Gabriella Saab's "The Star Society," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Star Society by Gabriella Saab.

The entry begins:

I think The Star Society would be such an exciting movie or, even better, a Netflix or HBO Max miniseries so we could dive even deeper into the story and characters. The story is set in 1946 during the Golden Age of Hollywood—a setting that is perfect for screen with opulence and glamour while overcast by the shadows of Red Scare paranoia. There are also flashbacks to war-torn Arnhem, which would be riveting and emotional to see on screen. The main characters, Ada and Ingrid, are twin sisters who are separated during the war. They reunite when Ingrid, a private investigator, is sent to uncover if her sister, Ada, an actress, has communist ties.

Ada and Ingrid are Dutch and British and have been educated in England, so most people assume they’re British. Although they are not identical twins, they do favor in appearance. Their hair is naturally dark, but postwar, Ingrid dyes her auburn, and Ada’s character is inspired by Audrey Hepburn. While I would love for the real Audrey to play her, if I were casting a modern- day Audrey, the obvious answer is Lily Collins. She favors Audrey Hepburn, and I think she would fit a 1946 setting perfectly and beautifully portray the charm Ada projects to the world while shielding her insecurities and trauma.

To play Ingrid, I would cast...[read on]

Visit Gabriella Saab's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Star Society.

Q&A with Gabriella Saab.

My Book, The Movie: The Star Society.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Joshua B. Freeman's "Garden Apartments"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Garden Apartments: The History of a Low-Rent Utopia by Joshua B. Freeman.

About the book, from the publisher:

How a form of multifamily housing with idealistic roots became a ubiquitous model promoted by both public entities and private developers.

Eminent historian Joshua Freeman rescues garden apartments—typically low-rise multifamily residences that enclose or are surrounded by landscaped gardens—from their invisibility in the American landscape. He details their outsized influence on housing policy and social policy as they helped upgrade living standards for working people. Inspired by the architectural innovations and socialist politics of British garden cities, Red Vienna, and German modernist housing in the 1920s, these large, centrally managed projects were mostly not public housing, but their capitalist developers worked with governments to keep down rents. The results were often relatively small apartments and large communal spaces, aimed at fostering actual American community.

Learn more about Garden Apartments at the University of Chicago Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Garden Apartments.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven top books for fans of "The Pitt"

At People magazine senior books editor Lizz Schumer tagged seven books for fans of the HBO medical drama, The Pitt. One title on the list:

Gone Before Goodbye by Harlan Coben and Reese Witherspoon

Army combat surgeon Maggie McCabe is passionate for helping others while living on the edge, until a tragedy leads to her losing her medical license. When a former colleague, a plastic surgeon with a high-profile clientele, offers her an equally challenging job that very few surgeons can succeed in, a desperate Maggie takes the gig. But she finds herself becoming a fugitive after a patient disappears under her care.

Read about another title on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Katie Bernet

From my Q&A with Katie Bernet, author of Beth Is Dead:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

Beth Is Dead kinda says it all, and I like to joke that Jo March came up with the title. Beth Is Dead is a modern reimagining of Little Women as a mystery-thriller in which Beth March is murdered in chapter one. In the story, Jo has a book deal for which she needs an idea, and as she toys with writing about her sister’s death, she lands on a blunt, chilling title, Beth Is Dead. Before writing this scene, I had a bland working title for the novel as a whole, but when Jo had this idea on the page, I knew...[read on]

Visit Katie Bernet's website.

The Page 69 Test: Beth Is Dead.

My Book, The Movie: Beth Is Dead.

Writers Read: Katie Bernet.

Q&A with Katie Bernet.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Michael Gorup's "The Counterrevolutionary Shadow"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Counterrevolutionary Shadow: Race, Democracy, and the Making of the American People by Michael Gorup.

About the book, from the publisher:

A bold explanation of how reactionary political movements appeal to racism to reconcile American democracy with antidemocratic practices.

“All power to the people!” So goes the familiar slogan of 1960s racial justice politics. The message is clear: the fight against racism is a fight for greater democracy—for the rule of “the people.” And yet, across American history, movements of racial backlash have also framed themselves as aiming to deliver greater democracy and redeem the rule of “the people.” Examples abound, ranging from the Southern Redeemers who overthrew Reconstruction, to the “populist” backlash to the civil rights movement, and the white revanchism of our own time. How is it that we find claims to greater democracy on both sides of these struggles? What does this reveal about modern democracy, popular sovereignty, and the peculiar politics of race in America?

