Pg. 99: Keith Richotte Jr.'s "The Worst Trickster Story Ever Told"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Worst Trickster Story Ever Told: Native America, the Supreme Court, and the U.S. Constitution by Keith Richotte Jr.

About the book, from the publisher:

When did the federal government's self-appointed, essentially limitless authority over Native America become constitutional?

The story they have chosen to tell is wrong. It is time to tell a better story. Thus begins Keith Richotte's playful, unconventional look at Native American and Supreme Court history. At the center of his account is the mystery of a massive federal authority called plenary power.

When the Supreme Court first embraced plenary power in the 1880s it did not bother to seek any legal justification for the decision – it was simply rooted in racist ideas about tribal nations. By the 21st century, however, the Supreme Court was telling a different story, with opinions crediting the U.S. Constitution as the explicit source of federal plenary power.

So, when did the Supreme Court change its story? Just as importantly, why did it change its story? And what does this change mean for Native America, the Supreme Court, and the rule of law? In a unique twist on legal and Native history, Richotte uses the genre of trickster stories to uncover the answers to these questions and offer an alternative understanding.

The Worst Trickster Story Ever Told provides an irreverent, entertaining synthesis of Native American legal history across more than 100 years, reflecting on race, power, and sovereignty along the way. By embracing the subtle, winking wisdom of trickster stories, and centering the Indigenous perspective, Richotte opens up new avenues for understanding this history. We are able, then, to imagine a future that is more just, equitable, and that better fulfills the text and the spirit of the Constitution.

Learn more about The Worst Trickster Story Ever Told at the Stanford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: The Worst Trickster Story Ever Told.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Allison Epstein's "Fagin the Thief"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Fagin the Thief: A Novel by Allison Epstein.

About the book, from the publisher:

A thrilling reimagining of the world of Charles Dickens, as seen through the eyes of the infamous Jacob Fagin, London’s most gifted pickpocket, liar, and rogue.

Long before Oliver Twist stumbled onto the scene, Jacob Fagin was scratching out a life for himself in the dark alleys of nineteenth-century London. Born in the Jewish enclave of Stepney shortly after his father was executed as a thief, Jacob's whole world is his open-minded mother, Leah. But Jacob’s prospects are forever altered when a light-fingered pickpocket takes Jacob under his wing and teaches him a trade that pays far better than the neighborhood boys could possibly dream.

Striking out on his own, Jacob familiarizes himself with London's highest value neighborhoods while forging his own path in the shadows. But everything changes when he adopts an aspiring teenage thief named Bill Sikes, whose mercurial temper poses a danger to himself and anyone foolish enough to cross him. Along the way, Jacob’s found family expands to include his closest friend, Nancy, and his greatest protégé, the Artful Dodger. But as Bill’s ambition soars and a major robbery goes awry, Jacob is forced to decide what he really stands for—and what a life is worth.

Colorfully written and wickedly funny, Allison Epstein breathes fresh life into the teeming streets of Dickensian London--reclaiming one of Victorian literature’s most notorious villains in an unforgettable new adventure.

Visit Allison Epstein's website.

My Book, The Movie: A Tip for the Hangman.

The Page 69 Test: A Tip for the Hangman.

Q&A with Allison Epstein.

My Book, The Movie: Let the Dead Bury the Dead.

The Page 69 Test: Let the Dead Bury the Dead.

Writers Read: Allison Epstein (October 2023).

Writers Read: Allison Epstein.

The Page 69 Test: Fagin the Thief.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Camille Di Maio

From my Q&A with Camille Di Maio, author of Come Fly with Me: A Novel:

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

Come Fly With Me is one of the rare books where I had the title before starting the book. And it ended up being ideal because it evokes several things that are a part of the story. The title, inspired by the famed Frank Sinatra song, sets us in that jet-set era. And the notion of flying not only touches on the travel themes of the book, but also the interior journey of the two main characters: each are escaping something in their lives and flying off to new opportunities with Pan American Airlines.

What's in a name?

When I chose names for my characters in historical fiction, I start by...[read on]

Visit Camille Di Maio's website.

Q&A with Camille Di Maio.

