldman.

About the novel, from the publisher:

A hypnotic debut about the pivotal summer that shatters the delicate balance between three best friends

Fifteen-year-old Mina’s whole world is her two best friends, but after an unexpected kiss, the established dynamics of their trio quickly unravel. Everything that was once shared openly, from clothes to secrets, now feels impossibly fragile. Loyalties shift and tensions simmer across the long days of this pivotal summer, where the girls have nowhere new to go and everything new to feel.

Looking back, an adult Mina traces the undercurrents of longing that shaped her first experience of desire. The rituals of girlhood—gossip, selfies, sleepovers, and videogames—become threads in a delicate, volatile web of intimacy, in which everything feels achingly fleeting and permanently etched. Loving one person, Mina learns, can change the way we love everyone else—including ourselves.

Bold, vulnerable, and sharply observant, Girl’s Girl is a sundrenched and dewy snapshot of modern girl culture set in the blaze of one suburban Midwest summer.

Visit Sonia Feldman's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Lady C: The Long, Sensational Life of Lady Chatterley’s Lover"

New from Yale University Press: Lady C: The Long, Sensational Life of Lady Chatterley’s Lover by Guy Cuthbertson.

About the book, from the publisher:

A vibrant account of the remarkable novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover, tracing its life over the last century

D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover is one of the best-known and most resonant works of the twentieth century. Originally considered obscene and unpublishable in numerous countries, its scandalous story of class divide and the English countryside is infamous. But, since the 1920s, we have repeatedly re-created Lady Chatterley, from film and TV to music and tourism.

Guy Cuthbertson tells the colourful story of the novel’s journey through the last hundred years. He examines how the book has been read, adapted, and reimagined across the globe, from the United States to Japan, and explores the 1960 “Chatterley trial”―a key moment in the struggle for freedom of expression. It might have been burnt and derided, laughed at and defaced, but Lawrence’s novel has crept into all walks of life. Whether the book, or its influence, be good or bad, we live in a world that Lady Chatterley’s Lover helped to create.

Visit Guy Cuthbertson's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Alan Opts Out"

New fom Little, Brown and Company: Alan Opts Out: A Novel by Courtney Maum.

About the novel, from the publisher:

In this timely and comedic take on ambition, consumerism, and the sticker price of privilege, an ad exec who bombs the biggest pitch of his career decides to forgo capitalism and live off the land of his suburban Connecticut home. Perfect for readers of Rufi Thorpe and Taffy Brodesser-Akner.

Alan Anderson is a powerful advertising executive who has built a successful life and thriving business by making people buy stuff they don’t actually need. He’s up for the biggest pitch of his career and the account everyone wants, US Dairy: cow’s milk sales are plummeting, and the C-Suite wants to see trendy oat milk kicked to the curb. But when an anarchist farmer tanks Alan’s presentation, Alan bombs the pitch but ends the day with an epiphany. No longer will he exploit the insecurities of others in the service of capitalism. Alan is opting out.

This development is anathema to his wife, Vivian. She’s just a few positive affirmations, a swimming pool, and an exacting series of social tests away from finally becoming part of the elite women’s club, the Queen Annes, in their adopted town of Greenwich, Connecticut. As if contending with a daughter who wants to write plays (!) and another who has an unnatural empathy with animals isn’t enough to manage, she can only watch as Alan moves into their backyard playhouse to live off the land and—worse—spend time with the family. But instead of shocking the neighbors, Alan’s commitment to a less-is-more lifestyle seems to be catching on. Could everyone want what Alan’s not selling?

Funny, sexy, intelligent, and poignant, Alan Opts Out is the most ambitious novel to date by celebrated author Courtney Maum, acclaimed for her stories that tackle big, chewy subjects of our post-modern America with wit and heart.

Visit Courtney Maum's website.

The Page 69 Test: I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You.

The Page 69 Test: Touch.

The Page 69 Test: Costalegre.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Please Look After This Bear"

New from Oxford University Press: Please Look After This Bear: How Paddington Became British by Melanie Ramdarshan Bold and Aishwarya Subramanian.

About the book, from the publisher:

An exploration of Paddingon the Bear as an international cultural phenomenon

In 1958, a little marmalade-loving brown bear from Peru named Paddington was introduced to the post-war British public. Inspired by his creator Michael Bond's memories of displaced Jewish children in the United Kingdom during World War II, Paddington became a symbol of how to treat refugees with kindness. Author Bond was clear from the outset about Paddington's refugee status. Nearly sixty-five years later, the bear's legacy has evolved into a transmedia phenomenon; his once marginalized image has now been licenced to numerous British organisations -- such as Barbour and Marks & Spencer -- and more recently, even become a symbolic figurehead of national mourning following Queen Elizabeth II's death in 2022.

