Ten chilling summer slasher novels

Alaina Urquhart is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Dr. Wren Muller series which has been published internationally in over twenty languages. When she isn’t writing, she is also the cohost of the chart-topping podcast Morbid, and an autopsy technician by trade.

The latest Dr. Wren Muller novel is The Butcher Legacy.

At People magazine Urquhart tagged ten "summer slashers [that] are meant to be read with the porch light on." One title on the list:

The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix

This one is such a classic for slasher summer. Grady Hendrix answers the question of what happens to the final girl after the credits roll. Who hasn’t wondered how they get through the aftershock of what they have survived? It’s a perfectly paced homage to the slasher genre, while also keeping it fresh and entertaining.

The women at the center of it all are so diverse and perfectly flawed enough to be relatable at their cores, while also being pulled straight out of Grady’s version of your favorite slasher flicks. It’s a page-turner that is intense, bloody and unrelenting. You will find yourself unable to put this one down.

Read about another novel on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Terra Ziporyn and Amy R. Wolfson's "Educating the Exhausted"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Educating the Exhausted: Adolescent Sleep and the Struggle for a Later School Start by Terra Ziporyn and Amy R. Wolfson.

About the book, from the publisher:

The battle to align the school day with the science of sleep.

For decades, sleep researchers have reached the same conclusion: adolescents need more sleep than current school schedules allow. Yet across the United States, most middle and high schools continue to start the day at hours that undermine student health, safety, and learning. In Educating the Exhausted, Terra Ziporyn and Amy R. Wolfson explain why evidence alone has not been enough to ensure school hours that allow for sufficient sleep.

The authors recount the development of adolescent sleep research since the 1980s and the long struggle to bring that knowledge into school policy. Scientists, educators, parents, and health professionals often worked in isolation, while school systems remained resistant to change. Early advocacy efforts stalled, local campaigns collapsed, and frustration mounted even as the research base grew stronger and more consistent. Yet, there has been some progress: broader coalitions formed, communication improved, and sustained advocacy led to meaningful policy shifts, including landmark legislation in California. These changes did not come easily; they required persistence, credibility, and a willingness to navigate political and institutional constraints.

Written by two leaders closely involved in these efforts, Educating the Exhausted offers an account of how research enters public decision-making―and what it takes for science to influence policy.

Visit Terra Ziporyn's website and Amy R. Wolfson's faculty webpage.

The Page 99 Test: Educating the Exhausted.

--Marshal Zeringue

E.J. Copperman's "Where There’s Smoke…," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Where There's Smoke... (A Haunted Paint Store Mystery, 2) by E.J. Copperman.

The entry begins:

The fact is, I don’t know what my characters look like.

That’s been true in every novel I’ve written (and there have been a bunch). I don’t picture the character beyond a very general type unless their appearance will be important to the story, and it almost never is.

So trying to (mentally) cast a movie of Where There’s Smoke… the second Haunted Paint Store mystery, I have to go with attitude rather than resemblance. I believe the reader will form a mental picture of the character and no matter what they imagine, they’ll be right. So no physical descriptions for me.

Laura Meehan, is a woman knocking on the door of middle age, but not walking over the threshold yet. She make self-deprecating comments about the way she looks, but I don’t think those are to be taken seriously. Certainly her husband Roy doesn’t think she’s lacking in any department. She’s not a girl-next-door type, but probably a girl-two-doors down woman.

Her deceased father, Amos Meehan, is...[read on]

Visit E. J. Copperman's website and Facebook page.

My Book, The Movie: The Thrill of the Haunt.

Writers Read: E. J. Copperman (November 2013).

The Page 69 Test: The Thrill of the Haunt.

My Book, The Movie: Ukulele of Death.

The Page 69 Test: Ukulele of Death.

Q&A with E. J. Copperman.

The Page 69 Test: Same Difference.

Writers Read: E. J. Copperman (February 2025).

The Page 69 Test: Where There's Smoke....

My Book, The Movie: Where There's Smoke....

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Linda Kass reading?

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

Her entry begins:

I See You’ve Called in Dead by John Kenney was the latest selection for my personal book club. I happen to love my book club, and all book clubs, because they bring community and connection around books! I may not have picked this book up on my own, but it was one of our selections because one of our book club members read it and was a fan. And isn’t word of mouth the way most of us find the greatest reads?

