Lincoln Mitchell's "Three Years Our Mayor," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Lincoln A. Mitchell's Three Years Our Mayor: George Moscone and the Making of Modern San Francisco.

His entry begins:

I do not have a deep knowledge of film or of actors, so rather than try to cast my whole book, Three Years Our Mayor: George Moscone and the Making of Modern San Francisco, I will focus simply on who would play the lead role, that of George Moscone. When thinking about who might play Moscone in a film version of my biography of him two things come to mind.

First, Moscone has been played on film before. In the 2008 biopic of Harvey Milk titled simply Milk, Moscone was paid played by Victor Garber. Garber is a fine actor, but in that film Moscone was peripheral to the story, so could be played by a character actor. Howeer, for a movie about Moscone, Garber is not the right guy.

Second, the question of who might play George Moscone is fun to answer because he could, and should, be played by a real movie star. Moscone had a career, and life, that calls for star treatment. He was a young man from modest background who was became All-City basketball player in high school and went on to a successful career in politics, was a bit of womanizer and, according to many who knew him, had movie star looks and charisma. Additionally, his life ended in horrific but nonetheless cinematic circumstances.

Moscone died when I was a child and although I remember the day he died and how upset many, but not everybody, I knew was, I never met the man, so it is tough for me to have a real sense of what movie star should portray him on film. However, it happened that while I was mulling over this question, I had the opportunity to have breakfast with a friend who is a bit older than me and knew Moscone quite well, having worked with him for many years. We talked about it and he agreed that a real movie star should play Moscone.

Based on our conversation and my own limited knowledge of film, for the movie of George Moscone's life, I would cast Brad Pitt in the leading role. Pitt is a good-looking leading man type and can pull off the kind of grace, athleticism, charisma and complexity that Moscone had. I had briefly entertained the idea of...[read on]

Visit Lincoln Mitchell's website.

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.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Rosanne Limoncelli

From my Q&A with Rosanne Limoncelli, author of The Four Queens of Crime:

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

My book The Four Queens of Crime takes the reader straight into the premise of Golden Age Mysteries. Fans of that era know Agatha Christie was called the Queen of Crime, and if they haven’t yet read Dorothy L Sayers, Ngaio Marsh or Margery Allingham, the novel is a good introduction to those authors. They were dubbed the Four Queens of Crime since they were to top selling authors of the 1930’s and all four authors are characters in the book. The year is 1938 and the Four Queens of Crime are called upon to host a fundraiser gala ball for the Women’s Voluntary Service, to help prepare for the event of war. They host the ball on a Friday evening and will stay the whole weekend at Sir Henry Heathcote’s country estate. The gala goes well, but the four writers witness quite a bit of dramatic family dynamics and political intrigue that pervade the event. The next morning Sir Henry is...[read on]

Visit Rosanne Limoncelli's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Four Queens of Crime.

The Page 69 Test: The Four Queens of Crime.

Q&A with Rosanne Limoncelli.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Michael Messner's "The High School"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The High School: Sports, Spirit, and Citizens, 1903-2024 Michael A. Messner.

About the book, from the publisher:

High school yearbooks provide both a vivid snapshot of student life and a reflection of what the adults in the community valued the most. For instance, athletics are often covered more than academics, and boys’ sports routinely receive more attention than girls’ sports. But how have those values changed over time?

In The High School, acclaimed sociologist Michael A. Messner reads through 120 years of El Gabilan, the yearbook from his own alma mater, Salinas High School in California, where his father taught and coached. Treating the yearbooks as a historical archive, Messner makes surprising discoveries about the school he thought he knew so well. For example, over fifty years before Title IX, the earliest yearbooks gave equal spotlights to boys’ and girls’ athletics, while the cheerleaders were all boys.

Tracing American life and culture from 1903 to 2024, Messner illuminates shifts in social practices at his high school that reflect broader changes in American culture across the twentieth century. The High School spotlights how the meanings and iconography of certain activities have changed radically over the decades, even as the “sports spirit complex”—involving athletes, cheerleaders, band members, and community boosters—has remained a central part of the high school experience. By exploring evolving sports cultures, socioeconomic conditions, racial demographics, and gender norms, Messner offers a fresh perspective on a defining feature of American teenage life.

Visit Michael Messner's website.

The Page 99 Test: Guys Like Me.

The Page 99 Test: The High School.

--Marshal Zeringue

The best retellings of "The Great Gatsby"

Camille Aubray is the author of Cooking for Picasso and The Godmothers. Both novels were a People Magazine’s Pick for the Best New Books. The Godmothers was also chosen for the Best Books Lists by Newsweek, Buzzfeed, Parade, and Veranda. Cooking for Picasso is an Indiebound bestseller and made the Indie Next Reading Groups List. Aubray is an Edward Albee Foundation Fellowship winner and was a writer-in-residence at the Karolyi Foundation in the South of France. She studied writing with her mentor Margaret Atwood, and was a finalist for the Pushcart Press Editors’ Book Award and the Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference.

