Alie Dumas-Heidt's "The Myth Maker," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Alie Dumas-Heidt's The Myth Maker: A Novel.

The entry begins:

I assembled a dream cast for The Myth Maker while I was writing the first draft. I went through my character list and assigned a face to each role. It wasn’t just a fun exercise – although it is fun to play that game! – it helps me visualize how the characters move around in their environment and interact physically with others.

My cast list still exists and most of the side characters have remained the same for years. Timothy Olyphant is who I imagined as I constructed FBI Agent Cole MacAllan, with the perfect amount of serious and tired. Christopher Gorham in his role of Augie on Covert Affairs made him the perfect Jamie Cantwell for me. Jamie is Cassidy’s twin, older by thirteen minutes, and I think Gorham would be perfect as her concerned older brother.

Michael Peña easily takes the role of Cassidy’s partner, Bryan Ramirez, for me. I’ve seen him play characters on both sides of the law, but there is a coolness he has that resonates with the character of Bryan. FBI Agent Phoenix Rhys was probably the hardest for me to cast, but I eventually landed on...[read on]

Visit Alie Dumas-Heidt's website.

Q&A with Alie Dumas-Heidt.

Writers Read: Alie Dumas-Heidt.

My Book, The Movie: The Myth Maker.

--Marshal Zeringue

Twelve of the best LA books

David Gordon was born in New York City. His first novel, The Serialist, won the VCU/Cabell First Novel Award and was a finalist for an Edgar Award. It was also made into a major motion picture in Japan. His work has also appeared in The Paris Review, The New York Times, Purple, and Fence, among other publications.

[The Page 69 Test: The Serialist; The Page 69 Test: Mystery Girl; The Page 69 Test: White Tiger on Snow Mountain; Writers Read: David Gordon (August 2019); The Page 69 Test: The Hard Stuff; Q&A with David Gordon; The Page 69 Test: The Wild Life]

Gordon's new novel is Behind Sunset.

At The Strand Magazine he tagged twelve favorite Los Angeles books. One title on the list:

The Black Echo – Michael Connelly

This novel, Connelly’s debut, begins the saga of Harry Hieronymous Bosch, a Hollywood homicide detective, driven by his own demons and on a holy crusade to seek justice, especially for the forgotten, like his own mother, a prostitute slain on the same LA streets he now guards.

Read about another book on Gordon's list.

Harry Bosch is among Alan Parks's top ten cops in fiction and Jeff Somers's six fictional cops who do things according to their own set of rules.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Gary A. O’Dell's "Reinventing the American Thoroughbred"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Reinventing the American Thoroughbred: The Arabian Adventures of Alexander Keene Richards by Gary A. O'Dell.

About the book, from the publisher:

Most equine authorities consider Alexander Keene Richards (1827–1881) one of the nineteenth century’s most significant Thoroughbred importers and breeders. Born in Georgetown, Kentucky, and orphaned as a toddler, Richards was adopted by his grandfather, from whom he inherited not only the family farm in Georgetown but also Transylvania, a cotton plantation in East Carroll Parish, Louisiana. Horses fascinated Richards from an early age, and as his passion deepened, he became convinced that the key to improving the stamina of the Thoroughbred, in an era when American racing consisted of grueling long-distance competitions, was to crossbreed American horses with the magnificent steeds of the Middle East.

As Reinventing the American Thoroughbred recounts, Richards traveled thousands of miles on expeditions into the heart of Syria to obtain Arabian stock of the purest blood. He became the first American―indeed the first Westerner―to venture into the desert to bargain directly with nomadic tribesmen for their horses. Richards transported the animals back to his grandfather’s farm near Georgetown, which he transformed into a premier breeding establishment called Blue Grass Park. He also used his Transylvania plantation in Louisiana for similar purposes. Richards relied on Ansel Williamson, an enslaved horse trainer, to prepare his Thoroughbreds for racing. Williamson developed a reputation as one of the best handlers in the nation.

The Civil War interrupted Richards’s equine breeding experiment. Dependent on southern cotton produced by enslaved labor for his wealth, Richards sided with the Confederacy and was appointed volunteer aide-de-camp by General John C. Breckinridge. During his brief military career, he served at Vicksburg and later in the attack on Baton Rouge. In late 1862, he received Breckinridge’s permission to travel to England to purchase artillery for the general’s Kentucky brigade. Richards remained in London for the remainder of the war, returning to the United States after receiving amnesty. Bankrupt, he spent the rest of his life attempting to rebuild Blue Grass Park as a nationally recognized Thoroughbred facility.

Richards’s life story, chronicled here for the first time by Gary A. O’Dell, is an epic tale of adventure, experimentation, and devastation that illuminates the grand history of the American Thoroughbred industry in fresh and fascinating ways.

Visit Gary A. O'Dell's website.

The Page 99 Test: Reinventing the American Thoroughbred.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Samuel Hawley's "Daikon"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Daikon: A Novel by Samuel Hawley.

About the book, from the publisher:

A sweeping and suspenseful novel of love and war, set in Japan during the final days of World War II, with a shocking historical premise: three atomic bombs were actually delivered to the Pacific—not two—and when one of them falls into the hands of the Japanese, the fate of a couple that has been separated from one another becomes entangled with the fate of this terrifying new device.

War has taken everything from physicist Keizo Kan. His young daughter was killed in the Great Tokyo Air Raid, and now his Japanese American wife, Noriko, has been imprisoned by the brutal Thought Police. An American bomber, downed over Japan on the first day of August 1945, offers the scientist a surprising chance at salvation. The Imperial Army dispatches him to examine an unusual device recovered from the plane’s wreckage—a bomb containing uranium—and tells him that if he can unlock its mysteries, his wife will be released.

