"The Law of Solitude"

New from Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books: The Law of Solitude (Children of the Black Glass) by Anthony Peckham.

About the book, from the publisher:

Tell and Wren face a wraith—a sorcerer gone rogue—in this third and final book in the Children of the Black Glass middle grade fantasy series that’s Howl’s Moving Castle meets Christopher Paolini!

Now a captive in Desert’s house, Wren learns the evil sorcerer has melded herself into a human body to become a wraith. Wielding even more power, more strength, and more magic than ever before, Desert’s still not satisfied…not until she consumes Wren’s too.

Tell will stop at nothing to save his sister, and while he lacks magic himself, he discovers one of their friends has mystical powers and is asdetermined as Tell is to save Wren—the girl who once saved him.

Separated for the first time, Tell and Wren are both left to rely on their quick wits, mountain training, and allies old and new to vanquish Desert once and for all. As desperate sorcerers prepare to battle the twisted wraith, they know losing would mean losing the city of Halfway…and each other.

Visit Anthony Peckham's website.

--Mrshal Zeringue

"Power Surge"

New from the University of California Press: Power Surge: Conglomerate Hollywood and the Studio System's Last Hurrah by Thomas Schatz.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the author of The Genius of the System, the classic tale of Hollywood’s first golden age, comes the story of its last.

Thomas Schatz returns us to an era when a newly enriched movie industry rediscovered its creative energy, and indie went mainstream without losing its edge.

Between 1989 and 2004, all the old studios either merged with other media giants or were swallowed up by even bigger diversified behemoths, leading to an infusion of money and fast-tracking the digital revolution. Yet even as CGI and piles of cash fueled a new breed of blockbusters—Batman and Titanic, Toy Story and The Lord of the Rings—an indie ethos permeated the industry. And at the crossroads of commodification and aesthetic vision, auteurs ranging from Steven Soderbergh and Quentin Tarantino to Sofia Coppola and Ang Lee became household names.

Power Surge traces these trajectories, which increasingly clashed and commingled during the 1990s and early 2000s, resulting in nothing short of a new golden age—and perhaps the last gasp of the century-old studio system.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Word Salad"

Coming September 15 from Harper Muse: Word Salad: A Novel by Susan Coll.

About the book, from the publisher:

Matilda loves logic and order, and now her structured world is falling apart—in a bookstore.

Former economics major Matilda is moving back to her hometown of Washington D.C. to care for her ailing mother, and she’s desperate for money. She takes a job at her neighborhood bookstore and tries, in vain, to make sense of illogical business of books. To make things worse, she’s forced to team up with a new hire—the enigmatic, flaky, larger-than-life, Sage—who shows up on her first day of work with zero administrative skills and her tiny, puffy, incessantly urinating dog that resembles an underfed rat.

Something in the chaos begins to remind Matilda of her long-neglected creative side, and she starts to rediscover the person she once was before so much got in the way. But things get even more unmanageable when Matilda and Sage are tasked with putting together an event for the reclusive and controversial Dr. Jordan Rutabaga, a windbag of a public intellectual with a cult following that includes a number of people who would like to literally and figuratively see him dead. Rutabaga has a long list of alleged misdeeds, from plagiarism to failure to pay child support to stiffing the nanny.

As the event date approaches, Matilda and Sage discover that Sage and Rutabaga have their own not uncomplicated past, adding yet another person to list of people who do not wish him well. Add in a lawsuit and an impending snowstorm along with the potentially sinister presence of Rutabaga himself, and Matilda is about to come undone.

Bestselling author Susan Coll’s gastric, bookish, laugh-out-loud comedy of manners reminds us that sometimes things have to completely fall apart for them to perfectly come together.

Visit Susan Coll's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Susan Coll & Zoe.

The Page 69 Test: Acceptance.

The Page 69 Test: Beach Week.

The Page 69 Test: The Stager.

The Page 69 Test: Real Life and Other Fictions.

The Page 69 Test: The Literati.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Naming Racism, Confronting Anti-Blackness"

New from Rutgers University Press: Naming Racism, Confronting Anti-Blackness: Mexican American Transnational Racialization and Coalition Building by Bianca Sofia Rubalcava.