The Counterrevolutionary Shadow: Race, Democracy, and the Making of the American People provides a novel account of the relationship between race and democratic politics in the United States. Across five chapters, Michael Gorup turns to the life and work of key figures in the history of American political thought—including Thomas Jefferson, Hosea Easton, David Walker, Ida B. Wells, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Huey P. Newton—to argue that racial politics in the United States has always been a politics of peoplehood. Racism is what Gorup calls a politics of “popular enclosure”: it limits the scope of democratic power by circumscribing who is said to belong to #8220;the people.” In so doing, it contains democratization from within. Neither strictly antidemocratic, nor a necessary entailment of modern democracy as such, Gorup argues that racism is best understood as a political construct developed to manage, if never fully reconcile, the contradictions that beset settler democracy.

Racism is, in short, American democracy’s “counterrevolutionary shadow”—a technology for rendering despotic practices like enslavement, exploitation, and dispossession tolerable within a society where the people are said to rule.

Learn more about The Counterrevolutionary Shadow at the University Press of Kansas website.

The Page 99 Test: The Counterrevolutionary Shadow.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven books that complicate stories about the South

Grace Gaynor is a writer from Louisville, Kentucky. She is a Feminist Press apprentice, an editorial intern at Electric Literature, and a reader for Bicoastal Review. She studied English and GWS at Hollins University and earned an MFA in creative writing from Virginia Tech.

At Electric Lit Gaynor tagged seven "books, each of which adds a new texture, layer, and contradiction to the story of what the South really is, [that] will resonate with readers who love and live in deeply complex, complicated places." One title on the list:

Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward

Men We Reaped is Ward’s memoir about how and why five Black men in her life died in just four years. It’s a narrative about the way the lives of Black American Southerners are thoroughly tainted by the systemic deaths of Black men. The book offers a powerful perspective on the dilemma of loving a place while being irreparably hurt by it. Ward writes: “I knew there was much to hate about home, the racism and inequality and poverty which is why I left, yet I loved it.”

Read about another title on the list.

Men We Reaped is among Alicia Simba's top ten memoirs and essay collections by Black women, Maggie Laurel Boyd's nine titles that rethink our narratives about health & healing and Matthew Gavin Frank’s eleven books featuring flying things.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Farah Naz Rishi's "The Flightless Birds of New Hope"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Flightless Birds of New Hope: A Novel by Farah Naz Rishi.

About the novel, from the publisher:

Three estranged siblings―and a high-maintenance cockatoo―reunite in a luminous novel about forgiveness, connection, and the complexities of family by the author of Sorry for the Inconvenience.

Upon the sudden deaths of their bird-obsessed parents, the three Shah siblings reunite.

Aliza has spent years holding their crumbling family together, caring for their younger brother, Sammy. And Aden, named executor of the estate, finds himself resentfully facing the one member of the family who always got their parents’ undivided love: their famous Bollywood-bopping cockatoo, Coco.

One reckless night, Aden opens Coco’s cage, letting her do what he did a decade ago―fly away from home.

In a panic, the siblings set off to recover her, armed with only Coco’s tracking chip and the fragile hope they might set things right. What they think will be a quick search and rescue becomes a two-week cross-country road trip, where old grudges resurface, relationships are tested, and long-buried dreams stir awake.

As Coco, meanwhile, forges her own path to the past, Aden, Aliza, and Sammy follow―not just the bird, but the possibility of something more: a way back to each other.

Visit Farah Naz Rishi's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Flightless Birds of New Hope.

The Page 69 Test: The Flightless Birds of New Hope.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Ralph Pite's "Edward Thomas's Prose"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Edward Thomas's Prose: Truth, Mystery, and the Natural World by Ralph Pite.

About the book, from the publisher:

Edward Thomas (1878-1917) is a renowned poet. Until recently, his prose writing has, by comparison, been neglected and very often dismissed by critics. Thanks not least to the multi-volume new edition being published by OUP (gen. eds. Guy Cuthbertson and Lucy Newlyn), this body of work is being re-evaluated. This new study by Ralph Pite forms part of that undertaking; it is the first to consider Thomas's prose on its own terms, independently of the poetry that it preceded.

