"Counting the Cost of Freedom"

New from the University of North Carolina Press: Counting the Cost of Freedom: The Fight Over Compensated Emancipation after the Civil War by Amanda Laury Kleintop.

About the book, from the publisher:

During the Civil War, the US government abolished slavery without reimbursing enslavers, diminishing the white South’s wealth by nearly 50 percent. After the Confederacy’s defeat, white Southerners demanded federal compensation for the financial value of formerly enslaved people and fought for other policies that would recognize abolition’s costs during Reconstruction. As Amanda Laury Kleintop shows, their persistence eventually led to the creation of Section 4 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which abolished the right to profit from property in people. Surprisingly, former Confederates responded by using Lost Cause history-making to obscure the fact that they had demanded financial redress in the first place. The largely successful efforts of white southerners to erase this history continues to generate false understandings today.

Kleintop draws from an impressive array of archival sources to uncover this lost history. In doing so, she demonstrates how this legal battle also undermined efforts by formerly enslaved people to receive reparations for themselves and their descendants—a debate that persists in today’s national dialogue.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Danger No Problem"

Coming soon from Thomas & Mercer: Danger No Problem: A Novel (Domingo the Bounty Hunter, 1) by Cindy Fazzi.

About the book, from the publisher:

Acclaimed author Cindy Fazzi takes readers on an action-packed ride full of wit and grit, as an immigrant turned recovery agent tracks down his most elusive assignment…and learns her explosive secret.

Domingo’s latest job is to bring in Monica Reed. Again. In all his years as a bounty hunter, Monica’s the only target who’s ever given him the slip―and the only one he’s ever let go.

Domingo takes his work seriously, rooting out fugitives who have no regard for the law. Added bonus: it gives him plenty of fodder for the book he’s writing on the side.

As Domingo works to flush out Monica for the third time, he uncovers more layers to her story. Dark secrets, hidden sacrifices, and shocking discoveries point to a dangerous truth she’ll risk her life to expose. Now Domingo must decide which side he’s actually on.

Drawing on the author’s own experience as an immigrant, Danger No Problem is an action-packed, humor-laden look at the pursuit of dreams and the desire for belonging.

Visit Cindy Fazzi's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Postcolonial Global Justice"

New from Princeton University Press: Postcolonial Global Justice by Shuk Ying Chan.

About the book, from the publisher:

A new account of global justice that recovers anticolonial thought for resisting a neocolonial age

Politicians and activists today turn to the language of decolonization to call attention to such issues as cultural and linguistic decline, exploitative foreign investment, and global institutions dominated by superpowers. But does anticolonial thought really provide a model for reimagining world politics? The history of decolonization has not resulted in the liberating transformations that many envisioned. In Postcolonial Global Justice, Shuk Ying Chan proposes a new account of postcolonial global justice centered around the value of social equality. Drawing on the thought of Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, Kwame Nkrumah, and Jawaharlal Nehru, Chan argues that a central theme in anticolonial thought is the rejection of hierarchy and the embrace of equality. These ideas from decolonization, she suggests, give us tools for critiquing contemporary global hierarchies and for rejecting postcolonial nationalism more concerned with policing its citizens than promoting their freedom and equality.

Following the wave of postcolonial state-founding in the twentieth century, many in the West saw decolonization as largely accomplished—and yet global politics continue to feature hierarchies that resemble colonial relations. Chan investigates these new and persistent colonial hierarchies across three areas of contemporary world politics: international investment, cultural imperialism, and global governance. Exploring the changes needed to move toward a new, more equal postcolonial world order, Chan offers a vision of global justice rooted in the unrealized egalitarian aspirations of anticolonial thinker-activists, prompting us to rethink what decolonization may mean today.

Visit Shuk Ying Chan's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The First Witch of Boston"

New from Lake Union: The First Witch of Boston: A Novel by Andrea Catalano.

About the book, from the publisher:

A gripping and intimate novel based on the true story of Margaret Jones, the first woman to be found guilty of witchcraft in seventeenth-century Massachusetts.

Massachusetts Bay Colony, 1646. Thomas and Margaret Jones arrive from England to build a life in the New World. Though of differing temperaments, cautious Thomas and fiery Margaret, a healer, are bound by a love that has lasted decades. With a child on the way, their new beginning promises only blessings.

