"The Day After the Party"

Coming January 7 from Grand Central Publishing: The Day After the Party by Nicole Trope.

About the book, from the publisher:

The perfect birthday or the perfect nightmare?

Katelyn smiles at her husband and friends, gathered to celebrate her thirty-sixth birthday in their beautiful home decorated with fairy lights. But the next day Katelyn wakes up shaken and terrified in a hospital bed…

She doesn’t remember the sweet taste of birthday cake icing, or how angry her best friend was at midnight, or the terrible things her husband said. She doesn’t remember the party at all.

When she asks her husband what happened the night of the party he says ‘nothing’. But her blood runs cold at the way his voice lilts slightly. The way it always does when he is lying.

Did someone at the party harm her? What is her husband hiding? Or did Katelyn herself do something terrible?

Only one thing is certain. Nobody can be trusted. And if Katelyn’s memories of the party do come back, it will tear them all apart…

Follow Nicole Trope on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.

The Page 69 Test: The Boy in the Photo.

Q&A with Nicole Trope.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Worthy of Justice"

New from Stanford University Press: Worthy of Justice: The Politics of Veterans Treatment Courts in Practice by Jamie Rowen.

About the book, from the publisher:

Over the past three decades, jurisdictions across the United States have developed alternatives to traditional criminal procedures and punishments for adults accused of crimes that are associated with substance use and mental health disorders. The Veterans Treatment Court (VTC) is one example of these problem-solving courts. VTCs benefit from the availability of extensive (and free) medical and social services through the Department of Veterans Affairs, as well as the social and political legitimacy that comes with serving veterans. Worthy of Justice takes this specific form of problem-solving court as lens for examining broader social inequalities in the criminal legal system. Jamie Rowen argues that the rationale for VTCs flows not from what veterans have done but from who they are. Their operations are fueled by the notion that their participants' criminal behavior is the result of military service rather than other personal choices made, thus making them uniquely worthy of public support. In this way, VTCs powerfully expose the contradictions inherent in the idea that criminals deserve punishment. Rowen draws on fieldwork at three such courts across the US. Ultimately, she illustrates how the politics of crime and the politics of welfare increasingly intersect and, together, construct classes of Americans who are either worthy, or not.

Visit Jamie Rowen's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Water Lies"

Coming January 1 from Thomas & Mercer: The Water Lies by Amy Meyerson.

About the book, from the publisher:

Internationally bestselling author Amy Meyerson takes readers on a harrowing journey where two mothers―one of a woman who drowned and the other of a toddler who might know what happened to her―are the only ones searching for the truth.

Heavily pregnant with her second child, Tessa Irons has enough on her mind without her toddler throwing tantrums at the local coffee shop. The boy is inconsolable, shouting “Gigi!” to a woman Tessa’s never seen before―and never will again. The next morning, the woman’s body is dredged up from the canal outside the Ironses’ posh Venice Beach home, and Tessa’s gut tells her it’s no coincidence.

Barb Geller refuses to believe that her daughter’s death was just some drunken accident. She heads to California for answers, where she crosses paths with Tessa. Together they hunt for the truth, certain they’ll find a connection between their children.

But the police don’t believe them. Tessa’s husband dismisses her worries as pregnancy jitters, and even though people are always watching along the canals, no one saw a thing. Tessa and Barb only have each other, their intuition, and the creeping sense of danger that grows with every shocking revelation.

Visit Amy Meyerson's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Monsters in the Archives"

Coming April 21 from Hogarth: Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King by Caroline Bicks.

About the book, from the publisher:

A fascinating, first-of-its-kind exploration of Stephen King and his most iconic early books, based on groundbreaking research and interviews with King—all conducted by the first scholar to be given extended access to his private archives

After Caroline Bicks was named the University of Maineʼs inaugural Stephen E. King Chair in Literature, she became the first scholar to be granted extended access by King to his private archives, a treasure trove of manuscripts that document the legendary writerʼs creative process—most of them never before studied or published. The year she spent exploring King’s early drafts and hand-written revisions was guided by one question millions of Kingʼs enthralled and terrified readers (including her) have asked themselves: What makes Stephen King’s writing stick in our heads and haunt us long after we’ve closed the book?

Bicks focuses on five of his most iconic early works—The Shining, Carrie, Pet Sematary, ʼSalemʼs Lot, and Night Shift—to reveal how he crafted his language, story lines, and characters to cast his enduring literary spells. While tracking King’s margin notes and editorial changes, she discovered scenes and alternative endings that never made it to print but that King is allowing her to publish now. The book also includes interviews Bicks had with King along the way that reveal new insights into his writing process and personal history.

Part literary master class, part biography, part memoir and investigation into our deepest anxieties, Monsters in the Archives—authorized by Stephen King himself—is unlike anything ever published about the master of horror. It chronicles what Bicks found when she set out to unearth how King crafted some of his scariest, most iconic moments. But it’s also a story about a grown-up English professor facing her childhood fears and getting to know the man whose monsters helped unleash them.

Visit Caroline Bicks's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Lies of Lena"

Coming January 6 from Forever: The Lies of Lena by Kylie Snow.

About the book, from the publisher:

In this spicy and dark romantasy setting BookTok ablaze, a young mage is captured by her mortal enemy bent on exacting revenge.

Lena Daelyra has survived by following two rules: never let anyone find out what she is and never wield her powers. After all, Mages are hunted for sport and have no laws to protect them. Staying alive means keeping to herself in the gritty outskirts of the kingdom of Otacia. Until the day a job gone awry lands Lena in ruthless hands, only to be saved by Quill Callon, a handsome swordsman from the wealthy Inner Ring. As Quill begins to train Lena to defend herself, her growing feelings for him serve as a cruel reminder that to reveal what she is would only be a death sentence.

Crown Prince Silas La’Rune has been a prisoner inside his own castle since he was five years old—after the murder of his younger sister. But the day he manages to escape the changes everything.

Tragedy rips Lena away from the man she has grown to love before she can confess her true identity. Yet, when their paths collide again years later, it’s clear that things will never be the same. And when Lena and other Mages are captured by the kingdom’s bloodthirsty heir bent on exacting punishment, the fate of Magekind will rest on her shoulders.

Full of forbidden love, passionate angst, and forced proximity, The Otacian Chronicles is a dark romantasy tale that will progressively get darker as the series continues. Please be mindful of the content warnings below and protect your mental health.

This book is a dark romantasy novel filled with romantic tension, sexy banter, and heartbreak. It also contains explicit sexual scenes, explicit language, violence, gore, torture, dismemberment, sexual assault, rape, loss, and grief.

