New Books Network

When nobleman Thomas Boleyn, lord of Hever Castle, is called to London in 1509 to present himself to a newly anointed King Henry VIII, he sets in train events that ensure the Boleyn name will never be forgotten. His daughters Mary and Anne were young then, and though he was ambitious for his family to prosper, he could not imagine what would transpire in the two decades to come.

Blending the history she knows so well with the creativity of her imagination, Tracy Borman brings the Boleyn family’s three-decade rise and precipitous fall to vivid life in The House of Boleyn (Hachette, 2026). Borman surrounds the main dramatic events of the Boleyn saga with a colorful tableau in which familial and inter-familial rivalries threaten and true love often loses out to keen ambition. Anne’s ever-loyal attendant Esther Frideswide and Thomas Boleyn’s perfidious steward Robert Cranwell are as memorable as Cardinal Wolsey, Thomas Cromwell, or anyone in the increasingly dangerous orbit of the royal court. Henry VIII pursues Anne relentlessly, showering her with gifts as the Boleyns are catapulted to political prominence. But when she can’t give him the son and heir he desperately seeks, the family faces a terrible and bloody fate. With lavish and compelling historical detail, Tracy Borman displays her keen gift for storytelling in this resonant novel of family, fate, and intrigue.

Tracy Borman is chief historian of Historic Royal Palaces, chief executive of the Heritage Education Trust, and chancellor and professor of Tudor History at Lincoln Bishop University.

Dr. Kristen Vitale Engel is an Associate Fellow at the Royal Historical Society. She is in the Department of History at Southern New Hampshire University, Global, the Editor-in-Chief of "The Court Observer" for The Society for Court Studies, the Submissions Editor for the Royal Studies Journal and the International Ambassador for HistoryLab+ in partnership with the Institute of Historical Research.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

There is a changeling in this story—but who?Madeleine is young for motherhood, a promising grad student in Victorian and Modernist literature, twenty-three and not long married. Even her mother worries about the timing. But Madeleine’s ambivalence is pushed aside by Tom’s elation and her own joy at bringing new life to the world.Then comes Maud, perfect and fresh and worth every moment of difficult labor. But after just a few nights, something seems amiss, changed. The child never stops crying. Her hunger is insatiable. Her eyes glint with some kind of ancient mischief. Could Maud be a fairy child, swapped when Madeleine wasn’t paying attention? Is the real Maud dancing in the half-light with the fairies and the foxes? Did the gray cat hide her behind the hedge?Meanwhile, the world around them continues in its humdrum ease. Tom works toward a promotion, urging Madeleine to connect with other moms and keep in touch with her colleagues. Her parents travel from abroad to meet the baby, but Madeleine is unnerved by her father’s new obsession with genealogy and DNA tests. Interrupted by visions, panicked at her lack of maternal feelings, shut out from her old life, she frantically searches for answers. But the old stories end in sorrow and bloodshed. And fairies do more than kidnap babies.A riveting portrait of madness, motherhood, the myths that haunt us, and the families who keep us tethered, Emily McBride’s Queen Mab (FSG, 2026) asks us to reconsider what is real and how we might see a truer picture of ourselves through the darkness.

Emily McBride is a Canadian-born editor, writer, and translator living in Barcelona. Her work has been published in The Nation, The Rumpus, and The Stinging Fly. Queen Mab is her debut novel.

Recommended Books:

Roberto Bolaño, Distant Star

Helen Garner, The Children’s Bach

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

The Land of Happiness: How the Japanese Department Store Visualized Modern Life
(MIT Press, 2026) explores the far-reaching influence of the Japanese
department store on modern life and our imaginations. In this gorgeously
illustrated volume, Dr. Nozomi Naoi explains how Japanese department
stores modeled
“the new modern Japanese life and identity” through print media and
design, physical and imagined space, and the new experiences that these
spaces offered. The stores created the notion of a modern subject
enjoying a “land of happiness”—and this, in turn, shaped the wider
sociological context, including emerging roles for women and perceptions of coloniality.

