Five great spy novels set in small towns

Ryan Britt is the author of the non-fiction books Luke Skywalker Can’t Read, The Spice Must Flow, and Phasers on Stun! His writing has appeared with Esquire, Den of Geek, and Inverse, where he is an editor. Britt teaches for the Maine Writers and Publisher’s Alliance, and is a guest instructor at Colby College.

At CrimeReads he tagged five top spy novels set in small towns, including:

The Spy Coast (2023) by Tess Gerritsen

The most recent smash-hit small-town spy book is perhaps the best so far in this quiet subgenre. Retired spy “Maggie Bird,” is living a fairly secluded life in a snowy town in Purity, Maine, until an operative tries to pull her back into the game after sixteen years. Soon, we learn that Maggie isn’t the only retired spy in this town, she regularly hangs out with others who have forged a new life for themselves, and are known as “the Martini Club.”

Purity, Maine might not be a real small town in the Pine Tree State, but Gerritsen makes it feel as real, if not more real, than many of Stephen King’s faux-Maine locations like Castle Rock or Salem’s Lot. From the way the population sees itself, to local police chief, Jo Thibodeau, trying to deal with meddling spies in her town, all the elements of The Spy Coast mix together into a riveting cocktail. But, what makes this book so grounded, is that within that cocktail, Gerritsen is always reminding us of what kind of booze the local bars and stores have, and exactly how much it costs. The life of a spy is sometimes thought of as glamorous, but The Spy Coast makes it seem not only real but affordable, too.

Read about another novel on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Alafair Burke "The Note"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Note: A Novel by Alafair Burke.

About the book, from the publisher:

A vacation in the Hamptons goes terribly wrong for three friends with a complicated history.

It was meant to be a harmless prank.

Growing up, May Hanover was a good girl, always. Well-behaved, top of her class, a compulsive rule-follower. Raised by a first-generation Chinese single mother with high expectations, May didn’t have room to slip up, let alone fail. Her friends didn’t call her the Little Sheriff for nothing.

But even good girls have secrets. And regrets. When it comes to her friendship with Lauren and Kelsey, she's had her fair share of both. Their bond—forged when May was just twelve years old—has withstood a tragic accident, individual scandals, heartbreak and loss. Now the three friends have reunited for the first time in years for a few days of sun and fun in the Hamptons. But a chance encounter with a pair of strangers leads to a drunken prank that goes horribly awry.

When she finds herself at the center of an urgent police investigation, May begins to wonder whether Lauren and Kelsey are keeping secrets from her, testing the limits of her loyalty to lifelong friends.

What had they gone and done?

The Note is a page-turner of the highest order from one of our greatest contemporary suspense writers.

Visit Alafair Burke's website.

The Page 69 Test: Dead Connection.

The Page 69 Test: Angel’s Tip.

The Page 69 Test: 212.

The Page 69 Test: All Day and a Night.

The Page 69 Test: The Ex.

The Page 69 Test: The Wife.

The Page 69 Test: The Better Sister.

Q&A with Alafair Burke.

The Page 69 Test: The Note.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Andrea Mansker's "Matchmaking and the Marriage Market in Postrevolutionary France"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Matchmaking and the Marriage Market in Postrevolutionary France by Andrea Mansker.

About the book, from the publisher:

Matchmaking and the Marriage Market in Postrevolutionary France uncovers the unexplored history of matrimonial agents, their novel marketing tactics, and the rise of personal advertisements to track the commercialization of marriage in nineteenth-century France. Brokers transformed courtship and marriage into forms of commercial exchange, linking them to the burgeoning urban values of abundance, pleasure, and social mobility.

By studying agents' and readers' media fictions on love alongside court cases, legislation, and literature surrounding the industry, Andrea Mansker reveals the intimate and socioeconomic pressures of finding a spouse. At the same time, she demonstrates how contemporaries used the business of matrimony to reimagine their public identities, relationships, and courtship rituals following unprecedented historical change due to the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars. The matchmaking business both responded to and helped shape national anxieties over fluctuating nuptial rates and changing laws on marriage and divorce. As a result, marriage itself was reconceived as a commercial contract inseparable from the atomistic and corrupt marketplace.

