Boston College graduate John Houle ’94 has published his second novel, The Siberian Candidate (BookPress Publishing, 2023). The political thriller continues the story of former campaign strategist Henry Mercucio, introduced in Houle’s debut novel The King-Makers of Providence. In The Siberian Candidate, the Rhode Island lieutenant governor stumbles across a Russian plot to subvert America’s electoral system. Mercucio and former Congressman Ray McNally are recruited to deliver a new Democratic gubernatorial candidate who could prevent Rhode Island and the country from falling to dark forces. Houle is the founder of the public relations and marketing firm Main Street Media.
The Siberian Candidate
The 4-day work week
Economist Juliet Schor, a professor of sociology at Boston College and a bestselling author, makes the case for a four-day work week, showing how this model can address major challenges such as burnout, AI, and the climate crisis, in her new book Four Days a Week (Harper Business, 2025). The five-day, 40-hours-a-week work model has gone unchanged for nearly a century. But a study of the four-day work week, involving hundreds of organizations across various countries, has demonstrated success in maintaining productivity while seeing remarkable improvements in employee well-being. In Four Days a Week, Schor shares her analysis of the benefits of a shorter work week, how companies can achieve them, why the concept has taken so long to emerge and gain acceptance, and why doing so will help a company’s employees and its bottom line. According to the publisher, the book is a blueprint for implementing a change that once seemed radical, but is now within reach. Schor has researched and written about work for more than four decades, and is the author of several books, including The Overworked American, The Overspent American, and After the Gig. Read more in Boston College Magazine.
Posted in Boston College Authors
Tagged economy, employment, Sociology Department, work
Leave a comment
Miracles can happen
The Boston College Class of 1975 recently celebrated its 50th Reunion. One of those Golden Eagles is Joan Luise Hill, who is the author of two books about miracles. Her first book, The Miracle Chase, co-authored with Katie Mahon and Mary Beth Phillips, tells the story of the authors’ friendship, the miracles that happened in their lives, and the journey of discovery these events sent them on. In Hill’s case, her miracle was the survival of her 13-year-old child from a dangerous cardiac event. Hill and Mahon followed up that book with The Miracle Collectors (Worthy Books/Hachette, 2021), based on the outpouring of stories of other miracles, offered from their readers and others. As part of their own spiritual quest, Hill and Mahon have become unofficial miracle experts and have discovered that when people are truly present, miracles abound. The authors say that “the stories of courage, forgiveness, gratitude, faith, hope, and love allow us to notice and appreciate the miracles that are available to each one of us, while opening us up to a part of the Divine mystery we can absorb and understand.” Shortly after The Miracle Collectors was released, Hill and Mahon were interviewed for a Boston College Church in the 21st Century Center God Pods segment. Learn more about Joan Luise Hill and her books at themiraclecollectors.com.
Grace
A new scholarly publication by Boston College Assistant Professor of Theology Henry Shea, S.J., proposes a deeply grounded investigation of grace and a robustly balanced impetus for advancing the gospel in the 21st century. In An Analogy of Grace (University of Notre Dame Press, 2025), Fr. Shea engages with the works of theologians Karl Rahner, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Erich Przywara, and others. From this analysis, he advances a new framework that, according to the publisher, “posits that grace is best understood as a moving Trinitarian analogy that begins in the heart and advances through the incarnate Word in the Spirit toward the whole Christ. This new analogy of grace is radically universal and inclusive while also wholly informed by the distinct form of Jesus Christ.”
Pooling the financial risk
In her latest book, Sharing Risk: The Path to Economic Well-Being for All (University of California Press, 2025) Liberty Mutual Insurance Professor of Law Patricia McCoy probes explanations as to why financial burdens have shifted onto the backs of individual U.S. families over the past 60 years. She examines how businesses and governments have slowly widened the wealth gap, and presents policy recommendations on risk sharing that would build a more equitable financial system. McCoy’s research is at the intersections of financial regulation, consumer protection, and economic justice. She is a founder of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. More from Boston College Law School Magazine.