The
book focuses on three areas: the mediascape of proliferating department
store posters, advertisements, commercial design, promotional
magazines, and merchandise; the physical space, such as the
Western-style architecture that characterized many of these early
department stores, and the imagined “modern space” created within their
walls; and, finally, the production of a novel “dreamworld,” which
included dining spaces with children’s menus, new technology such as
elevators and escalators, and more.

Although
the research on department stores and their role in the quotidian
experience is vast, there is nothing like this study, which is uniquely
grounded in an art-historical approach that draws on the visual media
environment of early twentieth-century Japan and its impact on the
everyday.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book
focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty
negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative
analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find
Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. 
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

The reason Eduard Habsburg, Archduke of Austria and formerly Hungarian Ambassador to the Vatican, has written a ‘travel guide’ to the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) is that he finds beauty, meaning, and joy in the experience of being a pilgrim in a foreign land. We pass through the doors—the portals—of the Church and the otherness of it pulls at our hearts and lays on us a bit of a yoke that will feel new. Especially for young people who’ve been crushed softly by the constant entertainment and accommodation, this hardness refreshes their souls, in the tradition of St. Augustine: “our heart is restless until it rests in you.”

Is it surprising it is to learn how the first few times he attended the Traditional Latin Mass, he found it off-putting—“oh no, not those crazy weirdoes”—but of course that’s all the more reason for a travel guide; because he can be our guide, like Virgil for Dante to show us around this new world—or, rather, very old world—that is our Catholic inheritance.

the book, Discovering the Latin Mass: A Travel Guide for the Curious, from Sophia Press

the secret link at Sophia Press that Eduard Habsburg was told us about to claim five free copies of the book so that you might share the Traditional Latin Mass

Eduard Habsburg on Twitter/X

Latin Missal on Amazon

Here is my earlier conversation for Eduard Habsburg (from 2023):

Amb. Archd. Eduard Habsburg on Almost Good Catholics, episode 59: Long Live the Empire! The Habsburg Tradition in the Twenty-First Century

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Empire and Frontier: Colonel Peter Schuyler and the Valiant Iroquois in King William's War: 1689-1701
(Pegasus Books, 2026) by Samuel Marquis presents a
powerful episode of early American history, revealing the very human
story of friendship and alliance between Colonel Peter Schuyler and the
Iroquois during King William’s War (1689–1701). Like Philbrick’s Mayflower and Gwynne’s Empire of the Summer Moon, this new book reveals how fragile alliances and cross-cultural diplomacy changed the course of empires in North America.

At the heart of the book is Peter Schuyler, a Dutch-American
mayor of Albany, Indian Affairs commissioner, and militia colonel who
earned deep trust among the Iroquois. Decades ahead of his time in his
respect for Native diplomacy and sovereignty, Schuyler helped forge and
sustain a fragile alliance between English colonists and the
Haudenosaunee (Five Nations of the Iroquois) during a decade of brutal
warfare. That alliance, known as The Covenant Chain, not only blocked
French ambitions in the region, but also shaped the political and
military landscape of the American frontier for the next one hundred
years.

Told
through multiple perspectives, the book also follows two unforgettable
Indigenous figures during the conflict. Lawrence, a Mohawk war captain,
serves as Schuyler’s compatriot on the battlefield, working for and
navigating the survival of his people. Hilletie van Olinda, a biracial
Mohawk-Dutch woman, becomes a key translator and diplomatic go-between,
using her language skills and cultural fluency to mediate between the
Iroquois and English.

Across
a decade of war, espionage, and political intrigue—from the 1689
Leisler’s Rebellion and 1690 Schenectady Massacre to the climactic Grand
Settlement of 1701—these intertwined stories reveal the human cost and
political complexity behind one of early America’s most consequential
alliances.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book
focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty
negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative
analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find
Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. 
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network