Seven spy novels that take you around the world

Barbara Nickless is the Wall Street Journal and Amazon Charts bestselling author of At First Light and Dark of Night in the Dr. Evan Wilding series as well as the Sydney Rose Parnell series, which includes Blood on the Tracks, a Suspense Magazine Best of 2016 selection and winner of the Colorado Book Award and the Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence; Dead Stop, winner of the Colorado Book Award and nominee for the Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence; Ambush; and Gone to Darkness.

[The Page 69 Test: At First Light; Q&A with Barbara Nickless; The Page 69 Test: Play of Shadows]

Nickless's newest novel is The Drowning Game.

At Novel Suspects the author tagged "seven novels from cities around the globe to whet your appetite" for "historical espionage or modern-day hijinks." One title on the list:

The Peacock and the Sparrow by I.S. Berry

This debut novel exploded onto the literary world, quickly scooping up acknowledgements as diverse as Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Award and a New Yorker Best Book of the Year. The prose leaps off the page, but it’s in world-weary CIA spy Shane Collins that we find the dark heart of any honest book on spydom: spying takes a terrible toll on its practitioners. Collins has become an alcoholic burnout just as the monarchy of Bahrain (an island country in the Persian Gulf) is under attack by Iran through their proxies (sound familiar?). Berry has real-world experience of Bahrain and the CIA, and this knowledge shines through. Bonus: Learning about a Middle Eastern country you might not have heard of and seeing it vividly portrayed through the eyes of the poverty-doomed locals, the jaded expat community, and in the glittering beaches, skyscrapers, and palaces of royalty and the well-to-do.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Peacock and the Sparrow is among Ayo Onatade's favorite crime and thriller reads of 2024, The Guardian's best crime and thrillers of 2024, and David McCloskey's top five spy novels.

Q&A with I.S. Berry.

The Page 69 Test: The Peacock and the Sparrow.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: William Boyle's "Saint of the Narrows Street"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Saint of the Narrows Street by William Boyle.

About the book, from the publisher:

As an Italian American family's decades-old secret begins to unravel, they will have to bear the consequences—and face each other—in this thrilling southern Brooklyn-set tragic opera of the highest caliber from crime fiction luminary William Boyle.

Gravesend, Brooklyn, 1986: Risa Franzone lives in a ground-floor apartment on Saint of the Narrows Street with her bad-seed husband, Saverio, and their eight-month-old baby, Fabrizio. On the night Risa's younger sister, Giulia, moves in to recover from a bad breakup, a fateful accident occurs: Risa, boiled over with anger and fear, strikes a drunk, erratic Sav with a cast-iron pan, killing him on the spot.

The sisters are left with a choice: notify the authorities and make a case for self-defense, or bury the man's body and go on with their lives as best they can. In a moment of panic, in the late hours of the night, they call upon Sav's childhood friend—the sweet, loyal Christopher "Chooch" Gardini—to help them, hoping they can trust him to carry a secret like this.

Over the vast expanse of the next eighteen years, life goes on in the working-class Italian neighborhood of Gravesend as Risa, Giulia, Chooch, and eventually Fabrizio grapple with what happened that night. A standout work of character-driven crime fiction from a celebrated author of the form, Saint of the Narrows Street is a searing and richly drawn novel about the choices we make and how they shape our lives.

Visit William Boyle's website.

My Book, The Movie: Gravesend and The Lonely Witness.

The Page 69 Test: Gravesend and The Lonely Witness.

The Page 69 Test: City of Margins.

My Book, The Movie: City of Margins.

Q&A with William Boyle.

The Page 69 Test: Shoot the Moonlight Out.

My Book, The Movie: Shoot the Moonlight Out.

Writers Read: William Boyle (December 2021).

The Page 69 Test: Saint of the Narrows Street.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jacqueline Faber's "The Department," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Department by Jacqueline Faber.

The entry begins:

The Department is set in an unnamed Southern university town. Imagine a vivid green lawn, manicured hedges where new buds emerge in pinks and whites, cut-off shorts and tank tops at the first signs of spring. The kind of lawn where you can be central, a game of hacky sack, lunch on the grass, students studying for tests on the benches, peals of laughter lifting into the outstretched arms of trees. Surrounding the quad are brick buildings, windows that peer down, to see but not be seen, a voyeur behind a pane of glass.

Two lead characters hold this fictional world aloft. A philosophy professor, Neil Weber, whose life is imploding. His wife has left him for someone else in the department. His work has stalled and in its place, an intellectual (and existential) lethargy has crept in. Mark Ruffalo could nail this performance, delivering the right combination of charm and despair. A soul we can root for, but not...[read on]

Visit Jacqueline Faber's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Department.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Michael Cannell's "Blood and the Badge"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Blood and the Badge: The Mafia, Two Killer Cops, and a Scandal That Shocked the Nation by Michael Cannell.

About the book, from the publisher:

For the first time in forty years, former New York Times editor Michael Cannell unearths the full story behind two ruthless New York cops who acted as double agents for the Mafia.

No episode in NYPD history surpasses the depravities of Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, two decorated detectives who covertly acted as mafia informants and paid assassins in the Scorsese world of 1980s Brooklyn.