Working in secrecy under crushing pressure, Kan begins to disassemble the bomb and study its components. One of his assistants falls ill after mishandling the uranium, but his alarming deterioration, and Kan’s own symptoms, are ignored by the commanding officer demanding results. Desperate to stave off Japan’s surrender to the Allies, the army will stop at nothing to harness the weapon’s unimaginable power. They order Kan to prepare the bomb for manual detonation over a target—a suicide mission that will strike a devastating blow against the Americans. Kan is soon confronted with a series of agonizing decisions that will test his courage, his loyalty, and his very humanity.

An extraordinary debut novel that is the result of twenty-seven years of work by its author, Daikon is a gripping and powerfully moving saga that calls to mind such classics as Cold Mountain. It is set amid the chaos and despair of the world’s third largest city lying in ruins, its population starving and its leadership under escalating assault from without and within. Here is a haunting epic of love, survival, and impossible choices that introduces a singular new voice on the literary landscape.

Visit Samuel Hawley's website.

The Page 69 Test: Daikon.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Terrence McCauley

From my Q&A with Terrence McCauley, author The Twilight Town:

What's in a name?

The names of characters are very important to me, but they’re never set in stone. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve had a character’s name in my head while thinking about a story, only for it to change as soon as my fingers hit the keyboard. It sounds odd, but my characters tend to tell me what their names are.

In The Twilight Town: A Dallas ’63 Novel, Dan Wilson was an exception. His name didn’t change from my mind to the page. I wanted something clear and recognizable that could fit in everywhere. It wasn’t too ethnic, but decidedly American. That’s what I was going for in that particular story.

But The Twilight Town characters offered me a unique challenge. It’s a novel about the JFK assassination and includes many characters from real life. I used only real names in the first draft, but decided to change them later on. I did this to avoid readers pointing out factual inconsistencies in the story. I wanted to avoid criticism, such as ‘Captain Westbrook didn’t look like that’ or ‘those two people never met in Dallas’. The book is a fictionalized account of an actual event based on a lot of research, but I changed certain names to make sure the truth didn’t get in the way of a good story.

I kept some names the same, of course, like Oswald and Ruby. They’re both pillars of the event, so...[read on]

Visit Terrence McCauley's website.

My Book, The Movie: A Conspiracy of Ravens.

The Page 69 Test: A Conspiracy of Ravens.

Writers Read: Terrence McCauley (October 2017).

The Page 69 Test: The Twilight Town.

My Book, The Movie: The Twilight Town.

Q&A with Terrence McCauley.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Mary Anne Trasciatti's "Elizabeth Gurley Flynn"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn: The Rebel Girl, Democracy, and Revolution by Mary Anne Trasciatti.

About the book, from the publisher:

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was involved in almost every major campaign of the U.S. Left in the first two thirds of the twentieth century. An outstanding orator, writer, and tactician, Flynn is one of the most important figures in the history of the American labor movement. Inspired by the Irish freedom struggle and appalled by the exploitation and grinding poverty she saw around her, she devoted her life to the advancement of civil liberties. Here, Mary Anne Trasciatti traces Flynn’s personal and political life to explore the broader social issues of a fraught era.

Born in 1890, Flynn began her activist career by joining the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) when she was just sixteen, and she ended it as the first female chair of the American Communist Party, a position she held from 1961 until her death in 1964. In the intervening years she organized workers into unions, led strikes, championed women’s rights, supported anti-imperialist movements around the globe, protested deportation, advocated for prison reform, and fought for Black liberation. Above all, she showed absolute devotion to workers and their struggles.

Slandered as an “un-American” in the anticommunist fervor of the 1940s and 1950s, Flynn was eventually ousted from the very organization she helped found, the American Civil Liberties Union, and imprisoned for two years. Though her own movement abandoned her, her commitment to the cause never wavered. This stirring biography illuminates Flynn’s inspiring life and worldview and returns her to her rightful place at the heart of labor and civil liberties history.

Learn more about Elizabeth Gurley Flynn at the Rutgers University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight top novels featuring age-gap relationships

Hattie Williams began pursuing a music career in her teens and toured Europe extensively, making three studio albums and working as a composer before finding her way to book publishing (quite by accident). She spent the next twelve years working with some of the biggest authors in the world, and she is the former producer of the Iceland Noir Literary Festival, which takes place in Reykjavík every November. Williams continues to feed her creativity through her writing from her home in East London, where she lives with her partner and daughter.

Williams's new novel is Bitter Sweet.

At Lit Hub she tagged eight of her favorite age gap relationship novels, including:

Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends

Nick and Frances, Frances and Nick. Ten years apart, yet both with the emotionally maturity of fifteen-year-olds. I love Rooney’s writing and this is her at her best, unravelling her characters slowly and with such restraint that it is impossible to look away.

Something about this particular relationship makes for very uncomfortable reading; the relationship is always slightly out of reach for both these characters, and the infidelity adds such tension. We also have Nick’s wife Meliisa, who again, is slightly older, and her relationship with Frances’ ex, Bobbi.

So many wonderful age gap and power dynamics going on in this novel that really set the tone for a whole generation of writers to come.

Read about another novel on Williams's list.

Conversations With Friends is among Michaela Makusha's five top books about female friendship and B&N Reads's fifteen top books about unforgettable friendships.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Alie Dumas-Heidt reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Alie Dumas-Heidt, author of The Myth Maker: A Novel.

Her entry begins:

I am currently reading two very different books right now, which I do to myself often. I have an older cozy mystery called The Quiche of Death by M.C. Beaton, and Evil Eye by Etaf Rum.

