"Darkology"

New from Liveright: Darkology: Blackface and the American Way of Entertainment by Rhae Lynn Barnes.

About the book, from the publisher:

A groundbreaking history, decades in the making, that chronicles how blackface dominated American society culturally, financially, and racially for nearly two centuries.

Never before has the disturbing story of blackface and its piercing reflection of American society been so comprehensively told. With Darkology, Princeton historian Rhae Lynn Barnes meticulously unravels the complex, subterranean, and all-too-often expunged history of “Darkology”―the insidious study, commodification, and dehumanization of Black life, through which performers caricatured the enslaved and formerly enslaved for their supposed subservience and happy demeanor.

Given the extraordinary research reflected in Darkology, it’s not surprising that Barnes spent twenty years tracking down “fading photographs, old movies, bureaucratic detritus, moldy scripts, and living witnesses, assembling an impressive archive that allowed her to demonstrate the astonishingly broad reach of blackface minstrelsy” (Laurel Thatcher Ulrich). Painstakingly piecing together these scattered shards of evidence, Barnes reveals the shocking extent to which blackface took center stage in every era of American history.

This was not a fringe activity. By 1830, as political resistance to slavery grew, blackface exploded from a niche performance into a venomous national export. Within a decade, hardly a theater in the country didn’t put on minstrel shows. Following the Civil War, this grotesque entertainment soared, seeping from professional theaters into everyday amateur shows, print, and advertisements. It was everywhere: Elks Clubs, religious institutions, battlefields, universities, and schools. It wasn’t just in the Jim Crow era; it defined it. The very name “Jim Crow” derives from minstrelsy’s founding character.

Darkology dismantles the myth that blackface was a fleeting, post–Civil War phenomenon. Even in eras known for liberal progressivism, it flourished. Barnes unearths the startling fact that four-term president Franklin D. Roosevelt was a devotee who died hours before a blackface show he had commissioned at Warm Springs. It permeated U.S. military bases and was even used in World War II Japanese American concentration camps and German POW camps as a bizarre tool of “Americanization.”

After WWII, the tide began to turn as Black veterans and mothers in places like suburban California protested the practice in schools. Still, blackface performances proved resilient, surfacing as late as 1969 at the University of Vermont. Even as the Civil Rights movement fought for equality, blackface remained present in American politics and white supremacist organizing through the Nixon and Ford administrations, its legacy still percolating in variable forms today.

By tracing minstrelsy’s evolution through oral histories, material culture, and a wide range of multimedia sources, Barnes’s “masterpiece” (David Blight) forces us to reckon with the myriad ways the American Dream wore blackface. Recasting this American story with “vivid and engaging storytelling” (Howard French), Darkology is a landmark work that peers beneath the boulders deliberately obscuring our past―illuminating a path toward a more just and equal society in America’s future.

--Marshal Zeringue

"If Books Could Kill"

New from Kensington: If Books Could Kill (Tomes & Tea Mystery #3) by Karen Rose Smith.

About the novel, from the publisher:

Daisy Swanson’s daughter Jazzi has moved away to the lakeside town of Belltower Landing, but the apple doesn’t fall from the tree. Much like Daisy, she’s running a tea bar and bookshop––and has a knack for getting into hot water…

Town librarian Mathilda has a troublesome new emplROSEoyee, and after Jazzi spots the two of them arguing at the ice-sculpture festival, Mathilda asks Jazzi if she’d mind discussing her workplace woes over a cup of tea. During the visit, Jazzi also finds out about Mathilda’s top-secret stash of valuable first editions.

Soon afterward, those rare books have vanished—and Mathilda is dead. As the police check out suspects and a lawyer searches for the next of kin, Jazzi learns that the librarian’s life was as mysterious as any crime thriller. She’d left home and changed her name as a teenager, and always seemed a little lonely. Oddly, it’s her new employee who seems the most distraught.

It’s the off-season, so the upstate New York town is free of the usual swarm of tourists—but the quiet doesn’t last long. The press is descending as the murder makes national news, and rumors start circulating. With Belltower Landing steeped in suspicion, Jazzi must figure out whether the first editions were the real motive for sending Mathilda to her final resting place…

Visit Karen Rose Smith's website, Facebook page, and Instagram page.

