Pg. 99: Samantha Barbas's "Hate Speech"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Hate Speech: The Legal and Cultural History of an American Dilemma by Samantha Barbas.

About the book, from the publisher:

A history of the battles over regulation of hate speech in the United States.

The United States has no hate speech laws; hate speech is generally considered to be free speech under the First Amendment. In this crisp guided history, acclaimed legal historian Samantha Barbas chronicles the country’s legal and cultural battles over the regulation of hate speech in the last hundred years. Charting the historical context for current debates, she ultimately argues that, however emotionally appealing they may seem, hate speech laws undermine civil rights and democracy.

The American policy on hate speech evolved from influences such as the civil rights movement, which contended that the most effective way to combat hate speech wasn’t through proposed laws. Rather than imposing restrictions, the US has developed an array of mechanisms other than law, including counterspeech and public education, that have been relatively effective at dealing with hate speakers and hate groups. Though not perfect, our method of addressing hate is less dangerous than government censorship and less likely to be weaponized against the powerless.

Visit Samantha Barbas's website.

The Page 99 Test: Laws of Image.

The Page 99 Test: Newsworthy.

The Page 99 Test: The Rise and Fall of Morris Ernst, Free Speech Renegade.

The Page 99 Test: Actual Malice.

The Page 99 Test: Hate Speech.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Monona Wali's "Sutra Americana"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Sutra Americana by Monona Wali.

About the novel, from the publisher:

In 1960 S. K. Sharma, a brilliant young astrophysicist at the beginning of his academic career, has finally succeeded in bringing his wife, Sushila, from India to America. Intensely drawn to one another as star university students, the couple pursue an unlikely affair and marriage that crosses caste lines. Their sweeping, decades-long story of love, forgiveness, and coming of age takes place in a country that is both fascinated by and shuns them. The United States, with its exaltation of individualism, offers immense opportunities, but its looser sexual mores threaten to undermine the family’s happiness and devotion to one another.

As their three daughters become young women, they must navigate the tumultuous decades of the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, and the women’s liberation movement. In their journeys of self-discovery, they upend their parents’ hold on them to craft radically new identities for themselves. As they discover their parents’ faults they grow increasingly puzzled by their devotion to one another, eventually learning how love and forgiveness have the power to overcome the most uncomfortable truths.

Visit Monona Wali's website.

Q&A with Monona Wali.

The Page 69 Test: Sutra Americana.

--Marshal Zeringue

KC Jones's "House Haunters," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: House Haunters by KC Jones.

The entry begins:

House Haunters centers on the relationship between Grace Wonderly, a very talented but very burnt-out reality TV producer who needs a hit concept to revive not just her career, but the joy she once found in it, and Frank Pendleton, a gruff and misanthropic home inspector who moonlights as a paranormal investigator and generally prefers the company of the dead to that of the living.

Joel Edgerton and Pedro Pascal were in my head a lot while writing Frank, particularly their turns in Dark Matter and The Last of Us respectively. I think either would bring the perfect blend of vulnerability and deadpan honesty to Frank.

Grace has always been a bit more elusive in my mind...[read on]

Visit KC Jones's website.

The Page 69 Test: White Line Fever.

Q&A with KC Jones.

Writers Read: KC Jones.

The Page 69 Test: House Haunters.

My Book, The Movie: House Haunters.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top horror novels set in the art world

Faith Gladwin grew up in Nova Scotia, Canada, and studied Political Science at Dalhousie University in Halifax. She now works at a museum, and in between research work and writing, she tries to keep her houseplants alive and safe from her cat, Cleo. She is the author of The Finalist.

At CrimeReads Gladwin tagged "five chilling novels set in the world of the arts, from theatre to isolated artistic retreats." One title on the list:

De Elizabeth, She Haunts Me Still

Mallory Webb is at Shore College, her deceased mother’s alma mater, for a fresh start with the lead role in their production of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet—but she ends up digging into the sanitarium-turned-liberal arts university’s bloody history when the demon that haunted her past and caused her mother’s death returns. Ezra, the director of the play, and Saskia, Mallory’s understudy, are drawn into her investigation—and a tragic love triangle—as Mallory races to find out what really happened to her mother, before the same fate befalls her.

