"Veridian Sterling Fakes It"

New from Lake Union: Veridian Sterling Fakes It: A Novel by Jennifer Gooch Hummer.

About the book, from the publisher:

In this colorful and humorous tale, a hopeful young painter finds herself embroiled in the world of art heists…and possibly responsible for the counterfeits needed to cover them up.

Freshly graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design, Veridian Sterling is ready to hang her work in any of the countless New York galleries that are sure to give her a show. The problem is only one will, and they’re not interested in her art so much as her personal assistant skills.

No glitz, no glam, and definitely none of the money she needs to help her struggling mother finally realize her dream of starting her own business after having sacrificed everything for Veri to go to art school. So when she overhears her new boss discussing the impressive finder’s fee for a lost van Gogh, Veri takes matters into her own hands. Maybe her own artwork isn’t celebrated, but she knows how to copy what is, and maybe those skills can help lead to a discovery.

But when a famous art dealer takes her under his wing (and his charming driver takes her interest), Veri realizes she’s in deeper than she expected, and quite possibly with the wrong people. With her mother’s dreams and her own future at stake, Veri will have to pull out every trick she can think of to wipe her canvas clean and erase the mess she’s created before she goes down for someone else’s crimes.

Visit Jennifer Gooch Hummer's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Good Governing"

New from Cambridge University Press: Good Governing: The Police Power in the American States by Daniel B. Rodriguez.

About the book, from the publisher:

Good Governing: The Police Power in the American States is a deep historical and legal analysis of state police power, examining its origins in the founding period of the American public through the 20th century. The book reveals how American police power was intended to be a broad, but not unlimited, charter of regulatory governance, designed to implement key constitutional objectives and advance the general welfare. It explores police power's promise as a mechanism for implementing successful regulatory governance and tackling societal ills, while considering key structural issues like separation of powers and individual rights. This insightful book will shape understanding of the neglected state police power, a key part of constitutional governance in the U.S.

--Marshal Zeringue

"State of Paradise"

New from Farrar, Straus and Giroux: State of Paradise: A Novel by Laura van den Berg.

About the book, from the publisher:

A heart-racing fun house of uncanniness hidden in Florida’s underbelly from the celebrated Laura van den Berg

It’s another summer in a small Florida town. After an illness that vanishes as mysteriously as it arrived, everything appears to be getting back to normal: soul-crushing heat, torrential downpours, sinkholes swallowing the earth, ominous cats, a world-bending virtual reality device being handed out by a company called ELECTRA, and an increasing number of posters dotting the streets with the faces of missing citizens. Living in her mother’s home, a ghostwriter for a famous thriller author tracks the eerie changes. On top of everything else, she’s contending with family secrets, spotty memories of her troubled youth, a burgeoning cult in the living room, and the alarming expansion of her own belly button.

Then, during a violent rainstorm, her sister goes missing. She returns a few days later, sprawled on their mother’s lawn and speaking of another dimension. Now the ghostwriter must investigate not only what happened to her sister and the other missing people but also the uncanny connections between ELECTRA, the famous author she works for, and reality itself.

A sticky, rain-soaked reckoning with the elusive nature of selfhood and storytelling, Laura van den Berg’s State of Paradise is an intricate and page-turning whirlwind. With inimitable control and thrilling style, van den Berg reaches deep into the void and returns with a story far stranger than either reality or fiction.

Visit Laura van den Berg's website.

Writers Read: Laura van den Berg (August 2018).

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Afterlife of Sympathy"

New from the University of Massachusetts Press: The Afterlife of Sympathy: Reading American Literary Realism in the Wake of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" by Faye Halpern.

About the book, from the publisher:

Literary realism rose to prominence in postbellum America with what the realists heralded as artful and accurate depictions of the world. Realism is thought to have replaced sentimentality—an earlier mode of writing the realists disparaged, which has often been seen as antithetical to realism. Literary scholar Faye Halpern challenges this apparent binary by uncovering how and why William Dean Howells, Mark Twain, Henry James, Constance Fenimore Woolson, and Charles Chesnutt incorporated sentimental elements into their most famous works.

With its distinctively narratological approach, The Afterlife of Sympathy offers a more rhetorical way to understand sentimentality and assess the ethical complexity of sympathy. Halpern demonstrates how sentimentality enables authors to form intimate relationships between their characters and readers to supplement the critical distance that realist writers otherwise celebrate and that has remained a key value in literary studies today. In reassessing American literary realism, Halpern seeks not only to understand why these writers adopted sentimental techniques but to provide insight into contemporary arguments in literary studies about critical distance and sympathetic identification.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Toward Eternity"

New from HarperVia: Toward Eternity: A Novel by Anton Hur.

About the book, from the publisher:

Negotiating the terrain of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun and Emily St. John Mandel’s Sea of Tranquility, a brilliant, haunting speculative novel from a #1 New York Times bestselling translator that sets out to answer the question: What does it mean to be human in a world where technology is quickly catching up to biology?

In a near-future world, a new technological therapy is quickly eradicating cancer. The body’s cells are entirely replaced with nanites—robot or android cells which not only cure those afflicted but leaves them virtually immortal.

Literary researcher Yonghun teaches an AI how to understand poetry and creates a living, thinking machine he names Panit, meaning Beloved, in honor of his husband. When Yonghun—himself a recipient of nanotherapy—mysteriously vanishes into thin air and then just as suddenly reappears, the event raises disturbing questions. What happened to Yonghun, and though he’s returned, is he really himself anymore?

When Dr. Beeko, the scientist who holds the patent to the nanotherapy technology, learns of Panit, he transfers its consciousness from the machine into an android body, giving it freedom and life. As Yonghun, Panit, and other nano humans thrive—and begin to replicate—their development will lead them to a crossroads and a choice with existential consequences.

Exploring the nature of intelligence and the unexpected consequences of progress, the meaning of personhood and life, and what we really have to fear from technology and the future, Toward Eternity is a gorgeous, thought-provoking novel that challenges the notion of what makes us human—and how love survives even the end of that humanity.

Visit Anton Hur's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Narrative Podcasting in an Age of Obsession"

New from the University of Michigan Press: Narrative Podcasting in an Age of Obsession by Neil Verma.

About the book, from the publisher:

It has been a decade since Serial brought the narrative podcast to the center of popular culture. In that time, there has been an enormous boom in the production of podcasts that tell stories, particularly in the fields of true crime, storytelling, history, and narrative fiction. Now that the initial glow around the medium has begun to fade, it is time to reevaluate the medium’s technological, political, economic, and cultural rise, in particular what types of storytelling accompanied that rise.

