Pg. 69: Steven M. Forman's "Boca Mournings"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Boca Mournings by Steve Forman.

About the book, from the publisher:

"Part Robert Parker, part Carl Hiaasen, Eddie Perlmutter is a high testosterone, no-nonsense detective with a tender core, and makes turning sixty a carnal, tropical ride." --Andrew Gross, bestselling author of The Blue Zone, on Boca Knights

Since he arrived in sunny Florida, Eddie has survived a run-in with the Russian mafia and tangled with Boca’s own family of neo-Nazis. But crime and punishment in the land of the Early Bird Special is complicated. The Russians have fled ... but their evil lingers on; and though the neo-Nazis’ junior thug is guilty, punishing him is a lot more complicated than Eddie thought it would be when he caught the little creep harassing decent folks in the name of white supremacy. And that’s just Eddie’s unfinished business. Helped by a reformed computer conman, he’s busier with new cases than he was in Boston, ranging from a mysteriously haunted elevator to a double kidnapping. He’s got cases with trails as far as Russia and Israel. Retirement, my foot.

Good thing he didn’t retire from matters of the heart ... because the women won’t let him. Between his amorous adventures and his burgeoning sleuth business, the twists and turns of Eddie’s life make this an edge-of-your-seat, uproariously funny thriller...

Read an excerpt from Boca Mournings, and learn more about the book and author at Steven M. Forman's website.

Forman divides his time between Massachusetts and Boca Raton, Florida. Boca Knights is his first novel.

The Page 69 Test: Boca Knights.

The Page 69 Test: Boca Mournings.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six essential rock-n-roll novels

For Flavorwire, Tobias Carroll named "six rock-n-roll novels that feature rock stars and wedding bands, local scenes and world tours, and inspiration both creative and personal — a primer of what the rock novel can address."

One book on the list:

Don DeLillo, Great Jones Street

Don DeLillo’s 1973 novel about a reclusive rock star named Bucky Wunderlick has much of what you might expect, given the author and subject: musings on the nature of celebrity and the overlap of art and commerce; surreal political declarations; ominous entities hovering over the proceedings. The novel intersperses Wunderlick’s account of his own self-imposed retreat to an apartment in a then-threatening East Village with lyrics and interviews, creating a fractured setting from which conspiracies emerge. DeLillo’s concept of the pop musician as corporate head anticipates everything from celebrity club appearances to Jeff Mangum’s periodic guest stints with affiliated bands to Jay-Z’s time as CEO of Def Jam.

Read about another novel on the list.

Also see: the ten best rock biographies, the four greatest rock ’n’ roll books, Tiffany Murray's top ten rock'n'roll novels, and the LA Times' 46 essential rock reads.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: James McGrath Morris' "Pulitzer"

Today's feature at the Page 99 Test: Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power by James McGrath Morris.

About the book, from the publisher:

Like Alfred Nobel, Joseph Pulitzer is better known today for the prize that bears his name than for his contribution to history. Yet, in nineteenth-century industrial America, while Carnegie provided the steel, Rockefeller the oil, Morgan the money, and Vanderbilt the railroads, Pulitzer ushered in the modern mass media.

James McGrath Morris traces the epic story of this Jewish Hungarian immigrant's rise through American politics and into journalism where he accumulated immense power and wealth, only to fall blind and become a lonely, tormented recluse wandering the globe. But not before Pulitzer transformed American journalism into a medium of mass consumption and immense influence. As the first media baron to recognize the vast social changes of the industrial revolution, he harnessed all the converging elements of entertainment, technology, business, and demographics, and made the newspaper an essential feature of urban life. Pulitzer used his influence to advance a progressive political agenda and his power to fight those who opposed him. The course he followed led him to battle Theodore Roosevelt who, when President, tried to send Pulitzer to prison. The grueling legal battles Pulitzer endured for freedom of the press changed the landscape of American newspapers and politics.

Based on years of research and newly discovered documents, Pulitzer is a classic, magisterial biography and a gripping portrait of an American icon.