Visit Kylie Snow's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Limits of Diversity"

New from NYU Press: The Limits of Diversity: How Secular and Evangelical Campuses Reproduce Inequality by Esther Chan.

About the book, from the publisher:

Shows that universities' diversity efforts may inadvertently reproduce inequality

Across universities and colleges, diversity is a purported value, often accompanied with commitments to equity and inclusion. But how do universities’ approaches to diversity affect their efforts to make equitable and inclusive environments?

The Limits of Diversity compares perspectives of diversity and inclusion among diversity student leaders, Asian Americans, and LGBTQ+ students at two college campuses, one secular and one evangelical. It argues that secular and religious universities reproduce inequality along multiple lines of social difference through the language and practices of diversity. Though their promotion of diversity may be well-intentioned, in practice their approaches reproduce social inequality. The volume offers empirical research on key flash points around diversity to illuminate how our current understandings of diversity are failing, and how we can improve and help universities to embrace more equitable approaches.

In a post-affirmative action world, scholars and activists are beset with the difficult task of re-imagining diversity and creating alternatives to diversity that can lead to social equity in college settings. Chan shows that approaches to diversity that do not center equity fall short. The student narratives presented in The Limits of Diversity challenge us to think about what diverse, equitable, and inclusive universities can look like.

Visit Esther Chan's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Sisterhood Above All"

Coming July 2026 from Saturday Books: Sisterhood Above All by Kathleen Barber with Amayah Shaienne.

About the book, from the publisher:

Any girl would kill to be a Gamma.

Being a Gamma at Southern State University means belonging to the most desirable, exclusive sisterhood there is. For Ava, it means even more―it’s the last connection she has to her beloved late mother, and she’ll do anything to wear the Gamma letters.

But the Gammas didn’t become the best house on campus by letting just anyone in, and every prospective pledge is expected to earn her spot. As president, Madison is the ultimate gatekeeper, and she has a special test for Ava.

Rival sorority Theta is nipping at the Gammas’ heels for the top spot on campus, and president Shay is proud they’ve gotten there by rising above the hyper-competitive gamesmanship that consumes other houses. She knows she’s made some enemies in her quest to change the Greek system from the inside, but she can’t imagine the depth of Madison’s resentment for her … or how far Ava will go to become a Gamma.

The sisterhood, the parties, the elite status―and the connection to her mother―are what Ava has always wanted, but she never guessed the cost of membership would be so high. Three women, two houses, one dead body: rush has never been this messy.

“Barber and Shaienne’s juicy, sexy, vicious collab is like America’s Next Top Model stitched with The Art of War. You’ll be equally riveted by the reality TV-level drama and the raw authenticity of the characters in this sure-to-go-viral sorority rush thriller.” ― Layne Fargo, bestselling author of The Favorites and They Never Learn

Visit Kathleen Barber's website.

The Page 69 Test: Follow Me.

Writers Read: Kathleen Barber (March 2020).

12 Yoga Questions with Kathleen Barber.

The Page 69 Test: Both Things Are True.

My Book, The Movie: Both Things Are True.

Q&A with Kathleen Barber.

Writers Read: Kathleen Barber (September 2025).

--Marshal Zeringue

"Between King Cotton and Queen Victoria"

New from the University of Georgia Press: Between King Cotton and Queen Victoria: How Pirates, Smugglers, and Scoundrels Almost Saved the Confederacy by Beau Cleland.

About the book, from the publisher:

Between King Cotton and Queen Victoria recenters our understanding of the Civil War by framing it as a hemispheric affair, deeply influenced by the actions of a network of private parties and minor officials in the Confederacy and British territory in and around North America. John Wilkes Booth likely would not have been in a position to assassinate Abraham Lincoln, for example, without the logistical support and assistance of the pro-Confederate network in Canada. That network, to which he was personally introduced in Montreal in the fall of 1864, was hosted and facilitated by willing colonials across the hemisphere. Many of its Confederate members arrived in British North America via a long-established transportation and communications network built around British colonies, especially Bermuda and the Bahamas, whose primary purpose was running the blockade. It is difficult to overstate how essential blockade running was for the rebellion’s survival, and it would have been impossible without the aid of sympathetic colonials. The operations of this informal, semiprivate network were of enormous consequence for the course of the war and its aftermath, and our understanding of the Civil War is incomplete without a deeper reckoning with the power and potential for chaos of these private networks imbued with the power of a state.

Visit Beau Cleland's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Hemlock"

Coming January 20 from Little, Brown and Company: Hemlock: A Novel by Melissa Faliveno.

About the novel, from the publisher:

A woman haunted by a dark inheritance returns to the woods where her mother vanished, in this queer Gothic novel.

Sam, finally sober and stable with a cat and a long-term boyfriend in Brooklyn, returns alone to Hemlock, her family’s deteriorating cabin deep in the Wisconsin Northwoods. But a quick, practical trip takes a turn for the worse when the rot and creak of the forest starts to creep in around the edges of Sam’s mind. It starts, as it always does, with a beer.

As Sam dips back into the murky waters of dependency, the inexplicable begins to arrive at her door and her body takes on a strange new shape. As the borders of reality begin to blur, she senses she is battling something sinister—whether nested in the woods or within herself.

Hemlock is a carnal coming-of-addiction, a dark sparkler about rapture, desire, transformation, and transcendence in many forms. What lives at the heart of fear—animal, monster, or man? How can we reject our own inheritance, the psychic storm that’s been coming for generations, and rebuild a new home for ourselves? In the tradition of Han Kang’s The Vegetarian, Hemlock is a butch Black Swan and a novel of singular style, with all the edginess of a survival story and a simmering menace that glints from the very periphery of the page.

Visit Melissa Faliveno's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Illusory Riches"

New from Oxford University Press: Illusory Riches: The False Promise of Evolutionary Psychology by Chris Haufe.

About the book, from the publisher:

Popular science and media are awash in sweeping claims concerning how some characteristic human behavior, feeling, or psychological disposition exists because it aided our evolutionary ancestors in survival and reproduction. These claims often arise from a discipline known as Evolutionary Psychology. Evolutionary Psychology claims to investigate the evolutionary underpinnings of human nature, to explain why we have the thoughts, feelings, impulses that are characteristic of human experience.

But when we compare these investigations with evolutionary research on other human traits, or on nonhumans, we see that Evolutionary Psychology is deeply out of touch with the basic theoretical and methodological precepts that form the basis of our knowledge of evolutionary history. By comparing research in Evolutionary Psychology with traditional forms of evolutionary research, we can appreciate the wide gap between what Evolutionary Psychology says about human nature, on the one hand, and what is traditionally required to support claims about evolutionary history, on the other.

