"The Champagne Letters"

New from Gallery Books: The Champagne Letters: A Novel by Kate MacIntosh.

About the book, from the publisher:

Perfect for fans of bubbly wine and Kristin Harmel, this historical fiction novel follows Mme. Clicquot as she builds her legacy, and the modern divorcée who looks to her letters for inspiration.

Reims, France, 1805: Barbe-Nicole Clicquot has just lost her beloved husband but is determined to pursue their dream of creating the premier champagne house in France, now named for her new identity as a widow: Veuve Clicquot. With the Russians poised to invade, competitors fighting for her customers, and the Napoleonic court politics complicating matters she must set herself apart quickly and permanently if she, and her business, are to survive.

In present day Chicago, broken from her divorce, Natalie Taylor runs away to Paris. In a book stall by the Seine, Natalie finds a collection of the Widow Clicquot’s published letters and uses them as inspiration to step out of her comfort zone and create a new, empowered life for herself. But when her Parisian escape takes a shocking and unexpected turn, she’s forced to make a choice. Should she accept her losses and return home, or fight for the future she’s only dreamed about? What would the widow do?

Visit Kate MacIntosh's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The White Ladder"

New from W. W. Norton & Company: The White Ladder: Triumph and Tragedy at the Dawn of Mountaineering by Daniel Light.

About the book, from the publisher:

A sweeping history of mountaineering before Everest, and the epic human quest to reach the highest places on Earth.

Whether in the name of conquest, science, or the divine, humans across the centuries have had myriad reasons to climb mountains. From the smoking volcanoes of South America to the great snowy ranges of the Himalaya, The White Ladder follows a cast of extraordinary characters―conquistadors and captains, scientists and surveyors, alpinists and adventurers―up the slopes of the world’s highest peaks.

A masterpiece of edge-of-your-seat narrative history, The White Ladder describes the epic rise of mountaineering’s world altitude record, a story of ever higher climbs by figures great and small of mountaineering during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Daniel Light describes how climbers used revolutionary techniques to launch themselves into the most forbidding conditions. The expeditions illustrate evolutionary changes in climbing style, the advancement of high-altitude science, and the development of mountain climbing as an industry.

Throughout, Light pays special attention to Incan climbers, Gurkha guides, Sherpa mountaineers, and many others who are often overlooked. He offers nuanced new perspectives on familiar characters, for example, calling out the famed female pioneer Fanny Bullock Workman for racism and for abusing her porters. He presents a complex new portrait of notorious occultist Aleister Crowley, who was at once a ruthless expedition leader, but also an innovative strategist who could read mountains and would risk everything trying to climb them. Light also makes bold new arguments about classic debates, for example, arguing that the much-maligned Jewish climber Oscar Eckenstein shaped mountaineering as we know it today.

A story of innovation, invention, and determination, The White Ladder immerses readers in a fascinating historical period. With their breathtaking exploits, these climbers laid the groundwork for the historic ascents of K2 and Everest that came after―and heightened the spectacle of their dangerous sport.

Visit Daniel Light's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Good Lieutenant"

New from Severn House: Good Lieutenant by E. J. Copperman.

About the book, from the publisher:

LA lawyer Sandy Moss comes to falsely accused lieutenant Trench's aid in this final instalment of the critically acclaimed legal cozy mystery series.

While settling into her new home in Los Angeles together with her boyfriend and TV star Patrick McNabb, attorney Sandy Moss receives a phone call from the LA Men’s Detention Center. It’s a new client accused of murder: the near-stoic Lt. K.C. Trench!

Being good at his job but not well-liked in his department, Trench is accused of killing a fellow LA police officer whom he openly despised and threatened. With the odds against her, Sandy takes on the case of her sometime nemesis/sometime ally. She is certain that Trench can’t be the killer. It seems like someone is trying to pin the murder on him, but who and why? And what isn’t Trench telling her?

Sandy has a tricky case on her hands with all the evidence pointing at Trench as the murderer, but one thing is clear, she will help the stoic lieutenant, even if it puts her in unimaginable danger...

Think Suits with a touch of romance: This witty cozy mystery is perfect for fans of classic courtroom dramas: Loveable, streetwise heroine Sandy “could give Perry Mason a run for his money” (Kirkus Reviews).

Visit E. J. Copperman's website, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.

My Book, The Movie: The Thrill of the Haunt.

Writers Read: E. J. Copperman (November 2013).

The Page 69 Test: The Thrill of the Haunt.

My Book, The Movie: Ukulele of Death.

The Page 69 Test: Ukulele of Death.

Q&A with E. J. Copperman.

The Page 69 Test: Same Difference.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Myths, Muses and Mortals"

New from Reaktion Books: Myths, Muses and Mortals: The Way of Life in Ancient Greece by William Furley.

About the book, from the publisher:

A window into the human lives of classical Greece through the words they left behind.

Myths, Muses and Mortals gives new insight into a multitude of life experiences in ancient Greece. The book introduces the lives of the ancient Greeks through extracts taken from a range of sources, including poems, plays, novels, histories, lawsuits, inscriptions, and private note tablets. The voices speak for themselves in fresh translation, but in addition, William Furley gives the narratives historical context and illuminates the literary genre in which they appear. The texts are grouped around important areas of life—love relations, travel and trade, social status, divine signs, daily events, warfare, philosophies, dress code, and private and public celebration—giving voice to the variety of lives experienced by the citizens of ancient Greece and an insight into the Greek mind.

Visit William Furley's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Assume Nothing"

Coming soon from Thomas & Mercer: Assume Nothing: A Thriller by Joshua Corin.

About the book, from the publisher:

For a brilliant detective and an avid mystery reader, truth really is stranger―and deadlier―than fiction in a suspenseful and wickedly entertaining novel about the games killers play.

In 1985, Kat McCann was six years old when renowned Austrian detective Alik Lisser solved her mother’s murder. And unfortunately proved Kat’s father as the culprit.

Ten years later Kat is still obsessed with the heroic criminologist. She’s also addicted to the bestselling novels inspired by Alik’s ingenious deductions―penned by the grande dame of whodunits, who’s a bit of a mystery herself. Kat has devoured them all. Even the one based on her father’s crime.

When Kat and Alik fatefully cross paths again, a friendship evolves, and Alik is delighted to share the secrets of his success with such an eager and clever girl by inviting Kat to solve a murder of her very own. One that challenges everything Kat believes about the detective, an elusive author, and Kat’s notorious past.

