Pg. 99: Nancy Sherman's "Afterwar"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Afterwar: Healing the Moral Wounds of Our Soldiers by Nancy Sherman.

About the book, from the publisher:

Movies like American Sniper and The Hurt Locker hint at the inner scars our soldiers incur during service in a war zone. The moral dimensions of their psychological injuries--guilt, shame, feeling responsible for doing wrong or being wronged-elude conventional treatment. Georgetown philosophy professor Nancy Sherman turns her focus to these moral injuries in Afterwar. She argues that psychology and medicine alone are inadequate to help with many of the most painful questions veterans are bringing home from war.

Trained in both ancient ethics and psychoanalysis, and with twenty years of experience working with the military, Sherman draws on in-depth interviews with servicemen and women to paint a richly textured and compassionate picture of the moral and psychological aftermath of America's longest wars. She explores how veterans can go about reawakening their feelings without becoming re-traumatized; how they can replace resentment with trust; and the changes that need to be made in order for this to happen-by military courts, VA hospitals, and the civilians who have been shielded from the heaviest burdens of war.

2.6 million soldiers are currently returning home from war, the greatest number since Vietnam. Facing an increase in suicides and post-traumatic stress, the military has embraced measures such as resilience training and positive psychology to heal mind as well as body. Sherman argues that some psychological wounds of war need a kind of healing through moral understanding that is the special province of philosophical engagement and listening.

Visit Nancy Sherman's website and Facebook page.

The Page 99 Test: Afterwar.

--Marshal Zeringue

Sara Solovitch's "Playing Scared," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Playing Scared: A History and Memoir of Stage Fright by Sara Solovitch.

The entry begins:

A lot of my friends have asked me who would play me in the movie version of my book. What woman of a certain age – brash yet vulnerable, willing to face her demons – is up to the role? I initially thought of Susan Sarandon, the bad girl in Bull Durham. But after discovering...[read on]

Visit Sara Solovitch's website.

My Book, The Movie: Playing Scared.

--Marshal Zeringue

Winston Churchill’s ten top books

Winston Churchill never actually published a “Top Ten” list of his favorite books. But he did read a great many books and was known for his strong opinions. So Jonathan Rose, William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of History at Drew University and author of The Literary Churchill: Author, Reader, Actor, was able to speculate that Churchill’s top ten books list might include:

It Can’t Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis

This dystopian nightmare envisioned America under the Fascist jackboot, ruled by a corn pone despot clearly based on Huey Long. When Long was shot and killed, Churchill gloated over the demise of “the most clownish of the Dictator tribe.”

Read about another entry on the list.

My Book, The Movie: The Literary Churchill.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Eleanor Kuhns reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Eleanor Kuhns, author of Death in Salem.

Her entry begins:

I just finished a mystery titled Run You Down by Julia Dahl. This is the second (after Invisible City) and they are both great. Rebekah is the daughter of an Ultra-Orthodox woman who leaves the Orthodox community but finds she has real difficulty in adjusting to the outside world. One of the lines I most appreciated came from a young Jew who was contemplating leaving but couldn’t figure out, without the severe rules of his culture, how he would know what was right and wrong. Since I live within miles of...[read on]

About Death in Salem, from the publisher:

It's 1796, and traveling weaver Will Rees is visiting Salem, Massachusetts. He's in town to buy a luxurious gift for his pregnant wife, a few yards of well-made fabric from the traders at the famed Salem harbor. While traveling through Salem, however, Rees comes upon a funeral procession for the deceased Mrs. Antiss Boothe. When Rees happens upon Twig, a friend who fought alongside him in the war, he learns that Mrs. Boothe had been very ill, and her death had not come as a surprise. But the next morning, the town is abuzz with the news that Mr. Boothe has also died--and this time it is clearly murder. When the woman that Twig loves falls under suspicion, Twig persuades Rees to stay in Salem, despite the family waiting for him back home in Maine, and help solve the murder.

Rees is quickly pulled into the murky politics of both Salem and the Boothe family, who have long been involved in the robust shipping and trading industry on the Salem harbor. Everyone Rees meets seems to be keeping some kind of secret, but could any of them actually have committed murder?

Will Rees returns in Death in Salem, the next delightful historical mystery from MB/MWA First Novel Competition winner Eleanor Kuhns.

Learn more about the book and author at Eleanor Kuhns's blog and Facebook page.

Coffee with a Canine: Eleanor Kuhns & Shelby.

My Book, The Movie: Death of a Dyer.

The Page 69 Test: Death of a Dyer.

The Page 69 Test: Death in Salem.

Writers Read: Eleanor Kuhns.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Carola Dunn's "Superfluous Women"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Superfluous Women (Daisy Dalrymple Mysteries, Volume 22) by Carola Dunn.

About the book, from the publisher:

In England in the late 1920s, The Honourable Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher, on a convalescent trip to the countryside, goes to visit three old school friends in the area. The three, all unmarried, have recently bought a house together. They are a part of the generation of "superfluous women"--brought up expecting marriage and a family, but left without any prospects after more than 700,000 British men were killed in the Great War.

Daisy and her husband Alec--Detective Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher, of Scotland Yard --go for a Sunday lunch with Daisy's friends, where one of the women mentions a wine cellar below their house, which remains curiously locked, no key to be found. Alec offers to pick the lock, but when he opens the door, what greets them is not a cache of wine, but the stench of a long-dead body.

