"Someone to Daydream About"

New from Fierce Reads: Someone to Daydream About by Sydney Langford.

About the book, from the publisher:

For fans of Rachel Lynn Solomon and Alice Oseman, this swoony, fast-paced romance stars a teen who falls in love with the lead singer of America's most popular boy band during a whirlwind summer tour.

This is what dreams are made of.

Every teenager in America knows eighteen-year-old Felix Song, the lead singer of the most popular boy band since One Direction. Unfortunately, Natalie Nielsen is no exception. Though she thinks of him more as an annoying rich kid from her hometown than a heartthrob.

Uninterested in stardom, Natalie dreams of honoring her late dad’s legacy and making a positive impact on her beloved Deaf community by revamping her family’s run-down Deaf Center. The issue? She has no money. When Felix's little sister's hearing loss begins to accelerate, he gives Natalie a generous job offer that would help secure the Center’s future: but she must accompany him on tour this summer to teach him ASL.

What begins as a professional arrangement soon morphs into stolen kisses and late-night rendezvous. But as their connection deepens, so do the risks—and when their relationship suddenly takes center stage, it’s not only their hearts but Felix’s career on the line. Amid relentless public scrutiny, contractual obligations, and meddling band members, Natalie must decide if their dreams can co-exist in the spotlight.

Visit Sydney Langford's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Serving the Street"

New from the University of Georgia Press: Serving the Street: Volunteering as Charity, Racial Justice, and Poverty Tourism by Matthew Jerome Schneider.

About the book, from the publisher:

Volunteering is typically thought of as an act of altruism, yet there are power dynamics embedded in volunteer-service recipient relationships, especially when volunteers operate from privileged positions. Following six grassroots homeless service organizations in St. Louis, Missouri, Matthew Schneider unpacks the tensions between race, class, urban space, and volunteerism. Volunteers are well intentioned and provide vital, life-saving services. However, Serving the Street explores how many of these same volunteer groups helped to reproduce racialized stigma and stereotypes about poverty, homelessness, and marginal urban space through volunteer practices that bordered on “poverty tourism.” If our goal is to make communities more inclusive and equitable, this book suggests a need for greater self-reflection, even among well-intentioned, social-justice-oriented volunteers.

Visit Matthew Jerome Schneider's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Survivor"

New from Minotaur Books: The Survivor by Andrew Reid.

About the novel, from the publisher:

A hijacked New York subway train, an anonymous killer, and a young man trapped by his hidden past converge in a breathless, breathtaking thriller

Do not turn off your phone
Do not get off the train
I know who you really are

Fired and walked out by security on his first day at his new job in New York City, Ben Cross thought his day couldn't get worse. But he couldn't be more wrong. Getting on the 1 train headed uptown, Ben starts receiving text messages from an anonymous killer, showing that they've already killed someone, then pointedly killing another as they got off the train to prove they aren't bluffing and to ensure Ben follows orders. But Ben wasn't picked at random—he has a history that no one is supposed to know.

At the same time, A NYPD detective, Kelly Hendricks, is on punishment duty with the transit police. The first one on the scene after the first murder, she gets on the train to find out what is really going on.

Switching rapidly between Cross and Hendricks, as the hijacked 1 train heads from South Ferry to 181st, the secret to the killer lies in Ben's own history—why he's been targeted and punished.

Follow Andrew Reid on Instagram and Threads.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Shakespeare Thinking"

New from Princeton University Press: Shakespeare Thinking by David Womersley.

About the book, from the publisher:

How Shakespeare’s exploration of central human questions—about identity, politics, religion and right and wrong—explains his lasting power, popularity and relevance

In the eighteenth century, Samuel Johnson famously argued that Shakespeare is enduringly popular because he “is above all writers, at least above all modern writers, the poet of nature; the poet that holds up to his readers a faithful mirror of manners and of life.” Johnson’s view largely prevailed until the late twentieth century, when it was challenged by a growing scepticism about the existence of a general human nature. In Thinking Through Shakespeare, eminent literary critic David Womersley pushes back against this change by exploring how Shakespeare’s plays think through—and invite us to think through—deep human questions of lasting importance.

Thinking Through Shakespeare explores four perennial human problems: personal identity, the distinction between civilization and barbarism, the relation between political power and religious authority and the tension between means and ends. It examines the history of these problems, from antiquity to today, and traces how Shakespeare engages with them in the great tragedies—Othello, Hamlet, Macbeth and King Lear—but also in his other plays. Without arguing that human nature is universal or unchanging, or that Shakespeare has some special access to timeless wisdom, the book makes the case that his drama is powerful because it serves as a forensic tool, probing rival perspectives on questions that have preoccupied many people in many societies over many centuries.