Browse inside Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power, and learn more about the book and author at the official James McGrath Morris website.

The Page 99 Test: Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Kay Thomas reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Kay Thomas, author of the “bulletproof” romantic thrillers including Bulletproof Bodyguard, which is scheduled to hit store shelves April 13, 2010.

Part of her entry:

I recently reread Save the Cat! by Blake Snyder. I’ve found it to be a wonderful resource for plotting that I often return to when I’m starting a new book or when I hit a snag in a current work in progress. I was fortunate enough to hear Blake speak a couple of years ago at the Romance Writer’s of America conference. His work completely changed the way I look at planning a story and has saved me hours of time in solving plot problems. It was a huge loss last year when he...[read on]

Kay Thomas' debut novel, Better Than Bulletproof (January 2009) is a Romantic Times Reviewer’s Choice Nominee for Best First Series Romance. Her second book, Bulletproof Texas was released in April 2009.

Among the praise for her work:

"Fast paced, intense, a suspenseful...a page turner, start to finish."
--Barbara Vey

"Terrific romantic suspense..."
--Carla Cassidy, award-winning author

Having grown up in the heart of the Mississippi Delta, she considers herself a recovering Southern belle. Today she lives in Dallas with her husband, their two children and a shockingly spoiled Boston Terrier named Jack.

For excerpts, book trailers and more, visit Kay Thomas' website.

Writers Read: Kay Thomas.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Leila Meacham's "Roses"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Roses by Leila Meacham.

About the book, from the publisher:

Spanning the 20th century, the story of Roses takes place in a small East Texas town against the backdrop of the powerful timber and cotton industries, industries controlled by the scions of the town's founding families. Cotton tycoon Mary Toliver and timber magnate Percy Warwick should have married but unwisely did not, and now must deal with the deceit, secrets, and tragedies of their choice and the loss of what might have been--not just for themselves but for their children, and children's children. With expert, unabashed, big-canvas storytelling, Roses covers a hundred years, three generations of Texans and the explosive combination of passion for work and longing for love.

Read an excerpt from Roses, and learn more about the novel at the publisher's website.

The Page 69 Test: Roses.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best horrid children in literature

For the Guardian, John Mullan named ten of the best horrid children in literature.

One child on the list:

Jack

There are plenty of horrid boys, it turns out, on William Golding's paradise island in Lord of the Flies, but Jack is the one who brings out their nastiness. In a previous life he has sung like an angel in some English cathedral. Now he uses the practised tactics of the playground bully to turn the violence of the mob on first one victim, then another.

Read about another child on the list.

Mullan also included Lord of the Flies on his list of ten of the best pairs of glasses in literature.

Lord of the Flies is on AbeBooks' list of 20 books of shattered childhoods and is one of the top ten works of literature according to Stephen King.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Sharon Davies' "Rising Road"

Today's feature at the Page 99 Test: Rising Road: A True Tale of Love, Race, and Religion in America by Sharon Davies.

About the book, from the publisher:

It was among the most notorious criminal cases of its day. On August 11, 1921, in Birmingham, Alabama, a Methodist minister named Edwin Stephenson shot and killed a Catholic priest, James Coyle, in broad daylight and in front of numerous witnesses. The killer's motive? The priest had married Stephenson's eighteen-year-old daughter Ruth--who had secretly converted to Catholicism three months earlier--to Pedro Gussman, a Puerto Rican migrant and practicing Catholic.

Having all but disappeared from historical memory, the murder of Father Coyle and the trial of Rev. Stephenson that followed are vividly resurrected in Sharon Davies's Rising Road. As Davies reveals in remarkable detail, the case laid bare all the bigotries of its time and place: a simmering hatred not only of African Americans, but of Catholics and foreigners as well. In one of the case's most interesting twists, Reverend Stephenson hired future U.S. Supreme Court justice Hugo Black to lead his defense team. Though Black would later be regarded as a champion of civil rights, at the time the talented defense lawyer was only months away from joining the Ku Klux Klan, which held fundraising drives to finance Stephenson's defense. Entering a plea of temporary insanity, Black and his client used both religion and race-accusing the Puerto Rican husband of being "a Negro"--in the hopes of persuading the jury to forgive the priest's murder.

