Pg. 69: Alie Dumas-Heidt's "The Myth Maker"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Myth Maker: A Novel by Alie Dumas-Heidt.

About the book, from the publisher:

Someone is killing women and staging their bodies in strange, evocative scenes in this Greek-mythology-inspired serial killer thriller perfect, for fans of Alex Michaelides and Tana French.

Cassidy Cantwell has devoted her life to becoming a detective, never forgetting the cold case that has influenced her entire career: the unsolved murder of her best friend. Cassidy tries to balance her demanding job with her suffocatingly close-knit family and her increasingly clingy boyfriend, but when a strange new murder case comes across her desk, she’s determined to solve it, especially when it turns out the victim was the wife of her college ex-boyfriend.

While Cassidy’s partner, Bryan, works to prove that her ex is their suspect, Cassidy can’t shake the feeling that there’s something more to the case that they’re not seeing. After the medical examiner finds a strange ring among the victim’s personal effects that the husband insists didn’t belong to his wife, Cassidy is struck by similarly odd details from a previous crime scene—details that seem to have an uncanny connection to a Greek myth.

When another body attracts public attention and the FBI joins the hunt, the case gets increasingly complicated–and solving it seems further and further out of reach. With anonymous taunts about her best friend’s death dragging her attention away, Cassidy finds herself pulled in different directions–sacrifice her personal life for the sake of her career, or put everything she has into finding years-old answers to a case that haunts her still.

And the killer behind the murders isn’t done yet.

Visit Alie Dumas-Heidt's website.

Q&A with Alie Dumas-Heidt.

Writers Read: Alie Dumas-Heidt.

My Book, The Movie: The Myth Maker.

The Page 69 Test: The Myth Maker.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Stacy Alaimo's "The Abyss Stares Back"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Abyss Stares Back: Encounters with Deep-Sea Life by Stacy Alaimo.

About the book, from the publisher:

In an era of accelerating extinctions, what does it mean to discover thousands of new species in the deep sea?

As we see the catastrophic effects of the Anthropocene proliferate, advanced technologies also grant us greater access to the furthest reaches of the world’s oceans, facilitating the discovery of countless new species. Sorting through the implications of this strange paradox, Stacy Alaimo explores the influence this newfound intimacy with the deep sea might have on our broader relationship to the nonhuman world. While many images of these abyssal creatures circulate as shallow clickbait, aesthetic representations can be enticing lures for speculating about their lives, profoundly expanding our environmental concern.

The Abyss Stares Back analyzes a diverse range of scientific, literary, and artistic accounts of deep-sea exploration, including work from the naturalist William Beebe and the artist Else Bostelmann as well as results of the Census of Marine Life that began at the turn of the twenty-first century. As she focuses on oft-overlooked creatures of the deep, such as tubeworms, hatchetfish, siphonophores, and cephalopods, which are typically cast as “alien,” Alaimo shows how depictions of the deep seas have been enmeshed in long colonial histories and racist constructions of a threatening abyss.

Drawing on feminist environmentalism, posthumanism, science and technology studies, and Indigenous and non-Western perspectives, Alaimo details how our understanding of science is fundamentally altered by aesthetic encounters with these otherworldly life forms. She argues that, although the deep sea is often thought of as a lifeless void with little connection to human existence, our increasing devastation of this realm underscores our ethical obligation to protect the biodiverse life in the depths. When the abyss stares back, it demands recognition.

Visit Stacy Alaimo's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Abyss Stares Back.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five books touching on Effective Altruism

Ben Brooks is the author of books for children and adults, including The Greatest Possible Good and the million-copy series Stories for Boys Who Dare to Be Different, both a Sunday Times (London) and New York Times bestseller, which has been translated into twenty-eight languages and received a British National Book Award. He received a Somerset Maugham Award and Jerwood Fiction Prize for his debut novel Lolito, and the Celsius 232 and Premio Torres del Agua for The Impossible Boy. He also writes for television and is developing original TV projects in the UK and Germany.

A Lit Hub Brooks tagged five books featuring people who decided to give away large amounts of money. One title on the list:

Dave Eggers, You Shall Know Our Velocity

In Dave Eggers’ third novel, Will makes $32,000 after one of his photographs is used for the logo of a lightbulb company. Feeling undeserving of the windfall and struggling with grief after the loss of a friend, Will and his friend Hand set out on a road trip to give the money away to people who need it. What they discover is how messy and unfulfilling trying to give well is. How do you decide who is deserving of your help? How can you resist helping those stood in front of you, even when there might be people further afield who need help more dearly?

Read about another book on Brooks's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Samuel Hawley

From my Q&A with Samuel Hawley, author of Daikon: A Novel:

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

The title Daikon is the nickname that the Japanese give to the atomic bomb they recover from the wreckage of the B-29 that crashes in chapter one. The bomb is very much a main character in the story in its own right. The other main characters Dr. Keizo Kan and Petty Officer Yagi open it up and explore it and get to know it, and then must put it together again for use in a suicide mission.

