"'Twas the Night"

Coming October 13 from William Morrow Paperbacks: 'Twas the Night: A Novel by Kevin Johnson.

About the book, from the publisher:

A young reporter follows a string of disappearances into the middle of a terrifying Christmas cult inspired by our favorite holiday classics.

You better watch out. You better not cry.

It’s Christmas in the village of Yule, Maine.

In fact, it’s always Christmas in Yule. Here, Santa Claus isn’t a storybook figure. He’s an icon. A god. The villagers don’t just believe in him—they worship him. And the world is better for it.

Halley Belanger hates Christmas, and she doesn’t have much love for Santa either. But when a string of child disappearances across Maine seems to spare only the village of Yule, Halley—a sharp, skeptical reporter—decides to investigate.

What she finds is a town that guards its secrets with gingerbread smiles and a snow globe sheen. Outsiders aren’t welcome. She isn’t welcome. And something sinister is keeping the Christmas spirit alive.

As Halley digs deeper, she begins to uncover the horrifying truth behind Yule’s eternal cheer. Christmas comes at a grisly cost. And Santa Claus is no saint.

Visit Kevin Johnson's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Filial Lines"

New from Cambridge University Press: Filial Lines: Art Spiegelman, Alison Bechdel, and Comics Form by Emmy Waldman.

About the book, from the publisher:

This is the first book to place the autobiographical projects of canonical comics authors Art Spiegelman and Alison Bechdel alongside each other, focusing on new and neglected works (and with an epilogue on the Pulitzer Prize-winning tour-de-force debut of Tessa Hulls). The book offers a lively cast of five formal tropes-boxes, spirals, tic-tac-toe, mirrors, and webs-through which to model fundamental elements of the comics grammar and its material processes. Built around rich close readings, it shows what makes the comics form particularly suited to negotiate complex familial and creative inheritances and manage layered, relational identities. Interweaving accounts of Jewish identity, female embodiment, legacies of modernism, and feminist practice, the book traces how contemporary graphic memoirists visually work and rework their filiations and affiliations through form, situating the medium as a privileged site and staging ground for arguments about the enabling possibilities of form now.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Stolen Women"

Coming October 27 from Park Row Books: The Stolen Women: A Novel by Alysandra Dutton.

About the book, from the publisher:

A case of missing noble women and a determined young warrior who sets out to bring them home in this new and exciting ancient historical set just before the founding of Rome, for fans of The Song of Achilles, Circe, and A Thousand Ships.

Safinia is fine to focus on her training as a warrior, providing for her sisters, and minding her own business. She feels no great need to meddle in anyone else's, until women in her town, including her former lover, begin disappearing. Quietly, at first, but disappearing just the same. All of the missing women have vanished from powerful households, but their formidable fathers are in utter denial, claiming their daughters are off on trips, sure to be back shortly, with perfectly reasonable explanations for their absences.

Dissatisfied with the half-hearted attempts to hand wave away the alarming and mysterious cases of the vanishing women, Safinia takes matters into her own hands, embarking on a journey to a neighboring village in search of answers or at the very least clues that might unearth threads she can begin to pull at. Along the way, she meets an unlikely yet helpful search partner, a historian who calls himself Livy. But despite his eerie sense of knowledge, Safinia is unable to uncover to missing women, thwarted more often than not by the girls' fathers themselves. As war with Rome looms on the horizon, Safinia must face the reality that the only one she can trust to bring them home is herself.

Alysandra Dutton has crafted an expertly researched and indepth look at the Sabine women, one of history's most overlooked yet crucial stories that has inspired countless works of art throughout the centuries. It's a fresh, page-turning adventure, perfect for readers of Madeline Miller and Natalie Haynes.

Visit Alysandra Dutton's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Hate Speech"

New from the University of California Press: Hate Speech: The Legal and Cultural History of an American Dilemma by Samantha Barbas.

About the book, from the publisher:

A history of the battles over regulation of hate speech in the United States.

The United States has no hate speech laws; hate speech is generally considered to be free speech under the First Amendment. In this crisp guided history, acclaimed legal historian Samantha Barbas chronicles the country’s legal and cultural battles over the regulation of hate speech in the last hundred years. Charting the historical context for current debates, she ultimately argues that, however emotionally appealing they may seem, hate speech laws undermine civil rights and democracy.