The Quiche of Death is the first in the Agatha Raisin cozy series that started in the 90's. I jumped into the books after watching the show on the BBC. It's a fun read with a spirited leading lady, Agatha Raisin, who leaves a successful PR career and unwittingly becomes a super sleuth in the Cotswolds. It is a little sassier than other cozy reads, but the sass feels true to the characters. I love how the side characters and the town itself add to the story and it's been my...[read on]

About The Myth Maker, from the publisher:

Someone is killing women and staging their bodies in strange, evocative scenes in this Greek-mythology-inspired serial killer thriller perfect, for fans of Alex Michaelides and Tana French.

Cassidy Cantwell has devoted her life to becoming a detective, never forgetting the cold case that has influenced her entire career: the unsolved murder of her best friend. Cassidy tries to balance her demanding job with her suffocatingly close-knit family and her increasingly clingy boyfriend, but when a strange new murder case comes across her desk, she’s determined to solve it, especially when it turns out the victim was the wife of her college ex-boyfriend.

While Cassidy’s partner, Bryan, works to prove that her ex is their suspect, Cassidy can’t shake the feeling that there’s something more to the case that they’re not seeing. After the medical examiner finds a strange ring among the victim’s personal effects that the husband insists didn’t belong to his wife, Cassidy is struck by similarly odd details from a previous crime scene—details that seem to have an uncanny connection to a Greek myth.

When another body attracts public attention and the FBI joins the hunt, the case gets increasingly complicated–and solving it seems further and further out of reach. With anonymous taunts about her best friend’s death dragging her attention away, Cassidy finds herself pulled in different directions–sacrifice her personal life for the sake of her career, or put everything she has into finding years-old answers to a case that haunts her still.

And the killer behind the murders isn’t done yet.

Visit Alie Dumas-Heidt's website.

Q&A with Alie Dumas-Heidt.

Writers Read: Alie Dumas-Heidt.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Elisabeth Rhoads's "Haggard House"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Haggard House by Elisabeth Rhoads.

About the book, from the publisher:

1859. The village of Nomaton, Michigan.

After a reclusive childhood within the dank walls of Haggard House, Adam Bolton, at the age of eleven, is finally allowed to attend the village school, providing he obeys his mother, Sarai's, injunction. Against all outward influence, he must: "Keep to the straight and narrow." An easy bidding, until Adam meets Penny, his bright-eyed, bright-spirited classmate. Frightened of the consequences their friendship threatens, Adam builds another Haggard House-only this one in his mind-and keeps Penny there, safe from his zealot mother; safe from himself.

Only, secrets, Adam ought to know, belong to God. Restless and heartsore, Adam's narrow path suddenly widens. Now a young man, he finds himself traveling West, meeting the world for the first time, a difficult place to keep promises.

Burning with the flame of free will, Adam can no longer restrain himself from the woman he loves. But as he returns to Nomaton, so does Sarai's dark influence, and Adam is forced to face the decaying house within-a house ready to collapse at any moment.

Visit Elisabeth Rhoads's website.

The Page 69 Test: Haggard House.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Tom Parr's "Empowering Workers in an Age of Automation"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Empowering Workers in an Age of Automation: Social Justice, Technology, and the Future of Work by Tom Parr.

About the book, from the publisher:

Empowering Workers in an Age of Automation explores how labour market policymakers should respond to the threats and opportunities that arise from automation, artificial intelligence, and other forms of technological progress. The book's aim is twofold. First, it is to develop and defend a novel philosophical framework for theorizing about the demands of social justice in the labour market, which Parr calls 'the empowerment model'. At the heart of this view is a concern for fairness and, more specifically, a concern for the growing inequality in prospects between members of the working-class and their middle- and upper-class counterparts. Second, it is to examine a range of concrete political controversies relating to labour markets and the future of work in the light of the empowerment model. The analysis presented is wide-ranging, and includes discussion of technological unemployment, the four day work week, the gender earnings gap, working from home, and role of higher education.

Throughout the text, Parr is keen to caution against sensationalist narratives, and instead emphasizes the more prosaic but still hugely consequential ways in which technology is changing how we work. To do this, he draws on a wealth of empirical research, and extensively from findings in labour economics. The result is a book that takes seriously, and aims to shed light on, some of the most pressing challenges that we actually face.

Visit Tom Parr's website.

The Page 99 Test: Empowering Workers in an Age of Automation.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top books to understand Middle Eastern Muslims

Donna Lee Bowen, Professor Emerita of Political Science and Near Eastern Studies at Brigham Young University, is co-editor of Everyday Life in the Muslim Middle East.

At Shepherd she taggd five of the best books to understand Middle Easterners and their lives in the Muslim Middle East. One title on the list:

Guests of the Sheik: An Ethnography of an Iraqi Village by Elizabeth Warnock Fernea

When I first lived in the Middle East, I realized that I had to learn a whole new framework of customs, practices, and expectations if I wanted to fit in. This book is still the best guide to values and practices, despite many changes since it was written.

Newly-married to a graduate student in anthropology at the University of Chicago, Elizabeth Fernea traveled to a Shia Muslim village in faraway Iraq in the mid-1960s. While Bob Fernea sets out to meet the officials in the town and surrounding area, Elizabeth is isolated in a small house, hindered by little local Arabic and being new and foreign as she works to make friends. The most respected and powerful man in the village is the local sheikh.

Unfortunately, Elizabeth doesn’t know what proper behavior for a sheltered Iraqi wife would be, and normal behavior for an American graduate student’s wife can be scandalous. As she learns how to live as a proper Iraqi woman, she teaches her readers that reputation and honor—all brought by proper behavior—brings status and esteem.

Elizabeth (known by her nickname B.J.) brings up all that I wanted to know about living in the Middle East with total honesty and humor. Elizabeth questions how she should act, what she should wear, and what is acceptable behavior.