Actually, the title of the book was originally One Hundred Million Eat Stones, a reference to the determination that the Japanese people (the “Hundred Million”) would fight to the death rather than surrender. The Japanese had several popular slogans like that during the war referring to the “Hundred Million.” In the early days of victory the slogans were upbeat, like “One Hundred Million Hearts Beating Together.” Toward the end of the war, with defeat looming, they had become grimmer, “One Hundred Million as a Suicide Squad,” that sort of thing.

My agent suggested that a shorter title would be better, maybe something enigmatic and even whimsical to contrast with the seriousness of the story. “The Americans referred to the bomb as ‘Little Boy’ or the ‘gadget’ or the ‘gimmick,’” he said. “Maybe the Japanese came up with a nickname for it too. That could be the title.” He was right. It was a great idea. So that’s what I did. One of the characters observes that the bomb looks like a big black daikon radish. So it became "the Daikon," and that became the title of the book.

When the book was purchased by Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster, the publisher wanted to try other titles. I struggled for ages to come up with something else, but nothing worked. “The Light That Falls,” “We Live in Ruins,” and “The Flowers of Adversity” are three I came up with. The more I struggled to find another title, however, the more convinced I became that “Daikon” was the best title. And eventually...[read on]

Visit Samuel Hawley's website.

The Page 69 Test: Daikon.

Q&A with Samuel Hawley.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Benjamin Wardhaugh's "Counting"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Counting: Humans, History and the Infinite Lives of Numbers by Benjamin Wardhaugh.

About the book, from the publisher:

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO COUNT? WHY ARE HUMANS THE ONLY SPECIES ON EARTH THAT CAN DO IT? WHERE DID COUNTING COME FROM? HOW HAS IT SHAPED SOCIETIES ALONG THE WAY? AND WHY DOES IT MATTER?

Counting is an innovative, erudite, world-wrapping journey through humanity’s marvellous ability to impose numbers on things. Acclaimed historian and mathematician Benjamin Wardhaugh draws on stories from the Stone Age to cyberspace in pursuit of the elusive, fascinating, endlessly diverse history of human counting.

Starting with the roots of counting in human brains, bodies and environments, Wardhaugh tours us around the world and through time while exploring the different flavours of counting that have developed over millennia. We meet the makers of bead necklaces in ancient South Africa, the inventors of writing in the world ’ s first metropolis, and the ‘counter culture’ of classical Athens. We see counting used – and changed – by Indian scholars, Chinese peasants and Papuan shopkeepers; we meet the distinctive numerate agendas of Mayan kings, US governments and Korean vloggers.

Weaving these stories together, Wardhaugh shows how cultures have shaped counting, and how counting has shaped culture, in a rich tapestry spanning thousands of years. This is the vast story of human attempts to find some order in an unruly world; or, perhaps, to impose on a reluctant world the order that humans find within themselves. It is a history as wide, deep and tangled as that of humanity itself.

Visit Benjamin Wardhaugh's website.

The Page 99 Test: Poor Robin's Prophesies.

The Page 99 Test: Counting.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five essential books for the Bigfoot-curious

Giano Cromley is the author of two indie YA novels, The Prince of Infinite Space, and The Last Good Halloween, and a short story collection, What We Build Upon the Ruins. He is a recipient of an Artists Fellowship from the Illinois Arts Council and was a BookEnds Fellow with Stonybrook University.

[Coffee with a Canine: Giano Cromley & Kaiya and Tanka; My Book, The Movie: The Last Good Halloween]

Originally from Billings, Montana, he graduated from Dartmouth College and received an MFA from the University of Montana. He has worked as a speech writer and deputy press secretary in Washington, DC, and he has taught GED and ESL classes in Chicago. He is currently an English professor at Kennedy-King College, where he is chair of the Communications Department. He is also an amateur woodworker and a certified wildlife tracker. He lives on the South Side of Chicago with his wife and two dogs.

Cromley's new novel is American Mythology.

At CrimeReads the author tagged five "books to broaden your Sasquatch knowledge (whether you believe or not)." One title on Cromley's list:

Where Bigfoot Walks: Crossing the Dark Divide by Robert Michael Pyle

A Yale-educated lepidopterist with a PhD in insect conservation ecology and a Guggenheim Fellow, Pyle brings a naturalist’s sensibility to his explorations of the Gifford Pinchot National Forest in western Washington. While conducting biological fieldwork, Bigfoot remains an intellectual itch Pyle can’t help but scratch. “Yet just there and then I was perfectly prepared: not to believe in Bigfoot necessarily, but to believe that the world is wider than we normally wish to accept.” No matter where you fall in the Bigfoot debate, this book is a profound exploration of mankind’s relationship to the natural world.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Alie Dumas-Heidt's "The Myth Maker," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Alie Dumas-Heidt's The Myth Maker: A Novel.

