Suzanne Redfearn's "The Wonder of One," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Wonder of One: A Novel by Suzanne Redfearn.

The entry begins:

If they make The Wonder of One into a movie, here’s who I imagine playing the roles:

For Vivien, the main protagonist of the story, when she's little (the story begins when she is six), I think an actress like Abigail Breslin when she acted in Signs would work well. She’s small, cute, and wise beyond her years. Adult Vivien (the story spans twenty-two years, ending when Vivien is twenty-eight) should be played by someone like Emilia Clarke (Daenerys in Game of Thrones), a diminutive spark plug, who is...[read on]

Visit Suzanne Redfearn's website, and follow her on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.

Coffee with a Canine: Suzanne Redfearn and Cooper.

My Book, The Movie: Hush Little Baby.

The Page 69 Test: Hush Little Baby.

The Page 69 Test: No Ordinary Life.

Writers Read: Suzanne Redfearn (February 2016).

My Book, The Movie: No Ordinary Life.

My Book, The Movie: In an Instant.

The Page 69 Test: In an Instant.

Q&A with Suzanne Redfearn.

My Book, The Movie: Hadley and Grace.

The Page 69 Test: Hadley & Grace.

Writers Read: Suzanne Redfearn (March 2022).

The Page 69 Test: Moment in Time.

My Book, The Movie: Moment in Time.

Writers Read: Suzanne Redfearn (February 2024).

Writers Read: S. E. Redfearn (October 2024).

The Page 69 Test: Two Good Men.

Writers Read: Suzanne Redfearn (October 2025).

My Book, The Movie: Call of the Camino.

The Page 69 Test: Call of the Camino.

My Book, The Movie: The Wonder of One.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven books for Dolly Parton fans

Tertulia's list of "a few essential reads by and about Dolly with some of the grown-up books she loved herself" includes:

The Dolly biography we'd recommend

She Come by It Natural: Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs
Sarah Smarsh

A smart, spirited look at Dolly as a feminist icon—and what her songs reveal about class, gender, and working women in America.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Verena Hanna Meyer's "Theologies of Remembering"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Theologies of Remembering: Modernity, Ambiguity, and Transcendence in Islamic Indonesia by Verena Hanna Meyer.

About the book, from the publisher:

Theologies of Remembering reveals how Indonesia's two largest Muslim groups, Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah―self-identifying as respectively traditionalist and modernist―actively engage memory as a framework for theological thought and practice. By reimagining their pasts to respond to new contexts, they articulate what it means to be a traditionalist or a modernist in the present and imagine possibilities for the future. Verena Meyer draws on interviews with group members, Islamic intellectual and narrative traditions, and critical theory to show that processes of remembering facilitate manifestations of the divine that destabilize binaries between the historical and transhistorical as well as linear understandings of temporality. Observing how constructions of the past are called into the service of sometimes conflicting demands, she argues against the pervasive idea that Islamic modernities have lost their tolerance for ambiguity and paradox. Tensions among incommensurable memories are generative for articulating elusive theological insights and complex positionalities among both traditionalists and modernists, prompting us to rethink these familiar distinctions in modern identity politics.

Learn more about Theologies of Remembering at the University of California Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Theologies of Remembering.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Susan Coll’s "Word Salad"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Word Salad: A Novel by Susan Coll.

About the book, from the publisher:

Matilda loves logic and order, and now her structured world is falling apart—in a bookstore.

Former economics major Matilda is moving back to her hometown of Washington D.C. to care for her ailing mother, and she’s desperate for money. She takes a job at her neighborhood bookstore and tries, in vain, to make sense of illogical business of books. To make things worse, she’s forced to team up with a new hire—the enigmatic, flaky, larger-than-life, Sage—who shows up on her first day of work with zero administrative skills and her tiny, puffy, incessantly urinating dog that resembles an underfed rat.

Something in the chaos begins to remind Matilda of her long-neglected creative side, and she starts to rediscover the person she once was before so much got in the way. But things get even more unmanageable when Matilda and Sage are tasked with putting together an event for the reclusive and controversial Dr. Jordan Rutabaga, a windbag of a public intellectual with a cult following that includes a number of people who would like to literally and figuratively see him dead. Rutabaga has a long list of alleged misdeeds, from plagiarism to failure to pay child support to stiffing the nanny.

As the event date approaches, Matilda and Sage discover that Sage and Rutabaga have their own not uncomplicated past, adding yet another person to list of people who do not wish him well. Add in a lawsuit and an impending snowstorm along with the potentially sinister presence of Rutabaga himself, and Matilda is about to come undone.

Bestselling author Susan Coll’s gastric, bookish, laugh-out-loud comedy of manners reminds us that sometimes things have to completely fall apart for them to perfectly come together.