At Lit Hub Aubray tagged some of the best remixes of The Great Gatsby. One title on the list:

Michael Farris Smith, Nick

The narrator of The Great Gatsby, Nick Carraway, is imagined as a World War I veteran in the tumultuous years before he meets Jay Gatsby. Attempting to forget the horror and destruction that he witnessed firsthand, Nick sets off on a whirlwind journey from Paris to New Orleans seeking love and redemption.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Lincoln Mitchell reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Lincoln A. Mitchell, author of Three Years Our Mayor: George Moscone and the Making of Modern San Francisco.

His entry begins:

I like to read both fiction and nonfiction, and usually switch back and forth between the two with each book I read. I have read a few novels recently, but my favorite was Rachel Kushner's Creation Lake. Some might say it comports with my background and personality that I'm a big Rachel Kushner fan. We are both Jewish, both grew up in San Francisco and both seem to have a particular love for the western part of the city. As a young person Kushner spent a lot of time in the Sunset District, which is just south of Golden Gate Park whereas I identify more with the Richmond District, just north of the park. While we didn't go to the same high school-Kushner went to Lowell and I went to University High School-I have a lot of friends who went to Lowell with her.

In Creation Lake, Kushner tells a story of aging lefty radicals in rural France and evinces a vague contempt, respect, admiration and sense of absurdity towards the group to which I could relate. The novel is...[read on]

About 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.

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.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg 69: Amy Mason Doan's "The California Dreamers"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The California Dreamers: A Novel by Amy Mason Doan.

About the book, from the publisher:

A group of siblings captured in an iconic beach photo reunite on a sunny California island, where they're forced to face the fallout of their unconventional upbringing—and the golden secret that has been simmering ever since...

It’s 1980s California, and everyone’s dreaming of the endless summer: sun-drenched beaches, infinite waves, and most of all, beautiful, beautiful freedom. For the Merrick siblings, this idyllic vision is their reality, as they travel up and down the coast with their parents in a van year-round, surfing and swimming their days away. But when a photographer secretly snaps a stunning photo of the family with their boards in the sand, and the image ripples across the country, the only life they’ve ever known is put at risk.

Decades after, the now-distant siblings gather on a gorgeous, wild island to honor their late father. But their reunion is complicated when a journalist, eager for the truth behind the famous photo, discovers their identity and tracks them down. As the siblings reckon with the possibility that more of their lives could be shared, a revelation about their past forces them to confront long-held heartaches. Together, they’ll have to decide whether to let the same tensions rip them apart again—or if telling their story on their own terms might just be the way to recapture the family magic.

Visit Amy Mason Doan's website.

The Page 69 Test: Summer Hours.

My Book, The Movie: Lady Sunshine.

The Page 69 Test: The California Dreamers.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Christopher J. Insole's "Negative Natural Theology"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Negative Natural Theology: God and the Limits of Reason by Christopher J. Insole.

About the book, from the publisher:

How can we live in harmony with the universe, and not just in it? What is it to feel at home in the world?

Some thinkers who feel the force of these questions reach for the concept of God. Others do not. This book asks what might be at stake in the choice of whether or not to speak about God: not just in terms of abstract reasoning or arguments about God, but in relation to deeper undercurrents of motivation and yearning.

The book is interested in sites in contemporary thinking, where the concept of the divine beckons, or looms, but also, perhaps, repels, or hides. It asks 'what is at stake' in the decision (if it is that) to talk about God and the divine, or not to do so, with a wide and deep curiosity about what this might include: reasons and arguments, certainly, but also more biographical, intuitive, and affective dimensions, including imagination, and feelings about what is valuable. Also relevant are unconscious drives and factors. Concepts can convince, or fail to convince, but, also, they can attract and repel.

The book draws on both analytical and continental post-Kantian sources, treating individual thinkers such as Immanuel Kant, William James, Carl Jung, Karl Rahner, Albert Camus, Saul Kripke, Thomas Nagel, Derek Parfit, Karen Kilby, and Janet Soskice, as well as cultural movements such as modern paganism, new atheism, and humanism.

'Natural theology' involves speaking about God without reference to revelation, tradition, or sources of authority, using the resources of 'reason alone'. 'Negative theology' is concerned with the way in which a type of abstract reasoning and rational argument run out, without this necessarily being an ending: other types of speech and communication may become possible and essential. Speaking into this space, the book draws on philosophy, theology, anthropology, literature, and psychology.

Learn more about Negative Natural Theology at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Negative Natural Theology.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight books featuring cats as characters

Tanya Guerrero is Filipino and Spanish by birth, and has been fortunate enough to call three countries home—the Philippines, Spain, and the United States. Currently, she lives in a shipping container home in the suburbs of Manila with her husband, their daughter, and a menagerie of rescued cats and dogs. She has volunteered for animal welfare organizations since 2008, with a focus on Trap/Neuter/Return and Rescue/Foster/Adopt groups. In her free time, she grows her own food, bakes, and reads.

Guerrero's new novel is Cat's People.

At Electric Lit she tagged eight books featuring memorable felines as characters. One title on the list:

A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman

Many of you have likely read this extremely popular novel by Backman, but for those who haven’t, it combines two of my favorite tropes: grumpy old man with a heart of gold, and cat hater who begrudgingly transforms into cat lover. The cover is also pitch-perfect, allowing you a glimpse into the story about an old man with his back to the world and a scruffy-looking cat in need of a home Velcro-ed to his legs. As the central character Ove reluctantly allows the world back into his cold, deadened heart, his disdain for the stray creature he fondly calls Cat Annoyance is eventually replaced with care and affection, allowing Ove to fully evolve into the feline servant he was meant to be. Make sure to keep a box of tissues nearby, because I guarantee you will need them.