Posted in Boston College Authors
Tagged Boston College Law School, economic inequality
Leave a comment
What’s your sign?
After a distressing astrology reading, science-minded skeptic Leah Lockhart is on a mission to prove that her horoscope is wrong in the latest novel by Boston College graduate Jessie Rosen. In All the Signs (G.P. Putnam’s Sons/Penguin Random House, 2025), Lockhart sets off to find people born under her exact same star map, in order to compare their lives and choices. Her journey takes her to Venice, Istanbul, New Orleans, and beyond. Along the way, Lockhart starts to question everything she believes in. Rosen is a writer, producer, educator, and speaker. Her previous novel was the USA Today bestseller The Heirloom.
Girls with Goals
Girls and women have always found a way to play soccer, in spite of bans, challenges, rules, and backward-looking attitudes. Today, soccer is the most popular women’s sport in the world. A new YA book by Boston College alumna Clelia Castro-Malaspina chronicles the history of women’s soccer from its birth in 19th century England to its rise as a global powerhouse. Girls with Goals (Holler/Quarto, 2025) has been described as “a love letter” to women’s soccer and the female athletes who have inspired girls all over the world. Kirkus Reviews calls Girls with Goals “a spirited, well-told success story” with a “vivid narrative.” Castro-Malaspina is the founder of Mossy Pines Creative, a children’s book editorial business, and the author of Your Freedom, Your Power: A Kid’s Guide to the First Amendment.
Posted in Alumni Authors
Tagged athletes, nonfiction, soccer, sports, women's history
Leave a comment
‘Parallel Letters’
Parallel Letters (Parallel’noe Pis’mo) (Sandermoen Publishing, 2025), a new bilingual collection of poems by Boston College Professor of Russian, English, and Jewish Studies Maxim D. Shrayer, showcases twin texts that were born from the same sources, but occupy different linguistic and cultural spaces: Russian and English. The title of the collection was drawn from Shrayer’s “parallel writing” process: his principal method of creating literary texts over the past three years. The volume’s 38 poems—written from 2020–2024—primarily focus on immigrant memory among those from the former Soviet Union now living in the United States, Israel, and Europe; the Soviet legacy; and the wars in Ukraine and Israel. Read more from BC News.
A fortune and a curse
The latest book from bestselling author Jen Calonita is about a girl who will inherit a mysterious fortune if she can break a centuries-old curse. In Isle of Ever, Everly “Benny” Benedict learns she’s the heir to a fortune, but to collect the inheritance she first has to play―and win―a game. If she fails, the fortune will be forfeited. Isle of Ever is book one of an expected series. Calonita is a Boston College graduate whose popular books for middle grade readers and young adults have been translated into 15 languages. Her publications include Fairy Godmother, 12 to 22, and many titles in Disney’s Twisted Tale series and the Fairy Tale Reform School series. Isle of Ever received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and School Library Journal.
Coercive Commerce
In 1842, the Qing Empire signed a watershed commercial treaty with Great Britain, beginning a century-long period in which geopolitical and global economic entanglements intruded on Qing territory and governance. Previously understood as an era of “semi-colonialism,” Boston College Assistant Professor of History Stacie A. Kent reframes this “treaty period” by shedding light on the generative force of global capital. Based on extensive research conducted with British and Chinese government archives, Kent’s book, Coercive Commerce: Global Capital and Imperial Governance at the End of the Qing Empire (Hong Kong University Press, 2024), shows how commercial treaties and the regulatory regime that grew out of them catalyzed a revised arts of governance in Qing-administered China. Kent contends that Qing administrators alternately resisted and adapted to this new reality by reorganizing Chinese territory into a space where global circuits of capital could circulate and reproduce at an ever greater scale. Kent, who teaches in the University’ International Studies program, specializes in global capitalism in imperial and post-colonial contexts.
Posted in Boston College Authors
Tagged Asian history, capitalism, China, History Department
Leave a comment
BC Bookmarks 