Visit Susan Coll's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Susan Coll & Zoe.

The Page 69 Test: Acceptance.

The Page 69 Test: Beach Week.

The Page 69 Test: The Stager.

The Page 69 Test: Real Life and Other Fictions.

The Page 69 Test: The Literati.

The Page 69 Test: Word Salad.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Laura Creedle reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Laura Creedle, author of The Girl in Green.

Their entry begins:

I’m reading a lot of indie horror right now. Last time I was in Louisville Ky, I went to Butcher Cabin Books. The co-owner of the store, Jenny Kiefer, wrote a book called This Wretched Valley, about a lost climbing expedition in the wilds of Kentucky. I’m a sucker for the idea of a lost expedition, Dyatlov Pass style, so it instantly piqued my interest. The author is a rock climber and it shows and all the details. There are paranormal aspects to the book but since I’m afraid of...[read on]

About The Girl in Green, from the publisher:

A school’s storied legacy cannot stop student's whispers of mysterious disappearances and a legendary monster, in this terrifying new novel that will entrance fans of Madeline Roux and Claire Legrand.

Jess has always been a runner—always looking for an escape, no matter how many detention centers or “special schools” she’s been sent to. So when she receives a scholarship to the illustrious Danvers-Cutteridge in the mountains of West Virginia, her first plan of action is to find the fastest exit.

But Jess soon learns that this new school has secrets hidden beyond the grand staircases and storied past. A student has gone missing, and Jess’s new friends suspect that they haven’t been told the truth about the disappearance.

As Jess helps search for answers (and a way out), she discovers more of Danvers-Cutteridge’s unsettling history. The abuses and mutilations inflicted on past residents. The strange authority in the headmaster’s celebrated family tree. And the fearsome legend that has haunted the valley for decades—a mysterious girl, dressed in green.

Soon, Jess’s search will take her down into the heart of the school, through the closed-off parts of its history left forgotten in the dark. But wa

Visit Laura Creedle's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Love Letters of Abelard and Lily.

My Book, The Movie: The Love Letters of Abelard and Lily.

Writers Read: Laura Creedle (January 2018).

Writers Read: Laura Creedle.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Colin Farrelly's "Aging and the Ethics of Longevity Science"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Aging and the Ethics of Longevity Science by Colin Farrelly.

About the book, from the publisher:

A century of advances in experimental science have revealed new insights into the biology of aging, thus making the aspiration of healthy longevity a feasible goal for public health and medicine in the twenty-first century. However, significant obstacles must be overcome to reap the societal benefits of the science of healthy aging. These include the prevalence of ageism, the dominance of the intellectual presuppositions of public health's "War Against Disease" paradigm, and the politicalization of science. This book advances a pragmatic ethical analysis designed to enhance the public understanding of the importance of healthy longevity and the scientific study of aging.

Visit Colin Farrelly's website.

The Page 99 Test: Aging and the Ethics of Longevity Science.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five scrappy sci-fi books for everyone who loves an underdog

At Book Riot Liberty Hardy tagged "five fun sci-fi novels about the protagonists using their wits and whatever else is available to fight the good fight." One entry on the list:

Boltguns and Duct Tape by Jamie McFarlane

Rix Banner is a WWII veteran who thought he had seen it all. But his quiet life as a mechanic changes when a spacecraft crashes in a cornfield. It belongs to the Galactic Empire, and they want the ship and the pilot who stole it: they don’t care how many Earthlings they have to destroy to get their way. So Rix decides to put together his own ship and take on the Empire himself.

Read about another title on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Randy Boyagoda

From my Q&A with Randy Boyagoda, author of Lords of Serendipity: A Novel – A Moving Campus Satire of Strivers, Gatekeepers, and University Dreams:

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

I hope the title Lords of Serendipity takes readers into this story by asking themselves two questions. First, who are the Lords? Second, what’s Serendipity? As readers will discover, in a novel about a Sri Lankan village girl who dreams of going to Harvard and then does whatever it takes to get in, people who teach and study at the world’s great universities are like lords, while getting in, as a student, is a source of unexpected joy and beauty, or serendipity. By the way, the word serendipity comes from the earliest European name for Sri Lanka — Serendib — based on their sense of a happy and unexpected discovery of...[read on]

Visit Randy Boyagoda's website.

The Page 69 Test: Governor of the Northern Province.

Q&A with Randy Boyagoda.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Nat Cutter's "Britain and the Ottoman Maghreb, 1662–1712"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Britain and the Ottoman Maghreb, 1662–1712: Merchants, Consuls, and Cultural Exchange by Nat Cutter.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the mid-seventeenth to early eighteenth century, a wide network of English-speaking men, women, and children took up residence in the Ottoman Maghrebi regencies of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli. There they formed expatriate communities, engaged with the societies around them, and undertook their businesses, from trading to captivity redemption to international politics.