--Marshal Zeringue

Thirteen of the best books about breakups

At Marie Claire Liz Doupnik tagged "some of the best books about breakups ... for whatever stage of relationship recovery you’re in." One title on the list:

Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason

An excellent depiction of the impact of mental health on relationships, Sorrow and Bliss blends comedy with heart-wrenching scenes about mental illness that will stick with you long after you’ve finished the novel. Martha, once a writer with a bright future, has come up short in life. Though if you asked her, she couldn’t begin to tell you when or how everything went sideways. On paper, she has (or had) it all. For one, there’s her husband Patrick, who she’s loved since she was a girl, a loyal sister, and an aunt who fiercely supports her. Somehow, she’s ruined everything.

It may be due to the random mood swings that can override everything else, causing her to push away everyone she loves, cannibalize her career, and mirror the chaos she experienced in childhood. To understand her outbursts, Martha revisits key moments of her upbringing to understand and address her behavior, hopefully before it’s too late. This book has a host of trigger warnings, from alcohol abuse to mental health issues, so be sure to give it a quick skim before diving in if you’re unsure if it’s right for you.

Read about another title on the list.

Sorrow and Bliss is among Justine Sullivan's ten top novels with heroines who are hot messes, Claire Alexander's five books to read when you’re lonely, Jane Shemilt's five books tracing the portrayal of mental disorders in literature, and Alyssa Vaughn's [February 2021] 42 books to help you get through the rest of quarantine.

The Page 69 Test: Sorrow and Bliss.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Lisa Black's "Not Who We Expected"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Not Who We Expected by Lisa Black.

About the book, from the publisher:

With a duo of complex female protagonists, breakneck plotting, and authenticity informed by her career as a crime scene analyst, New York Times bestselling author Lisa Black’s Locard Institute Thrillers land her in the same league as Tess Gerritsen, Patricia Cornwell, and Kathy Reichs.

Now forensic experts Ellie Carr and Rachael Davies are pulled into solving a deadly mystery unfolding in the shadow of a celebrated rock star.

The two crime experts are enlisted by legendary rock star Billy Diamond to find his missing daughter. A level-headed student at Yale, Devon left six months earlier with her boyfriend, Carlos, for a career development retreat in Nevada. Her calls and notes became less frequent until they stopped. Billy wanted to give his daughter space—but after learning Carlos’ body was found a few miles upstream from the ranch, he needs answers.

Rachael and Ellie hatch a plan—as Ellie goes undercover, Rachael will work with Billy to find out about Devon. But Rachael has a second agenda, to find out why Billy seems so familiar with her late sister Isis, whose little boy Rachael is raising. The music idol is hiding something, but what?

The southwest ranch is full of surprises. Devon is not only alive but thriving, and no one mentions Carlos. The attendees follow their leader, Galen, with slavish devotion, and their daily mind-body exercises stretch from brain-numbing to downright treacherous. If Galen is behind some nefarious scheme, how does it relate to the rock star and his daughter?

To answer those questions, Rachael will also have to ask: Who was her sister Isis, really? The answers will draw Ellie and Rachael deeper into danger. In Billy’s world and in Galen’s, the living, the missing, and the dead all have secrets.

Visit Lisa Black's website.

The Page 69 Test: That Darkness.

My Book, The Movie: Unpunished.

The Page 69 Test: Unpunished.

My Book, The Movie: Perish.

The Page 69 Test: Perish.

The Page 69 Test: Suffer the Children.

Writers Read: Lisa Black (July 2020).

The Page 69 Test: Every Kind of Wicked.

Q&A with Lisa Black.

My Book, The Movie: What Harms You.

The Page 69 Test: What Harms You.

My Book, The Movie: The Deepest Kill.

My Book, The Movie: Not Who We Expected.

The Page 69 Test: Not Who We Expected.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven books about a prophecy that changes everything

Olufunke Grace Bankole is a Nigerian American writer and novelist. A graduate of Harvard Law School, and a recipient of a Soros Justice Advocacy Fellowship, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, Glimmer Train Stories, AGNI, Michigan Quarterly Review, New Letters, The Antioch Review, Stand Magazine (UK), Writer's Digest, Portland Monthly Magazine, and elsewhere.