Please Look After This Bear analyzes the titular character's transformation from displaced Peruvian bear to member of a wealthy, upper-class West London family, raising questions about migration, assimilation, tolerance, and national identity. The first of its kind to trace the publication history of the Paddington stories, this cutting-edge, critical text not only offers a unique sociocultural biography on the series' origins and background, but looks closely at its contemporary adaptations and afterlives, citing its emergence as a British cultural symbol across the globe. To date, Paddington books have been translated into forty languages (including Latin) and have sold more than 35 million copies worldwide.

Told in poignant, incisive prose, this book reveals how Paddington evolved from an unassuming Peruvian bear on the printed page to an international transmedia phenomenon and icon of Britishness. With thoughtful nods both to nostalgia and to national identity, this book traces the character's dramatic change across the ever-changing British historical and political landscape of the past nearly-seven decades.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Marion"

New from St. Martin's Press: Marion: A Novel by Leah Rowan.

About the novel, from the publisher:

This fresh retelling of Hitchcock’s Psycho asks, what if the leading lady fought back? This time, Marion refuses to be the victim in this clever spin on a classic horror story.

NORMAN WAS HER FIRST...

Marion is in deep. She's stolen money from the Manhattan ad agency where she works in a desperate bid to help her sister escape an abusive marriage, but the bus breaks down before she can make it to Saratoga Springs. It's late at night, and the only place with vacancies is an old set of cabins on the outskirts of town. She pays for a room in cash, and ends up chatting with Norm, the young innkeeper who's handsome, charming and a touch hung-up on his elderly mother. Back in her room, she steps into the shower, scrubbing off the late-summer heat, when the curtain is pulled back...

Norm Billings is there with a knife. He raises his arm to strike, but before he does, Marion knees him in the balls, grabs the knife, and stabs the life out of him. Now, she's covered in blood, and she's a woman on the run—not just a thief, but a killer, too. Where will she go? How will she save both herself and her sister? And what mysteries will she uncover as she does?

In Psycho, Hitchcock shocked audiences when he killed off his protagonist. But what if the leading lady had fought back? Marion offers an alternate history of the most famous dead blonde to ever grace the silver screen. Only this time, the knife is in her hands—and she's no victim.

Visit Leah Rowan's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Writing for Dark Times"

New from the University of Chicago Press: Writing for Dark Times: A Literary History of Human Rights by Hadji Bakara.

About the book, from the publisher:

A history of human rights that places writers and their ideas at its center.

At Amnesty International’s headquarters in London hangs a large copy of Seamus Heaney’s “From the Republic of Conscience,” a poem that touches on neither imprisonment nor torture but instead suggests that acts of literary creation are themselves a form of human rights work, important for bringing new things into the world rather than removing evil from it. Why does a poem about the power of creation stand at the center of an organization known for publicizing atrocity? What can it tell us about human rights?

Hadji Bakara’s Writing for Dark Times tells the story of the writer’s distinct place in the history of human rights. It argues that the relationship between the creative work of writing and the pursuit of universal rights is an important but misunderstood dimension of both literary and human rights history over the past century. Following a diverse cast of writers from the First World War through the end of the Cold War, including Bertolt Brecht, Anna Seghers, Archibald MacLeish, Albert Camus, Czeslaw Milosz, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Seamus Heaney, Nadine Gordimer, and J.M. Coetzee, Bakara shows how their efforts to theorize and support human rights were bound up with changing ideas about the place of their own work in the world––the work of writing. And across the twentieth century, the book reveals, two central ideas about writing took shape around the politics of human rights. Writing creates something new and inspires the will for change.

For those who study human rights, Writing for Dark Times offers both an archive and a method for better understanding the influence of writers on the historical development of the concept. For those in literary studies, the book provides a new account of how human rights shaped the politics of twentieth-century literature. Few books have made as vivid a case for literature’s relevance to our most exalted ideals and institutions.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Samantha Spük: Paranormal Wedding Planner"

New from S&S/Saga Press: Samantha Spük: Paranormal Wedding Planner by Aleese Lin.

About the book, from the publisher:

Aleese Lin’s delightful, spooky—or Spük-y?—contemporary romance debut is perfect for fans of Legends & Lattes and Netflix’s Wednesday.

Samantha Spük is your go-to wedding planner, be it for werewolf, vampire, or fae!

...even if that's the last thing she would’ve imagined. Samantha “Sabby” Spük has spent her life trying to escape her family’s legacy of supernatural chaos. She’s finally graduated and landed a nice, normal 9–5 at a New York accounting firm. But then she gets the call: Grandma Rose is gone, and Sabby has been named executor of her (ahem, magically binding) will.

Now Sabby is stuck in her dreaded hometown of Salem, Massachusetts, taking on odd jobs—some very odd, like wedding planning for not-so-human locals—until she can sell the family home. At least this means a date with Hanry, the mysterious hottie Sabby meets in the neighborhood graveyard. With help from Hanry, a talking-head sidekick, and a manic pixie assistant, Sabby might pull these weddings off in time to salvage her accounting career…but is she ready to say goodbye to her paranormal one?

