"The Art of Living Forever"

Coming November 3 from Orbit Books: The Art of Living Forever (The Sundered Gods, 1) by A. T. Rainach.

About the novel, from the publisher:

A centuries-old rivalry is reignited in A.T. Rainach’s dark romantasy debut, which follows the ancient God of War as he discovers the reincarnated soul of the woman he once loved.

He could never forget her. Not in any lifetime. Not even after a thousand years.

Grace is desperate to escape the future planned for her―a forced engagement to a vile English lord an ocean away―when a mysterious stranger who looks at her like he's known her for lifetimes catches her eye.

Aris is bound by a past he cannot escape. Haunted by a woman with eyes the same gray-blue as a raging sea, he is determined to have her back. No matter the cost.

But in the shadows of Napoleonic Europe, Grace finds herself caught between a love she is only beginning to understand and a darkness that has been waiting for her, setting off a millennia-old conflict between two powerful gods.

Visit A. T. Rainach's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"She Dies in the End"

New from Thomas & Mercer: She Dies in the End by Elle Marr.

About the novel, from the publisher:

To hide her darkest secret, a woman must submit to a killer’s twisted demands in a shocking novel of psychological suspense from bestselling author Elle Marr.

Body broker Penny Lin keeps her distance from the past as she transports donated cadavers in Portland, Oregon, to laboratories, universities―anyone who can justly benefit from the dead. Then, among the deceased, Penny finds murder victim Cesar Velasquez, her ex-lover and a major figure in medical research, whose body comes with an anonymous warning: Don’t tell a soul.

The sender knows too much about Penny and the traumas she’s fled from. The grifting family members she left behind. The dark and devastating secrets she carries. To keep them hidden, Penny must comply with a killer and dispose of the dead, laundering their remains. When the blackmailer begins delivering more bodies to Penny’s shop, she’s torn between wanting justice for the victims and fearing her complicity in murder. Then, Penny is attacked, shattering any illusion of safety she once held.

As the maddening game continues, Penny begins to question her memories, her sanity, and how to escape a killer’s twisted revenge―without becoming another body in her inventory.

Visit Elle Marr's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Missing Sister.

The Page 69 Test: Lies We Bury.

My Book, The Movie: The Lie She Wears.

--Marshal Zeringue

"A Dangerous Bargain"

Coming September 22 from Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers: A Dangerous Bargain by Erin Cotter.

About the book, from the publisher:

A young artist who has bargained away most of his life for divine inspiration pairs up with fellow apprentice Leonardo da Vinci to infiltrate the Medici family and find out the truth about his missing brother in this Renaissance-set young adult mystery perfect for fans of F.T. Lukens.

It’s the height of the Italian Renaissance. In the golden city of Florence, art is equal to holiness—and angels walk among us, bestowing their talents…for a price.

Seventeen-year-old artist Virgil is in trouble. To support his family, he’s bargained most of his life away to an angel—only to discover that his missing brother is in danger, and nothing but magic can rescue him. Now, with just a few months left to live, Virgil is desperate enough to try the one thing he swore he would never, ever do—team up with the infuriating, annoyingly talented, and most notorious playboy in all of Florence, the charming Leonardo da Vinci.

As the two journey through Florence’s gilded streets, luxurious cathedrals, and glorious Medici palaces, they unearth dark truths beneath the city’s facade.

Those in power will do anything to keep their deadly secrets safe, but with his feelings for Leonardo giving him new life, Virgil is determined to expose their lies before he runs out of time.

Even if it might cost him his soul.

Visit Erin Cotter's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Soul: A Brief History of Black Cultural Life"

New from Yale University Press: Soul: A Brief History of Black Cultural Life by Christopher Freeburg.

About the book, from the publisher:

A passionate and illuminating account of soul, the hard-won wisdom shepherded by Black people throughout generations

How did enslaved Africans turn America’s infamous failure into the greatest moral occasion of modern Western life? In this book, Christopher Freeburg answers that question with one word: soul. It was soul, Freeburg believes, which drove Black individuals and communities, grappling with horrific strife, to reimagine American life and equality in earnest.

