"You Can't Stay Here Forever"

New from Harper: You Can't Stay Here Forever: A Novel by Katherine Lin.

About the book, from the publisher:

Desperate to obliterate her past, a young widow flees California for the French Riviera in this compelling debut, a tale of loss, rebirth, modern friendship, and romance that blends Sally Rooney’s wryness and psychological insight with Emma Straub's gorgeous scene-setting and rich relationships.

Just days after her young, handsome husband dies in a car accident, Ellie Huang discovers that he had a mistress—one of her own colleagues at a prestigious San Francisco law firm. Acting on impulse—or is it grief? rage? Probably all three—Ellie cashes in Ian’s life insurance policy for an extended stay at the luxurious Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc in Antibes, France. Accompanying her is her free-spirited best friend, Mable Chou.

Ellie hopes that the five-star resort on the French Riviera, with its stunning clientele and floral-scented cocktails, will be a heady escape from the real world. And at first it is. She and Mable meet an intriguing couple, Fauna and Robbie, and as their poolside chats roll into wine-soaked dinners, the four become increasingly intimate. But the sunlit getaway soon turns into a reckoning for Ellie, as long-simmering tensions and uncomfortable truths swirl to the surface.

Taking the reader from San Francisco to the gilded luxury of the south of France, You Can’t Stay Here Forever is a sharply funny and exciting debut that explores the slippery nature of marriage, the push and pull between friends, and the interplay of race and privilege, seen through the eyes of a young Asian American woman.

Visit Katherine Lin's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Three Ages of Water"

New from PublicAffairs: The Three Ages of Water: Prehistoric Past, Imperiled Present, and a Hope for the Future by Peter Gleick.

About the book, from the publisher:

A revelatory account of how water has shaped the course of human life and history, and a positive vision of what the future can hold—if we act now

From the very creation of the planet billions of years ago to the present day, water has always been central to existence on Earth. And since long before the legendary Great Flood, it has been a defining force in the story of humanity.

In The Three Ages of Water, Peter Gleick guides us through the long, fraught history of our relationship to this precious resource. Water has shaped civilizations and empires, and driven centuries of advances in science and technology—from agriculture to aqueducts, steam power to space exploration—and progress in health and medicine. But the achievements that have propelled humanity forward also brought consequences, including unsustainable water use, ecological destruction, and global climate change, that now threaten to send us into a new dark age. We must change our ways, and quickly, to usher in a new age of water for the benefit of everyone. Drawing from the lessons of our past, Gleick charts a visionary path toward a sustainable future for water and the planet.

Visit Peter Gleick's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Quiet Part Out Loud"

Coming soon from Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers: The Quiet Part Out Loud by Deborah Crossland.

About the book, from the publisher:

For fans of You’ve Reached Sam and A Heart in a Body in the World, this searing and heartrending teen novel follows an ex-couple as they struggle to reunite in the wake of a devastating earthquake.

High school sweethearts Mia Clementine and Alfie Thanasis had a plan to escape their town for college in the east. Mia would leave her hard-core evangelical home for Sarah Lawrence College, and Alfie would have a new place to pursue his three loves: baseball, poetry, and Mia. But when Alfie got offered a scholarship to the University of San Francisco the same week the entire town found out about Mia’s mom’s affair with their church’s pastor, Mia’s world imploded and she pushed everyone away…including Alfie.

Five months after the worst summer ever, Mia is crashing at her best friend’s dorm at San Francisco State, just a few miles away from the University of San Francisco, praying she never runs into the boy whose heart she broke. And Alfie is trying to make the most of his freshman year while struggling to reconcile with the abrupt ending of his first love.

When Mia and Alfie’s paths cross for the briefest of moments, Mia realizes she never should have let him go and Alfie’s suppressed memories and feelings boil to the surface. But their reunion is cut short when a massive earthquake rocks San Francisco, leaving them to stumble desperately across the rubble in search of the ex they still love before the city crumbles—taking one, or both, of them with it.

Visit Deborah Crossland's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Mary Climbs In"

New from Rutgers University Press: Mary Climbs In: The Journeys of Bruce Springsteen's Women Fans by Lorraine Mangione and Donna Luff.

About the book, from the publisher:

Bruce Springsteen has been cherished by his fans for decades, from his early days playing high school gymnasiums through globally successful albums and huge stadium shows to solo performances in intimate theaters. As his long and illustrious career has evolved, the legendary devotion of his fans has remained a constant. Springsteen fans have become worthy of study in their own right, with books, memoirs, and even a movie documenting their passion and perspectives. But his fans are not monolithic, and surprisingly little attention has been paid to why so many women from across the world adore The Boss.