Coffee with a Canine: Karen Rose Smith & Hope and Riley.

The Page 69 Test: Staged to Death.

The Page 69 Test: Murder with Lemon Tea Cakes.

The Page 69 Test: Murder Marks the Page.

The Page 69 Test: Booked for Revenge.

--Marshal Zeringue

"All Species of Knowledge"

New from Oxford University Press: All Species of Knowledge: A Voyage of Discovery, Failure, and Natural History in the Pacific Ocean by David Igler.

About the book, from the publisher:

In 1815, the Russian vessel Rurik set off on a three-year voyage through the Pacific and Arctic oceans in a quest to find the world's most elusive geographic feature, the Northwest Passage. Financed by a wealthy Russian count and commanded by a fame-seeking captain, the vessel carried four extraordinary observers of the natural world, including an Indigenous navigator from the Caroline Islands named Kadu.

The Rurik failed in its mission, yet, as award-winning Pacific historian David Igler masterfully demonstrates, the crew's pursuit of "natural history" throughout the voyage and during its decades-long afterlife embodied a search for knowledge through science, artistic representation, and oral tradition. Failure to achieve a great discovery was common in the great age of scientific voyaging, but explorers, natural philosophers, and traveling artists grew adept at turning their explorations into documented achievements by claiming, publishing, and promoting a range of significant findings. No expedition did this more successfully than the crew of the Rurik. Much of their produced knowledge derived directly from the Indigenous communities they encountered in the Pacific. The men aboard the ship conveyed their discoveries through various mediums. Artist Ludwig Choris documented the experience in the first lithographic compendium of a Pacific expedition. Navigator Kadu informed his Marshall Islander elders and peers of the wonders and dangers he encountered. Naturalists Adelbert von Chamisso and Johann Eschscholtz produced an astonishing range of scientific studies for both scholarly and public audiences. Meanwhile, Captain Otto von Kotzebue defended his failure to locate the Northern Passage by claiming other geographic findings.

Featuring rare color images created during the voyage, All Species of Knowledge reveals the intimate and daily practice of shipboard natural history, the role expeditions played in enlightening societies around the world, and the multiple meanings of failure and discovery in the pursuit of knowledge.

The Page 99 Test: The Great Ocean.

--Marshal Zeringue

"In The Fields of Fatherless Children"

New from Counterpoint Press: In The Fields of Fatherless Children: A Novel by Pamela Steele.

About the novel, from the publisher:

For readers of Jeannette Walls and Barbara Kingsolver, in this love story set in rural Appalachia during the Vietnam War, a young couple is torn apart by both global conflict and their families’ ancient feud

In late 1960s Appalachia, many things loom darkly over June Branham: the Vietnam War is dividing the country, and a strip mine is eating away the mountain at the head of the holler where she lives, threatening the natural landscape and the only way of life she has ever known. While still in high school, June has fallen in love. She is pregnant, and the father may be Ellis Akers. Ellis is the son of Solomon, a mortal enemy of June’s stepfather, Isom. The feud is so old it fuels two vengeful men with the power of long animosity between rival families.

June’s brother, Tom, leaves to enlist in the war, and so does Ellis. Suddenly, June is on her own, at sixteen with a newborn, and is a mother unable to protect her daughter from the wrath of Isom. Without warning, her baby is kidnapped. Guided by her love for the generations of women before her, but now desperately alone, June must carefully navigate the search for her child alongside family and strangers in a wild and disappearing landscape.

In the Fields of the Fatherless Children is a powerful story of love and perseverance, masterfully told by a writer of exquisite care who knows intimately the rural people of this time and place.

Follow Pamela Steele on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Elizabeth Cady Stanton: A Revolutionary Life"

New from Basic Books: Elizabeth Cady Stanton: A Revolutionary Life by Ellen Carol DuBois.

About the book, from the publisher:

The definitive biography of American suffragist and women’s rights pioneer Elizabeth Cady Stanton, from a preeminent historian of women’s suffrage

Elizabeth Cady Stanton was a singular leader, thinker, and organizer whose fight for women’s emancipation stretched from the 1840s to her death in 1902, a full fifth of America’s history. Yet her legacy has been marked by controversy. In this landmark biography, eminent historian Ellen Carol DuBois paints a fresh portrait of this complex crusader whose tireless work made contemporary feminism possible.