Black cultural life contains a central and significant theme―a soul, or form of life―expressed in a variety of musical, religious, and political forms. Through the work and words of figures ranging from the poet Phillis Wheatley to President Barack Obama and musician Nina Simone to disco owner Jewel Thais-Williams, Freeburg shows how Black communities leaned time and again on soul and its four pillars: resonance, revelation, resilience, and transcendence. It is soul, what Freeburg calls a beautiful transaction between individual and community across time and place, that has allowed Black people over generations to transform feelings of defeat and alienation into moral courage and shared belonging.

Visit Christopher Freeburg's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Siren Says"

New from G.P. Putnam's Sons: Siren Says by Jennifer Michelle Herrera.

About the novel, from the publisher:

A lush, spellbinding tale about a tenacious young woman who must harness her family’s dangerous magic to put a stop to the sacrifices they’ve been making for more than a century

Twenty-five-year-old Raven Wynn knows that the ancient plant magic running through her veins brings nothing but destruction. It doomed her Welsh ancestors. It killed her mother. It’s the reason she’s now bound by a painful curse—one that will destroy her if she can’t find a way to break its hold.

When her estranged Aunt Delilah bursts into her life promising a cure, Raven seizes the chance. However, her freedom comes at a steep price: Once her magic is fully unleashed, she is more powerful—and more dangerous—than anyone thought possible.

Desperate to tame powers she never wanted, Raven makes a pact with Delilah: In exchange for learning to control her magic, Raven will capture one of the spirits that roam Delilah’s hometown on May’s Eve so that it may grant Delilah’s secret wish. With the help of an enigmatic new friend, Cherry, as well as an infuriatingly handsome stoneworker, Idris, Raven learns that her task is even more perilous than she imagined—one false move and the spirits could trap her soul—forever.

A sumptuous escape into a world of Celtic spirits and botanical magic, Siren Says is a bewitching story of the unbreakable bonds between women, the interplay between goodness and power, and the capacity of love to mend our very souls.

Visit Jennifer Herrera's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Devil Knows Her Name"

Coming soon from Berkley: The Devil Knows Her Name by C.N. Vair.

About the book, from the publisher:

A hundred years ago, a witch sold her soul to save her life—but now she must stop the devil from collecting his due in this gripping and nuanced debut horror novel.

The devil was as my mother and grandmother had always described him: polite enough that you might forget yourself, so beautiful that you’d want to, so dangerous if you did.

Attacked by the man she desired and at the brink of death, Tess Wynne vowed she would do anything to live—and the devil heard her. Their bargain meant she would remain ageless and tethered to the land she nearly died on, at the edge of the isolated Appalachian town of Burrsville. Her home is now a wildlife sanctuary, and the spells she’s woven keep the land and community safe.

But then Tess rescues an orphaned fawn with unnatural appetites, and her instinct to protect this strange creature puts her at odds with Burrsville’s residents. And when a new pastor comes to town and begins chipping away at the trust she’s gained, threatening the sanctuary and its animals, the careful edges of Tess’s world begin to fray.

The devil whispers in her ear that he can save the sanctuary if she’ll just pay his price, and Tess must decide if she’ll trust in her own magic to save what she loves—or surrender to his will.

Visit C.N. Vair's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Halls of the Dead"

Coming August 18 from Harper Voyager: The Halls of the Dead: A Novel – A Queer Victorian Gothic Horror Romance of Necromancy and Impossible Love by S. M. Hallow.

About the book, from the publisher:

A queer, gothic horror romance set in a necromancy-tinged London, sure to entrance fans of The Death of Jane Lawrence and Mexican Gothic.

London, December 1849

Irene Shallcross Haley has dedicated her life to necromancy, a forbidden, reviled art that is passed along through sentient grimoires bound in human skin. With her undead husband St. John—a marriage of kindred spirits and platonic convenience—she has been protecting the knowledge of generations of witches that came before her. Like any magic, it has come at a cost: her reputation, her relationship with her sister, and her soul. But when Irene’s love, Agnes, is hanged for witchcraft, Irene refuses to let Agnes be one more thing that is taken from her.