Moving beyond official diplomatic records and printed texts, this book delves into thousands of personal letters and financial records, where we find friendship, conflict, adoration, derision, manipulation, and scandal across cultures and countries. In so doing, it offers new ways of thinking about British-Maghrebi relations in a transitional age for global trade and military-naval power, moving beyond plaintive consular complaints, gunboat diplomacy, and brutal captivity to accommodate positive cooperation and mutual benefit.

These expatriates became embedded mediators, hybridised European and Ottoman cultural forms, and experienced distanciation from both homeland and hostland to enjoy and manipulate both. For them, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli were not solely sites for danger or exploitation but, as peace was progressively established with each regency, increasingly places for pragmatic cooperation, personal and professional advancement, commercial success, and enjoyment.

Expansive networks of correspondence and cooperation around the Maghreb, Mediterranean, and Britain embedded the expatriates in a cross-cultural trade in material goods and information and allowed them to manipulate the course of trade and diplomacy between Britain and the Maghreb. The expatriates were less marginal, miserable, and misbehaving Britons and more embedded, canny, Mediterranean actors.

Visit Nat Cutter's website.

The Page 99 Test: Britain and the Ottoman Maghreb, 1662–1712.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five books that make you root for con artists, grifters, and tricksters

Lana Harper is the New York Times bestselling author of Payback's a Witch and the rest of the Witches of Thistle Grove series. Writing as Lana Popovic, she is also the author of YA novels Wicked Like a Wildfire, Fierce Like a Firestorm, Blood Countess, and Poison Priestess. Harper was born in Serbia and lived in Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania before moving to the United States, where she now lives in Naperville, Illinois, with her family. Jilly Gagnon is the author of eight novels, most recently What if it's You? Her humor writing, personal essays, and op-eds have appeared in Newsweek, Elle, Vanity Fair, Boston Magazine, and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, among others. She lives in Salem, Massachusetts, with her family and two black cats.

Harper and Gagnon's new mystery is Cards on the Table.

At CrimeReads the authors tagged five "delightful stories of grifters, tricksters, and cons," including:

Finley Turner, The Tarot Reader

There’s no way we could not include this book on our list. It features two tarot-reading con artist sisters, Jade and Stevie, who have been forced to fend for themselves for as long as they can remember. But when Jade sends a fabricated “psychic vision” to the police tip line and it winds up eerily correct, the girls find themselves at the center of a media whirlwind…and possibly caught in the sights of a serial killer.

It’s impossible not to root for the scrappy sisters at the heart of this tense, fast-paced novel (and we’d let them read our tarot any day).

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Page 69 Test: The Tarot Reader.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Linda Kass's "World News from Waverley High"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: World News from Waverley High: A Novel by Linda Kass.

About the book, from the publisher:

A tale of identity, activism, and finding your voice in a world on fire, this coming-of-age novel set at an urban high school captures a singular moment in American history—through the eyes of one unforgettable girl.

1969. Lena Rosen is an intelligent, observant teenager torn between spontaneity and self-consciousness. During her junior year, she becomes attuned to the pulse of her times in her first-period Current History class, where rebellion, social change, and musical innovation of the 1960s dominate discussion. When Lena becomes the associate editor of the school newspaper The Beacon, she is drawn into the swirling discourse surrounding the Vietnam War, civil rights, environmental disasters, and campus protests—while also grappling with her growing attraction to Jack Stone, the paper’s editor.

As the year progresses and the antiwar movement gains momentum, the unrest builds at Waverley High. Lena wrestles with her own cultural and religious identity as a Jewish teen while she and her fellow students struggle to cope with racial discord, a bomb threat, and the emotional toll of a world that seems to be unraveling. When tragedy collapses the distance between headlines and Lena’s own life, she must decide what it means to stand for peace—and to hope for a better world.

Set during one school year against the backdrop of an America on the brink of change, World News from Waverley High reveals the crossroads of personal growth and national unrest.

Visit Linda Kass's website.

Writers Read: Linda Kass (June 2026).

Writers Read: Linda Kass (July 2026).

Writers Read: Linda Kass (August 2026).

My Book, The Movie: World News from Waverley High.

Q&A with Linda Kass.

Writers Read: Linda Kass.

The Page 69 Test: World News from Waverley High.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Claire Booth reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Claire Booth, author of Hidden Currents (A Sheriff Hank Worth Mystery, 8).

Her entry begins:

I usually have two books going at once--a novel and a non-fiction. Here are a few that I've enjoyed lately.

