Six suspense novels & twisty thrillers set in small towns

Laura Griffin is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of more than thirty books and novellas. She is a two-time RITA Award winner, as well as the recipient of the Daphne du Maurier Award.

Her new novel is Innocence Road.

At CrimeReads Griffin tagged six favorite suspense novels and twisty thrillers set in small towns, including:

Rachel Howzell Hall, Fog and Fury

Irony is alive and well in Rachel Howzell Hall’s thriller about a private investigator who moves to Haven, California, hoping to escape the violence of L.A. but ends up getting embroiled in a murder investigation. Hall sets her story in a town nicknamed “Mayberry by the Sea,” but savvy readers will clue into the surprise she is creating for her protagonist, Sonny Rush, who soon after arrival gets called upon to help solve the mysterious death of a teenage boy.

It doesn’t take long for Sonny to figure out that nothing is as it seems in Haven, and that charming little communities can hide dangerous secrets.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Christina Kovac's "Watch Us Fall," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Watch Us Fall: A Novel by Christina Kovac.

The entry begins:

Addie James, who is the pivotal love interest/best friend, should be played by Zendaya. I always imagined Zendaya. In fact, when Josh first sees her, he notices Addie’s “big eyes and sharp cheeks, her warm brown skin... the way she moved. Like a dancer, or an athlete. Someone joyful in their body.” And Zendaya moves like that.

Anya Taylor-Joy from Queen’s Gambit would be an interesting choice for Lucy. She’s got a...[read on]

Visit Christina Kovac's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Cutaway.

The Page 69 Test: The Cutaway.

Writers Read: Christina Kovac (March 2017).

My Book, The Movie: Watch Us Fall.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Min Joo Lee's "Finding Mr. Perfect"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Finding Mr. Perfect: K-Drama, Pop Culture, Romance, and Race by Min Joo Lee.

About the book, from the publisher:

Finding Mr. Perfect explores the romantic relationships between Korean men and women who were inspired by romantic Korean televisual depictions of Korean masculinity to travel to Korea as tourists. Author Min Joo Lee argues that disparate racialized erotic desires of Korean pop culture fans, foreign tourists to Korea, Korean men, and the Korean nation converge to configure the interracial and transnational relationships between these tourists and Korean men. Lee observes how racial prejudices are developed and manifested through interracial and transnational intimate desires and encounters. This book is the first to examine the interracial relationships between Hallyu tourists and Korean men. Furthermore, it is the first to analyze Korea as a popular romance tourist destination for heterosexual women. Finding Mr. Perfect illuminates South Korean popular culture’s transnational fandom and tourism as a global phenomenon where fantasies and realities converge to have a tangible impact on individual lives.

Learn more about Finding Mr. Perfect at the Rutgers University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Finding Mr. Perfect.

--Marshal Zeringue

Fifteen books on why & how to preserve democracy

One title on Tertulia's list of "books that explain how we have arrived at a precarious state of democracy and what is to be done about it:"

The Originalism Trap: How Extremists Stole the Constitution and How We the People Can Take It Back
Madiba K. Dennie

Blending scholarship with accessible analysis of Constitutional law, this book underscores the ambition of the Reconstruction Amendments, which were adopted in the wake of the Civil War and sought to build a democracy with equal membership for marginalized people. The author argues the law must serve to make that promise of democracy real in spirit, not in following the original interpretation of a bygone era.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Page 99 Test: The Originalism Trap.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Cara Black reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Cara Black, author of Huguette.

Her entry begins:

Right now I'm reading Generation (Volume 1) published in 1987 by Hervé Hamon and Patrick Rotman.

This is a non-fiction book in French (and I confess DeepL for translation is very helpful in reading this 600 page book!)

I found this book secondhand in Paris at the wonderful Gibert Joseph bookstore near Saint Michel.

My friend recommended to read this since I'm doing research on May 1968 and the Sorbonne student uprising for my next book. He was right - it's got everything - firsthand accounts of protestors, journalists, police actions. Descriptions of...[read on]

About Huguette, from the publisher:

In the lawlessness of post–World War II France, a resilient young woman fights to survive and make a living, no matter the cost—from the New York Times bestselling author of Three Hours in Paris and the Aimée Leduc series

After Libération, spring 1945: Seventeen-year-old Huguette Faure is a survivor. The war has taken everything from her—both her parents and her sense of safety. Now, pregnant and on the lam, she cannot return to her childhood home in Paris. Forced to reinvent herself, she must outrun her father’s enemies, who want her dead. After narrowly avoiding jail time—thanks to the help of a kindhearted police officer named Claude Leduc—Huguette lands a job assisting a legendary film director. As her role develops from helping him with chores to cooking his books, she sees an opportunity to break free from the ghosts of her past once and for all.

In this big-hearted story of resilience, New York Times bestselling author Cara Black offers a wholly original depiction of postwar France as well as introduces Claude Leduc—the man who decades later inspired his granddaughter, Aimée, to become a private investigator.