By revealing in new ways how Shakespeare’s plays are animated and driven by central human problems, and why he should again be viewed as the great poet of human nature, Thinking Through Shakespeare opens up a richer understanding and appreciation of his work.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Jump"

New from Flatiron Books: The Jump: A Novel by Natalie Keller Reinert.

About the novel, from the publisher:

From the author of the popular Eventing Series, a brand-new and MUCH ANTICIPATED STANDALONE hardcover, set in Florida horse country and featuring a fresh set of UNFORGETTABLE characters

Brooke Haskell’s got big dreams . . . and she’s running out of time. The equestrian life Brooke craves has always been just outside her reach, but, like every horse girl, she believes that pluck, heart, and hard work can catapult anyone into greatness. Unfortunately, her horse Roxie doesn’t seem to agree. After her most disappointing horse show to date and with only one more year before graduation and real life take over, Brooke is finally upset enough to do something rash. She decides to ditch her college plans and her parents’ wishes, risking everything to apprentice with one of the country’s most famous equestrians, Eddie O’Neill.

As she plunges headfirst into the breakneck pace of a top training stable, Brooke finally feels like she belongs. Her fellow working student might be a trust-fund Instagram star, but they bond over their shared love of horses. And sparks fly with a colleague who seems to love this version of Brooke. But when Roxie goes from steady improvement to angry rebellion, Brooke realizes Eddie’s reputation for training winners may come at a steep price. Brooke is finally poised to have the life she always wanted—but at what cost? Will she discover an uncomfortable truth about her idol, and what is she willing to give up in order to defend the sport she loves?

Against the riveting high-stakes backdrop of the equestrian world, Reinert explores the passions that drive us, the love affairs that fuel us, and the partnerships—both animal and human—that help us thrive and find ourselves.

Visit Natalie Keller Reinert's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Romanticism Bewitched"

New from Cambridge University Press: Romanticism Bewitched: Witchcraft, Revolution and the Female Demonic by Orianne Smith.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Romantic-era witch was a remarkably flexible symbol of political and social disorder. The then-recent seventeenth-century witch hunts had already revealed deep anxieties about the subversive potential of women, and the witches who stalk the pages of Gothic poetry and prose or glare menacingly from works of art by Henry Fuseli and William Blake embody revolutionary anger and the possibility of radical social transformation. Despite the fears surrounding such figures, however, the Romantic period also saw witchcraft open up in conceptually new ways, enabling writers and artists to envision alternative means of interacting in the world that were not predicated on the subordination of women and other marginalized groups. Here, Orianne Smith embarks on an interdisciplinary reimagining of witchcraft, women's writing, religion, and social reform, providing original insights on the history of witchcraft and its influence on public discourse, literature and art.

--Marshal Zeringue

"No Man's Land"

New from Del Ray: No Man's Land by Richard K. Morgan.

About the book, from the publisher:

A compelling standalone dark fantasy set in a gritty post-WWI Britain that has been overrun by the fae, from the award-winning author of Altered Carbon

The Great War was supposed to be the war to end all wars—and maybe it would have been, had an even greater, otherworldly foe not risen to extinguish the conflict. Overnight, as guns blazed in France and Flanders, village after village in the quiet British countryside was swallowed by the Forest. And within the Forest lurk the Huldu—an ancient fae race, monstrous in their inhumanity, who have decided that mankind’s ascendency over the world can endure no longer.

Enter Duncan Silver. Scarred by the war, fueled by a rage deeper than the trenches in which he once fought, Duncan is determined to show the Huldu that the world is not theirs for the taking. Armed with a deadly iron knife and a cut-down trench gun filled with iron shot, Duncan will stop at nothing to return the children the Huldu have stolen to the arms of their families. No matter how many Huldu he may have to slaughter along the way.

But when he is hired by a mother to return her four-year-old daughter, Miriam—taken by the Huldu six months past and replaced with a changeling—all hell breaks loose. Miriam is a pawn in a much bigger game for dominance than Duncan ever expected, and several long-buried secrets from his past are about to be violently resurrected.

Visit Richard K. Morgan's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Steel Remains.

The Page 69 Test: Thirteen.

--Marshal Zeringue

"We the Voters"

New from Stanford University Press: We the Voters: The Constitutional Choices That Shape America's Elections by Lori Ringhand.

