Five best: books about Scotland Yard

Arthur Herman, author most recently of Gandhi and Churchill: The Epic Rivalry That Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age, named a five best list of books about Scotland Yard for the Wall Street Journal.

One title on his list:

The Scotland Yard Files
by Alan Moss and Keith Skinner
National Archives Press, 2006

Former Chief Superintendent Alan Moss and crime writer Keith Skinner browsed through Scotland Yard's files in the British National Archives to pull together a list of the 12 most important "firsts" in criminal detection. They include the first "wanted" picture, the first use of a line-up, and the first convictions based on fingerprints (in 1902) and on ballistic evidence. No fan of "Cold Case" or "Criminal Minds" or any of the countless other television crime dramas should be without a copy of this book or ignore the debt that every forensic police division owes to the pioneers at Scotland Yard.

Read about Number One on Herman's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Elissa Elliott's "Eve: A Novel of the First Woman"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Eve: A Novel of the First Woman by Elissa Elliott.

About the book, from the publisher:

It is the world’s oldest tale: the story of Eve, her husband, Adam, and the tragedy that would overcome her sons…. In this luminous debut novel, Elissa Elliott puts a powerful twist on biblical narrative, boldly reimagining Eve’s journey. At once intimate and universal, timely and timeless, this unique work of fiction blends biblical tradition with recorded history and dazzling storytelling. And as it does, Eve comes to life in a way religion and myth have never allowed—in a novel that explores the very essence of love, motherhood, faith, and humanity.

In their world they are alone…a family haunted by banishment, struggling for survival in a harsh new land. A woman who has borne and buried children, Eve sees danger shadowing those she loves, while her husband drifts further and further from the man he was in the Garden, blinded by his need to rebuild a life outside of Eden. One daughter, alluring, self-absorbed Naava, turns away from their beliefs. Another, crippled, ever-faithful Aya, harbors a fateful secret, while brothers Cain and Abel become adversaries, and Dara, the youngest, is chosen for a fate of her own.

In one hot, violent summer, by the shores of the muddy Euphrates, strangers arrive on their land. New gods challenge their own. And for Eve, a time of reckoning is at hand. The woman who once tasted the forbidden fruit of paradise sees her family unraveling—as brother turns on brother, culminating in a confrontation that will have far-reaching consequences for them all.

From a woman’s first awakening to a mother’s innermost hopes and fears, from moments of exquisite tenderness to a climax of shocking violence, Eve takes us on a breathtaking journey of the imagination. A novel that has it all—romantic love, lust, cruelty, heroism, envy, sacrifice, murder—Eve is a work of mesmerizing literary invention by a singular new voice in fiction.

Read an excerpt from Eve, and learn more about the book and author at Elissa Elliott's website and blog.

Elissa Elliott is a former high school teacher and a contributing writer for Books & Culture.

The Page 69 Test: Eve.

--Marshal Zeringue

Justin Gustainis' "Quincey Morris" series, the movies

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: Black Magic Woman and Evil Ways by Justin Gustainis.

The entry begins:

There are two books in my urban fantasy series about occult investigator Quincey Morris and his partner, “white” witch Libby Chastain. Black Magic Woman was released in January 2008, and Evil Ways came out December 30th. The third one, Sympathy for the Devil, is due in late 2009.

My first choice to play Quincey, the tall Texan with a degree from Princeton, would have been Tommy Lee Jones, about twenty years ago. But Mr. Jones is too old now, and, besides, the role might be too reminiscent of his work in the Men in Black movies. Among those available now, I’d pick Russell Crowe. He showed in 3:10 to Yuma that he can do the accent, and he combines the attributes of an action hero with real acting ability.

Libby Chastain should be played by an actress whose name might not be immediately recognizable:....[read on]

Learn more the books and author at Justin Gustainis' website and MySpace page.

Justin Gustainis is a Professor of Communication at Plattsburgh State University, where he earned the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2002. His academic publications include the book American Rhetoric and the Vietnam War, published in 1993. The Hades Project, his first novel, was released to rave reviews in 2003.

My Book, The Movie: Black Magic Woman and Evil Ways.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Catherine Blyth's "The Art of Conversation"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test:The Art of Conversation: A Guided Tour of a Neglected Pleasure by Catherine Blyth.

About the book, from the publisher:

A wide-ranging, exhortatory look at the pleasures of great conversation, including strategies for how to bring it about, from the witty pen of an Englishwoman wise in its ways

In The Art of Conversation, Catherine Blyth eloquently points out the sorry state of disrepair that conversation has fallen into—and then, taking examples from history, literature, philosophy, anthropology, and popular culture, she gives us the tools to rebuild. Her prose embodies the conversational values she promotes: It’s smart, succinct, self-deprecating, and light on its feet.

The Art of Conversation isn’t about etiquette, elocution, or knowing how to hold your teacup with your little finger crooked just so. It’s about something simple and profound: connecting. In our distracted days, it’s easy to forget that each of us possesses a communication technology that has been in research and development for thousands of years. Conversation costs nothing, but can bring you the world.

Blyth offers us a chance to revel in the possibilities of conversation. As Alexander Pope nearly wrote, “True ease in talking comes from art, not chance, as those move easiest who have learned to dance.” Okay, Pope was actually talking about writing, but Catherine Blyth has that skill as well. When you have read The Art of Conversation, you’ll not only know the steps, but hear the music like never before.

Listen to an excerpt from The Art of Conversation, and learn more about the book and author at Catherine Blyth's website.

Catherine Blyth is a writer and editor. She has contributed to publications like The Times, Daily Telegraph, New Statesman and Mail on Sunday, and written scripts for the BBC and Channel 5.

The Page 99 Test:The Art of Conversation.

--Marshal Zeringue

Lost manuscripts: ten best

At the Guardian, John Mullan named ten of the best lost manuscripts.

One author on the list:

James Michener

Bestselling author James Michener claimed that he dreamed one night in 1960 of writing an epic novel about Mexico. He duly researched and wrote most of the novel, before he misplaced the manuscript. It turned up 30 years later and Michener completed and published the saga.

Read about Number One on Mullan's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Sarah Graves' "A Face at the Window"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: A Face at the Window by Sarah Graves.

About the book, from the publisher:

Back in the day, Jacobia “Jake” Tiptree turned profits managing the fortunes of Manhattan’s most fortunate. Then she fled the rat race for a stately old fixer-upper in easygoing Eastport, Maine. But now a rat from an even darker corner of Jake’s past has turned up…a killer with a blueprint for demolishing her new life.

As a home repair enthusiast, Jake knows that nothing lasts forever—not windows or doors, not plaster or plumbing. And not good fortune.

After more than three decades eluding justice, the man who murdered her mother is finally about to stand trial—until he vanishes into thin air. Jake has a terrible foreboding of where Ozzie Campbell will turn up next. And while the local police chief is sure she’s overreacting, the truth is far worse than even Jake’s worst fears.

With her normally full house empty for at least another week, Jake has been looking forward to the unaccustomed peace and quiet. Now her cozy, well-loved home feels more like a big empty death trap ready to snap shut. First a pair of out-of-towners clearly not in Eastport for vacation turn up asking questions about her. And if she has any doubt they’re connected to Campbell, those doubts are erased when he calls her with a grim warning.

But exactly what Campbell wants from her isn’t clear, only that he’ll stop at nothing to hurt those closest to Jake. And his first victims are the most defenseless of all. Suddenly Jake can’t help but feel that her house—and her life—has far too many windows. And in any one of them she might see the face of her killer.

Read an excerpt from A Face at the Window, and learn more about the book and author at the official Sarah Graves website.

Sarah Graves, who lives in Eastport Maine, where her mystery novels are set, is the author of the "Home Repair Is Homicide" series.

The Page 99 Test: The Book of Old Houses.

The Page 69 Test: A Face at the Window.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Meryl Gordon reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Meryl Gordon, author of Mrs. Astor Regrets: The Hidden Betrayals of a Family Beyond Reproach.

Her entry begins:

I'm reading two very different books at once right now, partially because I've been traveling on book tour and haven't wanted to drag a hardcover on the road. I'm almost done with Curtis Sittenfeld's American Wife, and it's been fascinating to read her fictional portrayal of Laura and George Bush, at the precise moment when they have left the White House. I resisted reading this novel until my husband, political journalist Walter Shapiro, raved about it -- It's wonderfully-written, you bring a lot to the characters but Sittenfeld has also made them her own, memorable and understandable. [read on]

Meryl Gordon is a full-time magazine journalist who has profiled such influential figures as Kofi Annan, Mike Bloomberg, and John Kerry, and such stars as Nicole Kidman, Susan Sarandon, and Maggie Gyllenhaal. Gordon has written major features for New York, the New York Times Magazine, Gourmet, Elle, Marie Claire, and other publications.

Learn more about Mrs. Astor Regrets and Meryl Gordon at her publisher's website.

Read about Gordon's list of the five best "chronicles of high society."

Writers Read: Meryl Gordon.

--Marshal Zeringue

13 mysteries for political progressives

J. Kingston Pierce, editor of The Rap Sheet, has posted "a fairly interesting baker’s-dozen list of mysteries that Philip Green [in the extensive new resource book, The Nation Guide to the Nation] says belong on the shelves of political progressives."

One of the more recent books on the list:

No Defense, by Kate Wilhelm (2000): “In this, one of her (so far) nine cases, ‘death qualified’ Oregon attorney Barbara Holloway fights the political establishment, the legal powers that be and a dangerous crime lord to save the life of an innocent defendant: a typical day’s work for her.”

Read about two other titles to make the list.

Unlike Green, Pierce is "not so convinced that the detective story is inherently conservative." Read why at The Rap Sheet.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Dalton Conley's "Elsewhere, U.S.A."

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Elsewhere, U.S.A.: How We Got from the Company Man, Family Dinners, and the Affluent Society to the Home Office, BlackBerry Moms, and Economic Anxiety by Dalton Conley.

About the book, from the publisher:

Over the past three decades, our daily lives have changed slowly but dramatically. Boundaries between leisure and work, public space and private space, and home and office have blurred and become permeable. How many of us now work from home, our wireless economy allowing and encouraging us to work 24/7? How many of us talk to our children while scrolling through e-mails on our BlackBerrys? How many of us feel overextended, as we are challenged to play multiple roles–worker, boss, parent, spouse, friend, and client–all in the same instant?

Dalton Conley, social scientist and writer provides us with an X-ray view of our new social reality. In Elsewhere, U.S.A., Conley connects our daily experience with occasionally overlooked sociological changes: women’s increasing participation in the labor force; rising economic inequality generating anxiety among successful professionals; the individualism of the modern era–the belief in self-actualization and expression–being replaced by the need to play different roles in the various realms of one’s existence. In this groundbreaking book, Conley offers an essential understanding of how the technological, social, and economic changes that have reshaped our world are also reshaping our individual lives.

Read an excerpt from Elsewhere, U.S.A., and learn more about the book at the publisher's website.

Dalton Conley is University Professor of the Social Sciences and Acting Dean for the Social Sciences at New York University. He also teaches at NYU’s Wagner School of Public Service, as an Adjunct Professor of Community Medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, and he as a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. His essays have appeared in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Forbes, and Slate, among other publications. His previous books include Honky; Being Black, Living in the Red: Race, Wealth, and Social Policy in America; and The Pecking Order: Which Siblings Succeed and Why.

Visit Dalton Conley's faculty webpage.

The Page 99 Test: Elsewhere, U.S.A.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Suzy McKee Charnas' "The Vampire Tapestry"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: The Vampire Tapestry by Suzy McKee Charnas.

About the book, from the publisher:

Edward Weyland is far from your average vampire: not only is he a respected anthropology professor but his condition is biological — rather than supernatural. He lives discrete lifetimes bounded by decades of hibernation and steals blood from labs rather than committing murder. Weyland is a monster who must form an uneasy empathy with his prey in order to survive, and The Vampire Tapestry is a story wholly unlike any you've heard before.

Read an excerpt from The Vampire Tapestry, and learn more about the author and her work at Suzy McKee Charnas' journal and website.

Suzy McKee Charnas is the author of over a dozen works of science fiction, fantasy, and horror, including the Holdfast series from Tor Books and the Sorcery Hall series of books for young adults. She is the winner of the Hugo Award (for her short story "Boobs") and has won the James Tiptree, Jr. Award twice.

The Vampire Tapestry is one of Lisa Tuttle's top six vampire books.

The Page 69 Test: The Vampire Tapestry.

--Marshal Zeringue

2008's best China books

Jeffrey Wasserstrom took an interesting approach to naming 2008's best China books for the Far Eastern Economic Review: he created "thematic pairs of books that are particularly effective when read together."

One such pair:

China Past and Present. Several worthy 2008 books provide a more upbeat assessment of the present and "Modern China: A Very Short Introduction" can be placed in this category. Its author, Oxford historian Rana Mitter, does not view contemporary China through rose-colored glasses, but after finishing his latest book, readers will likely feel more positive about the PRC’s prospects than will those who have just put down "Out of Mao’s Shadow" or "Slaughter Pavilion." One of the book’s most interesting features is the emphasis that Mitter puts on continuities between the Republican era (1912-1949), especially the part when Chiang Kai-shek was in power (1928-1949), and the Communist period. While noting breaks and ruptures, he emphasizes enduring goals (modernization), strategies (nationalistic rhetoric) and flaws (authoritarian tendencies) that connect Chiang to the Communist Party leaders who’ve run China since 1949.

This makes Modern China particularly interesting to read beside Frank Dikotter’s "The Age of Openness: China before Mao" (University of California). Dikotter also links the Republican era to the Communist one. But his thesis is that much was basically right about the country during the decades immediately preceding 1949 (China was far more open to currents from the West then, he insists, and far less tightly controlled), and has been basically wrong ever since (especially but not only when Mao ruled).

Each book is short and lively. In addition, each makes effective use of intriguing examples—even though these sometimes are used to buttress arguments that specialists may feel, as I did occasionally with "Age of Openness" in particular, are made a bit too starkly, pushed a bit too far, or overstate the novelty of the author’s position.

Read about another pair from Wasserstrom's list.

The Page 69 Test: Rana Mitter's Modern China: A Very Short Introduction.

The Page 69 Test: Jeffrey Wasserstrom's China's Brave New World.

The Page 99 Test: Jeffrey Wasserstrom's Global Shanghai, 1850–2010.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Jeff Benedict's "Little Pink House"

Today's feature at the Page 99 Test: Little Pink House: A True Story of Defiance and Courage by Jeff Benedict.

About the book, from the publisher:

Suzette Kelo was just trying to rebuild her life when she purchased a falling down Victorian house perched on the waterfront in New London, CT. The house wasn't particularly fancy, but with lots of hard work Suzette was able to turn it into a home that was important to her, a home that represented her new found independence.

Little did she know that the City of New London, desperate to revive its flailing economy, wanted to raze her house and the others like it that sat along the waterfront in order to win a lucrative Pfizer pharmaceutical contract that would bring new business into the city. Kelo and fourteen neighbors flat out refused to sell, so the city decided to exercise its power of eminent domain to condemn their homes, launching one of the most extraordinary legal cases of our time, a case that ultimately reached the United States Supreme Court.

In Little Pink House, award-winning investigative journalist Jeff Benedict takes us behind the scenes of this case -- indeed, Suzette Kelo speaks for the first time about all the details of this inspirational true story as one woman led the charge to take on corporate America to save her home.

Read an excerpt from Little Pink House, and learn more about the book and author at Jeff Benedict's website. View the Little Pink House video.

Jeff Benedict is an award-winning investigative journalist, a lawyer, and a best-selling author of seven books. He is a contributing writer for the Los Angeles Times, Sports Illustrated and the Hartford Courant.

The Page 99 Test: Little Pink House.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: David Fulmer's "Lost River"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Lost River by David Fulmer.

About the book, from the publisher:

The next heart-pounding chapter in Fulmer’s Storyville series featuring New Orleans detective Valentin St. Cyr Autumn 1913. Valentin St. Cyr has been absent from his Storyville stomping grounds for some months, trying to make it in the straight detective world and make a go of it with his longtime love, Justine. But then a man is found dead in a Storyville brothel.The madam immediately turns to the creole detective for help.He resists, but when several more bodies turn up in Storyville, Valentin can’t help but come to the aid of the place—and the people—he tried to leave behind. Just when he has the case wrapped around his finger, it turns out Valentin has been played.The police captain thinks he’s meddling and may be guilty of murder.He’s on the run, and Justine has turned her back on him, retaliating with a handsome young fellow in a very sporty car. But is she being lured into a trap too? Taking us back to his acclaimed and much-loved Storyville series, in Lost River award-winning author David Fulmer marks a heart-pounding return to the streets of early-1900s New Orleans.

Read an excerpt from Lost River, and learn more about the author and his work at David Fulmer's website.

Fulmer is the author of, among other works, the acclaimed Storyville mysteries featuring Creole detective Valentin St. Cyr. The first volume of the series, Chasing the Devil's Tail, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Mystery/Thriller Book Prize and the winner of the Shamus Award for Best First P.I. Novel.

My Book, The Movie: David Fulmer's "Storyville" books.

The Page 69 Test: Lost River.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Jan Westerhoff reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Jan Westerhoff, author of the recently released Nagarjuna's Madhyamaka, his study of one of the greatest philosophers of ancient Asia.

One book mentioned in the entry:

The Indian Clerk by David Leavitt.

I did not just pick up this book because it is set in my old college. This fictionalized account of the meeting between G.H. Hardy, Fellow of Mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge (and author of A Mathematician's Apology) and Srinivasa Ramanujan, a self-educated accounts clerk from an Indian backwater and mathematical genius succeeds in giving a superb description of the adventures of mind in a mysterious atmosphere of melancholy and tragedy. [read on]

Jan Westerhoff was trained as a philosopher and orientalist; he is currently lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Durham, UK.

He has just finished a popular book on Buddhist philosophy and cognitive science entitled 12 Examples of Illusion which is due to come out later this year.

Visit Jan Westerhoff's website, and learn more about Nagarjuna's Madhyamaka at the Oxford University Press website.

Writers Read: Jan Westerhoff.

--Marshal Zeringue

Barbara Levenson's "Fatal February," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: Fatal February by Barbara Levenson.