Read about another entry on the list.

Also see thirteen top books featuring cats, Jessie Burton's eleven best books about/with cats, and Lynne Truss's top ten cats in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue

Leslie Karst’s "Waters of Destruction," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Waters of Destruction (An Orchid Isle Mystery, 2) by Leslie Karst.

The entry begins:

Valerie Corbin and her wife Kristen are a longtime couple in their early sixties who’ve recently retired to the Big Island of Hawai‘i from Los Angeles, where Valerie worked as a caterer for the film and TV industry and Kristen as a union carpenter.

Val and Kristen bicker some—as old married couples will do—but they have a loving and comfortable relationship. Until, that is, Valerie becomes obsessed with solving the murder of the bartender she’s recently replaced at the Speckled Gecko in Hilo, whose body has just been pulled from the treacherous Wailuku River (which translates as “waters of destruction”). Although Kristen is initially supportive of her wife’s efforts, she soon tires of her singular focus—and eventually begins to worry for Valerie’s safety as she digs deeper into the case.

My pick for who would play Valerie were Waters of Destruction to be made into a movie would be Annette Bening. In particular, the Annette Bening as she appeared in the marvelous film The American President (also starring her husband, Warren Beatty). She’s feisty and has a wry sense of humor, but also shows a vulnerability that’s necessary for Valerie’s character. Although at 5’ 7” Bening is a bit too tall for the shorter Valerie, her looks otherwise match those of my character, who has dark, now- graying hair and an olive complexion she’s inherited from her grandparents in Marseilles, France.

As for Kristen, I’d be thrilled to see...[read on]

Visit Leslie Karst’s website.

Coffee with a Canine: Leslie Karst & Ziggy.

My Book, The Movie: The Fragrance of Death.

Q&A with Leslie Karst.

The Page 69 Test: Waters of Destruction.

My Book, The Movie: Waters of Destruction.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Charles B. Fancher's "Red Clay"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Red Clay by Charles B. Fancher.

About the book, from the publisher:

An astounding multigenerational saga, Red Clay chronicles the interwoven lives of an enslaved Black family and their white owners as the Civil War ends and Reconstruction begins.

In 1943, when a frail old white woman shows up in Red Clay, Alabama, at the home of a Black former slave--on the morning following his funeral--his family hardly knows what to expect after she utters the words "... a lifetime ago, my family owned yours." Adelaide Parker has a story to tell--one of ambition, betrayal, violence, and redemption--that shaped both the fate of her family and that of the late Felix H. Parker.

But there are gaps in her knowledge, and she's come to Red Clay seeking answers from a family with whom she shares a name and a history that neither knows in full. In an epic saga that takes us from Red Clay to Paris, to the Côte d'Azur and New Orleans, human frailties are pushed to their limits as secrets are exposed and the line between good and evil becomes ever more difficult to discern. Red Clay is a tale that deftly lays bare the ugliness of slavery, the uncertainty of the final months of the Civil War, the optimism of Reconstruction, and the pain and frustration of Jim Crow.

With a vivid sense of place and a cast of memorable characters, Charles B. Fancher draws upon his own family history to weave a riveting tale of triumph over adversity, set against a backdrop of societal change and racial animus that reverberates in contemporary America. Through seasons of joy and unspeakable pain, Fancher delivers rich moments as allies become enemies, and enemies--to their great surprise--find new respect for each other.

Visit Charles B. Fancher's website.

The Page 69 Test: Red Clay.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Lincoln Mitchell's "Three Years Our Mayor"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Three Years Our Mayor: George Moscone and the Making of Modern San Francisco by Lincoln A. Mitchell.

About the book, 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.

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.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten noir novels for beginners

At The Strand Magazine Bob Rivers tagged ten "top picks for anyone looking to dip their toe into the dark, smoke-filled world of noir." One title on the list:

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

Yes, the plot is famously convoluted, and no, I’m not about to explain it in detail. Doing so would turn this list into the noir version of a physics lecture on Einstein’s theory of relativity. Here’s what you need to know: Marlowe is hired to investigate a blackmailer who has the goods on a rich old man’s unpredictable daughter. From there, the whole thing spirals into seedy photographs, corruption, missing people, and a body count that feels suspiciously like Tuesday in L.A.