Mary Climbs In illuminates this once overlooked but increasingly important and multi-faceted conversation about female audiences for Springsteen’s music. Drawing on unique surveys of fans themselves, the study offers insight into women’s experiences in their own voices. Authors Lorraine Mangione and Donna Luff explore the depth of women fans’ connection to Springsteen and the profound ways this connection has shaped their lives. Reflections from fans enliven each page as readers journey through the camaraderie and joy of concerts, the sorrow and confusion of personal loss and suffering, the love and closeness of community, and the search for meaning and for the self. Viewed through a psychological lens, women fans’ relationship with Springsteen is revealed in all its complexity as never before. Mary Climbs In is an important interdisciplinary contribution to the growing field of Springsteen studies and a must-read for any fan.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Final Cut"

New from Crooked Lane Books: Final Cut by Marjorie McCown.

About the book, from the publisher:

Perfect for fans of Elle Cosimano and Nita Prose, when Hollywood costumer Joey Jessop stumbles across a dead body near the set of a big budget movie, she must find ways to protect her career—and herself—before it’s too late.

Joey Jessop enjoys working behind the scenes. As key costumer for the next epic superhero movie, her role is to make others look good while staying out of the spotlight. That means making sure to be professional around Eli Logan, her ex and the First Assistant Director, and Courtney Lisle, Eli’s newest love interest and the Second Assistant Director. But this isn’t a problem for Joey—especially when the movie is shooting at a gorgeous Malibu location.

All of that changes when Joey finds Courtney’s dead body on the first day of principal photography and she soon becomes the primary suspect. When the press takes hold of the story and social media begins to run with it, Joey watches her well-ordered life behind the scenes become front and center for all to see. But that isn’t even the worst of it. In the midst of this newfound and unfortunate stardom, she must also contend with the reckless behavior of the movie’s predatory director and producer, Marcus Pray, who seems driven to continue his practice of making another blockbuster hit while making sure his crew endures a toxic and potentially lethal work environment. As a result, Joey finds herself embattled both personally and professionally.

With tensions building on set and a murder investigation looming over her life and future, Joey takes it upon herself to clear her name. Will she be able to expose the truth before it’s a wrap?

Visit Marjorie McCown's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Company Politics"

New from Oxford University Press: Company Politics: Commerce, Scandal, and French Visions of Indian Empire in the Revolutionary Era by Elizabeth Cross.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the wake of the Seven Years' War and the consolidation of British power on the subcontinent, the French monarchy chartered a new East India Company. The Nouvelle Compagnie des Indes was an attempt to maintain French diplomatic and financial credit among European rivals and trading partners within a region integral to the broader imperial economy. Reimagining French power as subsisting through an informal empire of trade, instead of a territorial empire of conquest, officials and intellectuals sought to remake the trading company as a private, "purely commercial" actor, rather than a sovereign company-state.

Company Politics offers a new interpretation of political economy, imperialism, and the history of the corporation during the late Old Regime and the French Revolution. Despite its reputation for speculation, corruption, and scandal, Elizabeth Cross argues that the "New Company" emerged from the unique circumstances France faced in India as a weakened imperial power vis à vis the expanding British East India Company. Seeking to control the Company for their own purposes, French government officials, theorists, and private financial actors clashed over differing notions of political economy, debt, and imperial power for Europe and the Indian Ocean world. In doing so, they envisioned new alignments between state and market, challenged the legitimacy of the Old Regime's economic and imperial policies, and sought to revolutionize the underlying corporation itself through progressive demands of corporate self-governance. Thus, the New Company should be seen as an innovative capitalist actor in its own right, not a mere derivative of its Anglo-Dutch competitors.

A valuable contribution to scholarship on capitalism, empire, and globalization, Company Politics uses the Company's history to present the Revolutionary Era as one of dynamic economic ideologies, practices, and experimentation, rather than only one of crisis and decline.

Follow Elizabeth Cross on Twitter.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Psyche and Eros"

New from William Morrow: Psyche and Eros: A Novel by Luna McNamara.

About the book, from the publisher:

In this utterly transporting reimagining of Greek mythology, the god of desire is cursed to fall for a spirited young mortal woman, but if she looks upon his face they will be parted forever—an epic adventure and love story for the ages, sure to satisfy fans of Madeline Miller and V.E. Schwab

Who said true love is a myth?

A prophecy claims that Psyche, princess of Mycenae, will defeat a monster feared even by the gods. Rebelling against her society’s expectations for women, Psyche spends her youth mastering blade and bow, preparing to meet her destiny.