Wild Dark Shore, by Charlotte McConaghy. I just finished this and can’t stop thinking about it. It’s an absolutely beautiful book that manages to be haunting and exciting at the same time (an enormously difficult thing to pull off). The island of Shearwater, close to Antarctica, is disappearing into the ocean and with it the research station and seed bank that are located there. A woman washes up on the shore during a storm and is nursed back to health by the widower and his three children who are caretakers of the island. McConaghy brings everything to life—the island and its animal and plant inhabitants, as well as the mysterious woman and the caretaker’s family, all of whom are hiding secrets. It’s an examination of loss and love—how to survive the first and why to bother with the second. It’s also a...[read on]

About Hidden Currents, from the publisher:

Another outstanding book in an ever-evolving police procedural series perfect for fans of Terry Shames and Steven F. Havill.

When the new owner of a local fishing store is found murdered, Sheriff Hank Worth has plenty of suspects. The owner was in the middle of a highly acrimonious divorce, had fallen out with his stepson, and was being threatened by the abusive ex-boyfriend of one of his employees.

As Hank delves deeper into the increasingly complicated crime, his professional life is also taking a toll. His deputy sheriff Sheila is in court testifying against the men who had left her for dead in a brutal attack, and the defense will do whatever it takes to win their case.

As tensions grow, it becomes clear there are hidden currents just under the surface everywhere Hank turns.

A skillful blend of character, plot, and mystery laced with a streak of dry humor.

Visit Claire Booth's website.

My Book, The Movie: Another Man's Ground.

The Page 69 Test: Another Man's Ground.

My Book, The Movie: A Deadly Turn.

The Page 69 Test: A Deadly Turn. 

Writers Read: Claire Booth (March 2019).

My Book, The Movie: Fatal Divisions.

The Page 69 Test: Fatal Divisions.

Q&A with Claire Booth.

Writers Read: Claire Booth.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Edward Goldring's "Purges"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Purges: How Dictators Fight to Survive by Edward Goldring.

About the book, from the publisher:

Purges delves into one of the key tactics that autocrats deploy to maintain power: the removal of individuals from within the regime.

From Kim Jong Un's execution of his uncle to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's removal of over a hundred Turkish generals, purges bear significant consequences for the survival and endurance of autocrats. Yet much remains unknown about why dictators use purges and whether they achieve their intended effects.

Drawing on an original global dataset on civilian and military elite purges in dictatorships in addition to case studies spanning North and South Korea as well as Turkey, Edward Goldring examines the logic behind purges and their consequences. He shows that dictators purge to consolidate power, punish disloyalty, and scapegoat elites to alleviate popular threats. But even as purges help dictators consolidate power early in their tenure, purges actually weaken their position when they have been in power for a long time, prompting pushback. In the face of an increasing global shift toward authoritarian norms, Purges offers critical insight into how autocrats maintain―and sometimes lose―power.

Visit Edward Goldring's website.

The Page 99 Test: Purges.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten literary SFF books that offer hope for the future

Chloe Benjamin is the author of The Immortalists, a New York Times bestseller, and The Anatomy of Dreams. A Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, LibraryReads favorite, and #1 Indie Next pick, The Immortalists was named a best book of 2018 by NPR, The Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, and others. The Anatomy of Dreams received the Edna Ferber Fiction Book Award and was longlisted for the 2014 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Originally from San Francisco, CA, Benjamin is a graduate of Vassar College and the M.F.A. in fiction at the University of Wisconsin.

Her new novel is Under Story .

At Lit Hub the author tagged ten literary-leaning science fiction and fantasy titles that offer hope for the future. One title on the list:

Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

My first novel, The Anatomy of Dreams, was inspired by this one. I was so arrested by Kathy’s voice—that sense of trouble under calm water, nostalgia pressured by melancholy—that some light turned on in my brain. I’ll be the first to say that Ishiguro did it better: Never Let Me Go explores issues of science, ethics, and creativity to heartbreaking effect. Ishiguro often blends literary and genre elements, from the off-kilter fantasy of THE BURIED GIANT to the noirish WHEN WE WERE ORPHANS. Indeed, the way he plays with memory makes it seem like a not-quite-realist genre of its own, wavy at the edges and unnervingly malleable.

Read about another book on Benjamin's list.