Placing this story in its full social and historical context, Davies brings to life a heinous crime and its aftermath, in a brilliant, in-depth examination of the consequences of prejudice in the Jim Crow era.

Read more about Rising Road at the Oxford University Press website.

Sharon L. Davies is the John C. Elam/Vorys Sater Designated Professor of Law at the Moritz College of Law, The Ohio State University.

The Page 99 Test: Rising Road.

--Marshal Zeringue

Hope Tarr's "Twelve Nights," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: Twelve Nights by Hope Tarr.

The entry begins:

Ah, the thought of seeing one’s humble novel played out upon the Silver Screen, what writer hasn’t fantasized about that glittering, fantastical moment, including bringing one’s fictional hero (and sometimes heroine) to life by casting honest to goodness actors to play their parts?

Callum Fraser, the hero of my Scottish Medieval Blaze, Twelve Nights, is the classic romance hero, a raven-haired warrior and rogue with abs of steel, and a sexy, penetrating gaze that can see straight through to a woman’s soul, not to mention her … unmentionables. Who better to serve as a role model-cum-muse than the “Dark Knight” himself, multi-talented actor, Christian Bale?

His most un-heroic mommy-shoving episode aside, Bale is hands-down “hawt” not to mention one of the few child actors in Hollywood (Empire of the Sun) to ace consistent box office wonder-dom as a grown-up.

For my heroine...[read on]

Hope Tarr is the award-winning author of a dozen books (and counting).

Look for her The Tutor in August 2010 and her novella, “Tomorrow’s Destiny” in a Harlequin Victorian Christmas anthology with bestselling authors, Betina Krahn and Jacquie D’Alessandro coming December 2010. In the meantime, visit her website and blog.

My Book, The Movie: Twelve Nights.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jackie Collins' 6 best books

Author and former-actor Jackie Collins named a six best books list for The Week magazine.

One title on the list:

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Jay Gatsby—the definitive hero. Mysterious, rich, sly, handsome, cool. This is a book I try to reread quite often. It’s beautifully written, and the characters of Jay and Daisy stay with you.

Read about another book on Collins' list.

The Great Gatsby appears among Kate Atkinson's top ten novels, Garrett Peck's best books about Prohibition, Robert McCrum's top ten books for Obama officials, and John Krasinski's six best books, and is on the American Book Review's list of the 100 best last lines from novels.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Brian Locke's "Racial Stigma on the Hollywood Screen"

Today's feature at the Page 99 Test: Racial Stigma on the Hollywood Screen from WWII to the Present: The Orientalist Buddy Film by Brian Locke.

Among the praise for the book:

“Not merely an overview of anti-Asian portrayals in mainstream cinema, Locke cogently argues that Asian villainy in popular film enables a national fantasy, the disavowal of institutional discrimination via the spectacle of reconciliation between white and black. This book explodes the myth of progressive Hollywood by revealing the ways in which racial inclusion comes at a cost—in this case, to Asian Americans. Refreshingly accessible, Racial Stigma on the Hollywood Screen offers scholars, students, and general readers alike a sharp critical framework for understanding cross-racial representations in popular culture. Readers will no longer be able to view a mainstream buddy film with the same kind of racial innocence.”
—Leslie Bow, Professor of English and Asian American Studies, University of Wisconsin, Madison and author of Betrayal and Other Acts of Subversion: Feminism, Sexual Politics, Asian American Women's Literature

“Locke will change the way you see the Hollywood film. No longer will the buddy film be the space of male possibility, of the reconciliation between white and black. No: the Asian intrudes. The cost of unity in the dark is called out, particularly as the white buddy hands the Asian the bill for racism. Nothing doing, says Locke. He sets the record straight.”
—Vijay Prashad, author of Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting: Afro-Asian Connections and the Myth of Cultural Purity

Read more about Racial Stigma on the Hollywood Screen from World War II to the Present at the publisher's website, and visit Brian Locke's website.