Now, as fact and fiction and truth and deception collide, it’s all Kat can do to survive the shocking twist ending to her own life story.

Visit Joshua Corin's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Business of Bobbysoxers"

New from Oxford University Press: The Business of Bobbysoxers: Cultural Production in 1940s Frank Sinatra Fandom by Katie Beisel Hollenbach.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Business of Bobbysoxers reconsiders the story of American popular music, celebrity following, and fan behavior during World War II through close examination of “bobbysoxers.” Preserved in popular memory as primarily white, hysterical, teen girl devotees of Frank Sinatra clad in bobby socks and saddle shoes, these girls were accused of displaying inappropriate behavior and priorities in their obsessive pursuit of a crooning celebrity at a time of international crisis. Author Katie Beisel Hollenbach peels back the stereotypes of girlhood idol adoration by documenting the intimate practices of wartime Sinatra fan clubs, revealing a new side of this familiar story in American history through the perspective of the bobbysoxer.

In World War II America, fan clubs and organizations like Teen Canteens offered a haven for teenage girls to celebrate their enjoyment of popular culture while cultivating relationships with each other through media icons and the entertainment industry. Many of these organizations attempted to encourage diverse memberships, influenced in part by Frank Sinatra's public work on racial and religious tolerance, and by Sinatra's own identity as an Italian American. Away from the critical public eye, these communities offered girls a place to safely explore and discuss issues including civil rights, politics, the war, patriotism, internationalism, and professional development in the context of their shared Sinatra fandom. With these broader social and political complexities in mind, The Business of Bobbysoxers shines a light on musical fan communities that provided teenage girls with peer groups at a critical moment of personal and historical change, allowing them to creatively express their desires and imagine their futures as American women together.

Visit Katie Beisel Hollenbach's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Nobody's Perfect"

New from Montlake: Nobody's Perfect by Sally Kilpatrick.

About the book, from the publisher:

From a USA Today bestselling author comes a poignant, funny, and heartfelt novel about a wife and mother grabbing hold of a second chance she never saw coming.

Vivian Quackenbush enjoys a typical life. She has winesday evenings with her two best friends. Her son is in college. She and her husband, Mitch, are planning the next move for their empty-nester future. But to Vivian’s blindsided surprise…not together.

After nearly twenty-five years of marriage, Mitch wants a divorce. He confesses that he doesn’t love her anymore. He never even liked her chicken salad! Brutal. What is Vivian to do but channel her anger, frustration, and pain into a video she posts online. Ill advised? Perhaps. Cathartic? Absolutely. Overnight, Vivian goes viral. Millions of views and counting―to Mitch’s fury, her son’s embarrassment, her mother’s support, and the media’s delight. For Vivian, it’s a moment of truth: hide or lean into it. Vivian 2.0 chooses to lean―maybe even toward the younger single father next door.

Visit Sally Kilpatrick's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Spaces of Treblinka"

New from the University of Nebraska Press: Spaces of Treblinka: Retracing a Death Camp by Jacob Flaws.

About the book, from the publisher:

Spaces of Treblinka utilizes testimonies, oral histories, and recollections from Jewish, German, and Polish witnesses to create a holistic representation of the Treblinka death camp during its operation. This narrative rejects the historical misconception that Treblinka was an isolated Nazi extermination camp with few witnesses and fewer survivors. Rather than the secret, sanitized site of industrial killing Treblinka was intended to be, Jacob Flaws argues, Treblinka’s mass murder was well known to the nearby townspeople who experienced the sights, sounds, smells, people, bodies, and train cars the camp ejected into the surrounding world.

Through spatial reality, Flaws portrays the conceptions, fantasies, ideological assumptions, and memories of Treblinka from witnesses in the camp and surrounding towns. To do so he identifies six key spaces that once composed the historical site of Treblinka: the ideological space, the behavioral space, the space of life and death, the interactional space, the sensory space, and the extended space. By examining these spaces Flaws reveals that there were more witnesses to Treblinka than previously realized, as the transnational groups near and within the camp overlapped and interacted. Spaces of Treblinka provides a staggering and profound reassessment of the relationship between knowing and not knowing and asks us to confront the timely warning that we, in our modern, interconnected world, can all become witnesses.

Visit Jacob Flaws's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Close-Up"

New from Gallery Books: The Close-Up by Pip Drysdale.

About the book, from the publisher:

A struggling author discovers the dark side of fame when a stalker begins reenacting violent events from her thriller in this electrifying and twisty new novel.

When Zoe Ann Weiss moves to Los Angeles to pursue her dream of becoming a writer, her whole future is wide open. But then Zach, the bartender and aspiring actor she’s falling for, ghosts her. Her debut novel, a thriller, fails. And she has writer’s block worse than ever before. Now, three years later, Zach is famous and Zoe is...not.

She’s facing her thirtieth birthday, a dead-end job at a flower shop, and a demanding agent, terrified she’ll never get her life back on track. But when she goes to make a flower delivery and Zach is at the address, it’s like no time has passed at all. They start casually dating in secret, her writer’s block disappears, and Zoe begins to wonder: Zach inspired her first novel, so why can’t he inspire her second?

But then the inevitable happens and photos are leaked, landing Zoe in the press. Her first novel goes viral, and now everyone seems to know her name. Except the problem with everyone knowing your name is that everyone knows your name—including the mysterious stalker obsessed with Zach. A stalker who begins reenacting violent events from Zoe’s book, step by step, against her...

Visit Pip Drysdale's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Brazil's Sex Wars"

New from the University Of Texas Press: Brazil's Sex Wars: The Aesthetics of Queer Activism in São Paulo by Joseph Jay Sosa.

About the book, from the publisher:

An ethnography and media analysis of LGBT+ activism in São Paulo during Brazil’s conservative turn from 2010 to 2018.

For decades, LGBT+ activists across the globe have secured victories by persuasively articulating rights to sexual autonomy. Brazilian activists, some of the world’s most energetic, have kept pace. But since 2010, a backlash has set in, as defenders of “tradition” and “family” have countered LGBT+ rights discourses using a rights-based language of their own.