Visit Cara Black's website and follow her on Instagram and Threads.

The Page 69 Test: Murder at the Lanterne Rouge.

My Book, the Movie: Murder at the Lanterne Rouge.

The Page 69 Test: Murder below Montparnasse.

The Page 69 Test: Murder in Pigalle.

My Book, The Movie: Murder in Pigalle.

My Book, The Movie: Murder on the Champ de Mars.

The Page 69 Test: Three Hours in Paris.

The Page 69 Test: Night Flight to Paris.

Writers Read: Cara Black (March 2023).

Writers Read: Cara Black (March 2024).

The Page 69 Test: Murder at la Villette.

My Book, The Movie: Huguette.

The Page 69 Test: Huguette.

Writers Read: Cara Black.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Orlando Murrin's "May Contain Murder"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: May Contain Murder by Orlando Murrin.

About the book, from the publisher:

For fans of Nita Prose, Benjamin Stevenson, and Jessa Maxwell, this delightfully witty and tightly-written new locked room culinary mystery from the MasterChef semi-finalist, cookbook writer, and bestselling author of Knife Skills for Beginners features a charming chef, delicious original recipes, and a killer cruise aboard a luxurious superyacht.

“If it weren’t for all the terrible things that have been happening, I’d consider myself the luckiest man alive...”

While his flooded house undergoes repairs, chef-turned-writer Paul Delamare has been offered an accommodation upgrade—an all-expenses-paid trip aboard a private superyacht in the company of Xéra, one of his dearest friends. Paul will help Xéra work on her memoirs as Maldemer glides its sumptuous way to the Caribbean. The scenery is stunning, the luxury is unparalleled, and the food…well, at least the dishes that Paul is roped into preparing are delicious. The hired chef, meanwhile, seems completely out of her depth.

She’s not the only one. Much as Paul adores Xéra, a Parisian socialite who he was introduced to by his late lover, Marcus, he has little in common with the other guests, a motley crew consisting of Xéra’s new husband and his grasping family.

When Xéra’s priceless new necklace goes missing, Paul falls under suspicion. But there’s far worse in store, as one of the passengers is found dead in mysterious and grisly circumstances. The stormy weather matches the threatening mood onboard, and as Maldemer veers off course, every semblance of order goes with it.

Above and below deck there are secrets and dangerous alliances. And as he untangles the truth, it becomes clear that Paul’s sharing close quarters with a killer eager to make this his final voyage...

Visit Orlando Murrin's website.

The Page 69 Test: Knife Skills for Beginners.

Q&A with Orlando Murrin.

The Page 69 Test: May Contain Murder.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Raphael Magarik's "Fictions of God"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Fictions of God: English Renaissance Literature and the Invention of the Biblical Narrator by Raphael Magarik.

About the book, from the publisher:

A new history of literary narration rooted in the turmoil of the Protestant Reformation.

We often identify secularization's characteristic literary form as the modern novel: out with divine scripture, in with human fictions. In Fictions of God, Raphael Magarik argues that this story overlooks the cultural upheavals of the Protestant Reformation. Early reformers imagined a Bible that was neither infallible nor inerrant but fictional, composed by a divine counterfactual: God crafted the text, they said, as if it had been written by the prophets. Early modern Protestants now found in their Bibles not a source of foundational truths but a model for unreliable narration, even fiction.

Fictions of God traces how this approach to literature passed from biblical commentators to poets like Abraham Cowley, John Milton, and Lucy Hutchinson amid the violent emergence of a new religious and political order—long before the eighteenth-century rise of the English novel. The result is a transformative account of the Reformation’s effect on imaginative literature and the secularization of the Bible itself.

Learn more about Fictions of God at the University of Chicago Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Fictions of God.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top 20 crime fiction, mysteries, and thrillers: "CrimeReads"

One title on the top twenty list of the best crime novels, mysteries, and thrillers of 2025, according to CrimeReads:

Murder Takes a Vacation, Laura Lippman

Stalwart mystery author Lippman takes up the Agatha Christie mantle in her newest novel, Murder Takes a Vacation, in which Tess Monaghan’s longtime sidekick, Mrs. Blossom, gets her turn in the spotlight. The action sees Blossom head to France for a once-in-a-lifetime cruise; her interest is sparked by a man on board, but, naturally, the man soon turns up dead in Paris, and the ship begins looking more like a vipers’ nest, as Blossom unspools a mystery among the passengers. The new novel adds a welcome layer of depth to the character and constructs a worthy mystery for her to solve, all set against the splendors of a voyager’s France. –

Read about another novel on the list.

Murder Takes a Vacation is among Sue Hincenbergs's eight mysteries and thrillers featuring older sleuths and criminals.