The Page 99 Test: Racial Stigma on the Hollywood Screen from WWII to the Present: The Orientalist Buddy Film.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Lenny Bartulin's "Death by the Book"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Death by the Book by Lenny Bartulin.

About the book, from Publishers Weekly:

Bartulin introduces irrepressible Sydney, Australia, used-book dealer Jack Susko in this tight hard-boiled whodunit, the first of what one hopes will be a long series. Susko's business is slow until he gets an odd request from a well-to-do businessman, Hammond Kasprowicz, who offers him $50 for every copy he can locate of the works of an obscure poet, Edward Kass. Needing the cash, Susko suppresses his curiosity about the motive behind his client's request. As he begins to track down copies of Kass's books, Susko is unable to avoid getting emotionally entangled with Kasprowicz's daughter, Annabelle. After a few dead bodies crop up, the bibliophile becomes the object of unwelcome suspicion by a shady cop who knows about Susko's unsavory background. While the story twists won't shock genre fans, most readers will find the smart-aleck amateur detective a winning lead character.

Read an excerpt from Death by the Book, and visit Lenny Bartulin's blog.

The Black Russian, the second Jack Susko mystery, is already available in Australia.

The Page 69 Test: Death by the Book.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Kathleen Rooney reading?

This weekend's featured contributor at Writers Read: Kathleen Rooney, author of For You, For You I Am Trilling These Songs.

Her entry begins:

Everybody is probably a little bit tempted to go superlative when they assemble this kind of recent-reading list, and that probably makes the people reading the list a little bit skeptical, but I can’t help it: the illustrated novel Cruddy by Lynda Barry is the best book I read in late 2009, and may be the best book I read the entire last decade. It is crushingly sad and violent, yet also funny and super-smart. And the heroine, Roberta Rohbeson, is sensitive, articulate, deadly, sharp and very, very ugly—like broken-nose, chipped-tooth, missing-digit not good-looking. Roberta is an unforgettable character overall, but the ugly thing sticks with me. So many female protagonists—both long ago and contemporary—are set up by their creators as “ugly” at first, but it becomes clear they are really to be read either as a) ugly ducklings who will morph into swans by novel’s end, or b) young women who were never truly ugly in the first place, but rather were just misunderstood, and part of their character arc is having people around them realize, “What a fool I’ve been for not recognizing her beauty this whole time.” I dislike and distrust a fake-ugly heroine. I admire Barry’s writing—her toughness and her compassion—but I also...[read on]

Kathleen Rooney is a poet and a writer. With Abby Beckel, she is a founding editor of Rose Metal Press. With Elisa Gabbert, she is the author of That Tiny Insane Voluptuousness (Otoliths, 2008). Her non-fiction books include Live Nude Girl: My Life as an Object.

About her book, For You, For You I Am Trilling These Songs, from the publisher:

In this collection about life as a twentysomething in the twenty-first century, Kathleen Rooney writes with the finesse of someone well beyond her years, but with fresh insights that reveal a girl still making discoveries at every turn. Varied and original, the tales in For You, For You I Am Trilling These Songs recount the perils of falling in love with the unlikeliest of people, of visiting the New York apartments of a vanished poet, and of touring an animal retirement home with her parents. Of getting a Brazilian wax, and of chauffeuring a U.S. senator around town. Of saying good-bye to a cousin who’s joining a convent, and of trying to convince herself that she's not wasting her life. This is a book about love and longing, poetry and plagiarism, death and democracy, mountain floods and Midwestern cicadas. Here is a young woman struggling to find her place as an adult and a citizen in an America that rarely manages to live up to Whitman’s dream of it. With this book, Rooney sings—yes, in fact, she trills—loud and clear.

Visit Kathleen Rooney's website.

The Page 99 Test: Live Nude Girl.