In order to support her husband’s position in the village, she first learned and then adapted to local customs in dress, behavior, and housekeeping. She develops friendships with curious neighbors, and they teach her how a proper woman runs a household.

I found this book to be entertaining and a delight to read, as well as introducing me to traditional norms of behavior in the region. As Elizabeth learns how to live as a respected resident of her village, I likewise learned answers to many of the questions I had about how Middle Easterners live and what is important to them.

Read about another book on Bowen's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Terrence McCauley's "The Twilight Town," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Twilight Town by Terrence McCauley.

The entry begins:

The Twilight Town is a fast-paced, hardboiled thriller ripped from the pages of history. It’s Dallas, 1963 and Dan Wilson is a Dallas PD detective with something to hide. He’s secretly helping Bobby Kennedy’s FBI investigate police corruption between Captain Eastbrook and the Dallas mob. But Wilson isn’t doing it out of the goodness of his heart. He’s got his sights set on Washington and becoming an FBI man. Officer JD Tippit is Wilson’s ex-partner. He has bills to pay, troubles at home and a career that’s going nowhere fast. He has nothing to lose when he agrees to help Wilson dig up dirt on the department’s top brass. They catch a break when they find a scared young man caught up in the Dallas underworld. His name is Lee Oswald. Officer Harry Denton never met a corner he couldn’t cut. A proud member of Captain Eastbrook’s cadre of crooked cops, he’ll do anything to protect his boss and keep the river of dirty money flowing through the department.

Wilson, Tippit and Denton soon lose their way in a shadow world of mob bosses, bigots, bureaucrats and power brokers named Ruby, Marcello, Walker, Hoover and Kennedy. In a sweeping saga that spans the seedy strip joints of Dallas to the halls of power in Washington, these three cops are on a collision course with history. And not all of them will make it out alive.

Here's how I would cast my book:

Dan Wilson – Garrett Hedlund (from Tulsa King)

Connie Wilson – Jessica Chastain (Zero Dark Thirty, The Help)

JD Tippit – Glen...[read on]

Visit Terrence McCauley's website.

My Book, The Movie: A Conspiracy of Ravens.

The Page 69 Test: A Conspiracy of Ravens.

Writers Read: Terrence McCauley (October 2017).

The Page 69 Test: The Twilight Town.

My Book, The Movie: The Twilight Town.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Kashana Cauley

From my Q&A with Kashana Cauley, author of The Payback: A Novel:

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

So far people associate The Payback with the James Brown song of the same name, which is correct. James Brown is singing about getting revenge on someone who crossed him, and The Payback is also a revenge story. My editor and I went through many titles, but when the book went out on submission, before it sold, its working title was Student Loan Payback. No matter how many titles my editor and I went through, I remember both of us gravitating towards the idea of payback over and over again. I like payback because it has the double meaning of what you’re supposed to do with your student loans as well as revenge, so it captures...[read on]

Visit Kashana Cauley's website.

Q&A with Kashana Cauley.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Anthea Kraut's "Hollywood Dance-ins and the Reproduction of Bodies"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Hollywood Dance-ins and the Reproduction of Bodies by Anthea Kraut.

About the book, from the publisher:

Hollywood Dance-ins and the Reproduction of Bodies proposes that a figure who barely registers in film studies or dance studies offers valuable insight into ideas about "the body" and the reproductive labor that gives rise to images of bodies. The book is the first scholarly study of the dance-in, a dancer who executes a star's choreography as cameras are being focused and lights are being set. While they share similarities with doubles and stand-ins, dance-ins do not replace stars' bodies on screen and they often serve multiple unseen roles, including as choreographers' assistants and stars' coaches, making them vital to the creation and transmission of choreography.

Focusing on dance-ins in mid-twentieth century Hollywood, when film musicals and the studio system were at their height, author Anthea Kraut exposes the racialized and gendered "corporeal ecosystem" that operated behind the scenes, propping up and concealed behind the seeming self-referentiality of white stars' filmic dancing bodies. A production history informed by feminist materialist approaches to labor and critical race theory, Hollywood Dance-ins tells the stories of the 1940s white pin-up star Betty Grable's dependence on her white dance-in Angie Blue; the African American jazz dancer Marie Bryant's private coaching of a myriad of stars in the late 1940s and early 1950s; Carol Haney and Jeanne Coyne's training of the white ingénue Debbie Reynolds for Singin' in the Rain (1952); the Mexican American dancer Alex Romero's close partnership with the white star Gene Kelly; and the biracial star Nancy Kwan's on- and off-screen exchanges with a white production team and Asian/American ensemble members in Flower Drum Song (1961).

Learn more about Hollywood Dance-ins and the Reproduction of Bodies at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Hollywood Dance-ins and the Reproduction of Bodies.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight top twisty crime thrillers

Elisa Shoenberger is a freelance writer and journalist. At Book Riot she tagged "eight crime thrillers with incredible twists that will have you guessing and holding your breath to the last page." One title on the list:

Almost Surely Dead by Amina Akhtar

They say life can change on a dime, and Dunia Ahmed is proof of that. One day while waiting for a train, a man tried to throw her into its path before committing the same act to himself. Dunia thought it might be just a one off thing. But then another person tries to kill her and then another. Now Dunia is missing. Did one of her would-be assassins succeed? The story follows a crime podcast trying to get to the bottom of what happened to Dunia and why people were trying to kill her.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Spencer Quinn's "Mrs. Plansky Goes Rogue"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Mrs. Plansky Goes Rogue by Spencer Quinn.

About the book, from the publisher:

This tale of the irresistible and unforgettable Mrs. Plansky, "a terrific character" (Stephen King), will lead her up and down coastal Florida and beyond in a brand-new, whirlwind adventure, Mrs. Plansky Goes Rogue!

