Pg. 69: Shirley Russak Wachtel's "The Baker of Lost Memories"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Baker of Lost Memories: A Novel by Shirley Russak Wachtel.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the author of A Castle in Brooklyn comes an epic novel spanning decades about the broken bonds of family, memories of war, and redemption and hope in the face of heartbreaking loss.

Growing up in 1960s Brooklyn, Lena wants to be a baker just like her mother was back in Poland prior to World War II. But questions about those days, and about a sister Lena never even knew, are ignored with solemn silence. It’s as if everything her parents left behind was a subject never to be broached.

The one person in whom Lena can confide is her best friend, Pearl. When she suddenly disappears from Lena’s life, Lena forges ahead: college, love and marriage with a wonderful man, the dream of owning a bakery becoming a reality, and the hope that someday Pearl will return to share in Lena’s happiness―and to be there for her during the unexpected losses to come.

Only when Lena discovers the depth of her parents’ anguish, and a startling truth about her own past, can they rebuild a family and overcome the heart-wrenching memories that have torn them apart.

Visit Shirley Wachtel's website.

The Page 69 Test: A Castle in Brooklyn.

My Book, The Movie: A Castle in Brooklyn.

Q&A with Shirley Russak Wachtel.

My Book, The Movie: The Baker of Lost Memories.

Writers Read: Shirley Russak Wachtel.

The Page 69 Test: The Baker of Lost Memories.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven top historical novels that explore the underbelly of the art world

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

Tell Them You Lied is her first novel.

At CrimeReads Leffler tagged seven standout art historical crime novels, including:

Stealing Mona Lisa by Carson Morton

Carson Morton’s Stealing Mona Lisa—a cozy caper about an unlikely group of con artists in the early 20th century. Morton uses the very real theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 1911 as the launching point of his delightful fiction. Using both real historical figures (the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, for one, makes a cameo), Morton takes us from Buenos Aires to New England to Paris in pursuit of riches, justice, and fun.

Read about another novel on the list.

Stealing Mona Lisa is among Nzinga Temu's ight action-packed novels about art heists and Carol Orange's seven top art heist novels.

The Page 69 Test: Stealing Mona Lisa.

My Book, The Movie: Stealing Mona Lisa.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Catherine Hartmann's "Making the Invisible Real"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Making the Invisible Real: Practices of Seeing in Tibetan Pilgrimage by Catherine Hartmann.

About the book, from the publisher:

How can a person learn to see a mountain as a divine mandala, especially when, to the ordinary eye, the mountain looks like a pile of rocks and snow? This is the challenge that the Tibetan pilgrimage tradition poses to pilgrims, who are told to overcome their ordinary perception to see the hidden reality of the holy mountain.

Drawing on multiple genres of Tibetan literature from the 13th to 20th centuries--including foundational narratives of holy places, polemical debates about the value of pilgrimage, written guides to holy sites, advice texts, and personal diaries--this book investigates how the pilgrimage tradition tries to transform pilgrims' perception so that they might experience the wondrous sacred landscape as real and materially present. Catherine Anne Hartmann argues that the pilgrimage tradition does not simply assume that pilgrims experience this sacred landscape as real, but instead leads pilgrims to adopt deliberate practices of seeing: ways of looking at and interacting with the world that shape their experience of the holy mountain.

Making the Invisible Real explores two ways of seeing: the pilgrim's ordinary perception of the world, and the fantastic vision believed to lie beyond this ordinary perception. As pilgrims move through the holy place, they move back and forth between these two ways of seeing, weaving the ordinary perceived world and extraordinary imagined world together into a single experience. Hartmann shows us how seemingly fantastical religious worldviews are not simply believed or taken for granted, but actively constructed and reconstructed for new generations of practitioners.

Visit Kate Hartmann's website.

The Page 99 Test: Making the Invisible Real.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Lorna Lewis

From my Q&A with Lorna Lewis, author of A Sky Full of Love: A Novel:

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

The title, A Sky Full of Love, establishes the story's tone before the reader turns the first page. The title is soft, hopeful, and maybe a little wistful. Even though the topics of captivity and loss are heavy, most of the story focuses on the healing journey, so that’s what I wanted the title to portray. I was a little hesitant at first because it could also give a romantic feel, and even though there are romantic components to the story, it’s not a romance novel. The biggest reason I liked this title was because of the bond Nova has with her family. While in the room, Nova was desperate for some kind of connection with the people she loved. One night, as she stared into the sky, she realized that no matter where they were in the world, they were looking at the same moon and stars as she was. That was the connection. The sky, at that moment, represented love because it was as close to her family as...[read on]

Visit Lorna Lewis's website.

The Page 69 Test: A Sky Full of Love.

Q&A with Lorna Lewis.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five books about cults

As a forensic scientist at the Cuyahoga County Coroner’s Office, New York Times bestselling author Lisa Black analyzed gunshot residue on hands and clothing, hairs, fibers, paint, glass, DNA, and blood as well as other forms of trace evidence. Now she is a Certified Crime Scene Analyst and Certified Latent Print Examiner and for the Cape Coral Police Department in Florida. Black is a member of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, the International Association for Identification, and the International Association of Bloodstain Pattern Analysts. She has testified in court as an expert witness and served as a consultant for CourtTV.

