Pg. 69: Megan Jauregui Eccles's "Sing the Night"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Sing the Night by Megan Jauregui Eccles.

About the book, from the publisher:

Discover a fantastical story inspired by The Phantom of the Opera, as musical magicians compete for the once-in-a-lifetime role as the King's Mage, but only if their magic—or fellow contestants—don't destroy them first—perfect for fans of Leigh Bardugo and Erin Morgenstern.

For as long as Selene remembers, she's only wanted one thing: to sing the boldest, brightest magic into existence and win L′Opéra du Magician. To the winner goes the spoils of being declared King′s Mage, a position her father held years ago, before he lost control of his magic and spiraled into madness, leaving Selene an orphan. But when the competition turns cutthroat and a competitor steals Selene′s song, the chance to redeem her father's legacy begins to slip through her fingers.

Until, in the depths of the opera house, she discovers a mysterious and beautiful man trapped within a mirror. He offers not only the magic of music, but a darker sorcery of shadow, blood, and want. He can help Selene if she helps him in return—but his forbidden magic may not be worth the cost.

As the competition continues and mages are driven to ruin competing for the king′s favor, Selene must navigate betrayal, the return of childhood love, and the price of ambition.

Visit Megan Jauregui Eccles's website.

My Book, The Movie: Sing the Night.

The Page 69 Test: Sing the Night.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight memoirs about losing a mother in childhood

Jacque Gorelick is a California native who has moved too many times to count. She’s lived all over the West Coast from Santa Barbara to Alaska. Now firmly rooted in the San Francisco Bay Area, she lives beside a creek under redwood trees with her husband, two boys, and a mélange of rescues.

Before freelance writing, Gorelick spent two decades as an elementary school teacher helping students turn ideas into stories. Her debut memoir, Map of a Heart: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Finding the Way Home, is about hearts (medical and metaphorical) and discovering—through a traumatic medical event and motherhood—the meaning of family.

At Electric Lit Gorelick tagged eight memoirs that "explore the ripple effects of early mother loss on womanhood, motherhood, identity, and belonging. A loss that shapes daughters for a lifetime." One title on the list:

The Manicurist’s Daughter by Susan Lieu

What if your mother died because of a choice you could not understand? How would you remember her or make peace with the loss? This is the journey of Susan Lieu, the daughter of a Vietnamese refugee mother who built a successful business and raised a family in California, only to die young after a botched cosmetic surgery. In her debut memoir, Lieu seeks not only to write her mother into a fully formed and vital woman—which she does—but to reckon with the circumstances of her death. As the author unspools the cultural and societal beauty standards that shaped her mother’s decision, the reader is invited to be part of Lieu’s family dynamics, cultural traditions, and the intimate banter that floats between manicure stations in her mother’s beloved nail shop. The Manicurist’s Daughter is an unflinchingly honest account of a daughter’s quest to understand the mother she lost too soon.

Read about another title on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Willie Edward Taylor Carver, Jr. reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Willie Edward Taylor Carver, Jr., author of Tore All to Pieces.

His entry begins:

I was asked what I am reading. An easier question might be what I'm not reading, since I have a propensity for reading dozens of books at a time.

I just finished Needlework by Julia Watts. A gorgeous novel set in east Tennessee. What I love the most is that she doesn't shy away from the ugly and painful; in fact, she takes a second look. She allows ethics to articulate itself where things feel hopeless. She flings something nostalgic into...[read on]

About Tore All to Pieces, from the publisher:

Nestled in the mountains, in an out-of-the-way part of rural America, the fictional town of Mosely is home to ordinary people: proud, compassionate, and complex. Women serving biscuits at the gas station counter, kids listening to Loretta Lynn with their uncles, teenage boys flirting with one another at prom, and parents busy raising their children's babies. This community is woven together by family ties, church congregations, coal mines, and fast-food chains. In Mosely, the residents work hard to find belonging, love, and identity.