The study of evolution is not the study of the design and purpose of nature-it is the study of how populations change over time and it requires the sort of investigation for which human subjects are generally ill suited. As Chris Haufe shows, Evolutionary Psychology has constructed a parallel scientific universe - cut off from genuine scientific knowledge of the evolutionary process - which seeks to actively promote a predetermined stance on human evolutionary history regardless of whether that stance is logically consistent with current scientific fact. Illusory Riches demonstrates that our scientific knowledge of the human past and of the evolutionary process permits a far greater range of human potentialities than one might suspect from the claims of Evolutionary Psychology.

Visit Chris Haufe's website.

The Page 99 Test: Do the Humanities Create Knowledge?.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Meet the Newmans"

Coming January 6 from Flatiron Books: Meet the Newmans: A Novel by Jennifer Niven.

About the book, from the publisher:

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Niven, a novel about America’s favorite TV family, whose perfect façade cracks, for fans of Lessons in Chemistry and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.

For two decades, Del and Dinah Newman and their sons, Guy and Shep, have ruled television as America’s Favorite Family. Millions of viewers tune in every week to watch them play flawless, black-and-white versions of themselves. But now it’s 1964, and the Newmans’ idealized apple-pie perfection suddenly feels woefully out of touch. Ratings are in free fall, as are the Newmans themselves. Del is keeping an explosive secret from his wife, and Dinah is slowly going numb―literally. Steady, stable Guy is hiding the truth about his love life, and the charmed luck of rock ‘n roll idol Shep may have finally run out.

When Del―the creative motor behind the show―is in a mysterious car accident, Dinah decides to take matters into her own hands. She hires Juliet Dunne, an outspoken, impassioned young reporter, to help her write the final episode. But Dinah and Juliet have wildly different perspectives about what it means to be a woman, and a family, in 1964. Can the Newmans hold it together to change television history? Or will they be canceled before they ever have the chance?

Funny, big-hearted, and deeply moving, Meet the Newmans is a rich family story about the dual lives we lead. Because even when our lives aren’t televised weekly, we all have a behind-the-scenes.

Visit Jennifer Niven's website.

Writers Read: Jennifer Niven (January 2015).

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Mystic of Friendship"

New from the University of Chicago Press: The Mystic of Friendship: Divining the Present in Settler Amazonia by Ashley Lebner.

About the book, from the publisher:

A vivid portrait of how divine and human intimacies sustain colonization in the Amazon.

On Brazil’s Amazonian frontier, settlers pursue land and opportunity, but they also gather for prayer and pilgrimage, yearning for a deep relationship with God and one another. In this book, anthropologist Ashley Lebner examines how everyday religious practices and feelings, what she calls a mystic of friendship, shape and sustain colonization in the Amazon.

Lebner invites us to a stretch of highway in Pará, Brazil, where violent colonization coexists with prophetic dreams, Afro-Brazilian prayers, and emerging evangelicalism. She shows how, amid political tensions and physical hardship, settlers believe that the violence they experience and enact derives from the bestial nature of earthly life that must be overcome. In exposing a longing for divinely-infused friendship that animates colonization, Lebner offers a powerful new perspective on the forces driving colonialism as much as religious and political expression.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Murder Will Out"

Coming February 17 from Minotaur Books: Murder Will Out: A Mystery by Jennifer K. Breedlove.

About the book, from publisher:

Minotaur Books/Mystery Writers of America First Crime Novel Award winner Jennifer K. Breedlove brings coastal Maine to life in Murder Will Out, a lighter, modern gothic mystery that's as atmospheric as it is heart-warming.

Come for the memories. Stay for the murder...

Little North Island, off the coast of Maine, is so beautiful it could be a postcard. Organist Willow Stone cherishes her memories of childhood summers spent on the island with her godmother Sue... even though her visits ended abruptly, and she hasn't seen or heard from her godmother in over fifteen years. Until a letter from Sue―and word of Sue’s death―brings Willow back to the picturesque island.

The islanders rarely mention Sue without also bringing up Cameron House, and the controversy around Sue’s unexpected inheritance of the sprawling mansion. When Willow overhears someone threatening the next heir to the property, she starts to question whether Sue’s death was really an accident, and can’t help but wonder whether someone on this sleepy island is willing to stop at nothing―even murder―to claim Cameron House for their own.

Through Willow’s eyes, as well as those of others on the island, a mystery unfolds that keeps drawing Willow back to Cameron House and the very real ghosts that walk its corridors.

Visit Jennifer K. Breedlove's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Body Language"

New from Bucknell University Press: Body Language: Medicine and the Eighteenth-Century Comic Novel by Kathleen Tamayo Alves.

About the book, from the publisher:

Body Language examines the complex intersections of British eighteenth-century comic fiction and medical discourse. By engaging medical writings of renowned and widely-read physicians of the Enlightenment such as John Freind, Thomas Sydenham, Albrecht von Haller, John Whytt, and William Cullen, with novels of humor by Henry Fielding, Tobias Smollett, Laurence Sterne, and Charlotte Lennox, Alves explains how medicine shaped comic language by dramatizing female-specific phenomena like menstruation, hysteria, nervous disorders, and pregnancy. In these novels, the medical belief that women are incapable of bodily self-regulation becomes an imperative for policing women’s bodies and highlights the enduring shortcomings of patriarchal systems. Ultimately, these comic representations offer a counternarrative of women’s bodies, agency, and selfhood, exposing masculine anxieties about the effectiveness of marriage to regulate women’s sexuality.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Star Society"

Coming soon from Harper Muse: The Star Society: A Historical Novel by Gabriella Saab.

About the book, from the publisher:

Inspired by the indomitable spirit of Audrey Hepburn, this gripping story follows two extraordinary sisters as they reunite after World War II, embarking on a journey of justice, survival, and secrets amid the backdrop of the Red Scare in Hollywood.

A new name, a new country, and a coveted title as Hollywood's newest rising star: by 1946, actress Ada Worthington-Fox has discarded the life she left in war-torn Arnhem, where she worked for the Dutch resistance before Gestapo imprisonment prompted her to flee after release. But that life is thrust back into the spotlight when Ingrid--the sister she believed dead--shows up on her doorstep.

Politically-minded Ingrid escaped the Nazi invasion of Arnhem and fled to Washington, DC, where she became a private investigator. Now, she has been sent to root out Communist influences in Hollywood. Her target: Ada Worthington-Fox, the sister she long thought lost to her. Ingrid must hide her true purpose as she shields Ada from sneaky reporters, damaging rumors, and increasing threats, all while fighting to uncover which side her sister is truly on before Ingrid's efforts to help her are too late.