For more than ten years, Eppolito and Caracappa moonlighted as the mob’s early warning alert system, leaking names of mobsters secretly cooperating with the government and crippling investigations by sharing details of surveillance, phone taps and impending arrests. The Lucchese boss called the two detectives his crystal ball: Whatever detectives knew, the mafia soon learned. Most grievously, Eppolito and Caracappa earned bonuses by staging eight mob hits, pulling the trigger themselves at least once.

Incredibly, when evidence of their wrongdoing arose in 1994, FBI officials failed to muster an indictment. The allegations lay dormant for a decade and were only revisited due to relentless follow up by Tommy Dades, a cop determined to break the cold case before his retirement. Eppolito and Caracappa were finally tried and then sentenced to life in prison in 2009, nearly thirty years after their crimes took place.

Cannell’s Blood and the Badge is based on entirely new research and never-before-released interviews with mobsters themselves, including Sammy “the Bull” Gravano. Eppolito and Caracappa’s story is more relevant than ever as police conduct comes under ever-increasing scrutiny.

Visit Michael T. Cannell's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Limit.

The Page 99 Test: The Limit.

My Book, The Movie: Incendiary.

My Book, The Movie: A Brotherhood Betrayed.

Writers Read: Michael Cannell.

My Book, The Movie: Blood and the Badge.

The Page 99 Test: Blood and the Badge.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top hostage novels

Gillian McAllister has been writing for as long as she can remember. She graduated with an English degree before working as a lawyer. She lives in Birmingham, England, where she now writes full-time.

Her novels include Wrong Place Wrong Time and Just Another Missing Person.

McAllister's new novel is Famous Last Words.

At the Waterstones blog she tagged five favorite "novels that employ hostage situations as their main source of drama," including:

A Spark of Light by Jodi Picoult

This is a novel centering on a women’s reproductive health services clinic that is stormed by a gunman. The author ingeniously narrates this novel backwards, and so the reader learns less about the what, and more about the why and the how. It poses the question: what is a life worth? It’s an eminently sympathetic portrayal of a place nobody - on either side - wants to be on that day. In my opinion, this is Picoult at her insightful, character-driven best.

Read about another novel on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Christa Carmen's "Beneath the Poet’s House"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Beneath the Poet's House: A Thriller by Christa Carmen.

About the book, from the publisher:

For a grieving writer, the secrets of the past and present converge in a novel of gripping psychological suspense from the author of The Daughters of Block Island.

Unmoored by her husband’s death and suffering from writer’s block, novelist Saoirse White moves to Providence, and into the historic home of Sarah Helen Whitman, the nineteenth-century poet and spiritualist once courted by Edgar Allan Poe. Saoirse’s certain she’ll find inspiration in the quiet rooms, as well as in the tucked-away rose garden and forgotten cemetery at the back of the property.

Saoirse is immediately welcomed by an effusive trio of transcendentalists obsessed with Whitman, the house, and Whitman’s mystic beliefs. Saoirse, emerging from grief and loneliness, welcomes the idea of new friends taking her mind off the past―even as they hope to summon it. When she meets Emmit Powell, a charismatic and charming prize-winning author, Saoirse thinks she’s finally turned a corner.

Emboldened by new romance, Saoirse begins to write again and, through her writing, rediscover herself. But as old fears return, she finds that nothing about her new life is what it seems―and a secret she’s tried so hard to bury may not be the only thing that comes back to haunt her.

Visit Christa Carmen's website.

The Page 69 Test: Beneath the Poet's House.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Tom Smith's "Word across the Water"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Word across the Water: American Protestant Missionaries, Pacific Worlds, and the Making of Imperial Histories by Tom Smith.

About the book, from the publisher:

In Word Across the Water, Tom Smith brings the histories of Hawai'i and the Philippines together to argue that US imperial ambitions towards these Pacific archipelagos were deeply intertwined with the work of American Protestant missionaries. As self-styled interpreters of history, missionaries produced narratives to stoke interest in their cause, locating US imperial interventions and their own evangelistic projects within divinely ordained historical trajectories.

As missionaries worked in the shadow of their nation's empire, however, their religiously inflected historical narratives came to serve an alternative purpose. They emerged as a way for missionaries to negotiate their own status between the imperial and the local and to come to terms with the diverse spaces, peoples, and traditions of historical narration that they encountered across different island groups.

Word Across the Water encourages scholars of empire and religion alike to acknowledge both the pernicious nature of imperial claims over oceanic space underpinned by religious and historical arguments, and the fragility of those claims on the ground.

Learn more about Word across the Water at the Cornell University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Word across the Water.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top novels with tantalizing anti-heroes

Taylor Hutton is the pseudonym of a pair of writer friends, one of whom has twice been a finalist for the National Book Award and the other who is a New York Times bestselling author and Edgar Award finalist. Between the two of them, they have written over forty books. When they are not passing their latest sexy thriller back and forth on Google Doc, they are browsing bookstores, sending each other ridiculous memes, walking their dogs Trudy and Potato around their Los Angeles neighborhood, and making their children cringe with their TikTok videos.

Their new novel is Strike and Burn.