Mrs. Plansky is fresh off of winning a thrilling senior tennis championship with her doubles partner, Kev Dinardo, and is gearing up to celebrate with him on his yacht. That is, until the yacht is destroyed in a fire. Kev claims the fire was caused by a lightning strike, pure bad luck, but there's one small problem—Mrs. Plansky didn't see any lightning.

Already certain there's more going on than she's being told, Mrs. Plansky's curiosity turns to concern when Kev goes missing. Her suspicion gets the better of her and leads her to break into his house, only to find it ransacked.

But Kev isn't the only person Mrs. Plansky has to worry about. A conversation with her dad reveals that not long ago, he'd introduced Kev to Jack, Mrs. Plansky's wayward tennis pro son. And now, her dad—distracted by arrangements for his upcoming wedding—either can't remember or has no interest in divulging any details.

Worse? Now Jack has gone missing, too.

Visit Spencer Quinn's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Peter Abrahams and Audrey (September 2011).

Coffee with a Canine: Peter Abrahams and Pearl (August 2012).

The Page 69 Test: The Dog Who Knew Too Much.

The Page 69 Test: Paw and Order.

The Page 69 Test: Scents and Sensibility.

The Page 69 Test: Bow Wow.

The Page 69 Test: Heart of Barkness.

Q&A with Spencer Quinn.

The Page 69 Test: A Farewell to Arfs.

The Page 69 Test: Mrs. Plansky Goes Rogue.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Turner Gable Kahn reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Turner Gable Kahn, author of The Dirty Version: A Novel.

Her entry begins:

One of the books I keep returning to—mentally and emotionally—is Everything’s Fine by Cecilia Rabess. On the surface, it’s a workplace romance between two people on opposite ends of the political spectrum: Jess, a young Black analyst starting out at a finance firm, and Josh, her smug, conservative coworker. But of course, it’s not really a romance in the traditional sense. It’s a razor-sharp exploration of power, identity, race, and the emotional gymnastics involved in navigating proximity to someone who can’t—or won’t—see the world the way you do.

What struck me most is how Rabess lets the emotional tension simmer under the surface of everyday interactions. The love story feels both impossible and deeply believable...[read on]

About The Dirty Version, from the publisher:

Heat rises and sparks fly when a surf-town author and an intimacy coordinator are thrown together to write new, steamy sex scenes for a TV series based on her hit novel in this deliciously fun debut romance.

Tash was thrilled when the dramatic rights to her surprise-hit feminist novel were snapped up by an indie film studio. But no one warned her that a Hollywood shuffle could land her smart, literary epic in the hands of a huge action-movie franchise director more famous for his machismo than his artistry.

And now this big shot director wants “the dirty version” of her book, demanding Tash transform the strong, complex female warriors she created into eye candy. Despite her best efforts to stall, the studio assigns Tash to its golden-boy intimacy coordinator to help her add spice to the script. Tash resents Caleb from the first word of the first sentence they write together, certain he's the enemy and too handsome to be trusted. But the longer they collaborate on her characters, the more she's attracted to his firm grasp of emotional (and fine, physical) nudity. Soon they're burning up the bedsheets along with their new pages, blurring romantic storylines.

But just when Tash feels it’s all coming together, the whole plot falls apart. Can she find a narrative that saves her show and her own love story, or are both lost forever?

Visit Turner Gable Kahn's website.

Q&A with Turner Gable Kahn.

My Book, The Movie: The Dirty Version.

Writers Read: Turner Gable Kahn.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Andreas Elpidorou's "The Anatomy of Boredom"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Anatomy of Boredom by Andreas Elpidorou.

About the book, from the publisher:

Boredom is a common human experience. It may strike us as straightforward―a mere absence or lack, an emotional emptiness of sorts―yet it is anything but simple. It is complicated: personal and social, biological and cultural, both ever-changing and constant. It can spur action, both productive and harmful. It affects us differently based on our social identity and standing. Boredom is both a mirror of the complexities of human existence and a cause of them.

In The Anatomy of Boredom, Andreas Elpidorou offers a groundbreaking examination of this ubiquitous yet enigmatic dimension of human existence, illuminating its profound influence on our personal and social lives. Through interdisciplinary analysis, careful argumentation, and captivating insights, Elpidorou presents a functional theory of boredom, which understands and individuates boredom in terms of its role in our mental, behavioral, and social existence. This theory provides a compelling synthesis of existing research, connects the present of boredom to its history, and allows us to apply our knowledge of boredom to relatively unexplored domains, such as its relationship to the good life, self-regulation and self-control, poverty and capitalism, advancements in AI, animal emotions, and even aesthetics and art appreciation. Ultimately, the study of boredom is revealed to be more than just an analysis of an intricate and important affective experience; it is also shown to be an insightful investigation into the complexities of human (and even non-human) existence.

Visit Andreas Elpidorou's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Anatomy of Boredom.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six of the best crime fiction canines

Dick Lochte is an award-winning, Los Angeles Times bestselling author of numerous crime novels, including The Talk Show Murders with Al Roker. He and his wife Jane live in Southern California with their dog Hoagy. Lochte's newest novel, with William M Webster IV, is Rockets' Red Glare.

At The Strand Magazine Lochte tagged six notable crime fiction canines, including:

DAVID HANDLER’S LULU

In his first witty, smoothly constructed mystery involving celebrity ghostwriter Stewart “Hoagy” Hoag, The Man Who Died Laughing, Handler was wise enough to provide his amateur detective with a faithful brown and white basset hound as charming, sophisticated and observant as her master. Hoagy’s career has had its ups and downs. After penning a popular and critically successful first novel, he suffered a writers block severe enough to cause cocaine addiction and the loss of prestige, money, friends and wife. Everything but the loyal Lulu who, with her waspish manner, odd penchant for foul-smelling food and seemingly miraculous manner of sniffing out evil, became a grounding presence for Hoagy. When the former bestseller settles for the inglorious hybrid profession of ghostwriter and amateur detective, Lulu becomes a unique sleuthhound in her own right.