The entry begins:

Fatal February is one part romance, one part mystery with a large spoonful of humor. After I wrote the book, I received several suggestions that it really was the blue print for a TV series, because it is the first in a series of mysteries with continuing characters. But who hasn’t dreamt of selling their brainchild as a movie?

The protagonist, Mary Magruder Katz, is a quirky criminal defense attorney in Miami, Florida. She is half Jewish and half Southern Baptist which explains her name. She has a hot Latin lover who is half Cuban and half Argentine. In Miami, the melting pot often begins in the wedding chapel.

I didn’t write with an eye to a particular look or actor in mind. Now that the characters are full blown, I do visualize who would fill the parts. Drew Barrymore has the right mix of comic timing and intelligent demeanor to be Mary. If I were casting a lesser known....[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Barbara Levenson's website.

Barbara Levenson has served as a prosecutor and run her own law practice where she focused on criminal defense and civil rights litigation. She was elected to a judgeship in the circuit court of Miami-Dade County, where she still serves as a senior judge. Fatal February is her first novel.

My Book, The Movie: Fatal February.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: P.W. Singer's "Wired for War"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century by P. W. Singer.

About the book, from the publisher:

A military expert reveals how science fiction is fast becoming reality on the battlefield, changing not just how wars are fought, but also the politics, economics, laws, and ethics that surround war itself

P. W. Singer’s previous two books foretold the rise of private military contractors and the advent of child soldiers— predictions that proved all too accurate. Now, he explores the greatest revolution in military affairs since the atom bomb—the advent of robotic warfare.

We are just beginning to see a massive shift in military technology that threatens to make the stuff of I, Robot and The Terminator all too real. More than seven- thousand robotic systems are now in Iraq. Pilots in Nevada are remotely killing terrorists in Afghanistan. Scientists are debating just how smart—and how lethal—to make their current robotic prototypes. And many of the most renowned science fiction authors are secretly consulting for the Pentagon on the next generation.

Blending historic evidence with interviews from the field, Singer vividly shows that as these technologies multiply, they will have profound effects on the front lines as well as on the politics back home. Moving humans off the battlefield makes wars easier to start, but more complex to fight. Replacing men with machines may save some lives, but will lower the morale and psychological barriers to killing. The “warrior ethos,” which has long defined soldiers’ identity, will erode, as will the laws of war that have governed military conflict for generations.

Paradoxically, these new technologies will also bring war to our doorstep. As other nations and even terrorist organizations start to build or buy their own robotic weapons, the robot revolution could undermine America’s military preeminence. While his analysis is unnerving, there’s an irresistible gee-whiz quality to the innovations Singer uncovers. Wired for War travels from Iraq to see these robots in combat to the latter-day “skunk works” in America’s suburbia, where tomorrow’s technologies of war are quietly being designed. In Singer’s hands, the future of war is as fascinating as it is frightening.

Learn more about the book and author at P.W. Singer's website.

P.W. Singer is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution; at 34 years old, he's the youngest person ever to hold that position. He's written for or appeared on a wide variety of media, from "60 Minutes" to the New York Times. He has worked for the Pentagon and Harvard University, and in his personal capacity, served as the coordinator of the defense policy advisory task force for the Obama campaign. In his previous two books, Singer foretold the rise of private military contractors and the advent of child soldiers - predictions which proved to be all too accurate.

The Page 99 Test: Wired for War.

--Marshal Zeringue

Summarizing Sundance 2009: Part IV

Ray Taras' fourth and final dispatch from the Sundance Flim Festival:

It came down to war, terror, and rape on the last day of Sundance, even though “the best snow on earth” was falling on Park City and the ski area towering over it. A few people trudged through the slush on Main Street taking photos of the winter wonderland that had, until Sunday, given no hint that it could envelop the town. Robert Redford’s posh restaurant, Zoom, showed few signs of life. The negotiations and bidding that had drawn attention away from the eclectic menu had ended some time ago, as well as the opportunity to spot a celebrity. I felt bad I hadn’t run into Christie Brinkley. Then again, I felt glad I hadn’t run into Mike Tyson. Apparently he spent all his time in this chic town locked up in his hotel room.

The war was one of those tribal conflicts in Africa that Western liberals like to describe as intractable—nothing to be done about it since these ethnic militias are intent on maiming and killing each other. I had read the novel, Johnny Mad Dog, a couple of years ago and knew what the film would be dealing with. Shot in Liberia, it turned out to be a lurid, fast-paced account of a group of child soldiers running amok in unnamed African villages and towns.

The child actors, speaking in Liberian patois that is almost understandable for English speakers, wear an array of colorful hand-me-down clothes that American thrift stores export to the west coast of Africa. They chant crazed mantras like "no die, no born"--if you don’t want to die you should not have been born. They swear constantly, as if reciting one long rap song. Like young teenagers they often lack logic. One of their victims is killed for saying he had bananas in his fruit basket when it was oranges that had tumbled out. The only conclusion to be drawn was that he was an advance spy of government troops.

French director Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire does not recreate any of the irony found in Emmanuel Dongala’s novel. Perhaps, in the interests of fairness, he could have included a scene from the book that ridicules the self-serving European peacekeepers—not just the African tribalists.

Christophe Minie is brilliant as Johnny—single-minded, remorseless, and stupid. In the film adaptation he does not get the just desserts that he earns in the novel.

This week the International Criminal Court in The Hague began the trial of a Congolese militia leader accused of war crimes, including conscripting child soldiers into his rebel army. Johnny Mad Dog is an attempt to capture the horrors of child soldiers as both perpetrators and victims.

Terror: the bomb attack on the United Nations mission in Baghdad in 2003 which killed the Secretary General’s Special Envoy in Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello. Sergio only incidentally deals with the sparring between the UN and U.S. authorities in the first months after the invasion. Its focus is instead on the Brazilian diplomat’s many achievements at peacemaking, from Mozambique to East Timor, from Yugoslavia to Cambodia.

The film also centers on his fiancée Carolina, left adrift after his death. The extended interview with her shows the anguish of losing a loved one in Iraq, and it reminds us how universal an emotion grieving is. The suspense built into the film is of the bungled attempt to save Sergio’s life as he lay buried and pinned down in the rubble of the UN mission in Iraq. Juxtaposing two American rescuers—one with deep religious beliefs and the other with only practical concerns—seemed contrived and unworthy of a film about a man who overcame divisions.

Sergio was a ladies’ man as well as a peacemaker. The film makes clear that he abandoned his wife and two young sons in order to follow a career as diplomat, in the process meeting many attractive women. It is fitting, then, that Sergio will be showing on HBO later this year.

Rape. Incest. HIV. That is the story of Precious, a grotesquely overweight sixteen-year-old in Brooklyn who is to boot illiterate, a mother of two, and locked into a violent relationship with her mother. Push: Based on the Novel by Sapphire won the two top awards—Grand Jury and Audience—for best U.S. drama at Sundance ’09. A special jury prize for acting was also awarded to Mo’Nique, the abusive mother whose sins of omission—not protecting her daughter from her father’s sexual assaults—overshadowed her own violence against daughter and baby granddaughter. Anyone doubting the strength of maternal instincts would have been taken aback by the collective flinching of females in the audience—at least, they were more expressive than men--as Precious’ newborn baby is battered by her enraged grandmother. Push, directed by Lee Daniels (who produced Oscar winner Monster’s Ball), is harrowing from start to finish. If there is a single gleam of hope in it, it is that Precious rises from illiteracy to an eighth-grade reading level. This is small consolation for all the misfortunes that she suffers.

Remarkably for a Sundance film with three awards, Push did not pick up a distributor at the festival. Times are hard, of course. The most lucrative contract this year--$3.5 million—was for Ashton Kutcher’s sex comedy Spread. Last year Hamlet 2 was picked up for $10 million, and it proceeded to bomb at the box office. The commercial versus indie dichotomy that some festival goers approach a film with is staggeringly inaccurate. Since I first attended Sundance in 2000, I have observed how films fall into one of four separate categories: 1) those around which a buzz develops and hype quickly follows; 2) the arty, brainy, lefty ones that Adorno and Althusser would love; 3) the award winners; and, 4) the ones picked up by big-time distributors. It is remarkable how mutually exclusive these categories tend to be.

No coverage of Sundance is complete without a mention of lost and found. The Daily Insider reported Sunday that one Festivalgoer had lost and recovered his cell phone three times. A man who lost his camera described it as having a lot of photos of himself with a banana. Someone also brought in to the Lost and Found office a Pomeranian with a pink Mohawk and sweater. It wasn’t difficult to figure out who it belonged to when, soon afterwards, a woman showed up wearing a matching sweater.

Storytelling in Park City resumes in January 2010.

See also: Summarizing Sundance 2009: Part I, Part II, and Part III.

Ray Taras, a visiting scholar at Stanford University, is the author of the recently released Europe Old and New: Transnationalism, Belonging, Xenophobia.

His literature reviews here on the blog include one of Emmanuel Dongala's Johnny Mad Dog.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Michael Shilling's "Rock Bottom"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Rock Bottom by Michael Shilling.

About the book, from the publisher:

Once, the Blood Orphans had it all: a million-dollar recording contract from Warner Brothers, killer hooks, and cheekbones that could cut glass. Four pretty boys from Los Angeles, they were supposed to be the next big thing, future kings of rock and roll.

But something happened on the way to glory, and now, two years later, along with their coke-fueled, mohawked female manager, they have washed up in Amsterdam for the final show of their doomed and dismal European tour. The singer has become a born-again Buddhist who preaches from the stage, the bass player's raging eczema has turned his hands into a pulpy mess, the drummer is a sex-fiend tormented by the misdeeds of his porn-king father, and the guitar player--the only talented one--is thoroughly cowed by the constant abuse of his bandmates.

As they stumble through their final day together, the Blood Orphans find themselves on a comic tour of frustration, danger, excitement, and just possibly, redemption.

Read an excerpt from Rock Bottom, and learn more about the book and author at the Rock Bottom website and Michael Shilling's blog.

Michael Shilling earned his MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Michigan where he now teaches in the English Department. His short stories have appeared in The Sun, Fugue, and Other Voices. He is currently working on a novel that takes place in England during the late 1820s, a drama that he describes, roughly, as Jane Eyre meets The Wire.

The Page 69 Test: Rock Bottom.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best identical twins in fiction

At the Guardian, John Mullan named ten of the best identical twins in fiction.

One entry on Mullan's list:

Jackson and Pierrot

These unnerving nine-year-olds, miserable echoers of each other, are Briony's cousins in Ian McEwan's Atonement, dumped on her family after their mother bolts. Their joint decision to run away leads to the novel's transforming night of chaos and betrayal.

Read about another set of identical twins on Mullan's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: J. Kaufman's "The Origins of Canadian and American Political Differences"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: The Origins of Canadian and American Political Differences by Jason Kaufman.

About the book, from the publisher:

Why do the United States and Canada have such divergent political cultures when they share one of the closest economic and cultural relationships in the world? Canadians and Americans consistently disagree over issues such as the separation of church and state, the responsibility of government for the welfare of everyone, the relationship between federal and subnational government, and the right to marry a same-sex partner or to own an assault rifle.

In this wide-ranging work, Jason Kaufman examines the North American political landscape to draw out the essential historical factors that underlie the countries’ differences. He discusses the earliest European colonies in North America and the Canadian reluctance to join the American Revolution. He compares land grants and colonial governance; territorial expansion and relations with native peoples; immigration and voting rights. But the key lies in the evolution and enforcement of jurisdictional law, which illuminates the way social relations and state power developed in the two countries.

Written in an accessible and engaging style, this book will appeal to readers of sociology, politics, law, and history as well as to anyone interested in the relationship between the United States and Canada.

Read an excerpt from The Origins of Canadian and American Political Differences, and learn more about the author and his work at Jason Kaufman's website and blog.

Jason Kaufman is a sociologist and historian. He is the author of For the Common Good? American Civil Society and the Golden Age of Fraternity and numerous articles on American politics and culture. He is the former John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University, where he is currently a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society.

The Page 99 Test: The Origins of Canadian and American Political Differences.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Greg Sanders reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Greg Sanders, author of Motel Girl, a collection of 21 short stories.

His entry begins:

About a month ago a writer friend, David Pollock, loaned me his copy of Thomas Bernhard's novel, The Loser. The story, in first person, follows the unnamed narrator's fictional relationship with the piano playing genius Glenn Gould and a second friend, Wertheimer, whom Gould labels with "The Loser" moniker when the three men are in music school together in the 1950s. Structurally, the third paragraph, which begins on the first page of the novel, goes on to the end of the book, and the entire narrative is an internal monologue. The novel's very bleak in its way (one suicide and lots of talk of death and diminution), but the narrator's disdain for his fellow Austrians—he calls them "cretinous"—and his meditations on the ridiculous delicacy of artists' egos (in this case, he and Wertheimer become convinced of their worthlessness the very fist time they hear Gould play the piano), along with his analysis of the interrelationship between wealth and existential unhappiness (the latter is a luxury only the former can afford) kept me, paradoxically, happy as all get up. The pure bleakness of the novel....[read on]

Greg Sanders' short stories have appeared in a number of journals and magazines, including Mississippi Review, Opium Magazine, Pindeldyboz, Essays & Fictions, The Los Angeles Review, and The Warwick Review. He earned his MFA from the New School in 2004, lives in New York City, and earns his living as a technical writer.

Among the praise for Motel Girl:

"Greg Sanders has hit the bullseye with Motel Girl. The stories—original, often surreal, yet thoroughly convincing—are tone-perfect, exuding a marvelous, full-bodied authority. An astonishingly fine debut."
—Janet Fitch, author of Paint It Black

"Greg Sanders's stories are ingenious and original—but more important, he's a fabulist with a heart."
—David Gates, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of The Wonders of the Invisible World, Jernigan and Preston Falls.

Learn more about Greg Sanders and his writing at his website, MySpace page, and Facebook page.

Writers Read: Greg Sanders.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top 10 "other" Scottish poems

For the Times (London), Gerard Carruthers, editor of a new collection of Scottish Poems, selected his top ten Scottish poems not by the famous Robert Burns.

One poem on his list:

Liz Lochhead, "Rapunzstiltskin"

A feminist poem that is indignant and riotously funny at the same time.

& just when our maiden had got

good & used to her isolation,

stopped daily expecting to be rescued.

had come almost to love her tower.

along comes This Prince

with absolutely

all the wrong answers…

Read another Scottish poem not by Robert Burns.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: David Francis' "Stray Dog Winter"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Stray Dog Winter by David Francis.

About the book, from the publisher:

Darcy Bright, a hapless young Australian artist, receives a surprising birthday present from his elusive half-sister Fin, ostensibly in Moscow on a prestigious fellowship painting industrial landscapes. Fin sends Darcy a ticket to the Soviet Union housed in a leather money belt, and an invitation to join her—only if he’s willing to bring the money belt and its contents.

Although their relationship has, in the past, swung between passionate attachment and startling disloyalty, Darcy has been drifting in his own life, and sees this as an opportunity for direction and purpose. Or, at the very least, adventure, and decides to put himself in his sister's hands, bringing himself and the belt into the USSR.

Upon his arrival into the bleak Soviet winter of 1984, Darcy is quickly engulfed in Fin’s mysterious life there, and he becomes entangled in an extortion plot designed to change the course of Cold War history. And as Fin’s true intentions for her brother unfold, the intricacies of the bond between the estranged siblings start to unravel.

With Stray Dog Winter, David Francis has entered Graham Greene territory, placing a naïve hero in the center of political intrigue and betrayal at the end of the Cold War. Atmospheric and suspenseful, this novel is pure Soviet noir, a remarkable tale of love, passion, politics, identity, and espionage.

Visit the Stray Dog Winter website.

David Francis is an Australian lawyer and former international equestrian who lives in Los Angeles. He is the author of the acclaimed novel The Great Inland Sea, which was published in seven countries. He has taught creative writing at University of California Los Angeles/Occidental College and in the Masters of Professional Writing program at University of Southern California.

The Page 69 Test: Stray Dog Winter.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Martin J. Wiener's "An Empire on Trial"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: An Empire on Trial: Race, Murder, and Justice under British Rule, 1870–1935 by Martin J. Wiener.

About the book, from the publisher:

An Empire on Trial is the first book to explore the issue of interracial homicide in the British Empire during its height – examining these incidents and the prosecution of such cases in each of seven colonies scattered throughout the world. It uncovers and analyzes the tensions of empire that underlay British rule and delves into how the problem of maintaining a liberal empire manifested itself in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The work demonstrates the importance of the processes of criminal justice to the history of the empire and the advantage of a trans-territorial approach to understanding the complexities and nuances of its workings. An Empire on Trial is of interest to those concerned with race, empire, or criminal justice, and to historians of modern Britain or of colonial Australia, India, Kenya, or the Caribbean. Political and post-colonial theorists writing on liberalism and empire, or race and empire, will also find this book invaluable.

• Shows the importance of criminal justice for the history of empire • Illustrates the centrality of race relations to the history of empire • Combines ‘close to the ground’ case studies with empire-wide overview of a common problem (how can a ‘liberal empire’ work?)

Read an excerpt from An Empire on Trial.

Martin J. Wiener is Mary Gibbs Jones Professor of History and Chair of the History Department at Rice University. His other publications include the books English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit, 1850-1980 and Men of Blood: Violence, Manliness, and Criminal Justice in Victorian England.

The Page 99 Test: An Empire on Trial.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Nina Killham's "Believe Me"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Believe Me by Nina Killham.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the tradition of Jodi Picoult—a fresh, smart, and deeply moving novel about the power of faith, love, and family

Thirteen-year-old Nic Delano has a lot of questions. Like why does he have a babysitter at his age-and where did she get such long legs? But mostly, what exactly is the meaning of life?

His mother, Lucy, an astrophysicist and atheist, has always encouraged Nic to ask questions. But lately she doesn’t like the answers he’s getting. Nic has been hanging out with a group of devout Christians and is starting to embrace the Bible—and a very different view of the heavens.

But when unexpected tragedy strikes, Nic and Lucy’s beliefs are truly to put to the test. And they need each other now more than ever. But will a mother and her son be able to find a common ground where faith meets understanding and love is, ultimately, what endures?

Learn more about the book and author at Nina Killham's website and blog.

Nina Killham's previous novels are How to Cook a Tart and Mounting Desire.