Set in 1999 New England, She Haunts Me Still draws on the real-life horror of the vampire panic in this dark academia horror, and the cursed production of Romeo and Juliet unfolds with homages to The Phantom of The Opera, creating an eerie, gothic atmosphere rife with tension

Read about another title on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Lee Alan Dugatkin's "Nary a Horse Left Standing"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Nary a Horse Left Standing: How a Nineteenth-Century Epidemic Transformed Medicine, Animal Welfare, and the Modern City by Lee Alan Dugatkin.

About the book, from the publisher:

How a devastating outbreak of horse flu in the 1870s ground city life to a halt—but ultimately revolutionized animal rights, medicine, and transportation.

From a veteran science writer, evolutionary biologist, historian of science, and the coauthor of the acclaimed How to Tame a Fox (and Build a Dog).

In the 1870s, horses were the lifeblood of North American cities. New York, Boston, Chicago, and Toronto relied on tens of thousands of workhorses to power daily life. Then, in late 1872 and into 1873, a devastating outbreak of horse flu—known as The Great Epizootic—swept across the continent.

In Nary a Horse Left Standing, Lee Dugatkin chronicles this little-known crisis, revealing how the epidemic disrupted nearly every aspect of urban life. From coast to coast, livelihoods collapsed as horses lay sick, or worse dying, on stable floors, fires raged unchecked without horse-drawn wagons, and city development stalled for lack of horsepower. Just as the Gilded Age was dawning and industrialists were poised to amass fortunes, the flu slowed progress to a crawl.

Yet the tragedy also catalyzed revolutions in medicine, animal rights, and transportation. Veterinary science in the U.S. was still emerging, but detailed medical reports from the epidemic helped validate germ theory and discredit outdated beliefs. The crisis also spotlighted early animal welfare efforts, with fledgling groups like the ASPCA advocating for sick horses forced to work. Finally, the sheer vulnerability of relying on animals for transport spurred a shift toward mechanized systems.

As illuminating as it is humbling, the book brings to life a critical account of a crisis that still speaks to the complex public health and transportation challenges we face today.

Visit Lee Alan Dugatkin's website.

The Page 99 Test: Power in the Wild.

The Page 99 Test: Dr. Calhoun's Mousery.

The Page 99 Test: Nary a Horse Left Standing.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Elizabeth Noel

From my Q&A with Elizabeth Noel, author of Beneath the Edelweiss:

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

The edelweiss is the quintessential symbol of the Austrian Alps. The flower has been protected under environmental laws since 1886 and features on the nation’s 2-Euro-Cent coin. It might bring forth images of Christopher Plummer as Captain von Trapp singing a love letter to his homeland in the classic 1965 adaption of The Sound of Music. Edelweiss, Edelweiss, every morning you greet me…

Austria’s Alps live and breathe in Beneath the Edelweiss so pointing to place in the title felt intuitive. However, the edelweiss denotes more than Austria alone. The flower is an illusion, appearing as a star against craggy limestone cliffs, you must look closely to see the tiny yellow flowers nestled inside what are fuzzy white leaves. Able to withstand freezing alpine winters, gale-force winds and thin soil, the edelweiss is a symbol for not only weathering the storm but knowing how to thrive once the clouds have passed. With its rugged alpine beauty, it clings to life against all odds.

The novel’s exact setting is Carinthia, Austria’s southern border province where history is as rich as it is heartbreaking. Beauty in Carinthia is omnipresent, and the dead are thought to mourn the landscape from heaven. Beneath the Edelweiss details Carinthia’s centuries old alpine herbalism tradition alongside it’s cradling of Nazism for it was in the region’s fertile soils that Austrian Nazism permeated.

Other strong...[read on]

Visit Elizabeth Noel's website.

Q&A with Elizabeth Noel.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six must-read speculative thrillers

At Book Riot Rey Rowland tagged six top speculative thrillers, including:

River Woman, River Demon by Jennifer Givhan

If you enjoy witchier psychological thrillers that have a tiny bit of a horror tinge then River Woman, River Demon is for you. This novel follows a Chicana artist named Eva Santos Moon, who practices brujería and curanderismo. She’s going through a tough time, especially since her husband was arrested for a murder that was eerily similar to one from her childhood. Soon enough, Eva herself becomes a suspect— and the only way to find out the truth is if she comes face to face with her own past.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Page 69 Test: River Woman, River Demon.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Lee Horikoshi Roripaugh reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Lee Horikoshi Roripaugh, co-editor of The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing the Lyric Essay: Insights and Prompts from Contemporary Writers and Teachers.