She is the author of the Locard Institute series and of the highly acclaimed Gardiner & Renner series, for which she was nominated for the Sue Grafton Memorial Award. Her books have been translated into six languages.

Black's latest title in the Locard Institute series is Not Who We Expected.

[The Page 69 Test: That Darkness; My Book, The Movie: Unpunished; The Page 69 Test: Unpunished; My Book, The Movie: Perish; The Page 69 Test: Perish; The Page 69 Test: Suffer the Children; Writers Read: Lisa Black (July 2020); The Page 69 Test: Every Kind of Wicked; Q&A with Lisa Black; My Book, The Movie: What Harms You; The Page 69 Test: What Harms You; My Book, The Movie: The Deepest Kill; My Book, The Movie: Not Who We Expected; The Page 69 Test: Not Who We Expected]

At The Strand Magazine Black tagged five books that made her want to write about a cult, including:

Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, & the Prison of Belief by Lawrence Wright

Lawrence Wright investigates Scientology through over 200 interviews and extensive research. He explores its origins with founder L. Ron Hubbard and successor David Miscavige, the church’s tactics to recruit celebrities, and its unique and often uncomfortable practices.

Read about another entry on the list.

Also see Kate Robards's five essential books about cults, Janice Hallett's five top books on cults, Melanie Abrams's seven novels about crimes in communes, cults, & other alternative communities, Joanna Hershon's seven darkly fascinating books about cults, Claire McGlasson's top ten books about cults, and Sam Jordison's top ten books on cults and religious extremists.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: A. Tunç Şen's "Forgotten Experts"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Forgotten Experts: Astrologers, Science, and Authority in the Ottoman Empire, 1450–1600 by A. Tunç Şen.

About the book, from the publisher:

Forgotten Experts offers a history of Ottoman court astrologers and traces their shifting authority and prestige over the long sixteenth century. These individuals served the Ottoman court with their expertise in mathematical, astronomical, and astrological sciences, distinguishing themselves from other occult practitioners and esoteric specialists. While both prophecy and prognostication are attempts to map the terrain of the future, the astrologers' work did not claim spiritual weight as a prophecy but relied instead on methods of prediction developed from data and patterns elaborated through technical and scientific writings. Drawing on extensive manuscript and archival records written in Ottoman Turkish, Persian, and Arabic, A. Tunç Şen writes a history of science, state formation, and bureaucracy within the overarching tale of Ottoman imperial formation and protocols. He invites readers to follow Ottoman court astrologers' fluctuating careers as practitioners of a contentious science and shows how this class of learned individuals constructed its scientific authority despite numerous cultural, societal, and epistemic challenges. In understanding the expertise of court astrologers, we gain insight into the intricate social relations established and maintained between the men of knowledge and the men of rule, between expertise and statecraft, in the early modern Ottoman imperial context.

Learn more about Forgotten Experts at the Stanford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Forgotten Experts.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Lorna Lewis's "A Sky Full of Love"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: A Sky Full of Love: A Novel by Lorna Lewis.

About the book, from the publisher:

Following a harrowing disappearance, a woman returns home to her family―and a life-changing secret in a powerful novel about betrayal, resilience, and love’s unbreakable bonds.

After fifteen years in captivity, Nova Lefleur is free, back home, and reunited with her Louisiana family. Through her ordeal, she never forgot them. They never forgot her either. But things have changed since Nova’s been gone.

Nova and her encouraging seventeen-year-old daughter, Skye, are getting to know each other for the first time. Her husband, Quinton, is rebuilding a relationship with a wife he thought was gone forever. And Nova’s sister, Leah, is overjoyed―and overwhelmed.

Leah shares a secret with Quinton neither can bear to tell the woman they cherish. Not yet. Five years ago, bonding over grief and finding a reason to smile again, Quinton and Leah were married. When it’s time for the truth to come out, they could lose Nova all over again.

As Nova is eased back into a life both familiar and unfamiliar, she and her family must confront their deepest fears, the choices they made, and the choices to come that will reshape each of their lives forever.

Visit Lorna Lewis's website.

The Page 69 Test: A Sky Full of Love.

--Marshal Zeringue

Gurjinder Basran's "The Wedding," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Gurjinder Basran's The Wedding: A Novel.

The entry begins:

The Wedding, an episodic novel told from fifteen unique perspectives about a lavish week-long Indian wedding would require a dream ensemble cast that was capable of portraying a high maintenance bride, an unsure groom, a conflicted wedding party, frenemies, gossiping aunties, a local bad boy, and a host of ever-watchful event staff. Since the novel is set in Canada and is multi-generational, and there are not a lot of well-known Indian actors, I’ll take some liberties in casting and draw from Bollywood and Hollywood past and present and cast just a few of the fifteen starring roles:

The Bride, Devi : Alia Bhatt, a British born Indian actress who is known for portraying strong women would be perfect to play the somewhat unlikeable strong willed bride Devi.

The Groom, Baby: If we could go back in time to the early 2000s, I would choose Bollywood heartthrob, Hritick Roshan because he was always able to portray vulnerability and strength.

The Groom’s brother, Gobind: Ishaan Khatter, recently made famous in North America for his role in The Perfect Couple and in the Netflix hit The Royals would be...[read on]

Visit Gurjinder Basran's website.

Q&A with Gurjinder Basran.