By considering all of Thomas's prose work in its wide variety of genres (nature writing, literary criticism, fiction, autobiography) and by drawing, for the first time, on the whole range of his reviewing, this study transforms understanding of his development. The continuity of his critical perspective emerges; his Celtic loyalties, their nature and their depth, are revealed; both the complexity and the conviction of his politics are brought to light, alongside his receptive alertness to innovative writing and his own originality and daring as a writer. The view of his achievement generated by his interwar reception (itself the outcome of societal mourning and griefwork) is challenged; so is the critical consensus regarding the quality of his prose and the reasons behind its changing styles across Thomas's career. From all of this, it becomes clear, moreover, how powerfully Thomas's work speaks in the contemporary moment of environmental and climate breakdown. Thomas's prose seeks constantly to articulate a relationship of absolute interdependence between human beings and the natural world. His writing is so exploratory and original because Thomas seeks to address the problematic reality that interdependence--this truth of humanity's place in natural world--is perceptible to Western eyes only as mystery.

Learn more about Edward Thomas's Prose at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Edward Thomas's Prose.

--Marshal Zeringue

The 25 best historical fiction books of all time

At Oprah Daily Charley Burlock and Bethanne Patrick tagged the twenty-five "most transportive historical novels across eras and continents, from ancient Greece to 1960s Saigon." One title on the list:

The Song of Achilles, by Madeline Miller

The Achilles of Homer’s The Iliad wept for days over his comrade Patroclus’s corpse, refusing to let it be buried. Miller, a scholar of classical literature, takes that tiny detail and uses it to reimagine the hero of the Trojan War as a man in love with his best friend and most faithful ally. This intimate, romantic story reveals more about soldiers, lovers, and queer couples than most of classical literature combined, yet it sticks close to the historical and literary context on which it’s based. Miller’s fresh look at this epic poem has inspired many other fiction writers to write about ancient works, but we all know that sometimes the first entry is the best.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Song of Achilles is among Tobias Madden's seven top books that take you places, Costa B. Pappas's eleven books that are contemporary retellings of classic titles, Bethanne Patrick's twenty-five best historical fiction books of all time, Mark Skinner's nineteen top Greek myth retellings, Alexia Casale's top eight titles sparked by the authors' work life, Allison Epstein's eight queer historical fiction books set around the world, Phong Nguyen's seven titles that live halfway between history & myth, The Center for Fiction's 200 books that shaped two centuries of literature, Sara Stewart's six best books and Nicole Hill's fourteen characters who should have lived.

My Book, The Movie: The Song of Achilles.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Katie Bernet reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Katie Bernet, author of Beth Is Dead.

Her entry begins:

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what makes a “high concept” novel, so I’ve been reading books that have well-defined, grabby premises. In the young adult space, I just finished reading Kill Creatures by Rory Power which is a murder mystery written from the perspective of the killer—chilling, clever, and horribly believable. I just started reading Let’s Split Up by Bill Wood which was pitched as Scream meets Scooby Doo and totally delivers on both the horror and the quirky group dynamics.

In the adult space, I just finished...[read on]

About Beth Is Dead, from the publisher:

Beth March’s sisters will stop at nothing to track down her killer—until they begin to suspect each other—in this debut thriller that’s also a bold, contemporary reimagining of the beloved classic Little Women.

When Beth March is found dead in the woods on New Year’s Day, her sisters vow to uncover her murderer.

Suspects abound. There’s the neighbor who has feelings for not one but two of the girls. Meg’s manipulative best friend. Amy’s flirtatious mentor. And Beth’s lionhearted first love. But it doesn’t take the surviving sisters much digging to uncover motives each one of the March girls had for doing the unthinkable.

Jo, an aspiring author with a huge following on social media, would do anything to hook readers. Would she kill her sister for the story? Amy dreams of studying art in Europe, but she’ll need money from her aunt—money that’s always been earmarked for Beth. And Meg wouldn’t dream of hurting her sister…but her boyfriend might have, and she’ll protect him at all costs.

Despite the growing suspicion within the family, it’s hard to know for sure if the crime was committed by someone close to home. After all, the March sisters were dragged into the spotlight months ago when their father published a controversial bestseller about his own daughters. Beth could have been killed by anyone.

Beth’s perspective told in flashback unfolds next to Meg, Jo, and Amy’s increasingly fraught investigation as the tragedy threatens to rip the Marches apart.

Visit Katie Bernet's website.

The Page 69 Test: Beth Is Dead.

My Book, The Movie: Beth Is Dead.

Writers Read: Katie Bernet.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Stephen J. Ramos's "Folk Engineering"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Folk Engineering: Planning Southern Regionalism by Stephen J. Ramos.