Never Let Me Go is on Tom Lamont's list of five books featuring unconventional families, Lauren Ling Brown's list of five dark academia novels by BIPOC authors, Costanza Casati's list of five of the best titles about literary threesomes, Sadi Muktadir's seven novels that give you hope before devastating you, Scott Alexander Howard's list of eight titles from across the world about isolation, Kat Sarfas's list of thirteen top dark academia titles, Raul Palma's list of seven stories about falling into debt, Akemi C. Brodsky's list of five academic novels that won’t make you want to return to school, Claire Fuller's list of seven top dystopian mysteries, Elizabeth Brooks's list of ten great novels with unreliable narrators, Lincoln Michel's top ten list of strange sci-fi dystopias, Amelia Morris's lits of ten of the most captivating fictional frenemies, Edward Ashton's eight titles about what it means to be human, Bethany Ball's list of the seven weirdest high schools in literature, Zak Salih's eight books about childhood pals—and the adults they become, Rachel Donohue's list of seven coming-of-age novels with elements of mystery or the supernatural, Chris Mooney's list of six top intelligent, page-turning, genre-bending classics, James Scudamore's top ten list of books about boarding school, Caroline Zancan's list of eight novels about students and teachers behaving badly, LitHub's list of the ten books that defined the 2000s, Meg Wolitzer's ten favorite books list, Jeff Somers's lists of nine science fiction novels that imagine the future of healthcare and "five pairs of books that have nothing to do with each other—and yet have everything to do with each other" and eight tales of technology run amok and top seven speculative works for those who think they hate speculative fiction, a list of five books that shaped Jason Gurley's Eleanor, Anne Charnock's list of five favorite books with fictitious works of art, Esther Inglis-Arkell's list of nine great science fiction books for people who don't like science fiction, Sabrina Rojas Weiss's list of ten favorite boarding school novels, Allegra Frazier's top four list of great dystopian novels that made it to the big screen, James Browning's top ten list of boarding school books, Jason Allen Ashlock and Mink Choi's top ten list of tragic love stories, Allegra Frazier's list of seven characters whose jobs are worse than yours, Shani Boianjiu's list of five top novels about coming of age, Karen Thompson Walker's list of five top "What If?" books, Lloyd Shepherd's top ten list of weird histories, and John Mullan's lists of ten of the best men writing as women in literature and ten of the best sentences as titles.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Vikki VanSickle

From my Q&A with Vikki VanSickle, author of The Mystic and the Missing Girl: A Mystery:

The entry begins:

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

The title The Mystic and the Missing Girl establishes two important elements of the book—it’s a mystery, and there’s an element of the supernatural. The title was very tricky to nail down! There are so many elements in the book (cold case, nineties, tarot, mystery, humour, small town setting, ensemble cast, contemporary) that it became very overwhelming. Because I was very much inspired by Nancy Drew, we ultimately went for a retro sounding title that includes two of the key hooks of the book- a mystic, implying a touch of the supernatural, and a mystery, implying the genre.

What's in a name?

I love...[read on]

Visit Vikki VanSickle's website.

Writers Read: Vikki VanSickle.

My Book, The Movie: The Mystic and the Missing Girl.

Q&A with Vikki VanSickle.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five great SFF books set at schools

At Book Riot Liberty Hardy tagged five top sci-fi and fantasy books set at school. One entry on the list:

Vita Nostra by Marina & Sergey Dyachenko

While I love this book about an unusual academy, I wouldn’t want to go here! Sasha Samokhina thinks her future might be bright when she’s chosen to attend the Institute of Special Technologies. But the school is frightening, the work is almost impossible to do, and when students fail, their families are punished. Can Sasha manage to get past it all in order to be granted her wildest dreams?

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Emily Sibley's "The Poetics of Incivility"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Poetics of Incivility: Satire and Subversion in Modern Arab Culture by Emily Sibley.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Poetics of Incivility explores impolite modes of expression―satire, crude humor, and rudeness―as a critical lens for both aesthetic innovation and sociopolitical critique. In the Arab world―from Cairo's Tahrir Square and the thoroughfares of Beirut to war-torn Gaza―political demands have been framed by satirical cartoons and graffiti or in subversive poetry and song. Emily Sibley shows that these forms of resistance are not new to Arab culture but return to mid-nineteenth-century debates over literary propriety.

In case studies concerning women's education in 1850s' Beirut, the satirical press in colonial Egypt, colloquial theater in the era of decolonization, street art and graphic novels during and after the 2011 Egyptian protests, Sibley follows the threads of an expressive culture that announces and celebrates its own impropriety. Concluding with analyses of Gaza poetry on the internet as a space where the stakes of incivility are acutely visible, The Poetics of Incivility offers a timely consideration of incivility as an aesthetic resource for authors and artists engaging with some of the most controversial issues of their times―and ours.

Learn more about The Poetics of Incivility at the Cornell University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: The Poetics of Incivility.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Vicki Delany's "‘Tis the Season to be Scary"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: 'Tis the Season to Be Scary: A Year-Round Christmas Mystery by Vicki Delany.

About the book, from the publisher:

It’s time for spirits to come out and play in the ninth Year-Round Christmas mystery by national bestselling author Vicki Delany.