When Psyche angers the love goddess Aphrodite, she sends Eros, god of desire, to deliver a cruel curse. After eons watching humanity twist his gifts, the last thing Eros wants is to become involved in the chaos of the mortal world. But when he pricks himself with the arrow intended for Psyche, Eros finds himself doomed to yearn for a woman who will be torn from him the moment their eyes meet.

Thrown together by fate, headstrong Psyche and world-weary Eros will face challenges greater than they could have ever imagined. And as the Trojan War begins and divine powers try to keep them apart, the pair must determine if the curse could become something more . . . before it’s too late.

A joyous and subversive tale of gods, monsters, and the human heart and soul, Psyche and Eros dazzles the senses while exploring notions of trust, sacrifice, and what it truly means to be a hero. With unforgettably vivid characters, spellbinding prose, and delicious tension, Luna McNamara has crafted a shimmering and propulsive debut novel about a love so strong it defies the will of Olympus.

Visit Luna McNamara's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Gun Country"

Coming November 2023 from the University of North Carolina Press: Gun Country: Gun Capitalism, Culture, and Control in Cold War America by Andrew C. McKevitt.

About the book, from the publisher:

Just as World War II transformed the United States into a global military and economic superpower, so too did it forge the gun country America is today. After 1945, war-ravaged European nations possessed large surpluses of mass-produced weapons, and American entrepreneurs seized the opportunity to buy used munitions for pennies on the dollar and resell them stateside. A booming consumer market made cheap guns accessible to millions of Americans, and rates of gun ownership and violence began to climb. Andrew C. McKevitt tells the history of this gun boom through the dynamics of consumer capitalism and Cold War ideology, the combination of which resulted in a vast number of Americans arming themselves to the teeth and centering their political identity on their guns.

When gun control legislation emerged in the 1960s, many Americans, accustomed to the unregulated postwar bounty of cheap guns and fearful of Soviet invasion, domestic subversion, and urban uprisings, fiercely challenged it. Meanwhile, gun control groups were diverted from their abolitionist roots toward a conciliatory, fundraising-focused strategy that struggled to limit the stockpiling of firearms. Gun Country recasts the story of guns in postwar America as one of Cold War and racial anxieties, unfettered capitalism, and exceptional violence that continues to haunt us to this day.

Follow Drew McKevitt on Twitter.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Sally Brady's Italian Adventure"

New from St. Martin's Press: Sally Brady's Italian Adventure by Christina Lynch.

About the book, from the publisher:

What if you found yourself in the middle of a war armed only with lipstick and a sense of humor? Abandoned as a child in Los Angeles in 1931, dust bowl refugee Sally Brady convinces a Hollywood movie star to adopt her, and grows up to be an effervescent gossip columnist secretly satirizing Europe’s upper crust. By 1940 saucy Sally is conquering Fascist-era Rome with cheek and charm.

A good deed leaves Sally stranded in wartime Italy, brandishing a biting wit, a fake passport, and an elastic sense of right and wrong. To save her friends and find her way home through a land of besieged castles and villas, Sally must combat tragedy with comedy, tie up pompous bureaucrats in their own red tape, force the cruel to be kind, and unravel the mystery, weight, and meaning of family.

Heir to Odysseus’s wiles and Candide’s optimism, Sally Brady is a heroine for the 21st century.

Visit Christina Lynch's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Italian Party.

The Page 69 Test: The Italian Party.

Writers Read: Christina Lynch (April 2018).

--Marshal Zeringue

"Idealism and the Harmony of Thought and Reality"

New from Oxford University Press: Idealism and the Harmony of Thought and Reality by Thomas Hofweber.

About the book, from the publisher:

Do human beings have a special and distinguished place in reality? In Idealism and the Harmony of Thought and Reality Thomas Hofweber contends that they do. We are special since there is an intimate connection between our human minds and reality itself. This book defends a form of idealism which holds that our human minds constrain, but do not construct, reality as the totality of facts. Reality as the totality of facts is thus not independent of our minds, and our minds play a metaphysically special role in all of reality. But reality as the totality of things is taken to be completely independent of us.

Hofweber's proposed form of conceptual idealism is formulated via the notion of a harmony between our minds and reality. This harmony is defended through considerations in the philosophy of language. How can one possibly defend a metaphysical thesis like idealism from considerations about our own representation? A key step in the book's argument is to consider a special class of concepts--inescapable concepts--which we cannot rationally replace with different ones. This leads to a new approach for making progress in metaphysics--immanent metaphysics--which is broadly neo-Kantian in spirit.

Visit Thomas Hofweber's website.

--Marshal Zeringue