The entry begins:

I assembled a dream cast for The Myth Maker while I was writing the first draft. I went through my character list and assigned a face to each role. It wasn’t just a fun exercise – although it is fun to play that game! – it helps me visualize how the characters move around in their environment and interact physically with others.

My cast list still exists and most of the side characters have remained the same for years. Timothy Olyphant is who I imagined as I constructed FBI Agent Cole MacAllan, with the perfect amount of serious and tired. Christopher Gorham in his role of Augie on Covert Affairs made him the perfect Jamie Cantwell for me. Jamie is Cassidy’s twin, older by thirteen minutes, and I think Gorham would be perfect as her concerned older brother.

Michael Peña easily takes the role of Cassidy’s partner, Bryan Ramirez, for me. I’ve seen him play characters on both sides of the law, but there is a coolness he has that resonates with the character of Bryan. FBI Agent Phoenix Rhys was probably the hardest for me to cast, but I eventually landed on...[read on]

Visit Alie Dumas-Heidt's website.

Q&A with Alie Dumas-Heidt.

Writers Read: Alie Dumas-Heidt.

My Book, The Movie: The Myth Maker.

--Marshal Zeringue

Twelve of the best LA books

David Gordon was born in New York City. His first novel, The Serialist, won the VCU/Cabell First Novel Award and was a finalist for an Edgar Award. It was also made into a major motion picture in Japan. His work has also appeared in The Paris Review, The New York Times, Purple, and Fence, among other publications.

[The Page 69 Test: The Serialist; The Page 69 Test: Mystery Girl; The Page 69 Test: White Tiger on Snow Mountain; Writers Read: David Gordon (August 2019); The Page 69 Test: The Hard Stuff; Q&A with David Gordon; The Page 69 Test: The Wild Life]

Gordon's new novel is Behind Sunset.

At The Strand Magazine he tagged twelve favorite Los Angeles books. One title on the list:

The Black Echo – Michael Connelly

This novel, Connelly’s debut, begins the saga of Harry Hieronymous Bosch, a Hollywood homicide detective, driven by his own demons and on a holy crusade to seek justice, especially for the forgotten, like his own mother, a prostitute slain on the same LA streets he now guards.

Read about another book on Gordon's list.

Harry Bosch is among Alan Parks's top ten cops in fiction and Jeff Somers's six fictional cops who do things according to their own set of rules.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Gary A. O’Dell's "Reinventing the American Thoroughbred"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Reinventing the American Thoroughbred: The Arabian Adventures of Alexander Keene Richards by Gary A. O'Dell.

About the book, from the publisher:

Most equine authorities consider Alexander Keene Richards (1827–1881) one of the nineteenth century’s most significant Thoroughbred importers and breeders. Born in Georgetown, Kentucky, and orphaned as a toddler, Richards was adopted by his grandfather, from whom he inherited not only the family farm in Georgetown but also Transylvania, a cotton plantation in East Carroll Parish, Louisiana. Horses fascinated Richards from an early age, and as his passion deepened, he became convinced that the key to improving the stamina of the Thoroughbred, in an era when American racing consisted of grueling long-distance competitions, was to crossbreed American horses with the magnificent steeds of the Middle East.

As Reinventing the American Thoroughbred recounts, Richards traveled thousands of miles on expeditions into the heart of Syria to obtain Arabian stock of the purest blood. He became the first American―indeed the first Westerner―to venture into the desert to bargain directly with nomadic tribesmen for their horses. Richards transported the animals back to his grandfather’s farm near Georgetown, which he transformed into a premier breeding establishment called Blue Grass Park. He also used his Transylvania plantation in Louisiana for similar purposes. Richards relied on Ansel Williamson, an enslaved horse trainer, to prepare his Thoroughbreds for racing. Williamson developed a reputation as one of the best handlers in the nation.

The Civil War interrupted Richards’s equine breeding experiment. Dependent on southern cotton produced by enslaved labor for his wealth, Richards sided with the Confederacy and was appointed volunteer aide-de-camp by General John C. Breckinridge. During his brief military career, he served at Vicksburg and later in the attack on Baton Rouge. In late 1862, he received Breckinridge’s permission to travel to England to purchase artillery for the general’s Kentucky brigade. Richards remained in London for the remainder of the war, returning to the United States after receiving amnesty. Bankrupt, he spent the rest of his life attempting to rebuild Blue Grass Park as a nationally recognized Thoroughbred facility.

Richards’s life story, chronicled here for the first time by Gary A. O’Dell, is an epic tale of adventure, experimentation, and devastation that illuminates the grand history of the American Thoroughbred industry in fresh and fascinating ways.

Visit Gary A. O'Dell's website.

The Page 99 Test: Reinventing the American Thoroughbred.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Samuel Hawley's "Daikon"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Daikon: A Novel by Samuel Hawley.

About the book, from the publisher:

A sweeping and suspenseful novel of love and war, set in Japan during the final days of World War II, with a shocking historical premise: three atomic bombs were actually delivered to the Pacific—not two—and when one of them falls into the hands of the Japanese, the fate of a couple that has been separated from one another becomes entangled with the fate of this terrifying new device.