At CrimeReads the authors tagged five novels in which "readers can’t help but find themselves occasionally rooting for the dark side." One title on the list:

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang

Like [Jean Hanff Korelitz's] The Book Series, Yellowface is an anti-hero story about a novelist appropriating and stealing another writer’s work (in this case a white woman stealing a book written by an Asian American woman about the Chinese Labor Corp) and passing it off as their own. At times a fun satiric inside-baseball skewering of the publishing industry, it’s also an exploration of white privilege, discrimination, cultural appropriation and professional envy. Kuang uses first person present tense to take us right into the mind of our unreliable narrator, and like all the books above, half the fun is the squeamishness and disgust we feel at the shamelessness of our anti-hero–as one of many examples, she takes on a pen name that misleads readers into thinking she’s Chinese. This literary thriller–like most of the best anti-hero novels–makes the reader compulsively turn the pages while simultaneously making us reach for the Costco size bottle of Tums.

Read about another novel on the list.

Yellowface is among Elizabeth Staple's eight books about youthful mistakes that come back to haunt you, Lauren Kuhl's eight top novels about toxic relationships, Elly Griffiths's top ten books about books, Toby Lloyd's seven books that show storytelling has consequences, Sophie Wan's seven top titles with women behaving badly, Leah Konen's six top friends-to-frenemies thrillers, and Garnett Cohen's seven novels about characters driven by their cravings.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Megan Chance reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Megan Chance, author of Glamorous Notions: A Novel.

Her entry begins:

The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden

Okay, this book … There’s so much to be said about it that can’t really be said without spoiling it, but I can tell you this: it’s set in the early 1960s in the Dutch countryside, which has finally recovered from WWII. The story deals with Isabel and her brother’s fiancée, Eva, who comes to stay at their family house—where only Isabel currently lives—while the brother is on a long business trip. Eva and Isabel try to get along, but they just don’t like one another, and Isabel is paranoid and suspicious. As their relationship grows and changes, we begin to see that though the land is healed, the scars from the war may still be there in other, more psychological and emotional ways.

This book is beautiful and subtle and heart-wrenching. It’s a love story, and a story about obsession, and it is a book...[read on]

About Glamorous Notions, from the publisher:

A costume designer’s past casts a long shadow over her well-constructed lies in this intriguing story about stolen identities, friendship, and betrayal from the author of A Splendid Ruin and A Dangerous Education.

Hollywood, 1955. As head costume designer for Lux Pictures, Lena Taylor hears startling confessions from the biggest movie stars. She knows how to keep their secrets―after all, none of their scandals can match her own.

Lena was once Elsie Gruner, the daughter of an Ohio dressmaker. Her gift for fashion design helped her win a coveted spot at an art academy in Rome. While in Italy, she became enthralled by the charismatic Julia, who drew her into a shadowy world of jazz clubs, code words, and mysterious deliveries. When one of Julia’s intrigues ended in murder, Elsie found herself in the middle of a bewildering sinister international plot. So she ran.

After fleeing to LA, Elsie became Lena―but she’s never stopped looking over her shoulder. Now, as her engagement to a screenwriter throws her into the spotlight, she’s terrified her façade won’t hold up. Will she figure out the truth about her past before everything falls apart?

Visit Megan Chance's website.

My Book, The Movie: A Splendid Ruin.

The Page 69 Test: A Splendid Ruin.

Q&A with Megan Chance.

The Page 69 Test: A Dangerous Education.

My Book, The Movie: A Dangerous Education.

Writers Read: Megan Chance (February 2023).

Writers Read: Megan Chance.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Martin Hewitt's "Darwinism's Generations"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Darwinism’s Generations: The Reception of Darwinian Evolution in Britain, 1859-1909 by Martin Hewitt.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Reception of Darwinian Evolution in Britain, 1859-1909: Darwinism's Generations uses the impact of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859) in the 50 years after its publication to demonstrate the effectiveness of a generational framework for understanding the cultural and intellectual history of Britain in the nineteenth century. It challenges conventional notions of the 'Darwinian Revolution' by examining how people from across all sections of society actually responded to Darwin's writings. Drawing on the opinions and interventions of over 2,000 Victorians, drawn from an exceptionally wide range of archival and printed sources, it argues that the spread of Darwinian belief was slower, more complicated, more stratified by age, and ultimately shaped far more powerfully by divergent generational responses, than has previously been recognised. In doing so, it makes a number of important contributions. It offers by far the richest and most comprehensive account to date of how contemporaries came to terms with the intellectual and emotional shocks of evolutionary theory. It makes a compelling case for taking proper account of age as a fundamental historical dynamic, and for the powerful generational patternings of the effects that age produced. It demonstrates the extent to which the most common sub-periodisation of the Victorian period are best understood not merely as constituted by the exigencies of events, but are also formed by the shifting balance generational influence.

Taken together these insights present a significant challenge to the ways historians currently approach the task of describing the nature and experience of historical change, and have fundamental implications for our current conceptions of the shape and pace of historical time.

Visit Martin Hewitt's website.

The Page 99 Test: Darwinism’s Generations.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five novels featuring houses to die for

Camilla Bruce is a Norwegian writer of speculative and historical fiction. She has a master’s degree in comparative literature and has co-run a small press that published dark fairy tales. Bruce currently lives in Trondheim with her son and cat.

Her new novel is At the Bottom of the Garden.