The Page 69 Test: Murder Takes a Vacation.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Matthew Pearl

From my Q&A with Matthew Pearl, author of The Award: A Novel:

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

I like to flatter myself that I'm a title aficionado, actually, in that I put a fair amount of energy into landing what I hope is the just-right title for a project, whether it comes easily or takes longer, and I try to be a student of other titles out in the world. The title for The Award came to me once I had the plot for this novel in mind, which involves an up-and-coming writer navigating twists and turns of the literary world, including elite soirees and fancy awards, which ultimately lead into life and death stakes. It also plays on the idea that we sometimes trust books that won awards to ...[read on]

Visit Matthew Pearl's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Poe Shadow.

The Page 99 Test: The Last Dickens.

The Page 69 Test: The Technologists.

Q&A with Matthew Pearl.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Mark Goodale's "Extracting the Future"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Extracting the Future: Lithium in an Era of Energy Transition by Mark Goodale.

About the book, from the publisher:

Bolivia's troubled efforts to develop a commercial lithium industry.

Bolivia's lithium accounts for a significant percentage of the world's known reserve. Drawing on extensive ethnographic research, Mark Goodale traces the development of Bolivia's closely guarded lithium project through the perspectives of a wide array of people and institutions, including workers at the Salar de Uyuni, the world's largest salt flat; the state lithium company in La Paz; Latin America's first electric vehicle company; and energy entrepreneurs in Bolivia, the United States, and Germany. He points to a fundamental contradiction: a so-called green energy transition dependent on the ever-greater extraction of yet another nonrenewable resource.

But without access to Bolivia's lithium, and at megaindustrial scales that far outstrip current production, there won't be sufficient lithium supply to make the batteries needed for a truly global EV revolution. Extracting the Future shows how the lithium economy is deeply embedded in a global capitalist system that continues to rely on resource extraction, unsustainable economic growth, and geopolitical violence.

Visit Mark Goodale's website.

The Page 99 Test: Surrendering to Utopia.

The Page 99 Test: Reinventing Human Rights.

The Page 99 Test: Extracting the Future.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight top historical mystery novels that transport readers

USA Today bestselling author Julie Mulhern is a Kansas City native who grew up on a steady diet of Agatha Christie. She spends her spare time whipping up gourmet meals for her family, working out at the gym, and finding new ways to keep her house spotlessly clean. Truth is, she's an expert at calling for take-out, she grumbles about walking the dog, and the dust bunnies under the bed have grown into dust lions. Action, adventure, mystery, and humor are the things Mulhern loves when she's reading. She loves them even more when she's writing!

Her new novel is Murder in Manhattan.

At CrimeReads Mulhern tagged eight favorite historical mystery novels that transport readers, including:

Catriona McPherson, After the Armistice Ball

After the Armistice Ball by Catriona McPherson drops us into a chilly Scottish winter where the unhealed wounds left by the Great War still color every conversation. The sleuth, Dandy Gilver, is an aristocratic woman finding new purpose as a detective, and McPherson captures both the privilege and the suffocating expectations of Dandy’s class with equal precision.

Dandy doesn’t rail against the bars of her golden cage. Instead, she subversively slips through them. And we love her for it. The mystery itself is clever, but it’s the atmosphere—the tension between old certainties and new possibilities—that keeps readers hooked.

Read about another entry on the list.

After the Armistice Ball is among Harini Nagendra's six top historical mysteries.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Cara Black's "Huguette"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Huguette by Cara Black.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the lawlessness of post–World War II France, a resilient young woman fights to survive and make a living, no matter the cost—from the New York Times bestselling author of Three Hours in Paris and the Aimée Leduc series

After Libération, spring 1945: Seventeen-year-old Huguette Faure is a survivor. The war has taken everything from her—both her parents and her sense of safety. Now, pregnant and on the lam, she cannot return to her childhood home in Paris. Forced to reinvent herself, she must outrun her father’s enemies, who want her dead. After narrowly avoiding jail time—thanks to the help of a kindhearted police officer named Claude Leduc—Huguette lands a job assisting a legendary film director. As her role develops from helping him with chores to cooking his books, she sees an opportunity to break free from the ghosts of her past once and for all.

In this big-hearted story of resilience, New York Times bestselling author Cara Black offers a wholly original depiction of postwar France as well as introduces Claude Leduc—the man who decades later inspired his granddaughter, Aimée, to become a private investigator.

Visit Cara Black's website and follow her on Instagram and Threads.

The Page 69 Test: Murder at the Lanterne Rouge.

My Book, the Movie: Murder at the Lanterne Rouge.

The Page 69 Test: Murder below Montparnasse.

The Page 69 Test: Murder in Pigalle.

My Book, The Movie: Murder in Pigalle.

My Book, The Movie: Murder on the Champ de Mars.

The Page 69 Test: Three Hours in Paris.

The Page 69 Test: Night Flight to Paris.

Writers Read: Cara Black (March 2023).

Writers Read: Cara Black (March 2024).

The Page 69 Test: Murder at la Villette.

My Book, The Movie: Huguette.

The Page 69 Test: Huguette.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Iftekhar Iqbal's "The Range of the River"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Range of the River: A Riverine History of Empire across China, India, and Southeast Asia by Iftekhar Iqbal.