A true resurrection has not been achieved in two thousand years, but Irene is determined. With the help of St. John, Irene bangs on the doors of the Halls of the Dead, demanding the third part of their triumverate back…or did she? Because the Agnes that awakens comes with both a hunger for raw flesh and a malignant ghost tied to her soul.

Necromancy is the art of saying no—no, I won't let you go; no, I won't let you be destroyed—and Irene’s work is not yet done. She must find a way to bring Agnes back to her true self, she must navigate her feelings for her resurrected lover as well as St. John, and she must do all of this without catching the attention of Sir Silas Underhill, the man who sentenced Agnes to death.

Death is not the end of love. But Irene may realize it can actually be the beginning.

Visit S.M. Hallow's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Inventing Immortality"

New from Oxford University Press: Inventing Immortality: Heterodoxy and Histories of the Soul in Early Enlightenment England by Michelle Pfeffer.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the decades either side of 1700, England witnessed a major public debate about the immortality of the soul. At its centre were two unlikely figures: the lawyer Henry Layton and the physician William Coward. Across numerous publications, both argued that the soul's immortality was a pagan invention absent from early scripture and only later absorbed into Christianity. Their detailed histories of the soul aimed to recast it as an inescapably human creation, rather than a natural and revealed truth.

Though often seen as the product of radical freethinking circles, Layton and Coward's histories drew directly on scholarly commonplaces that they simply reassembled and repurposed. Economic, social, and cultural shifts across the seventeenth century had made academic scholarship more accessible than ever, enabling a growing number of non-specialists to participate in scholarly debates that were now more firmly in the public sphere. The derivative nature of their work should not see writers like Layton and Coward dismissed as mere hacks. Technical proficiency does not automatically confer historical significance, nor does its absence preclude it. Layton and Coward's contributions to the debate about the soul were amateurish and, to specialist scholars at the time, unsurprising. Yet they helped push scholarship in new directions. The impact of ideas depends as much on the context of their circulation as on their originality and rigour.

Rather than portraying the heterodox publications of the period c.1700 as the 'unintended consequences' of scholarship, this book presents a more dynamic model: a feedback loop between lay and specialist knowledge, in which amateur contributions actively shaped scholarly debates. The early Enlightenment, this book suggests, may be best understood less in terms of substantive new ideas, and more in the repackaging of older ones, with different targets, by different sorts of people, for different audiences.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Savvy Summers and the Po'boy Perils"

New from Minotaur Books: Savvy Summers and the Po'boy Perils: A Mystery (Savvy Summers Mysteries, 2) by Sandra Jackson-Opoku.

About the novel, from the publisher:

The next delectable mystery featuring quick-witted, unforgettable Savvy Summers, owner of a soul food café in Chicago.

Savvy has her work cut out when an old friend hires her to cater a company luncheon at a nearby office building on Chicago's South Side. Stepping out of her traditional soul food comfort zone, Savvy whips together a menu of Creole classics, with her own spin, of course―mini po’boys with assorted fillings, sunburst salad, and bread pudding using Great Aunt Essie’s famous buttermilk biscuits.

But when someone is found dead in the company’s conference room, Savvy’s culinary creations are suddenly in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons. While the focus should be on their delicious flavors and inventive techniques, Savvy’s beloved café instead becomes the center of a murder investigation once again.

Caught within a messy web of gossip, miscommunication, and fraught coworker relationships, Savvy will have to settle the confusion to clear her name. Somebody’s hiding something, and with the help of her trusty assistant manager, Penny Lopés, Savvy sets out uncover exactly who is to blame. With familiar faces turning up the heat on her investigation and her café still in hot water, will Savvy be able to save her reputation before it’s too late?