Tore All to Pieces is a fragmented novel that delves into the lives of Appalachian characters with similar struggles, backgrounds, and experiences and examines how people are often lonely despite these connections. Each narrative, presented in the form of a poem or short story, bends and weaves like the roads of Appalachia. Each character's voice is richly portrayed in gripping and lyrical language, uniting the stories in a quest for truth, genuine understanding, and respect.

At a time when the rights of queer individuals, women, and people of color are increasingly under threat, this work powerfully reaffirms the humanity and significance of marginalized people. Tore All to Pieces underscores their enduring presence and rightful belonging.

Visit Willie Edward Taylor Carver, Jr.'s website.

Q&A with Willie Edward Taylor Carver, Jr.

My Book, The Movie: Tore All to Pieces.

The Page 69 Test: Tore All to Pieces.

Writers Read: Willie Edward Taylor Carver, Jr.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: David Igler' "All Species of Knowledge"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: All Species of Knowledge: A Voyage of Discovery, Failure, and Natural History in the Pacific Ocean by David Igler.

About the book, from the publisher:

In 1815, the Russian vessel Rurik set off on a three-year voyage through the Pacific and Arctic oceans in a quest to find the world's most elusive geographic feature, the Northwest Passage. Financed by a wealthy Russian count and commanded by a fame-seeking captain, the vessel carried four extraordinary observers of the natural world, including an Indigenous navigator from the Caroline Islands named Kadu.

The Rurik failed in its mission, yet, as award-winning Pacific historian David Igler masterfully demonstrates, the crew's pursuit of "natural history" throughout the voyage and during its decades-long afterlife embodied a search for knowledge through science, artistic representation, and oral tradition. Failure to achieve a great discovery was common in the great age of scientific voyaging, but explorers, natural philosophers, and traveling artists grew adept at turning their explorations into documented achievements by claiming, publishing, and promoting a range of significant findings. No expedition did this more successfully than the crew of the Rurik. Much of their produced knowledge derived directly from the Indigenous communities they encountered in the Pacific. The men aboard the ship conveyed their discoveries through various mediums. Artist Ludwig Choris documented the experience in the first lithographic compendium of a Pacific expedition. Navigator Kadu informed his Marshall Islander elders and peers of the wonders and dangers he encountered. Naturalists Adelbert von Chamisso and Johann Eschscholtz produced an astonishing range of scientific studies for both scholarly and public audiences. Meanwhile, Captain Otto von Kotzebue defended his failure to locate the Northern Passage by claiming other geographic findings.

Featuring rare color images created during the voyage, All Species of Knowledge reveals the intimate and daily practice of shipboard natural history, the role expeditions played in enlightening societies around the world, and the multiple meanings of failure and discovery in the pursuit of knowledge.

Learn more about All Species of Knowledge at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: The Great Ocean.

The Page 99 Test: All Species of Knowledge.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top crime novels where objects and houses remember

C. L. Miller is the internationally bestselling author of the Antique Hunter Series. She started working life as an editorial assistant for her mother, Judith Miller, on The Miller’s Antique Price Guide and other antiquing guides. She lives in a medieval cottage in Dedham Vale, Suffolk, with her family.

The author's newest novel is The Antique Hunter's Murder at the Castle.

At CrimeReads Miller tagged five crime novels "where houses act as witnesses, objects function as evidence, and history is not background texture but an active participant in the mystery." One title on the list:

Sarah Stewart Taylor, Hunter’s Heart Ridge

Hunter’s Heart Ridge by Sarah Stewart Taylor places its mystery deep within a remote Vermont hunting lodge cut off by blizzard. The isolation transforms the house into more than a setting: it becomes a crucible where past loyalties, wartime memory, and personal history sharpen into motive and conflict.