Their entry begins:

I just finished reading Ruth Ozeki’s enchanting debut collection of short stories, The Typing Lady—a collection that is about, among other things, writers and readers, memory, and loss. In the closing lines of the eponymously titled opening story, “The Typing Lady,” Ozeki writes: “Stories are like that. They are collaborations between people who read and people who type. They are how we co-create each other and dream ourselves into being.” These are stories in which characters counter profound loss through intense curiosity and engagement—tracing the narrative threads of their lives backwards into past memories, as well as intrepidly turning the pages forward into surprisingly quirky, or unexpected moments. Ozeki seems to suggest that curiosity and attentiveness are how...[read on]

About The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing the Lyric Essay, from the publisher:

FEATURING ESSAYS FROM: Chelsea Biondolillo • KJ Cerankowski • Ching-In Chen • Oliver de la Paz • Danielle Cadena Deulen • Camille T. Dungy • Jeannine Hall Gailey • Rigoberto González • torrin a. greathouse • Kimiko Hahn • Lily Hoàng • Michael Kleber-Diggs • Rowan McCandless • Sarah Minor • Rajiv Mohabir • Vi Khi Nào • Aimee Nezhukumatathil • Natanya Ann Pulley • Diane Seuss • Sun Yung Shin • Brian Turner • Katrina Vandenberg • Julie Marie Wade • chaun webster • The Cyborg Jillian Weise • Marco Wilkinson

The fifth volume in the immensely popular Field Guide series, The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing the Lyric Essay gives readers an extraordinary window into the methods of 26 expert practitioners at the leading edge of this ever-evolving genre.

With original craft essays, exercises, and examples, each contributor offers reflection and instruction on how lyric essays can be constructed and what makes them unique. As experts in the field, they offer their various approaches to creative nonfiction that uses an essay form, but is lyric in function, meaning that it pays special attention to patterning in language and the resonances of sound and imagery. The anthology’s expertise spans possible forms (braid, fragment, hermit crab, zuihitsu), lyric techniques (anaphora, fractal repetition, word associations, use of white space), and lyric processes (incorporating research or visual elements, engineering leaps, sustaining a longform lyric essay). Editors Heidi Czerwiec and Lee Horikoshi Roripaugh further illuminate the genre in their introduction, exploring the history of the lyric essay and its vital place in contemporary literature. This field guide is an indispensable addition to the bookshelf of any reader, writer, or instructor intrigued by this inventive and expressive genre.

Visit Lee Horikoshi Roripaugh's website, and learn more about the book at the publisher's website.

Writers Read: Lee Horikoshi Roripaugh.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine suspense novels with unforgettable settings

Hallie Shepherd is a screenwriter, actor, and producer. She is a Pacific Northwest native who now lives in LA with her filmmaker husband.

Call Off the Dark is her debut novel.

At CrimeReads the author tagged "nine suspense novels with unforgettable settings." One title on the list:

Riley Sager, The Only One Left

When Kit moves into a cliffside mansion to care for elderly Lenora, it’s not a typical caregiving job. Lenora’s entire family was murdered there when she was only seventeen years old, and though she was never charged with the crime, most people assume she committed it.

The house at the center of this story is truly a character in its own right. There are bloodstains from the murders on the carpet of the grand staircase, and the entire house is perched on the edge of a cliff. Each morning, Kit awakes to discover her mattress has slid several inches from the house’s tilt. As the story progresses, parts of the house break off and crash into the ocean below. The gloomy mansion creates a gothic atmosphere that builds tension throughout the first half before the story accelerates into a twist-heavy thriller.

Read about another novel on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Leah C. Stokes's "The Carbon Wave"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Carbon Wave: A Story of Democracy, Parenthood, and the Race to Protect Our Planet by Leah C. Stokes.

About the book, from the publisher:

The true, inspiring story of the new parents who spearheaded an unlikely climate victory.

From the rising climate advocate named to the Time100 Next list, for political junkies and anyone who cares about the environment.