Chandler was ahead of his time. Marlowe doesn’t solve the case so much as endure it—plunging into a world where money, lust, and vengeance motivate nearly everyone, and moral disintegration is just the price of doing business. Read the book before watching the film, but expect a brilliant performance from Bogart—that 20th-century noir icon born in the 19th.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Big Sleep also appears on John Banville's list of his six favorite books about cities, a list of four books that changed David Free, Jeff Somers's lists of fifty novels that changed novels and five famous books that contain huge mistakes, John Sweeney's top ten list of books on corruption, the Telegraph's top 23 list of amazing--and short--classic books, Lucy Worsley's ten best list of fictional detectives, Becky Ferreira's list of seven of the best books set in Los Angeles, Ian Rankin's list of five perfect mysteries, Kathryn Williams's reading list on greed, Gigi Levangie Grazer's list of six favorite books that became movies, Megan Wasson's list of five top books on Los Angeles, Greil Marcus's six recommended books list, Barry Forshaw's critic's chart of six American noir masters, David Nicholls' list of favorite film adaptations, and the Guardian's list of ten of the best smokes in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Su Chang

From my Q&A with Su Chang, author of The Immortal Woman:

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

Ah, titles! It’s the bane of my existence as a writer. My book title was the last thing I decided on, long after the book was written and self-edited multiple rounds. I had quite a few contenders. At one point, it was called “Erasure”. Later, it became “The Trouble with Leaving.” I was very serious about the latter title, and it almost made it to the end, if my editor hadn’t put a stop to it. I still think it was a decent one as it illuminated the main theme of the book, but I can also see some issues with it, the most important one being that it suggests the book is all about the daughter character, while in reality the mother character is equally important (with large sections of the book devoted to her). Another issue may be that the old title doesn’t have any “cultural marker.” A reader wouldn’t know from the title that half of the book is set in China and it’s a book about Chinese modern history and Chinese immigrants.

The current title, The Immortal Woman, is a good one and certainly solves the cultural marker problem. At the most literal level, the Immortal Woman is the patron saint of the mother and daughter’s ancestral village. She embodies tradition and hence a threat the Maoist China desperately sought to eradicate, as well as something the heartbroken Lemei, during her early motherhood, resolved to expunge from her daughter’s life. At the same time, the Immortal Woman also serves as a symbolic stand-in for both mother and daughter, who, despite decades of trauma, ultimately...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Su Chang's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Immortal Woman.

The Page 69 Test: The Immortal Woman.

Q&A with Su Chang.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Robert Inman's "Villages"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Villages by Robert Inman.

About the book, from the publisher:

21-year-old Jonas Boulware has come home to Copernicus, his small southern town, after serving as a medic in the Middle East, where he was severely wounded performing a heroic act. As his body heals, he keeps memories of the trauma at bay. He doesn't remember and doesn't intend to. He is home, trying to figure out who he has become and how he can deal with it. But trauma assails him in Copernicus, too: an abusive father and a mother who bears the burden of a long-ago family scandal. He renews friendships - a high school classmate, a physician/mentor, and the Black owner of a golf course. An instinctual caregiver, Jonas takes in (and falls in love with) a down-on-her-luck young folksinger, he tries to rescue a teenaged boy from his squalid, dangerous home life. But bits and pieces of his wartime trauma intrude in nightmares and flashbacks, until he admits that he suffers from PTSD and must come to grips with it to survive. With help from friends and an unorthodox counselor, he takes steps toward facing his past and moving into his profoundly altered present and future. In doing so, Jonas uncovers secrets from his past that cast new and hopeful light on his new normal.

Visit Robert Inman's website.

The Page 69 Test: Villages.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Shari Rabin's "The Jewish South"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Jewish South: An American History by Shari Rabin.

About the book, from the publisher:

A panoramic history of the Jewish American South, from European colonization to today

In 1669, the Carolina colony issued the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, which offered freedom of worship to “Jews, heathens, and other dissenters,” ushering in an era that would see Jews settle in cities and towns throughout what would become the Confederate States. The Jewish South tells their stories, and those of their descendants and coreligionists who followed, providing the first narrative history of southern Jews.

Drawing on a wealth of original archival findings spanning three centuries, Shari Rabin sheds new light on the complicated decisions that southern Jews made—as individuals, families, and communities—to fit into a society built on Native land and enslaved labor and to maintain forms of Jewish difference, often through religious innovation and adaptation. She paints a richly textured and sometimes troubling portrait of the period, exploring how southern Jews have been targets of antisemitism and violence but also complicit in racial injustice. Rabin considers Jewish immigration and institution building, participation in the Civil War, the 1915 lynching of Leo Frank, and Jewish support for and resistance to the modern fight for Black civil rights. She examines shifting understandings of Jewishness, highlighting both the reality of religious diversity and the ongoing role of Christianity in defining the region.

Recovering a neglected facet of the American experience, The Jewish South enables readers to see the South through the eyes of people with a distinctive religious heritage and a southern history older than the United States itself.

Visit Shari Rabin's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Jewish South.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six thrillers where mothers fight for their children

Sara Foster is an internationally published, bestselling psychological suspense author living in Western Australia. Her new novel is When She Was Gone.

Foster has previously published seven novels: the near-future acclaimed thriller The Hush, and suspense thrillers You Don’t Know Me, The Hidden Hours, All That is Lost Between Us, Shallow Breath, Beneath the Shadows, and Come Back to Me.

At CrimeReads Foster tagged six "outstanding thrillers where different kinds of mothers have needed to fight for their daughters in order to keep them safe or to discover what has happened to them." One title on the list:

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

A young girl goes missing after a house fire, and the story travels back in time to flesh out the details of what happened. There are three centralized mother characters here, and more in the background, all fighting for their daughters in different ways – with their various states of prosperity playing a huge part in the choices available to them. This book is a beautifully fleshed out social commentary on status and wealth as well as an exceptional mystery.