Such a claustrophobic landscape reminds us that place can heighten suspense by trapping characters with their own histories.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Rob Phillips

From my Q&A with Rob Phillips, author of Stakeouts and Strollers: A Mystery:

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

Stakeouts and Strollers works really well as a title because it explains the book’s general premise in three words: The protagonist, Charlie Shaw, is a first-time girl dad and rookie private investigator. He’s constantly sleep deprived, a common occurrence for both roles, and he’s fairly clueless at both, at least at first. The reader instantly knows that our hero is juggling new-parent/spousal duties with solving cases. When a teenage runaway named Friday Finley shows up near Charlie’s home in search of her estranged father, the case appeals to Charlie’s newfound sense of “dadness” and triggers some tragic personal memories that he seeks to exorcise by helping this...[read on]

Follow Rob Phillips on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.

Q&A with Rob Phillips.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five books for fans of "Project Hail Mary"

At Book Riot Liberty Hardy tagged five "great reads about searching for new habitable planets, or encountering aliens, or both." One entry on the list:

Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky

[A] junior anthropologist sent to observe life on an alien planet must break the rules and get involved with his subjects. The locals think he’s a sorcerer, but Elder Nyr is just a scientist trying to report his findings, who realizes he must interfere if he wants to save them from what they think is a demon that has been terrorizing their lands.

Read about the other entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Willie Edward Taylor Carver, Jr.'s "Tore All to Pieces"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Tore All to Pieces by Willie Edward Taylor Carver, Jr.

About the book, from the publisher:

Nestled in the mountains, in an out-of-the-way part of rural America, the fictional town of Mosely is home to ordinary people: proud, compassionate, and complex. Women serving biscuits at the gas station counter, kids listening to Loretta Lynn with their uncles, teenage boys flirting with one another at prom, and parents busy raising their children's babies. This community is woven together by family ties, church congregations, coal mines, and fast-food chains. In Mosely, the residents work hard to find belonging, love, and identity.

Tore All to Pieces is a fragmented novel that delves into the lives of Appalachian characters with similar struggles, backgrounds, and experiences and examines how people are often lonely despite these connections. Each narrative, presented in the form of a poem or short story, bends and weaves like the roads of Appalachia. Each character's voice is richly portrayed in gripping and lyrical language, uniting the stories in a quest for truth, genuine understanding, and respect.

At a time when the rights of queer individuals, women, and people of color are increasingly under threat, this work powerfully reaffirms the humanity and significance of marginalized people. Tore All to Pieces underscores their enduring presence and rightful belonging.

Visit Willie Edward Taylor Carver, Jr.'s website.

Q&A with Willie Edward Taylor Carver, Jr.

My Book, The Movie: Tore All to Pieces.

The Page 69 Test: Tore All to Pieces.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Matthew Avery Sutton's "Chosen Land"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Chosen Land: How Christianity Made America and Americans Remade Christianity by Matthew Avery Sutton.

About the book, from the publisher:

A sweeping history of Christianity in America, from the arrival of the first Europeans to the political triumphs of evangelicalism, showing the powerful, singular role the faith has always played in American public life.

In the United States today, there is no faith more dominant than Christianity. In Chosen Land, historian Matthew Avery Sutton chronicles Christians’ five-hundred-year endeavor to turn North America into their version of the kingdom of God, revealing the fruitful and dynamic entanglement between the history of America and the history of American Christianity.

In the centuries after Christianity first arrived on American shores, colonizers and colonized from New England to Spanish California practiced many varieties of the faith. After the founding of the United States, the nation’s lack of a state religion forced new and evolving strains of Christianity to battle for potential adherents, as they still do to this day. As American Christianity has bent, fractured, and adapted to changing times, Christian belief has shaped everything from the promise of Manifest Destiny to Ronald Reagan’s approach to the Cold War, the rise of the Southern Lost Cause narrative to the triumphs of the civil rights movement.

A landmark work of narrative synthesis tracing the faith’s major figures and currents, Chosen Land confirms the unique place that American Christianity—always both steadfast and precarious—occupies at the center of our shared history.

Visit Matthew Avery Sutton's website.