My Book, The Movie: The Wedding.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven books about girls doing crime

Darrow Farr is a Salvadoran American writer. She was a Stegner Fellow in Fiction at Stanford University from 2017 to 2019 and received an MFA in creative writing from the Michener Center at the University of Texas. She was born and raised outside Philadelphia, where she now lives with her husband and son.

The Bombshell is her debut novel.

At Electric Lit she tagged seven novels in which women "don’t resign themselves to injustice, desperation, inattention, or boredom—they change their circumstances. So what if their methods are technically illegal?" One title on the list:

The Bandit Queens by Parini Shroff

For a novel about spousal abuse, the Indian caste system, misogyny, and mariticide, The Bandit Queens is surprisingly delightful. Geeta’s abusive, alcoholic husband left her five years ago, but rumor has it she killed him. She’s never bothered to set the record straight, which becomes an issue when the women in her microloan group start approaching her to kill their own no-good husbands.

If the men in this novel are mostly straightforward villains (you won’t feel guilty rooting for their demise), the women’s friendships are refreshingly nuanced. “Women splayed the far corners, their cruelty and kindness equally capacious.” They’re not above sisterly bickering, manipulation, or even blackmail, but when men threaten the safety of the most vulnerable members of the village, they’re there to support—and kill for—each other.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Bandit Queens is among Julie Mae Cohen's six books featuring killer women.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Michael Gubser's "Their Future"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Their Future: A History of Ahistoricism in International Development by Michael Gubser.

About the book, from the publisher:

A compelling examination of how economic development projects ignore local history, and the effects of this shortsightedness

Foreign aid planners rarely consider the history of the societies in which they work, an oversight noted in the development literature but rarely examined. Aid programs costing billions of dollars operate largely in a historical vacuum, divorced from the knowledge of what succeeded or failed in the past. Michael Gubser chronicles the varieties of ahistoricism in international development theory and practice since 1945. He traces the history of development ideas, analyzing key theoretical and policy statements to highlight the marginalization of history in favor of technical solutions to economic and social problems; and he examines aid programs in several developing countries to show how Western models of social and economic development have been applied and misapplied.

Learn more about Their Future at the Yale University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Their Future.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Shirley Russak Wachtel reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Shirley Russak Wachtel, author of The Baker of Lost Memories: A Novel.

Her entry begins:

I have been an avid reader since I was eight years old. Whether I’m sitting in my backyard, waiting in a doctor’s office, or just before drifting off to sleep, I always have a book in hand. Like the stories I write, I am drawn to tales about people and relationships. My love for books goes beyond the stories so that I never borrow books but buy each book so that it occupies a coveted space in my library. Every few weeks, I rotate the genres, moving from classics to nonfiction and popular fiction.

I recently reread Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, a play about a small town in New England which takes us through the lives of ordinary people as they raise their families, find love, and endure loss. This play touched me as it showed that there is beauty in even the mundane. I made sure to see the latest rendition of this play on Broadway shortly after I read it.

The Small and the Mighty by Sharon McMahon sheds light on individuals in American history who made significant contributions to our country, but whose names we may not know. One woman...[read on]

About The Baker of Lost Memories, from the publisher:

From the author of A Castle in Brooklyn comes an epic novel spanning decades about the broken bonds of family, memories of war, and redemption and hope in the face of heartbreaking loss.

Growing up in 1960s Brooklyn, Lena wants to be a baker just like her mother was back in Poland prior to World War II. But questions about those days, and about a sister Lena never even knew, are ignored with solemn silence. It’s as if everything her parents left behind was a subject never to be broached.

The one person in whom Lena can confide is her best friend, Pearl. When she suddenly disappears from Lena’s life, Lena forges ahead: college, love and marriage with a wonderful man, the dream of owning a bakery becoming a reality, and the hope that someday Pearl will return to share in Lena’s happiness―and to be there for her during the unexpected losses to come.

Only when Lena discovers the depth of her parents’ anguish, and a startling truth about her own past, can they rebuild a family and overcome the heart-wrenching memories that have torn them apart.

Visit Shirley Wachtel's website.

The Page 69 Test: A Castle in Brooklyn.

My Book, The Movie: A Castle in Brooklyn.

Q&A with Shirley Russak Wachtel.

My Book, The Movie: The Baker of Lost Memories.

Writers Read: Shirley Russak Wachtel.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Gurjinder Basran

From my Q&A with Gurjinder Basran, author of The Wedding: A Novel:

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

The novel’s title, The Wedding, sets the stage for the reader in that this is a book about a lavish week-long modern day Indian wedding. Within the first few pages of the novel —that read like a guest list and a wedding invitation– the reader is invited to witness the secret lives of the wedding party, guests and event staff as told through their unique perspective. Weddings are always full of drama and in that spirit this novel delivers heaps of family drama, necessary comic relief and even a love triangle that keeps the readers guessing “will they or won’t they” get married. Unlike most wedding stories, this isn’t your boy meets girl, romantic comedy, it’s an episodic novel, that when taken together, not only delivers a picture of a wedding but also a portrait of an immigrant community. The Wedding is a love story about family and community and all the ways we need to love and be loved, and the title is meant to evoke the idea of love and the happily ever after we hope...[read on]

Visit Gurjinder Basran's website.