Writers Read: Kathleen Rooney.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five best cookbooks

Alton Brown, a Food Network host and commentator, and author of Good Eats: The Early Years, named a five best list of cookbooks for the Wall Street Journal.

One title on the list:

The Joy of Cooking
by Irma S. Rombauer
Bobbs-Merrill, 1936

Maybe it's because I inherited "The Joy of Cooking" from my paternal grandmother, a true witch of the baking world, or because her edition, the sixth, was published in 1962, the year I was born. Or maybe it's because even this 1960s "Joy" was still packed with old-fashioned tips like the carefully laid out instructions for skinning a squirrel. As the diagrams show, the skinning process is easy once you get the tail under your foot. Whatever the reason for my attachment to the particular volume on my shelf, I'm also a "Joy" fan no matter the edition: Every recipe is written in the book's unmistakable style, with ingredients and amounts seamlessly integrated into the instructions. For me this is still the quintessential American cookbook. Try the baked herring and potatoes or sourdough rye. Or perhaps the roast squirrel with walnut ketchup.

Read about another cookbook on Brown's list.

Also see: T. Susan Chang's 10 best cookbooks of 2009, the Independent's ten best list of children's cookbooks, and Kate Colquhoun's top 10 unusual cookbooks.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Joel Mokyr's "The Enlightened Economy"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain 1700-1850 by Joel Mokyr.

About the book, from the publisher:

This book focuses on the importance of ideological and institutional factors in the rapid development of the British economy during the years between the Glorious Revolution and the Crystal Palace Exhibition. Joel Mokyr shows that we cannot understand the Industrial Revolution without recognizing the importance of the intellectual sea changes of Britain’s Age of Enlightenment.

In a vigorous discussion, Mokyr goes beyond the standard explanations that credit geographical factors, the role of markets, politics, and society to show that the beginnings of modern economic growth in Britain depended a great deal on what key players knew and believed, and how those beliefs affected their economic behavior. He argues that Britain led the rest of Europe into the Industrial Revolution because it was there that the optimal intersection of ideas, culture, institutions, and technology existed to make rapid economic growth achievable. His wide-ranging evidence covers sectors of the British economy often neglected, such as the service industries.

Learn more about The Enlightened Economy at the Yale University Press website.

Joel Mokyr is Robert H. Strotz Professor of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Economics and History, Northwestern University, and Sackler Professor at the Eitan Berglas School of Economics, Tel Aviv University.

The Page 99 Test: The Enlightened Economy.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten books written by librarians

The Reading Copy Book Blog posted a top ten list of books written by librarians.

One title on the list:

The Less Deceived by Philip Larkin

The 1955 poetry collection that made his name – Larkin was a librarian at the University of Hull.

Read about another book on the list.

Larkin's "Sad Steps" is one of John Mullan's ten best examples of Moon poetry.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Mary Heimann's "Czechoslovakia"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Czechoslovakia: The State That Failed by Mary Heimann.

About the book, from the publisher:

This book, the most thoroughly researched and accurate history of Czechoslovakia to appear in English, tells the story of the country from its founding in 1918 to partition in 1992—from fledgling democracy through Nazi occupation, Communist rule, and invasion by the Soviet Union to, at last, democracy again.

The common Western view of Czechoslovakia has been that of a small nation that was sacrificed at Munich in 1938 and betrayed to the Soviets in 1948, and which rebelled heroically against the repression of the Soviet Union during the Prague Spring of 1968. Mary Heimann dispels these myths and shows how intolerant nationalism and an unhelpful sense of victimhood led Czech and Slovak authorities to discriminate against minorities, compete with the Nazis to persecute Jews and Gypsies, and pave the way for the Communist police state. She also reveals Alexander Dubcek, held to be a national hero and standard-bearer for democracy, to be an unprincipled apparatchik. Well written, revisionist, and accessible, this groundbreaking book should become the standard history of Czechoslovakia for years to come.