The Page 99 Test: American Apocalypse.

The Page 99 Test: Chosen Land.

--Marshal Zeringue

Albertine Clarke's "The Body Builders," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Body Builders: A Novel by Albertine Clarke.

The entry begins:

The Body Builders follows an alienated young woman, Ada, who believes her body has been replaced with an identical synthetic copy. Her relationship with Atticus, an older, married man, and the breakdown of her relationship with her mother, are the triggers which send her spiralling out of reality and into a self-directed dream-space designed especially for her.

I watch a lot of movies, and I wrote the book with cinematography always in the back of my mind. Even before I started writing I knew who I would want to direct it: Yorgos Lanthimos, with his uncanny ability to walk the line between tragedy and farce. Yorgos, if you’re reading, I’m waiting for you.

So, if Yorgos is our director, who would play Ada? Emma Stone, Yorgos’s longtime collaborator, wouldn’t be quite right. Ada is cold and detached, tormented by her feelings of unreality, the lack of connection between her and the world around her. I imagine somebody somewhat stormy and ...[read on]

Follow Albertine Clarke on Instagram.

Q&A with Albertine Clarke.

My Book, The Movie: The Body Builders.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Ava Morgyn reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Ava Morgyn, author of Only Spell Deep: A Novel.

Her entry begins:

I’m very much a mood reader, which means I don’t like to keep a towering TBR and tend to jump around a lot between genres. Though I pretty consistently read books with darker themes—so horror, Gothic literature, dark fantasy, thrillers, and the like.

I just finished books by two of my favorite authors. I devoured Play Nice by Rachel Harrison, a contemporary horror about an influencer who inherits her late mother’s old haunted house and tries to remodel it for views. It was a dark, winding adventure through childhood trauma, unreliable memories, attempts to control the narrative, grief, and the phenomenon of women not...[read on]

About Only Spell Deep, from the publisher:

Rebecca meets The Craft in this dark, atmospheric novel of one witch rediscovering her power while on the run from another willing to kill her for it.

From the USA Today bestselling author of The Bane Witch!

Judeth Cole has always had certain uncanny abilities. But when she arrived at Solidago, her grandfather’s estate by the sea, she was forced to keep them secret. There she lived a harsh life under his rule and the haunting legacy of her late grandmother, Aurelia. Until the fateful day she ignited a fire with her magic. It was the last time she saw her family alive.

Seventeen years later, she’s living in Seattle as Jude Clark, and failing at life, when she makes a last detour through her favorite bookstore, selecting a book to read as she waits to die. But when she pulls it from the shelf, an invitation to her for a clandestine midnight meeting slips out.

Jude is quickly swept up into a world of secrets and magic, discovering a circle of powerful new companions led by the mysterious, enigmatic Arla. The source of their magic, Arla tells her, is an entity, trapped and bound, that they call The Fathom. But Jude swiftly realizes Arla wants this power all to herself, and that she’s willing to kill for it.

Terrified, Jude turns to Levi, the handsome bookseller who’s seen her at her worst. With his help, she begins a research journey that leads her all the way back to Solidago, the house she swore to never return to. Now, the Fathom threatening to break free and Arla on the hunt, Jude must finally face her past to save her future.

Ava Morgyn's Only Spell Deep is a novel that takes readers on a journey into a dark, glittering world of magic, a place where power should never be caged and misplaced trust can have deadly consequences.

Visit Ava Morgyn's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Bane Witch.

Q&A with Ava Morgyn.

The Page 69 Test: Only Spell Deep.

Writers Read: Ava Morgyn.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five of the best celebrity/normal person romance novels

Haruka Iwasaki is a writer and bookseller living in Brooklyn, NY. She writes personal essays about her Japanese American identity, grief and growing up in NYC. One essay has appeared in print this year in Oh Reader magazine.