About the book, from the publisher:

The understudied history of race, region, and planning in the US South

During the interwar years, the discourse of regional planning profoundly reformulated the spatiality of race and place in the United States. In the South, Jim Crow brutality and agricultural crisis fueled unprecedented population outmigration. Sociologist and author Howard W. Odum founded the Institute for Research in Social Science at the University of North Carolina to develop a Southern regionalism that reasserted organic territorial culture amid that flux. Regionalism connected the arts, humanities, and social sciences across the country in a collective effort to elevate place-based narrative and folk sensibility to an all-encompassing social theory.

Stephen J. Ramos refocuses the history of US regionalism and regional planning on the South, illuminating the modern tensions inherent in regionalism as nostalgic cultural practice paired with future-oriented planning ideology. By tracing Southern regionalists' intellectual history and institutional biography, Ramos explores how they developed a regional-nationalism through surveying and planning that came to inspire federal New Deal policies for the South. In showing how Odum’s influence crossed various borders, Ramos offers us a nuanced way to reappraise race, social science, and planning in the US South.

Learn more about Folk Engineering at The University of North Carolina Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Folk Engineering.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top dark academia classics

Christopher J. Yates is the author of the novels Black Chalk, Grist Mill Road, and The Rabbit Club.

Black Chalk was an Indie Next Pick that was also named a best book of the year by NPR, and a “must read” by the Boston Globe, BBC.com, and the New York Post.

Grist Mill Road was an Entertainment Weekly "Must Read" and one of the NPR Book Concierge's "Best Books of the Year."

At Bustle Yates tagged his "five favorite books set in dark, dusty campus corridors. They’re the original dark academia tales...." One title on the list:

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark

Jean Brodie, a charismatic but unorthodox teacher at an exclusive Edinburgh school for girls, selects “the crème de la crème” for her “Brodie set,” six pupils whose lives and passions she intends to shape. (Fans of The Secret History might already be getting goosebumps.) Brodie is also in the throes of a love triangle with two of the male school masters, the handsome-but-married painter Mr. Lloyd and the less-enticing singing teacher, Mr. Lowther, who is at least a bachelor. “I am in my prime,” Miss Brodie states, repeatedly and somewhat desperately. Meanwhile, the teenage girls of the Brodie set find their schoolmistress’s romantic life both fascinating and titillating, and as these girls grow up under Brodie’s eccentric tutelage, what unfolds is a tale of power, lost innocence, and betrayal. Spark’s beautifully written novel is witty, dark, and deliciously subversive.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is among Karen Lord's top six works that remind us of the roots of violence in history, Meg Wolitzer’s ten desert island books, E. Lockhart's five top books about women labeled “difficult”, Adam Ehrlich Sachs's top ten funny books, Sebastian Faulks's six favorite books, Stuart Husband's top ten fictional teachers, Rachel Cooke's top ten spinsters, Karin Altenberg's top ten books about betrayal, Megan Abbott's five most dangerous mentors in fiction, the Barnes & Noble Review's list of five top books on teaching and learning and Ian Rankin's six best books. Miss Jean Brodie is one of John Mullan's ten best teachers in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Gabriella Saab

From my Q&A with Gabriella Saab, author of The Star Society: A Historical Novel:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

My title, The Star Society, tells readers everything the story is about. The word “star” is, of course, a word used in association with Hollywood actors, but a red star is also a symbol of the Communist Party—something which would have provoked suspicion in 1940s Hollywood when everyone was afraid of communist infiltration, and a main conflict in my novel. The Star Society is also the name of the glamorous, exclusive parties Ada hosts for her friend group. Both the title and Ada’s Star Society gatherings reflect the overall nature of the story: something seemingly alluring and lighthearted yet, beneath it all, is it what it seems? This book, from the moment I developed it, has always been The Star Society, because the title sums up the story perfectly.

What's in a name?

My main characters are twin sisters born to a Dutch father and British mother. One is loosely inspired by Audrey Hepburn, so...[read on]

Visit Gabriella Saab's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Star Society.

Q&A with Gabriella Saab.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Thomas Aiello's "Return of the King"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Return of the King: The Rebirth of Muhammad Ali and the Rise of Atlanta by Thomas Aiello.

About the book, from the publisher:

Return of the King tells the story of Muhammad Ali’s return to the ring in 1970, after a more than three-year suspension for refusing his draft notice as a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War. With Ali’s career still in doubt, he found new support in shifting public opinion about the war and in Atlanta, a city still governed by white supremacy, but a white supremacy decidedly different from that of its neighbor cities in the Deep South.