Follow Sandra Jackson-Opoku on Facebook and Instagram.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Farewitch of Foxe Holler"

New from S&S/Saga Press: The Farewitch of Foxe Holler by Ellen Pauley Goff.

About the book, from the publisher:

Steel Magnolias meets Practical Magic in this charming contemporary fantasy about a thirty-something kitchen witch who is recruited to help a reclusive warlock and discovers love on the other side of the next bake.

Honey Frost is Foxe Holler’s dependable Farewitch. With a dash of flour and a pinch of charm, Honey carries on her family’s legacy for healing any ailment with the right recipe. She just didn’t expect to inherit the role twenty years early.

When the Holler’s reclusive Warlock suddenly requests a Farewitch to cure his mysterious illness, Honey’s ordered life turns upside down. Honey is reluctant to help—witches and warlocks do not get along. Then he tempts her with the one thing she can’t resist: access to his infamous library of spellbooks and kitchen grimoires.

Soon, Honey is the newest resident of his moody farmhouse, which has one gorgeous kitchen. And a Warlock that maybe…isn’t so frightful after all. Or old. Or bad looking.

Healing the Warlock would be simple if he weren’t hiding a web of secrets. As Honey works to unravel his illness, a darker threat looms: the Widow Witch, who steals a soul from Foxe Holler every year, is due—and this time, she wants the Warlock.

Visit Ellen Pauley Goff's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Frenzy in Early Modern England"

New from Cambridge University Press: Frenzy in Early Modern England: Madness, Brain Disease and the Soul by Philippa Carter.

About the book, from the publisher:

Today, frenzy is the stuff of newspaper headlines. Five hundred years ago, it described a disease which could kill its sufferers within days. This book offers the first full-length study of frenzy, providing a fresh perspective on early modern understandings of mental illness, mind-body relations, and personhood. Frenzy was frightening not just because it killed its sufferers, but because it changed them beyond recognition. It gave the impression that what was then the most precious part of the person – the soul – was as easy to damage as the body. Frenzy in Early Modern England deepens and complicates our sense of what madness meant in this period, both to those who assigned the label, and to those who lived with it. This is an important intervention in the often-fragmented historiography of early modern madness, combining intellectual, social, and cultural history with the history of medicine.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Frank Buck: Chicago Hitman"

New from Tortoise Books: Frank Buck: Chicago Hitman by Joseph G. Peterson.

About the book, from the publisher:

Frank Buck is a fat f*ck. A slob, a middle-aged loser, he’s living in Chicagoland with his mother and collecting disability checks, drinking Svedka vodka and driving aimlessly through the nighttime city in the one thing in his life that brings him joy and freedom—a 1989 Cadillac Brougham D’Elegance.

Unfortunately he also has a talent.

His great weight, his ballast, makes him a remarkable shot with all manner of weapons. And this eventually draws him into the orbit of a local gangster and psychopath, a Polaroid-toting maniac named Rodger. In short order Frank is trapped in a seemingly endless and cartoonish routine of bloodshed and gore, a criminal Sisyphus pushing a soul-wearying boulder—or perhaps a biblical figure blundering towards an improbable Golgotha.

Joseph G. Peterson has attracted a devoted readership for his unique blend of sad and funny writing—a series of remarkable books centered around lovable losers stuck in absurdly existential situations reminiscent of both Camus and the Coen Brothers. Here he’s created perhaps his most memorable book, a pulpy reverie unlike anything you’ll ever read.

Visit Joseph G. Peterson's website.

The Page 69 Test: Beautiful Piece.

Writers Read: Joseph G. Peterson (May 2025).

The Page 69 Test: The Perturbation of O.

--Marshal Zeringue

"4 Janes"

Coming June 30 from Little A: 4 Janes: A Novel by Marian Yee.

About the novel, from the publisher:

Through time, space, and the transcendence of maternal love, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre is reimagined in the parallel lives of one soul searching for meaning, connection, and a place to belong.

Jane Eyre is a missionary’s wife.

A bookseller in Vietnam.

A time traveler.

A hero in a modern gothic tale.