The Page 69 Test: Believe Me.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five best: books on irrational decision-making

For the Wall Street Journal, Jonah Lehrer, author of Proust Was a Neuroscientist and the forthcoming How We Decide, named a five best list of books on irrational decision-making.

One title on the list:

The Winner's Curse
By Richard H. Thaler
Princeton, 1992

In 2000, the Texas Rangers signed Alex Rodriguez to the richest contract in baseball history after participating in a blind auction. If the team had consulted Richard H. Thaler's "The Winner's Curse," it would have known that such auctions invariably lead to irrational offers -- and, indeed, the Rangers' bid (a 10-year contract for $252 million) overshot the next highest offer by about $100 million. In addition to documenting how bidders at auctions operate, Thaler -- a behavioral economist at the University of Chicago -- examines other anomalies, such as the stock market's seasonal fluctuations (nearly one-third of annual returns occur in January) and the surprising unselfishness of people playing economic games. When given $10 and told to share the money with someone else, most people don't keep it all, or even most of it. Instead, they tend to split the cash equally, which is neither selfish nor rational. As Thaler notes, people have a powerful instinct for generosity, which can lead them to do things that flagrantly violate the model of Homo Economicus.

Read about the oldest book on Lehrer's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Summarizing Sundance 2009: Part III

Ray Taras' third report from the Sundance Flim Festival:

Sixteen films were entered in this year’s World Cinema Dramatic Competition. Among those I had flagged but did not see was Zion and his Brother, a tale of how older brothers can care for younger ones—up to a point. Set in multicultural Haifa, first-time director Eran Merav expressed surprise that Sundance audiences hadn’t grilled him on Israeli politics and focused on his story. “They are very mature,” he observed during a Park City radio station interview. Viewers were caught up in the film’s narrative tension and did not mistake it for that of the region.

One of a number of Canadian entries at this year’s Sundance was Before Tomorrow, ambitiously set in the 1840s in the Arctic tundra and capturing the early interactions between Inuit communities and the European explorers. Based on Morgendagen, a novel by Danish author Jørn Riel, an Inuit and French Canadian woman have teamed up to direct an exercise in aboriginal storytelling.

Unmade Beds by up-and-coming Argentine director Alexis Do Santos (Glue, 2006) follows the mating games of young foreigners hanging out in London. With a lively comme il faut sound track, it is another colorful depiction of ever swinging London—at least that is the image that young non-Londoners stubbornly cling to.

Because of film schedule conflicts, I was also unable to see The Maid, a Chilean film that explores the uniquely South American world of una empleada, a housekeeper employed by a wealthy household who inevitably becomes entangled in the unsavory family conflicts of the bourgeoisie. Cinéma vérité it must be.

I did see three entries, Cliente, An Education, and Corazón del Tiempo—all reviewed here yesterday—and found them equally compelling, even though each infused different degrees of intensity and embraced separate cinematic idioms. Yesterday I caught Victoria Day, named after the holiday English Canadians celebrate(and Quebecers grudgingly go along with) on a late Monday in May. Its director, David Bezmozgis, is a writer who captured considerable literary attention with “Natasha,” a short story published in 2005 in Harper’s and included in the 2005 Best American Short Stories. Canadian authors are often ambivalent about being included in a collection under such a title: Salman Rushdie, editor of the 2008 version, told me that of the 20 authors who he phoned to notify of their inclusion, the only one not to get back to him was Alice Munro.

Bezmozgis was born in Latvia and came to Canada as a six-year-old. His film explores the often overlooked immigrant experience of people from eastern—rather than central—Europe. The film dwells on hockey, though the director and screenwriter would deny it. It is hockey that bonds Canadianized son to immigrant Russian father (masterfully played by Sergiy Kotelenets). The hockey team accounts for most of the boy’s friends, whose antics produce the suspense in the film. Bezmozgis told us that his intention was to capture a kid’s first experiences of love, grief, and death—the defining moments a person returns to over and over as he grows older.

The glorification of the Great One—Gretzky—underpins the film, at times in the background as the hockey telecast is drowned out by heated parent-son exchanges, at times in the foreground as a girl’s effort to make out with the boy falters and “Hockey Night in Canada” coverage takes over. As a Canadian I don’t object to any of this, but I do wonder how it will play in Bogalusa or Las Cruces.

Our Q & A focused on whether a film should resolve all the plots and subplots introduced in it. Bezmozgis emphasized that an audience should leave a film with a sense of mystery. That when he filmed an attempted resolution of an ambiguity—the fate of a disappeared teenager—it created greater confusion and he scrapped the part. That a commercial film might require tidying up loose ends, but a Sundance film functions outside the usual norms.

What better metaphor to capture an unresolved plot than to include extended TV coverage of the 1988 Stanley Cup playoff game between the Boston Bruins and the Edmonton Oilers that was tied 3-3 when the power went out in Boston Gardens and the game had to be postponed!

Unresolved conflict anchors Five Minutes of Heaven, an Irish-UK film about the competing emotions of revenge and reconciliation dogging a Catholic who witnessed his older brother get gunned down during the Troubles in Northern Ireland in the 1970s. After thirty years the man is to meet face-to-face the Protestant militia member who killed his brother. The encounter has been arranged by a television producer and has been carefully stage managed. Neither man wants to be part of a made-for-television melodrama. But they do meet later, in the abandoned tenement flat where the killing took place, and thirty years of suppressed feelings are let out.

Five minutes of heaven? That’s how the Catholic envisages stabbing his brother’s killer methodically to death. Does he enjoy those five minutes? You know Guy Hibbert, who wrote the screenplay for Omagh (2005), will not give us a simple answer.

My personal favorite in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition was Lulu and Jimi from German director and screenwriter Oskar Roehler. There are no plot ambiguities, suspenseful confrontations, or unresolved conflicts in it. Jennifer Decker shines as the submissive and but wide-eyed and wacky daughter of an affluent German family. Against the wishes of her diabolic mother Gertrud, she takes up with an African American whose job is to offer bumper car rides at an amusement park. Perhaps you can get through the first ten minutes of this film treating it as commentary on an inegalitarian, racist society. But after that you’re in for a wild ride! This is a fairy tale with transparently fantastical characters. The costumes and props are garish, the dialogue self-parodical, and the plot a string of contretemps implicating ever more incredulous characters: Von Oppeln, the psychiatrist who has transformed Daddy Cool into a basket case; Josephine, who wanders a highway alone at night, then robs Lulu and Jimi of their money; Harry Hass, who fought at Stalingrad and sees himself as a lady killer.

The director effortlessly situates his film in 1950s Germany; there is no going overboard to define time and place. Many Germans of that period are lampooned as racist and hostile. Others are skewered for being racist and indulgent: for them there’s nothing in the world like being entertained by a cool black American, especially when he does a rendition of “Stand By Me.” In the film the forces of good and evil are easy to distinguish, so there is nothing for us to agonize over. We throw our support behind the good guys, as in a fairy tale. Off beat, decentered, irreverent, with a lightness of touch make this one of this year’s must-see Sundance graduates.--Ray Taras

See also: Summarizing Sundance 2009: Part I and Summarizing Sundance 2009: Part II.

Ray Taras, a visiting scholar at Stanford University, is the author of the recently released Europe Old and New: Transnationalism, Belonging, Xenophobia. His literature reviews here on the blog include Per Petterson's To Siberia.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Jana K. Lipman reading?

This weekend's featured contributor to Writers Read: Jana K. Lipman, author of Guantánamo: A Working-Class History between Empire and Revolution.

Her entry begins:

What am I reading?Thanks so much for asking – and the question makes me sit down and actually process the recent books I have read. And it makes me realize I wish I was reading more fiction.

Right now, I am starting a new research project, and my reading has focused on 19^th century US empire. Most of these books have dealt with mapping and the geographies of America in the 19^th century. They have made me re-think the “map” of the “United States” again – why is Hawaii a state? California? but not Panama or Puerto Rico? As borders continue to be disputed throughout the contemporary world, I’ve found it constructive to look back in time to re-remember how the areas we often take for granted as “American” have a much more violent and complex history.

Today I’m in the middle of Island World: A History of Hawaii and the United States by Gary Y. Okihiro. Although I still haven’t gotten to Barack Obama’s memoirs, I’m glad to be reading a book about Hawaii this week when the nation is celebrating the inauguration of the first president who grew up in Hawaii. So far, I’ve been intrigued by Okihiro’s descriptions of surfing and indigenous culture and the way in which it was appropriated by white men in California to demonstrate their strength and masculinity. Personally, I can’t surf, but Okihiro’s analysis will never allow me to look at surfing culture in quite the same way…. And it makes me want to read and learn more about Hawaii and its history vis a vis the United States and the Pacific. [read on]

Jana K. Lipman is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Tulane University.

Learn more about Guantánamo: A Working-Class History between Empire and Revolution at the University of California Press website.

Writers Read: Jana K. Lipman.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Rick Mofina's "Six Seconds"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Six Seconds by Rick Mofina.

About the book, from the publisher:

A vengeful woman who aches for her place in paradise…

In Iraq an aid worker who lost her husband and child in a brutal attack saves the life of an American contractor. Believing he can help her avenge her family's deaths, she follows him back home to the United States.

An anguished mother desperate to find her child…

In California a soccer mom arrives to pick up her son from school, only to discover that her husband has taken their child and vanished without a trace.

A detective who needs to redeem himself…

In the Rocky Mountains an off-duty cop rescues a little girl from a raging river moments before she utters her final words in his arms. Haunted by failure, he launches an investigation that leads him to a Montana school where time is ticking down on an event that will rewrite history.…

Three strangers entangled in a plot to change the world in only six seconds…

Read an excerpt from the novel and watch the video trailer.

Check out Ali Karim's take on the book at The Rap Sheet.

Rick Mofina is the acclaimed author of the award-winning Reed-Sydowski series (If Angels Fall, Cold Fear, Blood of Others, No Way Back and Be Mine) and the new internationally-acclaimed Jason Wade series (The Dying Hour, Every Fear and A Perfect Grave.)

Visit Rick Mofina's website.

The Page 69 Test: Six Seconds.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Louise Penny's "A Rule Against Murder"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: A Rule Against Murder by Louise Penny.

About the book, from the author's website:

Wealthy, cultured and respectable, the Finney family is the epitome of gentility. When Irene Finney and her four grown-up children arrive at the Manoir Bellechasse in the heat of summer, the hotel's staff spring into action. For the children have come to this idyllic lakeside retreat for a special occasion - a memorial has been organised to pay tribute to their late father. But as the heat wave gathers strength, it is not just the statue of an old man that is unveiled. Old secrets and bitter rivalries begin to surface, and the morning after the ceremony, a body is found. The family has another member to mourn.

A guest at the hotel, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache suddenly finds himself in the middle of a murder enquiry. The hotel is full of possible suspects - even the Manoir's staff have something to hide, and it's clear that the victim had many enemies. With its remote location, the lodge is a place where visitors come to escape their pasts. Until the past catches up with them.

Learn more about the book and author at Louise Penny's website and her blog.

A Rule Against Murder is the fourth novel in the Three Pines mystery series.

Louise Penny's first Three Pines mystery, Still Life, won the New Blood Dagger from the British Crime Writers’ Association and the Arthur Ellis Award from the Crime Writers of Canada. In the United States it received the prestigious Anthony and Barry Awards at Bouchercon 2007, as well as the Dilys Award for the book that the members of the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association most enjoyed selling. Her second in the series, A Fatal Grace, won the 2007 Agatha Award for Best Novel. And her third, The Cruelest Month, was number one on the hardcover Independent Mystery Booksellers Association bestseller list in March 2008.

The Page 69 Test: Still Life.

My Book, The Movie: A Fatal Grace.

The Page 99 Test: The Cruelest Month.

The Page 99 Test: A Rule Against Murder.

--Marshal Zeringue

Best books: Charles Cumming

Charles Cumming is a British spy novelist who has been hailed as the heir apparent to John le Carré.

For The Week, he named his favorite thrillers.

One title to make the list:

A Coffin for Dimitrios by Eric Ambler (Vintage, $13).

Ambler is the father of the spy novel, a writer who showed that the popular thriller could also be regarded as literature. This is undoubtedly his masterpiece, a fantastically compelling novel about a mystery writer who becomes involved in the seedy, pre–World War II European underworld.

Read about another title on Cumming's list.

Learn more about the author and his work at Charles Cumming's website.

His most recent novel, Typhoon, was published in the UK to huge critical acclaim.

Cumming’s first novel, A Spy By Nature, was released in 2008 in the US in paperback. The sequel, The Spanish Game, is available in hardcover from St. Martin’s Press.

The Page 69 Test: A Spy By Nature.

My Book, The Movie: The Spanish Game.

--Marshal Zeringue

Summarizing Sundance 2009: Part II

In yesterday's dispatch from the Sundance Flim Festival, Ray Taras reported on the films Pomegranates and Myrrh, Corazón del Tiempo, and El General.

In today's communiqué, Taras covers three films: Cliente (A French Gigilo), An Education, and In the Loop.

It is often with anguish that I leave the movie theatre after seeing another Sundance film that has captured my imagination—and often my heart. I know the odds are stacked against an indie film getting a distribution deal and being released to wider audiences. The majority of films at this year’s festival have not been picked up. In a recession, artistic merit counts for even less than usual when compared to commercial value. It is some consolation that filmmakers can now post links to their work on the internet. But the economic payoff for them is likely to be next to nothing.

Perhaps symbolically, the snow in Park City has been replaced with interludes of drizzle these last few days. The ski slopes are shrouded in fog and, down in the Salt Lake Valley below, a week-long inversion has given the area the worst air quality in America. The good news is that the recession has had no impact on the number of brilliant films screened at Sundance 09 (next year will be another story). Taking in a movie to get away from it all has never been a better option.

Three European films that have promising commercial futures are ones set in those secure cinematic locations of London and Paris. Cliente, which has been rendered in English as “A French Gigolo,” offers a sensitive and at times comic treatment of a ménage à trois—there is a reason why we use a French term to describe this arrangement. At one point in the film, the wife confers with her husband’s female client about a schedule when he can be of best service to each of them. But the reality is that both are in love with him and the conflict becomes one for the ages: will the older, wealthier, more sophisticated woman (intriguingly played by Nathalie Baye) win out, or will it be the younger, blond-haired, shapely wife? No prizes for guessing right, but the lead does change hands a number of times. Telling a complicated love story is always best left to the French, who have mastered the art, and director Josiane Balasko has solidified that reputation.

It’s a cultural leap backward from the chic streets of Paris to the dowdy roads of Twickenham; the affectionate local term for the place, “Twickers,” sums the place up. Danish director Lone Scherfig stumbled into making a movie out of the screenplay written by celebrated Londoner Nick Hornby: she took over on the set when Beeban Kidron (director of Bridget Jones Diary 2) dropped out. Scherfig’s grand uncle was the great Danish iconoclastic novelist Hans Scherfig. Lone’s own unconventional artistic roots lie in the Dogme canon, reflected in her 2000 film Italian for Beginners.

Are those the right qualifications to make a movie set in Twickers? Lone appeared defensive in her comments after her first screening of An Education in the presence of an audience. She admitted to deferring to Hornby’s sensibilities and to his re-writes. She overcompensated for not being a Londoner with extensive research on the city and the period—the much-neglected 1960s. She heaped praise on Carey Mulligan, the much acclaimed actress playing the lead part of a 16-year-old — even though the actress looks every bit 22, her actual age. Scherfig insisted there was eroticism in her film even though there was no nudity, but she confessed that most sex scenes she has filmed end up on the editing room floor.

The film is an introspective story of a girl in sixth form preparing nervously for her A levels, seeking to read English at Oxford, with all the personal sacrifices this entails. She is suddenly swept away by a louche older man who wines and dines her, buys her a pre-Raphaelite painting at an auction (for which the winning bid at the time was only 200 guineas!), and takes her for her birthday to, well, predictably, Paris for a weekend to take away her virginity. Based on a true story written by an English journalist, the mismatched couple breaks up. But Scherfig told us that the man on whom the story is based still phones up his former girlfriend each year, on her birthday.

When not studying for A levels—and even when they are—the English can be raucous. In the Loop, whose world premiere was at Sundance, has an extraordinary cast transforming a brilliant screenplay into a cinematic tour de force. “Wicked” must be used in any description of the humor in the film. A biting satire on how Britain and the U.S. made the decision to invade a Middle East country, director Armando Iannucci feigned that it had nothing to do with facts or real people. But Sundance director Geoff Gilmore suggested the film should have been entered in the world documentary category. On second thought, he believed it ought to have been sent to the White House in early 2003.

The pastiche treatment of British and American policy makers is outrageous. Public school brats deaf to anything but an Elgar symphony and speaking eloquently, and vacuously, run Britain. Ambitious young sycophantic interns—the females always in bulky pant suits—shape U.S. policy. The two groups try to outdo each other in their deviousness, their hypocrisy, and their vulgar language. In the Loop is no genteel “Yes Minister” English political satire but an exposition on the repulsiveness of the Anglo-American special relationship.--Ray Taras

Read Summarizing Sundance 2009: Part I.

Ray Taras, a visiting scholar at Stanford University, is the author of the recently released Europe Old and New: Transnationalism, Belonging, Xenophobia. His literature reviews here on the blog include Per Petterson's To Siberia.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jill Sorenson's "Crash Into Me," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: Crash Into Me by Jill Sorenson.

The entry begins:

Crash Into Me is set in San Diego, a real place, but none of my characters are based on real people. I guess I start with a blank face, adding details as I go. It was a lot of fun to surf the net, searching for actors who resemble the pictures in my head.

With his brown hair and dark, bedroom eyes, Eric Bana is a good match for Ben Fortune, my surfer hero. Ben is a struggling single father and a successful pro athlete, a former ladies’ man and current murder suspect. Since his wife’s death, he’s been in virtual seclusion, shunning fans and avoiding the media. Bana seems like a reluctant heartthrob, and a strong, sensitive type, which makes him a perfect choice for Ben.

My heroine, Special Agent Sonora “Sonny” Vasquez, is more difficult to cast. Physically, she’s kind of fierce, like....[read on]

Crash Into Me hits bookstores on Tuesday, January 27th.

Read an excerpt from Crash Into Me, and learn more about the author and her work at Jill Sorenson's website and blog.

