"The Road to the Salt Sea"

New from Amistad: The Road to the Salt Sea: A Novel by Samuel Kọ́láwọlé.

About the book, from the publisher:

As wrenching and luminous as Omar El Akkad’s What Strange Paradise and Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West, a searing exploration of the global migration crisis that moves from Nigeria to Libya to Italy, from an exciting new literary voice.

Able God works for low pay at a four-star hotel where he must flash his “toothpaste-white smile” for wealthy guests. When not tending to the hotel’s overprivileged clientele, he muses over self-help books and draws life lessons from the game of chess.

But Able’s ordinary life is upended when an early morning room service order leads him to interfere with Akudo, a sex worker involved with a powerful but dangerous hotel guest. Suddenly caught in a web of violence, guilt, and fear, Able must run to save himself—a journey that leads him into the desert with a group of drug-addled migrants, headed by a charismatic religious leader calling himself Ben Ten. The travelers’ dream of reaching Europe—and a new life—is shattered when they fall prey to human traffickers, suffer starvation, and find themselves on the precipice of death, fighting for their lives and their freedom.

As Able God moves into the treacherous unknown, his consciousness becomes focused on survival and the foundations of his beliefs—his ideas about betterment and salvation—are forever altered. Suspenseful, incisive, and illuminating, The Road to the Salt Sea is a story of family, fate, religion, survival, the failures of the Nigerian class system, and what often happens to those who seek their fortunes elsewhere.

Visit Samuel Kọ́láwọlé's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Conflicted: Making News from Global War"

New from Stanford University Press: Conflicted: Making News from Global War by Isaac Blacksin.

About the book, from the publisher:

How is popular knowledge of war shaped by the stories we consume, what are the boundaries of this knowledge, and how are these boundaries policed or contested by journalists producing knowledge from war zones? Based on years of fieldwork in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan, and Ukraine, Conflicted challenges normative conceptions of war by revealing how representational authority comes to be. Turning the lens on journalists from The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and other prominent publications, Isaac Blacksin shows why news coverage of contemporary conflict, widely presumed to function as a critique of excessive violence, instead serves to sanction official rationales for war.

Blacksin argues that journalism's humanitarian frame—now hegemonic in conflict coverage—serves to depoliticize and remoralize war, transforming war from an effect of policy on populations to a matter of violence against the innocent. Exploring the tension between experience and expression in conditions of violence, and tracking how journalists respond to dominant expectations of reality, Conflicted tells the story of war, reporters, and the consequences of their convergence. As new wars, and new reportage, continue to shape our understanding of armed conflict, this book makes visible both the power and the particularity of war reportage.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Villain Edit"

New from Avon: The Villain Edit: A Novel by Laurie Devore.

About the book, from the publisher:

Emily Henry meets Fleabag...and The Bachelor! An irresistibly sharp and sexy dramedy about a cynical romance novelist who goes on a Bachelor-like reality show to revive her flagging career, only to discover that while she may have just met the love of her life, the producers have turned her into the show’s villain.

Good villains make good TV.

Romance novelist Jacqueline Matthis’s big career has gone bust and she’s ditched the bright lights of New York City for her more affordable South Carolina hometown. Desperate, Jac dreams up a comeback plan—she is going to be a contestant on the 1, the most obsessively watched reality dating show in the world.

After all Jac is a romance writer—she knows how to pull off a meet-cute and create a spicy plotline.

On set, Jac quickly establishes herself as a front-runner for bachelor Marcus’s heart, but she’s shocked to discover who’s actually pulling the strings. How was she to know that Henry Foster, her last one-night stand before the show, was actually a longtime producer on the 1? Henry is just as horrified…but they can’t seem to keep their hands off each other.

As Jac plays the game and the show unfurls, she slowly discovers that she’s getting the villain edit. They say there’s no such thing as bad publicity, but as Jac’s secret plan begins crumbling around her, she’s not so sure. What happens if Marcus chooses her? Worse, what happens if her affair with Henry comes to light? What if, in trying to save her career, Jac has ruined her life?

Heartbreaking, smart, and sexy, this novel is for anyone who has ever secretly rooted for—or felt like—the villain.

Visit Laurie Devore's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Van Gogh and the End of Nature"

New from Yale University Press: Van Gogh and the End of Nature by Michael Lobel.