At The Nerd Daily Bruce tagged five "novels with powerful houses that the characters are willing to fight, live, die – and even kill – for." One title on the list:

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

No list of beguiling houses is complete without a mention of this classic. Without the existence of this novel, we might not have had so many other books about bewitching houses to enjoy. There is a reason why it’s still being widely read – I, for one, didn’t feel normal for a week after cracking its cover for the first time. Maybe it’s the setting: a group of sensitives of various flavors who come together to conduct an experiment, or maybe it’s Elanor: a protagonist that is so painfully sad and insecure that it’s impossible not to feel something for her. Or, maybe it’s just Hill House with its many – shifting – rooms, and the way it subtly seduces with a promise of belonging and home. Whatever the reason, this novel will forever hold the power to send chills down even the sturdiest of spines, and make you look twice (twice) at the shadows in your own home.

Read about another title on the list.

The Haunting of Hill House also appears on Jen Williams's list of the five best novels about hauntings, Sara Flannery Murphy's five top thriller and horror books with “House” in the title, Lisa Unger's list of five great horror novels that explore the darkest corners of our minds, Dell Villa's list of seven of the best haunted houses in literature, Kat Rosenfield's list of seven scary October reads, Michael Marshall Smith's top ten list of horror books, Carlos Ruiz Zafón's top ten list of 20th-century gothic novels,  and Brad Leithauser's five best list of ghost tales.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Angela Brown's "Some Other Time"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Some Other Time: A Novel by Angela Brown.

About the book, from the publisher:

A hopeful, funny, and untraditional love story about second chances, the ripple effects of love, and the myriad ways in which the simplest lives have the power to change the world.

The next step in Ellie Baker’s marriage: divorce. She and her husband, Jonah, are heading to Florida to break it to the family. No great drama to share. After twenty years of marriage, they’ve just fallen out of love. Simple.

Not to their college-age daughter, Maggie, who is devastated. Or to Ellie’s father, Frank, who grows as cold as a retiree can get in Orlando. As for Ellie’s mother, Bunny: no, no, no. She doesn’t want to hear it. After a dreadful weekend, Ellie and Jonah return home to New Jersey with hearts and minds still set on a split. Until the extraordinary morning Ellie wakes up to an alternate version of the present day―one in which she, and a passing stranger named Jonah, never married.

Over the span of an inexplicable week, Ellie sees how her world―and the world of everyone she loves―unfolded through a different course in time. And this time could change everything all over again.

Visit Angela Brown's website.

The Page 69 Test: Olivia Strauss Is Running Out of Time.

Q&A with Angela Brown.

The Page 69 Test: Some Other Time.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Edward Armston-Sheret's "On the Backs of Others"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: On the Backs of Others: Rethinking the History of British Geographical Exploration by Edward Armston-Sheret.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the Victorian and Edwardian eras British explorers sought to become respected geographers and popular public figures, downplaying or reframing their reliance on others for survival. Far from being solitary heroes, these explorers were in reality dependent on the bodies, senses, curiosity, and labor of subaltern people and animals.

In On the Backs of Others Edward Armston-Sheret offers new perspectives on British exploration in this era by focusing on the contributions of the people and animals, ordinarily written out of the mainstream histories, who made these journeys possible. He explores several well-known case studies of enduring popular and academic interest, such as Richard Francis Burton and John Hanning Speke’s Nile expeditions (1856–59 and 1860–63); Isabella Bird’s travels in North America, Persia, and East Asia (1872–c. 1900); and Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s two Antarctic expeditions (1901–4 and 1911–13). Armston-Sheret argues that numerous previously ignored stories show the work and agency of subaltern groups. In rethinking the history of exploration On the Backs of Others offers the first book-length study of the relationship between exploration and empire and their legacies within academic geography.

Visit Edward Armston-Sheret's website.

The Page 99 Test: On the Backs of Others.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight top historical novels that add a little magic

Susie Dumond is a queer writer originally from Little Rock, Arkansas. She is the author of Queerly Beloved, Looking for a Sign, and Bed and Breakup, and she also talks about books as a senior contributor at Book Riot and a bookseller at her local indie bookstore. Dumond lives in Washington, D.C., with her spouse, Mickey, and her cat, Maple. When she’s not writing or reading, you can find her baking cupcakes or belting karaoke at the nearest gay bar.

At Book Riot Dumond tagged "eight novels that combine historical fiction with magical realism and fabulism to create something truly special." One title on the list:

The Monstrous Misses Mai by Van Hoang

Cordelia dreams of becoming a famous fashion designer, but 1959 Los Angeles is less than kind to her as the child of Vietnamese immigrants. Desperate for an affordable place to live, Cordelia meets a mysterious stranger who leads her to an opening in an apartment with three roommates, all of whom share Cordelia’s middle name, Mai. It must be a sign that she’s found the right place. Then, the stranger offers Cordelia and her roommates a little spell to help them find jobs in exchange for a small sacrifice. It sounds reasonable, and it works! But as their wishes get bigger, so do their spells and their sacrifices, and getting what they want might lead them to lose everything.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Page 69 Test: The Monstrous Misses Mai.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Sejal Badani

From my Q&A with Sejal Badani, author of The Sun's Shadow: A Novel:

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

Quite a bit. In The Sun’s Shadow, the title symbolizes two key ideas: first, that even in moments of light and joy, shadows can loom over lives; and second, that one of the boys—a son—would cast a shadow over all their lives while also being a source of light and healing. Similarly, in The Storyteller’s Secret, the title reflects the layers of hidden truths. While the protagonist is a storyteller with a significant secret, it is the former servant, recounting the tale to the granddaughter, whose secret ultimately changes the course of all their lives, giving deeper meaning to the title.