War has taken everything from physicist Keizo Kan. His young daughter was killed in the Great Tokyo Air Raid, and now his Japanese American wife, Noriko, has been imprisoned by the brutal Thought Police. An American bomber, downed over Japan on the first day of August 1945, offers the scientist a surprising chance at salvation. The Imperial Army dispatches him to examine an unusual device recovered from the plane’s wreckage—a bomb containing uranium—and tells him that if he can unlock its mysteries, his wife will be released.

Working in secrecy under crushing pressure, Kan begins to disassemble the bomb and study its components. One of his assistants falls ill after mishandling the uranium, but his alarming deterioration, and Kan’s own symptoms, are ignored by the commanding officer demanding results. Desperate to stave off Japan’s surrender to the Allies, the army will stop at nothing to harness the weapon’s unimaginable power. They order Kan to prepare the bomb for manual detonation over a target—a suicide mission that will strike a devastating blow against the Americans. Kan is soon confronted with a series of agonizing decisions that will test his courage, his loyalty, and his very humanity.

An extraordinary debut novel that is the result of twenty-seven years of work by its author, Daikon is a gripping and powerfully moving saga that calls to mind such classics as Cold Mountain. It is set amid the chaos and despair of the world’s third largest city lying in ruins, its population starving and its leadership under escalating assault from without and within. Here is a haunting epic of love, survival, and impossible choices that introduces a singular new voice on the literary landscape.

Visit Samuel Hawley's website.

The Page 69 Test: Daikon.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Terrence McCauley

From my Q&A with Terrence McCauley, author The Twilight Town:

What's in a name?

The names of characters are very important to me, but they’re never set in stone. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve had a character’s name in my head while thinking about a story, only for it to change as soon as my fingers hit the keyboard. It sounds odd, but my characters tend to tell me what their names are.

In The Twilight Town: A Dallas ’63 Novel, Dan Wilson was an exception. His name didn’t change from my mind to the page. I wanted something clear and recognizable that could fit in everywhere. It wasn’t too ethnic, but decidedly American. That’s what I was going for in that particular story.

But The Twilight Town characters offered me a unique challenge. It’s a novel about the JFK assassination and includes many characters from real life. I used only real names in the first draft, but decided to change them later on. I did this to avoid readers pointing out factual inconsistencies in the story. I wanted to avoid criticism, such as ‘Captain Westbrook didn’t look like that’ or ‘those two people never met in Dallas’. The book is a fictionalized account of an actual event based on a lot of research, but I changed certain names to make sure the truth didn’t get in the way of a good story.

I kept some names the same, of course, like Oswald and Ruby. They’re both pillars of the event, so...[read on]

Visit Terrence McCauley's website.

My Book, The Movie: A Conspiracy of Ravens.

The Page 69 Test: A Conspiracy of Ravens.

Writers Read: Terrence McCauley (October 2017).

The Page 69 Test: The Twilight Town.

My Book, The Movie: The Twilight Town.

Q&A with Terrence McCauley.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Mary Anne Trasciatti's "Elizabeth Gurley Flynn"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn: The Rebel Girl, Democracy, and Revolution by Mary Anne Trasciatti.

About the book, from the publisher:

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was involved in almost every major campaign of the U.S. Left in the first two thirds of the twentieth century. An outstanding orator, writer, and tactician, Flynn is one of the most important figures in the history of the American labor movement. Inspired by the Irish freedom struggle and appalled by the exploitation and grinding poverty she saw around her, she devoted her life to the advancement of civil liberties. Here, Mary Anne Trasciatti traces Flynn’s personal and political life to explore the broader social issues of a fraught era.

Born in 1890, Flynn began her activist career by joining the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) when she was just sixteen, and she ended it as the first female chair of the American Communist Party, a position she held from 1961 until her death in 1964. In the intervening years she organized workers into unions, led strikes, championed women’s rights, supported anti-imperialist movements around the globe, protested deportation, advocated for prison reform, and fought for Black liberation. Above all, she showed absolute devotion to workers and their struggles.

Slandered as an “un-American” in the anticommunist fervor of the 1940s and 1950s, Flynn was eventually ousted from the very organization she helped found, the American Civil Liberties Union, and imprisoned for two years. Though her own movement abandoned her, her commitment to the cause never wavered. This stirring biography illuminates Flynn’s inspiring life and worldview and returns her to her rightful place at the heart of labor and civil liberties history.

Learn more about Elizabeth Gurley Flynn at the Rutgers University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight top novels featuring age-gap relationships

Hattie Williams began pursuing a music career in her teens and toured Europe extensively, making three studio albums and working as a composer before finding her way to book publishing (quite by accident). She spent the next twelve years working with some of the biggest authors in the world, and she is the former producer of the Iceland Noir Literary Festival, which takes place in Reykjavík every November. Williams continues to feed her creativity through her writing from her home in East London, where she lives with her partner and daughter.

Williams's new novel is Bitter Sweet.