Q&A with Gurjinder Basran.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Chris Pavone's "The Doorman"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Doorman: A Novel by Chris Pavone.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Doorman explores humanity's elite at their lowest under the careful watch of one man. Witty, sharp and twisty, this is perfect for fans of Only Murders in the Building.

A pulse-pounding novel of class, privilege, sex, and murder, from the New York Times bestselling author of Two Nights in Lisbon and The Expats.

Chicky Diaz is everyone’s favorite doorman at the Bohemia, the most famous apartment house in the world, home of celebrities, financiers, and New York’s cultural elite.

Up in the penthouse, Emily Longworth has the perfect-looking everything, all except her husband, whom she’d quietly loathed even before the recent revelations about where all the money comes from. But his wealth is immense, their prenup is iron-clad, and Emily can’t bring herself to leave him. Yet.

And downstairs in 2a, Julian Sonnenberg—who has carved himself a successful niche in the art world, and led a a good half-century of a full and satisfying, cosmopolitan life—has just received a devastating phone call that does nothing at all to alleviate his sense that, probably for better and worse, he has aged out and he’s just not that useful to anyone any more.

Meanwhile, gathered in the Bohemia’s bowels, the building’s almost entirely Black and Hispanic, working-class staff is taking in the news that that just a few miles uptown, a Black man has been killed by the police, leading to a demonstration, a counterdemonstration, and a long night of violence across the tinderbox city.

As Chicky changes into his uniform for tonight’s shift, he finds himself breaking a cardinal rule of the job: tonight, he’ll be carrying a gun, bought only hours earlier, but before he knew of the pandemonium taking over the city. Chicky knows that there’s more going on in his patch of sidewalk in front of the Bohemia than anyone’s aware of. Tonight in the city, enemies will clash, loyalties will be tested, secrets will be revealed—and lives will be lost.

Visit Chris Pavone's website.

See: Chris Pavone: five books that changed me.

Coffee with a Canine: Chris Pavone & Charlie Brown.

The Page 69 Test: The Expats.

The Page 69 Test: The Accident.

The Page 69 Test: The Travelers.

The Page 69 Test: The Paris Diversion.

The Page 69 Test: Two Nights in Lisbon.

The Page 69 Test: The Doorman.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Andrew Hartman's "Karl Marx in America"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Karl Marx in America by Andrew Hartman.

About the book, from the publisher:

The vital and untold story of Karl Marx’s stamp on American life.

To read Karl Marx is to contemplate a world created by capitalism. People have long viewed the United States as the quintessential anti-Marxist nation, but Marx’s ideas have inspired a wide range of people to formulate a more precise sense of the stakes of the American project. Historians have highlighted the imprint made on the United States by Enlightenment thinkers such as Adam Smith, John Locke, and Thomas Paine, but Marx is rarely considered alongside these figures. Yet his ideas are the most relevant today because of capitalism’s centrality to American life.

In Karl Marx in America, historian Andrew Hartman argues that even though Karl Marx never visited America, the country has been infused, shaped, and transformed by him. Since the beginning of the Civil War, Marx has been a specter in the American machine. During the Gilded Age, socialists read Marx as an antidote to the unchecked power of corporations. In the Great Depression, communists turned to Marx in hopes of transcending the destructive capitalist economy. The young activists of the 1960s were inspired by Marx as they gathered to protest an overseas war. Marx’s influence today is evident, too, as Americans have become increasingly attuned to issues of inequality, labor, and power.

After decades of being pushed to the far-left corner of intellectual thought, Marx’s ideologies have crossed over into the mainstream and are more alive than ever. Working-class consciousness is on the rise, and, as Marx argued, the future of a capitalist society rests in the hands of the people who work at the point of production. A valuable resource for anyone interested in Marx’s influence on American political discourse, Karl Marx in America is a thought-provoking account of the past, present, and future of his philosophies in American society.

Learn more about Karl Marx in America at the University of Chicago Press website.

The Page 99 Test: A War for the Soul of America.

The Page 99 Test: Karl Marx in America.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five books that grapple with visions of apocalypse

Martha Park is a writer and illustrator from Memphis, Tennessee. She received an MFA from the Jackson Center for Creative Writing at Hollins University, and was the Spring 2016 Philip Roth Writer-in-Residence at Bucknell University’s Stadler Center for Poetry. She has received fellowships and grants from the Religion & Environment Story Project, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.

Her collaborative illustrated journalism has been recognized with an EPPY Award for Best use of Data/Infographics and was a finalist for the Institute for Nonprofit News’ Insight Award for Visual Journalism.

Park’s work has appeared in Orion, Oxford American, The Guardian, Grist, Guernica, The Bitter Southerner, ProPublica, and elsewhere.

Her new book is World Without End: Essays on Apocalypse and After.

At Lit Hub Park tagged five "books that grapple with—and seek to undermine, complicate, and create new meanings from—visions of apocalypse." One title on the list:

The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing

The book that was my personal gateway drug to apocalyptic nonfiction, The Mushroom at the End of the World is an innovative, layered book that evokes a present world marked by environmental degradation and capitalism, as well as a wide range of possible futures expressed through stories of the matsutake—a highly valuable edible mushroom—and the communities of matsutake pickers Lowenhaupt Tsing encounters in Oregon, China, and Finland.