The debates and pressures Mansker describes in Matchmaking and the Marriage Market in Postrevolutionary France are still relevant today. As contemporary online daters likely understand, the possibility of finding a mate in an expanded pool of candidates beyond one's family, locality, and nation offered individuals the liberating opportunity to explore new personas just as it produced a novel sense of danger about these impersonal transactions in the anonymous marketplace.

Visit Andrea Mansker's website.

The Page 99 Test: Matchmaking and the Marriage Market in Postrevolutionary France.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top novels about women discovering unimaginable strength through tragedy

Melanie Maure holds a Master’s in Counselling Psychology and lives in central British Columbia. She is second generation Irish and spends a great deal of time in Ireland, which is an enduring source of inspiration for her work.

Sisters of Belfast is Maure's debut novel.

[The Page 69 Test: Sisters of Belfast; My Book, The Movie: Sisters of Belfast; Q&A with Melanie Maure]

At Shepherd Maure tagged five of the "best novels about seemingly ordinary women discovering unimaginable strength through tragedy." One title on the list:

All the Light We Cannot by Anthony Doerr

This novel took my breath away. The power of this novel is in the descriptive details and the fresh perspective on WWII. I adore a book that brings a global story down to the intricate details of the humans involved, their relationships, and, in particular, how people seemingly on opposite sides of violence are only love-seeking humans when all is said and done. The resilience of the characters, especially the young woman named Marie-Laure, who is blind, is truly inspiring. It's a reminder of the strength we all possess, even in the most challenging circumstances.

As with my other favorite novels, the unlikely protagonist and shero is a young woman named Marie-Laure, who is blind. I was taken by the way this novel explores her ability to navigate her known world and then a world that is devastated physically and emotionally. Marie-Laure, along with all of the characters in this novel, is so complex and easily inhabited. Reading this novel left me changed as a writer and reader. It raised the bar in both respects.

Read about another novel on the list.

All the Light We Cannot See is among Audrey Gale's five top novels about war, Jyoti Patel's top ten books about family secrets, Kimi Cunningham Grant's top six books featuring father-daughter relationships, Liz Boulter's top ten novels about France, Emily Temple's fifty best contemporary novels over 500 pages, Jason Allen's seven top books with family secrets, Whitney Scharer's top ten books about Paris, David Baldacci's six favorite books with an element of mystery, Jason Flemyng's six best books, Sandra Howard's six best books, Caitlin Kleinschmidt's twelve moving novels of the Second World War and Maureen Corrigan's 12 favorite books of 2014.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Michael Cannell reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Michael Cannell, author of Blood and the Badge: The Mafia, Two Killer Cops, and a Scandal That Shocked the Nation.

His entry begins:

Some years ago a book editor took me to lunch at a Midtown Manhattan sushi restaurant. Over miso soup and tuna rolls, I proposed a complicated structure for the book he had hired me to write. His response was this: I don’t care what structure you employ, as long as you ask yourself what the characters want at the start of each chapter. It was the best advice I ever received.

I write in a style know as narrative non-fiction. I’m a journalist. I tell true stories drawn from history. I fabricate nothing. Nor do I exaggerate or embellish. My books may, however, read like fiction, at least I hope they do, because I borrow techniques found in novels. Among other things, I try to impart my subjects’ feelings and motivations — their inner lives — as my editor suggested.

Where might you observe the most skillful examples of character development? I direct you to...[read on]

About Blood and the Badge, from the publisher:

For the first time in forty years, former New York Times editor Michael Cannell unearths the full story behind two ruthless New York cops who acted as double agents for the Mafia.

No episode in NYPD history surpasses the depravities of Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, two decorated detectives who covertly acted as mafia informants and paid assassins in the Scorsese world of 1980s Brooklyn.

For more than ten years, Eppolito and Caracappa moonlighted as the mob’s early warning alert system, leaking names of mobsters secretly cooperating with the government and crippling investigations by sharing details of surveillance, phone taps and impending arrests. The Lucchese boss called the two detectives his crystal ball: Whatever detectives knew, the mafia soon learned. Most grievously, Eppolito and Caracappa earned bonuses by staging eight mob hits, pulling the trigger themselves at least once.

Incredibly, when evidence of their wrongdoing arose in 1994, FBI officials failed to muster an indictment. The allegations lay dormant for a decade and were only revisited due to relentless follow up by Tommy Dades, a cop determined to break the cold case before his retirement. Eppolito and Caracappa were finally tried and then sentenced to life in prison in 2009, nearly thirty years after their crimes took place.