Yet, Ada has her own mission: locating the Gestapo agent who terrorized her hometown and bringing him to justice. But delving into her past would risk alerting the press to a life too personal to expose. As the rising fear of Communism threatens everyone, she turns to her sister, believing Ingrid's ties to Washington may be her only hope for success.

But the connections between Ada's elusive Nazi and Ingrid's Communist witch hunt might be stronger than they realize. Both sisters share the darkest secret of all, one that risks their very lives if ever exposed. As they come closer to identifying Ada's target and as Ingrid's investigation intensifies, they will need to decide what is more important: justice or safety, keeping silent or taking a stand, and, above all, if their loyalty to one another is worth risking the post-war lives they've fought to build.

A thrilling historical novel that transports readers from the shadows of the Dutch resistance to the glitz and glamour of Hollywood.

Visit Gabriella Saab's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Irish Romanticism: A Literary History"

New from Cambridge University Press: Irish Romanticism: A Literary History by Claire Connolly.

About the book, from the publisher:

What does 'Irish romanticism' mean and when did Ireland become romantic? How does Irish romanticism differ from the literary culture of late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain, and what qualities do they share? Claire Connolly proposes an understanding of romanticism as a temporally and aesthetically distinct period in Irish culture, during which literature flourished in new forms and styles, evidenced in the lives and writings of such authors as Thomas Dermody, Mary Tighe, Maria Edgeworth, Lady Morgan, Thomas Moore, Charles Maturin, John Banim, Gerald Griffin, William Carleton and James Clarence Mangan. Their books were written, sold, circulated and read in Ireland, Britain and America and as such were caught up in the shifting dramas of a changing print culture, itself shaped by asymmetries of language, power and population. Connolly meets that culture on its own terms and charts its history.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Only on Gameday"

Coming January 6 from MIRA: Only on Gameday (Game On, 5) by Kristen Callihan.

About the book, from the publisher:

A “fake” fiancée is just the trick to help a bad-boy football player clean up his image. Trouble is, there’s nothing fake about the way August feels about his “pretend” fiancée.

August Luck is on the brink of greatness: top NFL draft pick, a great team, multiple corporate sponsorships, but he keeps messing it up with bonehead moves. After his latest shenanigan goes viral, everyone is telling him to get his act together.

Penelope Morrow grew up with August. Their mothers were best friends. Unfortunately, Pen always fled the room with a look of disapproval on her pretty face whenever August was around. But Pen has a problem too: she inherited her grandparent’s house and can’t pay the estate tax.

On a whim, August decides a temporary public engagement is the solution to both their problems—he’ll pay her taxes, and she’ll help his image. Win-win.

But, when it comes to Pen, nothing is certain or safe. Because Pen isn’t so reserved anymore. This time, she’s smiling back at him. And he likes it. A lot. Will they each survive the ruse unscathed?

Game on...

Visit Kristen Callihan's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"As the Gods Kill"

New from the University of Texas Press: As the Gods Kill: Morality and Social Violence among the Precolonial Maya by Andrew K. Scherer.

About the book, from the publisher:

An exploration of war, violence, and sacrifice in precolonial Maya culture and its importance in religious practices.

As the Gods Kill delivers new insights into warfare, weaponry, violence, and human sacrifice among the ancient Maya. While attending to the particularity of a singular historical context, anthropologist and archaeologist Andrew Scherer also suggests that Maya practices have something to tell us about human propensities toward violence more broadly.

Focusing on moral frameworks surrounding deliberate injury and killing, Scherer examines Maya justifications of violence—in particular the obligations to one another, to ancestors, and to the gods that made violence not only permissible but necessary. The analysis isolates key themes underpinning the morality of violence—including justice, vengeance, payment, and costumbre (ritual)—and explores the ethics of violent agents, including warriors, ritual specialists, and the gods. Finally, Scherer addresses motivations for warfare, including the acquisition of spoils, tribute, captives, and slaves. An interdisciplinary case study of morality in an ancient society, As the Gods Kill synthesizes scholarship on an important dimension of precolonial American culture while taking stock of its implications for the social sciences at large.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Winter Witch"

Coming January 27 from Simon & Schuster: The Winter Witch: A Novel by Jennifer Chevalier.

About the book, from the publisher:

Two sisters set sail on a bride ship from Normandy hoping to leave a curse behind them and find better lives in the wilds of 17th-century Quebec, only to meet a mysterious witch who forces them to confront the truth about magic—and their past. For fans of Emilia Hart, Sarah Penner, Alix E. Harrow, Ami McKay, and Roberta Rich.

Élisabeth Jossard boards a bride ship to New France with her sister Marthe, forced to start a new life after a scandal in her village in Normandy. She’s harbouring a dark secret and hopes that by coming to Montreal—the holiest place in the world, she’s been told—the saints will hear her pleas and lift the curse that plagues her.

When Élisabeth’s prayers go unanswered and she is unable to banish the spirit she believes is tormenting her, Marthe encourages her to turn to a powerful witch for help, the enigmatic stowaway Jeanne Roy. But Jeanne has secrets of her own, and when she refuses to help, Élisabeth’s resentment kindles a dangerous fire.

Inspired by the tales of Canada’s Filles du Roi, The Winter Witch examines how lies, arrogance, and ignorance can lead to witch hunts in any society.

Visit Jennifer Chevalier's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"A Defence of Pretence"

New from Princeton University Press: A Defence of Pretence: Civility and the Theatre in Early Modern England by Indira Ghose.

About the book, from the publisher:

How the drama of Shakespeare’s time demonstrates the tensions within civility

Is civility merely a matter of reinforcing status and excluding others? Or is it a lubricant in a polarised world, enabling us to overcome tribal loyalties and cooperate for the common good? In A Defence of Pretence, Indira Ghose argues that it is both. Ghose turns to the drama of Shakespeare’s time to explore the notion of civility. The theatre, she suggests, was a laboratory where many of the era’s conflicts played out. The plays test the precepts found in treatises on civility and show that, in the complexity and confusion of human life, moral purity is an illusion. We are always playing roles. In these plays, as in social life, pretence is inescapable. Could it be a virtue?

Civility, Ghose finds, is radically ambiguous. The plays of Shakespeare, Jonson and Middleton, grappling with dissimulation, lies and social performance, question the idea of a clear—cut boundary between sincerity and dissembling, between truth and lies. What is decisive is the use to which our play—acting is put. A pretence of mutual respect might serve an ethical end: to foster a sense of common purpose. In life, as in drama, the concept of the common good might be a fiction, but one that is crucial for human society.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Jean"

Coming January 13 from W.W. Norton: Jean: A Novel by Madeleine Dunnigan.