About the book, from the publisher:

A groundbreaking reassessment that foregrounds Van Gogh’s profound engagement with the industrial age while making his work newly relevant for our world today

Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) is most often portrayed as the consummate painter of nature whose work gained its strength from his direct encounters with the unspoiled landscape. Michael Lobel upends this commonplace view by showing how Van Gogh’s pictures are inseparable from the modern industrial era in which the artist lived—from its factories and polluted skies to its coal mines and gasworks—and how his art drew upon waste and pollution for its subjects and even for the very materials out of which it was made. Lobel underscores how Van Gogh’s engagement with the environmental realities of his time provides repeated forewarnings of the threats of climate change and ecological destruction we face today.

Van Gogh and the End of Nature offers a radical revisioning of nearly the full span of the artist’s career, considering Van Gogh’s artistic process, his choice of materials, and some of his most beloved and iconic pictures. Merging a timely sense of environmental urgency with bold new readings of the work of one of the world’s most acclaimed artists, this book weaves together detailed historical research and perceptive analysis into an illuminating portrait of an artist and his changing world.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Midnight Rooms"

New from Amistad: Midnight Rooms: A Novel by Donyae Coles.

About the book, from the publisher:

Set in a foreboding Gothic mansion and infused with the heightened paranoia and creeping horror of novels like Catherine House and Crimson Peak, a spine-chilling debut historical thriller from a fresh voice in the genre that will leave you questioning who, or what, you can trust . . . including your own sanity.

England, 1840. Orabella Mumthrope spies an unexpected visitor in her uncle’s parlor. Scruffy in appearance yet claiming to be the scion of a fabulously wealthy family, Elias Blakersby declares a deep desire to make Orabella his wife. The orphaned daughter of a white man and a Black woman—an outsider with no fortune or connections—Orabella never expected to marry. But her uncle has many debts, and Orabella, curious about the seeming devotion Elias bestows upon her, agrees.

The new bride is quickly whisked away to Korringhill Manor, the Blakersby family estate, and far from everything she knows. Expecting splendor, Orabella is shocked to find decay, skittish servants, and curt elders. But her kind new husband’s loving touch, promises of a happy life together, and his assurances she’ll never want for anything soothe her concerns.

Yet there is a darkness deep within this house. Rooms are locked or hidden away, and the walls seem to thrum with secrets. Orabella can never venture outside unattended; she spends her days having tea with a catatonic sister-in-law and evenings at Elias’s side, dutifully hosting lavish dinners. The darkness soon begins to engulf her, too. Becoming dizzy and drowsy after dinner, she falls into a fitful sleep filled with macabre dreams, and is awakened by blood-curdling screams in the night. In the morning she rises from her bed covered in mysterious bruises. Confused and terrified, she begins to question where her dreams end and reality begins. The longer Orabella stays in this place, the more she loses parts of herself . . . how long until she no longer exists?

Midnight Rooms is a sweeping saga with supernatural undertones set in Victorian England. Vibrating with tension, richly atmospheric—haunted by ghosts, guilt, and familial bonds—it is an electrifying story that will linger in your dreams.

Visit Donyae Coles's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Worthy of Freedom"

New from the University of Chicago Press: Worthy of Freedom: Indenture and Free Labor in the Era of Emancipation by Jonathan Connolly.

About the book, from the publisher:

A study of Indian indentured labor in Mauritius, British Guiana, and Trinidad that explores the history of indenture’s normalization.

In this book, historian Jonathan Connolly traces the normalization of indenture from its controversial beginnings to its widespread adoption across the British Empire during the nineteenth century. Initially viewed as a covert revival of slavery, indenture caused a scandal in Britain and India. But over time, economic conflict in the colonies altered public perceptions of indenture, now increasingly viewed as a legitimate form of free labor and a means of preserving the promise of abolition. Connolly explains how the large-scale, state-sponsored migration of Indian subjects to work on sugar plantations across Mauritius, British Guiana, and Trinidad transformed both the notion of post-slavery free labor and the political economy of emancipation.

Excavating legal and public debates and tracing practical applications of the law, Connolly carefully reconstructs how the categories of free and unfree labor were made and remade to suit the interests of capital and empire, showing that emancipation was not simply a triumphal event but, rather, a deeply contested process. In so doing, he advances an original interpretation of how indenture changed the meaning of “freedom” in a post-abolition world.

--Marshal Zeringue

"They Thought I Was Dead"

New from Pan Macmillan: They Thought I Was Dead: Sandy's Story by Peter James.

About the book, from the publisher:

Peter James, the number one multimillion-copy bestselling author of the Grace series, returns with a thrilling new novel: a Roy Grace story told from a different perspective.

Some will know how it begins . . .

My name is Sandy.

My husband is Detective Superintendent Roy Grace.

But when I disappeared, even he couldn't find me.

This is my story.

There's more to Sandy than meets the eye. A woman with a dubious past, a complicated present and an uncertain future. Then she was gone.