At Lit Hub she tagged five favorite celebrity/normal person romance novels, including:

Jasmine Guillory, While We Were Dating

Sixth in Guillory’s The Wedding Date series, this romance is a stand alone book that’s a perfect introduction to the trope. Ben, a talented ad executive, pitches a huge campaign featuring a bona fide movie star, Anna, and charms her so much that when his company eventually lands the campaign, Anna makes sure that he is the lead on the project. Their light flirtation leads to something more; Anna reveals her celebrity-induced anxiety while Ben shares he has a long lost sister who wants to get in touch. There is a lovely running theme on the importance of mental health and therapy (I love a man who is in therapy!) When Anna has to deal with a family emergency, they decide to fake-date to help her public image which only leads them to get closer. When will they realize they are meant to be?

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Albertine Clarke

From my Q&A with Albertine Clarke, author of The Body Builders: A Novel:

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

My title, The Body Builders, is possibly slightly misleading, in that it makes the novel sound like it’s about body building. While the father of the protagonist is a body builder, this is more in the background than one might expect. Really the title is a pun, because there are two other varieties of body builder – the mother, who has literally built Ada’s body with her own, and the mysterious beings that provide Ada with the synthetic body. I imagine readers might find their expectations subverted, possibly frustrated, which is what I wanted.

How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your new novel?

I think my teenage self would...[read on]

Follow Albertine Clarke on Instagram.

Q&A with Albertine Clarke.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Frances Courtney Kneupper's "Prophecy and the Battle for Spiritual Authority, 1360–1400"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Prophecy and the Battle for Spiritual Authority, 1360–1400: Outsiders, Women, and Reformers by Frances Courtney Kneupper.

About the book, from the publisher:

The end of the fourteenth century was a time of upheaval and contested authority among the traditional institutions of medieval Europe. In response to these conditions, a number of people began to claim their own authority, as prophets speaking the word of God. They came from outside of the clerical elite and were mostly women and reformers. This book examines the battle over authority which ensued. Prophetic women and other non-elites successfully used prophecy to exert influence and to enter the corridors of power, while educated male clerics insinuated that prophecy was the product of demonic influence and therefore a hazard to the public. Surprisingly, a third faction also emerged--an international network of clerical men who wrote in support of female prophecy. This volume traces the arguments made by these three groups, the clashes that erupted, and the long-term impacts of this battle on ideas of spiritual authority.

Learn more about Prophecy and the Battle for Spiritual Authority, 1360–1400 at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Prophecy and the Battle for Spiritual Authority, 1360–1400.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven top darkly surreal Irish books

Eoghan Walls is a Northern Irish poet from Derry. He has lived and worked in Ireland, Britain, Germany and Rwanda. He won an Eric Gregory Award in 2006, and his poetry has been shortlisted for multiple international awards, including the Bridport Prize, the Manchester Poetry Prize and the Piggott Prize. He has published the first major translation of Heidegger’s poetical works and currently teaches Creative Writing at Lancaster University.

Walls's new novel, Field Notes from an Extinction, "deals with ecological disaster, weaponized starvation, and anti-immigrant sentiment."

At Electric Lit the author tagged seven favorite darkly surreal Irish books, including:

Beatlebone by Kevin Barry

I wouldn’t be the first to say there is a deep vein of insistent surreal urgency that pumps through all Kevin Barry’s work. In Beatlebone, my favorite of his books, the protagonist is John Lennon—unassassinated, wonderfully free of the dirt of actual history, but trapped at an existential dip in his life and marriage, ready to escape the afterwake of his earth-quaking fame and the mundanity of marriage just to scream on an island, releasing his trauma. The Ireland he escapes to—1978, on the west coast, rainy and bizarre—is pitch perfect. The woes he runs from are common as rain. The whole book takes a brazen and bewildering fourth wall lurch right near the apex of tension. You begin the book knowing—maybe loving—John Lennon. You end the book hungover and vaguely bruised.

Read about another novel on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Megan Jauregui Eccles's "Sing the Night," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Sing the Night by Megan Jauregui Eccles.