My Book, The Movie: Crash Into Me.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Erica Bauermeister's "The School of Essential Ingredients"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister.

About the book, from the publisher:

Reminiscent of Chocolat and Like Water for Chocolate, a gorgeously written novel about life, love, and the magic of food.

The School of Essential Ingredients follows the lives of eight students who gather in Lillian’s Restaurant every Monday night for cooking class. It soon becomes clear, however, that each one seeks a recipe for something beyond the kitchen. Students include Claire, a young mother struggling with the demands of her family; Antonia, an Italian kitchen designer learning to adapt to life in America; and Tom, a widower mourning the loss of his wife to breast cancer. Chef Lillian, a woman whose connection with food is both soulful and exacting, helps them to create dishes whose flavor and techniques expand beyond the restaurant and into the secret corners of her students’ lives. One by one the students are transformed by the aromas, flavors, and textures of Lillian’s food, including a white-on-white cake that prompts wistful reflections on the sweet fragility of love and a peppery heirloom tomato sauce that seems to spark one romance but end another. Brought together by the power of food and companionship, the lives of the characters mingle and intertwine, united by the revealing nature of what can be created in the kitchen.

Read an excerpt from The School of Essential Ingredients, and learn more about the book and author at Erica Bauermeister's website.

Erica Bauermeister is the co-author of 500 Great Books by Women: A Reader's Guide and Let's Hear It For the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14, and has taught literature and creative writing at the University of Washington.

The Page 69 Test: The School of Essential Ingredients.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best butlers in literature

At the Guardian, John Mullan named ten of the best butlers in literature.

One butler on the list:

Poole

Poole is Dr Jekyll's butler and the only character from whom Jekyll's inquisitive lawyer Mr Utterson can extract information about his increasingly odd client. We know that we are reaching the climax of the story when Poole abandons his post and his butler-like reticence to visit Utterson and confide his suspicion that his master has been murdered by Mr Hyde. . .

Read about the butler who topped Mullan's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Lorne Tepperman's "Betting Their Lives"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Betting Their Lives: The Close Relations of Problem Gamblers by Lorne Tepperman.

About the book, from the publisher:

There are now more ways than ever to gamble-casinos, corner stores, the internet-and as a result, there are also ever more "problem gamblers," individuals who gamble compulsively to their own detriment. While gambling is promoted as fun and glamorous, the reality is usually very different. Studies suggest that some 1 in 50 adults, or roughly 480,000 Canadians, have a gambling problem. So it is time to take a new and careful look at how gambling affects the lives of all these people.

Problem gambling has traditionally been seen as an individual issue: it's your problem, you deal with it. But this new book, the only study of its kind, takes an innovative sociological approach, considering problem gambling as a public health issue (it has social causes and significant health outcomes). Betting Their Lives is based on first-hand interviews that take us right into the lives of a selection of problem gamblers; we see how gambling is influenced by, and in turn influences, relationships with intimate partners - husbands, wives, children.

Based on important new research by outstanding Canadian sociologist Lorne Tepperman, this book looks into the personal relationships of problem gamblers, and comes out with some surprising results. It provides a superb discussion of expert opinion on the subject, includes first-hand narratives of those who have suffered from gambling addictions, and brings essential new explanatory concepts to the issue.

While more research is required into this growing problem, Betting Their Lives introduces a new and urgently needed understanding of problem gambling.

Read more about Betting Their Lives at the Oxford University Press website.

Lorne Tepperman is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto and is the author of many important books on sociology in Canada.

The Page 99 Test: Betting Their Lives.

--Marshal Zeringue

Summarizing Sundance 2009: Part I

Ray Taras, who covers World Literature for the blog, filed this dispatch from the Sundance Flim Festival:

It was the wrong question to ask, especially after what has been happening these last few weeks. The emotional reply didn’t clear anything up, but it was perfectly understandable. Palestinians continue to sing and to dance and to love, first-time director and screenwriter Najwa Najjar insisted, because they do not see themselves as victims.

Of course Palestinians are victims. They may continue to sing and to laugh and to harvest, but ordinary Palestinians are the victims of both Israeli military attacks, and of the intra-Palestinian disputes between Fatah and Hamas that heighten Israeli insecurity. Pomegranates and Myrrh—“sweetness and bitterness,” as Najjar says of her film, does indeed, in my view, depict Palestinian self pity—the question I had asked of her. If there are any circumstances in which national self pity is justified—and most nations invariably have bouts of it—then those confronting the Palestinians are it. Nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to apologize for.

A film project that she began while confined for weeks to her home by the Israeli crackdown following the breakout of the Second Intifada in 2000, there are scenes of the immense wall constructed by Israel to separate itself from the West Bank, the prison where the film’s protagonist is being held under “administrative detention.” There is the land confiscation issue—a controversial policy not providing for the same dramatic imagery as Israeli tanks rolling through Gaza but every bit as threatening to Palestinian survival. As one character in the film puts it, “If the Israelis succeed in confiscating our land, all is lost.”Armed Jewish settlers lurk on Palestinian-owned olive groves subjected to Israeli confiscation orders just waiting to start digging foundations for new apartment blocks.

How do you resist under these conditions? the film director asks. By training for a dance performance at a reopened fair grounds is the literal answer. Najjar, an earnest, eloquent, soft-spoken film maker, told us that her characters are searching for a way to speak about their lives, to open up dialogue. When I asked whether that meant engaging in a dialogue with someone like Israeli filmmaker Amos Gitai, who has shown much sympathy for the Palestinian cause, she ruled it out—“let’s not go there.” The two solitudes have never been further apart, it seems.

Pomegranates and Myrrh is a testimonial to Palestinian helplessness. It needn’t be this way: the literary voices of Ghassan Kanafani and Mhmoud Darwish ring out loudly and assertively. We cannot argue with Najjar when she acknowledges that a low budget movie like hers is understandable; money is desperately needed for hospitals and schools, not films. The saccharine electronic sound track is composed by the omnipresent Toronto-based film music master Mychael Dana. While a coup for her—“I emailed telling him about our low budget movie, he viewed the rough cut, and replied ‘make me an offer’”—it raises questions why Palestinian music cannot capture the fate of the Palestinian people.

Perhaps only a Western idiom can convey that fate to a Western audience. This reality is underscored by a second film dealing with Palestinians, selected by some critics as one of the top five at Sundance this year. There is a simple reason for this. Amreeka follows a Palestinian single mother who migrates to the U.S. to live with her Americanized extended family. Made by Cherien Dabis, an Arab-American who grew up in Ohio, it has a hook American viewers can relate to. Still, if a film about fitting in with our culture—not being a Palestinian in Palestine—is what critics prize, our level of cultural intelligence is worryingly impoverished.

Can the cinema of resistance be successful in projecting its message? For over a decade the most savvy resistance movement there has been anywhere in the world are the Zapatistas in southern Mexico. This phenomenon—it is just that—is underscored in Corazón del Tiempo (“Heart of Time”) being shown at Sundance. The film was made using no professional actors—just people recruited from indigenous communities in Chiapas, who were given a script to read. Alberto Cortés’ fourth feature is based on years of gaining access to and the trust of these communities. Showing these people other films, he emphasized, helped create a bond.

Predictably, one character in the film uses a hand held camera to video the Mexican government’s military helicopters and convoys that constantly harass the region. Should they make a false step, the world will be able quickly to witness it on their computers, and international solidarity with the descendants of the Mayans will deepen. Given the political capital the Zapatistas have carved out, the filmmaker claims he even invited the paramilitaries used by the federal Mexico authorities to repress the Zapatistas to take part in his film. The up tempo songs in the film are local, too, and, most significantly, the story-telling medium is distinctly indigenous. The film’s premiere was in the indigenous communities.

The unshakeable seemingly effortless self assurance of Corazon del Tiempo is rarely found in the cinema of resistance. Who else but the Zapatistas can make a film about the Leninist dictum to speed up the electrification of the countryside and infuse it with wide popular appeal! When Cortés was asked if he feared repercussions for his glorification of the Zapatistas’ struggle he smiled dismissively and replied no, Mexico has won its freedom and a filmmaker too can enjoy it in peace.

A fact that does not exist in the Palestinian territories today. Or in Mexico a hundred years ago, before the Revolution. Or for the first two decades after it. A third film I watched was titled El General dealing with General Plutarco Elias Calles, Mexican president from 1924 to 1928, then, under his successors, El Jefe Máximo (giving name to the Maximato of 1928 to 1935). An authoritarian figure under whom political assassinations were commonplace and executions of Catholic priests widespread, Calles’ legacy is evaluated through the audio recordings made by his daughter in the 1960s and a superimposed commentary by his great granddaughter.

Lest we assume that Mexican affairs are naturally of greater interest to us than Palestinian ones, this film is so tedious—slow scans of newspaper headlines and old family photos, repeated slo-mo showings of the few video clips we have of Calles, another minimalist music sound track that grates—that its commercial appeal may be limited to the Mexican equivalent of PBS. Mexican democracy is a mess, the film informs us, and corruption needs to be swept away. We see countless images of street cleaners with big brooms tidying up daily after the reported 500,000 street vendors—generating up to one-third of the country’s GDP--in Mexico City have called it a day. But just as it does about Calles’ legacy, the film equivocates about who should clean up Mexico. Like the notion of cantinfeado that originated in a 1930s film about a barber who is elected to the Mexican Congress by spewing out political promises he does not intend to keep, El General exemplifies Mexico’s problems and is not a part of its solution.

Sundance celebrates a notional twenty-fifth anniversary this year—there was a small film festival before 1984—and Steven Soderbergh was at a panel this week to celebrate it. The maker of sex, lies, and videotape (1989) that made him the “poster boy of the Sundance generation,” he argued that the Indie versus Hollywood dichotomy was meaningless. “It’s good movie versus bad movie. Indie cinema doesn’t have the market cornered on quality” (Sundance Daily Insider, January 21, 2009). Robert Redford, too, in his promo film, insists that there is no such thing as a Sundance film. Instead, “there will always be space for new stories told in new ways.”

The “new stories” in 2009 that have created a buzz include Endgame, a British film capturing the tense final years of South Africa’s apartheid regime; William Hurt stars in this Sundance premiere that will soon be at our Cineplexes. The September Issue focuses on Anna Wintour, long time editor of Vogue and a powerful figure in the world of fashion. Taking Chance, starring Kevin Bacon who has been pacing back and forth along Main Street this week, has been picked up by HBO after playing to shaken and sobbing audiences in Park City. It is not another film about the Iraq war but a defining one, the story of a Marine who brings the remains of a young soldier back to his family in Wyoming. Made by debut film maker Ross Katz, at a Q and A session the Marine emphasized how he had been taught to just “suck it up” when dealing with death and grieving. Another noteworthy film—one of the first world cinema documentaries to sell out all four screenings--is Let’s Make Money, an exposé of the arrogant globalization clan running the world’s financial system and transferring the wealth of nations into private hands. It is directed by Austrian director Erwin Wagenhofer.--Ray Taras

Read last year's Festival report from Taras: Summarizing Sundance '08.

Ray Taras, a visiting scholar at Stanford University, is the author of the recently released Europe Old and New: Transnationalism, Belonging, Xenophobia.

His literature reviews here on the blog include Per Petterson's To Siberia.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Catherine Allgor reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Catherine Allgor, author of A Perfect Union: Dolley Madison and the Creation of the American Nation and Parlor Politics: In Which the Ladies of Washington Help Build a City and a Government.

Her entry begins:

The most intriguing thing I learned from P. M. Forni's Choosing Civility: The Twenty-Five Rules of Considerate Conduct is on the front cover. A professor of Italian literature, Forni is also the co-founder of the Johns Hopkins Civility Project! Who knew there was such a thing?

This amazing fact does not mean you need to stop at the cover; Forni's small volume contains much wisdom and many insights. Choosing Civility, as Forni acknowledges, is just the most up-to-date version of a long-established genre--the courtesy book. As a historian of early America, I have had my own experiences with these manners manuals. Though they originated in European courts, courtesy books have an important place in American history. George Washington famously copied the dicta from one into his own little book; the nineteenth-century versions played an enormous role in the refinement movement in the United States.

When you read the old books--and even skim the rules that a young Washington chose to record--you understand how many of these "don't's" were about not intruding on another's space....[read on]

Catherine Allgor is the Visiting Croul Chair in American History at Claremont McKenna College.

The Page 99 Test: A Perfect Union.

Writers Read: Catherine Allgor.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Geri Spieler's "Taking Aim at the President"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Taking Aim at the President: The Remarkable Story of the Woman Who Shot at Gerald Ford by Geri Spieler.

About the book, from the publisher:

"I'm not sorry I tried...if successful, the assassination...just might have triggered the kind of chaos that could have started the upheaval of change." --Sara Jane Moore in 1976

Journalist Geri Spieler met would-be assassin Sara Jane Moore while she was in prison; Taking Aim at the President is based on over two decades of interviews as well as independant research. Spieler follows Moore's actions from her childhood in a small West Virginia town to her release from prison in December 2007. Moore's life was never conventional, and along the way she entered and dropped out of the military, was married five times, and was both a political radical and an FBI informant. Focusing on the complex psychology and motivations of a quintessentially desperate housewife and the only woman to ever fire a bullet at an American president, Spieler delivers a nuanced portrait of an elusive person and a fascinating glimpse back at a turbulent period in American history.

Read an excerpt from Taking Aim at the President, and learn more about the book at author at Geri Spieler's website and blog.

Geri Spieler is an investigative journalist and award-winning speaker. She has written for the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and Forbes. She has a strong professional relationship with her subject, Sara Jane Moore, who she has visited and interviewed in prison for the last thirty years.

The Page 69 Test: Taking Aim at the President.

--Marshal Zeringue

William H. Macy: best books

The actor William H. Macy named a "best books" list for The Week.

One title to make the list:

The Willow Field by William Kittredge.

I easily deem this 20th-century epic Western as one of my favorites. The book chronicles the life and times of Rossie Benasco, the son of a Reno, Nev., casino boss. Rossie’s decision to leave home to become a ranch hand leads him on many life adventures.

Read about another book on Macy's list.

Read an excerpt from The Willow Field.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: D. Sperling & D. Gordon's "Two Billion Cars"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Two Billion Cars: Driving Toward Sustainability by Daniel Sperling and Deborah Gordon.

About the book, from the publisher:

At present, there are roughly a billion motor vehicles in the world. Within twenty years, the number will double to 2 billion, largely a consequence of China's and India's explosive growth. Given that greenhouse gases are already creating havoc with our climate and that violent conflict in oil-rich nations is on the rise, does this mean that matters will only get worse? Or are there hopeful signs that effective, realistic solutions can be found?

In Two Billion Cars, transportation experts Daniel Sperling and Deborah Gordon provide a concise history of America's love affair with cars and an overview of the global oil and auto industries. America is still the leading emissions culprit, and what is especially worrying is that developing nations are becoming car-centric cultures as well. The authors explain how we arrived in this dangerous state, and also what we can do about it. Sperling and Gordon expose the roots of the problem-- the resistant auto-industry, dysfunctional oil markets, short-sighted government policies, and unmotivated consumers. They zero in on reforming our gas-guzzling culture, expanding the search for low-carbon fuels, environment-friendly innovations in transportation planning, and more. Promising advances in both transportation technology and fuel efficiency together with shifts in travel behavior, they suggest, offer us a realistic way out of our predicament.

Ironically, the authors contend that the two places with the most troublesome emissions problems--California and China-- are taking the lead in developing effective strategies that can help wean us from our reliance on conventional, petroleum-fueled cars. California's embrace of eco-friendly policies, which Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger discusses in the foreword, and China's willingness to confront the twin environmental and energy crises wrought by an exponential growth in cars, suggest that if they can develop ingenious and effective solutions, then there really is reason for hope.

Learn more about Two Billion Cars at the Oxford University Press website.

Daniel Sperling is Professor of Engineering and Environmental Science & Policy at the University of California, Davis, and Founding Director of University of California, Davis's Institute of Transportation Studies. Deborah Gordon is a senior transportation policy analyst who has provided consulting services to the National Commission on Energy Policy, the California Energy Commission, Hewlett Foundation, and the Chinese government to develop fiscal policies for their burgeoning auto fleet.

The Page 99 Test: Two Billion Cars.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: David Oppegaard's "The Suicide Collectors"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: The Suicide Collectors by David Oppegaard.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Despair has plagued the earth for five years. Most of the world’s population has inexplicably died by its own hand, and the few survivors struggle to remain alive. A mysterious, shadowy group called the Collectors has emerged, inevitably appearing to remove the bodies of the dead. But in the crumbling state of Florida, a man named Norman takes an unprecedented stand against the Collectors, propelling him on a journey across North America. It’s rumored a scientist in Seattle is working on a cure for the Despair, but in a world ruled by death, it won’t be easy to get there.

Read more about The Suicide Collectors at the publisher's website and at David Oppegaard's website and blog.

David Oppegaard holds a B.A. in English Literature from St. Olaf College and an M.F.A. in Writing from Hamline University. The Suicide Collectors is his first published novel.

The Page 69 Test: The Suicide Collectors.

--Marshal Zeringue

10 great novels with terrible original titles

At the Guardian, John Mullan named ten great novels with terrible original titles.

One book on the list:

The Saddest Story

What Ford Madox Ford had wanted to call his 1915 masterpiece; he had offered an alternative, The Good Soldier, to his publisher as a joke. The publisher, however, rejected his preference, worried that it would render the novel "unsaleable" in wartime.

Read about the top two titles on Mullan's list.

The Page 99 Test: The Good Soldier.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Rick Mayes reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Rick Mayes, associate professor of public policy at the University of Richmond and co-author of Medicare Prospective Payment and the Shaping of U.S. Health Care and the recently published Medicating Children: ADHD and Pediatric Mental Health.