To understand this shifting ground, Joseph Jay Sosa collaborated with Brazilian LGBT+ activists, who use the language of rights while knowing that rights are not what they seem. Drawing on the symbolic and affective qualities of rights, activists mobilize slogans, bodies, and media to articulate an alternative democratic sensorium. Beyond conventional notions of rights as tools for managing the obligations of states vis-à-vis citizens, activists show how rights operate aesthetically—enjoining the public to see and feel as activists do. Sosa tracks the fate of LGBT+ rights in a growing authoritarian climate that demands “human rights for the right humans.” Interpreting conflicts between advocates and opponents over LGBT+ autonomy as not just an ideological struggle but an aesthetic one, Brazil’s Sex Wars rethinks a style of politics that seems both utterly familiar and counterintuitive.

--Marshal Zeringue

"What It's Like in Words"

New from Henry Holt & Company: What It's Like in Words: A Novel by Eliza Moss.

About the book, from the publisher:

Eliza Moss's intoxicating debut novel is a dark, intense, and compelling account of what happens when a young woman falls in love with the wrong kind of man.

Enola is approaching 30 and everything feels like a lot. The boxes aren’t ticked and she feels adrift in a way she thought she would have beaten by now. She wants to be a writer but can't finish a first draft; she romanticizes her childhood but won’t speak to her mother; she has never been in a serious relationship but yearns to be one half of a couple that DIYs together at the weekends.

Enter: enigmatic writer. Enola falls in love and starts to dream about their perfect future: the wedding, the publishing deals, the house in Stoke Newington. But the reality is far from perfect. He’s distant. But she’s a Cool Girl, she doesn’t need to hear from him every day. He hangs out with his ex. But she's a Cool Girl, she’s not insecure. Is she? He has dark moods. But he’s a creative, that’s part of his ‘process’. Her best friend begs her to end it, but Enola can’t. She's a Cool Girl.

She might feel like she’s going crazy at times, but she wants him. She needs him. She would die without him...That's what love is, isn’t it? Over the next twenty-four hours (and two years), everything that Enola thinks she knows is about to unravel, and she has to think again about how she sees love, family, and friendship and—most importantly—herself.

With notes of Fleabag & I May Destroy You but with the sparseness and emotional accuracy of writers like Ali Smith and Lily King, What It's Like in Words is a close examination of what it means to experience the intense emotional uncertainty of first love.

Visit Eliza Moss's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Treekeepers: The Race for a Forested Future"

New from Basic Books: Treekeepers: The Race for a Forested Future by Lauren E. Oakes.

About the book, from the publisher:

“A frank, probing, but ultimately hopeful book” (Elizabeth Kolbert) that shows how the path from climate change to a habitable future winds through the world’s forests

In recent years, planting a tree has become a catchall to represent “doing something good for the planet.” Many companies commit to planting a tree with every purchase. But who plants those trees and where? Will they flourish and offer the benefits that people expect? Can all the individual efforts around the world help remedy the ever-looming climate crisis?

In Treekeepers, Lauren E. Oakes takes us on a poetic and practical journey from the Scottish Highlands to the Panamanian jungle to meet the scientists, innovators, and local citizens who each offer part of the answer. Their work isn’t just about planting lots of trees, but also about understanding what it takes to grow or regrow a forest and to protect what remains. Throughout, Oakes shows the complex roles of forests in the fight against climate change, and of the people who are giving trees a chance with hope for our mutual survival.

Timely, meticulously reported, and ultimately optimistic, Treekeepers teaches us how to live with a sense of urgency in our warming world, to find beauty in the present for ourselves and our children, and to take action big or small.

Visit Lauren E. Oakes's website.

The Page 99 Test: In Search of the Canary Tree.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Sweet Vidalia"

New from Little, Brown and Company: Sweet Vidalia by Lisa Sandlin.

About the book, from the publisher:

This life-affirming novel follows a fifty-seven-year-old woman forced to rebuild her life, unexpectedly and alone, in 1960s Texas—telling a "wonderfully wise and compassionate story of the extraordinary courage it takes to live a seemingly ordinary life" (Shelley Read, author of Go As a River) and proving "it's never too late to come of age" (Kirkus Reviews).

It’s 1964 and Eliza Kratke is mostly content. Married thirty years, she is long settled in Bayard, Texas with two grown children, a nice house, a little dog, and a routine. But her husband has a secret, and Eliza has not been brave enough to demand to know what it is.

So when her husband dies suddenly, the ground doesn’t just shift under Eliza’s feet—it falls away entirely, revealing that she has known nothing true about her life. How should she come to terms with all that has been a lie?

What emerges from this wreckage is a profoundly compelling portrait of a wonderfully nuanced woman, worn down like a gemstone to a core of durability and self-reliance as she fights for her own path forward. By taking business classes and moving into a hotel filled with aspiring young people, The Sweet Vidalia, Eliza gathers new friends and new possibilities. But with each of these, she finds that it isn't so simple to leave the past behind. Sweet Vidalia not only explores what it means to be honest with ourselves and with one another, but asks: what will we do with the truth when we find it?

Visit Lisa Sandlin's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Blacks against Brown"

New from the University of North Carolina Press: Blacks against Brown: The Intra-racial Struggle over Segregated Schools in Topeka, Kansas by Charise L. Cheney.

About the book, from the publisher:

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (1954) is regarded as one of the most significant civil rights moments in American history. Historical observers have widely viewed this landmark Supreme Court decision as a significant sign of racial progress for African Americans. However, there is another historical perspective that tells a much more complex tale of Black resistance to the NAACP's decision to pursue desegregating America's public schools.

This multifaceted history documents the intra-racial conflict among Black Topekans over the city's segregated schools. Black resistance to school integration challenges conventional narratives about Brown by highlighting community concerns about economic and educational opportunities for Black educators and students and Black residents' pride in all-Black schools. This history of the local story behind Brown v. Board contributes to a literature that provides a fuller and more complex perspective on African Americans and their relationship to Black education and segregated schools during the Jim Crow era.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Good Bride"

Coming soon from Crooked Lane Books: The Good Bride: A Novel by Jen Marie Wiggins.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Wedding of the Year turns disastrous in this twisty family drama full of lies and betrayals, perfect for fans of Laura Dave, Lucy Foley, and Ruth Ware.

One year after a devastating hurricane, bride-to-be Ruth Bancroft is marrying her perfect groom in a quaint fishing village on the Gulf Coast. The weekend is carefully curated, with the displays of pomp and social media magic meant to promote an area still struggling to rebuild as well as bring Ruth’s estranged family back together.