About the book, from the publisher:

Spanning nearly 4 million square kilometers, the Tibetan river system—including the Brahmaputra, Irrawaddy, Salween, Mekong, Red, and Yangzi—forms the largest contiguous network of rivers on the planet, stretching across eastern South Asia, mainland Southeast Asia, and southern China. The Range of the River uncovers the entwined histories of these vast waterways and the empires, human actors, and other—than—human forces that have shaped Asia since the 1850s. Both ethnodiverse and biodiverse, these rivers were more than contested imperial spaces—they were also channels of communal and material exchange, linking near and distant contact zones. They fostered connections across Asia, driving commerce, mobility, and cultural encounters that transformed them into shared, living commons bridging societies, political powers, and economic interests.

Tracing six major rivers across eight countries, Iftekhar Iqbal argues that these river systems formed the core of a discursive space where empires, regional political forces, ethnic groups, boaters, peddlers, explorers, merchants, and mules encountered each other in layered meanings and movements. This groundbreaking book reimagines the river not as merely a tool of empire but as a dynamic force in itself, shaping a truly transregional Asia. By weaving together diverse riverine life—worlds, The Range of the River invites us to rethink Asia's spatial history.

Learn more about The Range of the River at the Stanford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: The Range of the River.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six the best twisty police procedurals

Isabelle Popp's first attempt at writing a romance novel came in middle school, when she began a story about a weirdo girl who could photosynthesize. That project was abandoned, but she has plenty of other silly ideas in the hopper. When she isn't reading or writing, she's probably knitting, solving crossword puzzles, or scouring used book stores for vintage Gothic romance paperbacks. Originally from New York, she's as surprised as anyone that she lives in Indiana. Let's Give 'Em Pumpkin to Talk About is her first novel.

At Book Riot Popp tagged six of the best twisty police procedurals. One title on the list:

Echo by Tracy Clark

I am always down for a mystery involving a secret society. Chicago Police Department detective Harriet “Harri” Foster is on the case of a body found near a building that houses Belverton College’s Minotaur Society. The victim is the son of a billionaire benefactor of Belverton, so the story delves into another mysterious death in the past that may be linked to this one. This is a gritty mystery that also explores Detective Foster’s grief for her deceased partner.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Page 69 Test: Echo.

--Marshal Zeringue

Elena Taylor's "The Haunting of Emily Grace," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Haunting of Emily Grace by Elena Taylor.

The entry begins:

The Haunting of Emily Grace would make a great movie. I also think it would be very effective in one of those mini series we see on Netflix and Amazon Prime, with half a dozen episodes to binge all at once. Set in an isolated, unfinished mansion on a tiny island in the middle of a dark sea makes for the perfect imagery. With the rugged coastline of the San Juan Island chain up here in the Pacific Northwest as the backdrop, and the sweet, small town vibe in contrast to the cold, modern house, would give a director a location to love as much as the story and the characters. The directors of Harlan Coben's many streaming series or the series Justified would make excellent choices, as they all make location add to suspense.

Emily Grace should be played by an actress that can feel fragile, but also show a spine of steel when called upon. She has to come across as practical most of the time and have the physical strength to be a carpenter. Lili Taylor from her Mystic Pizza days is the first actress that comes to mind, but Jennifer...[read on]

Visit Elena Taylor's website.

Q&A with Elena Taylor.

The Page 69 Test: A Cold, Cold World.

My Book, The Movie: A Cold, Cold World.

Writers Read: Elena Taylor.

My Book, The Movie: The Haunting of Emily Grace.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Jon Moen and Mary Tone Rodgers's "Before the Fed"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Before the Fed: J.P. Morgan, America's Lender of Last Resort by Jon Moen and Mary Tone Rodgers.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the 19th century the United States had no formal central bank or lender of last resort, but it did have J. P. Morgan. His unique knowledge of financial markets gave him almost omniscient knowledge for crafting solutions to financial crises. Before the Fed examines Morgan's unusual role in resolving the National Banking Era crises in the U. S., exploring the rocky relationships and ultimatums he used to settle financial panics. It traces how he learned crisis management lessons from his father, passing it along to his son in turn. Citing his own ledgers, telegrams and testimony, Jon Moen and Mary Tone Rodgers detail how Morgan applied and modified routine business practices to solve non-routine crises, managing risk and reward in emergency lending. Analyzing forty last resort loans made over his fifty-year career, the authors challenge the invincibility folklore surrounding Morgan, uncovering how he stabilized American markets when others could not.

Learn more about Before the Fed at the Cambridge University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Before the Fed.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven books about very hungry women

Anna Rollins is the author of Famished: On Food, Sex, and Growing Up as a Good Girl. Her groundbreaking debut memoir examines the rhyming scripts of diet culture and evangelical purity culture. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Slate, Electric Literature, Salon, Joyland, and more, and she has also published scholarly work in composition and writing center studies. An award-winning instructor, she taught English in higher education for nearly 15 years and is a 2025 West Virginia Creative Network Literary Arts Fellow. A lifelong Appalachian, she lives in West Virginia with her husband and their three small children.