About the book, from the publisher:

What happens when we move beyond a Black-and-white understanding of racism? This provocative book challenges conventional narratives by exploring how Mexican Americans navigate the US racial hierarchy―not simply as victims of white supremacy but as complex participants in systems of racial oppression. Tracing the construction of race from colonial regimes to the present, author Bianca Sofia Rubalcava argues that non-Black people of color, particularly Mexican Americans, often negotiate their racial position by distancing themselves from Blackness. Through legal history, social movement archives, and survey data, this work reveals how anti-Blackness has persisted across borders and generations, from the pursuit of legal whiteness to enduring family biases around interracial relationships. Ultimately, the book offers a powerful critique of how anti-Black ideologies hinder cross-racial solidarity and perpetuate marginalization. A bold and necessary intervention, this study pushes the Latinx community―and all readers―to confront complicity and reimagine racial justice in more inclusive and transformative ways.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Undertow"

New from Thomas & Mercer: Undertow (Kari Sharpe Thrillers) by K. T. Konkoly.

About the novel, from the publisher:

From the author of Adrift comes a taut, emotionally charged legal thriller about confronting old enemies, unleashing hidden dangers, and fighting against the pull of small-town secrets.

Attorney Kari Sharpe knew it wouldn’t be easy, leaving her life in New York and returning home to Portland, Maine. But she never imagined it would mean defending her former bully―even if only in court.

Stacy and Greg Stadt made Kari’s childhood miserable. So, when Greg dies in a boating accident and Stacy is charged with his murder, she’s reluctant to take the case. But as Kari faces the demons of her past, she is confronted by more than she bargained for. Greg had been the last obstacle to a contentious casino plan, proposed by a shady consortium wielding power from the shadows.

When another town board member goes missing, Kari realizes the players in this conspiracy may not be what they seem. Meanwhile, she reconnects with her first real love―possibly the last person she should trust. If she can free her former tormentor, she might free herself from old fears. But strong currents of hidden influence keep threatening to pull her under.

Visit K. T. Konkoly's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Inventing Immortality"

New from Oxford University Press: Inventing Immortality: Heterodoxy and Histories of the Soul in Early Enlightenment England by Michelle Pfeffer.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the decades either side of 1700, England witnessed a major public debate about the immortality of the soul. At its centre were two unlikely figures: the lawyer Henry Layton and the physician William Coward. Across numerous publications, both argued that the soul's immortality was a pagan invention absent from early scripture and only later absorbed into Christianity. Their detailed histories of the soul aimed to recast it as an inescapably human creation, rather than a natural and revealed truth.

Though often seen as the product of radical freethinking circles, Layton and Coward's histories drew directly on scholarly commonplaces that they simply reassembled and repurposed. Economic, social, and cultural shifts across the seventeenth century had made academic scholarship more accessible than ever, enabling a growing number of non-specialists to participate in scholarly debates that were now more firmly in the public sphere. The derivative nature of their work should not see writers like Layton and Coward dismissed as mere hacks. Technical proficiency does not automatically confer historical significance, nor does its absence preclude it. Layton and Coward's contributions to the debate about the soul were amateurish and, to specialist scholars at the time, unsurprising. Yet they helped push scholarship in new directions. The impact of ideas depends as much on the context of their circulation as on their originality and rigour.

Rather than portraying the heterodox publications of the period c.1700 as the 'unintended consequences' of scholarship, this book presents a more dynamic model: a feedback loop between lay and specialist knowledge, in which amateur contributions actively shaped scholarly debates. The early Enlightenment, this book suggests, may be best understood less in terms of substantive new ideas, and more in the repackaging of older ones, with different targets, by different sorts of people, for different audiences.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Death and Birth of Iliana Marek"

Coming October 13 from Tachyon: The Death and Birth of Iliana Marek by David Liss.

About the book, from the publisher:

A young man with a terrible past finds his unlikely protector: the oddly-altered enforcer of a backwater Florida town. Edgar Award-winner David Liss's latest novel reads like Hiaasen meets Crichton―a razor-sharp allegory pulled straight from today’s headlines.

Who is Iliana Marek? Is she the bully who alongside her foster father police chief Bryce Hillard, controls and terrorizes Tylor, Florida? Or is she the reborn guardian angel of Dan Gibson, a social pariah responsible for the suicide of Faye Kristic, a death which he cannot remember ten years later.

Dan’s once-promising future is in tatters. He lives in an apartment on his estranged parents’ property, works at a convenience store with a terrible boss, and is addicted to prescription drugs. But ten years after Faye’s death, Iliana suddenly takes Dan’s side, and a lot of bad people start dying fast.