Anyway, back to this book. With a darkly comedic yet piercing tone, the author (who happens to be he New Yorker’s “Shouts & Murmurs” columnist) tells a story of life and death and the search for meaning through the novel’s narrator, a depressed obituary writer at the world’s largest wire service. Bud Stanely is a middle-aged man who has lost the spirit of his job and wonders the point of life. After one terrible night—a very bad blind date on top of his ongoing two-year depressed state since his wife ended their marriage—he...[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.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven top historical novels set during revolutions

At Book Riot Julia Rittenberg tagged seven historical novels set during revolutions, including:

A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel

Mantel’s singular style of storytelling allows her to pull apart the thorny, violent politics of the French Revolution. She illuminates the intense bloodiness and instability of the Reign of Terror through the narration of three major figures: Georges-Jacques Danton, Maximilien Robespierre, and Camille Desmoulins. Each has their own motivations and guiding principles, which affect how they accomplish their revolutionary aims.

Read about another book on the list.

A Place of Greater Safety is among Laura Shepherd-Robinson's six historical novels that perfectly capture the 18th century and the Barnes & Noble Review's top books on uprisings in pursuit of freedom around the world.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Tad Tuleja's "Skirmishes with Patriotism"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Skirmishes with Patriotism: Looking for America in the Long Shadow of Vietnam by Tad Tuleja.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the late 1960s, as the Vietnam War divided the country, millions of young American men faced the choice of how to respond to the draft. Some accepted conscription and went to fight. Others attended protests or fled the country. But most draft-aged men, avoiding both combat and exile, stayed home, punched the clock, watched Walter Cronkite, and mowed the lawn while history swirled around them. Decades later, members of this forgotten majority still live with the war's aftermath, questioning their response to the most polarizing conflict of their time.

Skirmishes with Patriotism is Tad Tuleja's lyrical and deeply personal memoir about this overlooked segment of his generation. Tracing his own journey from a flag-waving Boy Scout to a disillusioned humanist wrestling with the consequences of saying "no" to military service, he explores the complex pressures of family, expectations about masculine duty, and the fevered nationalism that continues to grip the United States today. This is not a tale of heroism or protest but a candid reckoning with moral ambiguity and the cost of a life-altering decision. With clarity and wit, Tuleja fills a critical gap in Vietnam War–era literature and offers a powerful reflection on what it means to be an American grappling with the legacy of patriotism and conflict.

Visit Tad Tuleja's website.

The Page 99 Test: Skirmishes with Patriotism.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Barbara O'Neal reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Barbara O'Neal, author of A Thousand Painted Hours: A Novel.

Her entry begins:

My agent and I both like a certain sort of quiet English novel, and when I was searching for things to bring with me on a trip to Japan recently, she recommended the 1931 novel A Fortnight By The Sea, by RC Sherriff. It is the story of a family who go to the seaside in England, day by day. It is ordinary and calming and so filled with English sensibilities of the period that...[read on]

About A Thousand Painted Hours, from the publisher:

An epic, emotionally charged novel about love, art, and survival spanning 1900s colonial India to Blitz-era London by the USA Today bestselling author of When We Believed in Mermaids.

In the shadow of the London Blitz, artist Elsie Turner clings fiercely to her canvases, refusing to let war dim the colors that define her. The bombs test her nerve, but the struggle also stirs memories of her golden youth in India and of the long-lost love of her life.

The daughter of a British civil servant in the Himalayan station of Nainital, Elsie crosses cultural divides to forge an unlikely bond with Tanveer Singh, a Sikh prince with hopes, dreams, and far-reaching ideas. What begins as shared sketchbooks and stargazing becomes first love and a secret correspondence. When Elsie’s father is summoned to England, Elsie is severed from the world she knows―and is determined to preserve it through both her art and a connection with Tanveer that endures through the most tumultuous years of their lives.

Across four decades and two continents, Elsie navigates a journey from lush colonial India to war-torn London, amid landscapes of beauty, protest, and peril. As past and present collide, the most impossible choices and sacrifices are yet to be made in the name of love, war, and survival.

Visit Barbara O'Neal's website.

My Book, The Movie: A Thousand Painted Hours.