At Lit Hub she tagged eight of her favorite age gap relationship novels, including:

Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends

Nick and Frances, Frances and Nick. Ten years apart, yet both with the emotionally maturity of fifteen-year-olds. I love Rooney’s writing and this is her at her best, unravelling her characters slowly and with such restraint that it is impossible to look away.

Something about this particular relationship makes for very uncomfortable reading; the relationship is always slightly out of reach for both these characters, and the infidelity adds such tension. We also have Nick’s wife Meliisa, who again, is slightly older, and her relationship with Frances’ ex, Bobbi.

So many wonderful age gap and power dynamics going on in this novel that really set the tone for a whole generation of writers to come.

Read about another novel on Williams's list.

Conversations With Friends is among Michaela Makusha's five top books about female friendship and B&N Reads's fifteen top books about unforgettable friendships.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Alie Dumas-Heidt reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Alie Dumas-Heidt, author of The Myth Maker: A Novel.

Her entry begins:

I am currently reading two very different books right now, which I do to myself often. I have an older cozy mystery called The Quiche of Death by M.C. Beaton, and Evil Eye by Etaf Rum.

The Quiche of Death is the first in the Agatha Raisin cozy series that started in the 90's. I jumped into the books after watching the show on the BBC. It's a fun read with a spirited leading lady, Agatha Raisin, who leaves a successful PR career and unwittingly becomes a super sleuth in the Cotswolds. It is a little sassier than other cozy reads, but the sass feels true to the characters. I love how the side characters and the town itself add to the story and it's been my...[read on]

About The Myth Maker, from the publisher:

Someone is killing women and staging their bodies in strange, evocative scenes in this Greek-mythology-inspired serial killer thriller perfect, for fans of Alex Michaelides and Tana French.

Cassidy Cantwell has devoted her life to becoming a detective, never forgetting the cold case that has influenced her entire career: the unsolved murder of her best friend. Cassidy tries to balance her demanding job with her suffocatingly close-knit family and her increasingly clingy boyfriend, but when a strange new murder case comes across her desk, she’s determined to solve it, especially when it turns out the victim was the wife of her college ex-boyfriend.

While Cassidy’s partner, Bryan, works to prove that her ex is their suspect, Cassidy can’t shake the feeling that there’s something more to the case that they’re not seeing. After the medical examiner finds a strange ring among the victim’s personal effects that the husband insists didn’t belong to his wife, Cassidy is struck by similarly odd details from a previous crime scene—details that seem to have an uncanny connection to a Greek myth.

When another body attracts public attention and the FBI joins the hunt, the case gets increasingly complicated–and solving it seems further and further out of reach. With anonymous taunts about her best friend’s death dragging her attention away, Cassidy finds herself pulled in different directions–sacrifice her personal life for the sake of her career, or put everything she has into finding years-old answers to a case that haunts her still.

And the killer behind the murders isn’t done yet.

Visit Alie Dumas-Heidt's website.

Q&A with Alie Dumas-Heidt.

Writers Read: Alie Dumas-Heidt.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Elisabeth Rhoads's "Haggard House"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Haggard House by Elisabeth Rhoads.

About the book, from the publisher:

1859. The village of Nomaton, Michigan.

After a reclusive childhood within the dank walls of Haggard House, Adam Bolton, at the age of eleven, is finally allowed to attend the village school, providing he obeys his mother, Sarai's, injunction. Against all outward influence, he must: "Keep to the straight and narrow." An easy bidding, until Adam meets Penny, his bright-eyed, bright-spirited classmate. Frightened of the consequences their friendship threatens, Adam builds another Haggard House-only this one in his mind-and keeps Penny there, safe from his zealot mother; safe from himself.

Only, secrets, Adam ought to know, belong to God. Restless and heartsore, Adam's narrow path suddenly widens. Now a young man, he finds himself traveling West, meeting the world for the first time, a difficult place to keep promises.

Burning with the flame of free will, Adam can no longer restrain himself from the woman he loves. But as he returns to Nomaton, so does Sarai's dark influence, and Adam is forced to face the decaying house within-a house ready to collapse at any moment.

Visit Elisabeth Rhoads's website.

The Page 69 Test: Haggard House.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Tom Parr's "Empowering Workers in an Age of Automation"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Empowering Workers in an Age of Automation: Social Justice, Technology, and the Future of Work by Tom Parr.

About the book, from the publisher:

Empowering Workers in an Age of Automation explores how labour market policymakers should respond to the threats and opportunities that arise from automation, artificial intelligence, and other forms of technological progress. The book's aim is twofold. First, it is to develop and defend a novel philosophical framework for theorizing about the demands of social justice in the labour market, which Parr calls 'the empowerment model'. At the heart of this view is a concern for fairness and, more specifically, a concern for the growing inequality in prospects between members of the working-class and their middle- and upper-class counterparts. Second, it is to examine a range of concrete political controversies relating to labour markets and the future of work in the light of the empowerment model. The analysis presented is wide-ranging, and includes discussion of technological unemployment, the four day work week, the gender earnings gap, working from home, and role of higher education.