She won the first-place prize in the Glimmer Train Short-Story Award for New Writers, and was the Bread Loaf-Rona Jaffe Scholar in Fiction at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She has been awarded an Oregon Literary Fellowship in Fiction, a Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation grant, a residency-fellowship from the Anderson Center at Tower View, and has received a Pushcart Special Mention for her writing.

Bankole's debut novel, The Edge of Water, set between Nigeria and New Orleans, is the story of Amina, a young woman, who dreams of life in America, as the collision of traditional prophecy and individual longing tests the bonds of a family during a devastating storm.

At Electric Lit the author tagged seven "works of fiction in which a life-altering prophecy is featured." One title on the list:

The End of Drum-Time by Hanna Pylväinen

Set in nineteenth-century Sweden, this lush historical novel–about the destructive consequences of settlers’ encroachment on the indigenous Sámi people of the Sápmi region–begins with prophetic dreaming. Reminiscent of a central theme in The Edge of Water, the book opens with the night-before dream of one of its characters, Lars Levi–a Lutheran minister. Attributing it to his family line, his standing as a vessel of God, and his home in the gray Scandinavian tundra, he believes in the power of dreams to foretell. On the morning that prominent reindeer herder and Sámi leader, Biettar Rasti, unexpectedly walks into church during Sunday service and kneels at the altar shaking, Lars Levi recalls an unsettling but forgotten dream from the previous night–perhaps it had been a portent for stubborn Biettar’s unlikely religious awakening. From this very incident–Biettar’s conversion–the families of the two men become inextricably joined in ways that have transformative, damaging consequences for all.

Read about another book on Bankole's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Brittany Friedman's "Carceral Apartheid"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Carceral Apartheid: How Lies and White Supremacists Run Our Prisons by Brittany Friedman.

About the book, from the publisher:

It is impossible to deny the impact of lies and white supremacy on the institutional conditions in US prisons. There is a particular power dynamic of racist intent in the prison system that culminates in what Brittany Friedman terms carceral apartheid. Prisons are a microcosm of how carceral apartheid operates as a larger governing strategy to decimate political targets and foster deceit, disinformation, and division in society.

Among many shocking discoveries, Friedman shows that, beginning in the 1950s, California prison officials declared war on imprisoned Black people and sought to identify Black militants as a key problem, creating a strategy for the management, segregation, and elimination of these individuals from the prison population that continues into the present day. Carceral Apartheid delves into how the California Department of Corrections deployed various official, clandestine, and at times extralegal control techniques―including officer alliances with imprisoned white supremacists―to suppress Black political movements, revealing the broader themes of deception, empire, corruption, and white supremacy in American mass incarceration. Drawing from original interviews with founders of Black political movements such as the Black Guerilla Family, white supremacists, and a swath of little-known archival data, Friedman uncovers how the US domestic war against imprisoned Black people models and perpetuates genocide, imprisonment, and torture abroad.

Visit Brittany Friedman's website.

The Page 99 Test: Carceral Apartheid.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Allison Epstein reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Allison Epstein, author of Fagin the Thief: A Novel.

Her entry begins:

I’ve had Rita Chang-Eppig’s Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea on my nightstand for a while now, but I was saving it for a rainy day because I knew I’d absolutely love it. Reader, I wasn't wrong—this book is stellar. It’s a historical novel about the famous 19th century Chinese pirate Shek Yeung (also known as Zheng Yi Sao or Ching Shih), and it’s immersive and exciting and full of morally complicated characters doing the best they can for themselves in an unfair world. Also, to reiterate: 19th century Chinese lady pirate....[read on]

About Fagin the Thief, from the publisher:

A thrilling reimagining of the world of Charles Dickens, as seen through the eyes of the infamous Jacob Fagin, London’s most gifted pickpocket, liar, and rogue.

Long before Oliver Twist stumbled onto the scene, Jacob Fagin was scratching out a life for himself in the dark alleys of nineteenth-century London. Born in the Jewish enclave of Stepney shortly after his father was executed as a thief, Jacob's whole world is his open-minded mother, Leah. But Jacob’s prospects are forever altered when a light-fingered pickpocket takes Jacob under his wing and teaches him a trade that pays far better than the neighborhood boys could possibly dream.