The Page 69 Test: A Thousand Painted Hours.

Writers Read: Barbara O'Neal.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight books that puncture the myths of Silicon Valley

Claire Stapleton is a writer, communications consultant, and tech labor activist. She began her career at Google, where she spent 12 years in a variety of influential communications, marketing, and executive ghostwriting roles, before co-organizing the Google Walkout in 2018, in which 20,000 employees loudly protested the company’s mishandling of sexual harassment. Stapleton now advises executives and organizations on navigating the complicated communications landscape, speaks and writes frequently about tech worker issues, and publishes an existential advice column for tech workers on Substack.

Her new book is Don't Be Evil: Bad Bosses, Fake Promises, and My Escape from Big Tech.

At Lit Hub Stapleton tagged the eight "books that most shaped my understanding of [Silicon Valley] that has become the air we all breathe—and, increasingly, choke on." One title on the list:

Private Government by Elizabeth Anderson

A professor friend of mine (hi, Pete!) recommended this book around the time of the Google Walkout, when I was beginning to realize that, as righteous as we felt demanding greater accountability from Google, the company felt no obligation to provide it. It’s a slim, riveting manifesto that permanently changed how I think about work.

Elizabeth Anderson asks a deceptively simple question: Why do we insist on democracy in public life while accepting authoritarian rule at work? Her answer is that corporations aren’t simply voluntary market arrangements. They are private governments, exercising extraordinary power over our speech, movements, relationships, and livelihoods with remarkably little democratic oversight.

I thought about Anderson often as Google began changing its internal rules to restrict speech, discipline organizing, and punish people who spoke out—moves that felt like abuses of power but offered little to no recourse, despite intense internal and public outrage. Once you begin seeing your employer as a private government rather than merely a workplace, it becomes very difficult to unsee. The perils of a society governed so extensively by corporations become impossible to ignore.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Ankita Pandey's "Becoming Allies"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Becoming Allies: Civil Liberties Activism in India by Ankita Pandey.

About the book, from the publisher:

What motivates individuals to stand up against injustices that don't personally affect them? Becoming Allies explores a vital but often overlooked dimension of social movements: the role of those who support a cause without being directly affected by its injustices. While most scholarship centres the conflict between social movements and the State, this book shifts the focus to allies-individuals who stand in solidarity and amplify marginalised demands. Drawing on interviews conducted with civil liberties activists and on documents from their private records, this book traces the evolving politics of allyship in India. Anchored in the histories of groups like the People's Union for Civil Liberties and the People's Union for Democratic Rights that rose in the context of the Naxalite Movement and the Emergency, the book sheds light on the ethics, dilemmas, and strategies of standing alongside others in struggle.

Learn more about Becoming Allies at the Cambridge University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Becoming Allies.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Amanda Sellet's "My Best French Wedding"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: My Best French Wedding: A Novel by Amanda Sellet.

About the novel, from the publisher:

Will it be l’amour the merrier or too haute to handle when rival reporters with a tangled history compete to tell the story of the year at a ritzy destination wedding?

Once upon a time, Walter was Hildy’s favorite person―until he crushed her teenage dreams. A decade later, she has a new beloved: the magazine she built from the ground up. Unfortunately, getting rid of Walter isn’t as easy as shedding her romantic illusions. He’s always around, vying for the juiciest scoops on the elite wedding circuit and provoking her into public displays that don’t scream “mature and sophisticated media maven.”

When Hildy scores exclusive access to the wedding of the season―a week-long parade of luxury in southern France―it’s a chance for her magazine to finally make its mark. Except Walter isn’t sitting at home crying; he’s right there in France, trying to steal Hildy’s story. Again.

Now it’s a head-to-head battle to see whose coverage will make it to print. The problem? Between the champagne and the chateaux, it’s easy to lose sight of the prize. Hildy knows better than to believe in fairy tales, but Walter is doing his best to convince her they could have a part deux.

In this gender-flipped twist on His Girl Friday, Hildy has seven days to prove she is totally over it, living her best life, and definitely not hung up on the past . . . or Walter.

Visit Amanda Sellet's website.

Q&A with Amanda Sellet.

The Page 69 Test: By the Book.

Writers Read: Amanda Sellet (December 2022).