What's in a name?

I love naming characters. I have a passion for...[read on]

Visit Sejal Badani's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Sejal Badani & Skyler.

My Book, The Movie: The Storyteller's Secret.

Q&A with Sejal Badani.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Brent Sohngen & Douglas Southgate's "Reversing Deforestation"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Reversing Deforestation: How Market Forces and Local Ownership Are Saving Forests in Latin America by Brent Sohngen and Douglas Southgate.

About the book, from the publisher:

Dire reports of surging deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon appear often in international headlines, with commentators decrying the destruction of tree-covered habitats as an act of environmental vandalism. Although forest losses are alarming, broader trends are bending in the direction of forest recovery. In this book, Brent Sohngen and Douglas Southgate address the long-term recovery of forests in Latin America. The authors synthesize trends in demography, agricultural development, and technological change, and argue that slower population growth and increasing crop and tree yields—in conjunction with protecting local ownership of natural resources—have encouraged forest transition. This book explores how market forces, ownership arrangements, and the enforcement of property rights have influenced this shift from net deforestation to net afforestation. Forest transitions have happened before, such as the recovery of tree-covered habitats in Europe and the United States. Signs of a similar transformation in land use are now present in Latin America. Ending deforestation requires a strengthening of forest dwellers' property rights while ensuring that biodiversity conservation is no longer treated as a value-less externality. The resulting forest landscape, actively managed for ecosystem services, will be more resilient, as is needed to overcome climate change.

Learn more about Reversing Deforestation at the Stanford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Reversing Deforestation.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top mystery novels with unique settings

Jenny Elder Moke is the award-winning author of children’s and adult literature. She enjoys fast-paced adventures with plenty of mysteries, surprising turns, and laughs along the way. Her adult debut, She Doesn’t Have A Clue, is a murder-mystery rom-com mash-up for fans of Clue and Knives Out.

At CrimeReads she tagged

five selections that range from haunting thrillers to whip-smart homages to detective novels of a bygone era, [in which] setting plays a critical role in the execution of the story. The stories are worth reading not only to solve the murder, but to lose yourself in their immersive worlds.

One title on the list:

A Midnight Puzzle by Gigi Pandian

The Secret Staircase series introduces Tempest Raj’s delightful family, along with their unique line of work – using their backgrounds in stage magic to create reality-defying interior designs for their customers. In this third book in the series, Tempest has purchased the local derelict theater in hopes of reviving her former magic career. But what happens instead seems impossible – a door that spouts knives, killing her dear friend and mentor. Is the theater haunted? Or is the Raj family curse coming for Tempest? The set designs are as elaborate as the mysteries, and fans of a classic cozy locked room mystery will adore this series for the dedicated work that Pandian puts into the set piece solutions.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

James Byrne's "Chain Reaction," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Chain Reaction (A Dez Limerick Thriller, 3) by James Byrne.

The entry begins:

I quite literally had this conversation with a Hollywood producer in the spring of 2024.

When asked about casting, here’s what I said:

Yes, Dez Limerick is a strong, powerfully built fighter. But I don’t think anyone producing my books should worry about casting guys with “Marvel Cinematic Universe” muscles. As near as I can tell, most actors, when offered a couple million dollars, can bulk up. I wouldn’t call Tom Holland a gym rat, but he got pretty buff for both Uncharted and Spider-Man. (In Spider-Man, Tom Holland plays a nerdy high schooler who gets bitten by a radioactive spider and gains the power to attract Zendaya. At least that’s how I remember it.)

And yes, Dez is from the U.K. He moved around a lot as a kid and lived in Ireland, Scotland and near Liverpool. But I wouldn’t worry about...[read on]

Visit James Byrne's website.

Q&A with James Byrne.

The Page 69 Test: Deadlock.

My Book, The Movie: Deadlock.

Writers Read: James Byrne.

The Page 69 Test: Chain Reaction.

My Book, The Movie: Chain Reaction.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Nicholas H. Wolfinger & Matthew McKeever's "Thanks for Nothing"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Thanks for Nothing: The Economics of Single Motherhood since 1980 by Nicholas H. Wolfinger and Matthew McKeever.

About the book, from the publisher:

In 1980, single mother families were five times more likely than two-parent families to be poor. Forty years later, single-mother families are still five times more likely to be poor. How can this be given the vast increases in education and employment achieved by American women over this period?