Narrative Podcasting in an Age of Obsession is the first book to look back on this prodigious body of material and attempt to make sense of it from a structural, historical, and analytic point of view. Focusing on more than 350 podcasts and other audio works released between Serial and the COVID pandemic, the book explores why so many of these podcasts seem “obsessed with obsession,” why they focus not only on informing listeners but also dramatizing the labor that goes into it, and why fiction podcasts work so hard to prove they are a brand new form, even as they revive features of radio from decades gone by. This work also examines the industry's reckoning with its own implication in systemic racism, misogyny, and other forms of discrimination. Employing innovative new critical techniques for close listening—including pitch tracking software and spectrograms—Narrative Podcasting in an Age of Obsession makes a major contribution to podcast studies and media studies more broadly.

--Marshal Zeringue

"A Thousand Times Before"

New from Viking Books: A Thousand Times Before: A Novel by Asha Thanki.

About the book, from the publisher:

A heartrending family saga following three generations of women connected by a fantastic tapestry through which they inherit the experiences of those that lived before them, sweeping readers from Partition-era India to modern day Brooklyn.

Ayukta is finally sitting down with her wife Nadya to respond to a question she’s long avoided: Should they have a child? The decision is complicated by a secret her family has kept for centuries, one that Ayukta will be the first to share with someone outside their bloodline: the women in her family inherit a mysterious tapestry, through which each generation can experience the memories of those who came before her.

Ayukta invites Nadya into this lineage, carrying her through its past. She relives her grandmother Amla’s life: Once a happy child in Karachi, Amla migrates to Gujarat during Partition, witnessing violence and loss that forever shape her approach to marriage and motherhood. Amla’s daughter, Arni, bears this weight in her own blood in 1974, when gender equity and urban class distinctions divide the community as a bold student movement takes hold. As Ayukta unspools these generations of women—whole decades of love, loss, heartbreak, and revival—she reveals the tapestry’s second gift: the ability for each of these women to dramatically reshape their own worlds. Like all power, both fantastic and societal, this inheritance is more treacherous than it seems.

What would it mean, to impart an impossible burden? To withhold these incredible gifts?

Sweeping, deeply felt and intergenerational, A Thousand Times Before is a debut as poetic as it is propulsive, as healing as it is heartbreaking, as it examines what it means to carry our past with us and to pass it on. Rooted in a tender love story, and spun with a tremendous amount of care, this book is a rare, remarkable feat from an incredible new literary talent.

Visit Asha Thanki's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Fragile Hope"

New from Stanford University Press: Fragile Hope: Seeking Justice for Hate Crimes in India by Sandhya Fuchs.

About the book, from the publisher:

Against the backdrop of the global Black Lives Matter movement, debates around the social impact of hate crime legislation have come to the political fore. In 2019, the UN Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice urgently asked how legal systems can counter bias and discrimination. In India, a nation with vast socio-cultural diversity, and a complex colonial past, questions about the relationship between law and histories of oppression have become particularly pressing. Recently, India has seen a rise in violence against Dalits (ex-untouchables) and other minorities. Consequently, an emerging "Dalit Lives Matter" movement has campaigned for the effective implementation of India's only hate crime law: the 1989 Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes Prevention of Atrocities Act (PoA). Drawing on long-term fieldwork with Dalit survivors of caste atrocities, human rights NGOs, police, and judiciary, Sandhya Fuchs unveils how Dalit communities in the state of Rajasthan interpret and mobilize the PoA. Fuchs shows that the PoA has emerged as a project of legal meliorism: the idea that persistent and creative legal labor can gradually improve the oppressive conditions that characterize Dalit lives. Moving beyond statistics and judicial arguments, Fuchs uses the intimate lens of personal narratives to lay bare how legal processes converge and conflict with political and gendered concerns about justice for caste atrocities, creating new controversies, inequalities, and hopes.

--Marshal Zeringue

"On the Surface"

New from Crooked Lane Books: On the Surface by Rachel McGuire.

About the book, from the publisher:

A YouTubing cruiser couple sails the world living their best lives—until one of them goes missing and their whole world capsizes, in this captivating psychological thriller perfect for fans of Something in the Water and Saint X.

Sawyer Stone III and Dani Fox, a young couple who spend their time circumnavigating the globe aboard their 42-foot sailboat and documenting it for their fledgling YouTube channel Sailing with the Foxes, have anchored in Exuma, in the Bahamas. As they wait for the price of crypto to rebound so they can provision and continue their journey, they’re partying and exploring with their fellow cruisers offshore. On the surface, everything looks perfect. But one night, Dani vanishes after a boat party, and Sawyer has no memory of her disappearance.

The search for Dani is initially fueled by concerns that she drowned during one of her daily ocean swims, but Dani's prescheduled video posts, recorded before she went missing, soon reveal a darker side to her relationship with Sawyer. Meanwhile, Royal Bahamas Police Force Inspector Veronique Knowles has her hands full trying to keep the investigation on course as the story of the American woman missing in the Bahamas goes viral and the internet sleuths unearth secrets from Sawyer’s past. Sawyer Stone is far from perfect, but is he a murderer?

This twisty, edge-of-your-seat thriller will keep readers gripped all the way through the final satisfying turn.

Visit Rachel McGuire's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Ruins to Riches"

New from Cambridge University Press: Ruins to Riches: The Economic Resurgence of Germany and Japan after 1945 by Raymond G. Stokes.

About the book, from the publisher:

n 1945, Germany and Japan lay prostrate after total war and resounding defeat. By 1960, they had the second and fifth largest economies in the world respectively. This global leadership has been maintained ever since. How did these 'economic miracles' come to pass, and why were these two nations particularly adept at achieving them? Ray Stokes is the first to unpack these questions from comparative and international perspectives, emphasising both the individuals and companies behind this exceptional performance and the broader global political and economic contexts. He highlights the potent mixtures in both countries of judicious state action, effective industrial organisation, benign labour relations, and technological innovation, which they adapted constantly – sometimes painfully – to take full advantage of rapidly growing post-war international trade and globalisation. Together, they explain the spectacular resurgence of Deutschland AG and Japan Incorporated to global economic and technological leadership, which they have sustained to the present.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Whoever You Are, Honey"

New from The Dial Press: Whoever You Are, Honey: A Novel by Olivia Gatwood.