The duo’s current adventure, The Man Who Swore He’d Never Go Home Again, is a series prequel, with freshly successful first novelist Hoagy returning to his small hometown in Connecticut for a funeral. In it we meet his new puppy Lulu and his new girlfriend (and eventual wife and ex-wife) actress Merilee Nash and learn how they all got together. Because of this, it’s a good starting point for the uninitiated, but, though entertaining, it’s not quite as satisfying a crime novel as his Edgar-winning The Man Who Would Be F. Scott Fitzgerald or last year’s elegant The Woman Who Lowered the Boom. That has Hoagy on the cusp of regaining his status as a rockstar novelist and doubly buoyed by the possibility of remarrying Merilee. Happiness at the start of a mystery must of necessity be short-lived and, just a few pages in, Hoagy learns that his editor, Norma Fives, has received letters threatening her life and, by extension, his novel. What can he do but expose the anonymous author of the letters and what can Lulu do but suffer the loss of comfort and a plate of her beloved sardines while helping him on the hunt?

Read about another canine on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Terrence McCauley's "The Twilight Town"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Twilight Town by Terrence McCauley.

About the book, from the publisher:

A fast-paced, hardboiled thriller ripped from the pages of history!

Dallas, 1963: Dan Wilson is a Dallas PD detective with something to hide. He’s secretly helping Bobby Kennedy’s FBI investigate police corruption between Captain Eastbrook and the Dallas mob. But Wilson isn’t doing it out of the goodness of his heart. He’s got his sights set on Washington and becoming an FBI man.

Officer JD Tippit is Wilson’s ex-partner. He has bills to pay, troubles at home and a career that’s going nowhere fast. He has nothing to lose when he agrees to help Wilson dig up dirt on the department’s top brass. They catch a break when they find a scared young man caught up in the Dallas underworld. His name is Lee Oswald.

Officer Harry Denton never met a corner he couldn’t cut. A proud member of Captain Eastbrook’s cadre of crooked cops, he’ll do anything to protect his boss and keep the river of dirty money flowing through the department.

Wilson, Tippit and Denton soon lose their way in a shadow world of mob bosses, bigots, bureaucrats and power brokers named Ruby, Marcello, Walker, Hoover and Kennedy. In a sweeping saga that spans the seedy strip joints of Dallas to the halls of power in Washington, these three cops are on a collision course with history. And not all of them will make it out alive.

Visit Terrence McCauley's website.

My Book, The Movie: A Conspiracy of Ravens.

The Page 69 Test: A Conspiracy of Ravens.

Writers Read: Terrence McCauley (October 2017).

The Page 69 Test: The Twilight Town.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Bruno J. Strasser & Thomas Schlich's "The Mask"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Mask: A History of Breathing Bad Air by Bruno J. Strasser and Thomas Schlich.

About the book, from the publisher:

A history of masks protecting against bad air—in cities, factories, hospitals, and war trenches—exploring how our identities and beliefs shape the decision to wear a mask

For centuries, humans have sought to protect themselves from harmful air, whether from smoke, dust, vapors, or germs. This book offers the first history of respiratory masks—ranging from simple pieces of cloth to elaborate gas masks—and explores why they have sparked both hope and fear.

Bruno J. Strasser and Thomas Schlich captivate readers with stories of individuals—from renowned doctors and political leaders to forgotten inventors and anonymous factory workers—who passionately debated the value of masks. In Renaissance Italy and Meiji Japan, in Victorian Britain and Cold War America, the way societies have engaged with face coverings reveals their deepest cultural and political fractures. The Mask challenges us to reconsider how we care for one another and the kind of environment we aspire to inhabit.

Visit Bruno Strasser's website and Thomas Schlich's faculty webpage.

The Page 99 Test: The Mask.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eighteen of the best works of historical fiction

At Vogue Mia Barzilay Freund tagged eighteen "of the best historical fiction books of the last several decades," including:

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

Starting in 1910 and ending in 1989, Pachinko has an ambitious premise: mapping one Korean family’s journey across borders, generations, and moments of crisis. Min Jin Lee’s success lies in her ability to anchor each major event in a specific emotional reality. The novel became an award-winning Apple TV+ drama series in 2022.

Read about another novel on the list.

Pachinko is among Courtney Rodgers's best historical fiction of the 21st century so far, Bethanne Patrick's twenty-five best historical fiction books of all time, Asha Thanki seven books about families surviving political unrest, the Amazon Book Review editors' twelve favorite long books, Gina Chen's twelve books for fans of HBO’s Succession, Cindy Fazzi's eight books about the impact of Japanese imperialism during WWII, Eman Quotah's eight books about mothers separated from their daughters, Karolina Waclawiak's six favorite books on loss and longing, Allison Patkai's top six books with strong female voices, Tara Sonin's twenty-one books for fans of HBO’s Succession, and six books Jia Tolentino recommends.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Alie Dumas-Heidt

From my Q&A with Alie Dumas-Heidt, author of The Myth Maker:

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

I think my title, The Myth Maker, is intriguing enough to catch readers attention, but does it completely spell out that this is a story about a detective on the hunt for a serial killer? I say no, but, funny enough, my agent wasn’t sure we’d be able to keep it because she did worry it gave too much away. I have old outlines and early chapters all with the title The Myth Maker and it was hard for me to consider it being called anything else. We played around with a few other titles, different ideas pulling from bits of what the killer was doing, but nothing stuck. I had an easier time changing the name of my lead character! I was thankful that a new title wasn’t part of the To Do list from my publisher during final edits.