But in this austere Puritan community, comely faces hide malicious intent. Wrong moves or words are met with suspicion, and Margaret’s bold and unguarded nature draws scorn. Soon, Margaret is mistrusted as more cunning woman than kind caregiver. And when personal tragedies, religious hysteria, and wariness of the unknown turn most against her, even the devotion Margaret and her husband share is at risk.

Inspired by actual diary entries and court records, The First Witch of Boston is at once the riveting story of a woman unjustly accused and a love story set amid the political and social turmoil of both Old and New England. Harrowing, and with a deep understanding of the human heart, history is brilliantly imagined.

Visit Andrea Catalano's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Age of Disaffection"

New from Columbia University Press: Age of Disaffection: The Aesthetic Critique of Politics in 1960s Japan by Patrick Noonan.

About the book, from the publisher:

The 1960s in Japan have long been understood as a period of radical political engagement. But as political movements from Old Left Communism to New Left revolts appeared to fail in their efforts to revolutionize Japanese society, artists and intellectuals came to reject the ideals of postwar politics. Instead, they advocated withdrawing from political participation and making self-transformation the grounds for social change.

This provocative book uncovers a paradox at the heart of the 1960s: how political disillusionment became the basis for a new form of politics—a politics of the self. Examining aesthetic criticism, popular literature, avant-garde art, cinema, and political theory, Patrick Noonan argues that cultural producers in 1960s Japan cultivated what he calls an “ethos of disaffection” toward revolutionary politics and postwar society. Departing from approaches that define politics as contestation, Age of Disaffection foregrounds cultivation, or the production of ways of feeling and relating to the world in efforts to redefine the political. It presents an unorthodox account of the 1960s: withdrawal from political activity developed not as the decade ended but as it was unfolding. Noonan reveals how Japanese artists and intellectuals in this period confronted a crucial question that continues to vex efforts at radical change today: transform institutions or alter how people relate to themselves and others?

--Marshal Zeringue

"Isabella's Not Dead"

New from G.P. Putnam's Sons: Isabella's Not Dead by Beth Morrey.

About the book, from the publisher:

A hilarious and thought-provoking murder mystery about the death of a friendship, and one woman’s quest to track down the best friend who disappeared, for fans of Where'd You Go, Bernadette.

Isabella’s NOT dead.

That’s what Gwen tells anyone who asks about the friend who ghosted them all fifteen years ago. But if Isabella’s not dead, then where is she? And why did she leave, just when Gwen needed her most?

Freshly fifty-three, out of a job, and with children who are starting to fly the nest, Gwen decides to turn detective. Setting out to solve the mystery, Gwen embarks on an adventure across England—then across Europe—that will test her marriage and put her on a collision course with reluctant acquaintances, a mother-in-law best described as eccentric, and a rabbit hole full of clues. But Isabella’s not the only one who’s lost.

A tale of deep, frayed friendship, fractured memories, and skewed perspectives, Isabella’s Not Dead is the story of one woman’s quest to reclaim her best friend—and herself.

Visit Beth Morrey's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Beth Morrey & Polly.

The Page 69 Test: The Love Story of Missy Carmichael.

My Book, The Movie: The Love Story of Missy Carmichael.

Q&A with Beth Morrey.

The Page 69 Test: Delphine Jones Takes a Chance.

My Book, The Movie: Delphine Jones Takes a Chance.

Writers Read: Beth Morrey (April 2022).

--Marshal Zeringue

"Financing Sovereignty"

New from Stanford University Press: Financing Sovereignty: The Poyais Scandal in the Early Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World by Damian Clavel.