Striking out on his own, Jacob familiarizes himself with London's highest value neighborhoods while forging his own path in the shadows. But everything changes when he adopts an aspiring teenage thief named Bill Sikes, whose mercurial temper poses a danger to himself and anyone foolish enough to cross him. Along the way, Jacob’s found family expands to include his closest friend, Nancy, and his greatest protégé, the Artful Dodger. But as Bill’s ambition soars and a major robbery goes awry, Jacob is forced to decide what he really stands for—and what a life is worth.

Colorfully written and wickedly funny, Allison Epstein breathes fresh life into the teeming streets of Dickensian London--reclaiming one of Victorian literature’s most notorious villains in an unforgettable new adventure.

Visit Allison Epstein's website.

My Book, The Movie: A Tip for the Hangman.

The Page 69 Test: A Tip for the Hangman.

Q&A with Allison Epstein.

My Book, The Movie: Let the Dead Bury the Dead.

The Page 69 Test: Let the Dead Bury the Dead.

Writers Read: Allison Epstein (October 2023).

Writers Read: Allison Epstein.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top likable fictional scoundrels

Wes Browne lives within the Kentucky River Basin in Madison County, Kentucky. He has practiced law as a criminal defense attorney, prosecutor, and public defender in Appalachia for over 24 years. He also helps run his family's pizza shops.

His novel They All Fall the Same was a Goodreads Biggest Thriller or Mystery of 2025 and one of Book Riot Read or Dead's Most Anticipated Books of 2025.

At CrimeReads Browne tagged five "books featuring not-so-good folks in prominent roles that may tickle your fancy." One title on the list:

Beauregard “Bug” Montague in Blacktop Wasteland

S.A. Cosby is the current world heavyweight champion of getting readers to root for characters with a robust criminal history and a reluctant criminal present. Bug is a perfect example of that: someone doing wrong for a right reason.

A father and legitimate business owner, it’s not all his fault that he’s drawn back to his felonious past when his lawful livelihood is threatened. Bug is still the best wheelman in Virginia and anywhere close. When he takes that one last job you just know he’s going to take, it’s his associates who derail him from making it clean, but even then, he’s not looking to hurt anybody who doesn’t deserve it.

Even at his most audacious, Cosby keeps Bug to the good side of ruthless, because at heart, he’s someone who’s not as bad as his worst deeds.

Read about another title on the list.

Blacktop Wasteland is among Mailan Doquang's top ten heist novels, The Amazon Book Review editors' ten favorite books to celebrate Black History Month, Lee Matthew Goldberg's seven stellar heist tales, Lisa Unger's five novels revolving around dysfunctional families, Nick Kolakowski’s five best getaway drivers in contemporary crime fiction, and Kia Abdullah's eight novels featuring co-conspirators.

--Marshal Zeringue

Lisa Black's "Not Who We Expected," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Not Who We Expected by Lisa Black.

The entry begins:

This book takes place in two worlds. Locard Forensic Institute director Rachael Davies stays in the east interviewing their new client, rock legend Billy Diamond at his vast mansion and behind the scenes of his comeback concert venue. Billy’s daughter Devon left college for the summer and never returned after a career development retreat in the Nevada desert turned into her new home. When the boyfriend who accompanied her turns up dead, Billy wants eyes on his daughter without appearing to hover.

Former FBI agent and new Locard professor Ellie Carr is dispatched to said desert to find some answers—and she does. But they come with new and ominous questions.

As Rachael, I would cast Gabrielle Union. If, however, the creative team felt her stunning beauty too much of a distraction, Tamara Lawrance of Get Millie Black has a sufficient amount of grit to balance the looks. Provided she could hide her British accent.

For Ellie, I would still want...[read on]

Visit Lisa Black's website.

The Page 69 Test: That Darkness.

My Book, The Movie: Unpunished.

The Page 69 Test: Unpunished.

My Book, The Movie: Perish.