Read about another entry on the list.

Little Fires Everywhere is among Isabelle McConville's five favorite dysfunctional book families, Beth Morrey‘s top ten single mothers in fiction, R.J. Hoffmann's six titles featuring adoptions gone awry, Amy Stuart's five thrilling novels with deeply flawed fictional characters you’ll learn to appreciate as you turn the pages and Kate Hamer's top ten teenage friendships in fiction.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Leslie Karst’s "Waters of Destruction"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Waters of Destruction (An Orchid Isle Mystery, 2) by Leslie Karst.

About the book, from the publisher:

Retired caterer Valerie Corbin investigates a suspicious drowning in this Orchid Isle cozy culinary mystery, featuring a feisty queer couple who swap surfing lessons for sleuthing sessions in tropical Hilo, Hawai‘i

After a vacation of a lifetime in Hilo, Hawai‘i, retired caterer Valerie Corbin and her wife Kristen have decided to move permanently to the beautiful – if storm-prone – Big Island. The couple are having fun furnishing their new house, exploring their new neighborhood and playing with their new little dog, Pua. But while they’ve made good friends with local restaurant manager Sachiko and her partner Isaac, they can’t help but feel a little lonely.

So when Sachiko begs Val to fill in for a member of her bar team who’s gone AWOL, Val dusts off her cocktail shaker and happily agrees. It’s a great chance to meet more people – and learn the local gossip.

Such as about Hank, the missing bartender, who vanished after a team-building retreat at a local beauty spot a week ago, and hasn’t been seen since. Until, that is, his body turns up at the bottom of the waterfall, and the police seem very interested in where Sachiko was at the time of his death.

Sachiko couldn’t have killed him . . . could she? Val dives into the murky waters of the case, determined to find out. This mouth-watering cozy mystery is perfect for fans of Ellen Byron, Jennifer J Chow, Lucy Burdette and Raquel V Reyes, and includes a selection of delicious Hawaiian recipes to cook at home.

Visit Leslie Karst’s website.

Coffee with a Canine: Leslie Karst & Ziggy.

My Book, The Movie: The Fragrance of Death.

Q&A with Leslie Karst.

The Page 69 Test: Waters of Destruction.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Joseph Jay Sosa's "Brazil's Sex Wars"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Brazil's Sex Wars: The Aesthetics of Queer Activism in São Paulo by Joseph Jay Sosa.

About the book, from the publisher:

An ethnography and media analysis of LGBT+ activism in São Paulo during Brazil’s conservative turn from 2010 to 2018.

For decades, LGBT+ activists across the globe have secured victories by persuasively articulating rights to sexual autonomy. Brazilian activists, some of the world’s most energetic, have kept pace. But since 2010, a backlash has set in, as defenders of “tradition” and “family” have countered LGBT+ rights discourses using a rights-based language of their own.

To understand this shifting ground, Joseph Jay Sosa collaborated with Brazilian LGBT+ activists, who use the language of rights while knowing that rights are not what they seem. Drawing on the symbolic and affective qualities of rights, activists mobilize slogans, bodies, and media to articulate an alternative democratic sensorium. Beyond conventional notions of rights as tools for managing the obligations of states vis-à-vis citizens, activists show how rights operate aesthetically—enjoining the public to see and feel as activists do. Sosa tracks the fate of LGBT+ rights in a growing authoritarian climate that demands “human rights for the right humans.” Interpreting conflicts between advocates and opponents over LGBT+ autonomy as not just an ideological struggle but an aesthetic one, Brazil’s Sex Wars rethinks a style of politics that seems both utterly familiar and counterintuitive.

Learn more about Brazil's Sex Wars at the University Of Texas Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Brazil's Sex Wars.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven intense books about messy relationships

Anu Kandikuppa has worked as an engineer, a software developer, and an economics consultant, most recently as Principal. The social structures of Indian families among which she grew up inform the stories in her first book, The Confines. Kandikuppa’s fiction and essays have appeared in Colorado Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, New England Review, The Cincinnati Review, Story, and other journals. In 2024, Kandikuppa received a Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant for Creative Individuals. Her work has thrice received special mention in the Pushcart Prize anthologies and has also been recognized by fellowships and residencies by the Virginia Center for Creative Arts and The Ragdale Foundation. Kandikuppa holds a Ph.D. in Finance and an MFA in Writing from Warren Wilson College. She lives outside Boston.

At Electric Lit Kandikuppa tagged seven intense books featuring messy relationships. One entry on the list:

Getting Lost by Annie Ernaux, translated by Alison L. Strayer

Getting Lost is autobiographical, comprising diary entries from the late 1980s, written during the author’s affair with a Soviet diplomat—the journal becomes her “way of enduring the wait” until they see each other again. The affair is doomed from the start: the author is single, while her lover is married, and she has no control over the direction of their relationship. The diary entries obsessively chronicle their nights together, her frantic calculations about their next meeting, and her fear of losing him—their repetitiousness a clue to the author’s emotional decline.

Read about another title on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Bryan Gruley's "Bitterfrost," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Bryan Gruley's Bitterfrost (A Bitterfrost Thriller).