About the book, from the publisher:

What happens when what was once considered dystopia is now reality?

This darkly brilliant debut novel explores how women shape themselves beneath the gaze of love, friendship, and the algorithm—by a thrilling feminist voice for the age of AI.

Mitty can’t quite make out the expression on Lena’s face, but she doesn’t look distressed. She looks like nothing at all. She looks like the beginning, before thoughts, a white hallway with no doors, a room so long your voice disappears before it can echo.

On the Santa Cruz, California, waterfront, every house is a flawless glass monolith. Except for one. In a dilapidated bungalow, Mitty and her elderly roommate, Bethel, are the oddball pair who represent the last vestiges of a free-spirited town taken over by the tech elite. But their lives are about to be forever changed when a new couple, Sebastian and Lena, move in next door.

Sebastian is a renowned tech founder and Lena is his spellbindingly perfect girlfriend. But Lena has secrets; she feels uneasy about her oddly spotty memory and is growing increasingly wary of the way Sebastian controls their relationship. Mitty is also hiding something, and the way Lena appears to float through her luxurious life draws Mitty inexorably into her orbit. As the two women begin to form a close friendship, they are finally forced to face their pasts—and the urgent truths that could change everything.

Showcasing Olivia Gatwood’s talent as an essential author for our hyper-digital age, Whoever You Are, Honey is a gripping, seductive, and prescient novel that dissects relationships between women and examines how striving for perfection and desirability plays out in spaces where technology and power intersect.

Visit Olivia Gatwood's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Heart of the Wild"

Coming August 13 from Princeton University Press: The Heart of the Wild: Essays on Nature, Conservation, and the Human Future, edited by Ben A. Minteer and Jonathan B. Losos.

About the book, from the publisher:

Timely and provocative reflections on the future of the wild in an increasingly human world

The Heart of the Wild brings together some of today’s leading scientists, humanists, and nature writers to offer a thought-provoking meditation on the urgency of learning about and experiencing our wild places in an age of rapidly expanding human impacts.

These engaging essays present nuanced and often surprising perspectives on the meaning and value of “wildness” amid the realities of the Anthropocene. They consider the trends and forces—from the cultural and conceptual to the ecological and technological—that are transforming our relationship with the natural world and sometimes seem only to be pulling us farther away from wild places and species with each passing day. The contributors make impassioned defenses of naturalism, natural history, and nature education in helping us to rediscover a love for the wild at a time when our connections with it have frayed or been lost altogether.

Charting a new path forward in an era of ecological uncertainty, The Heart of the Wild reframes our understanding of nature and our responsibility to learn from and sustain it as the human footprint sinks ever deeper into the landscapes around us.

With contributions by Bill Adams, Joel Berger, Susan Clayton, Eileen Crist, Martha L. Crump, Thomas Lowe Fleischner, Harry W. Greene, Hal Herzog, Jonathan B. Losos, Emma Marris, Ben A. Minteer, Kathleen Dean Moore, Gary Paul Nabhan, Peter H. Raven, Christopher J. Schell, Richard Shine, and Kyle Whyte.

Visit Ben Minteer's website and Jonathan B. Losos's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Fall of the Wild.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Failures"

New from DAW: The Failures by Benjamin Liar.

About the book, from the publisher:

From a debut voice comes a genre-breaking blend of apocalyptic sci-fi and epic fantasy about a scattered group of unlikely heroes traveling across their broken mechanical planet to stave off eternal darkness. A tightly-coiled puzzle of a thrill ride, The Failures launches The Wanderlands trilogy

Welcome to the Wanderlands.
A vast machine made for reasons unknown, the Wanderlands was broken long ago. First went the sky, splintering and cracking, and then very slowly, the whole machine—the whole world—began to go dark.

Meet the Failures.
Following the summons of a strange dream, a scattering of adventurers, degenerates, and children find themselves drawn toward the same place: the vast underground Keep. They will discover there that they have been called for a purpose—and that purpose could be the destruction of everything they love.

The end is nigh.
For below the Keep, imprisoned in the greatest cage ever built by magicians and gods, lies the buried Giant. It is the most powerful of its kind, and its purpose is the annihilation of all civilization. But any kind of power, no matter how terrible, is precious in the dimming Wanderlands, and those that crave it are making their moves.

All machines can be broken, and the final cracks are spreading. It will take only the careless actions of two cheerful monsters to tip the Wanderlands towards an endless dark...or help it find its way back to the light.

Visit Benjamin Liar's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Regulating Bodies"

New from Oxford University Press: Regulating Bodies: Elite Sport Policies and Their Unintended Consequences by Jaime Schultz.

About the book, from the publisher:

How far are we willing to go in the name of "better sport"?

Athletes have long sought to push the limits of human potential, but the advent and application of new knowledge, science, and technologies has taken elite sports into uncharted territory. It's no longer enough to break records―today's sport is about athletes surpassing their "natural" limits in the name of accomplishing the impossible.

With highlights across the spectrum of professional athletics from ski jumping to horse racing, Regulating Bodies narrates the global scientization of the sports industry and the lasting influence of protective sports policies on international discourses around race, sex, identity, and impairment. While these classifications are designed to protect athletes' wellbeing in the spirit of fair play, protective policies can be shallow solutions to deeper problems―offering the appearance of care while failing to safeguard athletes from more pressing concerns. Regulating Bodies investigates the development of protective policies across topics such as gene doping and sex testing to show how current policies impede the progress of athletic development by engendering unethical and unhealthy practices at the expense of an athlete's individual rights. It offers a pathway forward beyond traditional sports categorization with alternative regulatory strategies to reflect the next generation of high-performance athletes.

A scoping inquiry into the modern sports industry, Regulating Bodies asks us whether the unending quest for sporting excellence is worth the financial, social, and human toll it inevitably takes on participants at every level of elite sports.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Briar Club"

New from William Morrow: The Briar Club: A Novel by Kate Quinn.

About the book, from the publisher:

The New York Times bestselling author of The Diamond Eye and The Rose Code returns with a haunting and powerful story of female friendships and secrets in a Washington, DC, boardinghouse during the McCarthy era.