About the book, from the publisher:

Many Americans today are frustrated, unsettled, or just plain perplexed about the rules governing our democracy and who gets make them. Concern about rigged systems, confusion about the Electoral College, and uncertainty about who's in charge of it all have shaken our faith in elections as a reliable way to peacefully transfer political power in a deeply fractured nation.

In We the Voters, Lori A. Ringhand brings a fresh perspective to these issues. In straightforward and accessible language, she explains how certain questions – who "we the people" are, how they should be represented, and who gets to make the rules governing our elections – have always lurked just beneath the surface of our nation's most contentious fights about how our elections should work.

When there are clear answers to these questions, this book explains them. But its primary purpose is to help readers understand why so many of these questions are genuinely difficult, and how decisions made by past generations both structure and empower our choices today. Using constitutional text, history, and landmark Supreme Court decisions, Ringhand shows how the Constitution often serves less as rigid rule book for our elections and more as a general framework, empowering each generation of Americans to engage for themselves the important questions underlying our electoral system by interrogating what is and isn't working for them.

We the Voters is pragmatic, but also optimistic. In the end, the Constitution leaves the defense of our democracy up to us; it equips us with the tools we need to question, debate, and ultimately change how our system of self-government works. This book urges us to take up that call with vigor.

The Page 99 Test: Supreme Bias: Gender and Race in U.S. Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings by Christina L. Boyd, Paul M. Collins, Jr., and Lori A. Ringhand.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Beheading Game"

New from Crown: The Beheading Game: A Novel by Rebecca Lehmann.

About the novel, from the publisher:

Disgraced. Beheaded. And out for revenge . . .

We all know what happened to Henry VIII’s second wife, Anne Boleyn. But what if she woke up the day after her execution and took it upon herself to seek justice?

“Nobody was surprised at Anne’s conviction. The world loves to put a woman in her place.”

The Beheading Game begins in the hours after Anne Boleyn’s beheading, when she wakes to find herself unceremoniously laid to rest in a makeshift coffin, her head wrapped in linen at her knees. Discarded by King Henry VIII for being unable to give him a male heir and reviled by Cromwell for being too smart for her own good, she was ultimately executed based on trumped-up charges of adultery, incest, and high treason.

Anne escapes the Tower of London, sews her head back on, then sets out on a quest to kill Henry VIII before he can marry her own lady-in-waiting Jane Seymour. The stakes are high—if Jane gives birth to a rival heir, Anne’s daughter, Elizabeth, will lose her claim to the throne. Traveling the streets of London in the guise of a commoner, with the help of a prostitute who becomes a trusted friend (and perhaps something more), Anne soon realizes how little she knew about life in the real world.

A fantastical journey through the wilds of England and Tudor history, filled with danger and magic and steeped in Arthurian legend, The Beheading Game is a prescient reminder that “mouthy” women have always been punished. Now, thanks to debut novelist Rebecca Lehmann, nearly five hundred years after Anne Boleyn’s death, one of history’s most maligned women finally has the chance to tell her story.

Visit Rebecca Lehmann's website, and follow her on Instagram and Threads.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Inquisition for Blood"

New from LSU Press: Inquisition for Blood: The Making of a Black Female Serial Killer in the Jim Crow South by Lauren Nicole Henley.

About the book, from the publsher:

For three years in the early 1900s, a serial killer zigzagged across the rice belt region of the United States, using an everyday ax to slaughter Black families living within a mile of the Southern Pacific Railroad’s Sunset Route. The similarities among the murders were uncanny, yet lawmen in early twentieth-century America had neither the technology nor the vocabulary to identify the serial killer in their midst. Instead, regional authorities worked the cases as individual homicides.

This approach led to seemingly contradictory realities: the unknown killer was dubbed “the axman,” and a young Black woman named Clementine Barnabet was arrested as a suspect. She offered questionable confessions and swiftly gained international recognition, as the press reimagined Clementine as a cult-leading, ax-wielding, sacrifice-driven serial killer. But there was a problem: Clementine was already in jail by the time more than half of the murders occurred.

In Inquisition for Blood, Lauren Nicole Henley examines this conundrum as she describes how axman madness consumed an entire region for years. She unpacks these crimes and their aftermaths to show how Black communities responded to incomprehensible violence, how the state criminalized Blackness, and how a young Black woman ultimately came to be understood as a serial killer. Drawing on more than three thousand newspaper articles, hundreds of pages of court records, prison ledgers, death certificates, censuses, city directories, and more, Henley tells a historical narrative that is as intriguing as any true crime novel, challenging our assumptions about who has the ability to get away with murder.

--Marshal Zeringue