What's in a name?

I am a little bit of a name nerd in real life. I’m that annoying friend that will gladly put lists together for anyone naming a baby, puppy, or kitten. With The Myth Maker, my lead character...[read on]

Visit Alie Dumas-Heidt's website.

Q&A with Alie Dumas-Heidt.

--Marshal Zeringue

Turner Gable Kahn's "The Dirty Version," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Dirty Version: A Novel by Turner Gable Kahn.

The entry begins:

The Dirty Version is a contemporary feminist romance set between South Florida and Hollywood. It follows Tash, a sharp-tongued novelist whose surprise-hit dystopian book is being adapted for a TV series. But when the rights end up in the hands of a swaggering action director who insists the story needs to be “sexed up,” Tash is assigned to collaborate with a Hollywood intimacy coordinator to write brand-new steamy scenes. The twist? She’s furious about the rewrite. And even more furious about the fact that her new creative partner—Caleb—is thoughtful, patient, and suspiciously good at his job.

It’s an enemies-to-lovers, slow burn about power, intimacy, trust, and the behind-the-scenes tensions of storytelling.

If the book were adapted for screen, I’d want a cast that could capture the intelligence and emotional undercurrents as much as the romantic tension.

For Tash, I would absolutely love to see Geraldine Viswanathan in the role. Tash is guarded and intense, fiercely loyal, and allergic to being underestimated. Geraldine is brilliant and could bring all of that, with nuance and humor.

For Caleb, I picture someone quietly magnetic—someone who...[read on]

Visit Turner Gable Kahn's website.

Q&A with Turner Gable Kahn.

My Book, The Movie: The Dirty Version.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Moritz Föllmer's "The Quest for Individual Freedom"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Quest for Individual Freedom: A Twentieth-Century European History by Moritz Föllmer.

About the book, from the publisher:

What does it mean to see oneself as free? And how can this freedom be attained in times of conflict and social upheaval? In this ambitious study, Moritz Föllmer explores what twentieth-century Europeans understood by individual freedom and how they endeavoured to achieve it. Combining cultural, social, and political history, this book highlights the tension between ordinary people's efforts to secure personal independence and the ambitious attempts of thinkers and activists to embed notions of freedom in political and cultural agendas. The quest to be a free individual was multi-faceted; no single concept predominated. Men and women articulated and pursued it against the backdrop of two world wars, the expanding power of the state, the constraints of working life, pre-established moral norms, the growing influence of America, and uncertain futures of colonial rule. But although claims to individual freedom could be steered and stymied, they could not, ultimately, be suppressed.

Learn more about The Quest for Individual Freedom at the Cambridge University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: The Quest for Individual Freedom.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven top love triangle novels that are about more than romance

Lidija Hilje is a Croatian novelist and certified book coach. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times and other outlets. After ten years of trying cases before Croatian courts, she obtained a book coaching certification and has been working professionally with writers ever since. She lives in Zadar, Croatia, with her husband and two daughters.

Slanting Towards the Sea is her first novel.

At Electric Lit Hilje tagged seven of her "favorite love triangles in literary fiction." One title on the list:

Leaving by Roxana Robinson

Sarah and Warren fall passionately in love during college, but the relationship ends over a misunderstanding. Now in their sixties, a chance meeting at an opera house brings them back together, and the passion reignites instantly. While Sarah is divorced and ostensibly free to start a relationship, she hesitates to reclaim a chance at love after being devoted solely to her children for so long. Warren, on the other hand, has no such reservations. But when he tries to leave his apathetic, dull marriage, his adult daughter steps up to defend her mother. Ultimately, Leaving asks whether there ever comes a time when parents’ needs outweigh the duty to their children, and where the line lies between obligations to family, and the right to pursue personal happiness.

Read about another novel on the list.

The Page 69 Test Leaving.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Miriam Gershow reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Miriam Gershow, author of Closer.

Her entry begins:

I found a copy of Gin Phillip’s Fierce Kingdom at the library book sale this year. I’d been interested when this first came out eight years ago, but I was too early into parenting to be able to stomach the story of a women trapped with her four-year-old son at the zoo during an active shooter situation. I’m so glad I came back to it: it was harrowing, propulsive, and so well-rendered up to the very last note. It’s a story of motherhood at its most desperate, though the writing is so sharp and lively, you’re never entirely cowed by the desperation. Phillip’s keeps the story aloft in unimaginable...[read on]

About Closer, from the publisher:

Set in 2015 during Obama's presidency and Trump's early candidacy, the tranquil college town of Horace, Oregon, is disrupted when white students taunt a Black student in the high school library. This incident sparks immediate repercussions that ripple through the community, affecting students, families, and faculty alike. Woody, the school's guidance counselor, finds himself thrust into the spotlight after years on the sidelines. Lark, a struggling student, grapples with the fallout as her relationships are reshaped by the incident. Stefanie, a conflicted parent, struggles to balance protecting her child with allowing him to find his own path. Friendships are strained, marriages are tested, and families face the threat of sudden violence. When tragedy strikes with the death of a student, the survivors are left grappling with the fault lines in their most intimate relationships and searching for ways to draw closer. Closer explores themes of community, resilience, and the impacts of individual actions on collective destinies, offering a poignant reflection on how individuals grapple with their lives amidst societal challenges and personal reckonings.

Visit Miriam Gershow's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Local News.

Q&A with Miriam Gershow.

Writers Read: Miriam Gershow.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Molly MacRae's "There'll Be Shell to Pay"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: There'll Be Shell to Pay by Molly MacRae.