Washington, DC, 1950. Everyone keeps to themselves at Briarwood House, a down-at-the-heels all-female boardinghouse in the heart of the nation’s capital where secrets hide behind white picket fences. But when the lovely, mysterious widow Grace March moves into the attic room, she draws her oddball collection of neighbors into unlikely friendship: poised English beauty Fliss, whose facade of perfect wife and mother covers gaping inner wounds; policeman’s daughter Nora, who finds herself entangled with a shadowy gangster; frustrated baseball star Beatrice, whose career has come to an end along with the women’s baseball league of WWII; and poisonous, gung-ho Arlene, who has thrown herself into McCarthy’s Red Scare.

Grace’s weekly attic-room dinner parties and window-brewed sun tea become a healing balm on all their lives, but she hides a terrible secret of her own. When a shocking act of violence tears the house apart, the Briar Club women must decide once and for all: who is the true enemy in their midst?

Capturing the paranoia of the McCarthy era and evoking the changing roles for women in postwar America, The Briar Club is an intimate and thrilling novel of secrets and loyalty put to the test.

Learn more about the book and author at Kate Quinn's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Kate Quinn and Caesar.

My Book, The Movie: Empress of the Seven Hills.

The Page 69 Test: The Serpent and the Pearl.

The Page 69 Test: The Lion and the Rose.

The Page 69 Test: Lady of the Eternal City.

The Page 69 Test: The Alice Network.

Writers Read: Kate Quinn (June 2017).

The Page 69 Test: The Huntress.

The Page 69 Test: The Rose Code.

My Book, The Movie: The Rose Code.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Last Human Job"

New from Princeton University Press: The Last Human Job: The Work of Connecting in a Disconnected World by Allison J. Pugh.

About the book, from the publisher:

A timely and urgent argument for preserving the work that connects us in the age of automation

With the rapid development of artificial intelligence and labor-saving technologies like self-checkouts and automated factories, the future of work has never been more uncertain, and even jobs requiring high levels of human interaction are no longer safe. The Last Human Job explores the human connections that underlie our work, arguing that what people do for each other in these settings is valuable and worth preserving.

Drawing on in-depth interviews and observations with people in a broad range of professions—from physicians, teachers, and coaches to chaplains, therapists, caregivers, and hairdressers—Allison Pugh develops the concept of “connective labor,” a kind of work that relies on empathy, the spontaneity of human contact, and a mutual recognition of each other’s humanity. The threats to connective labor are not only those posed by advances in AI or apps; Pugh demonstrates how profit-driven campaigns imposing industrial logic shrink the time for workers to connect, enforce new priorities of data and metrics, and introduce standardized practices that hinder our ability to truly see each other. She concludes with profiles of organizations where connective labor thrives, offering practical steps for building a social architecture that works.

Vividly illustrating how connective labor enriches the lives of individuals and binds our communities together, The Last Human Job is a compelling argument for us to recognize, value, and protect humane work in an increasingly automated and disconnected world.

Visit Allison Pugh's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Let Me Liberate You"

New from Little A: Let Me Liberate You: A Novel by Andie Davis.

About the book, from the publisher:

A restless New York artist searching for purpose returns to Barbados and stumbles into the role of activist in this scathingly funny and brilliantly observed satire about privilege, family discord, and performative do-gooding.

Dark, lanky, and bald, New York–raised photographer Sabre Cumberbatch can’t tell if she’s highly talented or just highly Instagrammable. Up to here with art critics and their gaseous praise, Sabre returns to Barbados, her childhood island home, to water her roots. She needs to quell self-doubt by doing something―anything―profoundly important.

Welcoming her with bejeweled open arms is her aunt Aggie, a fearsome high-society attorney eager to show off her famous American niece. When Sabre witnesses Aggie unleash her wrath on the household staff over a minor mistake, Sabre finds her cause. During an interview for a puff piece about art, Sabre goes off-script and takes a righteous stand against the tyranny of the ruling class―starting with Aggie.

Visit Andie Davis's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"America's French Orphans"

New from Cambridge University Press: America's French Orphans: Mobilization, Humanitarianism, and the Protection of France, 1914–1921 by Emmanuel Destenay.

About the book, from the publisher:

During and after World War I, two humanitarian organizations galvanized the support of American men, women, and children to provide for France's children. Between 1914 and 1921, the Committee Franco-American for the Protection of the Children of the Frontier (CFAPCF) and the Fatherless Children of France Society (FCFS) capitalized on the generosity of Americans who believed that supporting a French child in need was seen as a moral and patriotic duty. Through a network of twenty-eight colonies – private homes and estates loaned for this specific purpose – the CFAPCF rescued, sheltered, and cared for children from invaded and occupied war zones, while the FCFS asked Americans to sponsor France's children of the war dead. Combining cultural, political, and diplomatic history, Emmanuel Destenay charts the rapid growth of these organizations and brings to light the unparalleled contribution made by Americans in support of France's children in time of war.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Ladykiller"

New from Bantam: Ladykiller: A Novel by Katherine Wood.

About the book, from the publisher:

Everyone has a story. But not everyone’s story is true.

When a young woman vanishes from her remote Greek island estate, her best friend races to find her, using clues found in the explosive manuscript she left behind.

Gia and Abby have been friends since childhood, forever bonded by the tragedy that unfolded in Greece when they were eighteen. Now thirty, heiress Gia is back in Greece with her shiny new husband, entertaining glamorous guests with champagne under the hot Mediterranean sun, while bookish Abby is working fourteen-hour days as an attorney. When Gia invites Abby on an all-expenses-paid trip to Sweden to celebrate her birthday, Abby’s thrilled to reconnect.

But on the day of her flight, Abby receives an ominous email that threatens to unearth the skeletons of her past, and when she and Gia’s brother, Benny, arrive in Sweden, Gia isn’t there. Worried, Abby and Benny fly to Greece, where they find Gia’s beachfront estate eerily deserted, the sole clue to her whereabouts the manuscript she penned, detailing the events leading up to her disappearance. Gia’s narrative reveals the dark truth about her provocative new marriage and the dirty secrets of their seductive guests, a story almost too scandalous to be believed. But the pages end abruptly, leaving more questions than answers.

How much of Gia’s story is true? Where is she now? And will Abby find her before it’s too late?

Visit Katherine Wood's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Psychic Empire"

New from Columbia University Press: Psychic Empire: Literary Modernism and the Clinical State by Cate I. Reilly.