Atlanta had been courting and landing professional sports teams in football, basketball, and baseball since the end of 1968. An influential state politician, Leroy Johnson, Georgia’s first Black state senator since Reconstruction, was determined to help Ali return after his exile. The state had no boxing commission to prevent Ali from fighting there, so Johnson made it his mission for Ali to make a comeback in Georgia. Ali’s opponent would be Jerry Quarry, the top heavyweight contender and, more important, a white man who had spoken out against Ali’s objection to the war.

In Return of the King, Thomas Aiello examines the history of Muhammad Ali, Leroy Johnson, and the city of Atlanta, while highlighting an important fight of Ali’s that changed the trajectory of his career. Although the fight between Ali and Quarry lasted only three rounds, those nine minutes changed boxing forever and were crucial to both the growth of Atlanta and the rebirth of Ali’s boxing career.

Visit Thomas Aiello's website.

The Page 99 Test: Jim Crow's Last Stand.

The Page 99 Test: Practical Radicalism and the Great Migration.

The Page 99 Test: Return of the King.

--Marshal Zeringue

"CrimeReads" -- the best gothic fiction of 2025

At CrimeReads Molly Odintz tagged the best gothic fiction titles of 2025, including:

Fiend, Alma Katsu

Succession, with demons! Alma Katsu has written a—bear with me—fiendishly delightful tale of a dysfunctional family whose multigenerational power comes from harnessing the energy of a rather unpredictable force. The ending left me stunned—and so, so satisfied.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Page 69 Test: Fiend.

My Book, The Movie: Fiend.

--Marshal Zeringue

Katie Bernet's "Beth Is Dead," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Beth Is Dead by Katie Bernet.

The entry begins:

Beth Is Dead is a modern reimagining of Little Women as a mystery-thriller in which Beth March is found murdered in chapter one.

Naturally, I’d melt into a puddle if Greta Gerwig directed the film adaptation. Her adaptation of Little Women reinvigorated my love for Louisa May Alcott’s classic, but I’ve been a Greta stan since the days of Francis Ha and Lady Bird. I’d flip to see her take on a mystery-thriller, and I can hardly imagine the fun of cozying up to her versions of Little Women and Beth Is Dead back to back to back forevermore.

Beth Is Dead is written from the alternating perspectives of all four March sisters—including Beth in flashback, so we’ll start by dream-casting the girls. They’re not redheads in the novel, but I think this redheaded quartet would do a fantastic job of modernizing the characters.

Madalaine Petsch could play...[read on]

Visit Katie Bernet's website.

The Page 69 Test: Beth Is Dead.

My Book, The Movie: Beth Is Dead.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six Regency-era novels that aren’t romances

Katie Moench is a librarian, runner, and lover of baked goods. A school librarian in the Upper Midwest, Moench lives with her husband and dog and spends her free time drinking coffee, trying new recipes, and adding to her TBR list.

At Book Riot she tagged six Regency-era novels that aren’t romances, including:

Gallows Thief by Bernard Cornwell

This historical mystery novel dives into the system of capital punishment that existed in Regency-era England. Returning from the Napoleonic Wars, Rider Sandman expected to come home to a gentleman’s life, but, two years after Waterloo, his family has no money and he has called off his engagement to the woman he loves. Desperate to bring in money, he takes a job working for the government investigating pleas for mercy from condemned criminals. His first case involves a painter who is sentenced to hanging, but as he looks into the case, Rider begins to have his doubts about the man’s guilt.

Read about another novel on the list.

Also see Celeste Connally's six Regency-era historical mysteries with headstrong heroines and Tara Sonin's fifty best regency romances.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Antwain K. Hunter's "A Precarious Balance"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: A Precarious Balance: Firearms, Race, and Community in North Carolina, 1715–1865 by Antwain K. Hunter.

About the book, from the publisher:

Spanning the 1720s through the end of the Civil War, this book explores how free and enslaved Black North Carolinians accessed, possessed, and used firearms—both legal and otherwise—and how the state and white people responded. North Carolinians, whether free or enslaved, Black or white, had different stakes on the issue, all of which impacted the reality of Black people’s gun use.