About the book, from the publisher:

Set over one hot summer, a startlingly assured debut about the kinds of love that break us and make us whole.

Seventeen-year-old Jean, a troubled Jewish boy caught in the countercultural swirl of 1970s London, arrives at Compton Manor, a rural alternative boarding school for boys with “problems.” Dyslexic, antisocial, and prone to violent outbursts, Jean has never made friends easily and school has never been a place of safety or enjoyment.

Compton Manor is his last chance, but even here, despite the unconventional teaching methods, Jean is marked by difference. The other boys are fee-paying, while Jean is on a grant; they have good, English families, while Jean’s mother, Rosa, is a German-Jewish refugee and his father is an absent memory. Having broken the rules several times, Jean is on thin ice. But there is only one summer to get through and then Jean will pass his exams and get out.

All of a sudden, he is befriended by Tom―confident, charming, buoyed by years of good breeding and privilege―and it seems as if Jean’s world might change. When things turn romantic, Jean is tipped into a heady, overwhelming infatuation. Now Jean skips class to venture into the woods, or sneaks across moonlit fields to see Tom, wondering whether the relationship might offer a way out of a life marked by alienation. But what if the only true path to freedom is to disappear altogether

Spellbinding and evocative, Jean is a meditative narrative of loss and escape distilled into the heartrending story of an intense and dangerous adolescent love.

Visit Madeleine Dunnigan's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"What We Mourn"

New from the University of Virginia Press: What We Mourn: Child Death and the Politics of Grief in Nineteenth-Century Britain by Lydia Murdoch.

About the book, from the publisher:

How a new culture of bereavement changed the relationship of the Victorian state to its most vulnerable subjects

When the Tory Member of Parliament Michael Sadler argued in 1832 for state intervention on behalf of Britain’s dying child factory workers, he elicited smirks and ridicule from his Liberal adversaries—a response that would have been unimaginable by the century’s end. What We Mourn traces the changing understandings of child death within British, imperial, and transatlantic contexts and reveals the importance of youth and emotion to constructions of the modern state.

As childhood took on new meanings over the course of the long nineteenth century, public mourning for the premature deaths of children emerged as a way of asserting and even redefining British rights and citizenship. Factory hands and abolitionists, sanitation reformers and suffragists democratized and politicized their grief as they called upon the state to recognize their lives as part of a new, reimagined political order. As Lydia Murdoch shows, carrying their own and others’ private grief into the public sphere—with petitions and marches, public lectures and poetry—allowed marginalized members of society to assert their claim to rights. What We Mourn explores both the power and the limitations of a new politics founded on grief and the protection of child life.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Epicenter of Forever"

Coming February 1 from Lake Union: The Epicenter of Forever: A Novel by Mara Williams.

About the book, from the publisher:

A moving story about family, forgiveness, and unexpected love―where the fault lines of a fractured past become the foundation for building something new.

Eden Hawthorne spent idyllic childhood summers in Grand Trees, a mountain town perched along a restless earthquake fault in the heart of California’s fire country. But her family and future were shattered there, and she vowed never to return―until news of her estranged mother’s illness forces her back twenty years later.

Still reeling from her recent divorce, Eden has to confront her mom’s found family, including single father Caleb Connell, who blames Eden for the seismic rift that drove her away. But as they move beyond a battle of wills, Eden and Caleb discover shared wounds and intertwined histories―and succumb to an attraction that feels fated.

When her mother’s condition worsens, Eden faces an impossible choice between the man she’s falling for and the mother she’s just beginning to forgive. And with time running out, Eden fears her decision will doom her to relive the aftershocks of past heartbreak.

Visit Mara Williams's website.

Q&A with Mara Williams.

The Page 69 Test: The Truth Is in the Detours.

My Book, The Movie: The Truth Is in the Detours.

Writers Read: Mara Williams (August 2025).

--Marshal Zeringue

"From Mutiny to Revolt"

New from Cambridge University Press: From Mutiny to Revolt: Women and the Beginning of 1857 by William R. Pinch.

About the book, from the publisher:

Why did the nonviolent Meerut mutiny of 1857 in India explode into a violent military revolt? Breaking new ground on the events of May 10, William Pinch reexamines the evidence, shifting our focus toward the identity of female participants and their actions in the hours before the revolt began. Drawing upon a wide range of sources, including Hindi folksongs, military records, police reports, literary fiction, and Urdu memoir, he creates snapshots from the perspective of key figures to uncover the social and emotional world of the military 'cantonment' and its rural hinterland. By foregrounding the lives of ordinary 'military women' and 'their men' - the Indian sepoys who peopled the revolt - Pinch challenges conventional narratives and guides readers through the literary and historiographical echoes of the fateful decision to take up arms against the British.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Railsong"

Coming February 17 from Bloomsbury USA: Railsong: A Novel by Rahul Bhattacharya.

About the novel, from the publisher:

From the Man Asian Prize–shortlisted author Rahul Bhattacharya, a breathtaking novel about a woman forging a life for herself on the railways of twentieth-century India.

In a country rapidly modernizing after independence, Animesh Chitol bends his caste title into a quirky surname, moves his family to the brand-new township of Bhombalpur Railway Workshop, and throws in his lot with an optimism-filled future. Then tragedy strikes. Into the empty space left by his wife's passing grows Chitol's only daughter, the middle child, Charu. As India moves from steam to diesel locomotives, through a great strike and state repression, Charu flees to Bombay, alarmed by her narrow prospects. There she quests for the means to live on her own terms.

Amidst the everyday discriminations of modern India, Charu forges her own destiny, becoming a railway woman and census enumerator who keeps her heart open-sometimes guilelessly-to her country's vast possibility. Sweeping, elegiac, and at times wonderfully comic, Railsong is one woman's coming of age and a beautifully complex love letter to the finely wrought world of the Indian railways and a country beset by religious and political upheaval.

Visit Rahul Bhattacharya's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"A Scourge of Humanity"

New from Oxford University Press: A Scourge of Humanity: The Origins of Interpol and the End of Empire in Central and Eastern Europe by David Petruccelli.

About the book, from the publisher:

As the First World War came to a chaotic end, Europeans feared that a wave of crime and anarchy would sweep across their continent. The upheavals of the war and of the subsequent violent breakup of the Habsburg, German, and Ottoman empires magnified longstanding fears that an increasingly interconnected world offered the enterprising and unscrupulous new opportunities to break the law and evade capture. New kinds of international criminals and criminal enterprises demanded novel forms of international cooperation. Thus was born the International Criminal Police Commission, known today as Interpol. In the 1920s and 1930s, Interpol's police officials and the lawyers who collaborated with them created lasting programs to combat counterfeiting, sex and drug trafficking, terrorism, and human smuggling, and other forms of international crime, which they labelled "a scourge of humanity."