The Page 69 Test: Perish.

The Page 69 Test: Suffer the Children.

Writers Read: Lisa Black (July 2020).

The Page 69 Test: Every Kind of Wicked.

Q&A with Lisa Black.

My Book, The Movie: What Harms You.

The Page 69 Test: What Harms You.

My Book, The Movie: The Deepest Kill.

My Book, The Movie: Not Who We Expected.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Diane Barnes's "The Mulligan Curse"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Mulligan Curse: A Novel by Diane Barnes.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the author of All We Could Still Have comes a charming tale about one woman who embraces a family curse, laying bare the dreams we give up―and the chances we take to get them back.

Mary Mulligan has two problems: her wisdom teeth…and everything else. Her only daughter is moving overseas. Her husband would rather go golfing than spend time with her. And Mary’s left to wonder why she abandoned her career ambitions when loneliness is all she has to show for it.

Plus her teeth really, really hurt.

But that’s one problem she can fix―never mind the stories that say if she gets her wisdom teeth removed, the last thirty years of her life will be erased. In fact, Mary wouldn’t mind if the Mulligan curse were actually true.

Turns out, it is.

The world around her hasn’t changed, but Mary is suddenly twenty-four again, with the life she once dreamed of still ahead of her. As she embarks on this new beginning, Mary comes to realize that those dreams aren’t nearly as important as everything she once had. If only she knew how to get it all back.

Visit Diane Barnes's website.

Q&A with Diane Barnes.

The Page 69 Test: All We Could Still Have.

My Book, The Movie: All We Could Still Have.

The Page 69 Test: The Mulligan Curse.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Matthew C. Halteman's "Hungry Beautiful Animals"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Hungry Beautiful Animals: The Joyful Case for Going Vegan by Matthew C. Halteman.

About the book, from the publisher:

A new approach to going vegan "as a joyful celebration of life on this planet" (Bryant Terry) that is a gateway into a better life for us all

Perhaps you’ve looked at factory farming or climate change and thought, I should become a vegan. And like most people who think that, very probably you haven’t. Why? Well, in our world, roast turkey emanates gratitude, steak confers virility, and chicken soup represents a mother’s love. Against that, simply swapping meat for plants won’t work.

In Hungry Beautiful Animals, philosopher Matthew C. Halteman shows us how—despite all the forces arrayed against going vegan—we can create an abundant life for everyone without using animals for food. It might seem that moral rectitude or environmental judgement should do the trick, but they can’t. Going vegan must be about flourishing, for all life. Shame and blame don’t lead to flourishing. We must do it with joy instead.

Hungry Beautiful Animals is more than philosophy: it’s a book of action, of forgiveness, of love. Funny and wise, this book frees us joyfully to want what we already know we need.

Visit Matthew C. Halteman's website.

The Page 99 Test: Hungry Beautiful Animals.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six essential love stories (where love is a heavy lift)

Jessica Soffer is the author of This Is a Love Story and Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots. She grew up in New York City, attended Connecticut College, and earned her MFA at Hunter College. Her work has appeared in Granta, The New York Times, Real Simple, Saveur, The Wall Street Journal, Vogue, and on NPR’s Selected Shorts. She teaches creative writing to small groups and in the corporate space and lives in Sag Harbor, New York with her family.

[Writers Read: Jessica Soffer (April 2013); My Book, The Movie: Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots]

Soffer's new novel is This Is a Love Story.

At Lit Hub she tagged six essential literary love stories that "do not sugarcoat the inescapable fact that love is a heavy lift." One title on the list:

Julian Barnes, The Only Story

The agonized—truly, this one is bleak but beloved!—memory of a romance fifty years prior is the heart of this novel, an aching exploration of memory, missteps, and the way that a love can change not only our life’s path but the essence of who we are.

An Englishman remembers a romance with a woman, thirty years his senior, who he met playing tennis doubles as the only story that matters in his life. It makes us wonder, of course, which was the only one that matters in ours.