Writers Read: Amanda Sellet (August 2024).

The Page 69 Test: The Odds of Getting Even.

The Page 69 Test: My Best French Wedding.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Maria Malone

From my Q&A with Maria Malone, author of Killing in the Countryside: A Wren & Wilson Mystery:

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

Coming up with the title is not my strongest point and my books have different titles in the UK and the US, which makes it even trickier. Left to my own devices, poison and/or peacocks would feature in the title, since they’re central to the story – how it begins, develops and ends. However, I appreciate the title has to work in its territory.

I was asked by the publisher to submit suggestions and among my offerings was A Poisonous Affair in the Countryside. Killing in the Countryside was their preference. It’s not easy, I think, to find something that captures the quirky, slightly eccentric British core of the book for American readers.

The fictional town of Heft is a strange little corner of the Yorkshire Dales, in the habit of wrong-footing the local law enforcement, Sergeant Ali Wren and her springer spaniel partner, Officer Wilson. I hope the character of the place and its people somehow comes across.

In its favour, the title is...[read on]

Visit Maria Malone's website.

Writers Read: Maria Malone (August 2025).

Writers Read: Maria Malone.

Q&A with Maria Malone.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top books about chess players

Allison Saft is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Wings of Starlight, A Dark and Drowning Tide, A Far Wilder Magic, and other romantic fantasy novels. Her work has won a Scribe Award and has been translated into over ten languages. She holds an MA in English Literature from Tulane University and teaches creative writing at Wilkes University. In her free time, she practices aerial circus arts. She lives in West Virginia with her partner and an Italian greyhound named Marzipan.

Saft's new novel is Immortal Game.

At The Nerd Daily the author tagged five of her "favorite books about chess players." One title on the list:

The Queen’s Gambit by Walter Tevis

You’ve most likely watched Netflix’s version of Beth Harmon’s story, but the novel it’s adapted from is just as brilliant. The show follows the book pretty closely. The Queen’s Gambit is an exploration of single-minded obsession, addiction, and the power and solace broken people find within the sixty-four squares of a chessboard. Chess players will be rewarded because it’s clear that Tevis loves chess; the games Beth plays are lovingly rendered, move by move. But if you don’t play, the glimpse we get into Beth’s mind is fascinating and devastating. The high point for me is, of course, her relationship with Borgov. We can so viscerally feel her fear of him, and how much emotional weight she places on the outcomes of their games.

Read about another entry on the list.

Also see K.W. Colyard's list "books like The Queen's Gambit that prove chess is far from boring" and Aisling Twomey's list of seven books for fans of The Queen’s Gambit.

The Queen’s Gambit is among Louise Erdrich's six favorite books that will transport you.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Barbara Ganson's "Lady Daredevils"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Lady Daredevils: American Women and Early Aviation by Barbara Ganson.

About the book, from the publisher:

Though often restricted as aviators, women helped build a stable aircraft industry that became the envy of the world. Barbara Ganson delves into the lives of the women whose work as test pilots, flight school owner-operators, airport managers, and in other roles impacted and reflected larger trends in society.

Women aviators challenged social norms that considered them inept with machinery and incapable of handling early flight’s very real dangers. Ganson follows how the New Woman ethos of freedom of movement and career inspired engagement with aviation. Despite resistance, women pushed limits by setting records for speed, altitude, distance, and endurance. The fashions of airwomen, meanwhile, reflected changing attitudes of women toward traditional roles and the pursuit of their career aspirations.

Informed by interviews and rare archival information, Lady Daredevils tells the stories of the pioneering women of early aviation history and reveals their dynamic interactions with social and technological change.

Learn more about Lady Daredevils at the University of Illinois Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Lady Daredevils.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Maria Malone reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Maria Malone, author of Killing in the Countryside: A Wren & Wilson Mystery.

Her entry begins:

The Homemade God by Rachel Joyce

I’m in awe of Rachel Joyce, whose debut The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry remains a favourite, a book I often return to. Her latest, The Homemade God, is the story of a family, the messy, messed-up Kemps. Four siblings brought up by their hard-drinking, unreliable, father following the death of their mother. Vic is hapless when it comes to parenthood, but he can paint, knock out pictures in no time at all. His work is not especially original, and the art world is dismissive, but Vic’s paintings sell and money pours in, enough to buy a villa on Orta in the Italian Lakes, the scene of many good times for the family. Vic has a plan to do a final painting, his masterpiece, one that will...[read on]

About Killing in the Countryside, from the publisher:

Sergeant Ali Wren and her police dog, Wilson, are back in this charming sequel, perfect for fans of Ann Cleeves and Margaret Mizushima.