Cannell’s Blood and the Badge is based on entirely new research and never-before-released interviews with mobsters themselves, including Sammy “the Bull” Gravano. Eppolito and Caracappa’s story is more relevant than ever as police conduct comes under ever-increasing scrutiny.

Visit Michael T. Cannell's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Limit.

The Page 99 Test: The Limit.

My Book, The Movie: Incendiary.

My Book, The Movie: A Brotherhood Betrayed.

Writers Read: Michael Cannell.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: David Shoemaker's "The Architecture of Blame and Praise"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Architecture of Blame and Praise: An Interdisciplinary Investigation by David Shoemaker.

About the book, from the publisher:

Many philosophers assume that to be a responsible agent is to be an apt target of responses like blame and praise. But what do these responses consist of, precisely? And do they really belong together, simply negative and positive symmetrical counterparts of each other? While there has been a lot of philosophical work on the nature of blame over the past 15 years--yielding multiple conflicting theories--there has been little on the nature of praise. Indeed, those few who have investigated praise--including both philosophers and psychologists--have concluded that it is quite different in some respects than blame, and that the two in fact may not be symmetrical counterparts at all.

In this book, David Shoemaker offers the first detailed deep-dive into the complicated nature of blame and praise, teasing out their many varieties while defending a general symmetry between them. The book provides a thorough normative grounding for the many types and modes of blame and praise, albeit one that never appeals to desert or the metaphysics of free will. The volume draws from moral philosophy, moral psychology, the philosophy and psychology of humor, the psychology of personality disorders, and experimental economics. The many original contributions in the book include: the presentation and defense of a new functionalist theory of the entire interpersonal blame and praise system; the revelation of a heretofore unrecognized kind of blame; a discussion of how the capacities and impairments of narcissists tell an important story about the symmetrical structure of the blame/praise system; an investigation into the blame/praise emotions and their aptness conditions; an exploration into the key differences between other-blame and self-blame; and an argument drawn from economic games for why desert is unnecessary to render apt the ways in which blame sometimes sanctions.

Learn more about The Architecture of Blame and Praise at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: The Architecture of Blame and Praise.

--Marshal Zeringue

The top nonfiction crime books of 2024

One title from the CrimeReads editors' list of the best nonfiction books of 2024:

Dean Jobb, A Gentleman and a Thief

Arthur Barry rose to fame during the American Jazz Age as the so-called “aristocrat of crime” – a real-life gentleman burglar who moved in rarefied circles and swindled just about anyone who was worth swindling. And doing it, by all accounts, with a dash of class. Jobb tells the wildly entertaining story of Barry’s exploits with admirable style, adding a nice heft of scholarship to the mix. Running through Barry’s scams and thefts becomes a kind of who’s who of the era, and the public’s fascination with the gentleman burglar seems to represent a shifting national consciousness. Jobb is one of the best crime historians at work today, and his latest has all the elements of an epic tale, with a surprisingly moving love story coursing just under the rap sheets and police reports.

Read about another title on the list.

A Gentleman and a Thief is among Jeff Somers's eleven top nonfiction books for Erik Larson fans.

The Page 99 Test: A Gentleman and a Thief.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Isa Arsén's "The Unbecoming of Margaret Wolf"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Unbecoming of Margaret Wolf by Isa Arsén.

About the book, from the publisher:

Two Shakespearean actors in an unconventional marriage get caught up in a renowned director’s scheme that will bring them closer than ever or rip them apart for good.

Up-and-coming stage actress Margaret Shoard has just taken a bow as Lady Macbeth, the role she has always believed was destined for her. At home, she plays wife to her best friend Wesley, even if she doesn’t hold his sole attention romantically. After a public breakdown threatens all she holds dear, Margaret’s doctor prescribes her uppers—just a little help to get through the days.

When Wesley is invited by eccentric director Vaughn Kline to join the cast for an inaugural Shakespeare performance in the New Mexico desert, Margaret decides to accompany him in hopes the time away will set her back to rights . . . but the world she finds in Vaughn’s company is filled with duplicity and betrayal. Margaret and Wesley, embroiled in an affair with a man who may not be all he seems, must find a way forward together before their story becomes the real tragedy.