About the book, from the publisher:

In nineteenth-century imperial Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, new scientific fields like psychophysics, empirical psychology, clinical psychiatry, and neuroanatomy transformed the understanding of mental life in ways long seen as influencing modernism. Turning to the history of psychiatric classification for mental illnesses, Cate I. Reilly argues that modernist texts can be understood as critically responding to objective scientific models of the psyche, not simply illustrating their findings. Modernist works written in industrializing Central and Eastern Europe historicize the representation of consciousness as a quantifiable phenomenon within techno-scientific modernity.

Looking beyond modernism’s well-studied relationship to psychoanalysis, this book tells the story of the non-Freudian vocabulary for mental illnesses that forms the precursor to today’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Developed by the German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin in the 1890s, this psychiatric taxonomy grew from the claim that invisible mental illnesses were analogous to physical phenomena in the natural world. Reilly explores how figures such as Georg Büchner, Ernst Toller, Daniel Paul Schreber, Nikolai Evreinov, Vsevolod Ivanov, and Santiago Ramón y Cajal understood the legal and political consequences of representing mental life in physical terms. Working across literary studies, the history of science, psychoanalytic criticism, critical theory, and political philosophy, Psychic Empire is an original account of modernism that shows the link between nineteenth-century scientific research on the mental health of national populations and twenty-first-century globalized, neuroscientific accounts of psychopathology and sanity.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Burning"

New from Minotaur Books: The Burning (Kate Burkholder Series #16) by Linda Castillo.

About the book, from the publisher:

Chief of Police Kate Burkholder investigates a gruesome murder that reveals a little-known chapter of early Amish history in this next riveting installment of the bestselling series by Linda Castillo.

Newlywed Chief of Police Kate Burkholder is awakened by an urgent midnight call summoning her to a suspicious fire in the woods. When she arrives at the scene, she discovers a charred body. According to the coroner, the deceased, an Amish man named Milan Swanz, was chained to a stake and burned alive. It is an appalling and eerily symbolic crime against an upstanding husband and father.

Kate knows all too well that the Amish prefer to handle their problems without interference from the outside world, and no one will speak about the murdered man. From what she’s able to piece together, Swanz led a deeply troubled life and had recently been excommunicated. But if that’s the case, why are the Amish so reluctant to talk about him? Are they protecting the memory of one of their own? Or are they afraid of something they dare not share?

When her own brother is implicated in the case, Kate finds herself not only at odds with the Amish, the world of which she was once a part, but also the English community and her counterparts in law enforcement. The investigation takes a violent turn when Kate’s life is threatened by a mysterious stranger.

To uncover the truth about the death of Milan Swanz, Kate must dive deep into the Anabaptist culture, peering into all the dark corners of its history, only to uncover a secret legacy that shatters everything she thought she knew about the Amish themselves—and her own roots.

Visit Linda Castillo's website.

The Page 69 Test: Sworn to Silence.

My Book, The Movie: Pray for Silence.

The Page 69 Test: Gone Missing.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Framing Nature"

New from the University of Nebraska Press: Framing Nature: The Creation of an American Icon at the Grand Canyon by Yolonda Youngs.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Grand Canyon of the Colorado River is an internationally known feature of the North American landscape, attracting more than five million visitors each year. A deep cultural, visual, and social history has shaped the Grand Canyon’s environment into one of America’s most significant representations of nature. Yet the canyon is more than a vacation destination, a movie backdrop, or a scenic viewpoint; it is a real place as well as an abstraction easily summoned in the minds of Americans. The Grand Canyon, or the idea of it, is woven into the fabric of American cultural identity and serves as a cultural reference point—an icon.

In Framing Nature Yolonda Youngs traces the idea of the Grand Canyon as an icon and the ways people came to know it through popular imagery and visual media. She analyzes and interprets more than fourteen hundred visual artifacts, including postcards, maps, magazine illustrations, and photographs of the Grand Canyon, supplemented with the words and ideas of writers, artists, explorers, and other media makers from 1869 to 2022. Youngs considers the manipulation and commodification of visual representations and shifting ideas, values, and meanings of nature, exploring the interplay between humans and their environments and how visual representations shape popular ideas and meanings about national parks and the American West. Framing Nature provides a novel interpretation of how places, especially national parks, are transformed into national and environmental symbols.

Visit Yolonda Youngs's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Pelican Tide"

New from Lake Union: The Pelican Tide: A Novel by Sharon J. Wishnow.

About the book, from the publisher:

After disaster strikes, a Louisiana family and their community need to prove to each other and the world that their bond is thicker than the oil threatening their shores in Sharon J. Wishnow’s stunning debut novel.

It’s taken Chef Josie Babineaux six months to reconcile the debts left from her husband Brian’s gambling along with her broken heart. But now with a promising tourist season heating up and a travel magazine declaring her the spice queen of the bayou, she may be able to save her family’s historic Cajun restaurant. Repairing her relationship with her daughter, Minnow, while hiding the true reason she left her husband is a bigger issue.

Just as the first tourists arrive, an explosion on an oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico shatters their fragile plans. With her island community at the epicenter of the oil spill, everything is endangered, including the restaurant’s beloved mascot―a brown pelican dear to the family’s heart.

Visit Sharon J. Wishnow's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Millennial Jewish Stars"

New from NYU Press: Millennial Jewish Stars: Navigating Racial Antisemitism, Masculinity, and White Supremacy by Jonathan Branfman.

About the book, from the publisher:

Highlights how millennial Jewish stars symbolize national politics in US media

Jewish stars have longed faced pressure to downplay Jewish identity for fear of alienating wider audiences. But unexpectedly, since the 2000s, many millennial Jewish stars have won stellar success while spotlighting (rather than muting) Jewish identity. In Millennial Jewish Stars, Jonathan Branfman asks: what makes these explicitly Jewish stars so unexpectedly appealing? And what can their surprising success tell us about race, gender, and antisemitism in America? To answer these questions, Branfman offers case studies on six top millennial Jewish stars: the biracial rap superstar Drake, comedic rapper Lil Dicky, TV comedy duo Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer, “man-baby” film star Seth Rogen, and chiseled film star Zac Efron.

Branfman argues that despite their differences, each star’s success depends on how they navigate racial antisemitism: the historical notion that Jews are physically inferior to Christians. Each star especially navigates racial stigmas about Jewish masculinity―stigmas that depict Jewish men as emasculated, Jewish women as masculinized, and both as sexually perverse. By embracing, deflecting, or satirizing these stigmas, each star comes to symbolize national hopes and fears about all kinds of hot-button issues. For instance, by putting a cuter twist on stereotypes of Jewish emasculation, Seth Rogen plays soft man-babies who dramatize (and then resolve) popular anxieties about modern fatherhood. This knack for channeling national dreams and doubts is what makes each star so unexpectedly marketable.