The enry begins:

Wouldn’t it be great if Bitterfrost were made into a movie? I’d be famous and rich and everyone would want to buy my books. Alas, I might also be dead because of how long it typically takes to get a book made into a movie.

But, please, bring it on!

Bitterfrost tells the tale of Jimmy Baker, a former minor-league hockey player who quit the game on the spot after he almost killed an opponent during a fight. Thirteen years later, he is the Zamboni driver for an elite amateur hockey team in the little northern Michigan town of Bitterfrost—and the prime suspect in a brutal double murder.

I don’t imagine actors as my fictional characters when I’m writing. But when someone asks who I might have play so-and-so, ideas jump to mind. I actually think Bitterfrost would work as well if not better as an episodic television series along the lines of The Night Of, Fargo, Slow Horses, or Mare of Easttown. I love those shows, which have influenced my writing, particularly my efforts to make every written scene as cinematic as possible. So, for Bitterfrost …

The actors:

Timothy Olyphant as Jimmy Baker. My wife, Pam, and I both fell in love with Olyphant’s portrayal of Raylan Givens in the TV series Justified. He can play tough and he can play vulnerable, exactly what’s needed for Jimmy’s flawed but likeable character. (Pam wondered if maybe Olyphant is “too pretty” to play Jimmy Baker; I told her viewers like pretty.)

Aimee Ffion-Edwards as Jimmy’s defense attorney, Devyn Payne. I’ve admired...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Bryan Gruley's website.

The Page 69 Test: Starvation Lake.

The Page 69 Test: The Hanging Tree.

The Page 69 Test: Bleak Harbor.

The Page 69 Test: Purgatory Bay.

The Page 69 Test: Bitterfrost.

Q&A with Bryan Gruley.

My Book, The Movie: Bitterfrost.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Mary G. Thompson's "One Level Down"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: One Level Down by Mary G. Thompson.

About the book, from the publisher:

Trapped in a child’s body, a resourceful woman risks death by deletion from a simulated world. With her debut novella for adults, Mary G. Thompson (Wuftoom) has crafted a taut, ultimately hopeful story that deftly explores identity and autonomy.

Ella is the oldest five-year-old in the universe. For fifty-eight years, the founder of a simulated colony-planet has forced her to pretend to be his daughter. Her “Daddy” has absolute power over all elements of reality, which keeps the colonists in line even when their needs are not met. But his failing experiments and despotic need for absolute control are increasingly dangerous.

Ella’s very life depends on her performance as a child. She has watched Daddy delete her stepmother and the loved ones of anyone who helps her.

But every sixty years, a Technician comes from the world above. Ella has been watching and working and biding her time. Because if she cannot get help, her only solution is a desperate measure that could lead to consequences for the entire universe.

Visit Mary G. Thompson's website.

The Page 69 Test: Amy Chelsea Stacie Dee.

The Page 69 Test: One Level Down.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five iconic preppy reads

Alyson Gerber is the bestselling author of The Liars Society, a middle grade mystery set at a New England prep school. The Liars Society is a USA Today bestseller, Barnes & Noble Bookseller Favorite, B&N Most Anticipated Book of the Month, and B&N Best Book of the Year (So Far), as well as an American Booksellers Association’s Best Books for Young Readers, Roku's Best Book of the Month, Bookshop's Favorite New Books. It's also a nominee for the Texas Bluebonnet Award and Indiana's Young Hoosier Award. The Liars Society #2: A Risky Game was published in April 2025.

At The Nerd Daily Gerber tagged five iconic preppy reads, including:

We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

E. Lockhart’s smart, twisty writing will pull you in and you’ll never want to leave Beechwood Island, just off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard. Luckily, We Were Liars, which centers around the Sinclair family and the summers spent on their private island, also has an incredible prequel—Family of Liars. And the TV show is coming soon. This clever, cunning story will make you even more curious about what these prep school kids are like the rest of the year.

Read about another entry on the list.

We Were Liars is among Sarah Porter's five top books featuring psychological hauntings, S. Jae-Jones's five top YA thrillers with a supernatural twist, Jeff Somers's six novels in which nothing is as it seems, Avery Hastings's five favorite books featuring unreliable narrators, Darren Croucher's five favorite YA novels featuring liars, Michael Waters's six must-read YA books for Mr. Robot fans, Lindsey Lewis Smithson's top seven sob-inducing books that deserve to be made into movies, Ruth Ware's top ten psychological thrillers, and Meredith Moore's five favorite YA thrillers.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Alison Brysk's "Abortion Rights Backlash"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Abortion Rights Backlash: The Struggle for Democracy in Europe and the Americas by Alison Brysk.

About the book, from the publisher:

Reproductive rights are fundamental for the life, freedom, health, and safety of over half the world's population. Yet reproductive freedoms are under attack worldwide, even where women have achieved political rights and workplace participation. According to the World Health Organization, about a third of pregnancies end in abortion--but about half of abortions are unsafe, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths each year. Why are abortion rights backsliding, even in developed democracies? Why do some modern societies progress toward reproductive freedoms, while others regress or stagnate? And what can the struggle for reproductive rights teach us about broader movements for human rights and gender justice?