About the book, from the publisher:

When she’s not selling seashells by the North Carolina seashore from her shell shop, Maureen Nash is a crime-solving sleuth with a ghost pirate for a supernatural sidekick...

Maureen is still getting used to life on Ocracoke Island, learning how to play the “shell game” of her business—and ghost whispering with the spirit of Emrys Lloyd, the eighteenth-century Welsh pirate who haunts her shop, The Moon Shell. The spectral buccaneer has unburied a treasure hidden in the shop’s attic that turns out to be antique shell art stolen from Maureen’s late husband’s family years ago.

Victor “Shelly” Sullivan and his wife Lenrose visit the shop and specifically inquire about these rare items. Not only is it suspicious that this shell collector should arrive around the time Maureen found the art, but Emrys insists that Sullivan’s wife is an imposter because Lenrose is dead. A woman’s corpse the police have been unable to identify was discovered by the Fig Ladies, a group who formed an online fig appreciation society. They’re meeting on Ocracoke for the first time in person and count Lenrose among their number, so the woman can’t possibly be dead.

But Lenrose’s behavior doesn’t quite match the person the Fig Ladies interacted with online. Now, Maureen and Emrys—with assistance from the Fig Ladies—must prove the real Lenrose is dead and unmask her mysterious pretender before a desperate murderer strikes again . . .

Visit Molly MacRae's website.

My Book, The Movie: Plaid and Plagiarism.

The Page 69 Test: Plaid and Plagiarism.

The Page 69 Test: Scones and Scoundrels.

My Book, The Movie: Scones and Scoundrels.

The Page 69 Test: Crewel and Unusual.

The Page 69 Test: Heather and Homicide.

Q&A with Molly MacRae.

Writers Read: Molly MacRae (July 2024).

The Page 69 Test: Come Shell or High Water.

My Book, The Movie: Come Shell or High Water.

Writers Read: Molly MacRae.

My Book, The Movie: There'll Be Shell to Pay.

The Page 69 Test: There'll Be Shell to Pay.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: David Rooney's "The Big Hop"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Big Hop: The First Non-stop Flight Across the Atlantic Ocean and Into the Future by David Rooney.

About the book, from the publisher:

The inspiring story of a pathbreaking 1919 flight and the courageous fliers who risked their lives to make aviation history.

In 1919, in Newfoundland, four teams of aviators came from Britain to compete in “the Big Hop”: an audacious race to be the first to fly, nonstop, across the Atlantic Ocean. One pair of competitors was forced to abandon the journey halfway, and two pairs never made it into the air. Only one team, after a death-defying sixteen-hour flight, made it to Ireland.

Celebrated on both continents, the transatlantic contest offered a surge of inspiration―and a welcome distraction―to a public reeling from the Great War and the influenza pandemic. But the seven airmen who made the attempt were quickly forgotten, their achievement overshadowed by the solo Atlantic flights of Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart years later. In The Big Hop, David Rooney grants the pioneering aviators of 1919 the spotlight they deserve. From Harry Hawker, the pilot who as a young man had watched Houdini fly over his native Australia, to the engineer Ted Brown, a US citizen who joined the Royal Flying Corps, Rooney traces the lives of the unassuming men who performed extraordinary acts in the sky.

Mining evocative first-person accounts and aviation archives, Rooney also follows the participants’ journeys: learning to fly on flimsy airplanes made of timber struts and varnished fabric; surviving the bloodiest war that Europe had ever yet seen; and battling faulty coolant systems, severe storms, and extreme fatigue while attempting the Atlantic. Rooney transports readers to the world in which the great contest took place, and traces the rise of aviation to its daredevil peak in the early decades of the twentieth century. Recounting a deeply moving adventure, The Big Hop explores why flights like these matter, and why we take to the skies.

Visit David Rooney's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Big Hop.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top social thrillers that will make you wonder who you can trust

Anna Barrington has worked in galleries and auction houses in the art world for over five years. She received an MA from the Courtauld Institute of Art and a BA from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Originally from Atlanta, she currently lives in London, where she worked at a leading international art gallery.

The Spectacle is her first novel.

At CrimeReads Barrington tagged "six novels to remind us that just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean people aren’t out to get you." One title on the list:

Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin

Rosemary’s Baby gains its strength from the superficially girlish, clipped realism of Ira Levin’s deadpan prose. We see 1960s New York through the eyes of Rosemary, a hopeful young housewife who has just married the actor Guy. When a stroke of luck delivers them a beautiful apartment in the legendary Bramford building, the couple meets a bunch of elderly neighbors who cook them dinner, offer ideas for Guy’s stilted career, and eagerly encourage her to get pregnant. But something satanic is growing inside Rosemary. Levin allows us to make up our own mind slowly about Rosemary’s husband, obstetrician and neighbors, who surround her with cheery advice even as she becomes more isolated, sick and scared. The novel has a feminist subtext; I found myself horrified at how Rosemary allows her peers to assuage her fears with their ‘rational’ and ‘medical’ advice, dismissing her own gut instinct that something is powerfully wrong.

Read about another novel on the list.

Rosemary's Baby is among Chin-Sun Lee's five best gothic novels about distressed women, Lisa Unger's five top horror novels that explore the darkest corners of our minds, Alice Blanchard's ten chilling thrillers to get you through a winter storm, Ania Ahlborn's ten scariest books of all time, Jeff Somers's twenty-one books that will give you an idea of how the horror genre has evolved and "twenty-five books that might not necessarily be the best horror novels, but are certainly the scariest," Christopher Shultz's top ten literary chillers, and Kat Rosenfield's top seven scary autumnal stories.

--Marshal Zeringue