Short chapters meditating on resurgence, disturbance, notions of progress, and the smell of the matsutake mushroom are broken up by the author’s own tiny line drawings of mushrooms and spores; black and white photographs of Japanese chefs, pickers armed with rifles, and Finnish reindeer; and wide-ranging epigraphs quoting Laotian mushroom buyers, John Cage’s translations of Basho’s poetry, and Samuel Beckett.

An expression of contingency, improvisation, and collaboration, The Mushroom at the End of the World always reshapes my own conceptions of what books can be like, and what stories can do and include, and how life can and will change in the face of catastrophe. “Neither tales of progress nor of ruin tell us how to think about collaborative survival,” Lowenhaupt Tsing writes. “It is time to pay attention to mushroom picking. Not that this will save us—but it might open our imaginations.”

Read about another book on Park's list.

The Page 99 Test: The Mushroom at the End of the World.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top mysteries set in international destinations

Jaclyn Goldis is a graduate of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and NYU School of Law. She practiced estate planning law at a large Chicago firm for seven years before leaving her job to travel the world and write novels. After culling her possessions into only what would fit in a backpack, she traveled for over a year until settling in Tel Aviv, where she can often be found writing from cafés near the beach.

Goldis is the author of The Chateau, The Main Character, and The Safari.

At CrimeReads the author tagged six destination thrillers, including:

We Solve Murders by Richard Osman

A beloved mystery writer and one of my perennial favorites, Richard Osman of The Thursday Murder Club acclaim is back with a new series just as gripping, witty, and wise as his previous, but this time with an international bent. A retired investigator enjoying his quiet countryside life is drawn into murder and mayhem when his daughter-in-law—a private security phenom protecting a mega-bestselling author—puts out an SOS. Together they traverse the world, on a private jet no less, as dead bodies turn up left and right. The characters are endearing and hysterical, firing off snappy dialogue and chasing the bad guys (and being chased in return) across picturesque backdrops. And the mystery is delightful, twisty, and fast-paced, elevated by the bevy of international hijinks. Ten out of ten recommend!

Read about another title on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Frank Krutnik's "Thrillers, Chillers, and Killers"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Thrillers, Chillers, and Killers: Radio and Film Noir by Frank Krutnik.

About the book, from the publisher:

Film noir is one of the most exciting and most debated products of studio-era Hollywood, but did you know that American radio broadcast many programs in the noir vein through the 1940s and 1950s? These included adaptations of such well-known films as The Maltese Falcon, Murder, My Sweet, and Double Indemnity, detective series devoted to the adventures of private eyes Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade, and the spine-tingling anthology programs Lights Out and Suspense. Thrillers, Chillers, and Killers is the first book to explore in detail noir storytelling on the two media, arguing that radio’s noir dramas played an important role as a counterpart to, influence on, or a spin-off from the noir films. Besides shedding new light on long-neglected radio dramas, and a medium that was cinema’s major rival, this scrupulously researched yet accessible study also uses these programs to challenge conventional understandings of the much-debated topic of noir.

Visit Frank Krutnik's website.

The Page 99 Test: Thrillers, Chillers, and Killers.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Paula Bomer's "The Stalker"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Stalker by Paula Bomer.

About the book, from the publisher:

An Untalented Mr. Ripley, a Dumb American Psycho: A young man combines boundless self-confidence with perpetual failure and ineptitude as he tries to manipulate his way into a better life, preying on women in New York City in the early ’90s.

Robert Doughten Savile, aka “Doughty,” is the son of a once-wealthy, now hard-up family from Darien, Connecticut. Doughty lives in a perpetual cloud of delusion, convinced of his own genius and status. While he has little capacity to accurately assess his own abilities or prospects, he cruises through life on the sheer force of his own sense of entitlement, dropping out of college and landing in the early ’90s in New York City, a place brimming with both prosperity and desperation.

He cons his way from a bed at the YMCA into the posh Soho loft of a middle-aged book editor, while pursuing a young bartender, whom he also abuses and gaslights. He spins elaborate tales about his imaginary high-power job in real estate while, in reality, he passes his days watching comedy specials on VHS, smoking crack in Tompkins Square Park, and engaging in occasional sex work in the restrooms of Grand Central Station. His many failures, however, only serve to sharpen his one true gift: Doughty is a skilled predator, and the damage he inflicts on the women around him is real and remorseless. As shocking as it is illuminating, The Stalker confirms Paula Bomer as a contemporary master of the pitch-black comic novel.

Visit Paula Bomer's website.

Writers Read: Paula Bomer (October 2012).

The Page 69 Test: The Stalker.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight funny novels that make light of the writer’s plight

Ashley Whitaker is a writer from Texas. She received her MFA in Prose from the University of Michigan Helen Zell Writers' Program. Her work has appeared in Tin House, StoryQuarterly, and has received support from the Ragdale Foundation. She lives in Austin with her family.

Whitaker's first novel is Bitter Texas Honey.