And with that, what was a pleasant Sunday lunch has taken an unexpected turn. Now Daisy's three friends are the most obvious suspects in a murder and her husband Alec is a witness, so he can't officially take over the investigation. So before the local detective, Superintendent Underwood, can officially bring charges against her friends, Daisy is determined to use all her resources (Alec) and skills to solve the mystery behind this perplexing locked-room crime.

Learn more about the book and author at Carola Dunn's website and blog.

Coffee with a Canine: Carola Dunn and Trillian.

The Page 69 Test: Heirs of the Body.

The Page 69 Test: Superfluous Women.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven of the unluckiest archetypes in fiction

At B & N Reads Tori Telfer tagged seven archetypes who just can’t seem to catch a literary break, including:

The Character Who Has a Phobia That’s Cruelly Exploited By the Author

Ever noticed how Ron Weasley, who has a terrible fear of spiders, is always encountering spiders? Can’t you just see J.K. Rowling cackling with glee every time she types “NEED MORE SPIDERS IN THIS SCENE” on her Macbook Pro? Or what about Captain Hook, who’s always being chased by his worst fear ever: the crocodile? It’s practically authorial sadism.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Amanda M. Czerniawski's "Fashioning Fat"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Fashioning Fat: Inside Plus-Size Modeling by Amanda M. Czerniawski.

About the book, from the publisher:

For two and a half years, Amanda Czerniawski was a sociologist turned plus-size model. Journeying into a world where, as a size 10, she was not considered an average body type, but rather, for the fashion industry, “plus-sized,” Czerniawski studied the standards of work and image production in the plus-sized model industry. Fashioning Fat takes us through a model’s day-to-day activities, first at open calls at modeling agencies and then through the fashion shows and photo shoots. Czerniawski also interviewed 35 plus-size models about their lives in the world of fashion, bringing to life the strange contradictions of being an object of non-idealized beauty.

Fashioning Fat shows us that the mission of many of these models is to challenge our standards of beauty that privilege the thin body; they show us that fat can be sexy. Many plus-size models do often succeed in overcoming years of self-loathing and shame over their bodies, yet, as Czerniawski shows, these women are not the ones in charge of beauty’s construction or dissemination. At the corporate level, the fashion industry perpetuates their objectification. Plus-size models must conform to an image created by fashion’s tastemakers, as their bodies must fit within narrowly defined parameters of size and shape—an experience not too different from that of straight-sized models. Ultimately, plus-size models find that they are still molding their bodies to fit an image instead of molding an image of beauty to fit their bodies. A much-needed behind-the-scenes look at this growing industry, Fashioning Fat is a fascinating, unique, and important contribution to our understanding of beauty.

Learn more about Fashioning Fat at the NYU Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Fashioning Fat.

--Marshal Zeringue

Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski's "The Strange Case of Ermine de Reims," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Strange Case of Ermine de Reims: A Medieval Woman Between Demons and Saints by Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski.

The entry begins:

Unlike my previous scholarly books this one actually has a plot and a riveting one at that. A simple woman named Ermine, widowed and penniless in late medieval Reims, moves into a room near her confessor, an Augustinian friar, whose ambition is to make her a saint. For the last ten months of her life she has horrible visions of demons in human and animal shape that invade her room and even take her on an aerial journey on a demonic flying horse. She’s middle-aged and apparently still attractive to some men since at one point she receives a marriage proposal. Her confessor is accused of having a sexual interest in her and demons accost her in the street calling her a whore. After her death of the plague in 1396 her confessor gets in touch with Jean Gerson, the powerful chancellor of the University of Paris -- who’s a kind of arbiter of the supernatural -- and sends him the text of the visions that he transcribed from Ermine’s testimony. He wants Gerson’s opinion on whether Ermine was indeed saintly. Gerson is ultracautious (he says neither yes, nor no) but twenty years later condemns her as an impostor.

So there are some juicy roles in this drama. First of all Ermine: she’s illiterate but seems to have some charisma. My first choice would be the Belgian actress...[read on]

Writers Read: Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski.

My Book, The Movie: The Strange Case of Ermine de Reims.

--Marshal Zeringue

Coffee with a canine: Amy Fellner Dominy & Riley

Featured at Coffee with a Canine: Amy Fellner Dominy & Riley.

The author, on how she and Riley were united:

He was first introduced to my daughter, Rachel, by her third grade teacher who brought in a litter of puppies. It took one afternoon for her to convince us that we had to...[read on]

About Amy Fellner Dominy's A Matter of Heart, from the publisher:

Readers will happily sink into this emotionally grounded, contemporary young adult novel about the sudden end of one girl’s Olympic swimming dreams and the struggles she endures before realizing there are many things that define who we are.

Sixteen-year-old Abby Lipman is on track to win the state swim championships and qualify for the Olympic trials when a fainting incident at a swim meet leads to the diagnosis of a deadly heart condition. Now Abby is forced to discover who she is without the one thing that’s defined her entire life.

Visit Amy Fellner Dominy's website, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.

Coffee with a Canine: Amy Fellner Dominy & Riley.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine top sci-fi books for people who don't like science fiction

At io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell tagged nine great science fiction books for people who don't like science fiction, including:

Daughters of the North, by Sarah Hall

Quick, brutal, and introspective, this is a good book to give people who have gotten wise to the fact that the The Handmaid’s Tale is science fiction. But it’s also not as bleak a chronicle of oppression as The Handmaid’s Tale. Instead of starting in the oppressive society, we start out by leaving the oppressive society behind. Alas, escaping oppression is not that simple.