Some will think they know how it ends . . .

Her disappearance caused a nationwide search. Even the best detective on the force couldn't find her. They thought she was dead.

But nobody knows this . . .

Where did she go? Why did she run? What would cause a woman to leave her whole life behind and simply vanish?

For the first time, the truth behind Sandy Grace’s dramatic disappearance is revealed. They Thought I Was Dead will thrill fans and new readers alike with its gripping account of a woman on the run. This is Sandy's story.

Visit Peter James's website.

--Marsal Zeringue

"Catland: Louis Wain and the Great Cat Mania"

New from Johns Hopkins University Press: Catland: Louis Wain and the Great Cat Mania by Kathryn Hughes.

About the book, from the publisher:

How cat mania exploded in the early twentieth century, transforming cats from pests into beloved pets.

In 1900, Britain and America were in the grip of a cat craze. An animal that had for centuries been seen as a household servant or urban nuisance had now become an object of pride and deep affection. From presidential and royal families who imported exotic breeds to working-class men competing for cash prizes for the fattest tabby, people became enthralled to the once-humble cat. Multiple industries sprang up to feed this new obsession, selling everything from veterinary services to leather bootees via dedicated cat magazines. Cats themselves were now traded for increasingly large sums of money, bolstered by elaborate pedigrees that claimed noble ancestry and promised aesthetic distinction.

In Catland, Kathryn Hughes chronicles the cat craze of the early twentieth century through the life and career of Louis Wain. Wain's anthropomorphic drawings of cats in top hats falling in love, sipping champagne, golfing, driving cars, and piloting planes are some of the most instantly recognizable images from the era. His round-faced fluffy characters established the prototype for the modern cat, which cat "fanciers" were busily trying to achieve using their newfound knowledge of the latest scientific breeding techniques. Despite being a household name, Wain endured multiple bankruptcies and mental breakdowns, spending his last fifteen years in an asylum, drawing abstract and multicolored felines. But it was his ubiquitous anthropomorphic cats that helped usher the formerly reviled creatures into homes across Europe.

Beautifully illustrated and based on new archival findings about Wain's life, the wider cat fancy, and the media frenzy it created, Catland chronicles the fascinating history of how the modern cat emerged.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Evenings and Weekends"

New from Mariner Books: Evenings and Weekends: A Novel by Oisín McKenna.

About the book, from the publisher:

For fans of Sally Rooney and Torrey Peters, a stunning debut that follows a vibrant multi-generational cast of characters through a London heatwave as their simmering tensions and secrets come to a head over a feverish, life-changing weekend.

Summer in London stops for no one. Not the half-naked drunks and stoners, the bachelorette parties glugging from bejewelled bottles, the drag queens puffing on hurried cigarettes. It’s June 2019, and everyone has converged on the city’s parks, beer gardens, and street corners to revel in the collective joys of being alive.

Everyone but Maggie. She’s 30, pregnant, and broke. Faced with moving back to the town she fought to escape, she’s wondering if having a baby with boyfriend Ed will be the last spontaneous act of her life. Ed, meanwhile, is trying to run from his past with Maggie’s best friend Phil and harboring secret dreams of his own.

Phil hates his office job and is living for the weekend, while falling for his housemate, Keith. But there’s a problem: Keith has a boyfriend and there might not be room for three people in the relationship. Then there’s Rosaleen, Phil’s mother, who’s tired of feeling like a side character in her own life. She’s just been diagnosed with cancer and is travelling to London to tell Phil, if she can ever get hold of him.

As Saturday night approaches, all their lives are set to change forever. Temperatures are soaring and the weekend is about to begin…

Strikingly heartfelt, sexually charged, and disarmingly comic, Oisín McKenna’s debut is a mesmerizing dive into the soul of a city and a searing look at what it takes to build a life there.

Visit Oisín McKenna's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Modernism and Finance Capital"

New from Cambridge University Press: Modernism and Finance Capital: British Literature, 1870–1940 by Regina Martin.

About the book, from the publisher:

Modernism and Finance Capital interprets modernism as a historical moment of financial crisis. It expands the definition of finance capital beyond mode of capital accumulation and value form to include a complex of historical processes during the modernist period, which includes the growth of the professional classes, the rise of the modern corporation, the economic turn toward London, and the emergence of affect as economic and literary value form. The book thereby locates the origins of twenty-first century affective economy in the turn-of-the-twentieth century modernist and financial revolutions. Scholars working at the crossroads of economic and cultural studies will find a model for how to interpret literature and other cultural artifacts as participating in economic processes of finance capital even when they do not engage explicitly with such issues.

--Marshal Zeringue