It’s just another day in the small town of Heft when Ali follows up on reports of an escaped pride of peacocks stirring up trouble in a once quiet cul-de-sac. A routine call, a case of fuss and feathers, Ali suspects. But what she discovers inside the house the birds have invaded is far from routine. The couple who live there have been receiving anonymous hate letters.

Letters that are at once threatening and suspiciously personal.

As Ali and Wilson investigate, they dig up long-buried secrets at the heart of the community. Every detail they uncover brings them closer to the truth, that someone in Heft will stop at nothing to keep their past hidden…

Visit Maria Malone's website.

Writers Read: Maria Malone (August 2025).

Writers Read: Maria Malone.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top humorous mystery novels

Gloria Chao is a USA Today bestselling author and a screenwriter. Her novels include The Mortal Enemy Murder Club, The Ex-Girlfriend Murder Club, Ex Marks the Spot, When You Wish Upon a Lantern, Rent a Boyfriend, Our Wayward Fate, and American Panda. She graduated from MIT and became a dentist before realizing she’d rather spend her days in fictional characters’ heads instead of real people’s mouths. When she’s not writing, you can find her on the curling ice, where she and her husband are world-ranked in mixed doubles.

[The Page 69 Test: American Panda; The Page 69 Test: When You Wish Upon a Lantern]

At CrimeReads Chao tagged six "humorous mysteries that I have loved, ranging from laugh-out-loud funny to more subtle humor." One title on the list:

Jo Firestone, Murder on Sex Island

A cast member from the hit reality TV show Sex Island goes missing, and producers hire Luella van Horn to go undercover as a contestant to solve the case. And Luella is absolutely hilarious. This book was laugh after laugh, just like the title promises, and it also delivered a surprising ending.

And luckily, you can keep the laughs going with Sex on Murder Island, the second book in the series!

Read about another mystery on Chao's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Ann Blair's "In the Scholar’s Workshop"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: In the Scholar’s Workshop: Hidden Histories of Collaboration and Authorship by Ann Blair.

About the book, from the publisher:

The hidden hands behind history’s great scholarly works

For centuries, many of the world’s most influential thinkers routinely relied on helpers who performed tasks such as taking dictation, correcting, indexing, composing, and endless copying. In the Scholar’s Workshop introduces readers to these unsung scribes, assistants, and collaborators, showing how the scholarly enterprise is rarely as solitary as we tend to think.

Ann Blair traces how the learned have relied on helpers since antiquity, discussing how and when these amanuenses became visible in manuscript and occasionally in print and explaining why they were uniquely positioned to shape the posthumous legacy of their principal. Taking an in-depth look at the later Renaissance, she reconstructs the private lives and academic pursuits of leading figures from the period such as the renowned humanist Erasmus, the reformer Martin Bucer, and Paris professors Adrien Turnèbe and Petrus Ramus. Blair paints multifaceted portraits of the servants, students, and family members who assisted in their work, drawing on sources ranging from scholarly texts in both draft and published forms to correspondence, annotations, biographical accounts, and household rules. Turning to the modern age, she identifies new kinds of digital amanuenses with the rise of chatbots and other powerful software tools.

Panoramic in scope, In the Scholar’s Workshop challenges conventional views about authorship and attribution while affirming the enduring importance of collaboration in scholarly work today.

Learn more about In the Scholar’s Workshop at the Princeton University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Too Much to Know.

The Page 99 Test: In the Scholar’s Workshop.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Barbara O'Neal's "A Thousand Painted Hours"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: A Thousand Painted Hours: A Novel by Barbara O'Neal.

About the book, from the publisher:

An epic, emotionally charged novel about love, art, and survival spanning 1900s colonial India to Blitz-era London by the USA Today bestselling author of When We Believed in Mermaids.