Drawing on press reports, police files, and criminal records in numerous languages and across multiple countries, David Petruccelli explores the origins of Interpol and the role Central and Eastern European actors played in developing criminal policing and law during the interwar period to bring stability to their region and reshape international institutions and norms. He shows how legal experts replaced a liberal focus on individual rights with an emphasis on a collective of international societies and of police officers who looked to the international sphere as a space for eluding the constraints of the rule of law at home. In doing so, their initiatives posed an alternative to the imperial and liberal internationalist programs pursued by many Western Europeans and Americans and laid the groundwork for more radical forms of persecution during the Second World War.

While bringing to life the stories of individuals involved in shady activities across borders, A Scourge of Humanity explores the vigorous policing and harsh criminal laws established by Interpol to combat their crimes and highlights illiberal forms of internationalism that have left a lasting mark on our world.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Downpour"

New from Berkley: Downpour (The Griffith Brothers) by Maggie Gates.

About the book, from the publisher:

A paraplegic bull rider and his new home aide fall in love as they pick up the pieces of their lives in the second book in the popular Griffith Brothers series.

Rule #1 of almost dying: Make sure someone knows your passwords. It’s hard to cancel your phone plan if you’re dead.

Rule #2 of almost dying: Make sure your house is clean before you walk up the steps to the pearly gates. It makes selling off your life easier.

All it took was eight seconds for Ray Griffith to win the biggest competition of his life, and one second to lose everything except that championship buckle. He'd left his family’s cattle ranch at eighteen with no intention of ever coming back for good. Now he's back, learning to navigate life in a wheelchair with a beautiful disaster attempting to burn the house down.

Rule #1 of trying to not get fired: Don’t piss off the grumpy bull rider.

Rule #2 of trying to not get fired: When you do get fired, keep your chin up. The grumpy bull rider was hot.

It was just a little fire. Tiny, even. But that didn’t change the fact that Ray Griffith didn’t want her anywhere near him. But they reached an agreement: if she ignores him, he doesn't fire her. Easy, right? Turns out not so much if they can’t keep their hands off each other.

Visit Maggie Gates's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Precarious Secrets"

New from University of Texas Press: Precarious Secrets: A History of the Latin American Political Thriller by Fabricio Tocco.

About the book, from the publisher:

An exploration of the political thriller genre and its context in Latin American politics and entertainment.

For the past five decades, a distinctive type of political thriller has been steadily developing in Latin America. Precarious Secrets is a panoramic overview of the genre in the hands of renowned writers and filmmakers from Argentina, Mexico, Chile, and Brazil, as well as lesser-known Peruvian, Uruguayan and Paraguayan artists for whom the style has been a vehicle for pungent narratives shot through with menace and conspiracy.

Fabricio Tocco explores the genre’s unique role in Latin American entertainment and activism. Precarious Secrets traces the evolutions of the Latin American political thriller from its emergence in the 1970s, through the silence imposed by dictatorships and the genre’s resurgence after the Cold War. The political thriller has dramatized the region’s turbulent past, through assassinations, coups, mass killings, revolutions and the search of desaparecidos by human rights organizations. In the process, Tocco isolates the Latin American political thriller’s particular grammar of secrecy. In the Hollywood thriller, revealing secrets involves high stakes and transformative consequences. In Latin American political thrillers, by contrast, secrets produce only more precarity—moral ambiguity as unsettling as it is unshakeable.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Other Moctezuma Girls"

Coming February 24 from Amazon Crossing: The Other Moctezuma Girls: A Novel by Sofia Robleda.

About the book, from the publisher:

In sixteenth-century Mexico, a fearless young woman strives to uncover the secrets her mother kept as the last Aztec empress in a sweeping historical epic by the author of Daughter of Fire.

Tenochtitlan, 1551. Thirty years after the Spanish Conquest destroyed everything she loved, the last Aztec empress has passed and left behind a pristine yet tenuous legacy for her children. As her last will and testament is read out, her daughter Isabel suspects that another account of her mother’s life may exist, hidden away, chapter by chapter, in the Valley of Mexico. Following each clue, Isabel is determined to find out who her mother really was and to discover the secrets she buried in order to survive.

Joined by her siblings and a handsome young cook named Juan, Isabel embarks on a perilous journey to piece together the past―a journey that will force the party to brave the brutal viceroyal court, face fearsome legends in mystical chinampas, and trek through desert, fire, and snow. As Isabel’s feelings for Juan grow, she confronts everything she thought she knew about her Spanish father, her empress mother, and herself. Facing everything from the tunnels of ancient pyramids to the summit of an active volcano, Isabel will meet every challenge to fulfill an epic quest for the truth.

Visit Sofia Robleda's website.

The Page 69 Test: Daughter of Fire.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Radical Romanticism"

New from Columbia University Press: Radical Romanticism: Democracy, Religion, and the Environmental Imagination by Mark S. Cladis.

About the book, from the publisher:

Romanticism is often reduced to nostalgic pastoralism and solitary contemplation of the sublime. But a radical strand of Romantic writers and thinkers offered sweeping political, ecological, and religious critiques of capitalism, racism, settler colonialism, and environmental destruction. Interweaving canonical nineteenth-century authors with Black and Indigenous thinkers who transformed their work, this book is a bold new account of Romanticism for today’s deeply entrenched crises.

Mark S. Cladis examines the progressive democratic, religious, and environmental beliefs and practices that informed European Romantic literature and its sustained legacies in North America. His interpretation interweaves diverse voices such as W. E. B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, and Leslie Marmon Silko while also revealing the progressive visions of Romantic authors such as Rousseau, William and Dorothy Wordsworth, Coleridge, Mary Shelley, Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller. Forging connections among literary and philosophical traditions while closely reading a wide range of texts, Radical Romanticism shows how storytelling is central to the pursuit of justice and flourishing for the human and the more-than-human worlds. Bringing together environmental humanities, literary theory, political theory, and religious studies, this book makes the case for a renewed radical Romanticism, offering urgent resources for a world beset by catastrophe, uncertainty, and despair.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Love in Plane Sight"

New from Berkley: Love in Plane Sight by Lauren Connolly.

About the book, from the publisher:

With her brother’s grumpy best friend—and her longtime nemesis—as Beth’s flight instructor, her pilot lessons could be a plane disaster or their first-class ticket to forever.

Mayday. Mayday. Engine failure.