Daughters of the North takes a look at what happens when an all-female commune goes to war. If that sounds to you like feel-good sisterhood, think again. Squeezed between a post-apocalyptic world and an oppressive regime, these women go to increasing extremes for an increasingly hopeless cause. It’s about asking people how much they’re willing to resist, and whether they know what they’re resisting.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Hugh Aldersey-Williams reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Hugh Aldersey-Williams, author of In Search of Sir Thomas Browne: The Life and Afterlife of the Seventeenth Century's Most Inquiring Mind.

His entry begins:

With a new book coming out, I thought I would prepare for the festival circuit by reading Francis Plug: How To Be a Public Author by Paul Ewen. Poised somewhere between fact and fiction, it recounts the author’s attempts to ingratiate himself with a series of prize-winning writers and get them to sign their books for him while trying to hoover up as much free drink as he can – a kind of Fear and Loathing ... on the literary circuit. It’s mad and...[read on]

About In Search of Sir Thomas Browne, from the publisher:

The extraordinary life and ideas of one of the greatest—and most neglected—minds in history.

Sir Thomas Browne (1605–1682) was an English writer, physician, and philosopher whose work has inspired everyone from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Jorge Luis Borges, Virginia Woolf to Stephen Jay Gould. In an intellectual adventure like Sarah Bakewell's book about Montaigne, How to Live, Hugh Aldersey-Williams sets off not just to tell the story of Browne's life but to champion his skeptical nature and inquiring mind.

Mixing botany, etymology, medicine, and literary history, Aldersey-Williams journeys in his hero's footsteps to introduce us to witches, zealots, natural wonders, and fabulous creatures of Browne's time and ours. We meet Browne the master prose stylist, responsible for introducing hundreds of words into English, including electricity, hallucination, and suicide. Aldersey-Williams reveals how Browne’s preoccupations—how to disabuse the credulous of their foolish beliefs, what to make of order in nature, how to unite science and religion—are relevant today.

In Search of Sir Thomas Browne is more than just a biography—it is a cabinet of wonders and an argument that Browne, standing at the very gates of modern science, remains an inquiring mind for our own time. As Stephen Greenblatt has written, Browne is "unnervingly one of our most adventurous contemporaries."

Visit Hugh Aldersey-Williams's website.

The Page 99 Test: Anatomies.

The Page 99 Test: In Search of Sir Thomas Browne.

Writers Read: Hugh Aldersey-Williams.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Eleanor Kuhns's "Death in Salem"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Death in Salem by Eleanor Kuhns.

About the book, from the publisher:

It's 1796, and traveling weaver Will Rees is visiting Salem, Massachusetts. He's in town to buy a luxurious gift for his pregnant wife, a few yards of well-made fabric from the traders at the famed Salem harbor. While traveling through Salem, however, Rees comes upon a funeral procession for the deceased Mrs. Antiss Boothe. When Rees happens upon Twig, a friend who fought alongside him in the war, he learns that Mrs. Boothe had been very ill, and her death had not come as a surprise. But the next morning, the town is abuzz with the news that Mr. Boothe has also died--and this time it is clearly murder. When the woman that Twig loves falls under suspicion, Twig persuades Rees to stay in Salem, despite the family waiting for him back home in Maine, and help solve the murder.

Rees is quickly pulled into the murky politics of both Salem and the Boothe family, who have long been involved in the robust shipping and trading industry on the Salem harbor. Everyone Rees meets seems to be keeping some kind of secret, but could any of them actually have committed murder?

Will Rees returns in Death in Salem, the next delightful historical mystery from MB/MWA First Novel Competition winner Eleanor Kuhns.

Learn more about the book and author at Eleanor Kuhns's blog and Facebook page.

Coffee with a Canine: Eleanor Kuhns & Shelby.

My Book, The Movie: Death of a Dyer.

The Page 69 Test: Death of a Dyer.

The Page 69 Test: Death in Salem.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five of the best YA books about summer camp

At the B & N Teen Blog, Jenny Kawecki tagged five of the best YA books about summer camp, including:

Dramarama, by E. Lockhart

There’s just no camp like drama camp, amirite? Sadye (aka Sarah) and Demi are aching to escape their small town, so they audition for and get accepted to drama camp. But just because you crave the spotlight doesn’t mean you’ll get it. Talented Demi slips right into the summer productions, but for Sadye, trying her best might not be enough—especially if she keeps up the attitude with her directors. Lockhart, as ever, is a genius, and you’ll definitely be wanting to see a show by the time you’re done with this one.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Page 99 Test: Dramarama.

--Marshal Zeringue

Beth Cato's "The Clockwork Crown," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Clockwork Crown by Beth Cato.

The entry begins:

When I think of my books The Clockwork Dagger and The Clockwork Crown as movies, I don't think of a Hollywood movie. I can only see it as an anime, especially one done by Studio Ghibli. They are famous for their movies like My Neighbor Totoro and Howl's Moving Castle--the latter in particular shows how well they handle steampunk fantasy with fantastic visuals. My books span forested wilderness to sky-scraping cities teeming with factories to scenes of pure, ancient magic. When I think of what they could do with that, I...[read on]

Learn more about The Clockwork Dagger and the just-released The Clockwork Crown at Beth Cato's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Clockwork Dagger.

My Book, The Movie: The Clockwork Crown.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Alexander H. Harcourt's "Humankind"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Humankind: How Biology and Geography Shape Human Diversity by Alexander H. Harcourt.

About the book, from the publisher:

An innovative and illuminating look at how the evolution of the human species has been shaped by the world around us, from anatomy and physiology, to cultural diversity and population density.