Visit Isa Arsén's website.

Q&A with Isa Arsén.

The Page 69 Test: The Unbecoming of Margaret Wolf.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Jennifer Denbow's "Reproductive Labor and Innovation"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Reproductive Labor and Innovation: Against the Tech Fix in an Era of Hype by Jennifer Denbow.

About the book, from the publisher:

In Reproductive Labor and Innovation, Jennifer Denbow examines how the push toward technoscientific innovation in contemporary American life often comes at the expense of the care work and reproductive labor that is necessary for society to function. Noting that the gutting of social welfare programs has shifted the burden of solving problems to individuals, Denbow argues that the aggrandizement of innovation and the degradation of reproductive labor are intertwined facets of neoliberalism. She shows that the construction of innovation as a panacea to social ills justifies the accumulation of wealth for corporate innovators and the impoverishment of those feminized and racialized people who do the bulk of reproductive labor. Moreover, even innovative technology aimed at reproduction—such as digital care work platforms and noninvasive prenatal testing—obscure structural injustices and further devalue reproductive labor. By drawing connections between innovation discourse, the rise of neoliberalism, financialized capitalism, and the social and political degradation of reproductive labor, Denbow illustrates what needs to be done to destabilize the overvaluation of innovation and to offer collective support for reproduction.

Learn more about Reproductive Labor and Innovation at the Duke University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Reproductive Labor and Innovation.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top novels for novelists

At B&N Reads Isabelle McConville tagged six novels for novelists. One title on the list:

The Cemetery of Untold Stories by Julia Alvarez

Any writer knows how it feels to see your characters through murky waters, just out of reach and never fully formed. What if they decided to do the job for you? When Alma inherits an ancestral plot of land in the Dominican Republic, she knows exactly what she wants to do with it — turn it into a literary graveyard. She decides to give up on her unfinished characters and let them rest in peace, but when they begin talking back to her and revising their own manuscripts, Alma realizes they won’t go down without a fight. A funny, life-affirming novel about storytelling, friendship and death from the author of How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Ellie Brannigan

From my Q&A with Ellie Brannigan, author of Death at an Irish Wedding:

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

For Death at an Irish Wedding, I was asked to come up with several titles. In fact, this was the third title selected, and I wrote the book under a completely different title and saved my word doc that way. When I went to look for my story later, I couldn’t find the manuscript. Any author might imagine my immediate reaction of holy smokes, my work has all disappeared: belly tightening, sweaty palms, slightly sick…but then I went to my saved emails and found the email stream with my editor. Crisis averted, but it was an awful ten minutes of panic.

This is the Irish Castle series, and at the end of the first book there was the question of ghosts in the castle. I liked Haunting in an Irish Castle, but my publisher wasn’t sold. Once the story progressed, I realized it was more about the super-secret Hollywood wedding of Rayne’s rich American client and her actor boyfriend than ghosts. We came up with alternates and Death at an Irish Wedding stuck. It was a lot of fun to bring in Irish wedding traditions to the getaway weekend to fit the title.

Through each story, the struggle for Rayne and Ciara to save Grathton Village is paramount and it is unfortunate that people keep kicking the bucket—which is why...[read on]

Visit Ellie Brannigan's website.

Q&A with Ellie Brannigan.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Mariana Chilton's "The Painful Truth about Hunger in America"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Painful Truth about Hunger in America: Why We Must Unlearn Everything We Think We Know--and Start Again by Mariana Chilton.

About the book, from the publisher:

A radical and urgent new approach to how we can solve the problems of hunger and poverty in the US.

Most people think hunger has to do with food: researchers, policymakers, and advocates focus on promoting government-funded nutrition assistance; well-meaning organizations try to get expired or wasted food to marginalized communities; and philanthropists donate their money to the cause and congratulate themselves for doing so. But few people ask about the structural issues undergirding hunger, such as, Who benefits from keeping people in such a state of precarity? In The Painful Truth about Hunger in America, Mariana Chilton shows that the solution to food insecurity lies far beyond food and must incorporate personal, political, and spiritual approaches if we are serious about fixing the crisis.