In Abortion Rights Backlash, Alison Brysk shows how threats to reproductive rights stem from a gendered political struggle over declining democracy, national identity, and widening inequality due to globalization. Formerly dominant groups facing social and economic crisis promote reactionary nationalist ideologies built around patriarchy, race, and religion as they seek to control population politics. Brysk demonstrates that this is a global phenomenon, comparing the diverging experiences of the politics of abortion in Ireland, Poland, Argentina, Brazil, and the United States (California vs. Texas). Timely and pathbreaking in its global perspective and feminist analysis, Abortion Rights Backlash transforms our understanding of human rights, the future of democracy, and the struggle for gender justice worldwide.

Visit Alison Brysk's website.

The Page 99 Test: Speaking Rights to Power.

The Page 99 Test: Abortion Rights Backlash.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with KC Jones

From my Q&A with KC Jones, author of White Line Fever:

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

White line fever is a colloquialism for highway hypnosis, which is the primary tool with which this malevolent stretch of road confuses, frightens, and ultimately kills people who drive it. The main character, Livia, has also been going through adulthood in her own form of highway hypnosis—until an unexpected turn shocks her out of it, and she suddenly realizes she doesn't recognize her life. Not her husband, her house, even herself. Her journey is not just surviving a trip down a hellish highway, it's reclaiming control instead of just going where the road takes her. To me, though, "highway hypnosis" just didn't quite ring as a title, whereas "white line fever" has a nice punchy cadence, like broken road stripes flashing past, and it's a bit strange, a bit unsettling. I came across the term while researching the psychology behind highway hypnosis, and...[read on]

Visit KC Jones's website.

The Page 69 Test: White Line Fever.

Q&A with KC Jones.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Rosanne Limoncelli's "The Four Queens of Crime"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Four Queens of Crime by Rosanne Limoncelli.

About the book, from the publisher:

In this debut mystery, DCI Lilian Wyles, the first woman detective chief inspector in the CID, is determined to find a killer with the help of the four queens of crime, Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, and Margery Allingham, perfect for fans of Elly Griffiths and Claudia Gray.

1938, London. The four queens of British crime fiction, Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, and Margery Allingham, are hosting a gala to raise money for the Women’s Voluntary Service to help Britain prepare for war. Baronet Sir Henry Heathcote has loaned Hursley House for the event, and all the elites of London society are attending. The gala is a brilliant success, despite a few hiccups, but the next morning, Sir Henry is found dead in the library.

Detective Chief Inspectors Lilian Wyles and Richard Davidson from Scotland Yard are quickly summoned and discover a cluster of potential suspects among the guests, including an upset fiancée, a politically ambitious son, a reserved but protective brother, an irate son-in-law, a rebellious teenage daughter, and the deputy home secretary.

Quietly recruiting the four queens of crime, DCI Wyles must sort through the messy aftermath of Sir Henry’s death to solve the mystery and identify the killer.

Visit Rosanne Limoncelli's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Four Queens of Crime.

The Page 69 Test: The Four Queens of Crime.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top books featuring reporter sleuths who dig too deep

Olesya Lyuzna is a historical fiction writer with a passion for queer noir.

Her debut novel Glitter in the Dark was selected for a 2020 Pitch Wars mentorship by Layne Fargo and Halley Sutton.

She lives in Toronto and spends her free time hosting murder mystery parties and scouring the archives for unsolved crimes.

At CrimeReads Lyuzna tagged five works featuring favorite reporter sleuths, including:

Lady in the Lake by Laura Lippman

Maddie Schwartz has spent the last two decades playing by the rules as a wife, a mother, a well-behaved woman who fit neatly into the expectations of 1960s Baltimore. But now, she wants something more. Something bigger. She wants a story.

It starts with a missing girl who vanished without a trace. When Maddie’s intuition leads her to the child’s body, she sees her opening. The discovery earns her a foothold at The Star, and she reinvents herself as a reporter, chasing leads, pushing past locked doors, refusing to take no for an answer.

But one story isn’t enough. Soon, she’s digging into the disappearance of Cleo Sherwood, a young Black woman whose murder barely made the papers. Maddie isn’t just looking for the truth—she’s trying to find her place in the world, rewriting the roles assigned to her by the life she left behind.

Lippman’s kaleidoscopic noir unfolds like a newspaper—a shifting patchwork of voices, from Cleo’s grieving friends and family to the men who crossed paths with her, to Cleo herself, watching from beyond the grave as Maddie exposes secrets best left buried.

This is a book about power. Who gets to ask the questions? Who deserves the answers? Whose story is Maddie really telling—and at what cost?

Lippman builds a deeply researched, atmospheric portrait of 1960s Baltimore, steeped in its racial and gender politics, layered with ambition, guilt, and the uneasy truth that journalism doesn’t just report on the world—it changes it. Sometimes for the better. Sometimes not.

Read about another entry on the list.

Lady in the Lake is among Andrea Park's 36 best mystery thriller books of all time, Alice Blanchard's five top mysteries set in still waters, Brittany Bunzey's ten books that take you inside their characters’ heads, Kimberly Belle's six novels that show lakes are a perfect setting for a murder mystery, and CrimeReads' ten best crime novels of 2019.

The Page 69 Test: Lady in the Lake.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Andrew S. Berish's "Hating Jazz"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Hating Jazz: A History of Its Disparagement, Mockery, and Other Forms of Abuse by Andrew S. Berish.