The American policy on hate speech evolved from influences such as the civil rights movement, which contended that the most effective way to combat hate speech wasn’t through proposed laws. Rather than imposing restrictions, the US has developed an array of mechanisms other than law, including counterspeech and public education, that have been relatively effective at dealing with hate speakers and hate groups. Though not perfect, our method of addressing hate is less dangerous than government censorship and less likely to be weaponized against the powerless.

Visit Samantha Barbas's website.

The Page 99 Test: Laws of Image.

The Page 99 Test: Newsworthy.

The Page 99 Test: The Rise and Fall of Morris Ernst, Free Speech Renegade.

The Page 99 Test: Actual Malice.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Dog Days of Planet Earth"

Coming October 27 from ECW Press: Dog Days of Planet Earth: A Novel by Theresa Shea.

About the book, from the publisher:

For fans of Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These and Karen Joy Fowler’s We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves comes this unforgettable and fiercely compassionate novel

Immediately upon his release from a 25-year prison sentence, former veterinarian Trevor Westmore gets his first surprise as a free man: A guard gives him a German shepherd puppy. While Trevor anxiously tries to build a new life, his dog, Libby, provides the routine and responsibility he needs to navigate his re-entry into society.

All Trevor wants is to earn a living, to stay out of trouble, and to be left alone — until he meets and falls for local veterinarian Laura Fenway. But they both have their secrets. When she learns the truth of Trevor’s past will she consider a future together? And when he discovers the lengths she’ll go to rescue dogs, will he jeopardize his long-awaited freedom?

Weaving together major environmental and political issues of the mid- to late-20th century that remain urgent today, Dog Days of Planet Earth asks what we’re willing to risk for our personal convictions in a world where powerful and unjust forces often oppose them.

Visit Theresa Shea's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Language of Bees"

New from Princeton University Press: The Language of Bees by James C. Nieh.

About the book, from the publisher:

A rich and engaging look at social bees, master communicators of the insect world

With senses that often seem alien to us, bees navigate complex decisions about where to find food, when to fight or flee, and how to work together. The Language of Bees invites readers into the hidden world of bee communication, a realm where creatures less than an inch long use scent, vibration, movement, and sound to cooperate, share information, and survive.

Drawing on decades of groundbreaking fieldwork, James Nieh sheds light on the remarkable signals that bees use and the evolutionary forces that shape them. Focusing on social species like bumble bees, honey bees, and stingless bees, he explores how colonies rely on these signals to organize all aspects of their lives, from foraging and warfare to espionage and defense. From the famous waggle dance of honey bees to the secretive trails and potentially coded sounds of stingless bees, he shows how their intricate communication systems reflect a delicate balance between cooperation and conflict and how a changing world disrupts these finely tuned systems. Along the way, Nieh shares key breakthroughs in animal behavior and offers new insights from his own research on how bees signal, eavesdrop, and adapt. Readers will learn how bees waggle dance better if they have teachers and an engaged audience, how predators and competition help shape bee language, and other astonishing findings.

The Language of Bees is also a story about how failure and unexpected turns lead to discoveries. Blending personal insights with cutting-edge science, this illuminating and informative book reveals how the study of bees continues to deepen our understanding of intelligence, resilience, and the diverse ways that life communicates.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Carrying"

Coming October 6 from G.P. Putnam's Sons: Carrying by Samantha Josephs.

About the novel, from the publisher:

She’s serving.
She’s eating.
She’s . . . Carrying.

In this electrifying horror debut that’s equal parts funny and harrowing, a stealth trans woman desperate to maintain her picture-perfect life discovers that she’s seemingly—impossibly—pregnant.

Everything Martha’s wanted, she’s made for herself.

Meet Martha: perfect wife, perfect stepmother, perfect woman. She’s got an adoring husband who wants more kids with her, a loving stepdaughter who looks up to her, and a body to die for. She’s an absolute pro: Salon-quality blowouts at home? Done. Perfectly plated meals on the table every day? Effortless. Meticulously faked miscarriages so her husband won’t suspect the truth? Just hand over the Oscar now.