At Electric Lit the author tagged eight novels that "satirize their main characters’ literary ambitions. Each ... features a writer main character at varying career stages, battling against their own ego." One title on the list:

Perfume and Pain by Anna Dorn

In Dorn’s sharp, hilarious, and compulsively readable tale of lesbian chaos, 35-year-old novelist Astrid Dahl is struggling to write her fourth book. She longs for the naïve confidence she possessed in her twenties, and finds herself crippled in the wake of the criticism she’s received after being politically incorrect at a Barnes and Noble event. Dorn’s handling of Astrid’s authorly ego is delightfully ironic and embarrassingly relatable. People with healthy egos don’t become writers, Astrid muses early on. They become engineers.

Read about another novel on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Thomas A. Tweed's "Religion in the Lands That Became America"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Religion in the Lands That Became America: A New History by Thomas A. Tweed.

About the book, from the publisher:

A sweeping retelling of American religious history, showing how religion has enhanced and hindered human flourishing from the Ice Age to the Information Age

Until now, the standard narrative of American religious history has begun with English settlers in Jamestown or Plymouth and remained predominantly Protestant and Atlantic. Driven by his strong sense of the historical and moral shortcomings of the usual story, Thomas A. Tweed offers a very different narrative in this ambitious new history. He begins the story much earlier—11,000 years ago—at a rock shelter in present-day Texas and follows Indigenous Peoples, African Americans, transnational migrants, and people of many faiths as they transform the landscape and confront the big lifeway transitions, from foraging to farming and from factories to fiber optics.

Setting aside the familiar narrative themes, he highlights sustainability, showing how religion both promoted and inhibited individual, communal, and environmental flourishing during three sustainability crises: the medieval Cornfield Crisis, which destabilized Indigenous ceremonial centers; the Colonial Crisis, which began with the displacement of Indigenous Peoples and the enslavement of Africans; and the Industrial Crisis, which brought social inequity and environmental degradation. The unresolved Colonial and Industrial Crises continue to haunt the nation, Tweed suggests, but he recovers historical sources of hope as he retells the rich story of America’s religious past.

Learn more about Religion in the Lands That Became America at the Yale University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: America's Church.

The Page 99 Test: Religion in the Lands That Became America.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight top historical fiction titles set in America’s Chinatowns

At Book Riot Courtney Rodgers tagged eight works of historical fiction set in America’s varied Chinatowns. One title on the list:

City of Dragons by Kelli Stanley

During Chinatown New Year’s festivities, private investigator Miranda Corbie witnesses the death of Eddie Takahashi. Sure it’s a murder, Miranda informs the police and also decides to investigate on her own. Miranda’s other cases begin to intersect in a bizarre, sinister puzzle. First in a mystery series, City of Dragons takes readers through the bustling streets of 1940s San Francisco’s Chinatown.

Read about another book on the list.

The Page 69 Test: City of Dragons.

My Book, The Movie: City of Dragons.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Alex Foster's "Circular Motion"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Circular Motion by Alex Foster.

About the book, from the publisher:

A brilliantly imagined literary debut of love, despair, and two people’s search for belonging in a world literally spinning out of control

The acceleration of Earth’s spin begins gradually. At first, days are just a few seconds shorter than normal. Awareness of the mysterious phenomenon hasn’t reached Tanner, a young man preoccupied with dreams of escaping his tiny Alaskan hometown. One night, desperate to make his mark on the world, he runs away. He lands an unlikely job at CWC, the operator of a network of massive aircraft that orbit the Earth at 30,000 feet, revolutionizing global transportation. Now goods and people can travel anywhere in little more than an hour—you can visit Paris for an evening or order sushi from Japan. But just as Tanner settles into his new life and begins to consider if his feelings for a male colleague might be more than platonic, CWC is shaken by a wave of social unrest and protest.

That unrest sweeps up Winnie. A high school outcast in an era of street protests, wild parties, and online savagery, Winnie falls in with a group of teen activists who blame CWC for the planet’s acceleration. As days on Earth quicken to twenty-three hours, then twenty, the sun rising and setting ever faster, causing violent storms and political meltdowns, Tanner and Winnie’s stories spiral closer together. They meet cynical executives toiling to forestall the crises they created and religious zealots for whom the apocalypse can’t come soon enough, lobbyists and lovers all coping in their own ways, and Victor Bickle—the self-aggrandizing TV scientist whose shameful secret will bind Tanner and Winnie’s fates . . . if they can uncover it before the Earth spins so fast that even gravity might lose its grip.

Three-hour days. Two-hour days . . .

A propulsive exploration of capitalism, technology, and our place within a system that dwarfs us, Circular Motion is one of the most ingenious debut novels of our time.

Visit Alex Foster's website.

The Page 69 Test: Circular Motion.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Greta Lynn Uehling's "Decolonizing Ukraine"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Decolonizing Ukraine: How the Indigenous People of Crimea Remade Themselves after Russian Occupation by Greta Lynn Uehling.

About the book, from the publisher:

In this ground-breaking book, distinguished anthropologist Greta Lynn Uehling illuminates the untold stories of Russia’s occupation of Crimea from 2014 to the present, revealing the traumas of colonization, foreign occupation, and population displacement. Drawing upon extensive fieldwork in Ukraine, including over 90 personal interviews, Uehling brings her readers into the lives of people who opposed Russia’s Crimean operation, many of whom fled for government-controlled Ukraine. Via the narratives of people who traversed perilous geographies and world-altering events, Uehling traces the development of a new sense of social cohesion that encompasses diverse ethnic and religious groups. The result is a compelling story—one of resilience, transformation, and ultimately, the unwavering pursuit of freedom and autonomy for Ukraine, regardless of ethnicity or race. Decolonizing Ukraine: The Indigenous People of Crimea and Pathways to Freedom demonstrates how understanding Crimea is essential to understanding Ukraine – and the war with Russia – today.