In turn, examining how each star navigates racial antisemitism onscreen makes it easier to pinpoint how antisemitism, white privilege, and color-based racism interact in the real world. Likewise, this insight can aid readers to better notice and challenge racial antisemitism in everyday life.

Visit Jonathan Branfman's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"All This and More"

New from William Morrow: All This and More: A Novel by Peng Shepherd.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the critically acclaimed, bestselling author of The Cartographers and The Book of M comes an inventive new novel about a woman who wins the chance to rewrite every mistake she’s ever made… and how far she’ll go to find her elusive “happily ever after.” But there’s a twist: the reader gets to decide what she does next to change her fate.

One woman. Endless options. Every choice has consequences.

Meek, play-it-safe Marsh has just turned forty-five, and her life is in shambles. Her career is stagnant, her marriage has imploded, and her teenage daughter grows more distant by the day. Marsh is convinced she’s missed her chance at everything—romance, professional fulfillment, and adventure—and is desperate for a do-over.

She can’t believe her luck when she’s selected to be the star of the global sensation All This and More, a show that uses quantum technology to allow contestants the chance to revise their pasts and change their present lives. It’s Marsh’s only shot to seize her dreams, and she’s determined to get it right this time.

But even as she rises to become a famous lawyer, gets back together with her high school sweetheart, and travels the world, she begins to worry that All This and More’s promises might be too good to be true. Because while the technology is amazing, something seems a bit off.…

Can Marsh really make her life everything she wants it to be? And is it worth it?

Perfect for fans of Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library and Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life, bestselling author Peng Shepherd’s All This and More is an utterly original, startlingly poignant novel that puts the reader in the driver’s seat.

Visit Peng Shepherd's website.

Writers Read: Peng Shepherd (June 2018).

Q&A with Peng Shepherd.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Revolt of the Rich"

New from Columbia University Press: Revolt of the Rich: How the Politics of the 1970s Widened America's Class Divide by David N. Gibbs.

About the book, from the publisher:

Inequality in the United States has reached staggering proportions, with a massive share of wealth held by the very richest. How was such a dramatic shift in favor of a narrow elite possible in a democratic society? David N. Gibbs explores the forces that shaped the turn toward free market economics and wealth concentration and finds their roots in the 1970s. He argues that the political transformations of this period resulted from a “revolt of the rich,” whose defense of their class interests came at the expense of the American public.

Drawing on extensive archival research, Gibbs examines how elites established broad coalitions that brought together business conservatives, social traditionalists, and militarists. At the very top, Richard Nixon’s administration quietly urged corporate executives to fund conservative think tanks and seeded federal agencies with free-market economists. Even Jimmy Carter’s ostensibly liberal administration brought deregulation to the financial sector along with the imposition of severe austerity measures that hurt the living standards of the working class. Through a potent influence campaign, academics and intellectuals sold laissez-faire to policy makers and the public, justifying choices to deregulate industry, cut social spending, curb organized labor, and offshore jobs, alongside expanding military interventions overseas.

Shedding new light on the political alliances and policy decisions that tilted the playing field toward the ultrawealthy, Revolt of the Rich unveils the origins of today’s stark disparities.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Mummy of Mayfair"

New from Severn House: The Mummy of Mayfair by Jeri Westerson.

About the book, from the publisher:

Private investigators Timothy Badger and Benjamin Watson take on another unusual and baffling case in Victorian London when a mummy unwrapping party takes a chilling turn.

London, 1895. Although their last high-profile case was a huge success, private detectives Tim Badger and Benjamin Watson know they can’t afford to turn down any work, despite financial assistance from their mentor, Sherlock Holmes.

So when the eminent Doctor Enoch Sawyer of St Bart’s Hospital asks Badger if the duo will provide security for a mummy unwrapping party he is hosting, Badger doesn’t hesitate to take the job. After all, how hard can guarding the doctor’s bizarre Egyptian artifacts be? But with Doctor Sawyer running late for his own party, the ‘genuine’ ancient sarcophagus of Runihura Saa is unravelled to reveal the remains of . . . Doctor Sawyer! Suddenly, the pair are drawn into a case that’s stranger and twistier than they could ever have imagined.

Follow Jeri Westerson on Threads, Instagram, and Facebook, and visit her website.

The Page 69 Test: Veil of Lies.

The Page 69 Test: Serpent in the Thorns.

The Page 69 Test: The Demon's Parchment.

My Book, The Movie: The Demon's Parchment.

The Page 69 Test: Troubled Bones.

The Page 69 Test: Blood Lance.

The Page 69 Test: Shadow of the Alchemist.

The Page 69 Test: Cup of Blood.

The Page 69 Test: The Silence of Stones.

The Page 69 Test: A Maiden Weeping.

Q&A with Jeri Westerson.

The Page 69 Test: The Deadliest Sin.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Making of Felony Procedure in Middle English Literature"

New from Oxford University Press: The Making of Felony Procedure in Middle English Literature by Elise Wang.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Making of Felony Procedure in Middle English Literature explores the literary inheritance of criminal procedure in thirteenth to fifteenth century English law, focusing on felony, the gravest common law offense. Most scholarship in medieval law and literature has focused on statute and theory, drawing from the instantiating texts of English law: acts of Parliament, judicial treatises, the Magna Carta. But those whose job it was to write about the law rarely wrote about felony. Its definition was left to its practice--from investigation to conviction--and that procedure fell to local communities who were generally untrained in the law. Left with many practical and ethical questions and few legal answers, they turned to cultural ones, archived in sermons they had heard, plays they had seen, and poetry they knew. This book reads the documents of criminal procedure--coroners' reports, plea rolls, and gaol delivery records--alongside literary scenes of investigation, interrogation, and witnessing to tell a new intellectual history of criminal procedure's beginnings.

The chapters of The Making of Felony Procedure guide the reader through the steps of a felony prosecution, from act to conviction, examining the questions local communities faced at each step. What evidence should be prioritized in a death investigation? Should the accused consider narrative satisfaction when building his plea? What are the dangers of a witnessing system that depends so heavily on a few "oathworthy" men? What can a jury do if the accused's guilt seems partial or complex? And what if the defendant-for whatever reason--refuses to participate in this new, still--delicate system of justice? The book argues that answers they found, and the sources that informed them, created the system that became modern criminal procedure. The epilogue offers some thoughts about the resilience and incoherence of the concept of felony, from the start of the jury trial to the present day.