About the book, from the publisher:

A deep dive into the meaning behind the hatred of jazz.

A rock guitarist plays four notes in front of one thousand people, while a jazz guitarist plays one thousand notes in front of four people. You might laugh or groan at this jazz joke, but what is it about jazz that makes people want to disparage it in the first place?

Andrew S. Berish’s Hating Jazz listens to the voices who have denounced, disparaged, and mocked the music. By focusing on the rejection of the music, Berish says, we see more holistically jazz’s complicated place in American cultural life. Jazz is a display of Black creativity and genius, an art form that is deeply embedded in African American life. Though the explicit racial tenor of jazz jokes has become muted over time, making fun of jazz, either in a lighthearted or aggressive way, is also an engagement with the place of Blackness in America. An individual’s taste in music may seem personal, but Berish’s analysis of jazz hatred demonstrates that musical preferences and trends are a social phenomenon. Criticism of jazz has become inextricable from the ways we understand race in America, past and present. In addition to this form of criticism, Berish also considers jazz hate as a form of taste discrimination and as a conflict over genre boundaries within different jazz cultures.

Both enlightening and original, Hating Jazz shows that our response to music can be a social act, unique to our historical moment and cultural context—we react to music in certain ways because of who we are, where we are, and when we are.

Visit Andrew S. Berish's website.

The Page 99 Test: Hating Jazz.

--Marshal Zeringue

Douglas Corleone's "Falls to Pieces," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Falls to Pieces by Douglas Corleone.

From the entry:

It’s hard to believe it’s been a decade since I wrote my last piece for “My Book, the Movie.” Of all the prompts on all the sites I’ve written for, this is my favorite. Why? Because we authors only write novels in the hopes that they’ll be adapted into screenplays, cast with megastars, and made into award-winning films. I’m kidding, of course. But the allure of Hollywood is undeniable. My storytelling skills come chiefly from movies and, let’s face it, not all of our friends read. (Even when we dedicate the book to them!)

Getting down to casting Falls to Pieces: For my main characters, Kati and Zoe, I needed a mother-daughter team, yet my mind went straight to sisters Vera and Taissa Farmiga (ca. 2014 in keeping with the character’s ages).

Kati’s lawyer Noah Walker was always...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Douglas Corleone's website.

The Page 69 Test: Good as Gone.

My Book, The Movie: Payoff.

The Page 69 Test: Gone Cold.

My Book, The Movie: Gone Cold.

Writers Read: Douglas Corleone (August 2015).

The Page 69 Test: Falls to Pieces.

Writers Read: Douglas Corleone.

My Book, The Movie: Falls to Pieces.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: KC Jones's "White Line Fever"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: White Line Fever by KC Jones.

About the book, from the publisher:

From Bram Stoker Award finalist KC Jones comes White Line Fever, a harrowing thrill ride about friendship, trauma, and learning how to take the wheel of your own life.

THEY'LL BREAK MORE THAN SPEED LIMITS ON THIS GIRLS' TRIP FROM HELL.

At a passing glance, County Road 951 is an entirely unremarkable stretch of blacktop, a two-lane scar across the Cascade foothills of Central Oregon.

But the road is known by another name, coined by locals who’ve had to clean up after all those scenic detours went horribly wrong: The Devil’s Driveway.

When Livia and her long-time friends take the Driveway as a shortcut to a much-needed weekend getaway, what begins as a morning joyride quickly becomes anything but. Soon, they’re driving for their lives, pursued by a horror beyond anything they ever imagined.

The Devil’s Driveway might be only 15 miles long, but with danger at every turn, it will take the four women to the very limits of their friendships and their sanity.

And there’s no telling what else lies in wait just beyond the bend.

Visit KC Jones's website.

The Page 69 Test: White Line Fever.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven books about women and food

Hannah Selinger is a James Beard Award-nominated lifestyle writer and mother of two based in Boxford, MA. Her print and digital work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, Travel + Leisure, Food & Wine, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and elsewhere. Her 2021 Bon Appétit essay, "In My Childhood Kitchen, I Learned Both Fear and Love," is anthologized in the 2022 Best American Food Writing collection.

Selinger's new book is Cellar Rat: My Life in the Restaurant Underbelly.

At Electric Lit she tagged seven titles about women and food, including:

Same As It Ever Was by Claire Lombardo

New York Times-bestselling author Claire Lombardo opens her fresh novel, Same As It Ever Was, in a grocery store; there, protagonist Julia Ames runs into an old friend, Helen Russo, while shopping for the ingredients to make crab cakes for her husband’s birthday. Russo, an older woman who had been, for a time, a motherly figure to Ames, comes alive in later chapters, and through acts of cooking. Food, in fact, punctuates the book’s main events. Crab cakes: celebratory for a 60th birthday. Later, an apricot galette will set an affair in motion. Both Ames and Russo have entrenched domestic roles, and their work in the kitchen is at once ancillary and important. They are making something, feeding someone, memorializing something. For these characters, who exist in a world where limits are drawn and bound by the more powerful people around them, there is a certain freedom here, in a place where the rules are theirs and theirs alone.

Read about another book on Selinger's list.

--Marshal Zeringue