But perhaps my favorite bit is the super Barnes craft move of switching from first person to second person to third person progressively to suggest the incredible torment of recollection and needing to move further and further away from it just to keep on.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Constance Squires

From my Q&A with Constance E. Squires, author of Low April Sun:

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

I usually change my titles a lot, often calling a book something different for each draft, and it’s often been the case that stories and even books have had their titles changed close to publication by suggestions from editors. But Low April Sun came to me early and didn’t change. The story takes place in April in two timelines, 1995 and 2015, so the title covers both temporal settings and unifies them. The word “Low” is like hitting a somber note, with low evoking depth—a bottom level—and moral depravity or unfairness—lowlife, low blow. Well, what else was the Oklahoma City Bombing if not a low blow? All of those meanings of Low fit the story, April is the setting, and sun is, well, heat and hope, and that’s there, too, in how the characters pursue their lives. So Low April Sun is a three-word progression from darkness to light.

What’s in a name?

One of the book’s main characters is named August P. I hid a lot of meaning in his name, partly to remind myself what I wanted...[read on]

Visit Constance E. Squires's website.

My Book, The Movie: Low April Sun.

The Page 69 Test: Low April Sun.

Q&A with Constance Squires.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Surekha Davies's "Humans: A Monstrous History"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Humans: A Monstrous History by Surekha Davies.

About the book, from the publisher:

A history of how humans have created monsters out of one another—from our deepest fears—and what these monsters tell us about humanity's present and future.

Monsters are central to how we think about the human condition. Join award-winning historian of science Dr. Surekha Davies as she reveals how people have defined the human in relation to everything from apes to zombies, and how they invented race, gender, and nations along the way. With rich, evocative storytelling that braids together ancient gods and generative AI, Frankenstein's monster and E.T., Humans: A Monstrous History shows how monster-making is about control: it defines who gets to count as normal.

In an age when corporations increasingly see people as obstacles to profits, this book traces the long, volatile history of monster-making and charts a better path for the future. The result is a profound, effervescent, empowering retelling of the history of the world for anyone who wants to reverse rising inequality and polarization. This is not a history of monsters, but a history through monsters.

Visit Surekha Davies's website.

The Page 99 Test: Humans: A Monstrous History.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven stories about women coming of age in their 30s & 40s

Emily J. Smith is a writer based in Brooklyn.

Her debut novel is Nothing Serious.

Smith discovered writing in her thirties, after a career in tech and nonprofits. She holds a B.S in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Cornell, and an M.B.A. from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. She also founded Chorus, the matchmaking app where friends swipe for friends.

At Electric Lit the author tagged seven stories that celebrate "women in their thirties and forties who, rather than conforming to the traditional paths of marriage and motherhood, embark on transformative journeys of self-discovery while choosing a life without children." One title on the list:

The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud

The Woman Upstairs is the quintessential novel of a single woman who feels, as she enters middle age, that her life has not gone as planned. Nora Eldridge is a 42-year old-artist by night, school teacher by day. The book opens with an unforgettable internal monologue of rage and regret about becoming what she calls the “woman upstairs”—the quiet, reliable helper for the people around her, fading into a background of mediocrity. But her life is disrupted by the arrival of a new student in her third-grade class, Reza Shahid, who she becomes enamored by, along with his glamorous parents. Reza’s mother is a successful artist who frequently invites Nora to work with her in her studio, where they form a tight artistic bond, and his father is an intellectual and charming Harvard professor. Her obsession with the Shahid family is all-consuming until cracks begin to form. When Nora discovers a devastating betrayal, her idolization of the family starts to crumble, leaving her not only with a clearer picture of the Shahids, but a clearer picture of herself, one that sets her on a path of change and resolve.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Woman Upstairs is among Isabelle McConville's six top novels featuring women and art, Jenny Shank's five terrific novels about art and artists, Joyce Maynard's six favorite books, and Alex Hourston’s top ten unlikely friendships in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is William Boyle reading?

Featured at Writers Read: William Boyle, author of Saint of the Narrows Street.