Where did the human species originate? Why are tropical peoples much more diverse than those at polar latitudes? Why can only Japanese peoples digest seaweed? How are darker skin, sunlight, and fertility related? Did Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens ever interbreed? In Humankind, U. C. Davis professor Alexander Harcourt answers these questions and more, as he explains how the expansion of the human species around the globe and our interaction with our environment explains much about why humans differ from one region of the world to another, not only biologically, but culturally.

What effects have other species had on the distribution of humans around the world, and we, in turn, on their distribution? And how have human populations affected each other’s geography, even existence? For the first time in a single book, Alexander Harcourt brings these topics together to help us understand why we are, what we are, where we are. It turns out that when one looks at humanity's expansion around the world, and in the biological explanations for our geographic diversity, we humans are often just another primate. Humanity's distribution around the world and the type of organism we are today has been shaped by the same biogeographical forces that shape other species.

Learn more about Humankind at the publisher's website.

Writers Read: Alexander H. Harcourt.

The Page 99 Test: Humankind.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the most horribly mistreated first wives in Gothic fiction

At io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell tagged the ten most horribly mistreated first wives in Gothic fiction, including:

Joanna Eberhart from The Stepford Wives

As divorce became more prevalent and less damaging, the “wife in the attic and body in the basement” domestic Gothics became less common. There was no practical reason to murder your wife, and so The Stepford Wives, an early “suburban gothic” novel, came up with an ideological reason to murder your wife.

Joanna Eberhart moves to Stepford with her husband Walter and their two children. The move is traumatic, and only gets more so as Joanna becomes estranged from her husband when he joins the local men’s club and loses her friends when they succumb one by one to suburban domestic bliss. Soon, she begins to realize something awful is going on, and it’s likely something to do with the fact that the head of the men’s club builds robots for Disneyland. If that sounds crazy to you, it sounds just as crazy to Joanna, who allows herself to be led to the house of her newly Stepfordized friend. This friend will demonstrate that Stepford women bleed, and will do so with a conveniently large knife. In the epilogue we are treated to Walter’s new Joanna wandering around and his old Joanna nowhere in sight.

Lesson: Don’t call your kid Joanna. Joannas never make it through a Gothic novel alive.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Stepford Wives also appears among Matt Haig's ten favorite fictional robots and Kit Whitfield's top ten genre-defying novels.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, author of The Strange Case of Ermine de Reims: A Medieval Woman Between Demons and Saints.

Her entry begins:

I am a medievalist by training and profession but for the most part I dislike historical novels, except when they deal with scientists and their passions (though I have no particular scientific aptitude). Recently I embarked on a kind of “thematic binge,” bookended by a wonderful non-fiction book, Richard Holmes’ The Age of Wonder and a novel, T. C. Boyle’s When the Killing’s Done (a book I almost didn’t read because of its awful title). Holmes’ book’s subtitle is “How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science.” It focuses on scientists like Joseph Banks, Humphry Davy, William Herschel and his sister Caroline, and the explorer Mungo Park. Each chapter captures the excitement of new discoveries, people’s resilience in the face of disappointments, and...[read on]

About The Strange Case of Ermine de Reims, from the publisher:

In 1384, a poor and illiterate peasant woman named Ermine moved to the city of Reims with her elderly husband. Her era was troubled by war, plague, and schism within the Catholic Church, and Ermine could easily have slipped unobserved through the cracks of history. After the loss of her husband, however, things took a remarkable but frightening turn. For the last ten months of her life, Ermine was tormented by nightly visions of angels and demons. In her nocturnal terrors, she was attacked by animals, beaten and kidnapped by devils in disguise, and exposed to carnal spectacles; on other nights, she was blessed by saints, even visited by the Virgin Mary. She confessed these strange occurrences to an Augustinian friar known as Jean le Graveur, who recorded them all in vivid detail.

Was Ermine a saint in the making, an impostor, an incipient witch, or a madwoman? Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski ponders answers to these questions in the historical and theological context of this troubled woman's experiences. With empathy and acuity, Blumenfeld-Kosinski examines Ermine's life in fourteenth-century Reims, her relationship with her confessor, her ascetic and devotional practices, and her reported encounters with heavenly and hellish beings. Supplemented by translated excerpts from Jean's account, The Strange Case of Ermine de Reims brings to life an episode that helped precipitate one of the major clerical controversies of late medieval Europe, revealing surprising truths about the era's conceptions of piety and possession.

Writers Read: Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Jessica Alcott's "Even When You Lie to Me"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Even When You Lie to Me by Jessica Alcott.

About the book, from the publisher:

Fans of John Green’s Looking for Alaska as well as Lauren Oliver and Sarah Dessen will embrace this provocative debut novel, an exploration of taboo love set against the backdrop of a suburban high school.

Charlie, a senior, isn’t looking forward to her last year of high school. Another year of living in the shadow of her best friend, Lila. Another year of hiding behind the covers of her favorite novels. Another year of navigating her tense relationship with her perfectionist mom.

But everything changes when she meets her new English teacher. Mr. Drummond is smart. Irreverent. Funny. Hot. Everyone loves him. And Charlie thinks he’s the only one who gets her.

She also thinks she might not be the only one with a crush.

In this stunning debut, Jessica Alcott explores relationships—and their boundaries—in a way that is both searingly honest and sympathetic.

Visit Jessica Alcott's website.

Writers Read: Jessica Alcott.

My Book, The Movie: Even When You Lie to Me.

The Page 69 Test: Even When You Lie to Me.