It’s Halloween, and the townsfolk of Rudolph, New York, are donning masks and costumes for the Yuletide Inn’s grand fundraising gala to support the local hospital. Shop owner Merry Wilkinson has yet another treat to celebrate: Her best friend, Vicky Casey, has a new cookbook set to publish. Vicky’s publishers, a prominent critic of her book, and a former opera star rumored to have been involved with Merry’s mother are all set to attend the gala.

As the drinks flow, the guests dance, and the canapés are served, things begin spiraling out of control. The book critic makes a scene, and tensions begin to rise. Then Merry realizes that she is not the only one who never actually paid for a gala ticket. But when someone drops dead after eating a cake pop from the lavish dessert buffet, everything comes to a head, and all eyes turn to Vicky, who made the treats. As it turns out, Vicky’s book might be doomed before it hits the shelves.

With her friend’s name and livelihood at stake and the fundraiser in serious danger, Merry must keep her wits about her. Surely she’s only imagining the ghost of Ebenezer Scrooge watching her from the shadows.

Visit Vicki Delany's website, and follow her on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.

The Page 69 Test: Rest Ye Murdered Gentlemen.

The Page 69 Test: A Scandal in Scarlet.

The Page 69 Test: Murder in a Teacup.

Writers Read: Vicki Delany (September 2021).

The Page 69 Test: Deadly Summer Nights.

The Page 69 Test: The Game is a Footnote.

Writers Read: Vicki Delany (January 2023).

Writers Read: Vicki Delany (January 2024).

The Page 69 Test: The Sign of Four Spirits.

The Page 69 Test: A Slay Ride Together With You.

Writers Read: Vicki Delany (December 2024).

The Page 69 Test: The Incident of the Book in the Nighttime.

Writers Read: Vicki Delany (July 2025).

The Page 69 Test: Tea with Jam & Dread.

Writers Read: Vicki Delany (October 2025).

The Page 69 Test: O, Deadly Night.

The Page 69 Test: 'Tis the Season to Be Scary.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Linda Kass reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Linda Kass, author of World News from Waverley High: A Novel.

Her entry begins:

I recently finished back-to-back readings of Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon and Colson Whitehead’s Cool Machine, third in his crime trilogy set in New York. I was left with an impression that Whitehead’s Ray Carney had some aligned traits, or at least parallels, with Morrison’s Mason Dead II, both Black businessmen who make property, commerce, and respectability central to their identities. But this is something I need to contemplate further. To review each:

Song of Solomon was written in 1977 and Morrison’s third novel after The Bluest Eye and Sula. It’s a deep and sprawling story that blends magical realism, folklore, and poetic prose. It follows Macon "Milkman" Dead III (Macon Dead II’s son) on a coming-of- age journey from his rustbelt city to the place of his family’s origins as it explores identity formation and evolution, intergenerational family trauma, and African American heritage. The characters are rich but flawed from Milkman and his self-absorbed youth to his estranged and mystical aunt Pilate and the complex women who carry the emotional weight of the narrative. I love Morrison’s attention to detail, especially in expressing tense emotion and speech. The novel covers nearly...[read on]

About World News from Waverley High, from the publisher:

A tale of identity, activism, and finding your voice in a world on fire, this coming-of-age novel set at an urban high school captures a singular moment in American history—through the eyes of one unforgettable girl.

1969. Lena Rosen is an intelligent, observant teenager torn between spontaneity and self-consciousness. During her junior year, she becomes attuned to the pulse of her times in her first-period Current History class, where rebellion, social change, and musical innovation of the 1960s dominate discussion. When Lena becomes the associate editor of the school newspaper The Beacon, she is drawn into the swirling discourse surrounding the Vietnam War, civil rights, environmental disasters, and campus protests—while also grappling with her growing attraction to Jack Stone, the paper’s editor.

As the year progresses and the antiwar movement gains momentum, the unrest builds at Waverley High. Lena wrestles with her own cultural and religious identity as a Jewish teen while she and her fellow students struggle to cope with racial discord, a bomb threat, and the emotional toll of a world that seems to be unraveling. When tragedy collapses the distance between headlines and Lena’s own life, she must decide what it means to stand for peace—and to hope for a better world.

Set during one school year against the backdrop of an America on the brink of change, World News from Waverley High reveals the crossroads of personal growth and national unrest.

Visit Linda Kass's website.

Writers Read: Linda Kass (June 2026).

Writers Read: Linda Kass (July 2026).

Writers Read: Linda Kass (August 2026).

My Book, The Movie: World News from Waverley High.

Q&A with Linda Kass.

Writers Read: Linda Kass.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Susanne Yuk-Ping Choi's "Queer Resistance"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Queer Resistance: Contesting State, Family, and Inequality in Post-Socialist China by Susanne Yuk-Ping Choi.

