Teaching the basic principles of archaeology through an “excavation” and analysis of New Orleans Mardi Gras parades and the beads thrown there? A student’s dream book! Award-winning historical archaeologist Laurie Wilkie takes her two loves and merges them into a brief, lively introductory textbook that is sure to actively engage students. She shows how her analysis of trinkets tossed from parade floats can illustrate major themes taught in introductory archaeology classes—from methods to economy, social identity to political power—introduced in a concrete, entertaining way. The strength of Wilkie’s book is in showing how different theoretical models used by archaeologists lead to different research questions and different answers. The textbook covers all the major themes expected of brief introductory texts but is one that students will want to read.

“This is a story she needed to tell; and the rest of the country needs to listen.” — New York Times Book Review “This vital memoir will change how we look at the opioid crisis and how the media talks about it. A deeply moving and emotional read, STRUNG OUT challenges our preconceived ideas of what addiction looks like.” —Stephanie Land, New York Times bestselling author of Maid In this deeply personal and illuminating memoir about her fifteen-year struggle with heroin, Khar sheds profound light on the opioid crisis and gives a voice to the over two million people in America currently battling with this addiction. Growing up in LA, Erin Khar hid behind a picture-perfect childhood filled with excellent grades, a popular group of friends and horseback riding. After first experimenting with her grandmother’s expired painkillers, Khar started using heroin when she was thirteen. The drug allowed her to escape from pressures to be perfect and suppress all the heavy feelings she couldn’t understand. This fiercely honest memoir explores how heroin shaped every aspect of her life for the next fifteen years and details the various lies she told herself, and others, about her drug use. With enormous heart and wisdom, she shows how the shame and stigma surrounding addiction, which fuels denial and deceit, is so often what keeps addicts from getting help. There is no one path to recovery, and for Khar, it was in motherhood that she found the inner strength and self-forgiveness to quit heroin and fight for her life. Strung Out is a life-affirming story of resilience while also a gripping investigation into the psychology of addiction and why people turn to opioids in the first place.

In Strung Together: The Cultural Currency of String Theory as a Scientific Imaginary, Sean Miller examines the cultural currency of string theory, both as part of scientific discourse and beyond it. He demonstrates that the imaginative component of string theory is both integral and indispensable to it as a scientific discourse. While mathematical arguments provide precise prompts for physical intervention in the world, the imaginary that supplements mathematical argument within string theory technical discourse allows theorists to imagine themselves interacting with the cosmos as an abstract space in such a way that strings and branes as phenomena become substantiated and legitimized. And it is precisely this sort of imaginary—which Miller calls a scientific imaginary—duly substantiated and acculturated, that survives the move from string theory technical discourse to popularizations and ultimately to popular and literary discourses. In effect, a string theory imaginary legitimizes the science itself and helps to facilitate a virtual domestication of a cosmos that was heretofore remote, alien, and incomprehensible.

Years after running away from America and the mysteries surrounding her mother's death, Merle Winslow winds up editing trash novels at X Publishing in West London and shacked up with a drug-addled diplomat's son. Shaky and defeated, she heads home to Florence, Ohio, with no money and no idea of what to do next. Meanwhile, Merle discovers that her brother Olin, rich and successful from marketing Marilyn Monroe meat thermometers, is poised to embark on a dubious performance art career, and that her stodgy father might be falling in love after years of living alone. As Merle looks for clues about her mother's life she uncovers disturbing new truths about her own romantic failings. She suspects she's never really escaped her old life; she's simply dragged it along with her, "like an outfit that was ill-fitting and too revealing, but impossible to get rid of." But with the help of her tough-talking grandmother, free-spirited brother, and a pilot who nurses a failing plane, Merle finally begins to face her family's checkered past and her own uncertain future. In vivid cinematic prose, High Strung balances humor on the rough edge of loss, regret, and wounded family love. Merle is an unforgettable creation in an exhilarating debut novel from a young writer to watch.

There’s no harmony in Nashville when a renowned sound engineer comes up missing and a record label exec’s home is firebombed. Cafton Merriepennie’s record label is in chaos, his top act is on tour, and an unidentified psychopath has him in his sights. When the cops start sniffing up the wrong tree, Cafton has to take charge and become a sleuth to save himself and the people he loves. But it’s too late for someone close to him, and others are perilously close to the brink of disaster.

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