Born in 1815 into a family deeply marked by the tumult of the American Revolution and surging evangelicalism, Stanton was captivated by Enlightenment ideas about individual freedom and transformed by early experiences in what she called “the school of antislavery.” Though most remembered for her fight for the vote, she was also an early crusader for women’s reproductive autonomy and reforming the institution of marriage, and against Christianity’s subordination of women. Her rifts with Black reformers and embrace of nativist ideas tarnished her reputation, but her words still have the ability to move and agitate people today.

Building upon exhaustive archival research and a deep engagement with Stanton’s copious writings, Elizabeth Cady Stanton brilliantly captures a crucial reformer in all of her intelligence, moral ambiguity, and power.

Visit Ellen Carol DuBois's website.

--Marshl Zeringue

"Amish Country Homicide"

New from Harlequin: Amish Country Homicide by Susan Furlong.

About the book, from the publisher:

Investigating family secrets may cost them their lives.

Returning home after years away, Alena Walsh is devastated to find her grandfather shot by a disguised gunman—and now someone wants her silenced next. Sheriff Caleb Mast, her former Amish childhood friend, is tasked with keeping her safe. Soon Alena and Caleb uncover key evidence that reveals a link between her grandfather’s cryptic final words, her mother’s decades—old murder and the recent death of a young woman in town. With family secrets unraveling and attacks against Alena escalating, they’ll need to expose the killer’s deadly scheme…or risk getting caught in the crosshairs.

From Love Inspired Suspense: Courage. Danger. Faith.

Visit Susan Furlong's website.

My Book, The Movie: Splintered Silence.

The Page 69 Test: Splintered Silence.

Writers Read: Susan Furlong (December 2018).

Q&A with Susan Furlong.

Writers Read: Susan Furlong (July 2023).

The Page 69 Test: Lethal Wilderness Trap.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Radical Science"

New from Ohio State University Press: Radical Science: Plants, Agency, and Nineteenth-Century British Narrative by Mary Bowden.

About the book, from the publisher:

Can plants move? Can they think? Can they act? In Radical Science, Mary Bowden shows that debates about plants’ capabilities are not new but can be traced to the nineteenth century, where they moved from scientific inquiries to popular articles and literary fiction. Examining the work of nineteenth-century physiological botanists, Bowden expands beyond Charles Darwin’s work in the field to uncover the full story of these debates and the impacts they had on literature, culture, and people. While many have interpreted the frequent comparisons between plants and people in nineteenth-century literature to be exemplary of aesthetic values or sexual symbolism, Bowden maintains that comparisons between plants and women, members of the working class, and people of color reiterate botanical debates about how to recognize agency in beings that are assumed to be passive. Studying the scientific texts of Darwin and Maria Elizabetha Jacson alongside social problem novels by Elizabeth Gaskell and Charles Kingsley and early science fiction by H. G. Wells, Radical Science foregrounds the connection between science and literature and ultimately suggests that we look to the propositions of nineteenth-century physiological botany to find more sustaining models of social and environmental relationship.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Dead Can't Make a Living"

Coming soon from Soho Crime: The Dead Can't Make a Living by Ed Lin.

About the novel, from the publisher:

Ed Lin’s big-hearted, eye-opening fifth installment in the fan-favorite Taipei Night Market series

Jing-nan, the owner of the most popular food stand in Taipei’s world-famous Shilin night market, is hauling trash after a successful evening of hawking Taiwanese delicacies to tourists when he finds a corpse propped up against the dumpsters. The dead man turns out to be Juan Ramos, a Philippine national who came to Taiwan for a job at a massive ZHD food processing plant.

Jing-nan is haunted by Ramos’s story, and by the heartbreak of his family, who arrive in Taipei looking for answers. ZHD has a history of safety violations, and activists have a hunch Ramos’s death might be part of a cover-up. Meanwhile, Jingnan’s gangster uncle, Big Eye, has his own mysterious, probably illegal, reasons for being concerned about what’s going on in ZHD. He pressures Jing-nan into a daring and risky mission: going undercover as a migrant laborer to get a job at the food processing plant and reporting back about the conditions inside. Jing-nan hopes to find out the truth for the Ramos family, and to save other immigrant lives—but first he has to survive the spy operation.