At Electric Lit Rollins tagged seven books in which "women are hungry for love, survival, and power" and "food indulgence runs parallel to their other, gnawing appetites." One title on the list:

The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood

Women’s bodies shrink as their rights shrink. Diets have long been considered through a feminist lens: If a woman is hungry and turned inward, she doesn’t have the energy or perspective to change the outside world. But in Margaret Atwood’s The Edible Woman, this reading of restriction is upended and considered in terms of awakening rather than submission. As Marian approaches an uninspiring marriage, she rejects food as a form of protest. At the conclusion, she bakes a cake shaped like a woman and insists that her fiance become the consumer. Disgusted, he refuses and leaves her. She eats some of her own cake, and with this act, her appetite returns.

Read about another title on Rollins's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Paula Munier reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Paula Munier, author of The Snow Lies Deep: A Mercy Carr Mystery.

Her entry begins:

This is my favorite time of year, so I was delighted to finally get to write a mystery set during the holidays. The Snow Lies Deep is my seventh Mercy Carr mystery (although you can read them in any order) and it was inspired by all the wonderful winter novels I’ve read and loved. Here are a few of my favorites:

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

This lovely fairy tale of a novel is set in Alaska in 1920. A childless homesteading couple scrape out a living in a remote area cut off from the rest of the world in the winter. They celebrate the first snowfall by building a snow child together—a symbol of their longing for a child of their own. The rest is magic…or is it? No spoilers, you’ll just have to read it…. I am a sucker for novels set in the wilderness, especially ones so beautifully written, as this Pulitzer-Prize nominee was. I loved...[read on]

About The Snow Lies Deep, from the publisher:

The latest thrilling installment in the bestselling Mercy Carr mystery series

Mercy and Troy are looking forward to baby Felicity’s first holiday season, and they’re determined to make it a Christmas to remember. At Northshire’s annual Solstice Soirée, hosted by Northshire’s finest and funded by Mercy’s billionaire pal Feinberg, Amy’s little girl Helena is sitting on Santa Claus’s lap. She’s telling him she’d like a Bitty Baby doll just like little Felicity when the bearded man leaps up, thrusts the toddler at her mother Amy, and staggers away from the festivities. He disappears into the woods. By the time Elvis and Mercy find him, Santa Claus aka the town mayor, is lying on his back, dead. A yule log made of oak sits on his chest, burning bright, a beacon of light on the darkest day of the year.

This strange murder is the first of a series of similar Solstice-themed killings targeting the town’s most prominent citizens. Beloved family friend Lillian Jenkins, the grande dame of Northshire, could be next. Mercy and Troy and the dogs must team up with Thrasher and Harrington to capture The Yuletide Killer before he strikes again, this time far closer to home.

Visit Paula Munier's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Paula Munier & Bear.

My Book, The Movie: A Borrowing of Bones.

The Page 69 Test: A Borrowing of Bones.

Writers Read: Paula Munier (October 2019).

My Book, The Movie: Blind Search.

The Page 69 Test: Blind Search.

My Book, The Movie: The Hiding Place.

The Page 69 Test: The Hiding Place.

Q&A with Paula Munier.

My Book, The Movie: The Wedding Plot.

The Page 69 Test: The Wedding Plot.

Writers Read: Paula Munier (July 2022).

Writers Read: Paula Munier (October 2023).

My Book, The Movie: Home at Night.

The Page 69 Test: Home at Night.

My Book, The Movie: The Night Woods.

The Page 69 Test: The Night Woods.

Writers Read: Paula Munier (October 2024).

My Book, The Movie: The Snow Lies Deep.

The Page 69 Test: The Snow Lies Deep.

Writers Read: Paula Munier.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Joanna Dee Das's "Faith, Family, and Flag"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Faith, Family, and Flag: Branson Entertainment and the Idea of America by Joanna Dee Das.

About the book, from the publisher:

Sons of Britches. The Great American Chuckwagon Dinner Show. The Haygoods. The Grand Jubilee. These are just a couple of the many shows performed in Branson, MO, a popular tourist destination that has played a role in the nation’s culture wars for over one hundred years.

Branson, Missouri, the Ozark Mountain mecca of wholesome entertainment, has been home to countless stage shows espousing patriotism and Christianity, welcoming over ten million visitors a year. Some consider it “God’s Country” and others “as close to Hell as anything on Earth.” For Joanna Dee Das, Branson is a political, religious, and cultural harbinger of a certain enduring dream of what America is. She takes Branson more seriously than the light-hearted fun it advertises—and maybe we should too.

For Das, Branson’s performers offer visions of the American Dream that embody a set of values known as the three Fs: faith, family, and flag. Branson boosters insist that these are universal values that welcome all people; the city aims to capture as many tourists as possible. But over the past several decades, faith, family, and flag have become markers of contemporary conservatism. The shows and culture of Branson, for all their fun and laughter, have been a galvanizing political force for white, working-and-middle class, Christian Americans. For social and economic conservatives alike, Branson is practically proof-of-concept for America as they want it to be.