What if Jane’s story didn’t end with her marriage to Edward Rochester? What if she never married him at all?

In one lifetime, Jane travels to India and Burma as Mrs. St. John Rivers. In another, she’s Trang, a young woman selling books in Vietnam, vying for the love of the local priest. Yet another picks up where Brontë left her, now grieving the loss of her child and crossing time and space to find him. And finally, a young Vietnamese-American man searching for himself in Boston, a tutor whose relationship with a veteran feels strangely, achingly familiar…

Each thread tells Jane’s story in sweeping, heartbreaking shades of loss, vulnerability, yearning, and the fierce love of mother and child that withstands time and space. While she may long for something more out of a life she didn’t get to choose, she can still decide what to make of it.

Visit Marian Yee's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"An Expanse of Blue"

New from Heartdrum: An Expanse of Blue by Kauakanilehua Mahoe Adams.

About the book, from the publisher:

Fans of The Poet X will fall for this powerful, romantic debut novel-in-verse about a Native Hawaiian girl's fight to find belonging in a fracturing family, sharing a message of love with resounding emotional truth.

Aouli Elizabeth Smith is adrift: unheard at home and an unbeliever at church, fighting her sister and losing her best friend. Overflowing with feeling, she pours her secrets and herself into her song journal when the world threatens to sweep her away. The one place she feels tied down to earth is at her Aunty Ehu’s house. Those joyous Saturdays with her extended Native Hawaiian community living in Western Washington are precious to her. Under the maple trees, the fragments of her life fit together, if only for an afternoon.

Then, an unspeakable truth about her father shatters this one perfect corner of her life.

As Aouli’s world constricts around what others wish she could be, language fails her. But when a new boy, Nalu, turns up with eyes that seem to pierce right into her soul, maybe it’s love that can give her the words to set herself free.

Visit Kauakanilehua Mahoe Adams's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Incredible Afterlives of Dr. Stevenson"

New from the University of Chicago Press: The Incredible Afterlives of Dr. Stevenson: One Scientist's Epic Quest for Evidence of Reincarnation, Apparitions, Poltergeists, and Other Matters of the Soul by Jesse Bering.

About the book, from the publisher:

The untold story of an iconoclastic scientist: a psychiatrist who dedicated his career to documenting consciousness after death.

While Ian Stevenson (1918–2007) was an academic psychiatrist with a serious demeanor, right down to his three-piece suits and wingtip shoes, he made his name researching an unusual topic for a behavioral scientist: the afterlife. For over four decades, Stevenson traveled the globe investigating cases of reincarnation, apparitions, possessions, and near-death experiences. At the time of his death, Stevenson was widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in parapsychology, a field devoted to psychic phenomena and paranormal experiences.

Set against the colorful backdrop of parapsychology’s rise and fall, from Victorian séances to modern media spectacles, The Incredible Afterlives of Dr. Stevenson captures Stevenson’s relentless quest for evidence of consciousness beyond the grave. Jesse Bering, himself a psychologist, interweaves Stevenson’s research with vivid stories of the larger-than-life characters who shaped his path—from Eileen Garrett, the fearless medium, to Chester Carlson, the inventor of Xerox photocopying and Stevenson’s unlikely patron. Through never-before-seen letters and candid interviews with Stevenson’s surviving family members, readers glimpse the inner turmoil of a scientist struggling to balance his revolutionary ideas with the skepticism of his academic peers as well as those closest to him. Along the way, Bering, a researcher whose own trailblazing work on the psychology of afterlife beliefs had led him to believe it was all just an illusion, is forced to rethink his own worldview. Are psychic phenomena examples of our living brains giving credence to the absurd? Or tantalizing glimmers of life after death?

Equal parts scientific detective story and intimate biography, The Incredible Afterlives of Dr. Stevenson shines a light on a significant figure whose life and work have not yet been fully explored. Bering boldly confronts readers with the complicated legacy of a man who many see as a Galileo-like rebel with groundbreaking ideas, ones that still have the power to upend everything we know about what it means to be human.