They were perhaps an unlikely trio: the professor Leah Stokes, the policy wonk Sonia Aggarwal in the White House, and the DC insider Adrian Deveny in the Senate, but together, they crafted the boldest climate legislation of our time. In The Carbon Wave, Stokes chronicles the turbulent path of their climate bill as it veered between breakthrough and collapse—from the hopeful beginnings of the Green New Deal in 2018, to the bill’s near-certain defeat by Senator Joe Manchin in the winter of 2021, to the surprise passage of the landmark legislation in August 2022. During this critical time, the author was pregnant or in the NICU with her premature twins, and Aggarwal and Deveny were new parents too.

Interlacing personal narratives with stories from Congress, the White House, and outside activists, Stokes shows how dogged perseverance and collective action can still bend the course of history. The book concludes with an update from the second Trump administration, explaining the parts of the bill that were—and were not—rolled back, and why we should remain hopeful that progress is still being made.

Everyone has been told to shrink their carbon footprint and lighten their load on our planet by changing their behavior. But what if instead of making ourselves smaller, we joined with others to maximize our impact? That’s the carbon wave. And this book shows us how to make it.

Visit Leah C. Stokes's website.

The Page 99 Test: Short Circuiting Policy.

The Page 99 Test: The Carbon Wave.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven novels that foresaw our digital lives

At Mental Floss Nicolle Sloan tagged seven novels that eerily predicted technological advancements of today. One title on the list:

Neuromancer by William Gibson (1984)

William Gibson unknowingly pioneered the vocabulary of the Internet age. In his novel Neuromancer, he laid the groundwork for modern hacker archetypes and crafted a gritty, neon-lit digital underworld where consciousness could exist outside the body.

The main character, Case, is a washed-up hacker hired for one last mission inside a sprawling network controlled by shadowy corporations and sentient code. Sounds a little like half of Netflix’s catalog now.

Gibson’s vision of a hyper-connected, hyper-commercialized world wasn’t just ahead of its time; it also helped create the cultural blueprint for how we think about the internet.

Read about another novel on the list.

Neuromancer made James Swallow's list of five of fiction’s greatest hacker-heroes, Emily Temple's list of ten books that defined the 1980s, Jeff Somers's top ten list of books for non-geek parents of geeks, Soman Chainani's top five list of SFF novels with perfect opening lines, Abhimanyu Das and Gordon Jackson's list of eleven science fiction books regularly taught in college classes, Steve Toutonghi's list of six top books that expand our mental horizons, Ann Leckie's top ten list of science fiction books, Madeleine Monson-Rosen's list of 15 books that take place in science fiction and fantasy versions of the most fascinating places on Earth, Becky Ferreira's list of the six most memorable robots in literature, Joel Cunningham's top five list of books that predicted the internet, Sean Beaudoin's list of ten books that changed his life before he could drive, Chris Kluwe's list of six favorite books, Inglis-Arkell's list of ten of the best bars in science fiction, PopCrunch's list of the sixteen best dystopian books of all time and Annalee Newitz's lists of ten great American dystopias and thirteen books that will change the way you look at robots.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: KC Jones's "House Haunters"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: House Haunters by KC Jones.

About the book, from the publisher:

From Bram Stoker Award finalist KC Jones comes House Haunters, a fast-paced thrill ride perfect for fans of How to Sell a Haunted House and Play Nice, in which a skeptical reality TV show producer and a misanthropic ghosthunter must team up to survive a shoot from hell.

Grace Wonderly needs a hit show, or her career is dead. But saving her job might just kill her.

With her studio relying on AI to greenlight new projects, finding the next breakout series is Grace's only shot to save her job. And her sanity.

Her solution may be Frank Pendleton: a brilliant but abrasive - and admittedly handsome - ghost hunter who claims he can’t feel fear, making him uniquely attuned to the paranormal.

Frank is either a fraud or the real deal. Skeptical, but hoping for TV gold, Grace assembles a crew to shoot a proof of concept.

But when the production descends into a nightmare, Grace is forced to face the impossible: ghosts are real, and though cold and distant, Frank may be their only chance of getting out alive.

Visit KC Jones's website.

The Page 69 Test: White Line Fever.

Q&A with KC Jones.

Writers Read: KC Jones.

The Page 69 Test: House Haunters.