This rollicking crime novel is a scorching, timely examination of our global dependence on undocumented immigrants.

Visit Ed Lin's website.



The Page 69 Test: Snakes Can't Run.

The Page 69 Test: One Red Bastard.

My Book, The Movie: Ghost Month.

Writers Read: Ed Lin (October 2016).

Q&A with Ed Lin.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Westerners"

New from Scribner: The Westerners: Mythmaking and Belonging on the American Frontier by Megan Kate Nelson.

About the book, from the publisher:

From award-winning historian Megan Kate Nelson, an epic account of the creation of the American West in the 19th century, shattering the traditional frontier myth that has dominated popular American culture.

The Westerners tells two richly detailed and interwoven stories. The first reveals the captivating lives of women and men moving through the American West—Indigenous peoples, Black Americans, Mexican Americans, and Canadian and Asian immigrants—in the 19th century. The second tracks the attempts of many Americans to erase these westerners from history, through a frontier myth that lionized individualism and conquest and celebrated white settlers traveling west in search of prosperity.

Nelson’s vivid, eye-opening account centers on seven extraordinary individuals whose lives capture the true history of the frontier: Sacajawea, not just Lewis and Clark’s guide but an explorer who forged her own path; Jim Beckwourth, a biracial fur trader whose sharp cultural insight made him indispensable; María Gertrudis Barceló, a Hispana gambling saloon owner who broke every stereotype to become the wealthiest woman in Santa Fe; Ovando Hollister, a gold miner, soldier, and newspaper man who championed Western expansion; Little Wolf, a Northern Cheyenne chief whose courageous leadership secured his people’s future; Canadian immigrant Ella Watson, who strove to become a ranch woman in a male-dominated world; and the defiant Polly Bemis, a Chinese immigrant who carved out a life in Idaho despite federal expulsion efforts.

Nelson roots this bold new history of the American West in the deep research and gripping storytelling that have garnered her critical acclaim. Highlighting the perseverance and ingenuity of the communities that have otherwise been forgotten or erased from history, The Westerners challenges us to reimagine who we are and where we came from.

Visit Megan Kate Nelson's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Three-Cornered War.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Most Mysterious Bookshop in Paris"

New from Kensington Books: The Most Mysterious Bookshop in Paris by Mark Pryor.

About the novel, from the publisher:

Hugo Marston, former head of security at the U.S. embassy in Paris, has retired and is ready to realize his lifelong dream of owning a mystery and antiquarian bookshop. But when a blackmail scheme targeting a chocolatier leads to murder, Hugo is again called to investigate in the first Paris Bookshop Mystery for readers of Charles Finch, Tasha Alexander, and Lev AC Rosen.

Hugo has led an exciting life as an FBI profiler and the US embassy’s head of security, but now he’s ready to embrace a quieter existence as a bookseller in the Marais district of Paris. His former employer, however, has other plans for him. A prominent American citizen is the COO of a boutique chocolate emporium in Paris, where they’ve received a mysterious and threatening note. A blackmailer who goes by the name The Shadow wants half a million euros or else their “darkest secret will be revealed.”

Eclat de Chocolat is housed in a chateau dating back to the 1700s. The building, which served as a convent in the first half of the twentieth century, where the angelic Sister Evangeline and her order of nuns helped countless orphans during World War II, has been beautifully converted into a chocolate factory. So what dark secrets could a chocolatier be hiding? The COO has no idea.

Involving his friend, Lieutenant Camille Lerens, Hugo begins to investigate. But soon a second note appears on the premises, canceling the blackmail threat. The same day, the body of an employee is found in an old graveyard behind the chocolatier. Now Hugo and Lerens have a murder on their hands, but is it connected to the blackmail attempt? As they dig for secrets and motives, it becomes clear The Shadow’s grave work has just begun . . .

Visit Mark Pryor's website.

My Book, The Movie: Dominic.

Writers Reads: Mark Pryor (January 2018).

My Book, The Movie: Die Around Sundown.

Q&A with Mark Pryor.

My Book, The Movie: The Dark Edge of Night.

Writers Read: Mark Pryor (August 2023).

--Marshal Zeringue