Yet as good intentions often go, this road to wed is hell and paved in complications. With tensions rising between the family and the bridal party, long-buried secrets come to light, and accusations start flying. Things officially spiral out of control when the oceanfront rehearsal dinner is rocked by a series of gunshots, and a high-profile guest goes missing. As the investigation gets underway, it turns out that everyone has something to hide.

Big Little Lies meets The Guest List in this gripping page turner that asks the big questions about messy family liaisons, modern media, and the lies we tell the world.

Visit Jen Marie Wiggins's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Cervantine Blackness"

New from Penn State University Press: Cervantine Blackness by Nicholas R. Jones.

About the book, from the publisher:

There is no shortage of Black characters in Miguel de Cervantes’s works, yet there has been a profound silence about the Spanish author’s compelling literary construction and cultural codification of Black Africans and sub-Saharan Africa. In Cervantine Blackness, Nicholas R. Jones reconsiders in what sense Black subjects possess an inherent value within Cervantes’s cultural purview and literary corpus.

In this unflinching critique, Jones charts important new methodological and theoretical terrain, problematizing the ways emphasis on agency has stifled and truncated the study of Black Africans and their descendants in early modern Spanish cultural and literary production. Through the lens of what he calls “Cervantine Blackness,” Jones challenges the reader to think about the blind faith that has been lent to the idea of agency―and its analogues “presence” and “resistance”―as a primary motivation for examining the lives of Black people during this period. Offering a well-crafted and sharp critique, through a systematic deconstruction of deeply rooted prejudices, Jones establishes a solid foundation for the development of a new genre of literary and cultural criticism.

A searing work of literary criticism and political debate, Cervantine Blackness speaks to specialists and nonspecialists alike―anyone with a serious interest in Cervantes’s work who takes seriously a critical reckoning with the cultural, historical, and literary legacies of agency, antiblackness, and refusal within the Iberian Peninsula and the global reaches of its empire.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Nobody's Hero"

New from Flatiron Books: Nobody's Hero: A Novel by M. W. Craven.

About the book, from the publisher:

A man who can't feel fear is in a race against time to find a woman who knows a secret that could take down the United States

The man who can’t feel fear is back. . .

When a shocking murder and abduction on the streets of London leads investigators to open a safe in Langley for the first time in ten years, they find a note directing them to a few key individuals. Three of the people on the list are dead. The fourth is Ben Koenig.

Koenig has no idea why his name is on the list. Then he realizes that he knows the woman who carried out the killings. Ten years earlier, without being told why, he was tasked with helping her disappear. Far from being a deranged killer, she is the gatekeeper of a secret that could take down America, and for the safety of the country, she has been in hiding for years—until now. And if she has resurfaced, the danger may be closer and more terrifying than anyone can imagine.

Ben Koenig has to find her before it’s too late. But Ben suffers from a syndrome that means he can’t feel fear. He doesn’t always know when he should walk away . . . or when he’s leading others into danger. Fast, brutal, smart, and violent, Nobody’s Hero is an engrossing story of contract killers, international terrorism, hard choices, and the future of the country—and the world as we know it.

Visit M. W. Craven's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Carmen in Diaspora"

New from Oxford University Press: Carmen in Diaspora: Adaptation, Race, and Opera's Most Famous Character by Jennifer M. Wilks.

About the book, from the publisher:

Carmen in Diaspora is a cultural history of Carmen adaptations set in African diasporic contexts. It explores the phenomenon of the connection between the story of Carmen, which originally appeared in Prosper Mérimée's eponymous 1845 novella and came to prominence through Georges Bizet's 1875 opera, with prolific popular recreations in African diasporic settings. The source texts for Carmen not only suggest nineteenth-century French negotiations of Blackness via the Romani community, but also provide provocative frameworks through which to examine conceptions of Black womanhood and self-determination in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Through analyses of Mérimée and Bizet, the Harlem Renaissance novels The Blacker the Berry (1929), Banjo (1929), and Romance in Marseille (2020); the U.S. movie musicals Carmen Jones (1954) and Carmen: A Hip Hopera (2001); the Senegalese and South African feature films Karmen Geï (2001) and U-Carmen eKhayelitsha (2005), respectively; and the Cuban-set stage musical Carmen la Cubana (2016), Carmen in Diaspora examines how these works illuminate the cultural currents of the nineteenth-century European context in which the character was born. The book also interrogates social categories, particularly gender, race, and sexuality, in contemporary Europe, North America, Africa, and the Caribbean. Carmen is Diaspora is an adaptation study that emphasizes connections formed through the transposition rather than imposition of European culture as it considers how artists have brought - and continue to bring - new energy, vision, and life to the story of opera's most famous character.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Alter Ego"

New from Flatiron Books: Alter Ego: A Novel by Alex Segura.

About the book, from the publisher:

Alex Segura, award–winning author of Secret Identity, returns with a clever and escapist standalone sequel set in the world of comic books. In the present day, a comics legend is given the chance to revive a beloved but forgotten character. But at what price?

Annie Bustamante is a cultural force like none other: an acclaimed filmmaker, an author, a comic book artist known for one of the all time best superhero comics in recent memory. But she’s never been able to tackle her longtime favorite superhero, the Lethal Lynx. Only known to the most die-hard comics fans and long out of print, the rights were never available—until now.

But Annie is skeptical of who is making the offer: Bert Carlyle's father started Triumph Comics, and has long claimed ownership of the Lynx. When she starts getting anonymous messages urging her not to trust anyone, Annie’s inner alarms go off. Even worse? Carlyle wants to pair her with a disgraced filmmaker for a desperate media play.

Annie, who has been called a genius, a sell-out, a visionary, a hack, and everything else under the sun, is sick of the money grab. For the first time since she started reading a tattered copy of The Legendary Lynx #1 as a kid, she feels a pure, creative spark. The chance to tell a story her way. She's not about to let that go. Even if it means uncovering the dark truth about the character she loves.

Sharply written, deftly plotted, and with a palpable affection for all kinds of storytelling, Alter Ego is a one-of-a-kind reading experience.

Visit Alex Segura's website.

The Page 69 Test: Blackout.

Writers Read: Alex Segura (May 2018).

--Marshal Zeringue

"From Colonial Cuba to Madrid"

New from Cambridge University Press: From Colonial Cuba to Madrid: Litigating Collective Freedom and Native Rights in the Spanish Empire, 1780–1814 by María Elena Díaz.