Visit Aleese Lin's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Fear of Queer Taiwan"

New from NYU Press: Fear of Queer Taiwan: Anti-LGBTQ Movements Between Taiwan and the U.S. Religious Right by Ying-Chao Kao.

About the book, from the publisher:

Traces the development of new anti-LGBTQ movements in Taiwan and their interactions with the US Religious Right

In 2019, global media celebrated Taiwan as the first Asian country to legalize same-sex marriage. However, the pursuit of this human rights milestone spurred waves of opposition to LGBTQ rights that have fundamentally shaped the nation’s democracy and its relationship with the United States. This book examines Taiwan’s anti-LGBTQ movements, analyzes their rise and fall, and reveals their surprising links with American religious conservatism.

Given that Christianity is a minority religion in Taiwan and East Asia, the book seeks to answer how and why Christian-led anti-LGBTQ sentiments became so powerful in Taiwan, and how they have built transnational connections with American and other international counterparts.

Drawing on more than 100 in-depth interviews with leading figures across a wide political spectrum, and two years of cumulative ethnographic observation in both Taiwan and the United States, Kao reveals that moral conservatism has been flowing across borders and adapting to contemporary socio-political institutions as it seeks to protect its moral territories and expand its ideological power. Exploring the transnational ebbs and flows of moral conservatism as a direct response to rising pro-LGBTQ liberalism and queer radicalism, Fear of Queer Taiwan offers a groundbreaking theoretical framework to understand conservatism’s fluidity in today’s ever-evolving global landscape of gender and sexual politics.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Windsor Affair"

New from Delacorte Press: The Windsor Affair: A Novel by Melanie Benjamin.

About the book, from the publisher:

A scandalous affair. A power struggle for the throne. A sensational rivalry between an English queen and an American social climber. In this electrifying novel, the New York Times bestselling author of The Swans of Fifth Avenue tells the story of the Abdication of Edward VIII—and the two women at the center of it all.

Feuding Windsor brothers and their wives—some things, it seems, never change. The Windsor Affair recreates the cataclysmic events that nearly toppled the monarchy and incited the power struggle between Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon and Wallis Simpson. Told from the perspective of both women, the novel propels readers into the fabulous world of the debonair Prince of Wales, café society of the 1930s, and the glittering private lives of the Windsors. The first novel to be dedicated to this infamous rivalry, The Windsor Affair brings us all the gossip and intrigue between the two very different—yet perhaps more similar than they would admit—wives of royals.

As Queen, Elizabeth would become the symbol of British pluck and courage during World War II and remain a British institution the rest of her long life. Wallis would be forever forced to enact the World’s Greatest Love Story even after it sours, as she goes from being admired to vilified and, ultimately, pitied. Against the backdrop of the Abdication Crisis, World War II, coronations, funerals, births, and deaths, these two women maintain a biting, sharp-tongued feud—until age and the long arm of history bring about a kind of understanding. For the last communication between these bitter rivals was a simple, surprising message: “In friendship, Elizabeth.”

Visit Melanie Benjamin's website.

The Page 69 Test: Alice I Have Been.

The Page 69 Test: The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb.

My Book, The Movie: The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb.

The Page 69 Test: The Aviator's Wife.

The Page 69 Test: The Swans of Fifth Avenue.

The Page 69 Test: The Girls in the Picture.

Writers Read: Melanie Benjamin (May 2019).

Q&A with Melanie Benjamin.

The Page 69 Test: The Children's Blizzard.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Dream Road to Pan America"

New from the University of California Press: Dream Road to Pan America: A Century in Pursuit of the World's Longest Highway by Shawn William Miller.

About the book, from the publisher:

An expansive and subversive history of the Pan-American Highway.

A century after the Pan-American Highway was first conceived, its story remains largely unknown—even to the hundreds of motorists who annually attempt the 30,000-kilometer drive from far northern Alaska to the tip of Tierra del Fuego. There is more to the highway, however, than the persistent allure of the open road. In Dream Road to Pan America, historian Shawn William Miller unveils a larger tale of lofty ideals and bedrock greed, romantic adventure and pragmatic diplomacy, immigrant desperation and Indigenous resistance.

This book journeys to the early 1920s when everyday Americans invented the idea of a road that would spread fraternity, democracy, and prosperity across the hemisphere. It looks at the commercial and geopolitical interests that shaped the highway—often with little concern for those living along its margins—and explains why the road became an escape route for millions of migrants rather than a corridor for tourists. Miller contends that the highway’s troubled past points to an unresolved future, offering insights into the growing costs of continuing down well-worn paths.

--Marshal Zeringue