Visit Jesse Bering's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Crossing the Bronx"

Coming June 2 from Fig Tree Books: Crossing the Bronx by David Hirshberg.

About the novel, from the publisher:

Crossing the Bronx is an historical literary novel set primarily in the 1950s in The Bronx. It is a modern retelling of the Jacob and Esau story from Genesis. The narrative that propels the story forward concerns the destruction of a neighborhood in the guise of progress. Jay and Eric, the sons of Ike (an Italian Jew), and Rebekeh, (a Mountain Jew), are estranged-as are their parents-and find themselves on opposite sides of a bitter struggle that pits those in power against the defenseless people of a local community.

Eric has aligned himself with his father Ike, who by day is a cop-and at other times works surreptitiously for a mobbed-up construction company engaged in major projects transforming New York City-while his younger brother Jay is allied with his mother and with a neighborhood group fighting to preserve its very soul. Their fractious relationship speaks to the issues of how families split apart, and whether or not the pieces can ever be put back together.

In addition to sustained tension-filled action, Crossing the Bronx is a story of romance, commitments, beliefs, and triumphs over adversities (lies, theft, murder, concealment, prejudice). Through vivid descriptions, perceptive insights, humor and sensitivity, the reader identifies with the characters who come to life in a realistic fashion to illustrate who we are, how we behave, and what causes us to change.

The novel is fast-paced, with uncompromising realism, reflecting the unrelenting tension between antagonists and the anxieties that overwhelm those without power. The underbelly of the criminal and political world is evidenced by brutality, rapaciousness, and a never-ending desire to seek retribution. A love story between Jay and his girlfriend Francesca counter-balances the grimness to show how some people can overcome the odds stacked against them by their birth and places of origin. Smart, savvy women (Francesca, Rebekah, Francesca's grandmother "Nonna Ebrea"-who thinks she is descended from Conversos-and Jay's therapist Dr. Leah Silverman) provide a strong counterbalance to the lies, thefts, beatings, concealments, murders, and prejudice evidenced by the men.

It is populated by colorful Italian, Irish, Black, Puerto Rican, and Jewish characters from a variety of different backgrounds; the novel sparkles with dialogue that is representative of their respective cultures.

The book can be read on three levels: (1) The story of what it was like to have lived through the Depression and World War II era, and into the one that emerged after 1945-a society that was being altered almost unknowingly into something that would turn out to be significantly different in terms of social activism and ethnic politics; (2) A metaphor for what is going on in cities today, in terms of the conflicts between 'ordinary people' and powerful politicians and business interests; and (3) How a Jewish family emerges from dysfunction to find its way despite daunting implacable obstacles in its way.

Visit David Hirshberg's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Feminist Freedom"

New from Cornell University Press: Feminist Freedom: An African Vision by Minna Salami.

About the book, from the publisher:

In Feminist Freedom, Minna Salami asks: What happens when we consider Africa through a feminist lens—and feminism through an African one?

Salami explores these questions through an unflinching and clear-sighted African feminist vision. From African knowledge systems to feminist thought and through postcolonial history, she reveals the matrix of power, identity, patriarchy, and imagination that animates everyday life. She tackles the hardest challenges to the African feminist movement—why feminism matters in Africa, how it relates to Black liberation and global feminism, whether "African feminist" is itself a contradiction—and confronts the backlash that both sparked and stalled its progress. Patriarchy and culture, she shows, can smother feminist fire—but language, history, and soul can reignite it.

Braiding social criticism with personal storytelling, Feminist Freedom invites readers to see our past, present, and future from the continent outward and to imagine new horizons of liberation.

Follow Minna Salami on Instagram and Threads.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Last Labyrinth"

New from 47North: The Last Labyrinth by Gwendolyn Womack.

About the novel, from the publisher:

From USA Today bestselling author Gwendolyn Womack comes a thrilling and romantic science fiction adventure about a musician who travels back to the 1800s on the currents of sound and falls for an earl as the two must decode the secrets of time and music to save both of their futures.