Antwain K. Hunter reveals that armed Black people used firearms for a wide range of purposes: They hunted to feed their families and communities, guarded property, protected crops, and defended maroon communities from outsiders. Further, they resisted the institution of slavery and used guns both against white people and within their own community. Competing views of Black people’s firearm use created social, political, and legal points of contention for different demographics within North Carolina and left the general assembly and white civilians struggling to harness Black people’s armed labor for white people’s benefit. A Precarious Balance challenges readers to rethink how they understand race and firearms in the American past.

Learn more about A Precarious Balance at the University of North Carolina Press website.

The Page 99 Test: A Precarious Balance.

--Marshal Zeringue

The Jane Austen reading list

One title from Tertulia's list of books that offer "multiple ways into Jane Austen’s enduring world:"

Wild for Austen: A Rebellious, Subversive, and Untamed Jane
Devoney Looser

Incisive and funny, this new book reconsiders Jane Austen’s life, writing, and long afterlife. Revisiting the novels, juvenilia, suffrage, adaptation history, and pop-cultural mythmaking, Looser presents a writer deeply entangled with the controversies of her time—and ours.

Read about another entry on the list.

Also see Rebecca Romney's list of six books that owe a debt to Jane Austen’s work, Melissa Albert's list of the top fifteen male characters in Jane Austen's novels, and Paula Byrne's list of the ten best Jane Austen characters.

The Page 99 Test: Wild for Austen.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Jacquelyn Stolos reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Jacquelyn Stolos, author of Asterwood.

Her entry begins:

A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin

No one needs me to say that LeGuin is a master of fantasy that deftly tackles social and existential questions. I returned to this classic to remind myself of everything that's possible in children's literature. The archipelago of Earthsea is the most vivid place I've ever been, the action gripping to the point of it being unfair. Prickly, arrogant Ged is a singular protagonist. The engineering of this world's magic, with its Taoist principles, is sublime. LeGuin's small, subtle moves--like...[read on]

About Asterwood, from the publisher:

Family secrets, friendship, and magic burst from the seams of this thrilling fantasy adventure that follows a ten-year-old girl as she discovers a new world behind her home in desperate need of her help and within it, her own troubling family legacy.

Madelyn has always been satisfied with her life of cozy meals, great books, and adventures with her father in the woods behind their farmhouse.

But when a mysterious child appears and invites her down a forbidden trail and into a new world, Madelyn realizes that there’s far more to life than she ever allowed herself to realize.

This new world, Asterwood, is wider, wilder, and more magical than she could ever imagine. And somehow, it’s people know who she is—and desperately need her help.

Accompanied by new friends—one ​who can speak the language of the trees and one with a mind as sharp as her daggers—and her calico cat, Dots, Madelyn embarks on an epic quest across a strange and sprawling forest world whose secrets just might help her save her own.​

Visit Jacquelyn Stolos's website.

Writers Read: Jacquelyn Stolos.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five books that embody resilience

William Boyd was born in 1952 in Accra, Ghana, and grew up there and in Nigeria. He is the author of sixteen highly acclaimed, bestselling novels and five collections of stories. Any Human Heart was longlisted for the Booker Prize and adapted into a TV series. His books have won many literary awards, including the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Fiction, and the Costa Book Award. He was named a Granta Best Young Novelist in 1983, and in 2005, he was awarded the CBE. Boyd's newest novel is The Predicament.

In 2020 at GQ (UK) he tagged "five books that, for him, embody and inspire resilience like no others," including:

Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov

This book is Vladimir Nabokov’s astonishing, exemplary autobiography. Nabokov (born in 1899) was the scion of a rich, enlightened, noble Russian family. He grew up in a world of unreflecting wealth and astonishing privilege. All of which was snatched away forever with the arrival of the Russian Revolution in 1917. Nabokov then became an impoverished exile – first in Berlin, then Paris and then, with the advent of the Second World War, the US. Fame and fortune eventually arrived, thanks to the global success of his novel Lolita, but what is remarkable about Nabokov’s telling of his life story is his composure. He lost everything, he never returned to his native land, his father was assassinated, family members perished in the Holocaust, but his view of life and his savouring of its particular pleasures never wavered. There was no bitterness, no regrets, no wailing at misfortune. The book is also beautifully written – in English. Miraculously, he became, after James Joyce, the language’s unrivalled stylist.

Read about another entry on the list.

Speak, Memory is on Eve Claxton's top ten list of memoirs and autobiographies, Anne Applebaum's top five list of memoirs of Communism and Eva Hoffman's list of five notable memoirs of identity, dislocation & belonging, and is one of Susan Cheever's favorite books.

--Marshal Zeringue