About the book, from the publisher:

From Colonial Cuba to Madrid examines the largest and most complex freedom suit litigated in the highest court of the Spanish empire at the end of the eighteenth century. Filed by hundreds of re-enslaved Afro descendant people who had lived in quasi-freedom in eastern Cuba for more than a century, this action drew on local customary practices and broader cultural, political, and legal discourses rooted in the Spanish Atlantic world to put forward novel claims to collective freedom and native based rights at a time when questions of slavery, freedom, and citizenship were igniting in many parts of the Atlantic world. Intersecting law, society studies, and the history of slavery, María Elena Díaz offers a carefully researched study of one of the few communities of Afro descendants that managed to secure freedom and political and legal recognition from the Spanish crown during the colonial period.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Sister Snake"

New from Ecco Books: Sister Snake: A Novel by Amanda Lee Koe.

About the book, from the publisher:

A glittering, bold, darkly funny novel about two sisters—one in New York, one in Singapore—who are bound by an ancient secret

Sisterhood is difficult for Su and Emerald. Su leads a sheltered, moneyed life as the picture-perfect wife of a conservative politician in Singapore. Emerald is a nihilistic sugar baby in New York, living from whim to whim and using her charms to make ends meet. But they share a secret: once, they were snakes, basking under a full moon in Tang dynasty China.

A thousand years later, their mysterious history is the only thing still binding them together. When Emerald experiences a violent encounter in Central Park and Su boards the next flight to New York, the two reach a tenuous reconciliation for the first time in decades. Su convinces Emerald to move to Singapore so she can keep an eye on her—but she soon begins to worry that Emerald’s irrepressible behavior will out them both, in a sparkling, affluent city where everything runs like clockwork and any deviation from the norm is automatically suspect.

Razor-sharp, hilarious, and raw in emotion, Sister Snake explores chosen family, queerness, passing, and the struggle against conformity. Reimagining the Chinese folktale “The Legend of the White Snake,” this is a novel about being seen for who you are—and, ultimately, how to live free.

Visit Amanda Lee Koe's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Agent Zo"

New from Pegasus Books: Agent Zo: The Untold Story of a Fearless World War II Resistance Fighter by Clare Mulley.

About the book, from the publisher:

The incredible and inspiring story of Elzbieta Zawacka, the World War II female resistance fighter known as Agent Zo.

During World War II, Elzbieta Zawacka—the WWII female resistance fighter known as Agent Zo—was the only woman to reach London as an emissary of the Polish Home Army command. In Britain, she became the only woman to join the Polish elite Special Forces, known as the "Silent Unseen.” She was secretly trained in the British countryside, and then she was the only female member of these forces to be parachuted back behind enemy lines to Nazi-occupied Poland. There, while being hunted by the Gestapo (who arrested her entire family), she took a leading role in the Warsaw Uprising and the liberation of Poland.

After the war, she was discharged as one of the most highly decorated women in Polish history. Yet the Soviet-backed post-war Communist regime not only imprisoned (and tortured) her, but also ensured that her remarkable story remained hidden for over forty years.

Now, through new archival research and exclusive interviews with people who knew and fought alongside Agent Zo, Clare Mulley brings this forgotten heroine back to brilliant life—while transforming how we value the history of women resistance fighters during World War II.

Visit Clare Mulley's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Women Who Flew For Hitler.

The Page 99 Test: The Women Who Flew For Hitler.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Shadowed Land"

New from Atria: The Shadowed Land: A Novel by Signe Pike.

About the book, from the publisher:

King Arthur and his contemporaries are boldly reimagined in this “mystical, epic, and captivating” (Hazel Gaynor, New York Times bestselling author) series that resurrects the real historical figures who inspired one of our most enduring legends.

Kingdom of Gododdin, AD 580: After defeating the Angles at the Battle of the Caledonian Wood, Languoreth, her daughter Angharad, brother Lailoken, and the warrior Artúr mac Aedan are reunited. But all too soon, fate pulls each back to their own path.

Artúr receives a mysterious summons from his father in Dalriada. Languoreth and Lailoken return to Strathclyde with the dangerous former bishop Mungo in tow, determined to maintain the fragile peace between the Christians and the people of the Old Way. Meanwhile, Angharad must travel deep into the shadowed land of the Picts, hoping to become the initiate of Briochan, a druid who practices the secret Celtic art of summoning weather.

As they rise to their destinies, they are pushed to impossible new frontiers as each must decide whether they are willing to do what it takes to be the heroes their harrowing days demand. This “rich, immersive” (Kirkus Reviews) saga transports the reader to a vivid world of mysticism, beauty, and meticulously researched early medieval history.

Follow Signe Pike on Instagram and Threads.

Writers Read: Signe Pike (November 2010).

--Marshal Zeringue

"Timing the Future Metropolis"

New from Cornell University Press: Timing the Future Metropolis: Foresight, Knowledge, and Doubt in America's Postwar Urbanism by Peter Ekman.

About the book, from the publisher:

Timing the Future Metropolis―an intellectual history of planning, urbanism, design, and social science―explores the network of postwar institutions, formed amid specters of urban "crisis" and "renewal," that set out to envision the future of the American city. Peter Ekman focuses on one decisive node in the network: the Joint Center for Urban Studies, founded in 1959 by scholars at Harvard and MIT.

Through its sprawling programs of "organized research," its manifold connections to universities, foundations, publishers, and policymakers, and its years of consultation on the planning of a new city in Venezuela―Ciudad Guayana―the Joint Center became preoccupied with the question of how to conceptualize the urban future as an object of knowledge. Timing the Future Metropolis ultimately compels a broader reflection on temporality in urban planning, rethinking how we might imagine cities yet to come―and the consequences of deciding not to.

--Marshal Zeringue

"White Mulberry"

New from Lake Union: White Mulberry: A Novel by Rosa Kwon Easton.

About the book, from the publisher:

Inspired by the life of Easton’s grandmother, White Mulberry is a rich, deeply moving portrait of a young Korean woman in 1930s Japan who is torn between two worlds and must reclaim her true identity to provide a future for her family.

1928, Japan-occupied Korea. Eleven-year-old Miyoung has dreams too big for her tiny farming village near Pyongyang: to become a teacher, to avoid an arranged marriage, to write her own future. When she is offered the chance to live with her older sister in Japan and continue her education, she is elated, even though it means leaving her sick mother―and her very name―behind.