In the shadow of the London Blitz, artist Elsie Turner clings fiercely to her canvases, refusing to let war dim the colors that define her. The bombs test her nerve, but the struggle also stirs memories of her golden youth in India and of the long-lost love of her life.

The daughter of a British civil servant in the Himalayan station of Nainital, Elsie crosses cultural divides to forge an unlikely bond with Tanveer Singh, a Sikh prince with hopes, dreams, and far-reaching ideas. What begins as shared sketchbooks and stargazing becomes first love and a secret correspondence. When Elsie’s father is summoned to England, Elsie is severed from the world she knows―and is determined to preserve it through both her art and a connection with Tanveer that endures through the most tumultuous years of their lives.

Across four decades and two continents, Elsie navigates a journey from lush colonial India to war-torn London, amid landscapes of beauty, protest, and peril. As past and present collide, the most impossible choices and sacrifices are yet to be made in the name of love, war, and survival.

Visit Barbara O'Neal's website.

My Book, The Movie: A Thousand Painted Hours.

The Page 69 Test: A Thousand Painted Hours.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven memoirs about discovering family late in life

BK (Kate) Jackson is an author, developmental editor, book coach, and a journalist with bylines in HuffPost, The Los Angeles Times, The Sun, Whale Road Review, Hippocampus Magazine, WIRED, and more. She earned a BA and an MA from UCLA. Jackson is the editor of the anthology Relative Strangers: Inheritance, Identity, and the Meaning of Family and the founder and editor of Severance, a magazine and community for adoptees and individuals who’ve discovered misattributed parentage. She also has a Substack about writing with ADHD.

At Electric Lit Jackson tagged seven memoirs that take "readers deep into the mind-bending and sometimes shattering experience of discovering close family late in life." One title on the list:

Inheritance by Dani Shapiro

Memoirist and novelist Dani Shapiro always knew who she was: the daughter of Paul Shapiro and a member of an Orthodox Jewish clan with deep roots. Yet her writing often circles a notion that there is something hidden in her history. In her 2013 memoir Still Writing, she wrote, “Secrets floated through our home like dust motes in the air. Every word spoken by my parents contained within it a hidden hard kernel of what wasn’t being said.” In 2016, after a DNA test her husband suggested they take “just for fun” revealed she was only half Jewish, she discovered she was the secret—that her beloved father wasn’t, in fact, her father, that her parents had relied on assistive reproductive technology, and she was the daughter of an anonymous donor. In this beautifully written memoir, Shapiro suggests that secrets and knowledge live within our unconscious, in our bodies, and that learning our truth validates the disquieting voices within us.

Read about another entry on Jackson's list.

Inheritance is among Jeremy B. Jones's seven complicated titles about complicated family histories and Thao Thai's seven books about gripping family secrets.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Sergey Gavrilets's "Social Influence and the Logic of Collective Action"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Social Influence and the Logic of Collective Action by Sergey Gavrilets.

About the book, from the publisher:

An integrated quantitative framework for understanding the dynamics of collective action

Collective action has been a fundamental aspect of human societies throughout history, from building irrigation systems and defenses in Neolithic times to coordinated disaster relief and scientific collaborations today. In this book, Sergey Gavrilets explains when and why groups of people cooperate, presenting a quantitative framework that unifies game theory with models of social influence, cognition, and individual and cultural variation. He shows how humans’ deep susceptibility to social influence—grounded in evolutionary need to cooperate and learn from peers, reinforced by deference to parents and elders, and extended to cultural, religious, and political leaders—shapes norms, beliefs, and collective outcomes.

Integrating previously separate literatures, Gavrilets introduces explicit dynamics for norms and beliefs, quantifies the effects of individual and cultural differences, and tests predictions across societies. Drawing on formal, data-based mathematical modeling supported by behavioral experiments and studies of online behavior, he concludes that successful collective action depends on six interacting forces: material payoffs, personal norms and attitudes, social influence, cognition, evolving social norms and beliefs about others, and individual and cultural differences. Lasting cultural change, he argues, depends on norms and institutions that shape behavior through persuasion, nudging, and enforcement. Gavrilets translates this theory into practical, testable strategies for policy and design, including targeted messaging, dynamic norms, and culturally sensitive approaches, and connects it to broader theories of behavior change.

Visit Sergey Gavrilets's website.