--Marshal Zeringue

Four books that changed Maureen McCarthy

Maureen McCarthy is one of Australia's most popular young adult authors. One of four books that changed the author, as shared at the Sydney Morning Herald:

Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart
Joyce Carol Oates

Oates refuses to stay in the domestic personal sphere. Her many titles dig courageously into race and class, popular culture, politics and history, all of them with truly believable characters at their core. This one depicts two families in a small upstate New York city, one white and one black, separated by the invisible colour line until a violent act links them irrevocably. The story slides into the complex morass of entrenched racism. Oates' writing is so vivid, so fresh and fluid, so amazingly insightful, that the book is more a cause for wonder than despair.

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Lynne Jonell reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Lynne Jonell, author of The Sign of the Cat.

Her entry begins:

I usually have a mix of books going at the same time—there’s always got to be one in every bathroom, for example—but there is generally one I’m reading straight through. And I’m a children’s writer, so I am always reading in that field as well.

Children’s books I’ve been reading this week are:

Listen, Slowly by Thanhha Lai

Mai, the smart, California-hip daughter of immigrants, is guilted into accompanying her grandmother, Ba, back to Viet Nam, on a quest to discover if Ba’s husband really did survive the war. Without ever being cloying or thumping a message into us, Thanhha Lai evokes two worlds colliding in one child, and gives us history on a plate full of...[read on]

About The Sign of the Cat, from the publisher:

Talking cats, a missing princess, swordfights with villains, and secret identities combine in this epic tale of bravery and self-discovery on the high seas.

Duncan is very smart. He also has a most unusual gift. So why does his mother encourage him to be perfectly average and insist he only get mediocre grades ? His special talent is the ability to talk to cats--but Duncan longs more than anything for academic success. When Duncan rebels and gets a perfect test score, people start taking notice of him. And it turns out that some of those people may not have the best intentions . . . not by a long shot.

Visit Lynne Jonell's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Sign of the Cat.

The Page 69 Test: The Sign of the Cat.

Writers Read: Lynne Jonell.

--Marshal Zeringue

Patricia Abbott's "Concrete Angel," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Concrete Angel by Patricia Abbott.

The entry begins:

Concrete Angel flips the plot of Mildred Pierce by being the story of a craven mother and her self-sacrificing daughter. So from the beginning, I couldn't help but picture actors from the sixties and seventies being in its cast.

Lana Turner would have been perfect for Eve, the book's pitch-dark protagonist. Especially since Turner experienced an incident like the initial event in the book. When I think of her in films like By Love Possessed, Portrait in Black, and Imitation of Life she would have made a riveting Eve Moran. She was adept at playing the kind of woman you couldn't look away from despite her bad deeds.

If I am going to cast it using actors from that era, the part of Christine might be played by...[read on]

Visit Patricia Abbott's website.

The Page 69 Test: Concrete Angel.

Writers Read: Patricia Abbott.

My Book, The Movie: Concrete Angel.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Hugh Aldersey-Williams's "In Search of Sir Thomas Browne"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: In Search of Sir Thomas Browne: The Life and Afterlife of the Seventeenth Century's Most Inquiring Mind by Hugh Aldersey-Williams.

About the book, from the publisher:

The extraordinary life and ideas of one of the greatest—and most neglected—minds in history.

Sir Thomas Browne (1605–1682) was an English writer, physician, and philosopher whose work has inspired everyone from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Jorge Luis Borges, Virginia Woolf to Stephen Jay Gould. In an intellectual adventure like Sarah Bakewell's book about Montaigne, How to Live, Hugh Aldersey-Williams sets off not just to tell the story of Browne's life but to champion his skeptical nature and inquiring mind.

Mixing botany, etymology, medicine, and literary history, Aldersey-Williams journeys in his hero's footsteps to introduce us to witches, zealots, natural wonders, and fabulous creatures of Browne's time and ours. We meet Browne the master prose stylist, responsible for introducing hundreds of words into English, including electricity, hallucination, and suicide. Aldersey-Williams reveals how Browne’s preoccupations—how to disabuse the credulous of their foolish beliefs, what to make of order in nature, how to unite science and religion—are relevant today.

In Search of Sir Thomas Browne is more than just a biography—it is a cabinet of wonders and an argument that Browne, standing at the very gates of modern science, remains an inquiring mind for our own time. As Stephen Greenblatt has written, Browne is "unnervingly one of our most adventurous contemporaries."

Learn more about the book and author at Hugh Aldersey-Williams's website.

The Page 99 Test: Anatomies.

The Page 99 Test: In Search of Sir Thomas Browne.

--Marshal Zeringue

Coffee with a canine: Brooke Johnson & K.K.

Featured at Coffee with a Canine: Brooke Johnson & K.K.

The author, on K.K.'s contribution to her writing:

He’s a source of constant company when I’m writing. He has a bed right next to my desk, and sometimes, he takes up residence at my feet or in my lap. He’s less of a hindrance now than he was when he was younger, when he’d crawl up onto my desk and lay on my arms like a cat. Now he just sleeps nearby, keeping me from...[read on]

About Brooke Johnson's The Brass Giant, from the publisher:

Sometimes, even the most unlikely person can change the world

Seventeen-year-old Petra Wade, self-taught clockwork engineer, wants nothing more than to become a certified member of the Guild, an impossible dream for a lowly shop girl. Still, she refuses to give up and tinkers with any machine she can get her hands on, in between working and babysitting her foster siblings.

When Emmerich Goss—handsome, privileged, and newly recruited into the Guild—needs help designing a new clockwork system for a top-secret automaton, it seems Petra has finally found the opportunity she's been waiting for. But if her involvement on the project is discovered, Emmerich will be marked for treason, and a far more dire fate will await Petra.