In Kyoto, anti-Korean sentiment is rising every day, and Miyoung quickly realizes she must pass as Japanese if she expects to survive. Her Japanese name, Miyoko, helps her find a new calling as a nurse, but as the years go by, she fears that her true self is slipping away. She seeks solace in a Korean church group and, within it, finds something she never expected: a romance with an activist that reignites her sense of purpose and gives her a cherished son.

As war looms on a new front and Miyoung feels the constraints of her adopted home tighten, she is faced with a choice that will change her life―and the lives of those she loves―forever.

Visit Rosa Kwon Easton's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"City of Wood"

New from the University of Texas Press: City of Wood: San Francisco and the Architecture of the Redwood Lumber Industry by James Michael Buckley.

About the book, from the publisher:

How San Franciscans exploited natural resources such as redwood lumber to produce the first major metropolis of the American West.

California’s 1849 gold rush triggered creation of the “instant city” of San Francisco as a base to exploit the rich natural resources of the American West. City of Wood examines how capitalists and workers logged the state’s vast redwood forests to create the financial capital and construction materials needed to build the regional metropolis of San Francisco. Architectural historian James Michael Buckley investigates the remote forest and its urban core as two poles of a regional “city.” This city consisted of a far-reaching network of spaces, produced as company owners and workers arrayed men and machines to extract resources and create human commodities from the region’s rich natural environment.

Combining labor, urban, industrial, and social history, City of Wood employs a variety of sources—including contemporary newspaper articles, novels, and photographs—to explore the architectural landscape of lumber, from backwoods logging camps and company towns in the woods to busy lumber docks and the homes of workers and owners in San Francisco. By imagining the redwood lumber industry as a single community spread across multiple sites—a “City of Wood”—Buckley demonstrates how capitalist resource extraction links different places along the production value chain. The result is a paradigm shift in architectural history that focuses not just on the evolution of individual building design across time, but also on economic connections that link the center and periphery across space.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Untethered"

Coming soon from Harper Muse: Untethered by Angela Jackson-Brown.

About the book, from the publisher:

Sometimes family is found in the most unlikely of places...

In the small college town of Troy, Alabama, amidst the backdrop of 1967, Katia Daniels lives a life steeped in responsibility. At the Pike County Group Home for Negro Boys

, she pours her heart into nurturing the young lives under her care, harboring a longing for children of her own. Katia's romantic entanglement with an older man brings comfort but also stirs questions about the path she's chosen.

The weight of her family's history bears down on her; a twin brother is missing in action in the heart of the Vietnam War. Having lost her father to cancer, Katia took up the mantle of caretaker, ensuring her mother and brothers were looked after. Her sense of duty extends to the boys at the group home, creating a web of obligations that stretches her emotional bandwidth thin.

Amidst a power struggle at work with the board, Katia finds solace in the pages of romance novels and the soothing melodies of Nina Simone. When Seth Taylor, a familiar face from her high school days, reenters Katia's life, he brings with him a breeze of nostalgia and a reminder of a time when her dreams felt less tethered. As their friendship rekindles, Katia grapples with the idea of making choices for herself, even as the realization that she can no longer have children weighs heavily on her.

This novel is a poignant tale of a woman torn between the demands of her heart and the responsibilities she's shouldered for so long. Set against the backdrop of a changing South, this novel delves into the complexities of love, family, and self-discovery in a time of transformation and upheaval.

Visit Angela Jackson-Brown's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Slow Wood"

New from Yale University Press: Slow Wood: Greener Building from Local Forests by Brian Donahue.

About the book, from the publisher:

A radical proposal for healing the relationship between humans and forests through responsible, sustainable use of local and regional wood in home building

American homes are typically made of lumber and plywood delivered by a global system of ruthless extraction, or of concrete and steel, which are even worse for the planet. Wood is often the most sustainable material for building, but we need to protect diverse forests as much as we desperately need more houses.

Brian Donahue addresses this modern conundrum by documenting his experiences building a timber frame home from the wood growing on his family farm, practicing “worst first” forestry. Through the stories of the trees he used (sugar maple, black cherry, black birch, and hemlock), and some he didn’t (white pine and red oak), the book also explores the history of Americans’ relationship with their forests.

Donahue provides a new interpretation of the connection between American houses and local woodlands. He delves into how this bond was broken by the rise of a market economy of industrial resource extraction and addresses the challenge of restoring a more enduring relationship. Ultimately, this book provides a blueprint and a stewardship plan for how to live more responsibly with the woods, offering a sustainable approach to both forestry and building centered on tightly connected ecological and social values.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Witch Queen of Redwinter"

New from Tor Books: Witch Queen of Redwinter (The Redwinter Chronicles, 3) by Ed McDonald.

About the book, from the publisher:

Having been saved from execution at the hands of the Draoihn―powerful magic users Raine used to count as allies―Raine finds herself in the Fault, a vast magical wasteland, which is falling apart before her eyes.

Alongside her two closest companions, they are searching for the only person Raine believes can help them get back home: the enigmatic and infuriatingly elusive Queen of Feathers.

But what home are they trying to get back to? Ovitus LacNaithe, power-hungry traitor that he is, has taken control of the Draoihn and is unwittingly doing the bidding of a darker master. He is soon to take control of the Crown of Harranir and plunge the land into unending darkness.

The fate of two worlds hangs in the balance. The stakes have never been higher. It’s going to take Raine’s dark, terrible powers, as well as the unbreakable bond of three friends, to ensure everyone lives to see the dawn.

Visit Ed McDonald's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Tiberius and His Age"

New from Princeton University Press: Tiberius and His Age: Myth, Sex, Luxury, and Power by Edward Champlin.

About the book, from the publisher:

A radical new portrait of the infamous Roman emperor

Rome’s second emperor, Tiberius (42 BCE–CE 37), has traditionally been seen as a villainous hypocrite—treacherous, grasping, vindictive, and depraved. But in Tiberius and His Age, Edward Champlin draws on vast and diverse evidence to show that Tiberius was—and was seen by contemporaries to be—recognizably human and far more complex than the monster of the hostile tradition that began with Tacitus and Suetonius.

Focusing on the overlapping themes of luxury, sex, power, and, especially, myth, Tiberius and His Age examines Tiberius’s standing as a folkloric figure in the Roman popular imagination and his conscious use of mythological themes to consolidate his power. It argues that the striking stories of Tiberius’s sexual depravity, which literary sources passed on to later generations, are ultimately incoherent fictions, the work of a brilliant fantasist who hated the emperor. The book’s portraits of three important figures in Tiberius’s circle—the gourmands Asellius Sabinus and Marcus Apicius and the emperor’s lieutenant, Sejanus—provide new perspectives on the emperor and his age. Tiberius’s passions for astrology, gastronomy, and mythology, which have often been seen as eccentric scholarly diversions, are revealed instead to be central to contemporary Roman debates and keys to understanding his personality, his power, and the lasting image of Roman emperors.