The entry begins:

Since Sing the Night is a Phantom of the Opera inspired gothic fantasy, the obvious choice, the only choice is the great Guillermo del Toro. He is the king of atmosphere, of gothic symbolism, of nuance. I have been inspired by his use of color for metaphor and have integrated that into my own work. I also find his casting to be thoughtful and would defer to him on all of that, hoping that he would highlight lesser-known actors and actresses.

One aspect of Sing the Night that makes it interesting for adaptation is...[read on]

Visit Megan Jauregui Eccles's website.

My Book, The Movie: Sing the Night.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six books for fans of the movie "Sinners"

Erica Ezeifedi is a writer, editor, and advocate currently serving as an Associate Editor at Book Riot. For the site she tagged six "books that each touch on the major themes and feelings in Sinners," including:

The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle

Tonally, this novella fits the overall feeling of Sinners the best of all the books in this list. It is a retelling of H.P. Lovecraft’s existential horror story The Horror at Red Hook, and is, in many ways, a reclaiming. Lovecraft was a raging racist (even for his time) who was influenced by Black people just as he despised us, and it’s kind of ironic (but also maybe just typical) that the same cosmic horror Lovecraft became known for explores exactly the same kind of all-encompassing existential dread that Black Americans have felt for hundreds of years in this land.

Read about another title on the list.

The Ballad of Black Tom is among Brittany K. Allen's ten top books for fans of Sinners, Chase Dearinger's seven horror titles where the setting is a monster, and Colleen Kinder's ten titles about chance encounters with strangers.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Ava Morgyn's "Only Spell Deep"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Only Spell Deep: A Novel by Ava Morgyn.

About the novel, from the publisher:

Rebecca meets The Craft in this dark, atmospheric novel of one witch rediscovering her power while on the run from another willing to kill her for it.

From the USA Today bestselling author of The Bane Witch!

Judeth Cole has always had certain uncanny abilities. But when she arrived at Solidago, her grandfather’s estate by the sea, she was forced to keep them secret. There she lived a harsh life under his rule and the haunting legacy of her late grandmother, Aurelia. Until the fateful day she ignited a fire with her magic. It was the last time she saw her family alive.

Seventeen years later, she’s living in Seattle as Jude Clark, and failing at life, when she makes a last detour through her favorite bookstore, selecting a book to read as she waits to die. But when she pulls it from the shelf, an invitation to her for a clandestine midnight meeting slips out.

Jude is quickly swept up into a world of secrets and magic, discovering a circle of powerful new companions led by the mysterious, enigmatic Arla. The source of their magic, Arla tells her, is an entity, trapped and bound, that they call The Fathom. But Jude swiftly realizes Arla wants this power all to herself, and that she’s willing to kill for it.

Terrified, Jude turns to Levi, the handsome bookseller who’s seen her at her worst. With his help, she begins a research journey that leads her all the way back to Solidago, the house she swore to never return to. Now, the Fathom threatening to break free and Arla on the hunt, Jude must finally face her past to save her future.

Ava Morgyn's Only Spell Deep is a novel that takes readers on a journey into a dark, glittering world of magic, a place where power should never be caged and misplaced trust can have deadly consequences.

Visit Ava Morgyn's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Bane Witch.

Q&A with Ava Morgyn.

The Page 69 Test: Only Spell Deep.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Garrett Peck's "The Bright Edges of the World"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Bright Edges of the World: Willa Cather and Her Archbishop by Garrett Peck.

About the book, from the publisher:

Author and historian Garrett Peck traces Willa Cather’s adventures in the Southwest and how they influenced her best book.

Six months before she died, Willa Cather called her 1927 novel Death Comes for the Archbishop her “best book.” The Atlantic magazine concurred, including Archbishop on its Great American Novels list in 2024. A perennial favorite for people who love New Mexico, the novel tells an unusual story of two French priests and best friends serving on the American frontier before the arrival of the railroad. This Western work of fiction is loosely based on two historical figures, Archbishop Jean-Baptiste Lamy and Bishop Joseph Machebeuf.