Working together in secret, they build the clockwork giant, but as the deadline for its completion nears, Petra discovers a sinister conspiracy from within the Guild council…and their automaton is just the beginning.

Learn more about the book and author at Brooke Johnson's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Brass Giant.

The Page 69 Test: The Brass Giant.

Writers Read: Brooke Johnson.

Coffee with a Canine: Brooke Johnson & K.K.

--Marshal Zeringue

The top 10 summers in fiction

Tim Lott's new novel is The Last Summer of the Water Strider. One of his top ten summers in fiction, as shared at the Guardian:

Atonement by Ian McEwan

For my money, McEwan’s greatest book, and something of a departure from what came before (and after). Set in the summer of 1935, but with a distinctly Edwardian feel, the country-house setting evokes all the usual spirits of sex, corruption and innocence, but with such authenticity you feel it is being done for the first time.

Read about another entry on the list.

Atonement also appears on Ellen McCarthy's list of six favorite books about weddings and marriage, David Treuer's six favorite books list, Kirkus Reviews's list of eleven books whose final pages will shock you, Nicole Hill's list of eleven books in which the main character dies, Isla Blair's six best books list, Jessica Soffer's top ten list of book endings, Jane Ciabattari's list of five masterpieces of fiction that also worked as films, and on John Mullan's lists of ten of the best birthday parties in literature, ten of the best misdirected messages in literature, ten of the best scenes on London Underground, ten of the best breakages in literature, ten of the best weddings in literature, and ten of the best identical twins in fiction. It is one of Stephanie Beacham's six best books.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Alexander H. Harcourt reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Alexander H. Harcourt, author of Humankind: How Biology and Geography Shape Human Diversity.

His entry begins:

Bernard Cornwell’s Waterloo.

Waterloo was published in 2014, but I came across it just this last month, May 2015, in the wonderful Daunt Books on Fulham Rd. in London. Let me give an example of the store’s excellence. I had just got back from Sicily. A friend told me about Leonardo Sciascia, a writer from there, dead 15 years ago. In a spirit of extravagant, even ridiculous optimism, I asked the salesperson behind the Daunt counter if by any chance they had any Sciascia. Instead of a puzzled look, he took me straight to the foreign authors bookshelves, and there pointed to five books by Sciascia. I bought the lot.

Back to Waterloo. Much has been written about the battle of Waterloo. But Bernard Cornwell with his skill as a fiction writer, most relevantly of the Richard Sharpe Napoleonic Wars series, energetically and fascinatingly describes that awful day. And the aftermath - the wounded left for days some of them, stripped by looters, even killed if they struggled.

The book reminded me once again of the tactical and strategic brilliance of Wellington...[read on]

About  Humankind, from the publisher:

An innovative and illuminating look at how the evolution of the human species has been shaped by the world around us, from anatomy and physiology, to cultural diversity and population density.

Where did the human species originate? Why are tropical peoples much more diverse than those at polar latitudes? Why can only Japanese peoples digest seaweed? How are darker skin, sunlight, and fertility related? Did Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens ever interbreed? In Humankind, U. C. Davis professor Alexander Harcourt answers these questions and more, as he explains how the expansion of the human species around the globe and our interaction with our environment explains much about why humans differ from one region of the world to another, not only biologically, but culturally.

What effects have other species had on the distribution of humans around the world, and we, in turn, on their distribution? And how have human populations affected each other’s geography, even existence? For the first time in a single book, Alexander Harcourt brings these topics together to help us understand why we are, what we are, where we are. It turns out that when one looks at humanity's expansion around the world, and in the biological explanations for our geographic diversity, we humans are often just another primate. Humanity's distribution around the world and the type of organism we are today has been shaped by the same biogeographical forces that shape other species.

Learn more about Humankind at the publisher's website.

Writers Read: Alexander H. Harcourt.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Lynne Jonell's "The Sign of the Cat"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Sign of the Cat by Lynne Jonell.

About the book, from the publisher:

Talking cats, a missing princess, swordfights with villains, and secret identities combine in this epic tale of bravery and self-discovery on the high seas.

Duncan is very smart. He also has a most unusual gift. So why does his mother encourage him to be perfectly average and insist he only get mediocre grades ? His special talent is the ability to talk to cats--but Duncan longs more than anything for academic success. When Duncan rebels and gets a perfect test score, people start taking notice of him. And it turns out that some of those people may not have the best intentions . . . not by a long shot.

Visit Lynne Jonell's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Sign of the Cat.

The Page 69 Test: The Sign of the Cat.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jessica Alcott's "Even When You Lie to Me," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Even When You Lie to Me by Jessica Alcott.

The entry begins:

This is a tough one because I deliberately didn't describe what my protagonist, Charlie, looks like – I wanted to leave that up to the reader's imagination. She's depicted only in terms of how she feels about her looks and how other people react to her. Casting her would pin this down – any viewer would be able to make a judgment about whether whoever played her was or wasn't attractive. I'd also worry that the actress would be "Hollywood ugly"; i.e., incredibly attractive but...[read on]

Visit Jessica Alcott's website.

Writers Read: Jessica Alcott.

My Book, The Movie: Even When You Lie to Me.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: William E. Mann's "God, Modality, and Morality"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: God, Modality, and Morality by William E. Mann.