About the book, from the publisher:

Queer Resistance examines transformations in intimate lives in post-socialist China through the experiences and resistance of LGBTQ+ people. Drawing on ten years of research conducted between 2015 and 2025, and one of the largest qualitative datasets of its kind, Susanne Y.P. Choi traces the weakening of the state-society-family alliance and its capacity to enforce Confucian and heteronormative ideals, and shows how LGBTQ+ people build communities amid intensified state crackdowns, develop new forms of personhood that subvert collectivist frameworks, and renegotiate intergenerational contracts. They navigate sexual possibilities opened up by marketization and digitalization while confronting hierarchies of desirability structured by class inequality and gender norms. The book demonstrates that younger Chinese people’s efforts to resist traditional obligations and pursue nonnormative life projects are relational, partial, and intersectional, shaped through encounters with changing configurations of power and inequality at the intersection of global forces and local histories.

Visit Susanne Choi's faculty webpage.

The Page 99 Test: Queer Resistance.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven novels that reflect on 9/11 and its lasting impact

The She Reads Editors tagged seven "stories [that] remind us of not only what transpired, but the long-lasting ripple effects of 9/11." One novel on the list:

The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid

A Pakistani man named Changez is living what appears to be the American dream. Living as an immigrant, he is working for a high-value firm and falling in love with an elite, Manhattan socialite. Then, September 11th, 2001 changes the entire world and Changez must grapple with his identity in the wake of the tragedy as a sentiment shift occurs that challenges everything good in his life.

Read about another title on the list.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist is among Flynn Berry's four top novels of subtle espionage, Abir Mukherjee's five top thrillers about terrorism, Ryan Lee Wong's ten best novels about Asian American politics, Maris Kreizman's top twenty-three short books, Colleen Kinder's ten books about chance encounters with strangers, Maris Kreizman's nineteen top short books and stories, Ian MacKenzie's ten top books about Americans abroad, Emily Temple's ten top contemporary novels by and about Muslims, Laila Lalami's eight top books about Muslim life for a nation that knows little about Islam, Porochista Khakpour's top ten novels about 9/11, Jimmy So's five best 9/11 novels, and Ahmede Hussain's five top books in recent South Asian literature.

The Page 69 Test: The Reluctant Fundamentalist.

--Marshal Zeringue

Vikki VanSickle's "The Mystic and the Missing Girl," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Mystic and the Missing Girl: A Mystery by Vikki VanSickle.

The entry begins:

The Mystic and the Missing Girl takes place in a small, lakeside town that seems charming on the surface, but is hiding some murky secrets—including the truth about seventeen-year-old Ginny Evans, who went missing in 1998. This is an ensemble piece that plays with small town stereotypes, dabbles in the supernatural, and offers numerous opportunities for character actors to shine. Think a cozy mystery in the hands of a screenwriter like Diablo Cody. Here are some of the main players:

Our hero is Drew Benson— a reluctant psychic and tarot reader turned sleuth. A former teenage Goth, Drew is a little messy with a quick wit and a vulnerable side. She is unsure of her path or where she belongs. I would cast a quirky, fast-talking brunette like Cristin Miliotti or Kat Dennings in the role.

Nick Campbell is Drew’s high school nemesis—top of the class, valedictorian, he is what Drew calls a ‘type A Virgo.’ These days he’s had...[read on]

Visit Vikki VanSickle's website.

Writers Read: Vikki VanSickle.

My Book, The Movie: The Mystic and the Missing Girl.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top adaptations of classic myths & legends

Chloe Gong is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of critically acclaimed fantasy and science fiction novels, including These Violent Delights, Immortal Longings, and Coldwire. Her books have been published in over twenty countries and she was named one of Forbes’ 30 Under 30 for 2024. Gong graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in English and International Relations. Born in Shanghai and raised in Auckland, New Zealand, she is now located in New York City.

Her new novel is Eyes of Kings.

At People magazine Gong tagged five of her favorite retellings of classic myths and legends, including:

Circe by Madeline Miller

With the latest Odyssey adaptation in theatres and spurring exciting conversation, Madeline Miller’s take on the Homeric epics is another worth reading. A feminist origin story for the witch Circe, following her perspective as a lesser god.

Read about another title on the list.