--Marshal Zeringue

Three books celebrating complicated women

Natalie Baszile's novel Queen Sugar was adapted for seven television seasons by writer/director Ava DuVernay, and co-produced by Oprah Winfrey.

Her new novel is Friends and Family.

At Book Riot Baszile tagged three books that celebrate complicated women. One entry on the list:

Normal People Don’t Live Like This, Rainey Royal, and List of All Possible Desires by Dylan Landis

This trilogy of novels-in-stories is a masterclass in writing complicated women. Landis explores the lives of girls and young women in 1970’s lower west side, New York. This was the era before helicopter parents and mommy play groups, when adults checked out to pursue their own desires, leaving their girls to raise themselves. Landis’s characters are wild and defiant. They are lovers and thieves, artists and thrill seekers. But beneath their tough exteriors, each is desperate for love and connection and will do almost anything to get it. Their search often finds them along the razor’s edge—physically, sexually, emotionally. Over the course of three books, readers will find themselves holding their breath as they watch Landis’s characters grow from fragile, rebellious girls into clear-eyed, truth seeking women.

Read about another title on the list.

The Page 69 Test: Rainey Royal.

--Marshal Zeringue

Elizabeth Crane's "That May Not Mean What You Think," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: That May Not Mean What You Think: Stories by Elizabeth Crane.

The entry begins:

For the story "Nepo Babies, An Extinction Story," set in a bizarro apocalyptic future where there is no longer anyone alive who isn't a descendant of a nepo baby, I would cast only nepo baby actors. So I think Dakota Johnson would be great as the character of the white feminist's grandchild (the characters don't have actual proper names in the story), and Billie Lourd would be great as the shady tech heiress, Patrick Schwarzenegger as the grandson of the muckety-muck, and perhaps Kiefer Sutherland and Gwyneth Paltrow as Harvard Rubble Guy and Harvard Rubble Guy's Wife.

And for the story "Senior Living For the Unknowables," set in a retirement home for aging reality TV stars...[read on]

Visit Elizabeth Crane's website.

Writers Read: Elizabeth Crane (April 2008).

The Page 69 Test: We Only Know So Much.

My Book, The Movie: We Only Know So Much.

Coffee with a Canine: Elizabeth Crane & Percy.

Q&A with Elizabeth Crane.

Writers Read: Elizabeth Crane.

The Page 69 Test: That May Not Mean What You Think.

My Book, The Movie: That May Not Mean What You Think.

--Marshal Zeringue

Twelve creepy small town horror novels

Richard Chizmar is the author of New York Times bestselling novels Chasing the Boogeyman, Becoming the Boogeyman, Memorials, and Widow’s Point: The Complete Haunting (cowritten with son, W.H. Chizmar), and coauthor (with Stephen King) of the New York Times bestselling novella Gwendy’s Button Box, the novel Gwendy’s Final Task, and the solo novella Gwendy’s Magic Feather. His short fiction has appeared in dozens of publications, most recently, the bestselling anthology, The End of The World as We Know It: New Stories of Stephen King’s The Stand.

Chizmar's new novel is Killing the Boogeyman.

At People magazine the author tagged twelve top creepy small town horror novels, including:

The Haunting Of Velkwood by Gwendolyn Kiste

The most recently published entry on my list, The Haunting of Velkwood is as fine of a modern ghost story as I’ve read. And with that lofty praise, the less I reveal about the storyline the better. Pick up a copy, avoid the jacket description, and dive right in.

Read about another title on the list.

The Page 69 Test: The Haunting of Velkwood.

Q&A with Gwendolyn Kiste.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Jessica Hines's "Forms of Suffering"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Forms of Suffering: Ethics, Aesthetics, and Chaucerian Pity by Jessica Hines.

About the book, from the publisher:

Forms of Suffering demonstrates how Geoffrey Chaucer transformed pity into a central ethical and aesthetic concern in English literature by tracing his reformulations of trans-European pity discourses for an English audience. In these reformulations, Chaucer brought to the fore the modes and effects of pity's work in challenging, even overturning, traditional power structures such as social status, gender, and race. Critically, his consideration of pity also explores its precarity: the ways that pity could easily slide from transformative justice into a weapon of unjust oppression.