About the book, from the publisher:

Suppose that God exists: what difference would that make to the world? The answer depends on the nature of God and the nature of the world. In this book, William E. Mann argues in one new and sixteen previously published essays for a modern interpretation of a traditional conception of God as a simple, necessarily existing, personal being. Divine simplicity entails that God has no physical composition or temporal stages; that there is in God no distinction between essence and existence; that there is no partitioning of God's mental life into beliefs, desires, and intentions. God is thus a spiritual, eternal being, dependent on nothing else, whose essence is to exist and whose mode of existence is identical with omniscience, omnipotence, and perfectly goodness.

In metaphysical contrast, the world is a spatial matrix populated most conspicuously by finite physical objects whose careers proceed sequentially from past to present to future. Mann defends a view according to which the world was created out of nothing and is sustained in existence from moment to moment by God. The differences in metaphysical status between creator and creatures raise questions for which Mann suggests answers. How can God know contingent facts and necessary truths without depending on them? Why is it so easy to overlook God's presence? Why would self-sufficient God create anything? Wouldn't a perfect God create the best world possible? Can God be free? Can we be free if God's power is continuously necessary to sustain us in existence? If God does sustain us, is God an accomplice whenever we sin?

Mann responds to the Euthyphro dilemma by arguing for a kind of divine command metaethical theory, whose normative content lays emphasis on love. Given the metaphysical differences between us, how can there be loving relationships between God and creatures? Mann responds by examining the notions of piety and hope.

Learn more about God, Modality, and Morality at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: God, Modality, and Morality.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six fabulous fictional female magicians

Sarah Skilton is the author of Bruised, a martial arts drama for young adults; and High and Dry, a hardboiled teen mystery. At the B&N Reads blog she tagged six fabulous fictional female prestidigitators, including:

Julia (The Magician King, by Lev Grossman)

In the second book of Grossman’s adult fantasy trilogy starring young magician Quentin Coldwater, Quentin’s high school friend and former crush, Julia, earns a co-lead credit. Unlike the comparatively pampered students of Brakebills magic college, “[Julia’s] magic had sharp, jagged edges on it that had never been filed down.” Having been tested by Brakebills, and having her memory of it (mostly) erased after failing the entrance exam, Julia becomes obsessed with recapturing the magic she’s lost. Self-taught as a “hedge witch,” she works herself to the bone and eventually teams up with other magical outcasts to perform ever greater (and more terrifying) feats of magic.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Patricia Abbott reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Patricia Abbott, author of Concrete Angel. 

Her entry begins:

As a writer of short stories, I am always drawn to a collection of stories and Russell Bank's new collection, A Permanent Member of the Family, went right on my kindle. Two of Banks' earlier books, Continental Drift and Affliction, were landmark works for me. In this collection we read about, mostly men, at pivotal moments in their lives. The title story was especially poignant: a divorced father watches his children's visits diminish after the family dog, who lives with him, dies. It was all about the...[read on]

About Concrete Angel, from the publisher:

An atmospheric and eagerly-awaited debut novel from acclaimed crime writer Patricia Abbott, set in Philadelphia in the 1970's about a family torn apart by a mother straight out of "Mommy Dearest", and her children who are at first victims but soon learn they must fight back to survive.

Eve Moran has always wanted “things” and has proven both inventive and tenacious in getting and keeping them. Eve lies, steals, cheats, swindles, and finally commits murder, paying little heed to the cost of her actions on those who love her. Her daughter, Christine, compelled by love, dependency, and circumstance, is caught up in her mother’s deceptions, unwilling to accept the viciousness that runs in her mother's blood. Eve’s powers of seduction are hard to resist for those who come in contact with her toxic allure. It’s only when Christine’s three-year old brother, Ryan begins to prove useful to her mother, and she sees a pattern repeating itself, that Christine finds the courage and means to bring an end to Eve’s tyranny.

An unflinching novel about love, lust and greed that runs deep within our bones, Patricia Abbott cements herself as one of our very best writers of domestic suspense.

Visit Patricia Abbott's website.

The Page 69 Test: Concrete Angel. 

Writers Read: Patricia Abbott.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Beth Cato's "The Clockwork Dagger"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Clockwork Dagger by Beth Cato.

About the book, from the publisher:

Orphaned as a child, Octavia Leander was doomed to grow up on the streets until Miss Percival saved her. Gifted with incredible powers, the young healer is about to embark on her first mission, visiting suffering cities in the far reaches of the war-scarred realm. But the airship on which she is traveling is plagued by a series of strange and disturbing occurrences, including murder, and Octavia herself is threatened.

Suddenly, she is caught up in a flurry of intrigue: the dashingly attractive steward may be one of the infamous Clockwork Daggers—the Queen's spies and assassins—and her cabinmate harbors disturbing secrets. But the danger is only beginning, for Octavia discovers that the deadly conspiracy may reach the crown itself.

Learn more about The Clockwork Dagger and the just-released The Clockwork Crown at Beth Cato's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Clockwork Dagger.

--Marshal Zeringue

Lynne Jonell's "The Sign of the Cat," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Sign of the Cat by Lynne Jonell.

The entry begins:

I suspect the movie would have to be animated—there are just too many talking cats. So I’d want Pixar to do the animation, and Pete Docter to direct. There’s a bit of local interest there—he grew up in Bloomington, Minnesota, and I grew up in Richfield, its next-door neighbor! But the real reason I’d like Pete Docter is that his montage of Carl and Ellie aging, in the movie Up, is one of the best things I’ve ever seen done.

