"Neither Land nor Water"

New from the University of Chicago Press: Neither Land nor Water: Planning Through Fringe Ecologies in the Meadowlands (1896–2020) by Şevin Yildiz.

About the book, from the publisher:

An urban and environmental history of the New Jersey Meadowlands, where marsh meets megamall.

The New Jersey Meadowlands, the vast marshes across the Hudson River from New York City, are a mysterious and complex wetland. Both strange and well-known to the millions of people who traverse the northeast corridor every year, this landscape is not well understood despite its familiarity. Seemingly natural and unnatural, human and nonhuman, the Meadowlands has long been shaped by urban development, industry, infrastructure, and countless dreams.

In Neither Land nor Water, Şevin Yıldız offers a close look at the planners, scientists, developers, politicians, industrialists, and others who have engaged with, dreamed about, or damaged this transitional ecology in different ways over the decades. She traces key periods in the area’s rich histories of urban planning and ecological thought, from the dispossession of the Lenape natives, through the dawn of ecological science, and onto both intensive industrial developments and environmental resistance to them. She examines as well how the Meadowlands exposes the inadequacies of today’s approaches to planning in the face of climate change and how they perhaps offer clues to a better future.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Burn of the Everflame"

New from Atria Books: Burn of the Everflame: A Novel (The Kindred's Curse Saga) by Penn Cole.

About the novel, from the publisher:

The highly anticipated never-before-published final book in the Kindred's Curse Saga, a slow-burn, epic romantasy series following one woman who must risk everything to save her family—and all of mortalkind.

War has overtaken Emarion. In the north, Ophiucae and his army of bloodthirsty mortals seek to eradicate all Descended from the continent. In the south, the Guardians of the Everflame lie in wait, plotting a rebellion generations overdue.

In Lumnos, Realm of Light and Shadow, the Crowns are gathering. Caught between two deadly foes, they must form an unlikely alliance to save their people.

But the Crowns have a secret—and a heart without its mate will burn the world down to fulfill its fate.

Hatred reigns. Hope seems lost. With the future in darkness, can a flame emerge to bring the light?

Visit Penn Cole's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Brass Band Story"

New from Yale University Press: The Brass Band Story by Trevor Herbert.

About the book, from the publisher:

A lively and engaging history of the brass band in Britain and beyond

Brass bands have played a unique role in the cultural history of Britain. Amidst the industrial revolution, an increasingly urban population turned to music for mass entertainment. Brass bands became intimately associated with working men and spread across the country at breathtaking speed. At their height in the late Victorian era, there were thousands of them.

Trevor Herbert reveals the story of these bands, from their working-class origins and the enormous popularity of Victorian contests to their sophistication in modern times. It is a tale of the survival of tradition and the embrace of change. Victorian brass bands solidified communities and promoted shared local identities. As new modes of popular culture posed existential threats in the twentieth century, they reinvented themselves. The model British bands created is now replicated throughout the world.

This is a fascinating and revealing history of a much-loved aspect of Britain’s musical heritage.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Hidden Currents"

New from Severn House: Hidden Currents (A Sheriff Hank Worth Mystery, 8) by Claire Booth.

About the novel, from the publisher:

Another outstanding book in an ever-evolving police procedural series perfect for fans of Terry Shames and Steven F. Havill.

When the new owner of a local fishing store is found murdered, Sheriff Hank Worth has plenty of suspects. The owner was in the middle of a highly acrimonious divorce, had fallen out with his stepson, and was being threatened by the abusive ex-boyfriend of one of his employees.

As Hank delves deeper into the increasingly complicated crime, his professional life is also taking a toll. His deputy sheriff Sheila is in court testifying against the men who had left her for dead in a brutal attack, and the defense will do whatever it takes to win their case.

As tensions grow, it becomes clear there are hidden currents just under the surface everywhere Hank turns.

A skillful blend of character, plot, and mystery laced with a streak of dry humor.

Visit Claire Booth's website.

My Book, The Movie: Another Man's Ground.

The Page 69 Test: Another Man's Ground.

My Book, The Movie: A Deadly Turn.

The Page 69 Test: A Deadly Turn. 

Writers Read: Claire Booth (March 2019).

My Book, The Movie: Fatal Divisions.

The Page 69 Test: Fatal Divisions.

Q&A with Claire Booth.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Legal Moves"

New from Stanford University Press: Legal Moves: Choreographies of Race, Law, and Empire by Anna Jayne Kimmel.

About the book, from the publisher:

Legal Moves engages in a project of epistemological disobedience, boldly suturing concepts of dance studies—kinesthetic awareness, fleshly memory, and techniques of the body—to the legal humanities. What opens when we expand our disciplinary methods of law—from the lettered to the embodied? Might we locate a more complete portrait of law, its logic, and impact for construction of the human? Anna Jayne Kimmel combs the laws and law-making logics of French imperial order and its postcolonial legacy to surface the already-embedded corporeal attentions and choreographic features of legal studies. The book moves across analysis of seventeenth-century French legal codes of conduct that structured race and empire within the metropole and its overseas horizons, twentieth-century scenes of police violence during anti-colonial protest in France, twenty-first century anxieties of assembly in postcolonial Algeria, and embodied aesthetics contained within human rights discourse. By tracing disciplined histories of dance notation, Kimmel argues laws have long operated as a societal score which script movements and conscript citizens into racialized categories of (non)being. Drawing upon archival material, legal records, and performance practice, Legal Moves calls to reimagine the human within Western jurisprudence of the body.

Visit Anna Jayne Kimmel's website.

--Marshal Zeringue