Jessica Hines describes how Chaucer's writing was formative in shaping an English pity discourse increasingly critical of the sociopolitical capacity of pity to act as a tool for challenging injustice and reforming oppressive social structures. Forms of Suffering makes clear the profound appeal of pity's ability to challenge structures of power in Chaucer's writing, as well as the ways that pity itself could be―and was being―manipulated by the powerful for their own ends.

Visit Jessica Hines's website.

The Page 99 Test: Forms of Suffering.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Monona Wali

From my Q&A with Monona Wali, author of Sutra Americana:

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

The title Sutra Americana is meant to be intriguing and mysterious. Most western readers might not know the meaning of the word sutra (although they may have heard of the Kama Sutra, the famous manual on lovemaking from ancient India) but what the title does is signal that this is a story about two cultures coming together – in this case the Indian and the American. The book cover also reflects that with its bright blue background and Indian fabrics in the graphics, but also using the iconic red, white and blue of the American flag. Together, they invite the reader into a world they might not know but will find accessible and entertaining. Honestly, I was worried that the title would sound too foreign, but readers have responded very positively, and I never got any advice from editors or publicity people to change it. I’m so happy about...[read on]

Visit Monona Wali's website.

Q&A with Monona Wali.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is KC Jones reading?

Featured at Writers Read: KC Jones, author of House Haunters.

His entry begins:

After finishing The Keeper by Tana French, which is scary enough in its depiction of how rumor mills can cause a small community to destroy itself long before the encroaching outside world even gets a chance, I decided to kick October off with a good old ghost story. Diavola, by Jennifer Thorne, is about a dysfunctional family reluctantly gathering for a getaway in a probably-haunted Italian villa. The contrast between the creeping dread within the walls of the increasingly sinister house and the beautiful Tuscan countryside is skin-crawlingly effective...[read on]

About House Haunters, from the publisher:

From Bram Stoker Award finalist KC Jones comes House Haunters, a fast-paced thrill ride perfect for fans of How to Sell a Haunted House and Play Nice, in which a skeptical reality TV show producer and a misanthropic ghosthunter must team up to survive a shoot from hell.

Grace Wonderly needs a hit show, or her career is dead. But saving her job might just kill her.

With her studio relying on AI to greenlight new projects, finding the next breakout series is Grace's only shot to save her job. And her sanity.

Her solution may be Frank Pendleton: a brilliant but abrasive - and admittedly handsome - ghost hunter who claims he can’t feel fear, making him uniquely attuned to the paranormal.

Frank is either a fraud or the real deal. Skeptical, but hoping for TV gold, Grace assembles a crew to shoot a proof of concept.

But when the production descends into a nightmare, Grace is forced to face the impossible: ghosts are real, and though cold and distant, Frank may be their only chance of getting out alive.

Visit KC Jones's website.

The Page 69 Test: White Line Fever.

Q&A with KC Jones.

Writers Read: KC Jones.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six historical mysteries set in the early modern era

Jane Bitomsky is an award-winning author of historical fiction. Her debut historical mystery novel is Death by Misadventure.

Bitomsky has a PhD in early modern English history, a BA (Hons) and an LLB (Hons) from the University of Queensland. She’s published in academic journals, and volunteers as a baker (specialising in brownies and cheesecake) for New Zealand charity Good Bitches Baking.

At CrimeReads Bitomsky tagged six favorite historical mysteries set in the early modern era, including:

Katherine Howe, The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane

Who doesn’t love witches?

This is a time-split narrative, which jumps between the life of Harvard graduate student Connie Goodwin in the 1990s, and Deliverance Dane, a woman accused of witchcraft in 1690s Salem. In her quest for a dissertation topic, Connie comes across a bible in her late grandmother’s derelict house, which bears Deliverance’s name, and reveals that her ancestor practised witchcraft during the Salem witch trials. On further research, Connie discovers that Deliverance had a spellbook (i.e. physick book), and she sets out to trace through time where the missing spellbook could be now. However, she is not the only one looking for the spellbook.

A seamless interplay of time periods, riveting portrayal of the female victims of the Salem witch trials, and it was fascinating to read about the author’s relation to two of the witches in this story.

Read about another title on the list.

The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane is among Alyssa Palombo's five spooky novels set in real places and Entertainment Weekly's ten wickedly great books about witches.

--Marshal Zeringue