His entry begins:

I've been rereading Leah Carroll's memoir Down City: A Daughter's Story of Love, Memory, and Murder. Carroll tells the story of her mother's murder and her father's descent into alcoholism and depression and, in doing so, she gives her parents back their humanity, making them more than just the tragedies that befell them, and she also tells her own story, how her parents are her, how she's them. I use this book every semester in the true crime class I teach, and I reread it every single time. I guess I've been...[read on]

About Saint of the Narrows Street, from the publisher:

As an Italian American family's decades-old secret begins to unravel, they will have to bear the consequences—and face each other—in this thrilling southern Brooklyn-set tragic opera of the highest caliber from crime fiction luminary William Boyle.

Gravesend, Brooklyn, 1986: Risa Franzone lives in a ground-floor apartment on Saint of the Narrows Street with her bad-seed husband, Saverio, and their eight-month-old baby, Fabrizio. On the night Risa's younger sister, Giulia, moves in to recover from a bad breakup, a fateful accident occurs: Risa, boiled over with anger and fear, strikes a drunk, erratic Sav with a cast-iron pan, killing him on the spot.

The sisters are left with a choice: notify the authorities and make a case for self-defense, or bury the man's body and go on with their lives as best they can. In a moment of panic, in the late hours of the night, they call upon Sav's childhood friend—the sweet, loyal Christopher "Chooch" Gardini—to help them, hoping they can trust him to carry a secret like this.

Over the vast expanse of the next eighteen years, life goes on in the working-class Italian neighborhood of Gravesend as Risa, Giulia, Chooch, and eventually Fabrizio grapple with what happened that night. A standout work of character-driven crime fiction from a celebrated author of the form, Saint of the Narrows Street is a searing and richly drawn novel about the choices we make and how they shape our lives.

Visit William Boyle's website.

My Book, The Movie: Gravesend and The Lonely Witness.

The Page 69 Test: Gravesend and The Lonely Witness.

The Page 69 Test: City of Margins.

My Book, The Movie: City of Margins.

Q&A with William Boyle.

The Page 69 Test: Shoot the Moonlight Out.

My Book, The Movie: Shoot the Moonlight Out.

Writers Read: William Boyle (December 2021).

The Page 69 Test: Saint of the Narrows Street.

My Book, The Movie: Saint of the Narrows Street.

Writers Read: William Boyle.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Constance E. Squires's "Low April Sun"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Low April Sun: A Novel by Constance E. Squires.

About the book, from the publisher:

On the morning of April 19, 1995, Delaney Travis steps into the Social Security office in Oklahoma City to obtain an ID for her new job. Moments later, an explosion shatters the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building into rubble. Her boyfriend Keith and half-sister Edie are left to assume the worst—that Delaney perished in the bombing, despite lack of definitive proof. Twenty years later, now married and bonded by the tragedy, Edie and Keith’s lives are upended when they begin to receive mysterious Facebook messages from someone claiming to be Delaney.

Desperate for closure, the couple embarks on separate journeys, each aiming for an artists’ community in New Mexico that may hold answers. Alongside their quest is August, a recovering alcoholic with a haunting connection to the bombing. Raised in the separatist compound of Elohim City, August harbors secrets about Timothy McVeigh, the perpetrator of the attack, and his own possible involvement in the tragedy. When his path crosses with Edie, he must choose whether to tell anyone about his past.

As the 20-year anniversary of the bombing approaches, fracking-induced earthquakes shake the ground of Oklahoma City, mirroring the unsettled lives of its residents. In their quest for answers, Edie, Keith, and August seek to understand how the shadows of the past continue to darken the present, as the ground beneath them threatens to give way once again.

In Low April Sun, acclaimed author Constance E. Squires has written the first novel to explore the enduring impact of the Oklahoma City bombing. While masterfully weaving a spellbinding mystery, Squires ultimately offers us a moving meditation on grief and forgiveness.

Visit Constance E. Squires's website.

My Book, The Movie: Low April Sun.

The Page 69 Test: Low April Sun.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Joshua K. Leon's "World Cities in History"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: World Cities in History: Urban Networks from Ancient Mesopotamia to the Dutch Empire by Joshua K. Leon.

