Pg. 99: Robert E.C. Davis's "Lieutenants and Light"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Lieutenants and Light: Mapping the US Army Heliograph Networks in Late Nineteenth-Century Arizona and New Mexico by Robert E.C. Davis.

About the book, from the publisher:

Lieutenants and Light provides an accurate, detailed historical study of the U.S. Army’s use of the heliograph as a tactical means of communication and command and control in the desert environment of Arizona and New Mexico in the late nineteenth century.

The heliograph network in the Southwest, which began development in 1882, used mirror-based signaling devices to facilitate communication across remote outposts, forts, and detachments. Heliographs enabled soldiers to send messages over long distances using Morse code transmitted through sunlight reflections. During and immediately following the campaign against Geronimo in 1886, General Nelson A. Miles implemented a heliograph network that connected key locations from Nogales, Arizona, to Fort Stanton, New Mexico, enhancing command and control. Additional tests and expansions solidified the heliograph’s role as an essential military communication tool.

Reports from the officers tasked with establishing these stations and modern geospatial analysis have identified almost ninety networked heliograph stations established between 1882 and 1893, culminating in the greatest heliograph network ever built.

Many of the officers who helmed these stations went on to distinguished careers in the military, business, or public service. Some had served in the Civil War, and most were veterans of the Indian Wars. Almost a third of these young officers would go on to become general officers, several serving in leadership roles during World War I. Thus, the heliograph not only connected points across the Southwest but also linked a group of officers whose experience and leadership spanned from the Civil War through World War I.

Visit Robert E.C. Davis's website.

The Page 99 Test: Lieutenants and Light.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best YA historical fantasy books

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 ten of the most enchanting YA historical fantasy books. One title on the list:

To Shape a Dragon’s Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose

Set in an alternate-history North America, To Shape a Dragon’s Breath beautifully blends Native American history and culture into an extraordinary tale of dragons. Teenager Anequs finds the first dragon egg seen on her island home in generations. But when the colonizers on the mainland hear of Anequs’s dragon, they make it clear that she must attend their school for dragon training or else her dragon will be killed. It’s a dragon fantasy unlike any you’ve read before, full of layered characters and powerful reckonings. This first book in the Nampeshiweisit series left me begging for the sequel, and it will finally hit shelves on January 27 with the title To Ride a Rising Storm. This is another title that wasn’t technically published as a YA read, but it has great appeal to fans of YA.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Brionni Nwosu's "The Wondrous Life and Loves of Nella Carter"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Wondrous Life and Loves of Nella Carter: A Novel by Brionni Nwosu.

About the book, from the publisher:

A young woman at the crossroads of life and death embarks on an extraordinary journey across time in an epic novel about beauty, hope, endurance, and endless loves.

Most humans cower in the face of Death. Not Nella May Carter. She sees him. She doesn’t hide. Instead, she bargains.

Born enslaved in eighteenth-century Georgia, Nella still believes in the will to survive amid the most untenable of conditions, in the glory of life, and in the ultimate goodness of the human race. She asks that Death, doubtful and curious, allow her to live long enough to prove it. He’s giving Nella all the time in the world.

Challenged, Nella embarks on an epic journey across the globe and centuries. Each new incarnation records the joys and losses, and the friendships and heartbreaks, throughout her lifetimes. When she meets handsome and passionate professor Sebastian Moore―the first man to whom she has ever revealed her secrets―Nella yearns for the mortality that escapes her. She can’t bear to leave this love behind.

As Death keeps watch, has Nella’s journey come to an end? Or is a new one just beginning?

Visit Brionni Nwosu's website.

Writers Read: Brionni Nwosu.

The Page 69 Test: The Wondrous Life and Loves of Nella Carter.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Al Filreis's "The Classroom and the Crowd"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Classroom and the Crowd: Poetry and the Promise of Digital Community by Al Filreis.

About the book, from the publisher:

For more than a decade, Al Filreis has taught a free online course about experimental poetry, known as “ModPo,” that has drawn some 435,000 students from 179 countries. Online classes even a fraction of ModPo’s size have been criticized as impersonal and unengaging. But the citizens of ModPo have formed a generous and enduring intellectual community as together they read poems typically dismissed as difficult and inaccessible.

In The Classroom and the Crowd, Filreis reflects on his decades of experience as a founder of participatory literary communities and teacher of online courses, demonstrating that student-centered education offers new possibilities for humane social networking. Introducing readers to ModPo participants and their open-ended, round-the-clock conversations, he shows how online learning can not only be accessible and educational but also deepen our commitment to democracy. Filreis argues that the emphasis on collaborative learning, space for discussion, and the inherent openness of poetry allows for a sense of community, continuity, and even intimacy that often eludes other online educational endeavors. ModPo embodies principles underlying both modern poetics and cooperative education: Writers and readers, like teachers and learners, create meaning together; many voices are clearer than one; and democracy is a creative practice. Proposing an optimistic vision of mass learning, this book contends that asynchronous education has surprising advantages over the traditional classroom, that panics about a crisis of attention and the death of reading are overblown―and that instead of logging off, we should all start reading with a crowd.

Learn more about The Classroom and the Crowd at the Columbia University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: The Classroom and the Crowd.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top books where women were pushed to the edge

L.M. Chilton is a journalist with fifteen years of experience working on a variety of television shows, such as This Morning, Loose Women, and more. His writing has appeared in Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Metro (London), and The Mirror (London).

The author's novels include Swiped and Everyone in the Group Chat Dies.

In 2024 at The Strand Magazine Chilton tagged "ten books where women take their lives and (mostly men’s’) deaths into their own hands." One title on the list:

BAD MEN by Julie Mae Cohen

Saffy is a glamorous socialite who also just happens to be a rather proficient serial killer. For the past fifteen years, she’s hunted down and dispatched ‘bad men’ – rapists, murderers and domestic abusers. But her double life has left her lonely, after all, dating can be tricky when your boyfriend might turn out to be your next victim. With cocktails, romance, and a whole lot of stabbing, Bad Men is an irresistible mix of Sex and The City and Silence of the Lambs.

Read about another title on the list.

The Page 69 Test: Bad Men.

Q&A with Julie Mae Cohen.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Brionni Nwosu reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Brionni Nwosu, author of The Wondrous Life and Loves of Nella Carter: A Novel.

Her entry begins:

I just finished Razorblade Tears by S.A. Cosby as part of one of my book clubs, The Virtual Book Club for Black Women, and it was a fantastic pick, enjoyed by our entire group. I even recommended it to my father, and he enjoyed it as well. I really liked seeing a story written by a Black male author with two male leads, especially how they handled fatherhood, grief, and their complicated feelings about their sons’ sexuality. The descriptions were so vivid, and there were several craft moments I highlighted because they were just that strong.

One moment that stayed with me was when...[read on]

About The Wondrous Life and Loves of Nella Carter, from the publisher:

A young woman at the crossroads of life and death embarks on an extraordinary journey across time in an epic novel about beauty, hope, endurance, and endless loves.

Most humans cower in the face of Death. Not Nella May Carter. She sees him. She doesn’t hide. Instead, she bargains.

Born enslaved in eighteenth-century Georgia, Nella still believes in the will to survive amid the most untenable of conditions, in the glory of life, and in the ultimate goodness of the human race. She asks that Death, doubtful and curious, allow her to live long enough to prove it. He’s giving Nella all the time in the world.

Challenged, Nella embarks on an epic journey across the globe and centuries. Each new incarnation records the joys and losses, and the friendships and heartbreaks, throughout her lifetimes. When she meets handsome and passionate professor Sebastian Moore―the first man to whom she has ever revealed her secrets―Nella yearns for the mortality that escapes her. She can’t bear to leave this love behind.

As Death keeps watch, has Nella’s journey come to an end? Or is a new one just beginning?

Visit Brionni Nwosu's website.

Writers Read: Brionni Nwosu.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top espionage novels with charmingly clueless protagonists

Jonathan Payne is a British-American writer based in New York City.

His first novel, Citizen Orlov, was named a Book of the Month by Apple Books. It won the 2024 IBPA Silver Medal for Mystery/Thriller and the 2024 IPPY Bronze Medal for Suspense/Thriller.

Payne previously worked in national security for the British government.

He holds a Master of Arts degree in Novel Writing from Middlesex University, London.

Payne's new novel is Hotel Melikov.

[Q&A with Jonathan Payne]

At CrimeReads the author tagged six favorite espionage novels with charmingly clueless protagonists, including:

Chris Pavone, The Travelers

Will Rhodes is a travel writer and a recently-married New Yorker with financial troubles who jets around the world writing articles about hotels and wine for ‘Travelers’ magazine. After a tryst with an Australian woman in Argentina, he is surprised to be propositioned by the CIA. Like James Wormold and Harry Pendel, Rhodes needs the money, so agrees to provide information about the rich and powerful folks he meets on his travels.

But soon Rhodes begins to suspect that the CIA is actually interested in information about something else. If so, what? And then he begins to suspect that the CIA officers who recruited him might be imposters. If so, who are they? This one has more twists than a plate of rotini.

Read about another title on the list.

The Page 69 Test: The Travelers.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Rebecca Jumper Matheson's "Artisans and Designers"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Artisans and Designers by Rebecca Jumper Matheson.

About the book, from the publisher:

One couple's bold vision for American fashion

Long before the fashion industry formally addressed questions of sustainability and advocated for “slow fashion,” William and Elizabeth Phelps, a husband-and-wife design duo, were already working to create hand-crafted leathergoods and functional women’s sportswear that could be worn for decades. Active from the 1940s to the late 1960s, Phelps Associates quickly won acclaim and found commercial success, attracting a broad clientele and becoming known for quality, utility, and craftsmanship.

Using vintage metal insignia and hardware, often military surplus, the Phelpses designed bags and belts that answered the need for American-made luxury goods during and after World War II. In the post-war period, the Phelpses experimented with new methods of production and branched into ready-to-wear fashion. Meanwhile, the pair worked to revive artisan workshops, emphasized fostering positive work environments for their employees, and offered employment opportunities for injured veterans.

Artisans and Designers is the first in-depth analysis of the Phelpses’ partnership, their often overlooked contributions to the fashion industry, and their forward-thinking business practices. Rebecca Jumper Matheson draws on their pieces to connect their work to larger conversations about sustainable fashion, consumerism, industrialization practices, and the intersection of art with American identity during and after World War II. The result is an engagingly written, richly illustrated account of a brand committed to creating classic pieces that have stood the test of time.

Learn more about Artisans and Designers at the The Kent State University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Artisans and Designers.

--Marshal Zeringue

Cindy Jiban's "The Probable Son," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Probable Son: A Novel by Cindy Jiban.

The entry begins:

Teacher Elsa Vargas has always suspected that the boy she is raising is the wrong child, accidentally switched at birth. But because of her deep love for Bird, Elsa has planned to keep her doubts buried forever.

Then one day, a student named Thomas in her middle school classroom is uncannily familiar. When she learns that he shares a birthday with Bird, she realizes: Thomas is probably her son.

If she’s right, what will that mean for Bird?

Here’s my dream cast for The Probable Son:

Elsa, the mother

Casting Elsa well is critical. She is a warm and inherently funny mother and teacher who has to navigate the possibility of terrible loss. Still, her sometimes-clumsy search for the truth becomes a bit cringeworthy, at turns. Her yearning drives her forward, but her penchant for rattling the school parent community fills her path with obstacles.

I need an actress who can portray a layered Elsa: hilarious eyerolls but also escaped tears; clever planning but also moments of love-fueled but unhinged judgment.

 To give us a complex and lovable Elsa we can’t look away from, I trust Emily Blunt.

Bird and Thomas, the possibly-switched sons

The son Elsa has been mothering, Bird, is a quiet and serious optimist within a family of extroverted skeptics. Meanwhile, Thomas is a charismatic questioner of the world, someone much more like the rest of Elsa’s family. Both are...[read on]

Visit Cindy Jiban's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Probable Son.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Marshall Karp's "NYPD Red #8"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: NYPD Red 8: The 11:59 Bomber (Book 8 in The NYPD Red Series) by Marshall Karp.

About the book, from the publisher:

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Marshall Karp comes the next installment in the endlessly thrilling NYPD Red series.

It's 11:59.

And the city that never sleeps is afraid to get out of bed.

A bomb explodes in a crowded New York subway station at exactly 11:59 a.m. The next day, a second blast rips through a busy department store--again at 11:59.

As the bombs go off with clockwork precision, the death toll climbs and businesses shut their doors as the city hunkers down in fear.

NYPD Red Detectives Kylie MacDonald and Zach Jordan face their most twisted case ever, as they race against the clock in search of one man who has vowed "to destroy New York City the way it destroyed my family."

Visit Marshall Karp's website.

The Page 69 Test: NYPD Red 8: The 11:59 Bomber.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top literary thrillers set in the artworld

Laura Leffler is a writer and art historian who builds stories within the gorgeous, strange, and sometimes terrifying art world. After receiving a master’s degree in post-war and contemporary art, she spent more than a decade working in commercial galleries, doing everything from art fair sales to condition reporting and logistics. Along the way, she witnessed more of that glittering world’s dark underbelly than she thought possible. Laura currently lives in Colorado with her family.

Tell Them You Lied is her first novel.

At Tertulia the author tagged ten favorite literary thrillers set in the artworld. One title on the list:

Mouth to Mouth by Antoine Wilson

Reading Mouth to Mouth feels like eavesdropping. Two acquaintances meet by chance in the first-class lounge at JFK airport, one (Jeff) begins to tell the other (our unnamed narrator) a long, strange story—a confession of sorts–about saving a drowning man’s life on a Los Angeles beach. When the drowning man turns out to be a gallerist-to-the-stars, and not a totally moral one, Jeff decides to take advantage of the situation. Part Talented Mr. Ripley, part Great Gatsby, full of dread and foreboding.

Read about another entry on the list.

Mouth to Mouth is among Maris Kreizman's twenty-three wonderful short books.

Q&A with Antoine Wilson.

--Marshal Zeringue

Third reading: D.W. Buffa on Robert Graves's "I, Claudius"

The Dark Backward is among D.W. Buffa's more recent novels to be released. The story revolves around not just the strangest case William Darnell had ever tried;

it was the strangest case ever tried by any lawyer anywhere. It was impossible to explain; or rather, impossible to believe. The defendant, who did not speak English or any other language anyone could identify, had been found on an island no one knew existed, and charged with murder, rape and incest. He was given the name Adam, and Adam, as Darnell comes to learn, is more intelligent, quicker to learn, than anyone he has ever met. Adam, he learns to his astonishment, is a member of an ancient civilization that has remained undiscovered for more than three thousand years.

Buffa is also the author of ten legal thrillers involving the defense attorney Joseph Antonelli. He has also published a series that attempts to trace the movement of western thought from ancient Athens, in Helen; the end of the Roman Empire, in Julian's Laughter; the Renaissance, in The Autobiography of Niccolo Machiavelli; and America in the twentieth century, in Neumann's Last Concert.

Buffa's latest take in his "Third Reading" series is I, Claudius by Robert Graves. It begins:

In 1929, Robert Graves published Goodbye to All That, a memoir of his life as a British soldier who fought in the trenches in the First World War. In the prologue to the edition published almost thirty years later, he provided the reason why he wrote it and what happened because of it: “I partly wrote, partly dictated, this book twenty-eight years ago during a complicated domestic crisis, and with very little time for revisions. It was my bitter leave-taking of England where I had recently broken a good many conventions; quarreled with, or been disowned by, most of my friends; been grilled by the police on a suspicion of attempted murder; and ceased to care what anyone thought of me.”

The title of the book became “a catch-word,” his “sole contribution to Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations. More importantly, Goodbye to All That made him enough money that he could move to Majorca and spend all his time writing. Among the dozens of other things he wrote were the two volumes, or the two novels, I, Claudius, published in 1934, and Claudius the God, published two years later in 1936. In an Author’s Note to the second volume, Graves takes up a frequent criticism of the first volume, a criticism which betrayed a complete failure to understand the difference between books of history and historical fiction; a failure, that is to say, between the report of events that had happened at some point in the past, and the attempt to understand what those involved in those events thought they were doing; the difference between seeing things from a distance, the present looking back at the past, and seeing things as they unfold.

Some reviewers, according to Graves, “suggested that in writing it I had merely consulted Tacitus’s Annals, and Suetonius’s Twelve Caesars, run them together and expanded the result with my own vigorous fancy.” Insisting that this “was not so,” he proceeds to list, in addition to Tacitus and Suetonius, twenty-four Greek and Roman authors, including Plutarch, Pliny, Dio Cassius, Diodorus Siculus, Juvenal, Josephus, “and Claudius himself in his surviving letters and speeches.” He then explains that, “Few incidents…are wholly unsupported by historical authority of some sort or other. I hope none are historically incredible. No character is invented.” Graves knew what he was doing.

In what might easily have gone unnoticed, Graves...[read on]

Visit D.W. Buffa's website.

Buffa's previous third reading essays: The Great Gatsby; Brave New World; Lord Jim; Death in the Afternoon; Parade's End; The Idiot; The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; The Scarlet Letter; Justine; Patriotic Gore; Anna Karenina; The Charterhouse of Parma; Emile; War and Peace; The Sorrows of Young Werther; Bread and Wine; “The Crisis of the Mind” and A Man Without Qualities; Eugene Onegin; The Collected Works of Thomas Babington Macaulay; The Europeans; The House of Mirth and The Writing of Fiction; Doctor Faustus; the reading list of John F. Kennedy; Jorge Luis Borges; History of the Peloponnesian War; Mansfield Park; To Each His Own; A Passage To India; Seven Pillars of Wisdom; The Letters of T.E. Lawrence; All The King’s Men; The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus; Naguib Mahfouz’s novels of ancient Egypt; Main Street; Theodore H. White's The Making of the President series, part I; Theodore H. White's The Making of the President series, part II; Thus Spoke Zarathustra; Fiction's Failure; Hermann Hesse's Demian; Frederick Douglass, Slavery, and The Fourth of July; Caesar’s Ghost; The American Constitution; A Tale of Two Cities; The Leopard; Madame Bovary; The Sheltering Sky; Tocqueville’s America and Ours; American Statesmen; Ancient and Modern Writers Reconsidered; Père Goriot; The Remarkable Edmund Burke; The Novels of W.H. Hudson; America Revised; The City And Man; "The Use And Abuse Of History"; I, Claudius.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: John Edward Huth's "A Sense of Space"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: A Sense of Space: A Local's Guide to a Flat Earth, the Edge of the Cosmos, and Other Curious Places by John Edward Huth.

About the book, from the publisher:

From global navigation to natal charts to memory palaces and beyond, a thrilling journey through humanity’s visualization of new spaces.

When you give directions, do you tell someone to go straight ahead and turn left? Or do you suggest that they head north before moving west? Your answer reveals more than you might think.

In A Sense of Space, writer and physicist John Edward Huth uses these two kinds of navigation—either centered on or independent of people—to help readers chart a path through evolving spatial models. In doing so, he offers an astonishing exploration of how changing scientific models of space alter our social perceptions, and vice versa. New visions of space can emanate from human considerations, he argues, and those new visions can in turn spawn new cultural phenomena. With accessible introductions to topics including mental maps, astrology, astronomy, particle physics, and Einstein’s relativity, Huth makes clear that, although our minds have evolved to comprehend space in terrestrial distances, we routinely extend this understanding to realms far removed from our everyday experiences, from cosmological to subatomic scales.

Taking us across the eons from the myth of a flat earth to the mysteries of the multiverse, A Sense of Space is an energetic, thoughtful guide to how we orient ourselves in our world—and beyond.

Learn more about A Sense of Space at the University of Chicago Press website.

The Page 99 Test: A Sense of Space.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top speculative books for "Pluribus" fans

At Book Riot Liberty Hardy tagged "five great speculative books, chosen for various similar aspects as Pluribus" [the sci-fi show that’s the brainchild of Vince Gilligan, the writer-producer-director behind shows like Breaking Bad and Better Caul Saul]. One title on the list:

The Seep by Chana Porter

Read this if your favorite aspect of Pluribus is the utopia-attaining virus that takes over the world. Trina is a trans woman who lives with her wife Deeba in a new world under the influence of an alien entity called The Seep. Since its arrival, mostly everything has become peaceful on Earth, with no more war or greed or classism. There’s even Seeptech that can make dreams a reality, which is where things start to go wrong for Trina. When Deeba decides she wants to be reborn as a baby and live life over, she leaves Trina behind. Hurt and lonely, Trina takes off on a road trip, where she meets a young man whom she decides she is going to save from the Seep while also trying to deal with the hole that Deeba has left in her heart.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Seep is among Allegra Hyde’s eight top utopian books for dystopian times.

My Book, The Movie: The Seep.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Mia Sheridan

From my Q&A with Mia Sheridan, author of The Fix: A Novel:

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

The Fix not only references a "fix" in the sense of a problem-solver for hire (which is suggested might be the reason for the crime the reader steps into almost immediately), but it also references what unfolds at the end of the story. So the title felt perfect to me because right up front, it made sense to the reader, and then made even more sense at the conclusion. I love a title that ends up having a deeper meaning than it originally suggests.

What's in a name?

One of the characters in my book is a young, extremely rational, non-emotional, genius of a young woman who is referred to by some as...[read on]

Visit Mia Sheridan's website.

Q&A with Mia Sheridan.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top novels about living near serial killers

Amy K. Green is a contemporary American author from New England who made an unconventional journey to becoming a writer. Originally pursuing a career in accounting, her transition to writing came after years of working in corporate finance and film production.

Growing up as an only child in a small New England town, Green credits her active imagination to solitary hours spent playing in the woods and her enthusiasm for pop culture. Her debut novel, The Prized Girl, published in 2020, was written during downtime between film productions. The novel showcased her skill in crafting complex narratives.

Green’s new novel is Haven't Killed In Years.

At CrimeReads the author tagged "five books that hinge on living in the close proximity of a serial killer." One title on the list:

Samantha Downing, My Lovely Wife

I hope no one treats this book as self-help to spice up their stale marriage because for the protagonists in this book, the trick to a happy marriage is getting away with murder(s). The story centers on a “perfect” suburban couple with 2.0 children who all eat organic dinners together at the table. The difference is that this husband bonds with his wife over stalking their next victim. . .happy wife, happy life after all.

The trouble with such a sick and, of course, illegal extra-curricular activity is the risks that come with escalation, the doubts that creep in about your accomplice, and the cracks that cause your secret life to ooze into the life you want others to see. This isn’t tennis, you can’t just quit and walk away.

My Lovely Wife provides an enthralling look at being in the orbit of a serial killer. Someone you love, someone you chose to make a life with, someone you encouraged to kill…and they could say the same exact things about you. I loved how this book is told from the perspective of the husband, a narrator whose own involvement clouds his ability to clearly see what is really at stake.

Read about another title on Green's list.

My Lovely Wife is among Courtney Rodgers's nine chilling thrillers about marriage, Darby Kane's seven top thrillers with couples who don’t get (or deserve) a happy ending, Misha Popp's eight titles featuring truly fatal femmes fatales, Sarah Bonner's thirteen psychological thrillers with gobsmacking twists, Kaira Rouda's thirteen books highlighting the wives in domestic suspense, Alice Feeney's eight top novels featuring odd couples & unexpected partnerships, Pip Drysdale's seven top revenge thrillers featuring women who have had enough, Christina McDonald's seven top thrillers with flawed characters, C.J. Tudor's seven crime novels where murder is a group activity, Lisa Levy's top seven psychological thrillers with manipulative male narrators, Kaira Rouda's top seven literary couples whose relationships are deeply disturbing in the most fascinating ways possible, and Margot Hunt's top five villains who have had about enough of domestic life.

The Page 69 Test: My Lovely Wife.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Rob Miller's "The Hours Are Long, But the Pay Is Low"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Hours Are Long, But the Pay Is Low: A Curious Life in Independent Music by Rob Miller.

About the book, from the publisher:

“The music business is not a meritocracy: it is a crapshoot taking place in a septic tank balanced on the prow of the Titanic, a venal snake pit where innovation, creativity, and honest business practices are actively discouraged.”

Rob Miller arrived in Chicago wanting to escape the music industry. In short order, he co-founded a trailblazing record label revered for its artist-first approach and punk take on country, roots, and so much else. Miller’s gonzo memoir follows a music fan’s odyssey through a singular account of Bloodshot Records, the Chicago scene, and thirty years as part of a community sustaining independent artists and businesses.

Hilarious and hundred-proof, The Hours Are Long, But the Pay Is Low delivers a warm-hearted yet clear-eyed account of loving and living music on the edge, in the trenches, and without apologies.

Visit Rob Miller's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Hours Are Long, But the Pay Is Low.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Catherine Ryan Hyde's "Falling Apart and Other Gifts from the Universe"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Falling Apart and Other Gifts from the Universe: A Novel by Catherine Ryan Hyde.

About the book, from the publisher:

Two disparate people―lost in their own way―find an unexpected healing connection in a poignant novel about redemption and chosen family by New York Times bestselling author Catherine Ryan Hyde.

An army veteran with a career as a beat cop behind her, security guard Addie Finch is tough―on the outside. Internally, she’s in crisis mode. She’s lonely, introverted, struggling through AA, estranged from her son, and, at sixty-two years old, questioning her role as a protector. She also has a soft spot for the underdog that’s about to change her life.

Addie finds Jonathan, a homeless teenager abandoned by his mother, holed up in a warehouse and vulnerable to the elements and to predators. Touched by the boy’s gentle nature and a wisdom beyond his years, Addie offers him temporary shelter in her garden shed in exchange for maintaining the sprawling property. It’s an act of kindness and purpose that means the world to Jonathan. But when Addie faces a situation that sends her internal world tumbling, the emotional connection with Jonathan, once the unlikeliest of strangers, becomes her lifeline as well.

As both process past traumas, Addie and Jonathan forge a surrogate grandmother-grandson bond―a chosen family that could restore trust and heal hearts they thought were broken forever.

Visit Catherine Ryan Hyde's website.

Q&A with Catherine Ryan Hyde.

The Page 69 Test: Brave Girl, Quiet Girl.

The Page 69 Test: My Name is Anton.

The Page 69 Test: Seven Perfect Things.

The Page 69 Test: Boy Underground.

The Page 69 Test: Dreaming of Flight.

The Page 69 Test: So Long, Chester Wheeler.

The Page 69 Test: A Different Kind of Gone.

The Page 69 Test: Life, Loss, and Puffins.

The Page 69 Test: Rolling Toward Clear Skies.

The Page 69 Test: Michael Without Apology.

The Page 69 Test: Falling Apart and Other Gifts from the Universe.

--Marshal Zeringue

Marshall Fine's "Hemlock Lane," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Hemlock Lane: A Novel by Marshall Fine.

The entry begins:

Hemlock Lane is a family drama that takes place over the course of four days, with each day told from the viewpoint of one of the four central characters—the perfect structure for a limited series on a streaming service, in case you’re a producer seeking a project.

The story is about a flashpoint weekend in the life of a suburban family in the summer of 1967. Secrets are both kept and revealed, building to a family showdown between a domineering mother and an independent- minded daughter, who is about to start a professional life that will put her beyond her mother’s reach.

The mother, Lillian—haughty, sharp-tongued, full of secret fears—would be perfect for an actress who can shift from warm to glacial with barely a movement of her eyebrow. I’d love to see someone like Cate Blanchett or Patricia Clarkson, actresses who combine steeliness with vulnerability.

The father, Sol, is a successful businessman whose secret shame is...[read on]

Visit Marshall Fine's website, and follow him on Facebook and Instagram.

My Book, The Movie: The Autumn of Ruth Winters.

Q&A with Marshall Fine.

The Page 69 Test: Hemlock Lane.

My Book, The Movie: Hemlock Lane.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best brutal survival thrillers

At Fully Booked Laura Tarallo tagged ten books like The Running Man, including:

Market Forces by Richard K. Morgan

Welcome to corporate dystopia, where job promotions are earned via death matches in armored cars. No, really. This is Wall Street meets Mad Max, and it’s gloriously awful in all the best ways.

Morgan mixes capitalist critique with ultraviolence and makes you question why you ever tolerated team-building exercises. It’s mean, smart, and leaves a bruise.

Why we recommend it: If corporate backstabbing were an Olympic sport, this book would be the gold medalist. For readers fascinated by capitalism’s dark underbelly, where boardrooms become battlefields and profits are soaked in blood, this one hits hard and fast.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine top books about forbidden desire

Amy Shearn is the award-winning author of the critically acclaimed novels Dear Edna Sloane, Unseen City, The Mermaid of Brooklyn, and How Far is the Ocean From Here. She has worked as an editor for Medium, and her work has appeared in the New York Times Modern Love column, Slate, Real Simple, Martha Stewart Living, Oprah, Coastal Living, Poets & Writers, Literary Hub, Catapult, The Millions, The Rumpus, and many other publications.

Shearn has an MFA from the University of Minnesota, and currently lives in Brooklyn with her two children.

Her latest novel is Animal Instinct.

[The Page 99 Test: How Far Is the Ocean from Here; Writers Read: Amy Shearn (March 2013); Q&A with Amy Shearn; My Book, The Movie: Dear Edna Sloane; The Page 69 Test: Dear Edna Sloane; The Page 69 Test: Animal Instinct; Writers Read: Amy Shearn (March 2025); My Book, The Movie: Animal Instinct]

At Tertulia Shearn tagged "nine great works of fiction about characters who lust after what they’re not supposed to." One title on the list:

Big Swiss by Jen Beagin

This quirky novel awakened in me a deep lust for drafty and problematic farmhouses in upstate New York even though I know that was really not the point — but there’s also a tense and fascinating affair between two women, one of whom is married to a man. It’s vividly written, full of lush detail, and laugh-out-loud funny.

Read about another entry on the list.

Big Swiss is among Vanessa Lawrence's eight titles about young women searching for identity & purpose through work.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Arnoud S. Q. Visser's "On Pedantry"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: On Pedantry: A Cultural History of the Know-it-All by Arnoud S. Q. Visser.

About the book, from the publisher:

A lively and entertaining cultural history of a supremely annoying intellectual vice

Intellectuals have long provoked scorn and irritation, even downright aggression. Many learned individuals have cast such hostility as a badge of honor, a sign of envy, or a form of resistance to inconvenient truths. On Pedantry offers an altogether different perspective, revealing how the excessive use of learning has been a vice in Western culture since the days of Socrates.

Taking readers from the academies of ancient Greece to today’s culture wars, Arnoud Visser explains why pretentious and punctilious learning has always annoyed us, painting vibrant portraits of some of the most intensely irritating intellectuals ever known, from devious sophists and bossy savantes to hypercritical theologians, dry-as-dust antiquarians, and know-it-all professors. He shows how criticisms of pedantry have typically been more about conduct than ideas, and he demonstrates how pedantry served as a weapon in the perennial struggle over ideas, social status, political authority, and belief. Shifting attention away from the self-proclaimed virtues of the learned to their less-than-flattering vice, Visser makes a bold and provocative contribution to the history of Western thought.

Drawing on a wealth of sources ranging from satire and comedy to essays, sermons, and film, On Pedantry sheds critical light on why anti-intellectual views have gained renewed prominence today and serves as essential reading in an age of rising populism across the globe.

Learn more about On Pedantry at the Princeton University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: On Pedantry.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Jonathan Payne

From my Q&A with Jonathan Payne, author of Hotel Melikov:

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

Hotel Melikov is the sequel to Citizen Orlov. It picks up a week after the first book finishes, in the same unnamed, fictional central European country between the two world wars. The sequel kicks off with a bang, as tensions between the government and revolutionaries erupt into civil war.

This series revolves around Citizen Orlov, an unassuming fishmonger who accidentally becomes a spy. But, of course, I can only use his name as a title once. Naming the other books in the series is an interesting challenge.

I've always loved stories set in hotels, like A Gentleman In Moscow by Amor Towles and John Irving's Hotel New Hampshire. Since this novel both begins and ends in Hotel Melikov, the grandest hotel in my fictional capital, I hope the title will tempt readers to wonder what happens behind those walls, and what role the hotel plays in the civil war.

Also, since there are nuns on the cover, and one of them is carrying a gun...[read on]

Visit Jonathan Payne's website.

Q&A with Jonathan Payne.

--Marshal Zeringue

Four top academia-centered mysteries

Peggy Townsend is an award-winning journalist and author. Her work has appeared in Catamaran literary magazine, Santa Cruz Noir, The Boston Globe Magazine, Memoir, and the San Francisco Chronicle, among other publications. Twice she lived for seven weeks in her van, traveling to Alaska and along the back roads of the U.S.

Townsend's new novel is The Botanist's Assistant.

At CrimeReads she tagged four favorite academia-centered mystery novels, including:

Jean Hanff Korelitz, The Plot

This is the kind of mystery thriller that makes you regret again any questionable decision you ever made. Jacob Bonner is a struggling writer and MFA teacher at a low-level college who finds himself reluctantly agreeing with an unpleasant student’s claim that his idea for a novel is a guaranteed bestseller.

Years later, when Bonner learns the student died without ever writing his book, the failing author persuades himself that appropriating his student’s idea is not theft if he writes the manuscript himself. When Bonner’s book becomes a runaway hit and makes him a rich man, anonymous notes that threaten to expose him as a thief begin to appear.

I found myself flipping through the pages, my heart racing, as Bonner tries to find his accuser. This is a book that will keep you up at night, but in the best possible way.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Plot is among Ayden LeRoux's seven top books about authorship hoaxes, Jane L. Rosen's nine books about book people, Elyse Friedman's eight novels featuring schemers & opportunists, E.G. Scott's five best books-within-books, Kimberly Belle's four thrillers with maximum escapism, and Louise Dean's top ten novels about novelists.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Edward Hall's "Power and Powerlessness"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Power and Powerlessness: The Liberalism of Fear in the Twenty-First Century by Edward Hall.

About the book, from the publisher:

Power and Powerlessness: The Liberalism of Fear in the Twenty-First Century examines whether the liberalism of fear - the negative and cautionary vein of liberal thinking, most famously articulated by Judith Shklar, which urges us to prioritize the avoidance of public cruelty - can effectively orient our political thinking in the twenty first century.

Hall systematically engages with Shklar's writings to offer a defence of liberalism in these terms, and also methodically works through a variety of practical political issues - torture, policing, immigration control, and hate speech. In so doing, Hall upends the suggestion that the liberalism of fear is an outdated species of Cold War Liberalism, arguing that as long as some people are invested with coercive power to exercise over others, there is a likelihood for public cruelty to emerge. Moreover, by examining some central features of politics in the twenty-first century, the book offers a series of vital and original recommendations about how we can respond to public cruelty, here and now.

Learn more about Power and Powerlessness at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Power and Powerlessness.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten books that refuse to dramatize or sanitize mental illness

Fredrik deBoer is a writer and academic. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Playboy, and Harper’s among many others. His nonfiction books include The Cult of Smart (2020) and How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement (2023). He holds a PhD in English with a concentration in writing assessment and higher education policy from Purdue University.

The writer's new novel is The Mind Reels.

At Electric Lit deBoer tagged ten books

that make a noble attempt at negotiating the gap between interior illness and exterior narrative. They don’t sanitize the disorientation, the self-doubt, the breakdowns that follow breakdowns; they resist turning mental illness into a metaphor or exotic spectacle.

One title on the list:

Sons, Daughters, and Sidewalk Psychotics by Neil Gong

In Sons, Daughters, and Sidewalk Psychotics, sociologist Neil Gong offers a stark examination of mental health care disparities in Los Angeles. Through ethnographic research, Gong contrasts the experiences of individuals receiving public mental health services with those attending elite private treatment centers. He uncovers a dual system where the wealthy access personalized care aimed at rehabilitation, while the impoverished often face minimal intervention focused on containment. Gong critiques the notion of “freedom” in treatment, highlighting how autonomy can sometimes lead to neglect, especially for those without resources. The book challenges readers to reconsider societal values and the ethics of care, urging a reevaluation of how mental health services are structured and who they really serve.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Page 99 Test: Sons, Daughters, and Sidewalk Psychotics.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Marshall Fine's "Hemlock Lane"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Hemlock Lane: A Novel by Marshall Fine.

About the book, from the publisher:

In this riveting story of family bonds and buried truths, a young woman’s homecoming becomes a reckoning as four days together threaten to shatter the comfortable lies that have held her family together.

In the summer of 1967, the Levitsky family convenes for a long weekend at their home in the suburbs―an idyllic holiday for the perfect family.

But Nora has always known better.

Growing up, she learned to tiptoe around her mother Lillian’s explosive temper. Her father did the same. Nora’s sole confidante was their housekeeper, Clara, and their bond has only strengthened through the years. In fact, it’s all that’s keeping Nora together for her homecoming. But under that lifetime of pressure, the facade is beginning to splinter.

Over the next four days, everyone’s secrets are at risk. None more so than what Nora really wants for her life, how Clara has helped her get it…and how they’ve orchestrated it all behind Lillian’s back.

As the family grapples with the complex ties that bind them, Nora discovers that facing the truth―however painful―might be the key to finally breaking free. This weekend, Nora’s bravest act may be in knowing which bonds to cherish and which ones need to be gently set aside, making room for a future of her own choosing.

Visit Marshall Fine's website, and follow him on Facebook and Instagram.

My Book, The Movie: The Autumn of Ruth Winters.

Q&A with Marshall Fine.

The Page 69 Test: Hemlock Lane.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Jonathan S. Jones's "Opium Slavery"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Opium Slavery: Civil War Veterans and America's First Opioid Crisis by Jonathan S. Jones.

About the book, from the publisher:

During the Civil War, the utility and widespread availability of opium and morphine made opiates essential to wartime medicine. After the war ended, thousands of ailing soldiers became addicted, or “enslaved,” as nineteenth-century Americans phrased it. Veterans, their families, and communities struggled to cope with addiction’s health and social consequences. Medical and government authorities compounded veterans' suffering and imbued the epidemic with cultural meaning by branding addiction as a matter of moral weakness, unmanliness, or mental infirmity. Framing addiction as “opium slavery” limited the efficacy of care and left many veterans to suffer needlessly for decades after the war ended.

Drawing from veterans' firsthand accounts as well as mental asylum and hospital records, government and medical reports, newspaper coverage of addiction, and advertisements, Jonathan S. Jones unearths the poorly understood stories of opiate-addicted Civil War veterans in unflinching detail, illuminating the war’s traumatic legacies. In doing so, Jones provides critical historical context for the modern opioid crisis, which bears tragic resemblance to that of the post–Civil War era.

Visit Jonathan S. Jones's website.

The Page 99 Test: Opium Slavery.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight top true stories from history about survival

Carolina Ciucci is a teacher, writer and reviewer based in the south of Argentina. She hoards books like they’re going out of style. In case of emergency, you can summon her by talking about Ireland, fictional witches, and the Brontë family. At Book Riot she tagged eight compelling true stories from history about survival. One title on the list:

The Devil’s Highway by Luis Alberto Urrea

In May 2001, twenty-six men tried to cross the border into the United States through The Devil’s Highway, a brutally dangerous desert. Only twelve of them survived. The book explores how these men managed to live through a lethal desert and a deep betrayal to reach Southern Arizona.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Devil’s Highway is among Joe Meno's seven true stories about the journey to seek asylum in the U.S.

--Marshal Zeringue