Circe is among J.T. Ellison's ten novels centering women finding their power, Paula Munier's eight top works informed by The Odyssey, J. Nicole Jones's seven books about people accused of being witches, Diana Helmuth's seven top books about modern witchcraft, Megan Barnard's eleven books about misunderstood women in history & mythology, Rita Chang-Eppig's ten top books with irresistible anti-heroines, Emilia Hart's five novels featuring witchcraft, Brittany Bunzey's top ten books centering women in mythology, Mark Skinner's twenty top books in witch lit, Hannah Kaner's five best novels featuring gods, the B&N Reads editors' twenty-four best mythological retellings, Ashleigh Bell Pedersen's eight novels of wonder and darkness by women writers, Kelly Barnhill's eight books about women's rage, Sascha Rothchild's most captivating literary antiheroes, Rachel Kapelke-Dale's eleven top unexpected thrillers about female rage, Kat Sarfas's thirteen enchanted reads for spooky season, Fire Lyte's nine current classics in magic and covens and spells, Elodie Harper's six top novels set in the ancient world, Kiran Millwood Hargrave's seven best books about islands, Zen Cho's six SFF titles about gods and pantheons, Jennifer Saint's ten top books inspired by Greek myth, Adrienne Westenfeld's fifteen feminist books that will inspire, enrage, & educate you, Ali Benjamin's top ten classic stories retold, Lucile Scott's eight books about hexing the patriarchy, E. Foley and B. Coates's top ten goddesses in fiction, Jordan Ifueko's five fantasy titles driven by traumatic family bonds, Eleanor Porter's top ten books about witch-hunts, Emily B. Martin's six stunning fantasies for nature lovers, Allison Pataki's top six books that feature strong female voices, Pam Grossman's thirteen stories about strong women with magical powers, Kris Waldherr's nine top books inspired by mythology, Katharine Duckett's eight novels that reexamine literature from the margins, and Steph Posts's thirteen top novels set in the world of myth.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Yuval Katz's "Media Making as Peacemaking"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Media Making as Peacemaking: Israel/Palestine by Yuval Katz.

About the book, from the publisher:

The horrific events of October 7 and the devastating war in Gaza have brought Israel/Palestine to the headlines once again. We have seen this all play out before: another ambitious peace plan, which secured a ceasefire, is imagined as the dawn of a new era of peace in the Middle East. But is it? Critiquing traditional state-centered approaches to peace, which usually highlight the work of diplomats and politicians, and which historically failed miserably in Israel/Palestine, Media Making as Peacemaking shifts our attention to the experiences of ordinary people. Investigating the idea of media encounters, this book shows how the collaboration of Palestinian and Jewish media practitioners and the popular texts they create together in television dramas, digital activism and mainstream journalism offer a new and exciting way to think about peace—a peace which does not maintain a repressive status quo, but seeks to deliver equality and justice to all people, Palestinians and Jews, living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

Visit Yuval Katz's website.

The Page 99 Test: Media Making as Peacemaking.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Margaret Mizushima's "Fighting Edge"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Fighting Edge: A Timber Creek K-9 Mystery by Margaret Mizushima.

About the book, from the publisher:

Major crimes intersect in this nail-biting installment of the Timber Creek K-9 mysteries by award-winning author Margaret Mizushima.

A routine welfare check becomes a nightmare when Deputy Mattie Walker finds a young mother dead and a hysterical toddler, possibly the only witness to a brutal crime. Before the investigative team can start piecing together what happened, Mattie discovers another criminal act in Timber Creek.

During a traffic stop for speeding, Mattie observes a nervous driver and a teenage passenger frozen with fear. A quick sweep of the car with her K-9 partner, Robo, reveals a dangerous mix of drugs and suspected human trafficking, providing Mattie with grounds to arrest the driver. After she places the teenager in protective custody, the sheriff’s department hands the case over to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.

As the team gathers evidence and information, Mattie’s husband, veterinarian Cole Walker, notices suspicious activity during ambulatory calls at dog kennels, indicating yet a third crime lurking in the shadows. What begins as isolated incidents quickly reveals a chilling truth: Organized crime has infiltrated their rural mountain community.

Every clue leads to more questions, and each answer brings them closer to greater danger. Do Mattie and her law enforcement partners have what it takes to shut down this criminal ring before it claims more victims? And could its next victim be someone Mattie loves?

Visit Margaret Mizushima's website and follow her on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.

Coffee with a Canine: Margaret Mizushima & Hannah, Bertie, Lily and Tess.

Coffee with a Canine: Margaret Mizushima & Hannah.

My Book, The Movie: Burning Ridge.

The Page 69 Test: Burning Ridge.

The Page 69 Test: Tracking Game.

My Book, The Movie: Hanging Falls.

The Page 69 Test: Hanging Falls.

Q&A with Margaret Mizushima.

The Page 69 Test: Striking Range.

The Page 69 Test: Standing Dead.

The Page 69 Test: Gathering Mist.

Writers Read: Margaret Mizushima (October 2024).

The Page 69 Test: Dying Cry.

The Page 69 Test: Fighting Edge.

--Marshal Zeringue