Visit Greta Uehling's website.

The Page 99 Test: Everyday War.

The Page 99 Test: Decolonizing Ukraine.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven top novels featuring imposters among us

Allison Buccola is the author of The Ascent and Catch Her When She Falls.

She has a JD from the University of Chicago and lives in the Chicago suburbs with her husband and their two young children.

[Q&A with Allison Buccola; The Page 69 Test: Catch Her When She Falls; Writers Read: Allison Buccola; The Page 69 Test: The Ascent]

At CrimeReads Buccola tagged "seven books that play with identity in a variety of fun ways and feature some of the different types of imposters that appear in thrillers." One title on the list:

Trust Issues (Elizabeth McCullough Keenan and Greg Wands): The Black Widower.

One specific—and deeply troubling—type of con artist is the black widow or widower. In Elizabeth McCullough Kennan and Greg Wand’s Trust Issues, influencer Hazel and food photographer/party boy drug dealer Kagan Bailey were both counting on a sizable inheritance when their mother died. They’re shocked to learn that she left them nothing but money for rehab, and the siblings begin to question whether their mother’s new husband is as harmless as he seems. The black widower often takes advantage of preexisting tensions in the family—and dysfunctional family dynamics abound here, with Succession-like tension between the siblings.

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Shirley Russak Wachtel's "The Baker of Lost Memories," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Baker of Lost Memories: A Novel by Shirley Russak Wachtel.

The entry begins:

My book, The Baker of Lost Memories, is about Lena, the daughter of Holocaust survivors, Anya and Josef. Her parents were once bakers in their own shop in Lodz, Poland before World War II. Working alongside them was their young daughter Ruby, who had a club foot but was perfect in every other way. After tragedy occurs and Anya and Josef make a new home in America, their daughter Lena has questions about the sister she never knew, questions which are mostly met with silence. She feeds a desire to be a baker like her sister to gain her parents’ love. She finds herself confiding in her best friend, Pearl, but when Pearl disappears, Lena builds a new life, marrying and becoming a baker in her own right. Yet she still struggles with gaining her parents’ approval. Only when another unexpected tragedy occurs and Lena finds out about some buried truths, can she rebuild the family she has always needed.

Here is how I would cast the movie version of my book:

Lena—Joey King: Joey has wide dimension as an actress, most recently proven in her role as Halina in the TV drama, We Were the Lucky Ones.

Anya—Kate Winslet: She is a...[read on]

Visit Shirley Wachtel's website.

The Page 69 Test: A Castle in Brooklyn.

My Book, The Movie: A Castle in Brooklyn.

Q&A with Shirley Russak Wachtel.

My Book, The Movie: The Baker of Lost Memories.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Kevin M. McGeough's "Readers of the Lost Ark"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Readers of the Lost Ark: Imagining the Ark of the Covenant from Ancient Times to the Present by Kevin M. McGeough.

About the book, from the publisher:

The sacred chest said to have been built by the Israelites to house the stone tablets on which the Ten Commandments were written, the Ark of the Covenant has long captured the popular imagination. According to the Bible, the Israelites carried it with them as they wandered in the wilderness and entered the promised land. After the Temple of Solomon was built, the Ark was kept in an inner sanctum where God made his divine presence felt to the Israelites. The Hebrew Bible is unclear about what happened to the Ark after the destruction of the temple and offers vague accounts of its function. Despite (or because of) this ambiguity, the Ark continues to hold an important place in Jewish and Christian tradition, even in its absence, and has led to much popular speculation. Widely imagined and re-imagined, it is perhaps today best known in popular culture as the object sought by Indiana Jones in the 1981 film Raiders of the Lost Ark.

In Readers of the Lost Ark Kevin McGeough explores the different ways people have interpreted and made sense of the Ark from ancient times to the present, in biblical literature, theological discourse, art, popular film, travel souvenirs, toys, faith-healing events, and alternative histories. The book recounts stories of people who have sought to find the Ark of the Covenant and examines how the Ark takes on new meanings in Europe, North America, East Asia, Ethiopia, and the modern Middle East.

Learn more about Readers of the Lost Ark at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Readers of the Lost Ark.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten realist novels that integrate futuristic topics

Fred Lunzer is a writer based in London, with a background in AI research and strategy. He grew up in London and Tokyo, and speaks Japanese. He writes literary fiction novels and short stories, as well as essays and reviews.

Sike, Lunzer's debut novel, is about a young man using an AI psychotherapist to navigate his relationships.

At Electric Lit the author tagged ten novels by "authors [who] write realistically while contending with the futuristic topics the 21st century throws our way." One title on the list:

The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami

Laila Lalami’s latest novel is a surveillance dystopia. The protagonist Sara is detained for a crime she is predicted to commit. Data has been mined from her dreams, and the “Risk Assessment Administration” has determined she might kill her husband. She is put into a retention centre away from her children, and her every move is tracked, the data fed into her risk score. She is meant to stay there twenty-one days, but months later there is no hint of release.