Martha is trans, so stealth even her family has no idea. She carved the woman she is out of the marble of a boy, and she’ll do whatever it takes to protect what she’s built. When a mysterious chronic illness and its debilitating symptoms threaten to upend her existence, she starts experimental treatments and gives in to her surprising, unsettling cravings. She’s even more shocked to discover that she’s undeniably, impossibly pregnant.

With her body changing rapidly outside of her control and her choices dwindling, Martha struggles to maintain the life she’s fought so hard to live while preparing for the motherhood she never thought she’d have.

Visit Samantha Josephs's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Narrative Side-Stepping"

New from Cornell University Press: Narrative Side-Stepping: Disability in the Novel Beyond Normalcy by Christian Lewis.

About the book, from the publisher:

Narrative Side-Stepping offers a new feminist, queer, crip way of reading that embraces expansive narrative possibilities for disabled characters. Instead of treating disabled characters as plot devices, metaphors, stereotypes, or marginal figures enforcing able-bodiedness, Christian Lewis argues that authors utilize disabled characters to question both social and literary conventions. Disability is thus not a limiting formal feature, but a source of experimentation and critique.

Focusing on the nineteenth century, which saw the rise of normalcy and the obsession over "normal" bodies, Narrative Side-Stepping centers female characters with mobility impairments in Victorian novels. These characters side-step by challenging the plots and roles available to them, offering narrative alternatives about how things "might have been." Examining the works of Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, Wilkie Collins, Harriet Martineau, and Charlotte Yonge, Lewis reconceptualizes the Victorian novel as a space where disabled characters can thrive.

By theorizing disabled characters and what they can do in a more reparative and capacious manner, Narrative Side-Stepping allows us to think about the novel beyond the confines of normalcy, side-stepping into a more accessible and accommodating world for those with disabilities.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Sisters Take All"

Coming soon from Thomas & Mercer: Sisters Take All: A Novel (Book 3 of 3: The Finch Sisters) by Amelia Diane Coombs.

About the book, from the publisher:

In a gleefully self-deprecating mystery, three estranged sisters meet in LA for the making of a documentary, learning the depth of their family dysfunction is nothing compared to social media obsession.

Another long weekend, another family reunion for the Finch sisters. This time, Venice Beach is calling, and with it, a film about Maeve’s glamorous career as an influencer. Remi and Eliana show up for moral support, but it’s not long before things start to feel wrong. Again.

For starters, documentarian Nadia Cullen bears an uncanny resemblance to Maeve―from her hairstyle down to her signature scent. Chalk it up to superfan behavior, maybe, but the weekend is far from over, and every day seems to bring something new to worry about.

Now, Remi may be prone to worry, but this is more than her anxiety disorder talking. The Finch sisters have secrets that need to stay buried between them. And with Nadia in the guesthouse and at their heels, things are starting to get too close for comfort.

If they’re not careful, this behind-the-scenes documentary could take a sharp turn into true crime.

Perhaps it already has…

Visit Amelia Diane Coombs's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Mapping Medical Modernity"

New from the University of Pittsburgh Press: Mapping Medical Modernity: Urban Space and Public Health in Tokyo, 1868–1920 by Susan L. Burns.

About the book, from the publisher:

Mapping Medical Modernity explores the history of medical modernization and public health in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Tokyo, a city undergoing rapid transformation from the seat of power of the Tokugawa shoguns of the Edo period to the capital of a modern nation-state and its expanding empire in the Meiji period. Tracing the development of institutions and policies designed to improve medical care and public health in a dense urban environment, Susan L. Burns examines tensions between the involved parties―including doctors and policymakers, police and civil officials, residents and those who governed them―and provides case studies focused on three of the city’s major challenges in public health: syphilis, cholera, and mental illness. Drawing upon a wide range of archival materials and contemporary accounts, Burns also employs geographic information system analysis in mapping the complicated relationships interlinking aspects of the urban environment, social life, public policy, and commercialized medical culture to demonstrate visually how policy decisions and medical capitalism gradually reshaped existing spatial arrangements in the city as well as the social relations that unfolded within them.

Visit Susan L. Burns's faculty webpage.

--Marshal Zeringue