Throughout the text, Parr is keen to caution against sensationalist narratives, and instead emphasizes the more prosaic but still hugely consequential ways in which technology is changing how we work. To do this, he draws on a wealth of empirical research, and extensively from findings in labour economics. The result is a book that takes seriously, and aims to shed light on, some of the most pressing challenges that we actually face.

Visit Tom Parr's website.

The Page 99 Test: Empowering Workers in an Age of Automation.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top books to understand Middle Eastern Muslims

Donna Lee Bowen, Professor Emerita of Political Science and Near Eastern Studies at Brigham Young University, is co-editor of Everyday Life in the Muslim Middle East.

At Shepherd she taggd five of the best books to understand Middle Easterners and their lives in the Muslim Middle East. One title on the list:

Guests of the Sheik: An Ethnography of an Iraqi Village by Elizabeth Warnock Fernea

When I first lived in the Middle East, I realized that I had to learn a whole new framework of customs, practices, and expectations if I wanted to fit in. This book is still the best guide to values and practices, despite many changes since it was written.

Newly-married to a graduate student in anthropology at the University of Chicago, Elizabeth Fernea traveled to a Shia Muslim village in faraway Iraq in the mid-1960s. While Bob Fernea sets out to meet the officials in the town and surrounding area, Elizabeth is isolated in a small house, hindered by little local Arabic and being new and foreign as she works to make friends. The most respected and powerful man in the village is the local sheikh.

Unfortunately, Elizabeth doesn’t know what proper behavior for a sheltered Iraqi wife would be, and normal behavior for an American graduate student’s wife can be scandalous. As she learns how to live as a proper Iraqi woman, she teaches her readers that reputation and honor—all brought by proper behavior—brings status and esteem.

Elizabeth (known by her nickname B.J.) brings up all that I wanted to know about living in the Middle East with total honesty and humor. Elizabeth questions how she should act, what she should wear, and what is acceptable behavior.

In order to support her husband’s position in the village, she first learned and then adapted to local customs in dress, behavior, and housekeeping. She develops friendships with curious neighbors, and they teach her how a proper woman runs a household.

I found this book to be entertaining and a delight to read, as well as introducing me to traditional norms of behavior in the region. As Elizabeth learns how to live as a respected resident of her village, I likewise learned answers to many of the questions I had about how Middle Easterners live and what is important to them.

Read about another book on Bowen's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Terrence McCauley's "The Twilight Town," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Twilight Town by Terrence McCauley.

The entry begins:

The Twilight Town is a fast-paced, hardboiled thriller ripped from the pages of history. It’s Dallas, 1963 and Dan Wilson is a Dallas PD detective with something to hide. He’s secretly helping Bobby Kennedy’s FBI investigate police corruption between Captain Eastbrook and the Dallas mob. But Wilson isn’t doing it out of the goodness of his heart. He’s got his sights set on Washington and becoming an FBI man. Officer JD Tippit is Wilson’s ex-partner. He has bills to pay, troubles at home and a career that’s going nowhere fast. He has nothing to lose when he agrees to help Wilson dig up dirt on the department’s top brass. They catch a break when they find a scared young man caught up in the Dallas underworld. His name is Lee Oswald. Officer Harry Denton never met a corner he couldn’t cut. A proud member of Captain Eastbrook’s cadre of crooked cops, he’ll do anything to protect his boss and keep the river of dirty money flowing through the department.

Wilson, Tippit and Denton soon lose their way in a shadow world of mob bosses, bigots, bureaucrats and power brokers named Ruby, Marcello, Walker, Hoover and Kennedy. In a sweeping saga that spans the seedy strip joints of Dallas to the halls of power in Washington, these three cops are on a collision course with history. And not all of them will make it out alive.

Here's how I would cast my book:

Dan Wilson – Garrett Hedlund (from Tulsa King)

Connie Wilson – Jessica Chastain (Zero Dark Thirty, The Help)

JD Tippit – Glen...[read on]

Visit Terrence McCauley's website.

My Book, The Movie: A Conspiracy of Ravens.

The Page 69 Test: A Conspiracy of Ravens.

Writers Read: Terrence McCauley (October 2017).

The Page 69 Test: The Twilight Town.

My Book, The Movie: The Twilight Town.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Kashana Cauley

From my Q&A with Kashana Cauley, author of The Payback: A Novel:

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

So far people associate The Payback with the James Brown song of the same name, which is correct. James Brown is singing about getting revenge on someone who crossed him, and The Payback is also a revenge story. My editor and I went through many titles, but when the book went out on submission, before it sold, its working title was Student Loan Payback. No matter how many titles my editor and I went through, I remember both of us gravitating towards the idea of payback over and over again. I like payback because it has the double meaning of what you’re supposed to do with your student loans as well as revenge, so it captures...[read on]

Visit Kashana Cauley's website.