When flying with George Bunsen, the last thing Beth Lundberg wants is to be horny in the cockpit. But when her first ride-along dives toward disaster, the perpetually stoic George is forced to execute a skillful emergency landing, and Beth is horrified to find herself with an adrenaline-fueled crush on the pilot. She’s even more shocked when her brother’s best friend offers her discounted flight lessons—possibly out of guilt for almost killing them.

And despite George’s annoying habit of departing any room the moment Beth enters, she really wants to accept. No matter that it’s an egregiously expensive hobby, or that her waitressing wages go right toward her mother’s medical bills, or that she’s already in debt up to her eyebrows. Flying is Beth’s dream, and she could use her private license to earn real money.

The more time they spend navigating the sky, the more the turbulence between George and Beth dissipates. But Beth has seen the burning wreckage that comes from mixing business with pleasure—plus, she’s been keeping a secret that, once revealed, will send all her relationships into a tailspin. Can she really take a risk on romance when her pilot career isn’t even off the ground?

Visit Lauren Connolly's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Being Thomas Jefferson"

Coming January 13 from Bloomsbury: Being Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History by Andrew Burstein.

About the book, from the publisher:

The deepest dive yet into the heart and soul, secret affairs, unexplored alliances, and bitter feuds of a generally worshipped, intermittently reviled American icon.

Perhaps no founding father is as mysterious as Thomas Jefferson. The author of the Declaration of Independence was both a gifted wordsmith and a bundle of nerves. His superior knowledge of the human heart is captured in the impassioned appeal he brought to the Declaration. But as a champion of the common man who lived a life of privilege on a mountaintop plantation of his own design, he has eluded biographers who have sought to make sense of his inner life. In Being Thomas Jefferson, acclaimed Jefferson scholar Andrew Burstein peels away layers of obfuscation, taking us past the veneer of the animated letter-writer to describe a confused lover and a misguided humanist, too timid to embrace antislavery.

Jefferson was a soft-spoken man who recoiled from direct conflict, yet a master puppeteer in politics. Whenever he left Monticello, where he could control his environment, he suffered debilitating headaches that plagued him for decades, until he finally retired from public life. So, what did it feel like to be Thomas Jefferson? Burstein explains the decision to take as his mistress Sally Hemings, the enslaved half-sister of his late wife, who bore him six children, none of whom he acknowledged. Presenting a society that encouraged separation between public and private, appearance and essence, Burstein paints a dramatic picture of early American culture and brings us closer to Jefferson's life and thought than ever before.

--Marhsal Zeringue

"Thirty, Flirty, and Forever Alone"

Coming soon from Montlake: Thirty, Flirty, and Forever Alone by Christine Riccio.

About the book, from the publisher:

27 Dresses meets Crazy Ex-Girlfriend in this witty, serendipitous rom-com with a magical twist from New York Times bestselling author Christine Riccio.

When your name literally means “forever alone,” it takes a lot of positive self-talk to stay optimistic in the hellscape that is dating. But on the cusp of thirty, Rikki Romona is determined to find her person.

Columnist, therapist, podcaster, entrepreneur―Rikki is an overachiever who thrives on schedules. She can absolutely handle two weddings in two days, and lock down someone to drag along as a plus-one.

And yet, spoiler: She doesn’t.

Rikki finds herself flying hopelessly solo at a themed wedding in New Jersey. A lonely Rapunzel waiting for her Flynn.

Enter Reed Tyler: writer, podcast producer, wannabe actor. Surprisingly single with startling blue eyes, he seems perfect. The catch? He lives kind of far away, so dating him would be a bit of a hike. Like an intense, all-the-way-across-the-country hike.

After one unforgettable night together, Rikki’s sure this is the end. But as she braces herself for heartache, the universe, it seems, has other plans…

Visit Christine Riccio's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Willing Warriors"

New from the University of Chicago Press: Willing Warriors: A New History of the Education Culture Wars by Mark Hlavacik.

About the book, from the publisher:

How the rise of the culture wars afflicts the politics of education.

On August 9, 2022, the Denton Independent School District held a meeting to address complaints about its libraries. Like so many districts in Texas and across the country, Denton had been responding to accusations that children had access to inappropriate books at school. During the public comment session, a local man stood up to the podium and read a sexually explicit passage from a book that he wanted removed from Denton’s school libraries. But beguiled by the prospect of securing a political win, he had confused the title of the lurid psychological thriller he read aloud with a young adult fiction series about mermaids. While his attempt to ban a book that was never in Denton’s school libraries in the first place received a few laughs, it also reflects a deeply serious and troubling culture of conflict that has taken over the politics of education and now divides people so completely as to make public education as a shared endeavor seem impossible.

In Willing Warriors, Mark Hlavacik shows how the culture wars have redefined the politics of US schooling from the 1970s to the present through vivid accounts of public controversies featuring Allan Bloom, Oprah Winfrey, Lynne Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, Betsy DeVos, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and others. Beginning in the 1970s, Hlavacik shows, efforts at innovation in schooling have increasingly been met by attempts to discredit them through exposé. As the culture wars have accelerated and exploded, this cycle of innovation and exposé has embroiled public schools in increasingly heated debates. He explains the dynamics that make curriculum controversies so intractable and confronts the delicate question of whether raucous public arguments are bad for education.

With clarity and insight, Hlavacik reveals why bitter contests between educational ideologies not only add another burden for the schools, but also for the people—the willing warriors—who devote their lives to fighting for their betterment.

Visit Mark Hlavacik's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Cape Fever"

New from Simon & Schuster: Cape Fever: A Novel by Nadia Davids.

About the book, from the publisher:

From award-winning South African author Nadia Davids comes a gothic psychological thriller set in the 1920s, where a young maid finds herself entangled with the spirits of a decaying manor and the secrets of its enigmatic owner.

I come highly recommended to Mrs. Hattingh through sentences I tell her I cannot read.

The year is 1920, in a small, unnamed city in a colonial empire. Soraya Matas believes she has found the ideal job as a personal maid to the eccentric Mrs. Hattingh, whose beautiful, decaying home is not far from The Muslim Quarter where Soraya lives with her parents. As Soraya settles into her new role, she discovers that the house is alive with spirits.

While Mrs. Hattingh eagerly awaits her son’s visit from London, she offers to help Soraya stay in touch with her fiancé Nour by writing him letters on her behalf. So begins a strange weekly meeting where Soraya dictates and Mrs. Hattingh writes—a ritual that binds the two women to one another and eventually threatens the sanity of both.

Cape Fever is a masterful blend of gothic themes, folk-tales, and psychological suspense, reminiscent of works by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Daphne du Maurier, and Soraya Matas is an unforgettable narrator, whose story of love and grief, is also a chilling exploration of class and the long reach of history.

