"There She Goes Again"

New from Rutgers University Press: There She Goes Again: Gender, Power, and Knowledge in Contemporary Film and Television Franchises by Aviva Dove-Viebahn.

About the book, from the publisher:

There She Goes Again interrogates the representation of ostensibly powerful women in transmedia franchises, examining how presumed feminine traits—love, empathy, altruism, diplomacy—are alternately lauded and repudiated as possibilities for effecting long-lasting social change. By questioning how these franchises reimagine their protagonists over time, the book reflects on the role that gendered exceptionalism plays in social and political action, as well as what forms of knowledge and power are presumed distinctly feminine. The franchises explored in this book illustrate the ambivalent (post)feminist representation of women protagonists as uniquely gifted in ways both gendered and seemingly ungendered, and yet inherently bound to expressions of their femininity. At heart, There She Goes Again asks under what terms and in what contexts women protagonists are imagined, envisioned, embodied, and replicated in media. Especially now, in a period of gradually increasing representation, women protagonists demonstrate the importance of considering how we should define—and whether we need—feminine forms of knowledge and power.

Visit Aviva Dove-Viebahn's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"First Lie Wins"

New from Pamela Dorman Books: First Lie Wins: A Novel by Ashley Elston.

About the book, from the publisher:

Evie Porter has everything a nice, Southern girl could want: a perfect, doting boyfriend, a house with a white picket fence and a garden, a fancy group of friends. The only catch: Evie Porter doesn’t exist.

The identity comes first: Evie Porter. Once she’s given a name and location by her mysterious boss Mr. Smith, she learns everything there is to know about the town and the people in it. Then the mark: Ryan Sumner. The last piece of the puzzle is the job.

Evie isn’t privy to Mr. Smith’s real identity, but she knows this job will be different. Ryan has gotten under her skin, and she’s starting to envision a different sort of life for herself. But Evie can’t make any mistakes—especially after what happened last time.

Because the one thing she’s worked her entire life to keep clean, the one identity she could always go back to—her real identity—just walked right into this town. Evie Porter must stay one step ahead of her past while making sure there’s still a future in front of her. The stakes couldn't be higher—but then, Evie has always liked a challenge...

Visit Ashley Elston's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Not in My Backyard"

New from Yale University Press: Not in My Backyard: How Citizen Activists Nationalized Local Politics in the Fight to Save Green Springs by Brian Balogh.

About the book, from the publisher:

How a woman-led citizens’ group beat a Southern political machine by enlisting federal bureaucrats and judges to protect their neighborhood from unchecked economic development

This social history of local political activism tells the story of the decades-long fight to save Green Springs, Virginia, illuminating the economic tradeoffs of protecting the environment, the origins of NIMBYism, the changing nature of local control, and the surprising power of history to advance public policy.

Rae Ely faced long odds when she launched a campaign in 1970 to stop a prison, then a strip mine, in Green Springs. The local political machine supported both projects, promising jobs for impoverished Louisa County, Virginia. But Ely and her allies prevailed by repurposing the same tactics used by the Civil Rights movement—the appeal to federal agencies and courts to circumvent local control—and by using new historical interpretations to create the first rural National Historic Landmark District.

The Green Springs protesters fought to preserve the historic character of their neighborhood and the surrounding environment in a quest that epitomized the conflict in late twentieth-century America between unbridled economic development for all and protecting the quality of life for an economically privileged few. Ely’s tactics are now used by neighborhood groups across the nation, even if they have been applied in ways she never intended: to resist any form of development.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Sky's End"

New from Peachtree Teen: Sky's End by Marc J Gregson.

About the book, from the publisher:

Plummet into a kill-or-be-killed competition where a scrappy underdog hell-bent on revenge must claw his way to the top in this thrilling YA fantasy debut

Exiled to live as a Low, sixteen-year-old Conrad refuses to become heir to his murderous uncle. But Meritocracy is a harsh and unforgiving rule on the floating island of Holmstead, and when his ailing mother is killed by monstrous gorgantauns, Conrad cuts a deal to save the only family he has left. To rescue his sister from his uncle's clutches, Conrad must enter the Selection of the Twelve Trades.

Hunter, the deadliest of all the Trades, gains a fresh recruit with Conrad. Now he must endure vigorous training, manipulative peers, and the Gauntlet—a brutal final test that yields riches and status to whichever skyship crew kills the most gorgantauns. Forced to serve in the lowest of stations and unseen by all, Conrad overhears whispers of rebellion in the dark. Conrad had never known anything existed below the toxic black clouds of the Skylands . . . until now.

Visit Marc J Gregson's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Future of the Factory"

New from Oxford University Press: The Future of the Factory: How Megatrends are Changing Industrialization by Jostein Hauge.

About the book, from the publisher:

For centuries, industrialization and factory-based production have been core ingredients in economic growth, development, and innovation. This symbiotic relationship between industrialization and economic prosperity is now changing. 'Megatrends' - trends within the domains of technology, economy, society, and ecology that have a global impact - are changing the ability of the manufacturing sector to serve as the engine of growth, changing traditional ideas of technological progress, and changing growth and development opportunities in both the global South and the global North.