Q&A with Kashana Cauley.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Anthea Kraut's "Hollywood Dance-ins and the Reproduction of Bodies"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Hollywood Dance-ins and the Reproduction of Bodies by Anthea Kraut.

About the book, from the publisher:

Hollywood Dance-ins and the Reproduction of Bodies proposes that a figure who barely registers in film studies or dance studies offers valuable insight into ideas about "the body" and the reproductive labor that gives rise to images of bodies. The book is the first scholarly study of the dance-in, a dancer who executes a star's choreography as cameras are being focused and lights are being set. While they share similarities with doubles and stand-ins, dance-ins do not replace stars' bodies on screen and they often serve multiple unseen roles, including as choreographers' assistants and stars' coaches, making them vital to the creation and transmission of choreography.

Focusing on dance-ins in mid-twentieth century Hollywood, when film musicals and the studio system were at their height, author Anthea Kraut exposes the racialized and gendered "corporeal ecosystem" that operated behind the scenes, propping up and concealed behind the seeming self-referentiality of white stars' filmic dancing bodies. A production history informed by feminist materialist approaches to labor and critical race theory, Hollywood Dance-ins tells the stories of the 1940s white pin-up star Betty Grable's dependence on her white dance-in Angie Blue; the African American jazz dancer Marie Bryant's private coaching of a myriad of stars in the late 1940s and early 1950s; Carol Haney and Jeanne Coyne's training of the white ingénue Debbie Reynolds for Singin' in the Rain (1952); the Mexican American dancer Alex Romero's close partnership with the white star Gene Kelly; and the biracial star Nancy Kwan's on- and off-screen exchanges with a white production team and Asian/American ensemble members in Flower Drum Song (1961).

Learn more about Hollywood Dance-ins and the Reproduction of Bodies at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Hollywood Dance-ins and the Reproduction of Bodies.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight top twisty crime thrillers

Elisa Shoenberger is a freelance writer and journalist. At Book Riot she tagged "eight crime thrillers with incredible twists that will have you guessing and holding your breath to the last page." One title on the list:

Almost Surely Dead by Amina Akhtar

They say life can change on a dime, and Dunia Ahmed is proof of that. One day while waiting for a train, a man tried to throw her into its path before committing the same act to himself. Dunia thought it might be just a one off thing. But then another person tries to kill her and then another. Now Dunia is missing. Did one of her would-be assassins succeed? The story follows a crime podcast trying to get to the bottom of what happened to Dunia and why people were trying to kill her.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Spencer Quinn's "Mrs. Plansky Goes Rogue"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Mrs. Plansky Goes Rogue by Spencer Quinn.

About the book, from the publisher:

This tale of the irresistible and unforgettable Mrs. Plansky, "a terrific character" (Stephen King), will lead her up and down coastal Florida and beyond in a brand-new, whirlwind adventure, Mrs. Plansky Goes Rogue!

Mrs. Plansky is fresh off of winning a thrilling senior tennis championship with her doubles partner, Kev Dinardo, and is gearing up to celebrate with him on his yacht. That is, until the yacht is destroyed in a fire. Kev claims the fire was caused by a lightning strike, pure bad luck, but there's one small problem—Mrs. Plansky didn't see any lightning.

Already certain there's more going on than she's being told, Mrs. Plansky's curiosity turns to concern when Kev goes missing. Her suspicion gets the better of her and leads her to break into his house, only to find it ransacked.

But Kev isn't the only person Mrs. Plansky has to worry about. A conversation with her dad reveals that not long ago, he'd introduced Kev to Jack, Mrs. Plansky's wayward tennis pro son. And now, her dad—distracted by arrangements for his upcoming wedding—either can't remember or has no interest in divulging any details.

Worse? Now Jack has gone missing, too.

Visit Spencer Quinn's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Peter Abrahams and Audrey (September 2011).

Coffee with a Canine: Peter Abrahams and Pearl (August 2012).

The Page 69 Test: The Dog Who Knew Too Much.

The Page 69 Test: Paw and Order.

The Page 69 Test: Scents and Sensibility.

The Page 69 Test: Bow Wow.

The Page 69 Test: Heart of Barkness.

Q&A with Spencer Quinn.

The Page 69 Test: A Farewell to Arfs.

The Page 69 Test: Mrs. Plansky Goes Rogue.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Turner Gable Kahn reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Turner Gable Kahn, author of The Dirty Version: A Novel.

Her entry begins:

One of the books I keep returning to—mentally and emotionally—is Everything’s Fine by Cecilia Rabess. On the surface, it’s a workplace romance between two people on opposite ends of the political spectrum: Jess, a young Black analyst starting out at a finance firm, and Josh, her smug, conservative coworker. But of course, it’s not really a romance in the traditional sense. It’s a razor-sharp exploration of power, identity, race, and the emotional gymnastics involved in navigating proximity to someone who can’t—or won’t—see the world the way you do.