Incisive, witty, and original, Tiberius and His Age presents a startlingly new picture of Tiberius and the culture and politics of the early Roman Empire.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Havoc"

New from Harper: Havoc: A Novel by Christopher Bollen.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the vein of The Bad Seed comes a twisty, atmospheric psychological suspense about a meddlesome elderly guest at a decadent luxury hotel who believes she has left her problematic past behind, until she decides to interfere in the lives of a young mother and her eight-year-old son, and finally meets her wicked match.

The war between age and youth has never been so vicious.

Eighty-one-year-old widow Maggie Burkhardt came to the Royal Karnak to escape. But not in quite the same way as most other guests who are relaxing at this threadbare luxury hotel on the banks of the Nile. Maggie, a compulsive fixer of other people’s lives, may have found herself in hot water at her last hotel in Switzerland and just might have needed to get out of there fast... But here at the Royal Karnak, under the hot Saharan sun, she has a comfortable suite, a loyal confidante in the hotel manager, Ahmed, and a handful of sympathetic friends, similar “long-termers” who understand her still-vivid grief for her late husband, Peter. Here, she is merely the sweet old lady in Room 309.

One morning, however, Maggie notices a new arrival at check-in: a mournful-looking young mother named Tess and her impish eight-year-old, Otto. Eager to help, Maggie invites them into her world. But it isn’t long before Maggie realizes that in her longing to be a part of their family, she has let in an enemy much stronger than she bargained for. In scrawny, homely Otto, Maggie Burkhardt has finally met her match.

A propulsive, addictively-readable breakout from the critically acclaimed author of A Beautiful Crime and The Lost Americans, Havoc is brilliant, twisty psychological suspense that will get under your skin like the most unforgettable Hitchcock classics.

Visit Christopher Bollen's website.

The Page 69 Test: A Beautiful Crime.

My Book, The Movie: A Beautiful Crime.

Writers Read: Christopher Bollen (February 2020).

The Page 69 Test: The Lost Americans.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Evolution for the People"

New from Cambridge University Press: Evolution for the People: Shaping Popular Ideas from Darwin to the Present by Peter J. Bowler.

About the book, from the publisher:

From Darwin's The Origin of Species to the twenty-first century, Peter Bowler reinterprets the long Darwinian Revolution by refocussing our attention on the British and American public. By applying recent historical interest in popular science to evolutionary ideas, he investigates how writers and broadcasters have presented both Darwinism and its discontents. Casting new light on how the theory's more radical aspects gradually grew in the public imagination, Evolution for the People extends existing studies of the popularization of evolutionism to give a more comprehensive picture of how attitudes have changed through time. In tracing changes in public perception, Bowler explores both the cultural impact and the cultural exploitation of these ideas in science, religion, social thought and literature.

The Page 99 Test: Darwin Deleted.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Mechanize My Hands to War"

Coming December 17 from DAW: Mechanize My Hands to War by Erin K. Wagner.

About the book, from the publisher:

The emergence of artificial life intersects with state violence and political extremism in Erin K. Wagner’s rural Appalachia, where startlingly intimate portraits of survival and empathy bloom against a stark backdrop of loss.

September, 2060: Adrian Hall, acting director of the ATF, is holding a press conference. Yes, Eli Whitaker, anti-android demagogue, remains at large, and yes, he is recruiting children into his militia — Adrian is careful not to use the word army. She is careful all the way through the conference, right up until someone asks her about her personal connection to Whitaker; about Trey Caudill, his foster son.

July, 2058: Farmers Shay and Ernst, struggling after they discover their GMO crop seeds have failed, hire android employees: Sarah as hospice, and AG-15 to work the now-toxic fields. Under one roof, four lives intertwine in ways no one expects.

July, 2060: Special Agent Trey Caudill is leading a raid on Eli Whitaker’s farm when an android, call sign Ora, shoots and kills a child.

March, 2061: Ora sits in a room. He has been there for seven months, resisting diagnostic tests. He is drawing on the walls, scratching his artificial skin, tracing something over and over and over again with a tired metallic finger. There is nothing wrong with his circuitry, so why does Ora feel so broken?

Unflinching yet understated, making expert use of its nonlinear form, Mechanize My Hands to War is at once a study of grief and an ode to the power of self-determination.

Visit Erin K. Wagner's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Civic Solitude"

New from Oxford University Press: Civic Solitude: Why Democracy Needs Distance by Robert B. Talisse.

About the book, from the publisher:

An internet search of the phrase "this is what democracy looks like" returns thousands of images of people assembled in public for the purpose of collective action. But is group collaboration truly the defining feature of effective democracy? Robert B. Talisse suggests that while group action is essential to democracy, action without reflection can present insidious challenges, as individuals' perspectives can be distorted by group dynamics.

The culprit is a cognitive dynamic called belief polarization. As we interact with our political allies, we are exposed to forces that render us more radical in our beliefs and increasingly hostile to those who do not share them. What's more, the social environments we inhabit in our day-to-day lives are sorted along partisan lines. We are surrounded by triggers of political extremity and animosity. Thus, our ordinary activities encourage the attitude that democracy is possible only when everyone agrees--a profoundly antidemocratic stance.

Drawing on extensive research about polarization and partisanship, Talisse argues that certain core democratic capacities can be cultivated only at a distance from the political fray. If we are to meet the responsibilities of democratic citizenship, we must occasionally step away from our allies and opponents alike. We can perform this self-work only in secluded settings where we can engage in civic reflection that is not prepackaged in the idiom of our political divides, allowing us to contemplate political circumstances that are not our own.

Learn more about Civic Solitude at the Oxford University Press website

The Page 99 Test: Overdoing Democracy.

The Page 99 Test: Sustaining Democracy.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Echo"

Coming soon from Thomas & Mercer: Echo (Detective Harriet Foster) by Tracy Clark.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the award-winning author of Hide and Fall comes the third book in the Detective Harriet Foster thriller series, a taut tale of renegade justice with a heart-stopping finale.