In Thanks for Nothing, Nicholas H. Wolfinger and Matthew McKeever explore the contradictions that lie at the heart of single motherhood. Drawing on forty years of data from two large national surveys, they find that the mystery of single mothers' economic stagnation can be explained by changes in the kind of women most likely to become single mothers. In 1980, most single mothers were divorced women; forty years later, the majority are mothers who gave birth out of wedlock. On paper, divorced women look a lot like their married contemporaries, but with one income instead of two. Never-married mothers are a completely different population--they have less education, work less, and receive lower economic returns on their educational credentials when they do work. They're also far more likely to have grown up in underprivileged families. Ultimately, Wolfinger and McKeever find that some single mothers are doing better even as others have fallen through the cracks.

Providing an in-depth look into the economics of single motherhood, Thanks for Nothing offers the most detailed statistical portrait of single mothers to date and, importantly, provides concrete suggestions for how policymakers should respond to persisting inequalities among mothers.

Learn more about Thanks for Nothing at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Thanks for Nothing.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven novels where real estate drives the plot

Daniel Kenitz is a freelance writer and the author of the thriller The Perfect Home. He has also published several short stories, including the Pushcart Prize-nominated "A Hand to the Plow" (2022, Red Rock Review), "Tickleneck" (2022, Spotlong Review), "The Cycle" (2021, Evening Street Review), "Seen" (2020, Every Day Fiction), "The Parent License" (2020, The Virginia Normal), and "Sunset 9037" (2013, Strangelet Magazine).

At Electric Lit Kenitz tagged seven novels in which "authors have skillfully used unique real estate situations for all sorts of literary purposes: metaphors, side plots, symbols, and entanglements." One title on the list:

Home Before Dark by Riley Sager

A literal House of Horrors here as the protagonist, Maggie Holt, inherits the mansion that had inspired her late father to write a bestselling book about the haunted house. Finding out the causes of the haunting feel a bit like demo day during a renovation—you’re never sure what’s going to turn up behind the walls. The House of Horrors book-within-a-book is a fun way to unravel the mysteries here, including a collapsed kitchen ceiling that reveal a secret love affair. You know. Standard demo day stuff.

Read about another novel on the list.

Home Before Dark is among Tom Ryan's six top suspense novels featuring mysterious mansions, Chanel Cleeton's nine novels about grand homes that are filled with secrets, Philip Fracassi's ten best thrillers with supernatural elements, Ana Reyes's six top books with embedded narratives, James S. Murray's five top books about women fighting their way out and Karen Dionne's eight top thrillers that turn home into a place of mortal danger.

The Page 69 Test: Home Before Dark.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Kira Jane Buxton "Tartufo"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Tartufo by Kira Jane Buxton.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the author of Hollow Kingdom, a fantastically funny story featuring a cast of colorful characters in a dying Italian village and a giant truffle that changes their fate forever in this “deliciously absurd tale....I savored every page of this book.” (Shelby Van Pelt, author of Remarkably Bright Creatures)

After nearly losing the election to a geriatric donkey, newly installed Mayor Delizia Miccuci can’t help but feel like the sun has finally set on the rural Italian village of Lazzarini Boscarino. Tourists only stop by to ask for directions, Nonna Amara’s cherished ristorante is long shuttered, and the town hall is disgustingly overrun with glis glis poo—even Postman Duccio has been disgraced. All that’s left is Bar Celebrità, a rustic establishment where weary locals gather to quibble over decades-long disputes, submit their poor stomachs to bartender Giuseppina’s volcanic espresso, and wonder what will become of the place where together they’ve spent their entire lives.

Little do the villagers know that local truffle hunter Giovanni Scarpazza has just happened upon something that could change everything. A truffle—un tartufo, that is—sits beneath the soil with the power to either be the greatest gift or the foulest curse the village has ever seen.

Written in the same enchanting style and raucous humor that defines Hollow Kingdom and Feral Creatures, Tartufo is a reflection on the interconnectedness of life in all its manifestations—and how holding on to harmony in the face of hardship can grow something beautiful and rare beneath the surface.

Visit Kira Jane Buxton's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Kira Jane Buxton & Ewok.

My Book, The Movie: Hollow Kingdom.

The Page 69 Test: Hollow Kingdom.

My Book, The Movie: Feral Creatures.

Q&A with Kira Jane Buxton.

The Page 69 Test: Feral Creatures.

My Book, The Movie: Tartufo.

The Page 69 Test: Tartufo.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Katie Beisel Hollenbach's "The Business of Bobbysoxers"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Business of Bobbysoxers: Cultural Production in 1940s Frank Sinatra Fandom by Katie Beisel Hollenbach.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Business of Bobbysoxers reconsiders the story of American popular music, celebrity following, and fan behavior during World War II through close examination of “bobbysoxers.” Preserved in popular memory as primarily white, hysterical, teen girl devotees of Frank Sinatra clad in bobby socks and saddle shoes, these girls were accused of displaying inappropriate behavior and priorities in their obsessive pursuit of a crooning celebrity at a time of international crisis. Author Katie Beisel Hollenbach peels back the stereotypes of girlhood idol adoration by documenting the intimate practices of wartime Sinatra fan clubs, revealing a new side of this familiar story in American history through the perspective of the bobbysoxer.