In The Bright Edges of the World, Garrett Peck explores how Cather’s travels to the Southwest inspired her writing. She visited the Southwest six times between 1912 and 1926, and from these journeys came three novels, the last of which was Death Comes for the Archbishop. Through Cather’s letters, postcards, articles, and interviews, Peck traces how integral travel was to Cather’s imagination while highlighting the vital contribution that Cather’s longtime partner, Edith Lewis, made to the story. The Bright Edges of the World is richly illustrated to highlight Cather and Lewis’s extensive Southwestern adventures.

Though Archbishop is a work of fiction, Peck explores how Cather wove some of the most legendary people in New Mexican history into her novel, such as Archbishop Lamy, Kit Carson, and Padre Antonio José Martínez, while subtly hinting toward the complexity of Pueblo Indian and Navajo (Diné) faith. Archbishop is a multicultural novel that reflects the diversity of New Mexico’s people.

Death Comes for the Archbishop remains a timeless book of friendship on the American frontier and an inspiration for people who, as Cather wrote, “have gone a-journeying in New Mexico on the trail of the Archbishop.”

Learn more about the book and author at Garrett Peck's website.

Garrett Peck's best books about Prohibition.

Writers Read: Garrett Peck (January 2010).

The Page 99 Test: The Prohibition Hangover.

The Page 99 Test: Capital Beer.

The Page 99 Test: A Decade of Disruption.

The Page 99 Test: The Bright Edges of the World.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Dan Buzzetta

From my Q&A with Dan Buzzetta, author of The Winter Verdict:

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

If the title of my novel, The Winter Verdict, was a worker whose job is to describe the story I’ve written, he or she would best be described as someone who does half-the-job very well. Truth to tell, I had another title in mind, but my publisher and editor preferred The Winter Verdict. The title succeeds in season-setting; my legal thriller takes place at a ski resort in the dead of winter with snow-capped mountains and tall pines on summit ridges standing sentinel over a bucolic wintery village. But the word Verdict isn’t to be taken literally. There’s little court room drama, no recanting witness, and those looking for an edge-of-your-seat climax waiting for a jury to return a verdict would be better served reading To Kill a Mockingbird. Instead, the word Verdict refers to the decisive actions taken by the protagonist to prevent a shadowy international conglomerate from...[read on]

Visit Dan Buzzetta's website.

Q&A with Dan Buzzetta.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Lyla Lane reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Lyla Lane, author of The Best Little Motel in Texas: A Novel.

Her entry begins:

I just finished Murder Bimbo by Rebecca Novack, and I can say with certainty that this is going to be one of my favorite reads of the year. It was an epistolary novel about a sex worker who assassinates a right-wing politician known as Meat Neck. With one story told three different ways, depending on who the unreliable narrator was trying to persuade, this absolutely unhinged book was a...[read on]

About The Best Little Motel in Texas, from the publisher:

A charming, edgy mystery about a young woman who unexpectedly inherits the best little motel in Texas – replete with a feisty set of golden working girls, a poisoned priest, and a sleepy hometown thrown into chaos.

After a childhood spent combing the dive bars of Sarsaparilla Falls to collect her fun-loving momma, Cordelia West now enjoys a simple, respectable life in Dallas. Then one phone call from the hometown she’s spent years trying to forget throws it into chaos.

Cordelia's great-aunt Penelope has passed away, naming Cordelia the sole heir to the Chickadee Motel. She has no memory of a great-aunt and no interest in hospitality, but the will stipulates that the motel can’t be sold until its residents leave or pass away – so she reluctantly heads back down to Sarsaparilla Falls to figure out who's living in the Chickadee, and how to get them out.