What struck me most is how Rabess lets the emotional tension simmer under the surface of everyday interactions. The love story feels both impossible and deeply believable...[read on]

About The Dirty Version, from the publisher:

Heat rises and sparks fly when a surf-town author and an intimacy coordinator are thrown together to write new, steamy sex scenes for a TV series based on her hit novel in this deliciously fun debut romance.

Tash was thrilled when the dramatic rights to her surprise-hit feminist novel were snapped up by an indie film studio. But no one warned her that a Hollywood shuffle could land her smart, literary epic in the hands of a huge action-movie franchise director more famous for his machismo than his artistry.

And now this big shot director wants “the dirty version” of her book, demanding Tash transform the strong, complex female warriors she created into eye candy. Despite her best efforts to stall, the studio assigns Tash to its golden-boy intimacy coordinator to help her add spice to the script. Tash resents Caleb from the first word of the first sentence they write together, certain he's the enemy and too handsome to be trusted. But the longer they collaborate on her characters, the more she's attracted to his firm grasp of emotional (and fine, physical) nudity. Soon they're burning up the bedsheets along with their new pages, blurring romantic storylines.

But just when Tash feels it’s all coming together, the whole plot falls apart. Can she find a narrative that saves her show and her own love story, or are both lost forever?

Visit Turner Gable Kahn's website.

Q&A with Turner Gable Kahn.

My Book, The Movie: The Dirty Version.

Writers Read: Turner Gable Kahn.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Andreas Elpidorou's "The Anatomy of Boredom"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Anatomy of Boredom by Andreas Elpidorou.

About the book, from the publisher:

Boredom is a common human experience. It may strike us as straightforward―a mere absence or lack, an emotional emptiness of sorts―yet it is anything but simple. It is complicated: personal and social, biological and cultural, both ever-changing and constant. It can spur action, both productive and harmful. It affects us differently based on our social identity and standing. Boredom is both a mirror of the complexities of human existence and a cause of them.

In The Anatomy of Boredom, Andreas Elpidorou offers a groundbreaking examination of this ubiquitous yet enigmatic dimension of human existence, illuminating its profound influence on our personal and social lives. Through interdisciplinary analysis, careful argumentation, and captivating insights, Elpidorou presents a functional theory of boredom, which understands and individuates boredom in terms of its role in our mental, behavioral, and social existence. This theory provides a compelling synthesis of existing research, connects the present of boredom to its history, and allows us to apply our knowledge of boredom to relatively unexplored domains, such as its relationship to the good life, self-regulation and self-control, poverty and capitalism, advancements in AI, animal emotions, and even aesthetics and art appreciation. Ultimately, the study of boredom is revealed to be more than just an analysis of an intricate and important affective experience; it is also shown to be an insightful investigation into the complexities of human (and even non-human) existence.

Visit Andreas Elpidorou's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Anatomy of Boredom.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six of the best crime fiction canines

Dick Lochte is an award-winning, Los Angeles Times bestselling author of numerous crime novels, including The Talk Show Murders with Al Roker. He and his wife Jane live in Southern California with their dog Hoagy. Lochte's newest novel, with William M Webster IV, is Rockets' Red Glare.

At The Strand Magazine Lochte tagged six notable crime fiction canines, including:

DAVID HANDLER’S LULU

In his first witty, smoothly constructed mystery involving celebrity ghostwriter Stewart “Hoagy” Hoag, The Man Who Died Laughing, Handler was wise enough to provide his amateur detective with a faithful brown and white basset hound as charming, sophisticated and observant as her master. Hoagy’s career has had its ups and downs. After penning a popular and critically successful first novel, he suffered a writers block severe enough to cause cocaine addiction and the loss of prestige, money, friends and wife. Everything but the loyal Lulu who, with her waspish manner, odd penchant for foul-smelling food and seemingly miraculous manner of sniffing out evil, became a grounding presence for Hoagy. When the former bestseller settles for the inglorious hybrid profession of ghostwriter and amateur detective, Lulu becomes a unique sleuthhound in her own right.

The duo’s current adventure, The Man Who Swore He’d Never Go Home Again, is a series prequel, with freshly successful first novelist Hoagy returning to his small hometown in Connecticut for a funeral. In it we meet his new puppy Lulu and his new girlfriend (and eventual wife and ex-wife) actress Merilee Nash and learn how they all got together. Because of this, it’s a good starting point for the uninitiated, but, though entertaining, it’s not quite as satisfying a crime novel as his Edgar-winning The Man Who Would Be F. Scott Fitzgerald or last year’s elegant The Woman Who Lowered the Boom. That has Hoagy on the cusp of regaining his status as a rockstar novelist and doubly buoyed by the possibility of remarrying Merilee. Happiness at the start of a mystery must of necessity be short-lived and, just a few pages in, Hoagy learns that his editor, Norma Fives, has received letters threatening her life and, by extension, his novel. What can he do but expose the anonymous author of the letters and what can Lulu do but suffer the loss of comfort and a plate of her beloved sardines while helping him on the hunt?

Read about another canine on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue