Paulette Kennedy's "The Artist of Blackberry Grange" the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Artist of Blackberry Grange: A Novel by Paulette Kennedy.

The entry begins:

Although none of my books have been optioned for film, I’ve had some interest, and it’s always fun to consider who might play my characters in a film adaptation. With my latest novel, The Artist of Blackberry Grange, which is set in the 1920s and centers on the experiences of a young caregiver who encounters a series of haunted paintings in her great-aunt’s mansion, I had some very strong ideas about who I would cast as I was crafting the novel.

Sadie Halloran, my main character, is a down-on-her-luck former flapper seeking a fresh start and financial security as her great-aunt’s caregiver. I picture Saoirse Ronan as Sadie, because she has the emotional range, appearance, and Irish heritage to embody my heroine, just as I imagined her. Plus, Saoirse just looks like she walked out of the 1920s, and I’ve admired her acting ever since she played Briony Tallis in Atonement.

For Marguerite Thorne, Sadie’s great-aunt, an acclaimed artist now suffering from dementia, whose story in the novel exists in two different time periods—the Gilded Age and the 1920s—I would cast...[read on]

Visit Paulette Kennedy's website.

The Page 69 Test: Parting the Veil.

The Page 69 Test: The Devil and Mrs. Davenport.

My Book, The Movie: The Artist of Blackberry Grange.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Corinna Barrett Lain's "Secrets of the Killing State"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Secrets of the Killing State: The Untold Story of Lethal Injection by Corinna Barrett Lain.

About the book, from the publisher:

Lethal injection is nothing like what people think. This is its untold story.

In the popular imagination, lethal injection is a slight pinch and a swift nodding off to forever-sleep. It is performed by well-qualified medical professionals. It is regulated and carefully conducted. And it usually provides a “humane” death. In reality, however, not one of those things is true.

Secrets of the Killing State pulls back the curtain on this clandestine punishment practice, presenting a view of lethal injection that states have worked hard to hide. Botched executions are a part of this story, but they are just the tip of the iceberg. For all the suffering that we see, there is also suffering that we don’t see. Indeed, the story told here is even bigger than the executions themselves, for behind the scenes is where it unfolds. Fake science, torturous drugs, inept executioners, prison problems, and decades of state secrecy have created an execution method hard-wired to go wrong in countless ways.

The story of lethal injection is a story of gross incompetence, law breaking, torturous deaths, and a stunning indifference to the way in which human beings die at the hands of the state. These are the secrets of the killing state—all that we know from litigation files, scientific studies, investigative journalism, autopsy reports, interviews, and scholarship across a number of fields. Death penalty expert Corinna Barrett Lain uses this groundbreaking journey into the dark reality of lethal injection to shine a light on the American death penalty more broadly and show that the state at its most powerful moment is also the state at its worst.

We are now over 45 years into the lethal injection era, and most Americans still have no idea what states are doing in their name. It’s time they found out.

Visit Corinna Lain's website.

The Page 99 Test: Secrets of the Killing State.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven books about long-lost sisters

Morgan Dick is a writer from Calgary, Canada. Her short fiction has appeared in Grain, Geist, CAROUSEL, Cloud Lake Literary, The Prairie Journal, Vagabond City Lit, and The Humber Literary Review.

Her debut novel, Favorite Daughter, draws from her time working in the mental health field.

At Electric Lit Dick tagged "seven books that show the many ways a 'long-lost' sister can be found." One title on the list:

Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano

The four Padavano sisters—ambitious Julia, starry-eyed Sylvie, passionate Cecilia, and caring Emeline—feel most like themselves when they’re together. They’ve grown up under one (admittedly chaotic) roof with their Catholic Italian parents, sharing even their most closely-guarded secrets with one another. Then Julia marries a college basketball player named William, and the ensuing chain of events causes a decades-long rift the sisters could’ve never previously imagined.

Read about another title on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Andrew Porter

From my Q&A with Andrew Porter, author of The Imagined Life: A Novel:

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

With my first novel, In Between Days, the title was the last thing I figured out, and I went through many lists of many possibilities before arriving at it. With my current novel, The Imagined Life, though, the title simply grew out of the writing, a passage in one of the last chapters that begins “In the imagined life, so much is different.” As soon as I wrote that passage, I opened up a document I’d been using to save possible titles in and wrote down “The Imagined Life” and highlighted it, though I think I sensed even at that moment that this would be the title. It just fits perfectly with the main story of the novel—a story about a man who is trying to retrace what happened to his father, who disappeared when he was twelve. His whole life has been imaging how his life would have been different had his father not disappeared. At the same time, the title also fits nicely with the storylines of many of the other characters in the book too, all of whom have...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Andrew Porter's website.

My Book, The Movie: In Between Days.

Q&A with Andrew Porter.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Edward Berenson's "Perfect Communities"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Perfect Communities: Levitt, Levittown, and the Dream of White Suburbia by Edward Berenson.

About the book, from the publisher:

The rise and fall of William J. Levitt, the man who made the suburban house a mass commodity

Two material artifacts defined the middle-class American lifestyle in the mid-twentieth century: the automobile, which brought gas stations, highways, commercial strips, and sprawl; and the single-family suburban home, the repository of many families’ long-term wealth. While the man who did the most to make the automobile a mass commodity—Henry Ford—is well known, few know the story of the man who did the same for the suburban house.

Edward Berenson describes the remarkable career of William Levitt, who did more than anyone else to create the modern suburb. In response to an unprecedented housing shortage as veterans returned home from World War II, his Levittown developments provided inexpensive mass-produced housing that was wildly popular—prospective buyers would camp out in line for two days for the chance to put down a deposit on a Levitt house. He was a celebrity, a life-changing hero to tens of thousands, and the pitchman of a renewed American Dream. But Levitt also shared Ford’s dark side. He refused to allow Black people to buy or rent in his developments and doggedly defended this practice against legal challenges. Leading the way for other developers who emulated his actions, he helped ensure that suburbs nationwide remained white enclaves. These legacies are still with us. Levitt made a major contribution to the stubborn wealth disparity between white families and Black families, and his solution to the housing crisis of the 1940s—the detached house and surrounding yard—is a primary cause of the housing crisis today.

As a person, Levitt was a strangely guileless and tragic figure. He accumulated vast wealth but, after losing control of his building company, surrendered it all through foolish investments and a lavish lifestyle that included a Long Island mansion and a two-hundred-foot yacht. Just weeks before his death, as a charity patient in a hospital to which he had once given millions, he was still imagining his great comeback.

Visit Edward Berenson's website.

The Page 99 Test: Heroes of Empire.

The Page 99 Test: Perfect Communities.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven terrifying tales that examine the nature of fear itself

Nat Cassidy writes horror for the page, stage, and screen. His acclaimed novels, including Mary: An Awakening of Terror and Nestlings, have been featured in best-of lists from Esquire, Harper's Bazaar, NPR, the Chicago Review of Books, the NY Public Library, and more, and he was named one of the "writers shaping horror’s next golden age" by Esquire. His award-winning horror plays have been produced throughout New York City and across the United States. He won the NY Innovative Theatre Award for his one-man show about H. P. Lovecraft, another for his play about Caligula, and was commissioned by the Kennedy Center to write the libretto for a short opera (about the end of the world, of course). You've also likely seen Nat on your TV, playing various Bad Guys of the Week on shows such as Law & Order: SVU, Blue Bloods, Bull, Quantico, FBI, and many others ... but that's a topic for a different bio. He lives in New York City with his wife.

Cassidy's new novel is When the Wolf Comes Home.

At CrimeReads the author tagged seven "books with similar preoccupations as Wolf—not just books that induce fear, but books that specifically examine the phenomenon of Fear itself." One title on the list:

This Appearing House, by Ally Malinenko

Sometimes fear isn’t the feeling you feel right before the bad thing happens . . . it’s the feeling you carry with you for the rest of your life after you survive it. And that bad thing doesn’t have to be some near-miss with a guy with a chainsaw; it can be the very real, very quiet understanding that your body can betray you. Call it PTSD, call it growing up. Either way, it’s a form of fear that can be both inescapable and all-consuming. That’s the premise of Ally Malinenko’s brilliant middle grade haunted house novel, in which a brave young girl named Jac is nearing the fifth anniversary of her cancer diagnosis, after a long but hopefully successful treatment regimen. She’s starting to exhibit strange symptoms, which may be related to disease recurrence . . . or may be related to the mysterious house that’s just appeared in her neighborhood, which she’s determined to explore. This book might sound heavy—and it can be at times—but Malinenko keeps the narrative grounded in Jac’s sense of determination to feel fear, but not be consumed by it. An important lesson for readers of any age.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Page 69 Test: This Appearing House.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Karen Rose Smith's "Booked for Revenge"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Booked for Revenge by Karen Rose Smith.

About the book, from the publisher:

Following in her mother Daisy’s footsteps, Jazzi Swanson has transformed her rural New York bookshop and tea bar, Tomes & Tea, into a must-stop destination in the lakeside resort town of Belltower Landing, New York, where, in addition to her talent for tea, Jazzi has shown a skill for sleuthing when trouble is brewing...

The Gentleman’s Bake-off is not only good for the town’s tourism, it’s bound to boost business at Tomes & Tea. The celebrity judges of the contest—chefs, bakers, restauranteurs—will all be signing their cookbooks at Jazzi’s shop. But with all the big personalities and inflated egos, she’s starting to wonder if there are—as the saying goes—too many cooks.

The competition is far from killer, with mostly residents and neighbors vying for bragging rights. But when local photographer Finn Yarrow takes first place, someone commits a most ungentlemanly act. Jazzi’s partner Dawn finds the man bludgeoned next to his prizewinning Black Forest Cake.

Between the judges and the contestants, the bookshop shop owner soon finds herself steeped in suspects as she tries to solve the crime. Was the murder connected to the bake-off—or did the shutterbug perhaps photograph something he shouldn’t have? Either way, Jazzi is determined to find a killer who’s trying to have their cake and eat it too...

Visit Karen Rose Smith's website, Facebook page, and Instagram page.

Coffee with a Canine: Karen Rose Smith & Hope and Riley.

The Page 69 Test: Staged to Death.

The Page 69 Test: Murder with Lemon Tea Cakes.

The Page 69 Test: Murder Marks the Page.

The Page 69 Test: Booked for Revenge.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: John Kinder's "World War Zoos"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: World War Zoos: Humans and Other Animals in the Deadliest Conflict of the Modern Age by John M. Kinder.

About the book, from the publisher:

A new and heartbreaking history of World War II as told through the shocking experiences of zoos across the globe.

As Europe lurched into war in 1939, zookeepers started killing their animals. On September 1, as German forces invaded Poland, Warsaw began with its reptiles. Two days later, workers at the London Zoo launched a similar spree, dispatching six alligators, seven iguanas, sixteen southern anacondas, six Indian fruit bats, a fishing cat, a binturong, a Siberian tiger, five magpies, an Alexandrine parakeet, two bullfrogs, three lion cubs, a cheetah, four wolves, and a manatee over the next few months. Zoos worldwide did the same. The reasons were many, but the pattern was clear: The war that was about to kill so many people started by killing so many animals. Why? And how did zoos, nevertheless, not just survive the war but play a key role in how people did, too?

A harrowing yet surprisingly uplifting chronicle, Kinder’s World War Zoos traces how zoos survived the deadliest decades of global history, from the Great Depression, through the terrors of World War II, to the dawn of the Cold War. More than anything before or since, World War II represented an existential threat to the world’s zoological institutions. Some zoos were bombed; others bore the indignities of foreign occupation. Even zoos that were spared had to wrestle with questions rarely asked in public: What should they do when supplies ran low? Which animals should be killed to protect the lives of others? And how could zoos justify keeping dangerous animals that might escape and run wild during an aerial attack?

Zoos in wartime reveal the shared vulnerabilities of humans and animals during periods of social unrest and environmental peril. World War II–era zoos offered people ways to think about and grapple with imprisonment, powerlessness, and degradation. Viewed today, the story of zoos during World War II can be read as an allegory of twenty-first-century crises, as the effects of climate change threaten all life across the planet.

A one-of-a-kind history, World War Zoos is the story of how the world’s zoos survived the deadliest conflict of the twentieth century—and what was lost along the way.

Learn more about World War Zoos at the University of Chicago Press website.

Writers Read: John M. Kinder (April 2015).

The Page 99 Test: Paying with Their Bodies.

The Page 99 Test: World War Zoos.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight books that feature the world of ballet

Nina Laurin studied Creative Writing at Concordia University in Montreal. She arrived there when she was just twelve years old, and she speaks and reads in Russian, French, and English but writes her novels in English.

Laurin's novel include A Woman Alone, The Last Beautiful Girl, What My Sister Knew, and The Last Thing She Saw.

At The Strand Magazine the author tagged eight "ballet reads that helped me pull back the curtain of that mythical world." One title on the list:

The Cranes Dance by Meg Howrey

The Cranes Dance is a razor-sharp, devastating dive into sisterhood, ambition, and the psychological toll of dance and the perfection it demands. Narrator Kate is your sardonic, emotionally wrecked bestie spiraling through pain meds and pirouettes. After all, the only thing more potent than rivalry between ballet stars is the rivalry between sisters, and it keeps you turning pages until the end.

Read about another book on the list.

The Page 69 Test: The Cranes Dance.

--Marshal Zeringue

Coffee with a canine: Lincoln Mitchell & Penny Lane

The current featured duo at Coffee with a Canine: Lincoln Mitchell and Penny Lane.

The author, on Penny Lane's obsession:

Penny Lane is obsessed with balls, but really anything I can throw. When we take our morning walk in Central Park she insists I throw the ball pretty much the whole time. Last fall I was watching a World Series game on television with Penny Lane. I think I threw the ball during that game more times than all the pitchers for the Yankees and Dodgers...[read on]

About Mitchell's new book Three Years Our Mayor, from the publisher:

Those who recognize Mayor George Moscone’s name may think of him as the career politician who was assassinated along with Harvey Milk, but there was much more to this influential and fascinating man’s story. He was a trailblazing progressive and powerful state legislator who was instrumental in passing legislation on issues ranging from LGBT rights to funding for school lunches. Moscone’s 1975 campaign for mayor was historically significant because it was the first time a major race was won by a candidate who campaigned aggressively for expanding civil rights for both African Americans and LGBT people. He won his campaign for mayor chiefly because of huge support from those two constituencies.

Moscone was also a very colorful character who, in addition to being a successful politician, was a charming and charismatic bon vivant who was deeply embedded in the fabric and culture of San Francisco. He grew up the only son of a single mother in Cow Hollow when it was a working class, largely Italian American neighborhood, and he became the kind of politician who knew bartenders, playground attendants, small business owners, and neighborhood activists in every corner of the city. Moscone’s life and the history of San Francisco during the middle half of the twentieth century are deeply intertwined.

Through illustrating the life of Moscone, author Lincoln A. Mitchell explores how today’s San Francisco came into being. Moscone—through his work in the State Senate, victory in the very divisive 1975 mayor’s race, and brief tenure as mayor—was a key figure in the city’s evolution. The politics surrounding Moscone’s election as mayor, governance of the city, and tragic death are still relevant issues. Moscone was a groundbreaking politician whose life was cut short, but his influence on San Francisco can still be felt today.

Visit Lincoln Mitchell's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Lincoln Mitchell & Isis.

The Page 99 Test: San Francisco Year Zero.

The Page 99 Test: The Giants and Their City.

The Page 99 Test: Three Years Our Mayor.

Writers Read: Lincoln A. Mitchell.

My Book, The Movie: Three Years Our Mayor.

Coffee with a Canine: Lincoln Mitchell and Penny Lane.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Andrew Donnelly's "Confederate Sympathies"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Confederate Sympathies: Same-Sex Romance, Disunion, and Reunion in the Civil War Era by Andrew Donnelly.

About the book, from the publisher:

The archive of the Civil War era is filled with depictions of men’s same-sex affections and intimacies. Across antebellum campaign biographies, proslavery fiction, published memoirs of Confederate veterans and Union prisoners of war, Civil War novels, newspaper accounts, and the war’s historiography, homoerotic symbolism and narratives shaped the era’s politics, as well as the meaning and memory of the war. The Civil War, in turn, shaped the development of homosexuality in the United States. In a book full of surprising insights, Andrew Donnelly uncovers this deeply consequential queer history at the heart of nineteenth-century national culture.

Donnelly’s sharp analytical eye particularly focuses on the ways Northern white men imagined their relationship with white Southerners through narratives of same-sex affection. Assessing the cultural work of these narratives, Donnelly argues that male homoeroticism enabled proslavery coalition building among antebellum Democrats, fostered sympathy for the national retreat from Reconstruction, and contributed to the victories of Lost Cause ideology. Linking the era’s political and cultural history to the history of homosexuality, Donnelly reveals that male homoeroticism was not inherently radical but rather cultivated political sympathy for slavery, the Confederacy, and white supremacy.

Visit Andrew Donnelly's website.

The Page 99 Test: Confederate Sympathies.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight Irish novels about the rise & fall of Big Houses

Louise Hegarty’s work has appeared in Banshee, the Tangerine, the Stinging Fly, and the Dublin Review, and has been featured on BBC Radio 4’s Short Works. She was the inaugural winner of the Sunday Business Post/Penguin Ireland Short Story Prize. Her short story “Getting the Electric” has been optioned by Fíbín Media. She lives in Cork, Ireland.

Hegarty's debut novel is Fair Play.

[The Page 69 Test: Fair Play; Q&A with Louise Hegarty]

At Electric Lit Hegarty tagged eight Irish novels about the rise and fall of Big Houses—a specifically Irish term meaning a rural country mansion. One title on the list:

The Likeness by Tana French

The Likeness is a psychological mystery that follows Detective Cassie Maddox as she investigates a murder. Detective Maddox is called to a crime scene where a woman has been found dead, and shockingly, the victim looks almost exactly like her. The deceased had been living amongst a group of students in a dilapidated mansion called Whitethorn House which they were in the process of restoring. Cassie joins the group to try and uncover the truth behind Lexie’s death, but as she immerses herself in the lives of the students, Cassie finds herself drawn to them, blurring the lines between her investigation and her own emotions.

Read about other entry on the list.

The Likeness is among Emily Bain Murphy's seven mystery novels with the best twists, Emily Beyda's seven top doubles in the twisted world of mystery fiction, Sophie Stein's eight books about small-town woman detectives, Alison Wisdom's sven great thrillers featuring communal living, Christopher Louis Romaguera's nine books about mistaken identity, and Simon Lelic's top ten false identities in fiction.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Adam Plantinga

From my Q&A with Adam Plantinga, author of The Ascent and Hard Town:

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

It's a pretty heavy lift. (The Heavy Lift would also be a good title for a thriller). Titles matter, and are hard to pick. Hard Town seemed a good fit to me because it's short and stark and consistent with the book's style and themes. I was going for a dirt-under-the-fingernails kind of vibe.

What's in a name?

Kurt Argento is a name I'm pleased with. His ancestry is half German, hence Kurt, and half Italian, which gives us Argento. Argento is a composite of several cops I've worked with over the years, but I was inspired to name him Kurt because that was the first name of a Milwaukee street cop I know who was a memorably tough piece of meat.

The last name was trickier. I cycled through...[read on]

Visit Adam Plantinga's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Ascent.

Q&A with Adam Plantinga.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Clay Risen's "Red Scare"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Red Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism, and the Making of Modern America by Clay Risen.

About the book, from the publisher:

As relevant as it is comprehensive, Red Scare tells the story of McCarthyism and the Red Scare—based in part on newly declassified sources—by an award-winning writer of history and New York Times reporter.

The film Oppenheimer has awakened interest in this vital period of American history. Now, for the first time in a generation, Red Scare presents a narrative history of the anti-Communist witch hunt that gripped America in the decade following World War II. The cultural phenomenon, most often referred to as McCarthyism, was an outgrowth of the conflict between social conservatives and New Deal progressives, coupled with the terrifying onset of the Cold War. This defining moment in American history, unlike any that preceded it, was marked by an unprecedented degree of political hysteria. Drawing upon newly declassified documents, journalist Clay Risen recounts how politicians like Joseph McCarthy, with the help of an extended network of other government officials and organizations, systematically ruined thousands of lives in their deluded pursuit of alleged Communist conspiracies.

Beginning with the origins of the era after WWI through to its conclusion in 1957, Risen brings to life the politics, patriotism, opportunism, courage, and delirium of those years through the lives and experiences of a cast of towering historical figures, including President Eisenhower, Roy Cohn, Paul Robeson, Robert Oppenheimer, Helen Gahagan Douglas, Richard Nixon, and many more individuals known and unknown. Red Scare takes us beyond the familiar story of McCarthyism and the Hollywood blacklists to a fuller understanding of what the country went through at a time of moral questioning and perceived threat from the left, and what we were capable of doing to each other as a result.

An urgent, accessible, and important history, Red Scare reveals an all-too-familiar pattern of illiberal conspiracy-mongering and political and cultural backlash that speaks directly to the antagonism and divisiveness of our contemporary moment.

Visit Clay Risen's website.

The Page 99 Test: A Nation on Fire.

The Page 99 Test: Red Scare.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five books to read when your spouse Is diagnosed with cancer

Ariel Gore makes books, zines, coloring books, and tarot cards. She is the founding editor and publisher of the Alternative Press Award-winning magazine Hip Mama and the author of 13 lucky books of fiction and nonfiction, including Rehearsals for Dying, Hexing the Patriarchy, and The End of Eve. Her shameless novel/memoir, We Were Witches, was published by the Feminist Press, and her anthology Portland Queer: Tales of the Rose City won the Lambda Literary Award for Best LGBT Anthology. She teaches writing online at Ariel Gore’s School for Wayward Writers at the Literary Kitchen.

At Lit Hub Gore tagged five books that helped her "navigate the emotional wilderness of loving someone with a terminal diagnosis." One title on the list:

Barbara Ehrenreich, Bright-sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America

In dusty pink waiting room after dusty pink waiting room, Deena [Gore's wife] and I discovered the tyranny of positivity that pervades cancer culture.

“You’ll beat this!” “Stay positive!” “You’re a warrior!” The relentless pressure to maintain a cheerful outlook becomes its own burden, layering guilt on top of fear when our natural feelings of anger, grief, and pure rage emerged.

Ehrenreich, who experienced earlier-stage breast cancer herself, took on the pink ribbon people and brilliantly dissected the cult of positive thinking that dominates American approaches to all illness, particularly cancer. The chapter on “Cancerland” should be required reading for anyone navigating a cancer diagnosis or supporting someone who is.

Because this is what is true: Pink-ribbon cheerfulness often serves corporate interests more than patients, and it creates a culture where those who don’t “think positive” enough are somehow to blame for their illness or prognosis.

In a world that pressures cancer patients to become gurus of Hallmark-like platitudes, Ehrenreich’s own “lessons learned” let me exhale with relief:

Breast cancer, I can now report, did not make me prettier or stronger, more feminine or spiritual. What it gave me, if you want to call this a “gift,” was a very personal, agonizing encounter with an ideological force in American culture that I had not been aware of before—one that encourages us to deny reality, submit cheerfully to misfortune, and blame only ourselves for our fate.

Bright-Sided gave Deena and me permission to honor all of our grumpiness and negativity—along with our radical happiness in being alive and in love. (Because it turns out that forced optimism doesn’t just make grief harder, it’s a total killjoy.)

And don’t even get Ehrenreich started on why “battle” metaphors for cancer are both inadequate and potentially super harmful. Ok, maybe do get her started.

Read about another book on Gore's list.

Also see five of the best books about living with cancer and ten top books about cancer.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top mysteries set in the bleak midwinter

Bailey Seybolt grew up in New York City. She studied literature at Brown University and creative writing at Concordia University. She’s worked as a travel writer in Hanoi, a tech writer in San Francisco, and many writerly jobs in between. She now lives with her family in Vermont, not far from Lake Champlain.

Coram House is her debut novel.

At CrimeReads Seybolt tagged "ten wintry mysteries that will have you reaching for a blanket." One title on the list:

The Coldest Case (Tessa Wegert)

Two influencers decide to spend the winter on a tiny, remote island in New York’s Thousand Islands, cut off from the mainland by miles of ice and snow. What could possibly go wrong? Part of Wegert’s Shana Merchant series, this novel also stands alone.

Read about another title on the list.

The Page 69 Test: The Coldest Case.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Nicholas Evan Sarantakes's "The Battle of Manila"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Battle of Manila: Poisoned Victory in the Pacific War by Nicholas Evan Sarantakes.

About the book, from the publisher:

A thrilling and in-depth look at the battle for Manila, the third-bloodiest battle of World War II and the culmination point of the war in the Pacific theater.

In 1945 the United States and Japan fought the largest and most devastating land battle of their war in the Pacific, a month-long struggle for the city of Manila. The only urban fighting in the Pacific theater, the Battle of Manila was the third-bloodiest battle of World War II, behind Leningrad and Berlin. It was a key piece of the campaign to retake control of the Philippine Islands, which itself signified the culmination of the war, breaking the back of Japanese strategic power and sealing its outcome.

In The Battle of Manila, Nicholas Sarantakes offers the first in-depth account of this crucial campaign from the American, Japanese, and, significantly, Filipino perspective. Fighting was building by building, with both sides forced to adapt to the new combat environment. None of the U.S. units that entered Manila had any previous training in urban warfare--yet, Sarantakes shows, they learned on the fly how to use tanks, flamethrowers, air, and artillery assets in support of infantry assaults. Their effective use of these weapons was an important factor in limiting U.S. casualties, even as it may also have contributed to a catastrophic loss of civilian lives.

The battle was a strategic U.S. victory, but Sarantakes reveals how closely it hinged upon the interplay between a series of key decisions in both U.S. and Japanese headquarters, and a professional culture in the U.S. military that allowed the Americans to adapt faster and in more ways than their opponents. Among other aspects of the conflict, The Battle of Manila explores the importance of the Filipino guerillas on the ground, the use of irregular warfare, the effective use of intelligence, the impact of military education, and the limits of Japanese resistance.

Ultimately, Sarantakes shows Manila to be a major turning in both World War II and American history. Once the United States regained control of the city, Japan was in a checkmate situation. Their defeat was certain, and it was clear that the United States would be the dominate political power in post-war Asia and the Pacific. This fascinating account shines a light on one of the war's most under-represented and highly significant moments.

Visit Nicholas Evan Sarantakes's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Battle of Manila.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Anne Hillerman's "Shadow of the Solstice"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Shadow of the Solstice: A Leaphorn, Chee & Manuelito Novel (A Leaphorn, Chee & Manuelito Novel, 10) by Anne Hillerman.

About the book, from the publisher:

In this gripping chapter in New York Times bestselling author Anne Hillerman’s Leaphorn, Chee & Manuelito series, the detectives must sort out a save-the-planet meditation group connected to a mysterious death and a nefarious scheme targeting vulnerable indigenous people living with addiction.

The Navajo Nation police are on high alert when a U.S. Cabinet Secretary schedules an unprecedented trip to the little Navajo town of Shiprock, New Mexico. The visit coincides with a plan to resume uranium mining along the Navajo Nation border. Tensions around the official’s arrival escalate when the body of a stranger is found in an area restricted for the disposal of radioactive uranium waste. Is it coincidence that a cult with a propensity for violence arrives at a private camp group outside Shiprock the same week to celebrate the summer solstice? When the outsiders’ erratic behavior makes their Navajo hosts uneasy, Officer Bernadette Manuelito is assigned to monitor the situation. She finds a young boy at grave risk, abused women, and other shocking discoveries that plunge her and Lt. Jim Chee into a volatile and deadly situation.

Meanwhile, Darleen Manuelito, Bernie’s high spirited younger sister, learns one of her home health clients is gone–and the woman’s daughter doesn’t seem to care. Darleen’s curiosity and sense of duty combine to lead her to discover that the client’s grandson is also missing and that the two have become ensnared in a wickedly complex scheme exploiting indigenous people. Darleen’s information meshes with a case Chee has begun to solve that deals with the evil underside of human nature.

Learn more about the book and author at Anne Hillerman's website.

My Book, The Movie: Spider Woman's Daughter.

The Page 69 Test: Spider Woman's Daughter.

The Page 69 Test: Song of the Lion.

The Page 69 Test: The Tale Teller.

Q&A with Anne Hillerman.

The Page 69 Test: The Sacred Bridge.

The Page 69 Test: Shadow of the Solstice.

--Marshal Zeringue

Adam Plantinga's "The Ascent," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Ascent by Adam Plantinga.

The entry begins:

My debut novel The Ascent is a thriller set in a violent maximum security prison. The main character is Kurt Argento, an ex-Detroit street cop. After running afoul of a corrupt local sheriff's department, he's imprisoned under false charges. Julie Wakefield, a grad student and the governor of Missouri's daughter, is touring the prison for a grad school class. A malfunction in the prison's security system releases a horde of prisoners and a fierce struggle for survival ensues. Argento has to help a small band of staff and civilians, including Julie and her state trooper handlers, make their way through the prison to safety.

I didn't start off with any particular actors in mind when I began writing The Ascent, although another character remarks that Argento looks like an even angrier Jason Statham. Argento is 5'9 and just over 200 pounds and exudes menace. He's one of the good guys but when you see him walking towards your car, you instinctively lock your doors. I think ideally the casting department would find him on a rugby field somewhere, possibly getting into a post-game brawl with the other team.

Julie Wakefield is cerebral and athletic, a distance runner who competes in endurance events. She doesn't have any of the training or experience Argento does, but...[read on]

Visit Adam Plantinga's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Ascent.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top nonfiction women's history books

At People magazine senior books editor Lizz Schumer and author Olivia Campbell tagged ten great books on women doing amazing things for readers who loved Hidden Figures and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. One title on the list:

Propaganda Girls: The Secret War of the Women in the OSS by Lisa Rogak

As members of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), Betty MacDonald, Zuzka Lauwers, Jane Smith-Hutton and Marlene Dietrich’s lies helped win World War II. They invented rumors for spies to spread to the enemy, forged letters and military orders and produced newspapers and radio broadcasts, all to break Axis soldiers’ spirits. Still, they were expected to make coffee and sandwiches for their male coworkers. Rogak weaves an action-packed adventure of women who successfully fought Nazis and sexism.

Read about another title on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Gennifer Weisenfeld's "The Fine Art of Persuasion"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Fine Art of Persuasion: Corporate Advertising Design, Nation, and Empire in Modern Japan by Gennifer Weisenfeld.

About the book, from the publisher:

Commercial art is more than just mass-produced publicity; it constructs social and political ideologies that impact the public’s everyday life. In The Fine Art of Persuasion, Gennifer Weisenfeld examines the evolution of Japanese advertising graphic design from the early 1900s through the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, a pivotal design event that rebranded Japan on the world stage. Through richly illustrated case studies, Weisenfeld tells the story of how modern corporations and consumer capitalism transformed Japan’s visual culture and artistic production across the pre- and postwar periods, revealing how commercial art helped constitute the ideological formations of nation- and empire-building. Weisenfeld also demonstrates, how under the militarist regime of imperial Japan, national politics were effectively commodified and marketed through the same mechanisms of mass culture that were used to promote consumer goods. Using a multilayered analysis of the rhetorical intentions of design projects and the context of their production, implementation, and consumption, Weisenfeld offers an interdisciplinary framework that illuminates the importance of Japanese advertising design within twentieth-century global visual culture.

Learn more about The Fine Art of Persuasion at the Duke University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: The Fine Art of Persuasion.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Alice Henderson

From my Q&A with Alice Henderson, author of The Vanishing Kind: An Action-Packed Mystery Thriller with a Wildlife Twist:

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

Originally I wanted each book in this series to be the group name of an animal and the animal, like "A Murder of Crows" or "An Obstinacy of Bison." But I quickly learned with the first three species I focused on (wolverines, polar bears, and mountain caribou), that they had no specific group names. So I made up fitting group names: A Solitude of Wolverines, A Blizzard of Polar Bears, A Ghost of Caribou. Originally I gave The Vanishing Kind the working title of A Prowl of Jaguars, and it was the first time the group of animals I was focusing on had an actual, pre-established group name: a prowl. But it was at this time that my publisher wanted to go in a different direction with the title themes, so The Vanishing Kind was chosen instead. We thought the title would convey a mystery...what is vanishing? And at the same time it applies to both the critically endangered jaguar and to...[read on]

Visit Alice Henderson's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Vanishing Kind.

My Book, The Movie: The Vanishing Kind.

Q&A with Alice Henderson.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven books that turn the workplace into a nightmare

Sarah Maria Griffin is from Dublin, Ireland. She is the author of the novels Spare & Found Parts and Other Words For Smoke, which won an Irish Book Award in 2019. She writes about video games for The Guardian, and her nonfiction has appeared in The Irish Times, The Winter Papers, and The Stinging Fly, among other places.

Griffin's new novel is Eat the Ones You Love.

At Electric Lit she tagged seven "books about work that ... lean firmly to the side of the gothic." One title on the list:

Candy House by Jennifer Egan

I do feel there should be a sub-category within the Gothic Employment that handles tech, specifically, because there is a growing darkness to every novel written about tech as each year passes. Egan’s novel is a set of beautifully interlinking short stories—and a sequel to A Visit From The Goon Squad—many of which orbit a company called Mandela, which externalizes memories. Lives. Characters upload themselves, or wrestle with the nature of what it is to do so. They willingly make ghosts of themselves, permanent digital monuments. This is a vast digital graveyard in the making—and the consequences of that are complicated, and heavy, as are all dealings with life after death.

Read about another entry on the list at Electric Lit.

Candy House is among Joe Fassler's seven books featuring fictional tech with world-altering consequences.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Nancy Thayer's "Summer Light on Nantucket"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Summer Light on Nantucket: A Novel by Nancy Thayer.

About the book, from the publisher:

A touching novel about parenthood, first love, family bonds, and rekindled relationships from the New York Times bestselling author and beloved Nantucket storyteller Nancy Thayer.

Blythe Benedict is content. Her life didn’t end when her marriage did. In fact, she’s more than happy living in her comfortable house in Boston, working as a middle school teacher, and raising four wonderful children. With three of her kids in the throes of teenagerhood and one not too far behind them, Blythe has plenty of drama to keep her busy every single day.

But no amount of that drama could change the family’s beloved annual summer trip to Nantucket. Blythe has always treasured the months spent at her island home-away-from-home, and has fond memories of her children growing up there. But this summer’s getaway proves to be much more than she bargained for.

Yes, there are sunny days enjoyed at the beach. But Blythe must contend with teenage angst, her ex-mother-in-law’s declining health, and a troubling secret involving her ex-husband. Meanwhile, Blythe reconnects with her first love, her former high school sweetheart Aaden. But their second-time-around romance becomes complicated when another intriguing man enters the picture.

It’s all a bit out of Blythe’s comfort zone. This particular island summer may not be as relaxing as Blythe had hoped, but she’s never felt that life has given her more than she can handle—especially when she has the love and support of her family around her.

Visit Nancy Thayer's website.

The Page 69 Test: Summer House.

The Page 69 Test: Beachcombers.

My Book, The Movie: Beachcombers.

Writers Read: Nancy Thayer (May 2015).

My Book, The Movie: The Guest Cottage.

The Page 69 Test: The Guest Cottage.

The Page 69 Test: Summer Love.

Writers Read: Nancy Thayer.

My Book, The Movie: Summer Light on Nantucket.

The Page 69 Test: Summer Light on Nantucket.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Julia McClure's "Empire of Poverty"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Empire of Poverty: The Moral-Political Economy of the Spanish Empire by Julia McClure.

About the book, from the publisher:

Empire of Poverty examines how changing concepts of poverty in the long-sixteenth century helped shape the deep structures of states and empires and the contours of imperial inequalities. While poverty is often understood to have become a political subject with the birth of political economy in the eighteenth century, this book points to the longer history of poverty as a political subject and a more complicated relationship between moral and political economies. It focuses upon the critical transformations taking place in the long-sixteenth century, with the emergence of the world´s first global empire and the development of colonial capitalism. The book explores how the 'moral-political economy of poverty' - defined as a new and changing conceptualisation of and approach to poverty, across laws, institutions, and acts of resistance - played a critical role in the development and governance of the Spanish Empire. In so doing it offers insights into the negotiated nature of sovereignty, the construction of inequalities, and strategies of resistance. Empire of Poverty explains how the combined processes of the transition to global capitalism and imperialism in the long-sixteenth century wrought a moral crisis which led to the transformation of poverty and reconceptualization of the poor and how the newly emerging beliefs, laws, and institutions of poverty helped structure the inequalities of the new global order.

Learn more about Empire of Poverty at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Empire of Poverty.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top novels about coming of age later in life

Emily Everett is an editor and writer from western Massachusetts.

Her debut novel All That Life Can Afford is the Reese’s Book Club pick for April 2025.

She is managing editor at The Common literary magazine, and a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow in Fiction.

At Lit Hub Everett tagged "five favorite novels exploring ... later-in-life coming of age," all books that "explore issues of money and class and economic stability." One title on the list:

Raven Leilani, Luster

One of my favorite subsets of coming-of-age drama is the plot that drops its protagonist into unfamiliar surroundings or a jarring social set. Luster does both, as we follow Edie, a 23-year-old Black woman, from a shabby New York City apartment to her white boyfriend’s pale New Jersey subdivision, where neighbors watch her suspiciously through the blinds. Add to that house the boyfriend’s white wife and Black adopted daughter, and you have enough tension to fill a novel twice the size. But Leilani keeps it slim and pared-back; where some coming-of-age novels can feel instructive to a fault—this is how you should learn to live—Leilani’s feels more like an exploration of how you might continue to live in a racist society, and keep yourself intact, and still have room to make mistakes and art and real relationships.

Read about another entry on the list.

Luster is among C. Michelle Lindley’s five best novels about art, Alana B. Lytle's eight top novels about destructive women, and Forsyth Harmon's five top obsessive female relationships in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Julie Mae Cohen reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Julie Mae Cohen, author of Eat, Slay, Love: A Novel.

Her entry begins:

Right now I’m reading Dear Miss Lake by AJ Pearce (to be published in the US in August 2025). This is the fourth and last in the WWII-set series of novels about Emmeline Lake, a plucky would-be agony aunt at Women’s Friend magazine, dealing with the problems of women on the home front and her own problems living in London during the Blitz. The novels are hilarious, with a cast of endearing characters. They celebrate courage in all its forms, from making cakes without any eggs or sugar to facing down the devastation of a bomb. While they’re goodhearted and uplifting novels, they don’t shy away from the reality of...[read on]

About Eat, Slay, Love, from the publisher:

International bestselling author Julie Mae Cohen returns with a delicious new novel about three very different women and what unites them: the man they’re holding hostage

A friend will help you move on. A best friend will help you move his body.

Marina gave up her career as a chef to raise her children, but her divorce has left her harried, lonely, and the black sheep of her family. It’s also left her in dire financial straits.

Opal is a post-menopausal fitness guru who spends her days chasing likes and followers in an industry that worships youth. Even her glossy online persona can’t mask her checkered past.

Lilah is a shy and optimistic librarian who spends her days tending to the stacks, until she wins an unbelievable sum in the lottery. With a growing bank account and a dashing fiancé, life seems too good to be true—and it just might be.

These three women have nothing in common except for one thing: the man who’s been lying to them all . . . and who they are now holding hostage in Marina’s basement.

As this shared secret brings them closer together, other, deadlier problems come crashing into their lives. Can they put their differences aside to save themselves—and each other?

Eat, Slay, Love is a raucous novel about friendship, finding joy, and becoming your best self, even if that sometimes involves kidnap and murder.

Visit Julie Mae Cohen's website.

The Page 69 Test: Bad Men.

Q&A with Julie Mae Cohen.

The Page 69 Test: Eat, Slay, Love.

Writers Read: Julie Mae Cohen.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Louise Hegarty

From my Q&A with Louise Hegarty, author of Fair Play: A Novel:

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

The title of my book comes from the fair play doctrine, one of the defining principles of Golden Age detective fiction - the concept that the reader should have a fair chance to solve the mystery before the grand reveal. The trick was to provide the reader with enough clues so that they could have, as TS Eliot put it “a sporting chance to solve the mystery”. It was so central to mystery writing at the time that The Detection Club – a dining club and discussion forum for writers of detective fiction founded in 1930 – began its own constitution with the line: “it is a demerit in a detective novel if the author does not play fair by the reader.” Over the years, many writers have put together their own version of the fair play rules: TS Eliot, Ronald Knox and SS Van Dine. Some writers, like JJ Connington and Ellery Queen, in radical displays of fair play, even included cluefinders at the back of their books. These were appendices that listed out all the clues with their corresponding page numbers to show the reader that they had in fact been given “a fighting chance” to solve the mystery. In my book, I use these fair play rules together with the familiar structure of a Golden Age detective novel - with its murder, its suspect, its Watson and the reveal - to explore...[read on]

Learn more about Fair Play at the publisher's website.

The Page 69 Test: Fair Play.

Q&A with Louise Hegarty.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten great haunted house novels

Yiğit Turhan was born in Ankara, Turkey. A lifelong reader, he owes his love of horror to his grandmother and the films she shared with him. He has previously published a horror novel in Turkish. He lives in Milan, Italy, where he holds a C-suite role at a renowned fashion house.

Their Monstrous Hearts is his English-language debut.

At CrimeReads Turhan tagged ten great haunted house novels full of atmosphere and secrets. One title on the list:

House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski

A house that’s bigger on the inside than it is on the outside—this premise alone is enough to unsettle you. I’ve read this novel multiple times, and each experience felt entirely different; it’s one of those rare literary mazes where the author steps back, leaving you alone to navigate its twisting passages. You’re left searching for your own answers in a book that is itself a puzzle. Creepy, disorienting, and uniquely formatted—Danielewski even did the typesetting himself. I can’t recommend it enough; this easily makes my top three books that I wish I had written.

Read about another entry on the list.

House of Leaves is among Sara Flannery Murphy's five top thriller & horror books with “House” in the title and Michael J. Seidlinger's eight most genuinely terrifying novels ever written.

--Marshal Zeringue