His entry begins:

Like millions of Americans, I was raised “born again” in an evangelical environment—at school, church and home—where my peers and I were often encouraged to foster a “personal relationship with Jesus.” Also like millions of Americans, I suppose, my enthusiasm for pursuing this kind of religious or spiritual experience waxed and waned over the years. The faith that I did develop out of these influences genuinely helped me through a variety of difficult personal times in my teens and 20s. But occasionally I found my uniquely American, Protestant, 20th century, consumerist version of Christianity to be intellectually hard to explain, much less defend. Millions of people around the world were suffering from a variety of severe deprivations and injustices and yet I was supposed to believe (or wanted to believe) that God was also equally concerned about my suburban, existential ups and downs? Wouldn’t that be a bit irrational and perverse, I sometimes thought to myself? Well, over the last several years a number of new Christian writers, who came to similar conclusions, have been publishing entertaining books about their personal journeys of faith and the evolution in their spiritual thinking: Donald Miller (Blue Like Jazz, Searching for God Knows What) and Rob Bell (Velvet Elvis, Sex God, Jesus Wants to Save Christians) are some examples. Another writer who has joined this cadre is Shane Claiborne, author of The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical.

Claiborne was raised in eastern Kentucky and....[read on]

Learn more about Rick Mayes' teaching, research, and publications at his University of Richmond faculty webpage.

Writers Read: Rick Mayes.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: John Jeter's "The Plunder Room"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: The Plunder Room by John Jeter.

About the book, from the publisher:

Moments before Edward Duncan dies, the colorful World War II hero leaves a mandate for his grandson Randol--to safeguard the family's proud Southern legacy. Randol, paralyzed and in a wheelchair after a car accident, buries his grandfather, and learns that his father, a Vietnam veteran, is running an illicit empire with Randol's half-brother, Jerod.

A wise-cracking music critic, Randol already has his hands full with his pot-smoking Goth son. When Jerod brings the gorgeous Annie down South and parks her in their South Carolina home, the family maid Volusia, "quick to ram a bar of soap into any foul mouth," sizes up Annie in short order. Jerod, his father, and Randol, are blind to what Volusia sees so easily, making it that much harder for Randol to bring the family together and salvage their dignity.

John Jeter's debut is a powerfully compelling story about one man's mission to preserve his family's ideals of honor and loyalty.

View the video trailer and read more about The Plunder Room at the publisher's website and John Jeter's blog.

John Jeter is a former editor and reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times, San Antonio Express-News and St. Petersburg Times, with a master's in journalism from Columbia University. He is also co-owner and founder of The Handlebar, an award-winning concert venue in Greenville, South Carolina. The Plunder Room is his first published novel.

The Page 69 Test: The Plunder Room.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: C.A.J. Coady's "Messy Morality"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Messy Morality: The Challenge of Politics by C.A.J. Coady.

About the book, from the publisher:

Tony Coady explores the challenges that morality poses to politics. He confronts the complex intellectual tradition known as realism, which seems to deny any relevance of morality to politics, especially international politics. He argues that, although realism has many serious faults, it has lessons to teach us: in particular, it cautions us against the dangers of moralism in thinking about politics and particularly foreign affairs. Morality must not be confused with moralism: Coady characterizes various forms of moralism and sketches their distorting influence on a realistic political morality. He seeks to restore the concept of ideals to an important place in philosophical discussion, and to give it a particular pertinence in the discussion of politics. He deals with the fashionable idea of "dirty hands," according to which good politics will necessarily involve some degree of moral taint or corruption. Finally, he examines the controversial issue of the role of lying and deception in politics.

Along the way Coady offers illuminating discussion of historical and current political controversies. This lucid book will provoke and stimulate anyone interested in the interface of morality and politics.

Read more about Messy Morality at the Oxford University Press website.

C. A. J. (Tony) Coady is one of Australia's best-known philosophers. He has an international reputation for his research in both epistemology and political and applied philosophy. His recent publications include Morality and Political Violence (Cambridge, 2007).

Learn more about Tony Coady at his webpage at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics.

The Page 99 Test: Messy Morality.

--Marshal Zeringue

Laurel Corona's "The Four Seasons," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: The Four Seasons by Laurel Corona.

The entry begins:

Writing The Four Seasons, I quickly realized how much of a challenge it was going to bring to life the sensual extravaganza that was Venice in the early eighteenth century. I think every writer comes up against the sobering fact that in our culture we shortchange our sensory experiences, so that we really can’t, for example, describe with any great degree of specificity the way a rose smells or butter tastes. I am old enough to remember American Bandstand, where cute teenagers, when asked whether they liked a new record, would almost inevitably say they did, with no more explanation than “it has a good beat and I can dance to it.” Novels based on paintings, such as those by Tracy Chevalier and Susan Vreeland, get a visual boost from their covers, but alas, there’s no such help for the poor soul writing a novel about music.

I often joked with my friends about how I was writing “Amadeus Meets Girl with the Pearl Earring,” realizing early on that for The Four Seasons to come to full life it needed to be experienced with Vivaldi’s music backing it up. I won’t be bashful about saying that I really, truly hope it will become a movie. In addition to the two main characters that can’t be cast—Venice and Vivaldi’s music--here are some ideas for first-rate actors who could bring The Four Seasons to life on screen.

For Vivaldi, Elijah Wood and Tobey Maguire bear a pretty good resemblance, but....[read on]

Read an excerpt from The Four Seasons, and learn more about the book and author at Laurel Corona's website and blog.

Laurel Corona is the author of more than a dozen middle school books and Until Our Last Breath: A Holocaust Story of Love and Partisan Resistance, and is a professor of English and Humanities at San Diego City College.

The Page 69 Test: The Four Seasons.

My Book, The Movie: The Four Seasons.

--Marshal Zeringue

Malcolm Gladwell: best books

Malcolm Gladwell, New Yorker contributor and author of The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers: The Story of Success, named a "best books" list for The Week.

One title to make the list:

The Blind Side by Michael Lewis.

Lewis is the finest storyteller of our generation, and this is his best book. Supposedly about football (the title refers to the side of the field a quarterback is blind to), it’s actually an extraordinary story about love and redemption.

Read about another book on Gladwell's list.

Learn about Michael Lewis' most important books.

The Page 69 Test: The Blind Side.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Josh Bazell's "Beat the Reaper"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell.

About the book, from the publisher:

Dr. Peter Brown is an intern at Manhattan's worst hospital, with a talent for medicine, a shift from hell, and a past he'd prefer to keep hidden. Whether it's a blocked circumflex artery or a plan to land a massive malpractice suit, he knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men.

Pietro "Bearclaw" Brnwna is a hitman for the mob, with a genius for violence, a well-earned fear of sharks, and an overly close relationship with the Federal Witness Relocation Program. More likely to leave a trail of dead gangsters than a molecule of evidence, he's the last person you want to see in your hospital room.

Nicholas LoBrutto, aka Eddy Squillante, is Dr. Brown's new patient, with three months to live and a very strange idea: that Peter Brown and Pietro Brnwa might-just might-be the same person ...

Now, with the mob, the government, and death itself descending on the hospital, Peter has to buy time and do whatever it takes to keep his patients, himself, and his last shot at redemption alive. To get through the next eight hours-and somehow beat the reaper.

Spattered in adrenaline-fueled action and bone-saw-sharp dialogue, Beat the Reaper is a debut thriller so utterly original you won't be able to guess what happens next, and so shockingly entertaining you won't be able to put it down.

Read or listen to an excerpt, and learn more about the book and author at the Beat the Reaper website.

Josh Bazell has a BA in writing from Brown University and a MD from Columbia University.

The Page 69 Test: Beat the Reaper.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Wendy Mnookin reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Wendy Mnookin, author of four poetry collections, The Moon Makes Its Own Plea, What He Took and To Get Here, all from BOA Editions, and Guenever Speaks, a collection of persona poems. She has recent poems in the Harvard Review, Prairie Schooner and Salamander.

Mnookin has won a Book Award from the New England Poetry Club and a Poetry Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She graduated from Radcliffe College and the Vermont College MFA Program. She teaches poetry at Emerson College and at Grub Street, a non-profit writing center in Boston.

One paragraph from her entry:

I recently went back to David Wojahn's Strange Good Fortune: Essays on Contemporary Poetry. I find I read more carefully the second time through, or maybe it's that different aspects of the discussion interest me, but in any case it feels like a new read. This time around I was especially fascinated with the essay on W.D. Snodgrass--I hadn't remembered that at the beginning of his career Snodgrass wrote under as the pseudonym "Gardons" as well as under his own name. Which sent me to Not for Specialists: New and Selected Poems, where I could compare the two bodies of work. I recommend reading the selection from Heart's Needle, written as Snodgrass, and the selection from Remains, where Gardons speaks--and speaks more freely.[read on]

Visit Wendy Mnookin's website and check out Garrison Keillor reading one of her poems.

Writers Read: Wendy Mnookin.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Russell and Cheryl Sharman's "Nightshift NYC"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Nightshift NYC by Russell Leigh Sharman and Cheryl Harris Sharman.

About the book, from the publisher:

New York is the city that never sleeps. This luminous book peels back the cover of darkness over the city as it hums along in the night, revealing a hidden world populated by the thousands of women and men who work and live the nightshift. Written with beauty and grace, Nightshift NYC weaves together cultural critique, vivid reportage, and arresting photographs to trace the inverted logic of the city at night. Russell Leigh Sharman and Cheryl Harris Sharman spent a year interviewing and shadowing fry cooks and coffee jockeys, train conductors, cab hacks, and dozens of others who keep the city running when the sun goes down. Investigating familiar places such diners and delis, they explore some less familiar ones as well—taking us on a walking tour of homelessness in Manhattan, onto a fishing boat out of Brooklyn, and into other little-known corners of the night. Traveling past the threshold of voyeurism into the lives of real people, they depict a social space entirely apart—one that is highly structured and inherently subversive. Together, these stories open a compelling view on contemporary urban life and, along the way, reveal the soul of the city itself.

Russell Leigh Sharman is a writer and anthropologist. He received his PhD in cultural anthropology from Oxford University in 1999, and now teaches at Brooklyn College. Cheryl Harris Sharman has written for publications including Scientific American Online, The Lancet, The Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO) magazine, Perspectives in Health, The San Francisco Chronicle, and Central America’s The Tico Times.

Visit the Nightshift NYC website and blog.

The Page 99 Test: Nightshift NYC.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Courtney Summers' "Cracked Up to Be"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Cracked Up to Be by Courtney Summers.

About the book, from the publisher:

Perfect Parker Fadley isn’t so perfect anymore. She’s quit the cheerleading squad, she’s dumped her perfect boyfriend, and she’s failing school. Her parents are on a constant suicide watch and her counselors think she’s playing games…but what they don’t know, the real reason for this whole mess, isn’t something she can say out loud. It isn’t even something she can say to herself. A horrible thing has happened and it just might be her fault. If she can just remove herself from everybody--be totally alone--then everything will be okay... The problem is, nobody will let her.

View the video trailer for Cracked Up to Be.

Read an excerpt from Cracked Up to Be, and learn more about the author and her work at Courtney Summers' website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: Cracked Up to Be.

--Marshal Zeringue

Critic's chart: how-to books

Book reviewer Melissa Katsoulis named six top how-to books for the (London) Times.

One book to make the chart:

How to Tell a Naked Man What to Do by Candida Royalle

She's a feminist pornographer and with a name like that, who's going to argue with her?

Read about another title on Katsoulis' list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Blaize Clement's "Cat Sitter on a Hot Tin Roof"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Cat Sitter on a Hot Tin Roof by Blaize Clement.

About the book, from the publisher:

Curiosity Killed the Cat Sitter introduced a winning sleuth in Florida pet sitter Dixie Hemingway, and the next books in the series, Duplicity Dogged the Dachshund and Even Cat Sitters Get the Blues, firmly established author Blaize Clement as a new star amongst mystery fans. Now Dixie Hemingway, no relation to you-know-who, is back in this fourth riveting installment.

When Dixie meets Laura Halston, a newcomer to Siesta Key, she recognizes a kindred spirit and believes she's found a new friend. Disarmingly beautiful, Laura confesses that she's in hiding from an abusive husband. Later, when Laura receives threatening phone calls, Dixie is certain the husband is the culprit.

But the more Dixie learns about Laura, the less certain she is about anything…and then matters turn deadly. As she tries to understand Laura’s past, Dixie is forced to acknowledge things about herself that she has never faced before.

Fast-paced and gripping, Cat Sitter on a Hot Tin Roof is everything Blaize Clement’s many fans have come to expect.

Blaize Clement is the author of the Dixie Hemingway mysteries: Curiosity Killed the Cat Sitter, Duplicity Dogged the Dachshund, and Even Cat Sitters Get the Blues.

Visit Blaize Clement's website and blog.

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

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

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Malcolm Shuman's "The Levee"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: The Levee by Malcolm Shuman.

About the book, from the publisher:

Colin Douglas, a 63-year-old true crime writer, witnesses the execution of his latest subject which leaves him "feeling hollow, with a copper taste in my mouth."

The upsetting experience triggers a recurrent nightmare, about a traumatic incident that occurred in 1959, when he was a boy growing up in Baton Rouge. A teacher from his school was murdered in a cemetery near a Mississippi River levee and an abandoned slave plantation.

In his nightmare, he sinks into the mud of a borrow pit and when his nocturnal dread even begins to affect his waking life, he decides to leave Colorado and return to Baton Rouge to find out what really happened that night.

The fascinating parallel narratives of Colin the boy and the mature writer come together when he meets his old friend, Blaize St. Martin. Their discussion of that dark night leads to new discoveries and ends with the shocking impact of a Hitchcock film.

Based on a true story, The Levee subtly explores the reality beneath the surface of the America of 1959. with vivid characters and a convincing portrayal of adolescent boys. this book has been compared to The Body by Stephen King, the basis for the film, Stand By Me.

Read more about The Levee at the publisher's website and visit Malcolm Shuman's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Levee.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Paul Collier reading?

This weekend's featured contributor to Writers Read: Paul Collier, author of The Bottom Billion and Wars, Guns, and Votes: Democracy in Dangerous Places.

One book mentioned in his entry:

It’s Our Turn to Eat: the Story of a Kenyan Whistleblower
by Michela Wrong,
Published by Fourth Estate, February 3rd, 2009.

One of the advantages of being an author is that other authors sometimes send you advance copies of their books. Over Christmas Michela Wrong sent me her new book, It’s Our Turn to Eat: the Story of a Kenyan Whistleblower which is not out until February 3rd. This turned out to be one of those rare books that once you have started leaves you no choice but to drop everything else until you have finished it. For me this proved mighty inconvenient – I face deadlines – but that is what I did.

The book is written like a thriller, except that this is reality. A tape recorder concealed on the hero’s body really did go wrong and start to play back out loud at a crucial moment. If....[read on]

Paul Collier is a professor of economics at Oxford University. He is the author of The Bottom Billion, which won the Lionel Gelber Prize and the Arthur Ross Book Award of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Visit Paul Collier's website.

Learn more about Wars, Guns, and Votes: Democracy in Dangerous Places.

Read J. Tyler Dickovick's interview with Collier about his last book, The Bottom Billion.

The Page 99 Test: The Bottom Billion.

Writers Read: Paul Collier.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Marc Egnal's "Clash of Extremes"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Clash of Extremes: The Economic Origins of the Civil War by Marc Egnal.

About the book, from the publisher:

Clash of Extremes takes on the reigning orthodoxy that the American Civil War was waged over high moral principles. Marc Egnal contends that economics, more than any other factor, moved the country to war in 1861.

Drawing on a wealth of primary and secondary sources, Egnal shows that between 1820 and 1850, patterns of trade and production drew the North and South together and allowed sectional leaders to broker a series of compromises. After midcentury, however, all that changed as the rise of the Great Lakes economy reoriented Northern trade along east-west lines. Meanwhile, in the South, soil exhaustion, concerns about the country’s westward expansion, and growing ties between the Upper South and the free states led many cotton planters to contemplate secession. The war that ensued was truly a “clash of extremes.”

Sweeping from the 1820s through Reconstruction and filled with colorful portraits of leading individuals, Clash of Extremes emphasizes economics while giving careful consideration to social conflicts, ideology, and the rise of the antislavery movement. The result is a bold reinterpretation that will challenge the way we think about the Civil War.

Learn more about Clash of Extremes at the publisher's website.

Marc Egnal is a professor of history at York University and the author of several books, including A Mighty Empire: The Origins of the American Revolution and Divergent Paths: How Culture and Institutions Have Shaped North American Growth.

The Page 99 Test: Clash of Extremes.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten best books about Chinese women in 2008

From The China Beat's list of the "10 Best Books about Chinese Women in 2008:"

Xiaolu Guo, A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers. Chatto & Windus.

This inventive novel that also poses as a Chinese language textbook follows the romance between Z, a 20-year-old girl who left her village in China for London, and her 44-year-old bisexual, ex-anarchist vegetarian British boyfriend. Like the film “Lost in Translation,” the story explores belonging, alienation, and the missed communication that we often attribute to cultural differences but that exists between any two individual minds.

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Peter James' "Looking Good Dead"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Looking Good Dead by Peter James.

About the book, from the publisher:

Tom Bryce did what any decent person would do. But within hours of picking up the CD that had been left behind on the train seat next him, and attempting to return it to its owner, he is the sole witness to a vicious murder. Then his young family are threatened with their lives if he goes to the police. But supported by his wife, Kellie, he bravely makes a statement, to the murder enquiry team headed by Detective Superintendent Roy Grace, a man with demons of his own - including his missing wife - to contend with. And from that moment, the killing of the Bryce family becomes a mere formality - and a grisly attraction. Kellie and Tom's deaths have already been posted on the internet. You can log on and see them on a website. They are looking good dead.

Read the first two chapters of Looking Good Dead and learn more about the author and his work at the official Peter James website.

Peter James has worked as a screenwriter and a producer of numerous films, including the The Merchant Of Venice, starring Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons and Joseph Fiennes.

Looking Good Dead is the second of four novels in the the award winning Detective Superintendent Roy Grace crime series, which Judith Cutler calls "predictably deeply researched, elegantly written, fiendishly plotted and impossible to put down." The other titles are Dead Simple, Not Dead Enough, and Dead Man's Footsteps.

The Page 69 Test: Looking Good Dead.

--Marshal Zeringue

Erika Mailman's "The Witch’s Trinity," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: The Witch’s Trinity by Erika Mailman.

The entry begins:

It’s a heady thing to imagine a movie made of one’s novel. Most novels never get optioned for film, let alone have the rights bought outright—and then to be filmed and distributed, well, let’s just say it’s a guilty pleasure to visualize. Much like my daydreams of getting an Olympic gold medal (in some vague, undefined sport) or saving someone’s life.