Magellan Brighton may be a musical prodigy with limitless talent, but her soul yearns for something more than playing in concert halls or at weddings. As the world is on the brink of a catastrophic polar shift, she mysteriously vanishes while playing an ancient organ and awakens in 1829. The answers to why lie in a lost diary belonging to Gwynedd, Merlin’s forgotten twin sister.

Rhys Sherwood, the dashing and brooding Earl of Liron, is still haunted by the memory of his father, a scientist and historian who was killed in an experiment gone wrong. When Rhys stumbles upon a strange woman at the center of his estate’s labyrinth, her arrival couldn’t have come at a worse time, interrupting an important house party he’d planned to select his future wife.

Yet the two find themselves inexplicably drawn to each other, and when they discover that Magellan’s musical gifts and the diary are connected, they must uncover its secrets and connection to the key to saving the world. From candlelit medieval abbeys to opulent Renaissance courts in a perilous journey through the past to find the key, Magellan must risk everything and face the sinister forces who want the key for themselves.

Visit Gwendolyn Womack's website.

Writers Read: Gwendolyn Womack (May 2015).

My Book, The Movie: The Memory Painter.

The Page 69 Test: The Memory Painter.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Quarter Queen"

New from Ballantine Books: The Quarter Queen: A Novel by Kayla Hardy.

About the book, from the publisher:

A Voodoo witch must navigate a magically and racially divided nineteenth-century New Orleans to save her mother—and the soul of the city itself—in this lush debut novel inspired by the life of Marie Laveau.

In 1843 New Orleans, the reigning Voodoo queen is Marie Laveau, feared by her enemies and followers alike. Her daughter, Marie "Ree" Laveau the Second, is everything her cutthroat and principled mother is not—spoiled and entitled, with a wickedly rebellious streak—and defies her mother at every turn. But Ree’s world is turned upside down when she finds Marie comatose in the bayou, cursed by exiled Voodoo king Jon the Conjurer—Marie’s former teacher, lover, and greatest enemy.

As Marie hovers on the brink of death, Ree races to uncover the secrets of her mother’s life in search of a cure and gradually uncovers a web of alliances, dangers, and deception. What’s worse, Henryk Broussard, Ree’s long-missing childhood best friend, returns as a witch hunter of the Church, tasked with investigating her. With so many enemies circling, including a puritanical-minded Brotherhood of alchemists and the slave-holding mayor of the city, Ree must confront the past and face her mother’s demons that have now become her own—or die trying.

Told in alternating timelines between Ree in the present and Marie’s rise to power twenty-five years earlier, The Quarter Queen is an intimate yet epic portrait of a mother and daughter who have struggled all their lives to understand one another, and a captivating exploration of racism, family, and womanhood.

Visit Kayla Hardy's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Fountain"

New from Harper: The Fountain: A Novel by Casey Scieszka.

About the book, from the publisher:

A propulsive and deeply moving novel about eternity and mortality that asks what it would mean to live forever.

Vera Van Valkenburgh hasn’t been home in one hundred and eighty-eight years. But now Vera, forever twenty-six and able to heal from any wound, has returned to the Catskills. Whatever made her family immortal happened here, and if she can uncover it, maybe she can reverse it. After nearly two centuries—an endless sequence of unnoticed, meaningless lives and a soul-shaking incident in the desert—she longs to be released.

Posing as a newly arrived forest ranger, she quickly blends into the upstate community and learns of something curious and disturbing. A mysterious, well-funded company is snapping up local property, no matter how high the asking price. But when her brother, a fellow immortal shows up, accompanied by a woman whose face is incredibly familiar to Vera, the purpose for her return gets clouded and Vera is in a race against time to find out what has caused her condition before someone else does.

Blending the spectacular with the everyday in a tale filled with humor and warmth, The Fountain explores what gives life meaning and how our understandings of our histories shape—and cage—us.

Visit Casey Scieszka's wesbite.

--Marshal Zeringue