Four megatrends are particularly worthy of note: the rise of services, digital automation technologies, globalization of production, and ecological breakdown. In this book, Jostein Hauge provides a novel analysis of how these megatrends are changing industrialization, and charts new pathways for industrial policy and global governance. He also offers a wide-ranging account of the role of technology, globalization, and ecology in shaping the world economy. The Future of the Factory shows that industrialization remains a cornerstone of economic prosperity, but that power asymmetries in the world economy create uneven opportunities for achieving economic growth, development, and industrialization.

Visit Jostein Hauge's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Perfect Tree"

New from Cameron Kids: The Perfect Tree by Corinne Demas and Penelope Dullaghan (illustrator).

About the book, from the publisher:

From award-winning creators—author Corinne Demas and illustrator Penelope Dullaghan—The Perfect Tree is a picture book holiday tale about how Bunny searches for and finds the perfect Christmas tree—a wonderful gift book.

Bunny is looking for the perfect Christmas tree. Her forest friends tell her that the perfect tree is one that is just her size, bushy as Squirrel’s tail, perfectly pointy on top for a star, the greenest green, and smells like Christmas. But sometimes the perfect tree is the one surrounded by friends.

Visit Corinne Demas's website.

Q&A with Corinne Demas.

The Page 69 Test: The Road Towards Home.

My Book, The Movie: The Road Towards Home.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Inkface"

New from the University of Virginia Press: Inkface: Othello and White Authority in the Era of Atlantic Slavery by Miles P. Grier.

About the book, from the publisher:

In Inkface, Miles P. Grier traces productions of Shakespeare's Othello from seventeenth-century London to the Metropolitan Opera in twenty-first-century New York. Grier shows how the painted stage Moor and the wife whom he theatrically stains became necessary types, reduced to objects of interpretation for a presumed white male audience. In an era of booming print production, popular urban theater, and increasing rates of literacy, the metaphor of Black skin as a readable, transferable ink became essential to a fraternity of literate white men who, by treating an elastic category of marked people as reading material, were able to assert authority over interpretation and, by extension, over the state, the family, and commerce. Inkface examines that fraternity’s reading of the world as well as the ways in which those excluded attempted to counteract it.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Sleeping with Friends"

Coming January 1 from Thomas & Mercer: Sleeping with Friends by Emily Schultz.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the author of The Blondes comes a twisted, darkly humorous story about a woman’s attempted murder, her lost memories, and the old friends who try to put her back together―or finish her off for good.

When Mia Sinclair-Kroner wakes from a coma, all she can remember are the movies she’s known and loved. Her college friends quickly assemble for a weekend party, in an effort to help her remember. But with old friends come old wounds, and it soon becomes clear that Mia’s accident might not have been an accident at all.

Was it Agnes, driven by her unspoken resentments? Or Zoey, who covets everything Mia has? Have the years apart only fanned the extinguished flame between Ethan and Mia, compelling him to violence? Or did Victor, who moved away, return with an agenda? Or was it Martin, the wealthy husband, who put a country estate between Mia and her past?

Visit Emily Schultz's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Best Effect"

New from the University of Chicago Press: The Best Effect: Theology and the Origins of Consequentialism by Ryan Darr.

About the book, from the publisher:

A theological history of consequentialism and a fresh agenda for teleological ethics.

Consequentialism—the notion that we can judge an action by its effects alone—has been among the most influential approaches to ethics and public policy in the Anglophone world for more than two centuries. In The Best Effect, Ryan Darr argues that consequentialist ethics is not as secular or as rational as it is often assumed to be. Instead, Darr describes the emergence of consequentialism in the seventeenth century as a theological and cosmological vision and traces its intellectual development and eventual secularization across several centuries. The Best Effect reveals how contemporary consequentialism continues to bear traces of its history and proposes in its place a more expansive vision for teleological ethics.

--Marshal Zeringue

"A Feast for Starving Stone"

Coming soon from 47North: A Feast for Starving Stone (Chefs of the Five Gods) by Beth Cato.

About the book, from the publisher:

Two countries at war. A delicious taste of magic. And a fierce princess comes of age in a rousing adventure by the author of A Thousand Recipes for Revenge.

Princess Solenn’s marriage into royalty should have unified the continental neighbors of Verdania and Solenn’s homeland of Braiz against a common enemy: the country of Albion. Thanks to Albion’s cunning sabotage, Verdania is now Braiz’s lethal rival. And the dead Braizian sailors washed ashore near Solenn’s château are just the beginning.

Arriving in the midst of danger, Ada Garland, rogue Chef to the Gods, is desperate to reunite with her daughter, Solenn. Not only has open war begun; it’s become heart-wrenchingly personal. Ada’s long-lost, beloved Braizian musketeer, Captain Erwan Corre, is being held in a Verdanian prison, with execution imminent. And her daughter has been tasked with the near-doomed responsibility of uniting violently adversarial countries in peace.

Can Solenn and Ada, coming together, stop their land from descending into all-out war? And what will Solenn become to achieve victory? As ambassador between the human and magical worlds, Solenn must now draw from both to prevent catastrophe, and this time, even the Gods are working against her.

Visit Beth Cato's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Clockwork Dagger.

My Book, The Movie: The Clockwork Crown.

The Page 69 Test: Breath of Earth.

The Page 69 Test: Call of Fire.

The Page 69 Test: Roar of Sky.

Writers Read: Beth Cato (November 2018).

--Marshal Zeringue