The taste of dystopia could overpower any flavor of realism, but Lalami’s villains use technology that would look normal, even old hat, in the latest Apple product launch. Everything feels plausible, even the dream readers, even the interpretation of all the tracking, done by “agents who cared only about the data, not about the truth.”

The uncanniness goes deeper. The legitimate fears of inmates echo the day-to-day paranoia of real life. Have you ever acted differently upon seeing a CCTV camera? Even when doing nothing wrong, Sara fabricates movements for the Guardian cameras that monitor the centre, lest she “convey unintended meaning.” Dissociation through video happens again—more perniciously, more recognizably—during a call between Sara and her husband. The mundane tension of it is chilling. He is moving around his office, she is at her lowest ebb. “Now isn’t a good time for me to chat,” he says. “I’m really busy…”

Read about another novel on Lunzer's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven top books about the wives of Henry VIII

Martha Jean Johnson is a writer of fiction and non-fiction and the author of a series of books and articles on public opinion and public policy. The Queen’s Musician is her debut novel. She also reviews trends in historical fiction and discusses her own love of reading and writing in her biweekly blog, Historical Magic. She currently divides her time between writing and her work with the National Issues Forums Institute, an organization that encourages civil discourse and nonpartisan deliberation on national and local issues.

During a long public policy career, Johnson analyzed and reported on American public thinking, working with noted social analyst and public opinion pioneer, Daniel Yankelovich. She has published articles in USA Today and The Huffington Post and appeared on CNN, MSNBC, and PBS. She is the author of a series of nonfiction paperbacks on major political issues, co-authored with Scott Bittle.

At The Nerd Daily Johnson tagged seven books for fans of Six the Musical. One title on the list:

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

This first novel in Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell trilogy won the prestigious Booker Prize. In it, Henry’s exceedingly clever counselor helps oust Katherine of Aragon so the king can marry Anne Boleyn. But three years later, Anne hasn’t had a son either. Cromwell senses the shift in the wind. Mantel’s writing is propulsive, and her dialogue shimmers with acerbic wit. She promotes a revisionist view of Cromwell who is generally depicted as treacherous. Was he a civilized man trying to manage a volatile king or a consigliere pursuing his own ends?

Read about another entry on the list.

Wolf Hall made Tom Lamont's top five list of books featuring unconventional families, the Amazon Book Review editors' list of twelve of their favorite long books, Mark Skinner's top ten list of books featuring English and British monarchs, Emily Mitchell's list of five of the best historical novels to remind you how strange the past really was, Jody Hadlock's list of nine historical novels featuring real people as main characters, Benjamin Myers's top ten list of mentors in fiction, Jessie Burton's list of eleven of the best books about/with cats, Pete Buttigieg’s ten favorite books list, Ruby Bentall's six best books list, Rula Lenska's six favorite books list, Deborah Cadbury's top ten list of books about royal families, Peter Stanford's top ten list of Protestants in fiction, Melissa Harrsion's ten top depictions of British rain, the Telegraph's list of the 21 greatest television adaptations of novels, BBC Culture's list of the 21st century’s twelve greatest novels, Ester Bloom's ten list of books for fans of the television series House of Cards, Rachel Cantor's list of the ten worst jobs in books, Kathryn Williams's reading list on pride, the Barnes & Noble Review's list of books on baby-watching in Great Britain, Julie Buntin's top ten list of literary kids with deadbeat and/or absent dads, Hermione Norris's 6 best books list, John Mullan's list of ten of the best cardinals in literature, the Barnes & Noble Review's list of five books on dangerous minds and Lev Grossman's list of the top ten fiction books of 2009, and is one of Geraldine Brooks's favorite works of historical fiction; Matt Beynon Rees called it "[s]imply the best historical novel for many, many years."

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Tiffany D. Joseph's "Not All In"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Not All In: Race, Immigration, and Health Care Exclusion in the Age of Obamacare by Tiffany D. Joseph.

About the book, from the publisher:

Examines how health policy shifts fail to fully serve immigrant communities due to structural racism and anti-immigrant rhetoric and enforcement measures.

Despite progressive policy strides in health care reform, immigrant communities continue to experience stark disparities across the United States. In Not All In, Tiffany D. Joseph exposes the insidious contradiction of Massachusetts' advanced health care system and the exclusionary experiences of its immigrant communities.

Joseph illustrates how patients' race, ethnicity, and legal status determine their access to health coverage and care services, revealing a disturbing paradox where policy advances and individual experiences drastically diverge. Examining Boston's Brazilian, Dominican, and Salvadoran communities, this book provides an exhaustive analysis spanning nearly a decade to highlight the profound impacts of the Affordable Care Act and subsequent policy shifts on these marginalized groups.

Not All In is a critical examination of the systemic barriers that perpetuate health care disparities. Joseph challenges readers to confront the uncomfortable truths about racialized legal status and its profound implications on health care access. This essential book illuminates the complexities of policy implementation and advocates for more inclusive reforms that genuinely cater to all. Urging policymakers, health care providers, and activists to rethink strategies that bridge the gap between legislation and life, this book reminds us that in the realm of health care, being progressive is not synonymous with inclusivity.

Visit Tiffany D. Joseph's website.

The Page 99 Test: Race on the Move.

The Page 99 Test: Not All In.

--Marshal Zeringue