Learn more about Czechoslovakia: The State That Failed at the Yale University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Czechoslovakia.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Blaize Clement's "Raining Cat Sitters and Dogs"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Raining Cat Sitters and Dogs by Blaize Clement.

About the book, from the publisher:

In this fifth installment of the wildly popular Dixie Hemingway mystery series, a mysterious young girl is missing. Lieutenant Guidry, the hunky homicide detective with whom Dixie has an on-again, off-again relationship, is trying to find the girl because she may be a material witness to a murder. Finally Dixie must go it alone to confront criminals who will stop at nothing to get what they want.

Read an excerpt from Raining Cat Sitters and Dogs, and learn more about the book and author at Blaize Clement's website and blog.

Blaize Clement is the author of the Dixie Hemingway mysteries: Curiosity Killed the Cat Sitter, Duplicity Dogged the Dachshund, Even Cat Sitters Get the Blues, and Cat Sitter On A Hot Tin Roof. Raining Cat Sitters and Dogs is the fifth novel in the series.

The Page 99 Test: Even Cat Sitters Get the Blues.

The Page 99 Test: Cat Sitter on a Hot Tin Roof.

The Page 69 Test: Raining Cat Sitters and Dogs.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Kevin Shamel reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Kevin Shamel, author of Rotten Little Animals.

The entry begins:

What am I reading? You can bet it’s weird. In fact, I’ll just go ahead and tell you, it’s extra weird. I’m reading Bradley Sands’, It Came From Below the Belt. It’s freaky times ten.

From what I’ve gathered so far, and I have to tell you that I’m not far into it, it’s about a guy named Grover who’s been thrown into the future and he’s met his detached, sentient penis. He’s fairly lost, and quite shaken by the experience.

He’s actually just started high school at the point I’m reading. He has a couple of Grover clones, and is defeating ridiculousness as best he can. Chapter eight begins a miniature choose-your-own-adventure story that I nimbly navigated. Others may not be so lucky.

It Came From Below the Belt is a gorgeous display of Bizarro Fiction with a heavy leaning toward the ridiculous and surreal. I’m loving it. I can’t wait to get to where Grover’s going.

Which brings me to the reason that you can bet whatever I’m reading is...[read on]

Kevin Shamel lives in the Pacific Northwest in an old haunted house with his whole wild family. He writes as weird as he can and does it often. Rotten Little Animals is his first published book, and he’s pretty happy about that.

Among the praise for Rotten Little Animals:

“Like a bionic Ralph Bakshi reborn from snorting Orwell’s ashes, Kevin Shamel drags cherished childhood fantasies into the gutter of adulthood, and makes you pay dearly to swallow them all over again. Intelligence is a universal disease, but never fear. Rotten Little Animals just may be the cure we’ve been praying for.”
–Cody Goodfellow, author of Radiant Dawn and Silent Weapons For Quiet Wars

“Looney Tunes amped up on cocaine, sex and soft, silky fur and feathers. Shamel’s debut is wildly entertaining and destined to become an instant bizarro classic.”
–Gina Ranalli, author of Mother Puncher, Sky Tongues, Swarm of Flying Eyeballs, and other bizarro books

“It begins as a zombie film, transforms into a deranged puppet show, and ends with a car chase. If you ever wondered what a Pixar exploitation film would be like, you need Rotten Little Animals.”
–Cameron Pierce, author of Shark Hunting in Paradise Garden, and The Ass Goblins of Auschwitz

Check out Shameless Creations for more of Shamel's writing and artsy sorts of things.

Writers Read: Kevin Shamel.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top 10 literary stepmothers

Sam Baker, author of the novels Fashion Victim, This Year's Model, and The Stepmother's Support Group, named a top ten list of fictional stepmothers for the Guardian.