I’d have Pixar use performance capture so the animated human actors would not only sound, but also look and move like themselves. So with that in mind, here goes:

Choosing a child actor to play Duncan, the central character, is tough. Movies take a long time to make, and child actors just keep growing up. But since I write fantasy, I don’t consider that I have to be realistic about this; I’d choose Tom Holland, back when he was twelve. I loved his work in The Impossible and he’s even got the look I imagined for Duncan, a kid who longs for success but whose mother warns him to never, never do his best. I already know Tom can do adventure with lots of drama, and deliver an understated yearning; the big question is, does he...[read on]

Visit Lynne Jonell's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Sign of the Cat.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Brandon R. Brown's "Planck"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Planck: Driven by Vision, Broken by War by Brandon R. Brown.

About the book, from the publisher:

Max Planck is credited with being the father of quantum theory, and his work was described by his close friend Albert Einstein as "the basis of all twentieth-century physics." But Planck's story is not well known, especially in the United States. A German physicist working during the first half of the twentieth century, his library, personal journals, notebooks, and letters were all destroyed with his home in World War II. What remains, other than his contributions to science, are handwritten letters in German shorthand, and tributes from other scientists of the time.

In Planck: Driven by Vision, Broken by War, Brandon R. Brown interweaves the voices and writings of Planck, his family, and his contemporaries--with many passages appearing in English for the first time--to create a portrait of a groundbreaking physicist working in the midst of war. Planck spent much of his adult life grappling with the identity crisis of being an influential German with ideas that ran counter to his government. During the later part of his life, he survived bombings and battlefields, surgeries and blood transfusions, all the while performing his influential work amidst a violent and crumbling Nazi bureaucracy. When his son was accused of treason, Planck tried to use his standing as a German "national treasure," and wrote directly to Hitler to spare his son's life. Brown tells the story of Planck's friendship with the far more outspoken Albert Einstein, and shows how his work fits within the explosion of technology and science that occurred during his life.

This story of a brilliant man living in a dangerous time gives Max Planck his rightful place in the history of science, and it shows how war-torn Germany deeply impacted his life and work.

Visit Brandon Brown's website.

My Book, The Movie: Planck.

Writers Read: Brandon R. Brown.

The Page 99 Test: Planck.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eleven adult sci-fi novels to turn teens into genre fans for life

At the B & N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog Ceridwen Christensen tagged eleven works of science fiction and fantasy that were written for grown-ups, but, if read by precocious teens, are likely to turn them into genre readers for life. One title on the list:

Nova, by Margaret Fortune

Sixteen-year-old Lia Johansen is being repatriated from a prisoner of war camp, a goodwill gesture from one interplanetary empire to another. She makes it through security when the countdown timer actives in her head: she’s a genetically engineered bomb, set to blow in 36 hours. When the countdown timer inexplicably stops, she had to start living as the actual Lia Johansen, who has friends on the space station, a life and a history. Her purpose becomes muddy, confusing: if she thinks like Lia, moves like Lia, is she on some level Lia? Nova is a situational extreme, a tug of war between purpose and personality, that can stand in quite easily for the undecided ambitions of our formative years. I have lit my candle at both ends…

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Jessica Alcott reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Jessica Alcott, author of Even When You Lie to Me.

Her entry begins:

The last book I read that made a huge impression on me was Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. It's won tons of prizes and it's a bestseller to boot, so most readers will probably be familiar with the plot, but just in case: it's an elliptical narrative about the end of the world we know and the beginning of a new one for the survivors of a deadly plague. That makes it sound much more dystopian than it is; what it's really about is loss and sadness and the meaning and importance of art, how there must be more to existence than...[read on]

About Even When You Lie to Me, from the publisher:

Fans of John Green’s Looking for Alaska as well as Lauren Oliver and Sarah Dessen will embrace this provocative debut novel, an exploration of taboo love set against the backdrop of a suburban high school.

Charlie, a senior, isn’t looking forward to her last year of high school. Another year of living in the shadow of her best friend, Lila. Another year of hiding behind the covers of her favorite novels. Another year of navigating her tense relationship with her perfectionist mom.

But everything changes when she meets her new English teacher. Mr. Drummond is smart. Irreverent. Funny. Hot. Everyone loves him. And Charlie thinks he’s the only one who gets her.

She also thinks she might not be the only one with a crush.

In this stunning debut, Jessica Alcott explores relationships—and their boundaries—in a way that is both searingly honest and sympathetic.

Visit Jessica Alcott's website.

Writers Read: Jessica Alcott.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Patricia Abbott's "Concrete Angel"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Concrete Angel by Patricia Abbott.

About the book, from the publisher:

An atmospheric and eagerly-awaited debut novel from acclaimed crime writer Patricia Abbott, set in Philadelphia in the 1970's about a family torn apart by a mother straight out of "Mommy Dearest", and her children who are at first victims but soon learn they must fight back to survive.

Eve Moran has always wanted “things” and has proven both inventive and tenacious in getting and keeping them. Eve lies, steals, cheats, swindles, and finally commits murder, paying little heed to the cost of her actions on those who love her. Her daughter, Christine, compelled by love, dependency, and circumstance, is caught up in her mother’s deceptions, unwilling to accept the viciousness that runs in her mother's blood. Eve’s powers of seduction are hard to resist for those who come in contact with her toxic allure. It’s only when Christine’s three-year old brother, Ryan begins to prove useful to her mother, and she sees a pattern repeating itself, that Christine finds the courage and means to bring an end to Eve’s tyranny.

An unflinching novel about love, lust and greed that runs deep within our bones, Patricia Abbott cements herself as one of our very best writers of domestic suspense.

Visit Patricia Abbott's website.

The Page 69 Test: Concrete Angel.

--Marshal Zeringue