Drawing on 25 years of research, programming, and advocacy efforts, Chilton compellingly demonstrates that food insecurity is created and maintained by people in power. Taking the reader back to the original wounds in the United States caused by its history of colonization, genocide, and enslavement, she forces us to reckon with hard questions about why people in the US allow hunger to persist. Drawing on intimate interviews she conducted with many Black and Brown women, the author reveals that the experience of hunger is rooted in trauma and gender-based violence—violence in our relationships with one another, with the natural world, and with ourselves—and that if we want to fix hunger, we must transform our society through compassion, love, and connection. Especially relevant for young people charting new paths toward abolition, mutual aid, and meaningful livelihoods, The Painful Truth about Hunger in America reinvigorates our commitment to uprooting the causes of poverty and discrimination, and points to a more generative and humane world where everyone can be nourished.

Visit Mariana Chilton's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Painful Truth about Hunger in America.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eleven contemporary retellings of classic books

At Teen Vogue Costa B. Pappas tagged "eleven books that are contemporary retellings of classic titles," including:

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Madeline Miller gifts readers a queer twist to the Greek classic, The Iliad, paying homage to the story through the eyes of Patroclus and his companionship-turned-romance with the legendary Greek figure Achilles. This novel explores war, masculinity, the fluidity of sexuality, and the lengths those in love have always gone in order to stay together, against all odds.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Song of Achilles is among Bethanne Patrick's twenty-five best historical fiction books of all time, Mark Skinner's nineteen top Greek myth retellings, Alexia Casale's top eight titles sparked by the authors' work life, Allison Epstein's eight queer historical fiction books set around the world, Phong Nguyen's seven titles that live halfway between history & myth, The Center for Fiction's 200 books that shaped two centuries of literature, Sara Stewart's six best books and Nicole Hill's fourteen characters who should have lived.

My Book, The Movie: The Song of Achilles.

--Marshal Zeringue

Sam Wiebe's "Ocean Drive," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Ocean Drive: A Novel by Sam Wiebe.

The entry begins:

Meghan Quick is the senior officer at a small police department in White Rock, BC, up against a large-scale criminal conspiracy. I’ve referred to Ocean Drive as a Pacific Northwest Fargo, and of course Frances McDormand would be a great choice to play Meghan. But Thandiwe Newton would be a great choice, too—she really stood out in God’s Country.

Cameron Shaw is fresh out of prison and trying to go straight, but...[read on]

Visit Sam Wiebe's website.

My Book, The Movie: Invisible Dead.

The Page 69 Test: Invisible Dead.

The Page 69 Test: Cut You Down.

Q&A with Sam Wiebe.

The Page 69 Test: Hell and Gone.

Writers Read: Sam Wiebe (March 2022).

My Book, The Movie: Hell and Gone.

My Book, The Movie: Sunset and Jericho.

Writers Read: Sam Wiebe (April 2023).

The Page 69 Test: Sunset and Jericho.

The Page 69 Test: Ocean Drive.

My Book, The Movie: Ocean Drive.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Michael McKenna's "Responsibility and Desert"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Responsibility and Desert by Michael McKenna.

About the book, from the publisher:

Responsibility & Desert advances a conversational theory of moral responsibility that relies upon desert as the normative basis for blame and punishment. A conversational theory understands the relationship between a blameworthy person and one who blames her to be similar to the relationship between competent speakers engaged in a conversational exchange. Blame can therefore be appraised for being meaningful as a reply to a culpable party's conduct. But meaningfulness alone is inadequate to justify blame and punishment. Might one appeal to fairness, reasonableness, or just utility?

Desert is widely regarded as the proper basis for blame and punishment. But is this a philosophically defensible position? Philosopher Michael McKenna explores just what desert is within the domain of moral responsibility, when conceptualized within the framework of the conversational theory. He does not offer an unqualified defence, but he does offer a best case for treating desert as the proper basis for the communicative character of blame and punishment. To do so, he takes up familiar challenges to desert and retribution. Does deserved blame and punishment commit us to the non-instrumental goodness of harms to the blameworthy and criminally culpable? Is this mere vengeance? Does it also commit us to extremely harsh treatment in response to extremely egregious wrongdoing? McKenna does not shy away from accepting hard truths about appeal to desert, but he does show that many of the most damning indictments of it are misguided.

Visit Michael McKenna's website.