Visit Elise Wang's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Broiler"

New from Soho Crime: Broiler by Eli Cranor.

About the book, from the publisher:

The troubles of two desperate families—one white, one Mexican American—converge in the ruthless underworld of an Arkansas chicken processing plant in this new thriller from the award-winning author of Don’t Know Tough.

Gabriela Menchaca and Edwin Saucedo are hardworking, undocumented employees at the Detmer Foods chicken plant in Springdale, Arkansas, just a stone’s throw from the trailer park where they’ve lived together for seven years. While dealing with personal tragedies of their own, the young couple endures the brutal, dehumanizing conditions at the plant in exchange for barebones pay.

When the plant manager, Luke Jackson, fires Edwin to set an example for the rest of the workers—and to show the higherups that he’s ready for a major promotion—Edwin is determined to get revenge on Luke and his wife, Mimi, a new mother who stays at home with her six-month-old son. Edwin’s impulsive action sets in motion a devastating chain of events that illuminates the deeply entrenched power dynamics between those who revel at the top and those who toil at the bottom.

From the nationally bestselling and Edgar Award–winning author of Don’t Know Tough and Ozark Dogs comes another edge-of-your-seat noir thriller that exposes the dark, bloody heart of life on the margins in the American South and the bleak underside of a bygone American Dream.

Visit Eli Cranor's website.

The Page 69 Test: Don't Know Tough.

Q&A with Eli Cranor.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Bitch: The Journey of a Word"

New from Cambridge University Press: Bitch: The Journey of a Word by Karen Stollznow.

About the book, from the publisher:

Bitch is a bitch of a word. It used to be a straightforward insult, but today―after so many variations and efforts to reject or reclaim the word-it's not always entirely clear what it means. Bitch is a chameleon. There are good bitches and bad bitches; sexy bitches and psycho bitches; boss bitches and even perfect bitches. This eye-opening deep-dive takes us on a journey spanning a millennium, from its humble beginnings as a word for a female dog through to its myriad meanings today, proving that sometimes you can teach an old dog new tricks. It traces the colorful history and ever-changing meaning of this powerful and controversial word, and its relevance within broader issues of feminism, gender, race and sexuality. Despite centuries of censorship and attempts to ban it, bitch has stood the test of time. You may wonder: is the word going away anytime soon? Bitch, please.

Visit Karen Stollznow's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Blind to Midnight"

Coming August 13 from Blackstone Publishing: Blind to Midnight: A Nick Ryan Novel by Reed Farrel Coleman.

About the book, from the publisher:

When you're in trouble, you call 911.

When cops are in trouble, they call Nick Ryan.

Every cop in the city knows his name, but no one says it out loud.

He doesn't wear a uniform, but he is the most powerful cop in New York.

Nick Ryan can find a criminal who's vanished. Or make a key witness disappear.

He has cars, safe houses, money, and weapons hidden all over the city.

Nearly three thousand New Yorkers died on 9/11. But in the entire city on that tragic day, only one murder actually took place. Now, over two decades later, Detective Nick Ryan must dig beneath the official report--and into his own past--to find the truth.

Working again for the mysterious power broker "Joe," Nick finds a link between an airman, a billionaire, a trove of Nazi gold, and a crew of killers, but gets sidetracked when his dear "uncle" Tony and Tony's wife are murdered in a professional hit.

Nick's investigations uncover a tangled web of corruption and blood money, and as the horrifying truth emerges, he finds himself outgunned, on the run, and trusting no one.

With professional killers on his trail, will Nick Ryan be able to end the violence before he loses everything that matters to him--including his own life?

Visit Reed Farrel Coleman's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Hollow Girl.

The Page 69 Test: Where It Hurts.

The Page 69 Test: What You Break.

Writers Read: Reed Farrel Coleman (March 2017).

My Book, The Movie: Sleepless City.

Q&A with Reed Farrel Coleman.

The Page 69 Test: Sleepless City.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Complicit Participation"

New from Oxford University Press: Complicit Participation: The Liberal Audience for Theater of Racial Justice by Carrie J. Preston.

About the book, from the publisher:

In this incisive critique of the ways performances of allyship can further entrench white privilege, author Carrie J. Preston analyses her own complicit participation and that of other audience members and theater professionals, deftly examining the prevailing framework through which white liberals participate in antiracist theater and institutional “diversity, equity, and inclusion” initiatives. The book addresses immersive, documentary, site-specific, experimental, street, and popular theatre in chapters on Jean Genet's The Blacks, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins's An Octoroon, George C. Wolfe's Shuffle Along, Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton, Anna Deavere Smith's Notes from the Field, and Claudia Rankine's The White Card. Far from abandoning the work to dismantle institutionalized racism, Preston seeks to reveal the contradictions and complicities at the heart of allyship as a crucial step toward full and radical participation in antiracist efforts.

Carrie J. Preston is the Arvind and Chandan Nandlal Kilachand Professor and Director of Kilachand Honors College, Professor of English and Women's, Gender, & Sexuality Studies, and the founding Associate Director of the Center on Forced Displacement at Boston University. She is the author of Modernism's Mythic Pose: Gender, Genre, & Solo Performance and Learning to Kneel: Noh, Modernism, & Journeys in Teaching.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Road to the Salt Sea"

New from Amistad: The Road to the Salt Sea: A Novel by Samuel Kọ́láwọlé.

About the book, from the publisher:

As wrenching and luminous as Omar El Akkad’s What Strange Paradise and Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West, a searing exploration of the global migration crisis that moves from Nigeria to Libya to Italy, from an exciting new literary voice.

Able God works for low pay at a four-star hotel where he must flash his “toothpaste-white smile” for wealthy guests. When not tending to the hotel’s overprivileged clientele, he muses over self-help books and draws life lessons from the game of chess.

But Able’s ordinary life is upended when an early morning room service order leads him to interfere with Akudo, a sex worker involved with a powerful but dangerous hotel guest. Suddenly caught in a web of violence, guilt, and fear, Able must run to save himself—a journey that leads him into the desert with a group of drug-addled migrants, headed by a charismatic religious leader calling himself Ben Ten. The travelers’ dream of reaching Europe—and a new life—is shattered when they fall prey to human traffickers, suffer starvation, and find themselves on the precipice of death, fighting for their lives and their freedom.