Visit Nadia Davids's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Broken China Dream"

New from Princeton University Press: The Broken China Dream: How Reform Revived Totalitarianism by Minxin Pei.

About the book, from the publisher:

A provocative book that demystifies China’s great democratic leap backward under Xi Jinping, revealing why the country’s embrace of capitalism has given rise to hard authoritarianism, mass surveillance, and one—man rule instead of democracy as many in the West had hoped

When China embarked on its transformative journey of modernization in 1979, many believed the country’s turn toward capitalism would put its totalitarian past to rest and mark the birth of a democratic, open society. Instead, China reverted to a neo—totalitarian state, one backed by one of the fastest—growing, most formidable economies on earth. The Broken China Dream pulls back the curtain on the regime of strongman Xi Jinping, revealing why the reforms of the post—Mao era have been reversed on nearly every front—and why the world failed to see it coming.

Exposing the truth behind China’s economic ascendency after the Cultural Revolution, Minxin Pei shows how, following Mao’s death in 1976, Deng Xiaoping strategically deployed the tools of capitalism to preserve the Chinese Communist Party. Deng kept intact the institutional foundations of totalitarianism even as he unleashed private entrepreneurship and courted foreign investment, giving China’s one—party state control of a vast repressive apparatus and the most critical sectors of the economy. Only a fragile balance of power among dueling factions prevented the rise of a totalitarian leader in the two decades after the Tiananmen crackdown in 1989—but this temporary equilibrium collapsed.

Essential to understanding today’s China, this meticulously researched book is a sobering account of why the country’s reformers and institutions could not stop a shrewd and ruthless politician like Xi from resurrecting dormant totalitarian practices that, for the foreseeable future, have spelled the end of the dream of a free and prosperous China.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Slow Burn"

Coming January 27 from Montlake: The Slow Burn by Ali Rosen.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the bestselling author of Unlikely Story comes a warm, witty novel about a chef whose unexpected summer in Italy turns messier and richer than any recipe she ever would’ve planned.

Between a breakup and a burned-down restaurant, there’s nothing left in New York for Kit Roth except the ashes of her success.

Needing distance and distraction, she agrees to work for her best friend’s pasta-making nonna in the Italian countryside. But instead of providing a quiet sabbatical to eat up time while her kitchen is rebuilt, the small town of Manciano keeps pulling Kit into its rituals and rhythms. And before long, it shows her everything she’s been missing. Simpler cooking, community…and Nico Ruspoli, an olive oil producer with his own scorched past. But with Kit determined to leave after three months, and Nico rooted to his grove, their growing chemistry is at odds with what they both want for their future.

Yet with each passing week, Kit finds herself measuring less and tasting more. And when it’s time to go back to her life in New York, she doesn’t know what―or who―she’s willing to leave behind.

Visit Ali Rosen's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"A Most Quiet Murder"

New from Cornell University Press: A Most Quiet Murder: Maternity, Affliction, and Violence in Late Nineteenth-Century France by Susannah Wilson.

About the book, from the publisher:

A Most Quiet Murder examines the death of a five-year-old girl in late nineteenth-century France, unfolding the mystery through judicial investigations, psychiatric medical evaluations, and ultimately, a trial for murder.

The investigators quickly learned that the child, Henriette, had been abducted by Marie-Françoise Fiquet, an employee at the city tobacco factory and known troublemaker. Fiquet had taken the child back to her home and kept her there all day. But what actually happened between the abduction at midday and the discovery of the child's body at five o'clock in the morning remained a mystery.

Susannah Wilson uses archival records, press coverage, and psychiatric reports to reveal how the troubled history and reputation of Marie-Françoise Fiquet, marked by suspicions of sexual debauchery, infanticide, abortions, poisoning, theft, and extortion, was a case study in an emerging medical paradigm. Her signs of trauma, psychological disturbance, and medical morphine abuse provide insight into factitious disorders―or simulated illnesses―that would be more commonly observed in the following century.

A Most Quiet Murder provides a new view of nineteenth-century France, where the law and public authorities intervened in the lives of the working classes and their children during moments of crisis to exercise the law of the land. The murder of a child reveals the connections between the psychology of female violence, the emergent understanding of factitious disorders, and the psychologically complex motives that extend beyond simple altruism.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Served Him Right"

Coming March 10 from Park Row Books: Served Him Right: A Novel by Lisa Unger.

About the novel, from the publisher:

A woman’s brunch with friends quickly turns dark in this gripping thriller from New York Times bestselling author Lisa Unger

Ana Blacksmith has gathered her closest friends and sister Vera for a brunch to celebrate her recent breakup from her boyfriend Paul. But when shocking news about Paul arrives, all eyes are on Ana, the angry ex with a bad reputation. Suspicions only intensify when Ana’s best friend falls deathly ill after the brunch.

But Ana is not the only one who had a score to settle with Paul. As the investigation unfolds, rumors of a secret network that uses ancient methods to obtain justice begin to emerge. Vengeance is sweet, but it can also be deadly. Ana and Vera are determined to find the truth before Ana takes the fall and their own long—buried history comes to light.

Visit Lisa Unger's website.

Q&A with Lisa Unger.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Affairs of Humanity"

New from Yale University Press: Affairs of Humanity: The Religious Origins of Humanitarian Diplomacy in Britain and Europe, 1690-1748 by Catherine Arnold.

About the book, from the publisher:

A new look at the origins of humanitarian intervention

We are encouraged to empathize with the suffering of distant strangers every day, from ads for UNICEF to the outcry over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But where did this type of politics come from?

Historian and practicing barrister Catherine Arnold locates the religious origins of humanitarian politics in early eighteenth‑century Britain and Europe. In the late seventeenth century, British politicians argued for “confessional intervention”—in other words, for interventions to protect Britain’s fellow Protestants in continental Europe. By the 1740s, however, a cadre of high‑ranking British officials was advocating instead for a new form of “humanitarian intervention,” using natural law–inflected language to justify its claims. Between 1690 and 1745, British officials intervened diplomatically to protect not only Protestants in France, northwestern Italy, and the Holy Roman Empire, but also Jewish fugitives from Portugal, Catholic dissidents in France, and Jewish refugees in Bohemia.

Arnold shows that this new type of intervention was intended to stop states from torturing, imprisoning, or expelling their subjects and was justified with humanitarian arguments. British officials contended that state persecution—that is, using state authority to punish a subject only because of her religious beliefs—violated natural law. They asserted that Britain had a duty to prevent states from violating natural law and an ethical obligation to aid sufferers of all religious faiths out of common humanity.

--Marshal Zeringue