One character on the list:

Mrs Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

As light of touch as ever, Austen gave us the anti-Cinderella story in the form of Mrs Dashwood. The antithesis of the Wicked Queen, she is cruelly wronged when Mr Dashwood dies and, in keeping with the property laws of his time, he leaves everything to his son from his first marriage. Far from being the baddie, Mrs Dashwood and her daughters fall victim to an avaricious daughter-in-law, who sees to it, despite her husband's deathbed promise to his father that he would look after his stepmother and sisters, the rivals are out on their ear by Friday. Was Austen trying to tell us something? Undoubtedly.

Read about another stepmother on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Peter Metcalf's "The Life of the Longhouse"

Today's feature at the Page 99 Test: The Life of the Longhouse: An Archaeology of Ethnicity by Peter Metcalf.

About the book, from the publisher:

For two centuries, travellers were amazed at the massive buildings found along the rivers that flow from the mountainous interior of Borneo. They concentrated hundreds of people under one roof, in the middle of empty rainforests. There was no practical necessity for this arrangement, and it remains a mystery. Peter Metcalf provides an answer by showing the historical context, using both oral histories and colonial records. The key factor was a pre-modern trading system that funneled rare and exotic jungle products to China via the ancient coastal city of Brunei. Meanwhile the elite manufactured goods traded upriver shaped the political and religious institutions of longhouse society. However, the apparent permanence of longhouses was an illusion. In historical terms, longhouse communities were both mobile and labile, and the patterns of ethnicity they created more closely resemble the contemporary world than any stereotype of “tribal” societies.

Read an excerpt from The Life of the Longhouse, and learn more about the book at the Cambridge University Press website.

Peter Metcalf is professor of anthropology at the University of Virginia.

The Page 99 Test: The Life of the Longhouse.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Julie Compton's "Rescuing Olivia"

Today's feature at the Page 69 Test: Rescuing Olivia by Julie Compton.

About the book, from the publisher:

Anders Erickson has fallen for Olivia, who likes to live in the moment and doesn’t want to talk about her past. That’s fine with Anders—who has his own memories he’d like to forget—until a car runs their motorcycle off the road and causes an accident that puts Olivia in a coma.

Olivia’s estranged father blames Anders and denies his pleas to see her. When she mysteriously disappears from the hospital and Anders tries to learn what happened, her father stops at nothing to prevent him from discovering the truth.

But Anders refuses to accept that she’s gone for good. Determined to find answers, he sets out on a dangerous path that exposes Olivia’s traumatic past and places him squarely in the way of her father’s plans. When he discovers her very life is threatened, his search for answers becomes a race against time, and he is forced to finally confront his own past if he is to have any chance of rescuing Olivia from hers.

Pitched at the intersection of suspense and family drama, Rescuing Olivia is another gripping read from Julie Compton, a talented new author who never fails to mine the most compelling emotional terrain.

Read an excerpt from Rescuing Olivia, and learn more about the book and author at Julie Compton's website and her blog.

The Page 69 Test: Tell No Lies.

My Book, The Movie: Tell No Lies.

The Page 69 Test: Rescuing Olivia.

--Marshal Zeringue

Kelli Stanley’s "City of Dragons," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: City of Dragons by Kelli Stanley.

The entry begins:

First, I want to thank Marshal for letting my imagination run wild in the fields of celluloid! I loved dreaming about film adaptations for Nox Dormienda, my first novel, and am thrilled to be back!

City of Dragons is a PI series set in 1940 San Francisco, a reimagining of noir with the censorship gloves off and a femme fatale in the driver’s seat. And period pieces are almost as tough as my protagonist.

Miranda Corbie is a PI, ex-Spanish Civil War nurse and former escort. She’s a rich, complex character, and City of Dragons is really her book—and her movie. I’m also adamant about trying to capture the truth of the era … to not get lost in the fog of nostalgia but to show both the beauty and the ugliness of the past.

After all, you scratch 2010 and underneath—covered up with a veneer of social progress and respectability—is 1940, with all the concomitant human problems that still plague us: poverty, crime, racism, sexism, ignorance.

But—and this is important—I don’t see it as “neo-noir.” I envision the film almost with a post-war neo-realism vibe, mixed with some expressionistic camera movement—Otto Preminger, maybe, or Charles Vidor or Jacques Tourneur or Nicholas Ray.