My book is The Witch’s Trinity, set in medieval Germany. The main character Gude is elderly, as is her friend Kunne who is pivotal in the beginning. I’m happy my book would offer leading roles for older women if it were made. I’ve heard much talk of how females in Hollywood never get good roles after they turn 30-something… this would be a film where older women could sink their teeth into meaningful roles. Although the character Irmeltrud is comparatively young, the severity of her life (diet, strenuous work, short life expectancy in the Middle Ages) has rendered her looking fairly old.

My choice for the main character Gude would most emphatically be Dame Judi Dench. Though she often plays firm, no-nonsense characters, her vulnerability and mental bewilderment in the film Iris make it clear how amazing she is when portraying less powerful characters. She also looks...[read on]

Read an excerpt from The Witch's Trinity and learn more about the book and author at Erika Mailman's website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: The Witch's Trinity.

My Book, The Movie: The Witch’s Trinity.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Dawn Shamp reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Dawn Shamp, author of the acclaimed debut novel, On Account of Conspicuous Women.

Her entry begins:

Thank you for asking. I ought to be ashamed to admit this, but I tend to read works I should’ve read way back in high school, and perhaps too little of what’s current, but for Michael Chabon and Eric Felten’s column in the Wall Street Journal (hey, if it weren’t for his column I never would’ve known how to make a Sweet Patootie or discovered mascara cherries).

At the moment I’m doing research for a novel set in the 1940s, so I’m having a heyday with a stack of books. Among them are three standouts:

Three Comrades by Erich Maria Remarque. This book is an absolute treasure. Here’s a writer who not only has a remarkable understanding of the human condition, but who also portrays it beautifully with his stunning balance of wit and poignancy — without melodrama. One scene that will forever stick with me is...[read on]

Read Linda L. Richards' January Magazine review of On Account of Conspicuous Women as well as other accolades and reviews.

Visit Dawn Shamp's website.

Writers Read: Dawn Shamp.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Justin Marozzi's "The Way of Herodotus"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: The Way of Herodotus: Travels with the Man Who Invented History by Justin Marozzi.

About the book, from the publisher:

During the classical age of Greece, Herodotus wrote the first history text. But what he created was much more than this. Informed by his own travels, his historical work digresses more than it chronicles, with tales of the lands and peoples he visited. As Michael Ondaatje once famously suggested, “What you find in him are the cul-de-sacs within the sweep of history.” In The Way of Herodotus, intrepid travel historian Justin Marozzi retraces the footsteps of Herodotus through the Mediterranean and Middle East, examining his 2,500-year-old observations about the cultures and places he visited, and finding echoes of his legacy reverberating to this day. It is a lively yet thought-provoking excursion into the world of Herodotus, with the man who invented history ever present, guiding the narrative with his discursive spirit.

Learn more about the book and author at Justin Marozzi's website.

Justin Marozzi is a writer, journalist, and historian who has traveled extensively throughout the Herodotean world. He is the author of the highly acclaimed Tamerlane.

The Page 99 Test:The Way of Herodotus.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69/99: Thomas Perry's "Runner"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Runner by Thomas Perry.

About the book, from the publisher:

Jane Whitefield—New York Times best-selling writer Thomas Perry’s most popular character—returns from retirement to the world of the runner, guiding fugitives out of danger. After a nine-year absence, the fiercely resourceful Native American guide Jane Whitefield is back, in the latest superb thriller by award-winning author Thomas Perry. For more than a decade, Jane pursued her unusual profession: “I’m a guide ... I show people how to go from places where somebody is trying to kill them to other places where nobody is.”Then she promised her husband she would never work again, and settled in to live a happy, quiet life as Jane McKinnon, the wife of a surgeon in Amherst, New York. But when a bomb goes off in the middle of a hospital fundraiser, Jane finds herself face to face with the cause of the explosion: a young pregnant girl who has been tracked across the country by a team of hired hunters.That night, regardless of what she wants or the vow she’s made to her husband, Jane must come back to transform one more victim into a runner. And her quest for safety sets in motion a mission that will be a rescue operation—or a chance for revenge. Runner is Thomas Perry at the top of his form.

Learn more about Runner at the publisher's website and at Thomas Perry's official website.

Thomas Perry is the author of the Jane Whitefield series as well as the bestselling novels Nightlife, Death Benefits, and Pursuit. He is the first recipient of the Gumshoe Award for Best Novel, and he won an Edgar Award for The Butcher’s Boy.

The Page 69 Test: Silence.

The Page 99 Test: Nightlife.

Writers Read: Thomas Perry.

The Page 69/99 Test: Fidelity.

The Page 69/99 Test: Runner.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top 10 smelly books

In 2006 Lara Feigel, a Lecturer at King's College London and author of A Nosegay: A Literary Journey from the Fragrant to the Fetid, named her top 10 smelly books for the Guardian.

One book on the list:

Perfume by Patrick Süskind

This list would not be complete without Perfume, which is a classic piece of smell writing. Süskind is the doyenne of olfactory prose and this novel includes some virtuosic descriptions of the stenches of 18th-century France and the extraordinary aroma of a beautiful girl whose scent resembles "a piece of thin, shimmering silk" combined with "pastry soaked in honey-sweet milk." Süskind's name is everywhere at the moment with the release of Tom Tykwer's film, which sadly doesn't quite live up to the novel in its power to evoke smell, so read the book before you see it.

Read about Number One on Feigel's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: L. Harris & C. Molesworth's "Alain L. Locke"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Alain L. Locke: The Biography of a Philosopher by Leonard Harris and Charles Molesworth.

About the book, from the publisher:

Alain L. Locke (1886-1954), in his famous 1925 anthology The New Negro, declared that “the pulse of the Negro world has begun to beat in Harlem.” Often called the father of the Harlem Renaissance, Locke had his finger directly on that pulse, promoting, influencing, and sparring with such figures as Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Jacob Lawrence, Richmond Barthé, William Grant Still, Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, Ralph Bunche, and John Dewey. The long-awaited first biography of this extraordinarily gifted philosopher and writer, Alain L. Locke narrates the untold story of his profound impact on twentieth-century America’s cultural and intellectual life.

Leonard Harris and Charles Molesworth trace this story through Locke’s Philadelphia upbringing, his undergraduate years at Harvard—where William James helped spark his influential engagement with pragmatism—and his tenure as the first African American Rhodes Scholar. The heart of their narrative illuminates Locke’s heady years in 1920s New York City and his forty-year career at Howard University, where he helped spearhead the adult education movement of the 1930s and wrote on topics ranging from the philosophy of value to the theory of democracy. Harris and Molesworth show that throughout this illustrious career—despite a formal manner that many observers interpreted as elitist or distant—Locke remained a warm and effective teacher and mentor, as well as a fierce champion of literature and art as means of breaking down barriers between communities.

The multifaceted portrait that emerges from this engaging account effectively reclaims Locke’s rightful place in the pantheon of America’s most important minds.

Read more about Alain L. Locke at the University of Chicago Press website.

Leonard Harris is professor of philosophy at Purdue University. Charles Molesworth is professor of English at Queens College in New York.

The Page 99 Test: Alain L. Locke.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Judith Cutler reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Judith Cutler, a prolific U.K.-based crime novelist.

Her entry begins:

I’ve been finishing a book of my own recently, so reading other people’s books, no matter how enticing, has had to be put on hold. However, before I start my next novel, I’ve escaped from the computer to read:

Prison: Five Hundred Years Behind Bars
Edward Marston
National Archive, 2009

Reading this was actually a labour of love, since it was written by my husband, and I sneaked a look at the proof stage. Those of you who know his historical crime fiction will know the depth and breadth of his meticulous research. Here, drawing on files at the National Archives, he addresses himself to a scholarly but intensely readable history of prisons and their effects on the people they confine. It begins in medieval times when gaols were often located in castles or gatehouses and when their function was simply to detain prisoners until their trial. It was only centuries later that imprisonment was itself the punishment – and in general a far worse punishment than the crime merited. Thank goodness for reformers like Elizabeth Fry. Read and ponder what we can do to our fellow human beings in the name of justice.[read on]

Among Cutlers books are five main series of crime novels featuring Chief Superintendent Fran Harman, Josie Welford, Tobias Campion, Detective Sergeant Kate Power and Sophie Rivers respectively.

Visit Judith Cutler's website.

Writers Read: Judith Cutler.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Merrill Markoe's "Nose Down, Eyes Up"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Nose Down, Eyes Up by Merrill Markoe.

About the novel, from the publisher:

At forty-seven, Gil has reached a relatively happy period in his life as the world’s oldest twenty-two-year-old man. In exchange for doing the odd carpentry and construction job, he gets paid to live rent-free in Los Angeles at the glorious summerhouse of rich retirees who are never there. It’s a world of solitary splendor spent mainly in the company of his four dogs, Cheney, Fruity, Dinky, and Jimmy, the alpha and the only one of the four that Gil has raised from a pup.

Because Gil is the kind of guy who understands his dogs far better than he understands any of the people in his life–including his girlfriend, Sara, who is an “animal communicator” (albeit one that the dogs make fun of)–he is not particularly surprised when he stumbles upon Jimmy delivering lectures on canine manipulative techniques to the rest of the dogs in the neighborhood. (For example, the always effective “Nose down, eyes up” is a surefire path to permission to sleep on the bed.) Soon Gil begins to see dollar signs in the idea of turning Jimmy and his advice into a “brand” that he can merchandise on the Internet.

Their collaboration has barely begun when Jimmy makes a shocking realization: He’s adopted. And not only is Gil not his real father, they’re not even the same species. In the identity crisis that ensues, Gil hears the last thing he wants his favorite dog to say: that Jimmy wants to be reunited with his birth mother, a bitch owned by the woman who emptied Gil’s bank account, his pension plan, and his plans for the future–Gil’s sexy and still seductive ex-wife, Eden, now remarried, wealthy, and living in Malibu.

When the rich retirees who own Gil’s house return for an indefinite period, Gil must decide what to do: risk a new relationship disaster by trying to live in a tiny house with his good-hearted on-again, off-again girlfriend, Sara, or relive an old relationship disaster by getting reinvolved with his flirtatious ex-wife, with her new husband, Jimmy’s birth mother, and their Malibu guesthouse.

In this hilarious new novel, Merrill Markoe offers uncanny insight into the bonds between hounds and humans, as well as their respective ideas of the way that love and family are supposed to work. Nose Down, Eyes Up is a revealing examination of the interspecies power of love, sex, family, and real estate and why everyone–on two legs or four–deserves to have his or her day.

Learn more about the book and author at Merrill Markoe's website.

Merrill Markoe is the author of three books of humorous essays and the novels It’s My F---ing Birthday, What the Dogs Have Taught Me, and Walking in Circles Before Lying Down. She has also co-authored with Andy Prieboy the novel The Psycho Ex Game. And she has won multiple Emmy awards.

The Page 69 Test: Nose Down, Eyes Up.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Deborah Nelson's "The War Behind Me"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: The War Behind Me: Vietnam Veterans Confront the Truth about U.S. War Crimes by Deborah Nelson.

About the book, from the publisher:

In 2005, Deborah Nelson joined forces with military historian Nick Turse to investigate an extraordinary archive: the largest compilation of records on Vietnam-era war crimes ever to surface. The declassified Army papers were erroneously released and have since been pulled from public circulation. Few civilians have seen the documents. The files contain reports of more than 300 confirmed atrocities, and 500 other cases the Army either couldn’t prove or didn’t investigate. The archive has letters of complaint to generals and congressmen, as well as reports of Army interviews with hundreds of men who served. Far from being limited to a few bad actors or rogue units, atrocities occurred in every Army division that saw combat in Vietnam. Torture of detainees was routine; so was the random killing of farmers in fields and women and children in villages. Punishment for these acts was either nonexistent or absurdly light. In most cases, no one was prosecuted at all. In The War Behind Me Deborah Nelson goes beyond the documents and talks with many of those who were involved, both accusers and accused, to uncover their stories and learn how they deal with one of the most awful secrets of the Vietnam War.

Read an excerpt and learn more about the book and author at the official The War Behind Me website.

Deborah Nelson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist currently at the University of Maryland College of Journalism as the Carnegie Visiting Professor. Her Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting is for a series that exposed widespread problems in the federal government's Indian Housing Program. She won an AAAS Science Journalism Award for an investigation into the death of a teenager in a gene therapy experiment.

The Page 99 Test: The War Behind Me.

--Marshal Zeringue

Critic's chart: top six vampire books

Lisa Tuttle, a novelist and the Times (London) science fiction and fantasy reviewer, named her top six vampire books.

One title on the chart:

The Vampire Tapestry by Suzy McKee Charnas

Brilliant scientific, feminist overhaul of romantic cliché imagines vampire as highly evolved predator.

Read about Number One on Tuttle's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Clay Risen's "A Nation on Fire"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: A Nation on Fire: America in the Wake of the King Assassination by Clay Risen.

About the book, from the publisher:

A few hours after Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated at a Memphis motel, violent mobs had looted and burned several blocks of Washington a few miles north of the White House, centered around the U Street commercial district. Quick action by D.C. police quelled the violence, but shortly before noon the next day, looting and arson broke out anew -- not just along U Street, but in two other commercial districts as well.

Over the next several days, the immediate crisis of the riots was matched by an equally ominous sense among the nation's political leadership that they were watching the final dissolution of the 1960s liberal dream. For many whites who watched flames overtake city after city -- Washington, Chicago, Baltimore, Kansas City -- the April riots were an unfathomable and deeply troubling response during what should have been a time of national mourning. To them the rioters were little better than common criminals. But a look at the average rioter complicates such conclusions: they were primarily young (under 25) and male, but most made a decent salary, had a better than average education, and had no previous arrest record. In interviews and testimonies afterward, rioters recalled a sense of release, of striking back at the "system."

To say that the riots meant different things to different people would be exceedingly trite if it weren't also exceedingly true. In ways large and small, the King riots solidified attitudes and trends that destroyed the momentum behind racial progress, fatally wounded postwar domestic liberalism, created new divisions among blacks and whites, and condemned urban America to decades of poverty and crime. This book will explain why they occurred, how they played out, and what they meant.

Read an excerpt from A Nation on Fire, and learn more about the book at the publisher's website.

Clay Risen, formerly an editor at The New Republic, is the managing editor of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas. He's also written for Smithsonian, Slate, the Atlantic, and the New York Times Sunday Magazine.

The Page 99 Test: A Nation on Fire.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is J.T. Ellison reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: J.T. Ellison, author of the critically acclaimed Taylor Jackson series: All the Pretty Girls, 14, and Judas Kiss.

One paragraph from her entry:

The holidays have just ended, which means I’ve done my annual revamp of my writing system and set my goals for the year. Every Christmas, I take a week off from writing and focus on the art of the craft. First up is Stephen King’s glorious On Writing, one of the best writing books out there. By the end of the year, I’ve become so bogged down with deadlines and To Do lists that I stop reading for pleasure. King’s book helps me refocus, gives me permission to read what I want, to enjoy the art of reading for its own sake instead of simply for research. It’s invaluable advice, because I find that when I’m reading, I write cleaner and more voraciously.[read on]

Visit J.T. Ellison's website and MySpace page.

The Page 69 Test: All the Pretty Girls.

The Page 99 Test: 14.

The Page 69 Test: 14.

The Page 99 Test: Judas Kiss.

Writers Read: J.T. Ellison.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: David Lozell Martin's "Losing Everything"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Losing Everything by David Lozell Martin.

About the book, from the publisher:

In Losing Everything, his first book of nonfiction, acclaimed novelist David Lozell Martin tells his wildest, most outlandish story yet -- his own.

One evening in the mountainous forest of his isolated West Virginia farmhouse, Martin became disoriented when searching for a horse who had wandered off the property. Wading through the dark and guiding his horse with a belt around its neck, Martin felt as though every step was taking him deeper into the mountains. Instead, he unknowingly spent the night walking in a wide circle that brought him back to where he started. This quickly became a metaphor for Martin's life. "The more lost I get, the closer to home I come."

After growing up with a violent father who nearly killed Martin's clinically insane mother, Martin pursued a writer's life with a vengeance, becoming vulnerable to struggles with alcohol, financial ruin, and legal feuds. Then, after a betrayal by his soul mate, Martin's sanity was in as much jeopardy as his mother's had ever been -- a state of mind that in his case led to gunfire, divorce, and at least one trip to the emergency room.

But Losing Everything is less about getting lost and more about finding your way home again. In his pursuit of stability, Martin uncovered lessons that might help others who have encountered loss: take pleasure in something as small as an ampersand, keep a list of people you know who have died, meet your own death like a warrior, and be glad you don't own a monkey.

Deeply personal yet surprisingly universal, Martin's story is for anyone who has wandered astray. If not a road map, his journey is a guide, providing hard-earned wisdom to illuminate the path home.

Learn more about Losing Everything at the publisher's website, and read Dwight Garner's review in the New York Times.

David Lozell Martin's novels include 2007's Our American King, the international bestsellers Lie to Me and Tap, and the critically acclaimed The Crying Heart Tattoo, The Beginning of Sorrows, and Crazy Love. Of Facing Rushmore (2005), Martin's eleventh book, Elmore Leonard said, "What I like best about a David Martin suspense novel -- and it will grab you, I guarantee -- is that the man knows how to write."

The Page 69 Test: Our American King.

The Page 69 Test: Losing Everything.

--Marshal Zeringue

Michael Wiley’s "The Last Striptease," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: The Last Striptease by Michael Wiley.

The entry begins:

I wrote The Last Striptease with the big screen in mind but didn’t think about real actors until I’d finished.

My private detective, Joe Kozmarski, is a six-foot-tall Polish-American in his mid-forties. He looks sort of like Rod Blagojevich but with abs and a haircut. One of the other characters, who’s trying to flirt with him, sees in him “a little of Robert De Niro and a lot of Bill Murray.” But De Niro and Murray have too much sheen – and Blagojevich is probably going to jail – so, given the chance, I would cast Russell Crowe as Joe. Joe is a lifelong Chicagoan and he’s constantly making and sometimes overcoming mistakes. Crowe grew up in New Zealand and Australia, but he got arrested in New York for throwing a telephone at a man – which is something that Joe might do (in fact, he more or less does do in Bad Kitty Lounge).