As Dan becomes entangled in the ensuing chaos, he needs to finally discover what part he played in the death of Faye Kristic, and why the changes to Iliana make her no longer entirely human.

Visit David Liss's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Twelfth Enchantment.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Order of Business"

New the University of North Carolina Press: Order of Business: The Golden Age of Fraternity and Its Legacy of Inequality by Pamela A. Popielarz.

About the book, from the publisher:

Though the industrial revolution pushed Americans into radically new modes of living, working, and organizing, patriarchy and white supremacy survived in the new institutions of the industrial economy. Fraternal orders flourished so spectacularly between the Civil War and World War I that this era—the peak of the industrial revolution—is known as the Golden Age of Fraternity. In this work of historically informed sociology, Pamela A. Popielarz explores the hidden impact of fraternal orders on systemic inequalities in American business. Most orders welcomed only white men, yet members ranged from capitalist elites to wage workers. Popielarz analyzes the Freemasons and the Knights of Pythias, illuminating who they were, what they aimed to do, and how they adopted novel business practices during the Golden Age. In doing so, she reveals the collective imprint of fraternal orders on business culture and offers new ways to understand contemporary racial and gender inequalities.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Conviction"

New from Grove Atlantic: Conviction by Elizabeth H. Winthrop.

About the novel, from the publisher:

The story of a young, American woman’s misguided journey to join ISIS and the grief of the mother she leaves behind—a gripping and thought-provoking exploration of loss, empathy, and hope from the acclaimed author of The Mercy Seat

Maggie is gone. And her mother, Ann, is reeling.

In the aftermath of 9/11, eleven-year-old Maggie’s first instinct was rage. But when her parents took her to an open house at a mosque, she glimpsed a faith of beauty and peace—and over time came to embrace Islam as her own.

A decade later, Maggie has left Maine for the life in New York she always dreamed of. Yet her joy is shadowed by images from Syria: civilians starving, children buried under rubble. She feels powerless to help. Then she meets Ahmet, the handsome and headstrong son of a neighborhood baker. Ahmet is enraged by all the same things she is—so much that he leaves his life behind to join a new rebel group emerging in Syria, electrified by its sweeping vision to fight Assad and create a Muslim utopia. The group is ISIS.

Driven by love, Maggie follows him into territory from which she can’t return. Trapped without her passport and cut off from home, she slowly gleans the brutal nature of the group she has joined, one that does not share her vision of Islam.

Back in Maine, Ann is left with silence and half-truths, with the hope that one day her daughter will realize her mistake and come home. As ISIS explodes into global infamy, Ann becomes consumed by questions of what she did not see in her daughter and how belief—whether religious, political, or maternal—can turn to conviction, and conviction to ruin.

Told in counterpoint between mother and daughter, America and Syria, Conviction is both intimate and global in scope: a portrait of love during war, and a nuanced dive into the horrors of the modern world and the conditions that beget violence.

Visit Elizabeth H. Winthrop's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"When Healing Harms"

Coming October 6 from the University of California Press: When Healing Harms: The Doctor Who Put a Hospital on Trial―and the Case That Shook Psychiatry by Eric Caplan.

About the book, from the publisher:

The legal case that changed psychiatry and forced a reckoning within the profession.

In 1979, Dr. Raphael Osheroff admitted himself to Chestnut Lodge, a prestigious psychiatric hospital, expecting world-class care for his severe depression. Instead, he was confined to a locked ward, denied medication, and subjected to seven months of talk therapy. The experience rendered him physically frail and emotionally devastated before his parents secured his transfer to a hospital willing to prescribe the antidepressants he desperately needed. But the damage was done: his marriage, his practice, and his reputation all lay in tatters.

Then he did something unprecedented. He sued Chestnut Lodge.

When Healing Harms excavates the long-buried story behind one of the most consequential―and most misunderstood―malpractice cases in modern psychiatry and surfaces its impact that persists to this day. Drawing on thousands of pages of court transcripts, medical files, legal archives, hundreds of letters, video testimony, and interviews, Eric Caplan provides the definitive account of how a world-renowned psychiatric hospital failed a patient in crisis, and how the story of that failure has been obscured and misrepresented for more than four decades. The result is a revelatory examination of how psychiatry confronted its limitations―and unwittingly gave rise to a system that has failed seriously ill patients even more than the one Osheroff fought to change.

Visit Eric Caplan's website.

--Marshal Zeringue