So … it’s tricky. I don’t want...[read on]

Read an excerpt from City of Dragons, and learn more about the novel and author at Kelli Stanley's website and blog.

My Book, The Movie: Nox Dormienda.

The Page 69 Test: City of Dragons.

My Book, The Movie: City of Dragons.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five books: the Super Bowl

From The Barnes & Noble Review -- one of five books about the Super Bowl:

The Billion-Dollar Game
by Allen St. John

Allen St. John went backstage and spent twelve months living inside the intense, unique world of Super Bowl preparations: the highly complex orchestration of television coverage; the hosting-committee logistics worthy of a military campaign; ticket distribution; stadium construction; and, oh yes, the celebrities. St. John digs into it all, and in the process suggests that the business of the big game contains as many fascinations as the contest on the gridiron itself.

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Jimena Canales' "A Tenth of a Second"

Today's feature at the Page 99 Test: A Tenth of a Second: A History by Jimena Canales.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the late fifteenth century, clocks acquired minute hands. A century later, second hands appeared. But it wasn’t until the 1850s that instruments could recognize a tenth of a second, and, once they did, the impact on modern science and society was profound. Revealing the history behind this infinitesimal interval, A Tenth of a Second sheds new light on modernity and illuminates the work of important thinkers of the last two centuries.

Tracing debates about the nature of time, causality, and free will, as well as the introduction of modern technologies—telegraphy, photography, cinematography—Jimena Canales locates the reverberations of this “perceptual moment” throughout culture. Once scientists associated the tenth of a second with the speed of thought, they developed reaction time experiments with lasting implications for experimental psychology, physiology, and optics. Astronomers and physicists struggled to control the profound consequences of results that were a tenth of a second off. And references to the interval were part of a general inquiry into time, consciousness, and sensory experience that involved rethinking the contributions of Descartes and Kant.

Considering its impact on much longer time periods and featuring appearances by Henri Bergson, Walter Benjamin, and Albert Einstein, among others, A Tenth of a Second is ultimately an important contribution to history and a novel perspective on modernity.

Read more about A Tenth of a Second at the University of Chicago Press website.

Jimena Canales is associate professor of the history of science at Harvard University.

The Page 99 Test: A Tenth of a Second.

--Marshal Zeringue

Coffee with a canine: Kelli Stanley & Bertie

The current featured couple at Coffee with a Canine: Kelli Stanley and her "handsome spotted Springer Spaniel with big red eyes," Bertie.

Stanley, on Bertie's best qualities:

He’s a very positive dog. He makes people feel good to be around, because he’s upbeat and sweet and puts out a lot of positive energy. And he absolutely loves people … except for the postman. He’s not a bloodthirsty dog, and we never permit him to chase other animals. In fact, he’s grown pretty tolerant of the raccoons that camp out...[read on]

Kelli Stanley is the author of the critically acclaimed Nox Dormienda, which won the Bruce Alexander Award for best historical mystery and was nominated for a Macavity Award.

Her new novel, City of Dragons, debuted this week. Among the early praise for the novel:

"A stunning recreation of time and place that I greatly enjoyed...as will everyone who reads it."
--Robert B. Parker

"Stunning, pitch-perfect noir...conjures forth a lost, poignant, and darkly luminous San Francisco in which Hammett - and LA's Chandler - would feel immediately at home."
--Cornelia Read, author of A Field of Darkness

"Come...rush headlong into 1940's San Francisco. You'll be smoking two packs of Chesterfields and drinking Old Taylor straight from the bottle by the time you're done. Take a sip. I dare you."
--Louise Ure, Shamus Award-winning author of The Fault Tree

Read an excerpt from City of Dragons, and learn more about the novel and author at Kelli Stanley's website and blog.

My Book, The Movie: Nox Dormienda.

The Page 69 Test: City of Dragons.

Coffee with a Canine: Kelli Stanley & Bertie.

--Marshal Zeringue