The Page 99 Test: Responsibility and Desert.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five thrilling books that will make you want to listen to a true crime podcast

Katherine Greene is the pen name of bestselling authors A. Meredith Walters and Claire C. Riley. They each cut their teeth on spine-tingling thrillers and true crime. It was their love of dark, twisted tales with a strong female voice led them to create stories that leave you guessing. Both currently live in the United Kingdom with their families.

The Lake of Lost Girls is their second novel.

At CrimeReads the authors tagged five "amazing stories that use [true crime podcasts] to deliver a fast-paced, and complicated narrative." One title on the list:

Are you Sleeping by Kathleen Barber: Part psychological thriller, part true crime podcast snippets. A woman’s past comes back to haunt her when a mega hit true crime podcast reopens her family’s murder case and threatens to unravel her carefully constructed life. Focusing on how trauma changes us and tears families apart, it highlights how social media can deeply influence people.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Meryl Gordon reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Meryl Gordon, author of The Woman Who Knew Everyone: The Power of Perle Mesta, Washington's Most Famous Hostess.

Her entry begins:

Since I am a biographer, people expect me to read a lot of biographies and sometimes I do, to see how other authors frame their subjects and deal with the ambiguities. But for pleasure, I’m much more likely to read novels, mysteries, fantasy and books recommended by friends.

A few high points of this year: Martin MacInnes’ stunning novel In Ascension. Riveting, beautifully-written futuristic book, kept me up late at night, made me think. Satisfying ending, which rarely seems to happen.

Ian Rankin’s latest in the Inspector Rebus series: Midnight and Blue. I am addicted to this series, and in this new book, the writer is...[read on]

About The Woman Who Knew Everyone, from the publisher:

A deeply researched biography of the socialite, political hostess, activist and United States envoy to Luxembourg, Perle Mesta, from New York Times bestselling author Meryl Gordon.

Perle Mesta was a force to be reckoned with. In her heyday, this wealthy globe-trotting Washington widow was one of the most famous women in vAmerica, garnering as much media attention as Eleanor Roosevelt. Renowned for her world-class parties featuring politicians and celebrities, she was very close to three presidents–Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower and Lyndon Johnson. Truman named her as the first female envoy to Luxembourg, which inspired the hit musical based on Perle’s life – “Call Me Madam” – which starred Ethel Merman, ran on Broadway for two years and later became a movie. A pioneering supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment, she was a prodigious Democratic fundraiser and rescued Harry Truman’s financially flailing 1948 campaign.

In this intensely researched biography, author Meryl Gordon chronicles Perle’s lavish life and society adventures in Newport, Manhattan and Washington, while highlighting her important, but nearly forgotten contribution to American politics and the feminist movement.

Visit Meryl Gordon's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Phantom of Fifth Avenue.

Writers Read: Meryl Gordon (October 2017).

The Page 99 Test: Bunny Mellon.

My Book, The Movie: Bunny Mellon.

My Book, The Movie: The Woman Who Knew Everyone.

Writers Read: Meryl Gordon.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Eric S. Haag's "The Other Big Bang"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Other Big Bang: The Story of Sex and Its Human Legacy by Eric S. Haag.

About the book, from the publisher:

Sex shapes who we are as individuals and as a species. Where in the mists of time did something so important―and eye-catching―originate, and what does this history tell us about ourselves? Why do we have sex, and sexes, at all?

In The Other Big Bang, the evolutionary and developmental biologist Eric S. Haag explores the two-billion-year history of sex, from the first organisms on Earth to contemporary humans. He delves into the deep history of sexual reproduction, from its origins as a fix for a mutational crisis to an essential feature of all complex life. Haag traces sexual differentiation from its earliest forms in microbes to its elaboration in animals, showing why sex differences in cells and organisms help species adapt, persist, and evolve. Humanity’s clear sexual kinship with yeast and clams exists even as we evolved differences that distinguish us from other mammals, and even other apes.

Bringing the story up to the present, Haag argues that the evolutionary history of human sexuality helps us better understand contemporary society. Our ancient male-female sexual system remains an important fact of life, even as we see increasingly diverse sexual orientations, gender expressions, and parenthood choices. Witty and inviting, The Other Big Bang offers a clear view of the evolutionary roots of human sexuality and their significance today.