But upon her arrival, Cordelia discovers the Chickadee isn’t a motel—it’s a brothel, housing three women in their sixties known as the Chicks. For decades, Daisy, Arline, and Belinda Sue have entertained the men of Sarsaparilla Falls (with their wives’ blessings)—including the upright Pastor Reed-Smythe, who thunders against the town’s favorite sins when he’s not indulging. Cordelia doesn’t want to be a hotel manager or a madam, but she can’t just sell the only home the Chicks have known—especially not after the pastor is found poisoned in Daisy’s bed.

With the Chicks—and the town—on the verge of a breakdown, Cordelia steps up to mop up the mess. For a small town, there are plenty of suspects: could it be the obsessed nurse with access to arsenic? Developers eager to gobble up the land? The righteously angry town librarian? Things are heating up in Sarsaparilla Falls, and with the Pastor’s obnoxiously attractive son Archer—Cordelia’s childhood nemesis—investigating the Chicks and getting close, straightlaced Cordelia may just have to get a little dirty to make a killer come clean.

Visit Lyla Lane's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Best Little Motel in Texas.

Q&A with Lyla Lane.

The Page 69 Test: The Best Little Motel in Texas.

Writers Read: Lyla Lane.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six thrillers that feature contagions & pandemics

Alice Martin is a writer, reader, and teacher from North Carolina. She holds a PhD in Literature from Rutgers University and works as an Assistant Professor of English Studies at Western Carolina University, where she teaches fiction writing and American literature. She lives outside of Asheville, North Carolina with her husband, her son, and too many typewriters.

Westward Women is Martin's debut novel.

At CrimeReads the author tagged six novels that are

stories about societies on the edge in the face of contagions, stories made pulse-pounding not only because of the way they demonstrate contagion as a threat but also the way they reveal how contagion can be a catalyst for social change, a reminder of the potential reckless delights in being free of social constraint.

One title on Martin's list:

Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven

Like [Stephen King's] The Stand, Emily St. John Mandel’s magnificent Station Eleven can be divided into the “before” and “after”: the collapse of society under the weight of a flu pandemic and the rise of something new and uncanny in its aftermath. In the “after,” a group of traveling performers try to find what pleasure there is in life beyond surviving while a terrifying extremist gains influence nearby.

But the opening to Station Eleven might be my favorite opening of any book. It begins with a production of King Lear that serves as a kind of super-spreader event. After witnessing a man die onstage, one man who was present, Jeevan, receives more advanced warning from a doctor friend, leading him to stock up on supplies for the end of the world. This sequence always catches my breath because of how real it feels.

For Jeevan, everything in the world—jobs, responsibilities, weeknight plans—all stop in a second. It is the embodiment of the most famous line from King Lear: “unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bar, forked animal as thou art. Off, off, you lendings! Come unbutton here.” Unbuttoning ourselves from the constraints of society may make us animals, but it is freeing, too.

Read about another entry on the list.

Station Eleven is among Rebecca Fallon's five top Shakespeare-inspired novels, Lauren Wilson's eight top books featuring cults, Barnaby Martin's seven titles featuring parents & children at the end of the world, Brittany K. Allen's ten books that get the theatre world right, Jeanette Horn's nine twisted novels about theatrical performers, Isabelle McConville's fifteen books for fans of the post-apocalyptic TV-drama Fallout, Joanna Quinn's six best books set in & around the theatrical world, Carolyn Quimby's 38 best dystopian novels, Tara Sonin's seven books for fans of Margaret Atwood's The Testaments, Maggie Stiefvater's five fantasy books about artists & the magic of creativity, Mark Skinner's five top literary dystopias, Claudia Gray's five essential books about plagues and pandemics, K Chess's five top fictional books inside of real books, Rebecca Kauffman's ten top musical novels, Nathan Englander’s ten favorite books, M.L. Rio’s five top novels inspired by Shakespeare, Anne Corlett's five top books with different takes on the apocalypse, Christopher Priest’s five top sci-fi books that make use of music, and Anne Charnock's five favorite books with fictitious works of art.

--Marshal Zeringue