Hardwicke House, home to Belverton College’s exclusive Minotaur Society, is no stranger to tragedy. And when a body turns up in the field next to the mansion, the scene looks chillingly familiar.

Chicago PD sends hard-nosed Detective Harriet “Harri” Foster to investigate. The victim is Brice Collier, a wealthy Belverton student, whose billionaire father, Sebastian, owns Hardwicke and ranks as a major school benefactor. Sebastian also has ties to the mansion’s notorious past, when thirty years ago, hazing led to a student’s death in the very same field.

Could the deaths be connected? With no suspects or leads, Harri and her partner, Detective Vera Li, will have to dig deep to find answers. No charges were ever filed in the first case, and this time, Harri’s determined the killer must pay. But still grieving her former partner’s death, Harri must also contend with a shadowy figure called the voice―and their dangerous game of cat and mouse could threaten everything.

Visit Tracy Clark's website.

Q&A with Tracy Clark.

My Book, The Movie: What You Don’t See.

Writers Read: Tracy Clark (July 2021).

The Page 69 Test: Runner.

The Page 69 Test: Hide.

The Page 69 Test: Fall.

Writers Read: Tracy Clark (December 2023).

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Apothecary's Wife"

New from the University of California Press: The Apothecary's Wife: The Hidden History of Medicine and How It Became a Commodity by Karen Bloom Gevirtz.

About the book, from the publisher:

A groundbreaking genealogy of for-profit healthcare and an urgent reminder that centering women's history offers vital opportunities for shaping the future.

The running joke in Europe for centuries was that anyone in a hurry to die should call the doctor. As far back as ancient Greece, physicians were notorious for administering painful and often fatal treatments—and charging for the privilege. For the most effective treatment, the ill and injured went to the women in their lives. This system lasted hundreds of years. It was gone in less than a century.

Contrary to the familiar story, medication did not improve during the Scientific Revolution. Yet somehow, between 1650 and 1740, the domestic female and the physician switched places in the cultural consciousness: she became the ineffective, potentially dangerous quack, he the knowledgeable, trustworthy expert. The professionals normalized the idea of paying them for what people already got at home without charge, laying the foundation for Big Pharma and today’s global for-profit medication system. A revelatory history of medicine, The Apothecary’s Wife challenges the myths of the triumph of science and instead uncovers the fascinating truth. Drawing on a vast body of archival material, Karen Bloom Gevirtz depicts the extraordinary cast of characters who brought about this transformation. She also explores domestic medicine’s values in responses to modern health crises, such as the eradication of smallpox, and what benefits we can learn from these events.

Visit Karen Bloom Gevirtz's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Floreana"

Coming soon from Little A: Floreana: A Novel by Midge Raymond.

About the book, from the publisher:

On the Galápagos Islands, the lives of two women―a century apart―converge in the most startling ways in a historical novel of desperate love, secrets, and deception by the author of My Last Continent.

After ten years away to build a family, Mallory returns to Floreana Island in the Galápagos, and to Gavin, the mentor with whom she had a long-ago affair. Their project is to build nests to revive the vulnerable penguin population. But Mallory doesn’t dare tell Gavin why she’s really come back. Then she discovers old journals hidden in a lava cave―confessions of another woman who needed to disappear.

In 1929, Dore Strauch left the life she knew to create a new one with the man she loved. On remote Floreana they’re beholden to no one but each other. Until the arrival of strangers, settlers in their paradise. Suddenly, Dore realizes that it’s no longer the refuge she imagined. And that amid the island’s fragile beauty, people can do the most terrible things.

A gripping reimagining of a true story, Floreana intertwines the emotional journeys of two women bound by dark secrets, the want of escape, and the lengths to which they’ll go to find their place in the world.

Learn more about the author and her work at Midge Raymond's website.

The Page 69 Test: My Last Continent.

Writers Read: Midge Raymond (June 2016).

--Marshal Zeringue

"Dread Danger"

New from Cambridge University Press: Dread Danger: Cowardice and Combat in the American Civil War by Lesley J. Gordon.

About the book, from the publisher:

When confronted with the abject fear of going into battle, Civil War soldiers were expected to overcome the dread of the oncoming danger with feats of courage and victory on the battlefield. The Fire Zouaves and the 2nd Texas Infantry went to war with high expectations that they would perform bravely; they had famed commanders and enthusiastic community support. How could they possibly fail? Yet falter they did, facing humiliating charges of cowardice thereafter that cast a lingering shadow on the two regiments, despite their best efforts at redemption. By the end of the war, however, these charges were largely forgotten, replaced with the jingoistic rhetoric of martial heroism, a legacy that led many, including historians, to insist that all Civil War soldiers were heroes. Dread Danger creates a fuller understanding of the soldier experience and the overall costs and sufferings of war.

The Page 99 Test: A Broken Regiment.

--Marshal Zeringue

"All's Fair in Love and Treachery"

New from Minotaur Books: All's Fair in Love and Treachery: A Mystery (Lady Petra Inquires, 2) by Celeste Connally.

About the book, from the publisher:

Bridgerton meets Agatha Christie in this dazzling next installment in a captivating Regency-era mystery series with a feminist spin.

21 June, 1815. London may be cheering the news of Napoleon’s surrender at Waterloo, but Lady Petra Forsyth has little to celebrate after discovering that the death of her viscount fiancé three years earlier was no accident. Instead, it was murder, and the man responsible is her handsome, half-Scottish secret paramour Duncan Shawcross―yet the scoundrel has disappeared, leaving only a confusing riddle about long-forgotten memories in his wake.

So what’s a lady to do when she can’t hunt down her traitorous lover? She concentrates on a royal assignment instead. Queen Charlotte has tasked Petra with attending an event at the Asylum for Female Orphans and making inquiries surrounding the death of the orphanage’s matron. What’s more, there may be a link between the matron’s death and a group of radicals with ties to the aristocracy, as evidenced by an intercepted letter.

Then, Petra overhears a nefarious conversation with two other men about a plot to topple the monarchy, set to take place during three days of celebrations currently gripping London.

As the clock counts down and London’s streets teem with revelers, Petra’s nerves are fraying as her past and present collide. Yet while all’s fair in love and war, she can never surrender, especially when more orphaned girls may be in trouble. And to save their lives, the monarchy itself, and even her own heart, Lady Petra must face her fears with the strength of an army of soldiers and fight with the heart of a queen.

Visit Celeste Connally's website.

The Page 69 Test: Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Lord.

--Marshal Zeringue