For Joe’s ex-wife Corrine...[read on]

Read an excerpt from The Last Striptease, and learn more about the book and author at Michael Wiley's website.

Wiley’s The Last Striptease (St. Martin’s Press) received the Best First Novel award from the Private Eye Writers of American and St. Martin’s in 2007 as was nominated for a Shamus in the same category in 2008. His Bad Kitty Lounge is forthcoming.

The Page 69 Test: The Last Striptease.

My Book, The Movie: The Last Striptease.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five best: books about high society

Meryl Gordon, author of Mrs. Astor Regrets: The Hidden Betrayals of a Family Beyond Reproach, compiled a list of the five best "chronicles of high society" for the Wall Street Journal.

One title to make her list:

Little Gloria . . . Happy at Last
By Barbara Goldsmith
Knopf, 1980

Hard to believe that a custody battle among the rich and famous in the 1930s would still prove riveting, but social historian Barbara Goldsmith's best-selling account of the fight over young Gloria Vanderbilt stands the test of time. For those who know Vanderbilt now primarily as the mother of CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, or vaguely remember her as the woman who launched the trend of socialite designer jeans, this book will be a revelation. It is a well-written tale of the cruelties inflicted on a famously wealthy and frightened child. Alternating between the two perpetrators -- Gloria's widowed, frivolous and financially strapped mother and her domineering aunt -- Goldsmith creates a suspense-filled saga as well as a richly reported portrait of society in a bygone era.

Read about another book on Gordon's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: J.T. Ellison's "Judas Kiss"

This weekend's feature at the Page 99 Test: Judas Kiss by J.T. Ellison.

About the book, from the publisher:

Sex, lies and videotape.

It was a murder made for TV: a trail of tiny bloody footprints. An innocent toddler playing beside her mother's bludgeoned body. Pretty young Corinne Wolff, seven months pregnant, brutally murdered in her own home.

Cameras and questions don't usually phase Nashville Homicide Lieutenant Taylor Jackson, but the media frenzy surrounding the Wolff case is particularly nasty...and thorough. When the seemingly model mommy is linked to an amateur porn website with underage actresses and unwitting players, the sharks begin to circle.

The shock is magnified when an old adversary uses the sexy secret footage to implicate Taylor in a murder--an accusation that threatens her career, her reputation and her relationship.

Both cases hinge on the evidence--real or manufactured--of crimes that go beyond passion, into the realm of obsessive vengeance and shocking betrayal. Just what the networks love.

Learn more about the book and author at J.T. Ellison's website and MySpace page.

The Page 69 Test: All the Pretty Girls.

The Page 99 Test: 14.

The Page 69 Test: 14.

The Page 99 Test: Judas Kiss.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Hallie Ephron's "Never Tell A Lie"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Never Tell A Lie by Hallie Ephron.

About the book, from the publisher:

It all started with the yard sale. Ivy was eight months and one week pregnant when she insisted that she and her husband, David, clean out the junk they'd inherited with the old Victorian house they'd bought three years before. Call it nesting, call it nerves—she just wanted it all gone: the old electrical fixtures, the boxes of National Geographics from the 1960s, the four black wool greatcoats.

Neither she nor David recognized the woman at first. But it turned out that the customer asking about the lime-green glass swan dish—the woman who looks just about as pregnant as Ivy—was none other than Melinda White, a former high school classmate of David and Ivy's. When Melinda was a child she used to play in their new house, she explained. It looked like they'd been doing some work. Would it be all right if she took a look around? David took Melinda inside. And she never came out.

Now David's under police suspicion, and Ivy finds herself digging deep into the past to clear his name. But David's history, she begins to discover, is not necessarily the history she remembers, and before long Ivy has uncovered a twisted web of deceit, betrayal, and lies, both the ones we tell those we love and the ones we tell ourselves....

Relentlessly fast-paced and disturbingly creepy, Never Tell a Lie is a page-turning thrill ride about how well we know the people we love, and how far we are willing to go to protect the secrets of our past.

Browse inside Never Tell A Lie, and learn more about the novel and author at Hallie Ephron's website and blog.

Hallie Ephron is an award-winning mystery reviewer for the Boston Globe. She is the author of 1001 Books for Every Mood and Writing and Selling Your Mystery, which was nominated for both an Edgar and an Anthony award.

The Page 69 Test: Never Tell A Lie.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Steven Cramer reading?

This weekend's featured contributor to Writers Read: Steven Cramer, author of four poetry collections.

Part of his entry:

I’ve been reading and rereading Jonathan Weinert's first book of poetry, In the Mode of Disappearance (Nightboat Books, 2008), one of the thornier and more rewarding first collections I've encountered in long awhile. It's hard to write about poetry—which is an event of language or it is nothing—without quoting. From "Suave": "If I could climb into death now/as into a foreign car, where/in all of France would you drive me?" Who wouldn't want to read on? Suave, indeed.

Weinert is a difficult poet influenced by difficult poets—Blake, Stevens—and he takes an angular, often oblique approach to his subjects. His imagery, diction, and syntax, though, are always acute....[read on]

Steven Cramer's four poetry collections are The Eye that Desires to Look Upward (1987), The World Book (1992), Dialogue for the Left and Right Hand (1997), and Goodbye to the Orchard (2004), which won the 2005 Sheila Motton Prize from the New England Poetry Club, and was named a 2005 Honor Book in Poetry by the Massachusetts Center for the Book.

Recipient of fellowships from the Massachusetts Artists Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, he currently directs the Low-Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at Lesley University in Cambridge.

Visit Steven Cramer's website and read many of his poems available online.

Writers Read: Steven Cramer.

--Marshal Zeringue

Best books: Bill Maher

In October 2008, The Week ran a best books list from the host of HBO’s Real Time With Bill Maher.

A great book on his list--with a very odd justification for including it:

Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

I haven’t actually read this one, but I’ve heard such good things I thought I should mention it.

Read about another book on Maher's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: G. Lock and D. Murray's "The Hearing Eye"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: The Hearing Eye: Jazz & Blues Influences in African American Visual Art, edited by Graham Lock and David Murray.

About The Hearing Eye, from the publisher:

The widespread presence of jazz and blues in African American visual art has long been overlooked. The Hearing Eye makes the case for recognizing the music's importance, both as formal template and as explicit subject matter. Moving on from the use of iconic musical figures and motifs in Harlem Renaissance art, this groundbreaking collection explores the more allusive - and elusive - references to jazz and blues in a wide range of mostly contemporary visual artists.

There are scholarly essays on the painters Rose Piper (Graham Lock), Norman Lewis (Sara Wood), Bob Thompson (Richard H. King), Romare Bearden (Robert G. O'Meally, Johannes Völz) and Jean-Michel Basquiat (Robert Farris Thompson), as well an account of early blues advertising art (Paul Oliver) and a discussion of the photographs of Roy DeCarava (Richard Ings). These essays are interspersed with a series of in-depth interviews by Graham Lock, who talks to quilter Michael Cummings and painters Sam Middleton, Wadsworth Jarrell, Joe Overstreet and Ellen Banks about their musical inspirations, and also looks at art's reciprocal effect on music in conversation with saxophonists Marty Ehrlich and Jane Ira Bloom.

With numerous illustrations both in the book and on its companion website, The Hearing Eye reaffirms the significance of a fascinating and dynamic aspect of African American visual art that has been too long neglected.

Read more about The Hearing Eye on the Oxford University Press web site.

An excerpt from the book, in which Joe Overstreet discusses his painting Strange Fruit, is available in the December 2008 issue of the online magazine Point of Departure.

Graham Lock is a freelance writer, Special Lecturer in American Music, University of Nottingham, and author, Forces in Motion: Anthony Braxton and the Meta-reality of Creative Music, Chasing the Vibration: Meetings with Creative Musicians, and Blutopia: Visions of the Future and Revisions of the Past in the Work of Sun Ra, Duke Ellington and Anthony Braxton, and editor, Mixtery: A Festschrift for Anthony Braxton.

David Murray is Professor of American Studies, University of Nottingham, and author, Indian Giving: Economies of Power in Early Indian-White Exchanges, Forked Tongues: Speech, Writing and Representation in North American Indian Texts, and Matter, Magic and Spirit: Representing Indian and African American Belief.

The Page 99 Test: Thriving on a Riff.

The Page 99 Test: The Hearing Eye.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Simon Lewis' "Bad Traffic"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Bad Traffic by Simon Lewis.

About the book, from the publisher:

Inspector Jian is a tough Chinese cop who thinks he's seen it all. But his search for his missing daughter takes him to the meanest streets he's ever faced -- in rural England.

Migrant worker Ding Ming is distressed -- his gang master is making demands, he owes a lot of money to the snakeheads, and no one will tell him where his wife has been taken. Maybe England isn't the Gold Mountain he was promised.

Two desperate men, lost in a baffling foreign land, are pitted against a ruthless band of human traffickers in this breathtaking thriller.

Read an excerpt from Bad Traffic and learn more about the book and author at Simon Lewis' website and blog.

Simon Lewis was born in Wales and grew up in Scotland. He is the author of the Rough Guides to China, Beijing, and Shanghai, and the backpacker novel Go, which he wrote in a village in the Himalayas. He spends half his time in Brixton, London, and the rest in Asia, mostly China and Japan.

The Page 69 Test: Bad Traffic.

--Marshal Zeringue

Books about the media: critic's chart

George Brock, International Editor of the Times (London), named six favorite books about the media.

One title on his list:

Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky

Not confined to media, but explains the digital revolution better than any other book.

Read about another book on Brock's chart.

Here Comes Everybody also appeared on a critic's chart of books with big ideas.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Kathleen M. Blee reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Kathleen M. Blee, Distinguished Professor & Chair of the Department of Sociology at the University of Pittsburgh.

Her entry begins:

I just finished Kwame Anthony Appiah’s terrific book, Experiments in Ethics (2008, Harvard University Press) which explores when people behave in accord with their sense of morality and when they do not. What I found particularly valuable is his distinction between an honest person and a person that behaves honestly across a range of circumstances. Too often....[read on]

Kathleen Blee's books include Inside Organized Racism: Women in the Hate Movement and Women of The Klan: Racism and Gender in the 1920s, now available in paperback with a new preface.

About Women of the Klan, from the publisher:

Ignorant. Brutal. Male. One of these stereotypes of the Ku Klux Klan offers a misleading picture. In Women of the Klan, sociologist Kathleen M. Blee dismantles the popular notion that politically involved women are always inspired by pacifism, equality, and justice. In her new preface, Blee reflects on how recent scholarship on gender and right-wing extremism suggests new ways to understand women's place in the 1920s Klan's crusade for white and Christian supremacy.

Learn more about Kathleen Blee's teaching and research at her faculty webpage.

Writers Read: Kathleen M. Blee.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: G. Lock and D. Murray's "Thriving on a Riff"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Thriving on a Riff: Jazz & Blues Influences in African American Literature and Film, edited by Graham Lock and David Murray.

About Thriving on a Riff, from the publisher:

From the Harlem Renaissance to the present, African American writers have drawn on the rich heritage of jazz and blues, transforming musical forms into the written word. In this companion volume to The Hearing Eye, distinguished contributors ranging from Bertram Ashe to Steven C. Tracy explore the musical influence on such writers as Sterling Brown, J.J. Phillips, Paul Beatty, and Nathaniel Mackey. Here, too, are Graham Lock's engaging interviews with contemporary poets Michael S. Harper and Jayne Cortez, along with studies of the performing self, in Krin Gabbard's account of Miles Davis and John Gennari's investigation of fictional and factual versions of Charlie Parker. The book also looks at African Americans in and on film, from blackface minstrelsy to the efforts of Duke Ellington and John Lewis to rescue jazz from its stereotyping in Hollywood film scores as a signal for sleaze and criminality. Concluding with a proposal by Michael Jarrett for a new model of artistic influence, Thriving on a Riff makes the case for the seminal cross-cultural role of jazz and blues.

Read more about Thriving on a Riff on the Oxford University Press web site.

An excerpt from the book, in which Krin Gabbard discusses Miles Davis’s autobiography, will appear in the February 2009 issue of the online magazine Point of Departure.

Graham Lock is a freelance writer, Special Lecturer in American Music, University of Nottingham, and author, Forces in Motion: Anthony Braxton and the Meta-reality of Creative Music, Chasing the Vibration: Meetings with Creative Musicians, and Blutopia: Visions of the Future and Revisions of the Past in the Work of Sun Ra, Duke Ellington and Anthony Braxton, and editor, Mixtery: A Festschrift for Anthony Braxton.

David Murray is Professor of American Studies, University of Nottingham, and author, Indian Giving: Economies of Power in Early Indian-White Exchanges, Forked Tongues: Speech, Writing and Representation in North American Indian Texts, and Matter, Magic and Spirit: Representing Indian and African American Belief.

The Page 99 Test: The Hearing Eye.

The Page 99 Test: Thriving on a Riff.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jeffrey Hantover’s “The Jewel Trader of Pegu,” the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: Jeffrey Hantover’s The Jewel Trader of Pegu.

The entry begins:

As a writer in these dark economic days with royalties far south of John Grisham’s, I follow a prudent investment strategy – I buy weekly lottery tickets and daydream who will star in the movie of my book. An East-West love story set in 16th century Venice and a Burmese city turned to ashes will not come cheap, but I keep dreaming and have a neighborhood tailor on call ready to let out my tux for Oscar night.

When writing The Jewel Trader of Pegu, Adrien Brody was always Abraham, the tall, melancholy Venetian Jew who reluctantly travels to Pegu to buy stones for his uncle. In his Academy Award winning performance in The Pianist and the recent Cadillac Records, we sense beneath Brody’s angular face a churning inner world. He could with a simple expression or glance convey Abraham’s doubts and ethical turmoil.

For Mya, the Peguan peasant woman whose love redeems Abraham...[read on]

Read an excerpt from The Jewel Trader of Pegu, and learn more about the author and his work at Jeffrey Hantover's website.

The Jewel Trader of Pegu, now available in paperback.

Browse inside the paperback with its P.S. section of insights, interviews and more.

The Page 69 Test: The Jewel Trader of Pegu.

My Book, The Movie: The Jewel Trader of Pegu.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Bill Cameron's "Chasing Smoke"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Chasing Smoke by Bill Cameron.

About the book, from the publisher:

Portland homicide detective Skin Kadash just wants to survive cancer treatment so he can get back to work he loves. But when his partner tries to drag him into an unofficial investigation of a series of deaths, he’s not interested — he’s dead-dog sick and doesn’t need the grief — until she reveals the victims all suffered from cancer themselves, and all had one thing in common with Skin. His oncologist.

The police have closed the books on the deaths, all apparent suicides, yet a mysterious young woman, daughter of the first victim, surfaces and insists that the dead men were all murdered. Before her story can be probed more deeply, she disappears, leaving Kadash with no support from the cops and little to go on except a nagging belief the missing woman knew more than she revealed.

Kadash is left to chase elusive leads among the bitter and broken widows of the dead men. Struggling with his own illness and with a growing rift between himself and his partner, Kadash finds himself entangled in a web of resentment, jealousy, and deceit. Ultimately, he finds that not is he only seeking a missing woman and the truth about the dead men, but also the meaning of his own life in the face of his impending mortality.

Read an excerpt from Chasing Smoke and view the video trailer.

Visit Bill Cameron's website and blog.

Cameron's debut mystery is Lost Dog; his stories have appeared in Portland Noir, Killer Year, and elsewhere.

The Page 69 Test: Lost Dog.

My Book, The Movie: Lost Dog.

The Page 69 Test: Chasing Smoke.

--Marshal Zeringue

Best books of 2008: January Magazine

One title from January Magazine's best books of 2008 list:

The Toss of A Lemon by Padma Viswanathan (Harcourt) 640 pages

Padma Viswasathan’s debut novel pads in on little cat feet and rips you along. You don’t realize you’re on an epic journey in the midst of a generational saga until you’re well along and it’s far, far too late to turn back. Not that you’d want to. Not that you even could. Inspired by the author’s own family history, we join Sivakami in a village in India in 1892, the year of her marriage to the healer, Hanumarathnam. She is ten. What astonishes here is Viswasathan’s virtuosity. In The Toss of A Lemon, we join India at a time of great social and political upheaval. Nevertheless, we experience this only at a distance. The way, in fact, Sivakami might experience it. Our concerns are more immediate, more domestic, though never more mundane. The marriage of a daughter, a granddaughter. The obedience of a son-in-law. The disturbingly progressive thoughts of a son. These concern Sivakami exclusively and, with her as our proxy, they are all that concern us, as well. -- Linda L. Richards

Read about another title among January Magazine's selections.

Related: crime fiction maven J. Kingston Pierce, editor of The Rap Sheet and contributor to January Magazine, named his top 10 crime novels of 2008.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Michael Welland's "Sand"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Sand: The Never-Ending Story by Michael Welland.

About the book, from the publisher:

From individual grains to desert dunes, from the bottom of the sea to the landscapes of Mars, and from billions of years in the past to the future, this is the extraordinary story of one of nature's humblest, most powerful, and most ubiquitous materials. Told by a geologist with a novelist's sense of language and narrative, Sand examines the science—sand forensics, the physics of granular materials, sedimentology, paleontology and archaeology, planetary exploration—and at the same time explores the rich human context of sand. Interwoven with tales of artists, mathematicians, explorers, and even a vampire, the story of sand is an epic of environmental construction and destruction, an adventure in staggering scales of time and distance, yet a tale that encompasses the ordinary and everyday. Sand, in fact, is all around us—it has made possible our computers, buildings and windows, toothpaste, cosmetics, and paper, and it has played dramatic roles in human history, commerce, and imagination. In this luminous, kinetic, revelatory account, we do indeed find the world in a grain of sand.

Learn more about the book and author at Michael Welland's blog, "Through the Sandglass."

Welland is a geologist who has worked around the world in the energy industry. He is a fellow of the Geological Societies of America and London and the Royal Society for the Arts and Commerce.

The Page 99 Test: Sand: The Never-Ending Story.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Katy Lederer reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Katy Lederer, author of the poetry collections Winter Sex and The Heaven-Sent Leaf, and the memoir Poker Face: A Girlhood Among Gamblers.