The Page 99 Test: Social Influence and the Logic of Collective Action.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Lisa Roe

From my Q&A with Lisa Roe, author of Big & Lily: A Novel:

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

Big & Lily is the story of two very different, but very codependent sisters, Bridget (Big) Ackerman-Petty and Lily Ackerman who accidently sign up for an extreme Alaskan adventure. Choosing to use just the sisters’ names as the title draws focus to the most important aspect of the book—the sisters’ relationship. In addition, by using Bridget’s nickname “Big” (short for Big Sister), readers will quickly understand the key theme of the story—the exploration birth order theory (a fascination of mine, being a big sister myself) and its role in each of the women’s lives. Big & Lily is also a play on Big & Little, which further brings the point home.

When I first started drafting the book, my working title was Big and Lily Come to a Fork, but I soon realized that...[read on]

Visit Lisa Roe's website.

Q&A with Lisa Roe.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six of the best SFF books about gods and demons

Lyndsie Manusos’s fiction has appeared in PANK, SmokeLong Quarterly, and other publications. She holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has worked in web production and content management. When she’s not nesting among her books and rough drafts, she’s chasing the baby while the dog watches in confused amusement. She lives with her family in a suburb of Indianapolis.

At Book Riot she tagged six of the best science fiction and fantasy books about gods and demons, including:

The Starving Saints by Caitlin Starling

Let’s close out this list with some medieval dark fantasy/horror, shall we?

I’ve been a fan of Starling since reading Yellow Jessamine, and I also adored The Death of Jane Lawrence. Starling’s work is as mysterious as it is startling, and she’s fantastic at sprinkling tender moments among the horrors. The Starving Saints is a somewhat-historical fantasy/horror about Aymar Castle, which has been under siege for six months. The people within its walls are starving and desperate. Then, lo and behold, the Constant Lady and her Saints arrive. Miraculously and, somehow, despite the barricades. Suddenly, the stores are replenished. All they ask in return is adoration.

What follows is a story told from the point of view of multiple women, from a war hero to a nun-turned sorceress, to a serving girl. They all see their situation for what it is, and they must consider how they will survive under the sway of the Constant Lady and her bacchanalian feasts. More than anything else, though, this is a survival story.

Read about another title on the list.

The Starving Saints is among Lyndsie Manusos's top six medieval horror books and Saratoga Schaefer's five novels that use isolation to create horror.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Greg Garrett's "White Lies"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: White Lies: Dismantling Ten Cultural Myths About Race by Greg Garrett.

About the book, from the publisher:

A timely analysis of the myths that underpin white supremacy--and how to counteract them

For centuries, white men in the West have cultivated and perpetuated a set of false narratives about Black people in order to subjugate and maintain power over them. Some of these myths originated abroad but flourished in America, while others were cultivated solely on American soil. All of them, however, continue to find expression in the present as white supremacy strains to maintain its privilege.

These myths have been expressed in almost every form of discourse, from court rulings and sermons to literature and film to material culture and textbooks. They vary from the biological--Black Africans and their descendants are mentally inferior to whites--to the anthropological--Black Africans are incapable of governing themselves and require the supervision of whites--and all have helped to perpetuate Black Americans' enslavement, imprisonment, and exclusion.

White Lies analyzes ten of the most dangerous and pervasive of these myths and observes how they still emerge in political discourse, legislation, pop culture, and religion. This racist rhetoric is present in the words of Abraham Lincoln, George Wallace, and Donald Trump, and the power of white Christian nationalism often evokes these myths, sometimes so subtly listeners may not be conscious of how they are being manipulated. White Lies connects the dots between past narratives, images, and ideas, and present speech about violence, urban life, the suburbs, voter and welfare fraud, and white saviors. It explores myths that individuals and communities may employ to avoid confronting racism, including the notion that America is either post-racial or that white people are the group most liable to suffer discrimination. While these myths continue to spread, White Lies also notes some of the powerful competing narratives which seek to correct them.

Follow Greg Garrett on Facebook and Substack.

The Page 99 Test: Entertaining Judgment.

Writers Read: Greg Garrett (June 2017).

The Page 99 Test: Living with the Living Dead.

The Page 99 Test: White Lies.

--Marshal Zeringue