Faith, Family, and Flag is a comprehensive history of the Branson entertainment industry, within the context of America’s long culture wars. Das reveals how and why a town known for popular entertainment, a domain associated most often with the political left (“Hollywood liberals”), came to be so important to the political right and its vision for America.

Visit Joanna Dee Das's website.

The Page 99 Test: Faith, Family, and Flag.

--Marshal Zeringue

Four top novels that give a voice to Massachusetts' blue-collar communities

Emily Ross is the author of the mystery thriller Swallowtail and the International Thriller Writers Thriller Awards finalist, Half In Love With Death. She won the Al Blanchard best story award for her short story, “Let the Chips Fall”, which appeared in Devil’s Snare: Best New England Crime stories 2024. She is a graduate of Grub Street’s Novel Incubator and lives in Quincy, MA, with her husband and Obi-Wan Kenobi, their very playful cat.

[The Page 69 Test: Half In Love With Death; Writers Read: Emily Ross (December 2015); My Book, The Movie: Half In Love With Death]

At CrimeReads Ross tagged four novels that give a voice to blue-collar communities like Quincy, Massachusetts. One title on the list:

Dennis Lehane, Gone Baby Gone

Lehane’s Gone Baby Gone vividly evokes violent, drug-filled working-class neighborhoods in Boston and Quincy. It tells the harrowing story of private investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro’s search for a missing child whose neglectful mother, Helene, seems to have forgotten her existence even before she goes missing.

Their search leads to a hair-raising scene in the Quincy quarries. In the midst of chaos and terror, Lehane conjures the chilling essence of this place that has claimed many lives with lines like: “I could smell that clean, cold, and suddenly frightening odor of a century’s raindrops just before I hit the water.”

Later, Patrick finds himself in a house of horrors in Germantown, one of Quincy’s roughest neighborhoods. The grisly scene where he confronts a child molester wearing “a yellow half T-shirt that left a wrinkled, milky midriff exposed…and a pair of black nylon tights,” is impossible to unsee, no matter how much you want to.

Gone Baby Gone is a bleak thriller full of twists, but it’s also a story about a child in peril that raises unsettling ethical questions. Ultimately, it’s not the plot turns that stay with me, it’s that villain rising like a swamp thing from one of the grimmest corners of Quincy, and Helene, the mother defined by her out-of-control, self-serving indifference.

Read about another novel on the list.

Gone Baby Gone is among Peter Colt's five top mysteries set in the greater Boston area and Haylen Beck's eight crime novels that focus on the bonds of parent and child.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Paula Munier's "The Snow Lies Deep"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Snow Lies Deep: A Mercy Carr Mystery by Paula Munier.

About the book, from the publisher:

The latest thrilling installment in the bestselling Mercy Carr mystery series

Mercy and Troy are looking forward to baby Felicity’s first holiday season, and they’re determined to make it a Christmas to remember. At Northshire’s annual Solstice Soirée, hosted by Northshire’s finest and funded by Mercy’s billionaire pal Feinberg, Amy’s little girl Helena is sitting on Santa Claus’s lap. She’s telling him she’d like a Bitty Baby doll just like little Felicity when the bearded man leaps up, thrusts the toddler at her mother Amy, and staggers away from the festivities. He disappears into the woods. By the time Elvis and Mercy find him, Santa Claus aka the town mayor, is lying on his back, dead. A yule log made of oak sits on his chest, burning bright, a beacon of light on the darkest day of the year.

This strange murder is the first of a series of similar Solstice-themed killings targeting the town’s most prominent citizens. Beloved family friend Lillian Jenkins, the grande dame of Northshire, could be next. Mercy and Troy and the dogs must team up with Thrasher and Harrington to capture The Yuletide Killer before he strikes again, this time far closer to home.

Visit Paula Munier's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Paula Munier & Bear.

My Book, The Movie: A Borrowing of Bones.

The Page 69 Test: A Borrowing of Bones.

Writers Read: Paula Munier (October 2019).

My Book, The Movie: Blind Search.

The Page 69 Test: Blind Search.

My Book, The Movie: The Hiding Place.

The Page 69 Test: The Hiding Place.

Q&A with Paula Munier.

My Book, The Movie: The Wedding Plot.

The Page 69 Test: The Wedding Plot.

Writers Read: Paula Munier (July 2022).

Writers Read: Paula Munier (October 2023).

My Book, The Movie: Home at Night.

The Page 69 Test: Home at Night.

My Book, The Movie: The Night Woods.

The Page 69 Test: The Night Woods.

Writers Read: Paula Munier (October 2024).

My Book, The Movie: The Snow Lies Deep.

The Page 69 Test: The Snow Lies Deep.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Sarah Mosseri's "Trust Fall"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Trust Fall: How Workplace Relationships Fail Us by Sarah Mosseri.