One paragraph from her entry:

I have been avidly reading Paul Krugman in the New York Times. His rancor over what has happened bothers me (why not this rancor and deep analysis of the mechanics of Wall Street while the boom was still happening--when it might have done some good?), but his opinions on what Obama should do about the economy once he gets into office are fascinating to read about.[read on]

Visit Katy Lederer's website and read some of her poems online.

Lederer's poems and prose have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Harvard Review, GQ, and elsewhere.

She has been anthologized in Body Electric (Norton), From Poe to the Present: Great American Prose Poems (Scribner), and State of the Union (Wave Books), among other compilations.

Publishers Weekly included Poker Face on its list of the Best Nonfiction Books of the Year and Esquire Magazine named one of its eight Best Books of the Year.

Writers Read: Katy Lederer.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: M. Bart & L. Corona's "Until Our Last Breath"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Until Our Last Breath: A Holocaust Story of Love and Partisan Resistance by Michael Bart and Laurel Corona.

About the book, from the publisher:

At Leizer Bart’s funeral, one of the mourners told his son Michael that the gravestone should include a reference to the Freedom Fighters of Nekamah, to honor his late father’s involvement in the Jewish resistance movement in Vilna (now Vilnius), Lithuania, at the end of World War II. Michael had never heard of the Freedom Fighters.

Following his father’s death, and with his mother in failing health, Michael embarked on a ten-year research project to find out more details about his parents’ time in the Vilna ghetto, where they met, fell in love, and married, and about their activities as members of the Jewish resistance. Until Our Last Breath is the culmination of his research, and his parents’ story of love and survival is seamlessly tied into the collective story of the Vilna ghetto, the partisans of Vilna, and the wider themes of world history.

Zenia, Bart’s mother, was born and raised in Vilna. Leizer fled there to escape the Nazi invasion of his hometown of Hrubieshov in Poland. They were married by one of the last remaining rabbis ninety days before the liquidation of the ghetto. Leizer was friends with Zionist leader Abba Kovner and became a member of the Vilna ghetto underground. Shortly before the total liquidation of the ghetto, Zenia and Leizer, along with about 120 members of the underground, were able to escape to the Rudnicki forest, about 25 miles away. They became part of the Jewish partisan fighting group led by Abba Kovner—known as the Avengers—which carried out sabotage missions against the Nazi army and eventually participated in the liberation of Vilna.

Until Our Last Breath is intensely personal and painstakingly researched, a lasting memorial to the Jews of Vilna, including the resistance fighters and the author’s family.

Visit Michael Bart's website.

Visit Laurel Corona's website and blog, and read the Page 69 Test entry for her novel, The Four Seasons.

The Page 99 Test: Until Our Last Breath.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Stewart O'Nan's "Songs for the Missing"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Songs for the Missing by Stewart O'Nan.

About the book, from the publisher:

An enthralling portrait of one family in the aftermath of a daughter’s disappearance.

It was the summer of her Chevette, of J.P. and letting her hair grow. It was also the summer when, without warning, popular high school student Kim Larsen disappeared from her small midwestern town. Her loving parents, her introverted sister, her friends and boyfriend must now do everything they can to find her. As desperate search parties give way to pleading television appearances, and private investigations yield to personal revelations, we see one town’s intimate struggle to maintain hope and, finally, to live with the unknown.

Stewart O’Nan’s new novel begins with the suspense and pacing of a thriller and soon deepens into an affecting family drama of loss. On the heels of his critically acclaimed and nationally bestselling Last Night at the Lobster, Songs for the Missing is an honest, heartfelt account of one family’s attempt to find their child. With a soulful empathy for these ordinary heroes, O’Nan draws us into the world of this small American town and allows us to feel a part of this family.

Listen to an excerpt from Songs for the Missing, and learn more about the author and his work at Stewart O'Nan's website.

Stewart O'Nan's novels include Snow Angels, The Speed Queen, A Prayer for the Dying, and Last Night at the Lobster. His works of nonfiction include the bestselling book with Stephen King on the Boston Red Sox, Faithful. Granta named him one of the twenty Best Young American Novelists in 1995.

The Page 69 Test: Songs for the Missing.

--Marshal Zeringue

Best collections of literary letters 2008

For National Public Radio, Troy Patterson selected the year's best collections of literary letters, genuine and otherwise.

One title on his list:

Dear American Airlines, by Jonathan Miles

Employing a highly risky device to deeply rewarding effect, Miles structures his first novel as a harangue handwritten during a torturous airport delay. As protagonist Benjamin Ford writes to request a refund in the amount of $392.68, the titular salutation develops into a ritual incantation — "Dear American Airlines, enclosed please find my sciatic nerve" — and the howl of complaint builds into a vibrantly bellowing, Saul-Bellowing confession. Bennie, profane and pithy, itches to make it to Los Angeles to reunite with his daughter, whom he hasn't seen since she was an infant, and walk her down the aisle at her "commitment ceremony." This is an account of how life deposited him in the purgatory of O'Hare. The narrative pushes full-thrust through droll remembrance and weathered self-remonstrance, the author hitting the jets with a confidence that lets us take his wild comedy very sincerely.

Read about another collection to make the list.

The Page 69 Test: Dear American Airlines.

--Marshal Zeringue

Per Petterson in "The Guardian"

From Per Petterson's interview by James Campbell in the Guardian:

"When I started Out Stealing Horses, I had no idea that the war would be in that book. Then some friction crept in - an unease between the two fathers. And I thought to myself: what can that be? Well, this is the 1940s. It has to be something about the war. Shit. I'll have to write about the war. Then I have to do research, and I hate research. Of course, now it seems that the war is essential to the story."

Read the complete interview.

See Ray Taras' reviews of Per Petterson's Out Stealing Horses and To Siberia.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Jennifer Ouellette reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Jennifer Ouellette, author of Black Bodies and Quantum Cats: Tales From the Annals of Physics (2006) and The Physics of the Buffyverse (2007).

One paragraph from her entry:

For bedtime reading, I prefer non-fiction with shorter chapters -- if I get TOO engrossed in a novel, I'll stay up all night to finish it, which really isn't the point of bedtime reading. Most recently, I've read Barack Obama's Dreams from My Father, a highly literate memoir that makes me proud and a bit awed that such an eloquent, thoughtful person is going to be our next president. Mary Roach's Bonk was a sheer delight, particularly the hilarious footnotes -- you definitely don't want to miss those. Tom Parker-Bowles' The Year of Eating Dangerously was interesting and amusing, but the vivid accounts of all that gastronomic excess (he claims he gained 20 or so pounds while writing the book) made me feel a bit ill by proxy -- so perhaps not the best bedtime reading. Right now I'm working my way through Steve Dublanica's Waiter Rant, about the dark side of waiting tables in a trendy Manhattan bistro -- based on a popular blog of the same name.[read on]

Jennifer Ouellette is associate editor of APS News, the monthly publication of The American Physical Society; and writes for the American Institute of Physics’ TV project, Discoveries and Breakthroughs in Science, as well as its Inside Science News Service. She was also a contributing editor for the now-defunct The Industrial Physicist magazine; a 1997 article on concert hall acoustics garnered her an award in science writing from the Acoustical Society of America.

Ouellette writes about science in the popular press, most notably for Discover, Salon, New Scientist, and On Earth. She holds a black belt in jujitsu.

Learn more about Jennifer Ouellette at her website and at the popular general science blog, Cocktail Party Physics.

Writers Read: Jennifer Ouellette.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Mark Wolverton's "A Life in Twilight"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: A Life in Twilight: The Final Years of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Mark Wolverton.

About the book, from the publisher:

A Life in Twilight reveals the least-known and most enigmatic period of J. Robert Oppenheimer’s life, from the public humiliation he endured after the 1954 Atomic Energy Commission’s investigation into his alleged communist leanings and connections to his death in 1967. It covers Oppenheimer’s continued work as a scientist and philosopher and head of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, his often controversial public appearances, as well as parts of his private life.

What emerges is a portrait of a man who was toppled from the highest echelons of politics and society, had to see his honor and name blackened, but succeeded in maintaining his dignity and rebuilding a shattered life, although he never truly recovered from the McCarthy-inspired persecution he suffered. Previously unpublished FBI files round out the picture and cast a sinister cloud over Oppenheimer’s final years, during which he remained under occasional surveillance.

Mark Wolverton has succeeded in presenting an evenhanded and very well- researched account of a life that ended in twilight. It reads like a written version of the acclaimed film Good Night, and Good Luck, and indeed Murrow’s interview with Oppenheimer is one of the central elements of the story.

A Life in Twilight is an important exploration, not only of a prominent scientist and philosopher, but also of an unforgettable era in American history.

Watch the video preview of A Life in Twilight.

Learn more about the author and his work at Mark Wolverton's website.

Mark Wolverton is the author of The Depths of Space and The Science of Superman. His articles on science, technology, and history have appeared in Scientific American, American Heritage of Invention & Technology, Air & Space Smithsonian, Skeptical Inquirer, Quest, and American History, among other magazines.

The Page 99 Test: A Life in Twilight.

--Marshal Zeringue

J.M. Hayes' Mad Dog & Englishman series, the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: J.M. Hayes' Mad Dog & Englishman series.

The entry begins:

A rural Kansas sheriff, his oddball-born-again Cheyenne brother, and their efforts to solve the rare crimes of a small community are the essence of the Mad Dog & Englishman series. But when those crimes hit, it's with a Murphy's Law kind of fury—everything that can go wrong will. I'm delighted to make casting suggestions for the series, especially since I have nothing better to do while I wait by the phone for the Coen Brothers to call.

There aren't many actors who do bald leading men or who are willing to shave their heads the way Mad Dog does since his hair is just too curly for braids. So Bruce Willis gets the nod. Mad Dog was a local football hero. That makes Willis' muscular frame appropriate. And Willis is about the right age for the beginning of the series. Let's just hope he doesn't mind donning a pair of Speedos and slathering himself with body paint for the vision quest scenes.

Englishman, aka Benteen County's Sheriff English, is harder to cast. If we could...[read on]

Learn more about the books and author at The Words & Worlds of J.M. Hayes website.

J.M. Hayes is also the author of The Grey Pilgrim (2000), Mad Dog & Englishman (2000), Prairie Gothic (2003), Plains Crazy (2004), Broken Heartland (2007) and, coming in May 2009, Server Down.

The Page 69 Test: Broken Heartland.

My Book, The Movie: J.M. Hayes' Mad Dog & Englishman series.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five best: books about Cold War culture

Daniel Johnson, the editor of Standpoint and author of White King and Red Queen: How the Cold War Was Fought on the Chessboard, named a five best list of books about Cold War culture for the Wall Street Journal.

One title on his list:

The Master and Margarita
by Mikhail Bulgakov
Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky; Penguin, 1997

In many respects, Mikhail Bulgakov's "The Master and Margarita" is a Cold War book, even though it was written between 1928 and the author's death in 1940. The novel was not published until 1966-67 in the Russian journal Moskva (Moscow), and even then the editors cut about 60 pages, which soon enough made their way into samizdat publications. This scathing satire on every aspect of life under Stalin immediately caused a sensation. Today, Bulgakov's riotously funny Faustian tale of the Devil arriving in Moscow has lost none of its freshness. The boldness of the conception is demonstrated by the contrast Bulgakov provides between the phantasmagorical nightmare of Soviet totalitarianism and the stark reality of the execution of Jesus as seen through the eyes of Pontius Pilate -- a story within the novel's story.

Read about the book that topped Johnson's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Brian Raftery's "Don't Stop Believin'"

This weekend's feature at the Page 69 Test: Don't Stop Believin': How Karaoke Conquered the World and Saved My Life by Brian Raftery.

About the book, from the publisher:

Armed with a keen eye and a terrible singing voice, writer Brian Raftery sets out across the globe, tracing karaoke's evolution from cult fad to multi-million dollar phenomenon. In Japan, he meets Daisuke Inoue, the godfather of karaoke; in Thailand, he follows a group of Americans hoping to win the Karaoke World Championships; and in New York City, he hangs out backstage with the world's longest-running heavy-metal karaoke band. Along the way, Raftery chronicles his own time as an obsessive karaoke fan, recalling a life's worth of noisy relationships and poor song choices, and analyzing the karaoke-bar merits of such artists as Prince, Bob Dylan and Fugazi. Part cultural history, part memoir, Don't Stop Believin': How Karaoke Conquered the World and Changed My Life is a hilarious and densely reported look at the liberating effects of a good sing-along.

Read an excerpt from Don’t Stop Believin’ and learn more about the book and author at Brian Raftery's website.

Brian Raftery's features, profiles, and criticism have appeared in such publications as Wired, Spin, GQ, and Entertainment Weekly. His favorite karaoke song is Night Ranger's "Sister Christian."

Watch the Don’t Stop Believin’ video.

The Page 69 Test: Don't Stop Believin'.

--Marshal Zeringue

Asia's best books, 2008: WSJ

John Krich compiled the Wall Street Journal's list of Asia's best books of 2008.

One book on the list:

BEIJING COMA
Ma Jian

Since 2008 was the year of Beijing's Olympics -- its coming-out party -- here's another, even more dissident view of the city's reality.

Seven years in the making, this is bitter exile Ma Jian's magnum opus: a brilliant argument for the facts as only fiction can tell. A disembodied mind sifts through memories and ideals where individuality has been reduced to the ultimate form of powerlessness -- along the way, almost incidentally, offering the most insightful depiction of the 1989 Tiananmen Square revolt to come along thus far.

"Beijing Coma" is as telling in its tiniest details of grubby Chinese domesticity and callous family relations as it is sweeping in its metaphor of the country's promising democracy movement reduced, like the quasi-comatose narrator, to a paralyzed, vegetal state.

Read about another book on the Journal's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Joan Wickersham reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Joan Wickersham, author of The Suicide Index: Putting My Father's Death in Order.

Her entry begins:

I'm reading Great Expectations, for what I think is the fourth time. Of all the books I know, this one seems to expand the most with each re-reading. What I'm seeing this time is the perfect balance between self-delusion and self-awareness. You have patience with Pip's follies and vanities because...[read on]

Read reviews and an excerpt from The Suicide Index.

Among the praise for The Suicide Index:

[A] remarkable memoir... she exposes the whole messy territory of inheritance, of heritage, of what our families leave us, the treacherous trail of genetics and psychology and unhappiness, the legacy of all those generations as they play out in ways that we can see and ways that we will never see across the patterns of our lives. . . true in a way that transcends mere recollection ... [S]he arrives at an almost perfect balance, producing a survivor's story, a portrait of suicide from the outside, one that finds clarity in its inability to be clarified.
--David Ulin, Los Angeles Times

Wickersham also wrote the novel The Paper Anniversary, and her fiction has appeared in magazines including AGNI, Glimmer Train, the Hudson Review, Ploughshares, and Story, and has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories. She has published essays in Glamour, Yankee, and the Boston Globe, and she has contributed and read on-air essays for National Public Radio’s On Point and Morning Edition.

Learn more about Joan Wickersham and her work at her website.

Writers Read: Joan Wickersham.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Jan Zalasiewicz's "The Earth After Us"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: The Earth After Us: What Legacy Will Humans Leave in the Rocks?, by Jan Zalasiewicz.

About the book, from the publisher:

Geologist Jan Zalasiewicz takes the reader on a fascinating trip one hundred million years into the future--long after the human race becomes extinct--to explore what will remain of our brief but dramatic sojourn on Earth. He describes how geologists in the far future might piece together the history of the planet, and slowly decipher the history of humanity from the traces we will leave impressed in the rock strata. What story will the rocks tell of us? What kind of fossils will humans leave behind? What will happen to cities, cars, and plastic cups? The trail leads finally to the bones of the inhabitants of petrified cities that have slept deep underground for many millions of years. As thought-provoking as it is engaging, this book simultaneously explains the geological mechanisms that shape our planet, from fossilization to plate tectonics, illuminates the various ingenious ways in which geologists and paleontologist work, and offers a final perspective on humanity and its actions that may prove to be more objective than any other.

Learn more about The Earth After Us at the Oxford University Press website.

Jan Zalasiewicz is a Lecturer in Geology at the University of Leicester, before that working at the British Geological Survey. A field geologist, palaeontologist and stratigrapher, he teaches various aspects of geology and Earth history to undergraduate and postgraduate students, and is a researcher into fossil ecosystems and environments across over half a billion years of geological time. He has published over a hundred papers in scientific journals.

The Page 99 Test: The Earth After Us.

--Marshal Zeringue

The Independent: best books of 2008

Britain's Independent asked its "critics and favourite writers [to] pick the fiction and non-fiction that will stand the test of time."

A sample of the findings:

Christopher Fowler

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga (Atlantic), an assured first novel and Man Booker winner, was rightly acclaimed. It's about an India that can't provide sanitation or discipline, yet is filled with entrepreneurs.

In Churchill's Wizards by Nicholas Rankin (Faber), the truth is out: we won the war through bluff, trickery, turning the road-signs around, hiding large objects and dressing up. It's a true account of wartime deceit that's very English.

Don't be put off by the fact that Malcolm Gladwell is a global phenomenon. Outliers: The Story of Success (Allen Lane), an encapsulation of his populist thinking, goes only part of the way toward explaining why some people are so successful, but it's a great read.

Read the complete feature.

Related:

• The Page 69 Test: Christopher Fowler's The Victoria Vanishes.
• The Page 69 Test: Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Mark Budman's "My Life at First Try"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: My Life at First Try by Mark Budman.

About the book, from the publisher:

In this semi-autobiographical debut novel, Mark Budman chronicles the life of Alex, a boy born in Siberia in 1950. Short chapters—sometimes hilarious, sometimes sobering—chronicle Alex’s life year by year as he matures, starts a family, gets a chance to leave the Soviet Union, and then goes on to discover the rhythms, disappointments, and small pleasures of suburban life in upstate New York.

Mark Budman's works have appeared or are about to appear in such magazines as Weird Tales, Mississippi Review, Virginia Quarterly, The London Magazine, Iowa Review, McSweeney's, Turnrow, Connecticut Review, the W.W. Norton anthology Flash Fiction Forward, and elsewhere. He is the publisher of a flash fiction magazine Vestal Review.

Learn more about the author and his work at Mark Budman's website, his blog, and his blog in Russian.

The Page 69 Test: My Life at First Try.

--Marshal Zeringue