"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

"Imitation Is Suicide"

New from Princeton University Press: Imitation Is Suicide - Teachers & Students from the Romantic by Marc Gotlieb.

About the book, from the publisher:

A groundbreaking cultural history of calamitous teacher-student relationships at the heart of nineteenth-century French painting and efforts to fix them

The suicides of painters Léopold Robert and Antoine-Jean Gros in 1835 left a deep imprint on the European imagination. Imitation Is Suicide examines a rash of notorious artist suicides that saw wide publicity in the Romantic era, showing how observers of the period—from visual artists to novelists, art critics, biographers, and numerous others—at once commemorated those deaths and traced their origins to teacher-student relationships gone catastrophically wrong.

Marc Gotlieb also sheds light on figures like Eugène Delacroix—who controversially argued against the authority of tradition in art education and sought to dismantle the prestige of the teacher. And he also explores the pioneering instruction of Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran, an influential art teacher who viewed education as recuperative, designed to protect students from external forces that hindered their natural development. Gotlieb traces how the relationship between teacher and student emerged as newly charged and frequently contested terrain, not simply in the teaching studio but also long after instruction had ended. Against the classic scenario that saw masters instruct pupils in their own manner, it now fell to teachers to discourage such imitations. Gotlieb looks at real and fictionalized quarrels between teachers and students, including idealizing imagery around art education that made the case the teacher should stand aside. And he pairs such imagery with accounts of last paintings—works completed prior to an artist’s suicide and thought to betray clues as to the pedagogical character of the crisis that brought an artist’s career to a violent terminus.

With new findings on familiar and lesser-known artists, Imitation Is Suicide demonstrates how the circumstances of an artist’s death, no less than their artistic education, could profoundly shape how their lives and works were interpreted and imbued with meaning.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Squatters"

New from The Dial Press: The Squatters: A Novel by Saba Brelvi.

About the book, from the publisher:

Two families collide in this provocative debut about motherhood, migration, and the distance between who we are and who we want to be.

How far are you willing to go to help someone in need?

Surrey is a quiet, affluent area just outside of London, replete with tree-lined streets, great schools, and friendly neighbors. Though she and her husband embody second-generation immigrant success, Dalia Waheed has never quite felt like she belongs.

While volunteering at a local nonprofit called Refugee Resettlement, Dalia meets the very pregnant Hajira and her husband, who are seeking asylum in the UK. In Hajira, Dalia feels a kinship she can’t quite explain. So, when Hajira asks for help finding an alternative to their grim government housing, Dalia knows she will not ignore her plea. Helping another mother secure a safer place to live seems less like charity than duty.

But what begins as a simple act of compassion quickly spirals into something far more treacherous. Soon, Dalia finds herself engulfed in a political firestorm that forces her to confront what she's truly willing to risk—for her ideals, her family, and for a woman who has already lost everything.

Visit Saba Brelvi's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Holding On to Home"

New from the University of California Press: Holding On to Home: Immigrant Women and the Promise of Sanctuary by Sarah Bruhn.

About the book, from the publisher:

Over twenty million Americans live in cities that have passed sanctuary policies to protect the rights of immigrants and their families. However, contentious public conversations surrounding sanctuary obscure what these policies actually mean to the immigrants they purport to serve, making it hard to see what strengthens the power of sanctuary and what undermines its protections.

Holding On to Home, based on five years of fieldwork and over one hundred in-depth interviews, illuminates how immigrant women’s care work―in their families, schools, and communities―makes real the promise of sanctuary. Through their resistive care work, immigrant women weave together an enduring fabric of protection that transforms inclusive policies into meaningful practices that support immigrant mothers as they nurture their children and loved ones. Holding On to Home reveals how these women confront both overt threats to sanctuary―anti-immigrant policies and increasingly violent and arbitrary immigration enforcement―alongside a less obvious threat to sanctuary, but one that widens inequality in our urban landscapes: gentrification. Tracing the meaning of sanctuary across shifting political contexts, Sarah Bruhn powerfully demonstrates how immigrant women resist these forces of exclusion to lay claim to their right to create a home and to belong in our shared cities.

Visit Sarah Bruhn's website.

--Marshal Zeringue