In World War II America, fan clubs and organizations like Teen Canteens offered a haven for teenage girls to celebrate their enjoyment of popular culture while cultivating relationships with each other through media icons and the entertainment industry. Many of these organizations attempted to encourage diverse memberships, influenced in part by Frank Sinatra's public work on racial and religious tolerance, and by Sinatra's own identity as an Italian American. Away from the critical public eye, these communities offered girls a place to safely explore and discuss issues including civil rights, politics, the war, patriotism, internationalism, and professional development in the context of their shared Sinatra fandom. With these broader social and political complexities in mind, The Business of Bobbysoxers shines a light on musical fan communities that provided teenage girls with peer groups at a critical moment of personal and historical change, allowing them to creatively express their desires and imagine their futures as American women together.

Visit Katie Beisel Hollenbach's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Business of Bobbysoxers.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six great thrillers featuring sisters (and murder)

Kate Alice Marshall is the bestselling author of thrillers and horror for kids and adults. Her middle grade books include the Secrets of Eden Eld trilogy and Extra Normal. In YA, she’s written the survival thriller I Am Still Alive, as well as supernatural suspense including Rules for Vanishing and The Narrow. She made her adult thriller debut with What Lies in the Woods, followed by the USA Today bestseller No One Can Know.

She lives outside Seattle with her family, two very friendly (but not very smart) golden retrievers, and a growing collection of fancy pens.

At CrimeReads Marshall tagged six of her "favorite stories featuring sisters—the good, the bad, and the complicated." One title on the list:

My Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

I couldn’t resist including Oyinkan Braithwaite’s compulsively readable story of Korede, whose sister Ayoola is either deeply unlucky in love or maybe (probably) a cold-blooded serial killer. She’s always got a perfectly reasonable excuse for why her latest boyfriend had to go. Korede is always there to clean up her sister’s mess, moral qualms or no, but when Ayoola starts cozying up to the man Korede is in love with, Korede has to decide if it’s time to put an end to her sister’s bad habits.

Read about another entry on the list.

My Sister the Serial Killer is among Margot Douaihy's four novels that show the power of siblings in mysteries & thrillers, Francesca McDonnell Capossela's seven books about women committing acts of violence, Tessa Wegert's five thrillers about killer relatives, Catherine Ryan Howard's five notable dangers-of-dating thrillers, Sally Hepworth's top five novels about twisted sisters, Megan Nolan's six books on unrequited love and unmet obsession, Sarah Pinborough's top ten titles where the setting is a character, Tiffany Tsao's top five novels about murder all in the family, Victoria Helen Stone's eight top crime books of deep, dark family lore, and Kristen Roupenian's six best books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Lydia Reeder's "The Cure for Women"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Cure for Women: Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi and the Challenge to Victorian Medicine That Changed Women's Lives Forever by Lydia Reeder.

About the book, from the publisher:

How Victorian male doctors used false science to argue that women were unfit for anything but motherhood―and the brilliant doctor who defied them

After Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman to graduate from medical school, more women demanded a chance to study medicine. Barred entrance to universities like Harvard, women built their own first-rate medical schools and hospitals. Their success spurred a chilling backlash from elite, white male physicians who were obsessed with eugenics and the propagation of the white race. Distorting Darwin’s evolution theory, these haughty physicians proclaimed in bestselling books that women should never be allowed to attend college or enter a profession because their menstrual cycles made them perpetually sick. Motherhood was their constitution and duty.

Into the midst of this turmoil marched tiny, dynamic Mary Putnam Jacobi, daughter of New York publisher George Palmer Putnam and the first woman to be accepted into the world-renowned Sorbonne medical school in Paris. As one of the best-educated doctors in the world, she returned to New York for the fight of her life. Aided by other prominent women physicians and suffragists, Jacobi conducted the first-ever data-backed, scientific research on women's reproductive biology. The results of her studies shook the foundations of medical science and higher education. Full of larger than life characters and cinematically written, The Cure for Women documents the birth of a sexist science still haunting us today as the fight for control of women’s bodies and lives continues.

Visit Lydia Reeder's website.

My Book, The Movie: Dust Bowl Girls.

The Page 99 Test: The Cure for Women.

--Marshal Zeringue

Books that show how to be alone

Rebecca Joines Schinsky is the Chief of Staff for Riot New Media Group and a co-host of the Book Riot Podcast.

At Book Riot she tagged a few "books to help you savor solitude, sink into silence, and be alone with your thoughts in a world filled with noise." One title on the list:

If you’re dreaming of becoming a person who can eat dinner alone at the bar in a restaurant or go see a movie by yourself without feeling like everyone is staring at you, Glynnis MacNicol’s I’m Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself is a great place to start. About a post-covid summer she spent in Paris, the book is an ode to the freedom of not being subject to anyone’s desires but your own. Though MacNicol travels and lives alone, she is far from lonely; the book is full of wine-soaked meals with friends, sexy encounters, and the kinds of spontaneous experiences and adventures that become available when you show up by yourself and let the world work its magic.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: James Byrne's "Chain Reaction"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Chain Reaction (A Dez Limerick Thriller, 3) by James Byrne.

About the book, from the publisher:

Dez Limerick, a man of many skills and a murky past, faces the impossible-a skilled, deadly opponent who anticipates his every move in James Byrne's Chain Reaction.

Desmond Aloysius Limerick ("Dez" to his friends and close personal enemies) is a man with a shadowy past, certain useful hard-won skills, and, if one digs deep enough, a reputation as a good man to have at your back. He was trained as a "gatekeeper"―he can open any door, keep it open as long as necessary, and control who does―and does not―go through. Now retired from his previous life, Dez still tries to keep his skills up to date.