About the book, from the publisher:

How do millions of Americans navigate today’s demanding and unpredictable work terrain without the protection of strong labor laws, unions, or a reliable social safety net? They turn to trusted colleagues and supervisors to help find a way through the chaos. But is interpersonal trust truly a solution, or just another source of vulnerability?

In Trust Fall, Sarah Mosseri delves into the intricate web of workplace trust. Drawing on years of immersive research across diverse industries—from bustling restaurants and tech startups to marketing agencies and ride-hail circuits—she uncovers how the very bonds workers rely on to manage instability and insecurity often deepen their exposure to risk and exploitation.

Blending vivid storytelling with sharp sociological insight, Trust Fall reveals the seduction and costs of workplace trust. It gives readers the language to recognize and challenge the unspoken bargains workers make to belong, thrive, and survive in today’s precarious labor landscape.

Visit Sarah Mosseri's website.

The Page 99 Test: Trust Fall.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight memoirs that explore the damage of purity culture

K. W. Colyard grew up weird in a one-caution-light town in the Appalachian foothills. She now lives in an old textile city with her husband and their clowder of cats.

At Book Riot Colyard tagged "eight memoirs exploring the damage of purity culture." One title on the list:

On Her Knees: Memoir of a Prayerful Jezebel by Brenda Marie Davies

“My Christianity depended on purity,” writes Brenda Marie Davies. Tracing her twenties in L.A., Davies’s memoir examines whether a Christian life is possible without the threat of sexual contamination. As such, this read is perfect for deconstructing Evangelicals who aren’t ready to leave the faith entirely.

Read about another memoir on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Anna North

From my Q&A with Anna North, author of Bog Queen:

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

I think (or hope) that the title Bog Queen is doing work on a few levels. In the most literal way, it’s letting people know that this book involves a bog and maybe some figure analogous to a queen (the actual woman who ends up buried in the bog isn’t a queen, but she is powerful for her time). I hope it also conjures a mood of eeriness and the supernatural, giving readers a taste of what’s ahead.

The title is also a reference to the Seamus Heaney poem of the same name. It’s actually not my favorite of Heaney’s bog poems (that would be “The Grauballe Man,” from which I took the epigraph for Bog Queen), but the title felt right for my book, and I liked being able to gesture at the long history of...[read on]

Visit Anna North's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Life and Death of Sophie Stark.

The Page 69 Test: Outlawed.

Q&A with Anna North.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Anthony Fletcher and Ruth Larsen's "Mistress"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Mistress: A History of Women and their Country Houses by Anthony Fletcher and Ruth M. Larsen.

About the book, from the publisher:

An insightful, hugely engaging new history of elite women and the country house from the sixteenth to the twentieth century

Grand houses can be found across the countryside of England and Wales. From the Stuart and Georgian periods to the Edwardian and Victorian, these buildings were once home to the aristocratic families of the nation. But what was life like for the mistresses of these great houses? How much power and influence did they really have?

Anthony Fletcher and Ruth M. Larsen explore the lives of country house mistresses. Focusing on eighteen women, and spanning five centuries, they look at the ways in which elite women not only shaped the house, household, and family, but also had an impact on society, culture, and politics within their estates and beyond. We meet Brilliana Harley, who defended her castle at Brampton Bryan; Frances Boscawen, who oversaw the building of Hatchlands; and Lady Mary Elcho, who preserved her secret life as mistress to Arthur Balfour. This is a fascinating account of the country house that puts women’s experiences centre stage.

Learn more about Mistress: A History of Women and their Country Houses at the Yale University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Mistress: A History of Women and their Country Houses.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten legal thrillers

One title on Tertulia's top ten list of legal thrillers:

The Lincoln Lawyer
Michael Connelly

This blockbuster series stars attorney Mickey Haller as he drives around LA defending gangsters, drug dealers and their ilk. In book one, he's hired to help a Beverly Hills playboy accused of assault, before things quickly take a sinister turn.

Read about another novel on the list.

Also see Sally Smith's five top legal thrillers, Brittany Bunzey's eight best legal thrillers, Chad Zunker's six legal thrillers with powerful social messages, and Jillian Medoff's eight top legal thrillers.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Connie Berry reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Connie Berry, author of A Grave Deception: A Kate Hamilton Mystery.

Her entry begins:

Since I’ve finished the latest installments of all my current favorites—Richard Osman, Elly Griffiths, Anthony Horowitz, Sarah Pearse, Ruth Ware, Robert Galbraith—I decided to indulge myself by reading—or rereading—crime novels written during the Golden Age of Detective Fiction (the period between the two world wars). Guided by British crime writer and editor Martin Edwards, current president of the famous London Detection Club, I’ve enjoyed wonderful novels by E. C. R. Lorac (Fire in the Thatch, Death of an Author), Anthony Berkeley (Murder in the Basement), and a lesser-known author, Anthony Rolls (Family Matters). They were recommended by Edwards, who wrote introductions to them for their publication by the British Library Crime Classics. In my opinion, these novels hold up today as true puzzle pieces with plenty of clues, red herrings, and twists. They also provide a fascinating time-travel experience to life in rural England between the wars, which I love. The BLCC collection to date includes more than 130 titles, but I’ve stopped reading them for now so I don’t unconsciously begin imitating their style. I can do that.