Visit Eric S. Haag's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Other Big Bang.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top thrillers set in Russia

At the Waterstones blog Anna Orhanen tagged five "thrilling tales of crime, espionage and deception set in Russia and the USSR you might enjoy next," including:

The Russia House by John le Carré

Le Carre's first post-glasnost spy novel is a complex interrogation of ideals and the shifting geopolitical landscape, as a small-time publisher finds himself at the centre of dangerous negotiation.

Read about another thriller on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Sam Wiebe's "Ocean Drive"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Ocean Drive: A Novel by Sam Wiebe.

About the book, from the publisher:

A paroled killer and a small-town cop find themselves on a collision course when the murder-by-arson of a college student sparks off gang violence along the forty-ninth parallel.

His first day out of prison, paroled killer Cameron Shaw meets with a mysterious lawyer who offers him a small fortune to infiltrate the League of Nations crime syndicate. Shaw turns her down, intending to go straight. But with no job, no family and no prospects, he’s soon compelled to take her offer.

In the small Pacific Northwest town of White Rock, a body is pulled from a burning house. Staff Sgt. Meghan Quick identifies the victim as grad student Alexa Reed. Alexa’s behavior during her last few days strikes Quick as bizarre. Why did she remove the for-sale sign from her parents’ house, and why was she trying to meet with the League of Nations?

As Quick tries to solve Alexa’s homicide, Shaw moves deeper into the League’s cross-border drug trade.

With the threat of a gang war looming, and long-buried secrets coming to light, Quick must find Alexa’s killer, while rescuing Shaw from the brutal gang violence that threatens the future of White Rock.

Visit Sam Wiebe's website.

My Book, The Movie: Invisible Dead.

The Page 69 Test: Invisible Dead.

The Page 69 Test: Cut You Down.

Q&A with Sam Wiebe.

The Page 69 Test: Hell and Gone.

Writers Read: Sam Wiebe (March 2022).

My Book, The Movie: Hell and Gone.

My Book, The Movie: Sunset and Jericho.

Writers Read: Sam Wiebe (April 2023).

The Page 69 Test: Sunset and Jericho.

The Page 69 Test: Ocean Drive.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Ellen Hartigan-O'Connor's "America Under the Hammer"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: America Under the Hammer: Auctions and the Emergence of Market Values by Ellen Hartigan-O'Connor.

About the book, from the publisher:

Reveals how, through auctions, early Americans learned capitalism

As the first book-length study of auctions in early America, America Under the Hammer follows this ubiquitous but largely overlooked institution to reveal how, across the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, price became an accepted expression of value. From the earliest days of colonial conquest, auctions put Native land and human beings up for bidding alongside material goods, normalizing new economic practices that turned social relations into economic calculations and eventually became recognizable as nineteenth-century American capitalism.

Starting in the eighteenth century, neighbors collectively turned speculative value into economic “facts” in the form of concrete prices for specific items, thereby establishing ideas about fair exchange in their communities. This consensus soon fractured: during the Revolutionary War, state governments auctioned loyalist property, weaponizing local group participation in pricing and distribution to punish political enemies. By the early nineteenth century, suspicion that auction outcomes were determined by manipulative auctioneers prompted politicians and satirists to police the boundaries of what counted as economic exchange and for whose benefit the economy operated. Women at auctions—as commodities, bidders, or beneficiaries—became a focal point for gendering economic value itself. By the 1830s, as abolitionists attacked the public sale of enslaved men, women, and children, auctions had enshrined a set of economic ideas—that any entity could be coded as property and priced through competition—that have become commonsense understandings all too seldom challenged.

In contrast to histories focused on banks, currencies, or plantations, America Under the Hammer highlights an institution that integrated market, community, and household in ways that put gender, race, and social bonds at the center of ideas about economic worth. Women and men, enslaved and free, are active participants in this story rather than bystanders, and their labor, judgments, and bodies define the resulting contours of the American economy.

Visit Ellen Hartigan-O'Connor's website.

The Page 99 Test: America Under the Hammer.

--Marshal Zeringue

The best historical fiction of the 21st century

At BookRiot Courtney Rodgers tagged the best historical fiction of the 21st century so far. One title on the list:

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

Teenage Sunja is abandoned by the wealthy businessman who promised her the world. Instead, Sunja marries a minister on his way to Japan. As Sunja’s sons grow up in WWII Japan, they face xenophobia and classism. Sunja’s choices ripple outwards, changing her family’s path forever.

Read about another title on the list.

Pachinko is among 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