Knocking around the country, picking up the occasional gig as a guitarist, Dez is contacted by a friend in urgent need of his musical skills. At his behest, Dez flies to the East Coast to a gig at the brand new massive complex, the Liberty Center. But he's barely landed before he finds himself in the midst of a terrorist attack, a group has taken over the whole center and thousands of hostage lives are in danger. With the semi-willing help of a talented thief, Dez takes on the impossible task of outfighting and outwitting a literal army. But that's just the beginning, as Dez learns he was actually lured there under false pretenses, by someone who knows more about Dez, his past and his skills than any living person should.

Visit James Byrne's website.

Q&A with James Byrne.

The Page 69 Test: Deadlock.

My Book, The Movie: Deadlock.

Writers Read: James Byrne.

The Page 69 Test: Chain Reaction.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Hemangini Gupta's "Experimental Times"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Experimental Times: Startup Capitalism and Feminist Futures in India by Hemangini Gupta.

About the book, from the publisher:

Experimental Times is an in-depth ethnography of the transformation of Bengaluru/Bangalore from a site of "backend" IT work to an aspirational global city of enterprise and innovation. The book journeys alongside the migrant workers, technologists, and entrepreneurs who shape and survive the dreams of a "Startup India" knitted through office work, at networking meetings and urban festivals, and across sites of leisure in the city. Tracking techno-futures that involve automation and impending precarity, Hemangini Gupta details the everyday forms of experimentation, care, and friendship that sustain and reproduce life and labor in India's current economy.

Learn more about Experimental Times at the University of California Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Experimental Times.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top books on belonging and identity

Charlene Carr has published eleven novels. Her first agented novel, Hold My Girl, was named one of the Best Books of 2023 by CBC, shortlisted for multiple awards, and has been optioned for adaptation to the screen. Carr lives in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia with her husband and young daughters.

Her new novel is We Rip the World Apart.

At The Nerd Daily Carr tagged six books that explore themes of identity and belonging. One title on the list:

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

The Vanishing Half is the story of identical twins who take on differing racial identities—one Black, one white—which leads them to lead extremely different lives. The sister who is ‘passing’ has chosen to live a lie, hiding her true racial background from everyone she knows and loves, even her child.

Spanning decades, the novel is a compelling, emotional read that kept me compulsively turning the pages as it explored questions of identity and the ways in which so many of us, either in small or massive ways, present multiple versions of ourselves as we search for a place to belong.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Vanishing Half is among Beth Morrey‘s top ten single mothers in fiction.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Kemper Donovan

From my Q&A with Kemper Donovan, author of Loose Lips:

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

Quite a lot, I hope! My title, Loose Lips, is the first part of a common phrase: “Loose lips sink ships.” To make certain that this word association occurs in the mind of a would-be reader, I made sure to include a picture of a sinking ship on the cover of the book. The idea is to convey: 1) the action of the story takes place entirely on a boat, and 2) matters on this boat go seriously awry. There is also a subtitle, A Ghostwriter Mystery, which clarifies that this book is a mystery, one in a series, and furthermore, that it does not matter where the book falls within that series, since any one of the Ghostwriter Mysteries can be read on its own. The Ghostwriter in question is the narrator of each book, and in this outing, she reluctantly joins a literary-themed cruise as a lecturer, along with a handful of writer colleagues and a few hundred paying passengers. Would you be surprised to learn that...[read on]

Visit Kemper Donovan's website.

Q&A with Kemper Donovan.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Victoria Sturtevant's "It's All in the Delivery"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: It's All in the Delivery: Pregnancy in American Film and Television Comedy by Victoria Sturtevant.

About the book, from the publisher:

How changing depictions of pregnancy in comedy from the start of the twentieth century to the present show an evolution in attitudes toward women’s reproductive roles and rights.

Some of the most groundbreaking moments in American film and TV comedy have centered on pregnancy, from Lucille Ball’s real-life pregnancy on I Love Lucy, to the abortion plot on Maude; Murphy Brown’s controversial single motherhood; Arnold Schwarzenegger’s pregnancy in Junior; or the third-trimester stand-up special Ali Wong: Baby Cobra.

In the first book-length study of pregnancy in popular comedy, Victoria Sturtevant examines the slow evolution of pregnancy tropes during the years of the Production Code; the sexual revolution and changing norms around nonmarital pregnancy in the 1960s and ‘70s; and the emphasis on biological clocks, infertility, adoption, and abortion from the 1980s to now.

Across this history, popular media have offered polite evasions and sentimentality instead of real candor about the physical and social complexities of pregnancy. But comedy has often led the way in puncturing these clichés, pointing an irreverent and satiric lens at the messy and sometimes absurd work of gestation. Ultimately, Sturtevant argues that comedy can reveal the distortions and lies that treat pregnancy as simple and natural “women’s work,” misrepresentations that rest at the heart of contemporary attacks on reproductive rights in the US.

Learn more about It's All in the Delivery at the University of Texas Press website.

The Page 99 Test: It's All in the Delivery.

--Marshal Zeringue