About the book, from the publisher:

Joshua K. Leon explores 6,000 years of urban networks and the politics that drove them, from Uruk in the fourth millennium BCE to Amsterdam's seventeenth-century 'golden age.' He provides a fresh, interdisciplinary reading of significant periods in history, showing how global networks have shaped everyday life. Alongside grand architecture, art and literature, these extraordinary places also innovated ways to exert control over far-flung hinterlands, the labor of their citizens, and rigid class, race and gender divides. Asking what it meant for ordinary people to live in Athens, Rome, Chang'an, or Baghdad - those who built and fed these cities, not just their rulers - he offers one of the few fully rendered applications of world cities theory to historical cases. The result is not only vividly detailed and accessible, but an intriguing and theoretically original contribution to urban history.

Visit Joshua K. Leon's website.

The Page 99 Test: World Cities in History.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five novels that feature the uncanny suspense of a third character's arrival

Nick Newman is the adult pen-name of Nicholas Bowling, author of several children’s novels including Witchborn and In the Shadow of Heroes, which was shortlisted for the Costa Children's Book Award. He works as a bookseller at Daunt Books in London.

His new novel is The Garden.

At CrimeReads Newman tagged five books by "authors who have made masterpieces of tension through a triangulating a single relationship." One title on the list:

The Road, Cormac McCarthy

I don’t need to extol the virtues of a book that won its author the Pulitzer Prize. It is terrifying, it is heartbreaking – not for the bleakness of its world, but for the tenderness of its central relationship between the unnamed man and his son. Here is all of humanity, in its defiance, its frailty, its compassion. Here is vast, devastated open world, and yet it is a story of extraordinary intimacy – the boy and his father are a candleflame in the darkness, and we are not privy to anything that is not illuminated by them. The unbearable tension of the novel comes not from any intrusion into the pair, but from the threat of one. We read it in a state of total vigilance – knowing, really, that at some point two will become three, or perhaps one, and either will be catastrophic.

Read about another novel on the list.

The Road appears on Linda Rodriguez McRobbie's list of yhirty of literature's best parents, Robert Lee Brewer's list of the ten best dystopian novels ever written, Pedro Hoffmeister's list of five titles with lessons to turn a post-apocalyptic novel into a thriller, Malcolm Devlin’s list of eight zombie stories without any zombies, Michael Christie's list of ten novels to reconfigure our conception of nature for the better, Emily Temple's list of the ten books that defined the 2000s, Ceridwen Christensen's list of ten novels that end their apocalypses on a beach, Steph Post's top ten list of classic (and perhaps not so classic) road trip books, a list of five of the best climate change novels, Claire Fuller's top five list of extreme survival stories, Justin Cronin's top ten list of world-ending novels, Rose Tremain's six best books list, Ian McGuire's ten top list of adventure novels, Alastair Bruce's top ten list of books about forgetting, Jeff Somers's lists of five science fiction novels that really should be considered literary classics and eight good, bad, and weird dad/child pairs in science fiction and fantasy, Amelia Gray's ten best dark books list, Weston Williams's top fifteen list of books with memorable dads, ShortList's roundup of the twenty greatest dystopian novels, Mary Miller's top ten list of the best road books, Joel Cunningham's list of eleven "literary" novels that include elements of science fiction, fantasy or horror, Claire Cameron's list of five favorite stories about unlikely survivors, Isabel Allende's six favorite books list, the Telegraph's list of the 15 most depressing books, Joseph D’Lacey's top ten list of horror books, the Barnes & Noble Review's list of five unforgettable fathers from fiction, Ken Jennings's list of eight top books about parents and kids, Anthony Horowitz's top ten list of apocalypse books, Karen Thompson Walker's list of five notable "What If?" books, John Mullan's list of ten of the top long walks in literature, Tony Bradman's top ten list of father and son stories, Ramin Karimloo's six favorite books list, Jon Krakauer's five best list of books about mortality and existential angst, William Skidelsky's list of the top ten most vivid accounts of being marooned in literature, Liz Jensen's top 10 list of environmental disaster stories, the Guardian's list of books to change the climate, David Nicholls' top ten list of literary tear jerkers, and the Times (of London) list of the 100 best books of the decade. In 2009 Sam Anderson of New York magazine claimed "that we'll still be talking about [The Road] in ten years."

--Marshal Zeringue