Over the Christmas holidays, I’ll reread as I always do The Wind in the Willows and several of...[read on]

About A Grave Deception, from the publisher:

Antiques expert Kate Hamilton dives into the past to solve a fourteenth-century mystery with disturbing similarities to a modern-day murder in the sixth installment of the Kate Hamilton mystery series.

Kate Hamilton and her husband, Detective Inspector Tom Mallory, have settled into married life in Long Barston. When archaeologists excavating the ruins of a nearby plague village discover the miraculously preserved body of a fourteenth-century woman, Kate and her colleague, Ivor Tweedy, are asked to appraise the grave goods, including a valuable pearl. When tests reveal the woman was pregnant and murdered, the owner of the estate on which the body was found, an amateur historian, asks Kate to identify her and, if possible, her killer. Surprised, Kate agrees to try.

Meanwhile, tensions within the archaeological team erupt when the body of the lead archaeologist turns up at the dig site with fake pearls in his mouth and stomach. Then a third body is found in the excavations. Meanwhile, Kate’s husband Tom is tracking the movements of a killer of his own.

With the help of 700-year-old documents and the unpublished research of a deceased historian, Kate must piece together the past before the grave count reaches four.

Visit Connie Berry's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Art of Betrayal.

My Book, The Movie: The Art of Betrayal.

Q&A with Connie Berry.

Writers Read: Connie Berry.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eleven books about disability as an ethics of care

Jodi-Ann Burey (she/her) is a writer and critic who works at the intersections of race, culture, and health equity. She is the author of Authentic: The Myth of Bringing Your Full Self to Work.

At Electric Lit Burey tagged eleven books "that in one way or another touch on disability identity." One entry on the list:

Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor

In Death of the Author, protagonist Zelunjo “Zelu” Onyenezi-Onyedele is unceremoniously fired from her university teaching position and her novel is rejected again. As if her own sense of failure isn’t enough, Zelu’s large Yoraba-Igbo Nigerian family of overachievers judges her every move. Their hovering is also a habituated response to anything Zelu has done in the decades since a childhood accident paralyzed her. Running out of both money and f–s to give, Zelu moves back into her parent’s wheelchair unfriendly home and feverishly writes Rusted Robots, a new sci-fi novel unlike anything she’s written before that catapults her career. Death of the Author is set in a now-ish world where Zelu gets around town with self-driving cars, but Rusted Robots, the book-within-the-book, is a far-future epic tale about an ongoing war between AI and androids. Chapter by chapter, Zelu’s real and imagined worlds begin to blend, presenting an interesting paradox about how technology can (and can’t) help us belong to our own bodies.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Daniel Eastman An's "Fear of God"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Fear of God: Practicing Emotion in Late Antique Monasticism by Daniel Eastman An.

About the book, from the publisher:

n the writings of ancient Christians, the near-ubiquitous references to the "fear of God" have traditionally been seen as a generic placeholder for piety. Focusing on monastic communities in late antiquity across the eastern Mediterranean, this book explores why the language of fear was so prevalent in their writings and how they sought to put it into practice in their daily lives. Drawing on a range of evidence, including sermons, liturgical prayers, and archaeological evidence, Daniel An explores how the languages monastics spoke, the socioeconomic settings they inhabited, and the visual spaces in which they prayed came together to shape their emotional horizons. By investigating emotions as practices embedded in the languages, cultures, and sensorial environments of late antiquity, this book offers new insights into the spiritual world of Christian monasteries.

Learn more about Fear of God at the University of California Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Fear of God.

--Marshal Zeringue

Cara Black's "Huguette," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Huguette by Cara Black.

The entry begins:

As I wrote Huguette I had no specific actress in mind. In thinking about this now, I'd want an actress who has frizzy hair she's constantly trying to tame, as Huguette does. An actress who can completely change her look, as Huguette does and probably all actresses can do with different make up and wardrobe. And an innocent face.

Director wise I'd like Martin Scorsese to direct Huguette. Granted he's more mob centric but he's also done unusual films like Kundun and The Last Temptation of Christ. Music threads through his films and I definitely feel...[read on]

Visit Cara Black's website and follow her on Instagram and Threads.

The Page 69 Test: Murder at the Lanterne Rouge.

My Book, the Movie: Murder at the Lanterne Rouge.

The Page 69 Test: Murder below Montparnasse.

The Page 69 Test: Murder in Pigalle.

My Book, The Movie: Murder in Pigalle.

My Book, The Movie: Murder on the Champ de Mars.

The Page 69 Test: Three Hours in Paris.

The Page 69 Test: Night Flight to Paris.

Writers Read: Cara Black (March 2023).

Writers Read: Cara Black (March 2024).

The Page 69 Test: Murder at la Villette.

My Book, The Movie: Huguette.

--Marshal Zeringue