About the book, from the publisher:

Financing Sovereignty rewrites the story of one of the great financial frauds of the nineteenth century: Gregor MacGregor, a Scottish mercenary and self-proclaimed cacique of Poyais, borrowed massive sums on the City of London's burgeoning South American sovereign debt market by selling bonds of the State of Poyais. The only problem—Poyais did not exist. At least, that is what MacGregor was quickly accused of by the press and public opinion at the time. From then on, MacGregor has embodied the figure of the swindler par excellence, the con artist behind the most audacious financial fraud in history. In Damian Clavel's deeply researched retelling of the Poyais story, MacGregor is less an unscrupulous adventurer aiming to defraud English investors than a luckless intermediary between Indigenous Miskitu elites and British financiers. From the coasts of Moskitia to the trading floors of London, Clavel traces the genesis, development, and downfall of the Poyais project, detailing how these events were the outcome of a failed attempt to finance the making of a new country in Central America. A microhistory set against the backdrop of global history, Financing Sovereignty offers a new lens through which to view the political, economic, legal, and social dynamics of the nineteenth-century revolutionary, financial, and imperial transformations that took place across the Atlantic.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Cammy Sitting Shiva"

New from Alcove Press: Cammy Sitting Shiva: A Novel by Cary Gitter.

About the book, from the publisher:

This stirring debut novel is an unflinching, darkly funny look at loss, family, and coming home—perfect for fans of This Is Where I Leave You and Competitive Grieving.

When Cy Adler dies, it’s a shock to everyone, especially his daughter, Cammy. Almost thirty, slightly aimless, and stuck in a basement apartment in Queens, she’s forced to return to River Hill, her one-square-mile New Jersey hometown, to sit shiva. Cammy’s fraught relationship with her mother, Beth, has never been easy. And now, with her beloved father gone, she would rather be anywhere but back in her childhood room, in a house filled with guests noshing on snacks and offering their condolences. So Cammy does whatever she can to make it through seven turbulent days of mourning.

Amid getting stoned, reconnecting with her best friend and her high school crush, evading the rabbi, and spending a debauched night in Atlantic City, Cammy must reckon with her roots—with the place she fled for the glamour of New York, where she thought she belonged. But is she really any better off than those she left behind? While navigating the swirl of emotions that accompany grief, Cammy also uncovers hidden truths about her father, which lead her to doubt how well she knew the man she adored. Then again, does she even know herself?

Fueled by wry, lively prose, Cammy Sitting Shiva is a deeply relatable fish-out-of-water story, grappling with how it feels to be adrift and to find that a hard trip home may be what it takes to anchor you.

Visit Cary Gitter's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Land, Law and Empire"

New from Cambridge University Press: Land, Law and Empire: The Origins of British Territorial Power in India by John Marriott.

About the book, from the publisher:

In this innovative exploration of British rule in India, John Marriott tackles one of the most significant and unanswered questions surrounding the East India Company's success. How and when was an English joint stock company with trading interests in the East Indies transformed into a fully-fledged colonial power with control over large swathes of the Indian subcontinent? The answer, Marriott argues, is to be found much earlier than traditionally acknowledged, in the territorial acquisitions of the seventeenth century secured by small coteries of English factors. Bringing together aspects of cultural, legal and economic theory, he demonstrates the role played by land in the assembly of sovereign power, and how English discourses of land and judicial authority confronted the traditions of indigenous peoples and rival colonial authorities. By 1700, the Company had established the sites of Madras, Bombay and Calcutta, providing the practical foothold for further expansion.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Welcome to the Ghost Show"

New from Storytide: Welcome to the Ghost Show by J.W. Ocker.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Ghost Show is coming . . . are you ready? Three friends must face their deepest fears in this spine-tingling horror novel by USA Today bestselling author J.W. Ocker that's perfect for fans of R.L. Stine and Mary Downing Hahn.

When mysterious ads for the Ghost Show appear around town, nobody can tell what it is. A band? A movie? A game? But that magic word—ghost—excites Hazel Gold, or Zel to her friends. As founder of her school’s Creepy Club (three members strong!), she’s always looking for paranormal activity.

Turns out the Ghost Show is a black, five-story skull that appears on the edge of town as a supernatural attraction. Stepping inside, the Creepy Club is greeted by the eccentric Amadeus Everest Mancer, a self-proclaimed ghost catcher who guides them through an aquarium full of vaporous floaty things—sheets that cover gobs of dripping red goo.

Then Mancer offers Zel what she’s always wanted: the chance to see a real ghost. But it turns out to be more than she bargained for. To stop him, the Creepy Club must fight a massive ghost infestation and free the trapped souls within, culminating in chilling battle that blurs the line between reality and the supernatural.

Visit J.W. Ocker's website.

--Marshal Zeringue