As Able God moves into the treacherous unknown, his consciousness becomes focused on survival and the foundations of his beliefs—his ideas about betterment and salvation—are forever altered. Suspenseful, incisive, and illuminating, The Road to the Salt Sea is a story of family, fate, religion, survival, the failures of the Nigerian class system, and what often happens to those who seek their fortunes elsewhere.

Visit Samuel Kọ́láwọlé's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Conflicted: Making News from Global War"

New from Stanford University Press: Conflicted: Making News from Global War by Isaac Blacksin.

About the book, from the publisher:

How is popular knowledge of war shaped by the stories we consume, what are the boundaries of this knowledge, and how are these boundaries policed or contested by journalists producing knowledge from war zones? Based on years of fieldwork in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan, and Ukraine, Conflicted challenges normative conceptions of war by revealing how representational authority comes to be. Turning the lens on journalists from The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and other prominent publications, Isaac Blacksin shows why news coverage of contemporary conflict, widely presumed to function as a critique of excessive violence, instead serves to sanction official rationales for war.

Blacksin argues that journalism's humanitarian frame—now hegemonic in conflict coverage—serves to depoliticize and remoralize war, transforming war from an effect of policy on populations to a matter of violence against the innocent. Exploring the tension between experience and expression in conditions of violence, and tracking how journalists respond to dominant expectations of reality, Conflicted tells the story of war, reporters, and the consequences of their convergence. As new wars, and new reportage, continue to shape our understanding of armed conflict, this book makes visible both the power and the particularity of war reportage.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Villain Edit"

New from Avon: The Villain Edit: A Novel by Laurie Devore.

About the book, from the publisher:

Emily Henry meets Fleabag...and The Bachelor! An irresistibly sharp and sexy dramedy about a cynical romance novelist who goes on a Bachelor-like reality show to revive her flagging career, only to discover that while she may have just met the love of her life, the producers have turned her into the show’s villain.

Good villains make good TV.

Romance novelist Jacqueline Matthis’s big career has gone bust and she’s ditched the bright lights of New York City for her more affordable South Carolina hometown. Desperate, Jac dreams up a comeback plan—she is going to be a contestant on the 1, the most obsessively watched reality dating show in the world.

After all Jac is a romance writer—she knows how to pull off a meet-cute and create a spicy plotline.

On set, Jac quickly establishes herself as a front-runner for bachelor Marcus’s heart, but she’s shocked to discover who’s actually pulling the strings. How was she to know that Henry Foster, her last one-night stand before the show, was actually a longtime producer on the 1? Henry is just as horrified…but they can’t seem to keep their hands off each other.

As Jac plays the game and the show unfurls, she slowly discovers that she’s getting the villain edit. They say there’s no such thing as bad publicity, but as Jac’s secret plan begins crumbling around her, she’s not so sure. What happens if Marcus chooses her? Worse, what happens if her affair with Henry comes to light? What if, in trying to save her career, Jac has ruined her life?

Heartbreaking, smart, and sexy, this novel is for anyone who has ever secretly rooted for—or felt like—the villain.

Visit Laurie Devore's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Van Gogh and the End of Nature"

New from Yale University Press: Van Gogh and the End of Nature by Michael Lobel.

About the book, from the publisher:

A groundbreaking reassessment that foregrounds Van Gogh’s profound engagement with the industrial age while making his work newly relevant for our world today

Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) is most often portrayed as the consummate painter of nature whose work gained its strength from his direct encounters with the unspoiled landscape. Michael Lobel upends this commonplace view by showing how Van Gogh’s pictures are inseparable from the modern industrial era in which the artist lived—from its factories and polluted skies to its coal mines and gasworks—and how his art drew upon waste and pollution for its subjects and even for the very materials out of which it was made. Lobel underscores how Van Gogh’s engagement with the environmental realities of his time provides repeated forewarnings of the threats of climate change and ecological destruction we face today.

Van Gogh and the End of Nature offers a radical revisioning of nearly the full span of the artist’s career, considering Van Gogh’s artistic process, his choice of materials, and some of his most beloved and iconic pictures. Merging a timely sense of environmental urgency with bold new readings of the work of one of the world’s most acclaimed artists, this book weaves together detailed historical research and perceptive analysis into an illuminating portrait of an artist and his changing world.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Midnight Rooms"

New from Amistad: Midnight Rooms: A Novel by Donyae Coles.

About the book, from the publisher:

Set in a foreboding Gothic mansion and infused with the heightened paranoia and creeping horror of novels like Catherine House and Crimson Peak, a spine-chilling debut historical thriller from a fresh voice in the genre that will leave you questioning who, or what, you can trust . . . including your own sanity.

England, 1840. Orabella Mumthrope spies an unexpected visitor in her uncle’s parlor. Scruffy in appearance yet claiming to be the scion of a fabulously wealthy family, Elias Blakersby declares a deep desire to make Orabella his wife. The orphaned daughter of a white man and a Black woman—an outsider with no fortune or connections—Orabella never expected to marry. But her uncle has many debts, and Orabella, curious about the seeming devotion Elias bestows upon her, agrees.

The new bride is quickly whisked away to Korringhill Manor, the Blakersby family estate, and far from everything she knows. Expecting splendor, Orabella is shocked to find decay, skittish servants, and curt elders. But her kind new husband’s loving touch, promises of a happy life together, and his assurances she’ll never want for anything soothe her concerns.

Yet there is a darkness deep within this house. Rooms are locked or hidden away, and the walls seem to thrum with secrets. Orabella can never venture outside unattended; she spends her days having tea with a catatonic sister-in-law and evenings at Elias’s side, dutifully hosting lavish dinners. The darkness soon begins to engulf her, too. Becoming dizzy and drowsy after dinner, she falls into a fitful sleep filled with macabre dreams, and is awakened by blood-curdling screams in the night. In the morning she rises from her bed covered in mysterious bruises. Confused and terrified, she begins to question where her dreams end and reality begins. The longer Orabella stays in this place, the more she loses parts of herself . . . how long until she no longer exists?

Midnight Rooms is a sweeping saga with supernatural undertones set in Victorian England. Vibrating with tension, richly atmospheric—haunted by ghosts, guilt, and familial bonds—it is an electrifying story that will linger in your dreams.

Visit Donyae Coles's website.

--Marshal Zeringue