Caroline Sharples's "The Long Death of Adolf Hitler"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Long Death of Adolf Hitler: An Investigative History by Caroline Sharples.

About the book, from the publisher:

A fascinating exploration of why Hitler’s death was only confirmed in 2018

Adolf Hitler has taken a long time to die, despite the lethal efficiency of the gun he put to his head in April 1945. Although eagerly anticipated around the world, there were no available witnesses to his suicide—and his corpse was not put on display. This created the perfect vacuum for myth and survival legends, while rival intelligence agencies and propaganda further confounded the investigations of successive historians.

Caroline Sharples explores the aftermath of events at the Führerbunker in the first cultural account of this decisive yet elusive moment. Hitler’s death was widely anticipated, and the news elicited a huge range of emotions as governments and secret services scrambled to verify what they heard. The search for proof of death led to an outpouring of conspiratorial thinking, and the final moments of Hitler’s life have been reimagined ever since.

This is an intriguing, unsettling account of a historical event we all think we know—and a sophisticated examination of how history is written.

Learn more about The Long Death of Adolf Hitler at the Yale University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: The Long Death of Adolf Hitler.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is April Howells reading?

Featured at Writers Read: April Howells, author of The Unforgettable Mailman: A Novel.

Her entry begins:

I’m currently reading The Retirement Plan by Sue Hincenbergs and loving it. I enjoy books with older protagonists and the cat-and-mouse approach to this story caught my eye.

I recently finished Iona Iverson’s Rules for Commuting by Clare Pooley. I adored How to Age Disgracefully and picked up Clare’s backlist knowing it would be up my alley. I was right. Iona is a fun, tenacious main character others can’t help but gravitate to. She’s the perfect blend of...[read on]

About The Unforgettable Mailman, from the publisher:

It's never too late for the adventure of a lifetime, even if you can't remember why you started.

The Unforgettable Mailman is a heartwarming story about intergenerational friendship and the power of human connection, perfect for fans of Fredrik Backman and Virginia Evans' The Correspondent.

1966, Chicago. Backlogged with millions of undelivered letters, the post office announces a temporary closure. But eighty-one-year-old Henry Walton can't stand idly by when there’s mail waiting to be delivered. He believes letters are what keep people connected, and he’s not about to let them get lost in the chaos.

Plus, connection keeps the mind sharp—according to a note someone’s pinned up in his kitchen.

While the post office scrambles to get things under control, Henry races against time and forgetfulness. Taking it upon himself to deliver the mail, he discovers hatred and tragedy, triumph and joy in the letters he carries and the people he meets along the way.

Inspired by true events, this delightful story will linger with readers long after they turn the last page—and might just inspire someone to write a letter, the old-fashioned way.

Visit April Howells's website.

Q&A with April Howells.

My Book, The Movie: The Unforgettable Mailman.

The Page 69 Test: The Unforgettable Mailman.

Writers Read: April Howells.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven books for fans of "Margo’s Got Money Troubles"

At Book Riot Megan Mabee tagged seven titles for fans of Margo’s Got Money Troubles, including:

Mary Jane by Jessica Anya Blau

Like Margo’s Got Money Troubles, this funny and heartfelt coming-of-age story by Jessica Anya Blau touches upon parenthood, family, substance abuse, fame, creating art, and finding yourself. In 1970’s Baltimore, bookish teen Mary Jane lands a summer job as a nanny for a psychiatrist’s toddler daughter. What Mary Jane didn’t realize is that the doctor is hosting a famous rock star and his movie star wife for the summer as the rock star works on recovering from substance abuse. Just as Margo gets life advice from her famous dad, so too does Mary Jane from the eccentric and lovable cast of characters she spends her summer with.

Read about another entry on the list.

Mary Jane is among Matthew Norman's seven novels featuring musicians & the lure of rock stardom and Jessica Gentile's eight titles with all the band drama of Daisy Jones & the Six.

The Page 69 Test: Mary Jane; Q&A with Jessica Anya Blau.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Paige Classey

From my Q&A with Paige Classey, author of Anna-Jane and the Endless Summer:

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

Anna-Jane and the Endless Summer introduces our narrator and signifies something unusual is afoot. Summer is supposed to have an end date; kids away at summer camp know this all too well. This title prepares the reader for atypical times. The original title was Anna-Jane and the Last Summer, but my editor and I worried that that maybe implied it was her last summer, as opposed to a last normal summer for all.

What's in a name?

Anna-Jane is a name I...[read on]

Visit Paige Classey's website.

Q&A with Paige Classey.

--Marshal Zeringue

T. Greenwood's "Everything Has Happened," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Everything Has Happened: A Novel by T. Greenwood.

The entry begins:

I have been told before that my writing is cinematic, and I think that comes from my deep love of movies. (I often say that in another life, I would have studied film in college.) When I write a novel, I approach each scene like a cinematographer - with a keen eye for detail and physical nuance, with vivid descriptions that help place readers in the moment. I try to create work that provides a sensory experience for the reader rather than a cerebral one.

I don't "cast" my novels per se, but after the novel is done, I often dream about who would play the characters in a film version of the book.

Everything Has Happened is a dual timeline literary mystery about a little boy who goes missing in 1986. The story is narrated by his older sister, Edie, both in the months leading up to his disappearance and nearly forty years later when the cold case is reopened. But in addition to being a mystery, the novel is also a sapphic love story about two young women at the precipice of their lives, and how the secrets they keep change their respective trajectories forever.

Edie Marshall, the narrator, is seventeen in 1986. She's a runner and an aspiring poet obsessed with Sylvia Plath. She comes from a traditional, middle-class family, her mother a pediatric nurse, and her father a carpenter. Trillium Jenkins (Trill) is new to school their senior year, the daughter of counter-culture parents, now living with her mother and older brother, Jericho, on the grounds of a defunct commune. Trill cracks Edie's world wide-open. She is magic. But...[read on]

Visit Tammy Greenwood's website.

My Book, The Movie: Rust and Stardust.

The Page 69 Test: Rust and Stardust.

Writers Read: T. Greenwood (August 2019).

The Page 69 Test: Keeping Lucy.

My Book, The Movie: Keeping Lucy.

Q&A with T. Greenwood.

The Page 69 Test: Such a Pretty Girl.

My Book, The Movie: The Still Point.

My Book, The Movie: Everything Has Happened.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five books about historic betrayals

Emma Parry's debut novel, Mrs. Benedict Arnold, is a compelling exploration of the life of Peggy Shippen, the wife of Benedict Arnold, during the American Revolution. The novel delves into the complexities of love, loyalty, and treason, as Peggy navigates the political currents of the time while seeking safety and peace for her family. Parry's writing is noted for its historical accuracy and the vivid portrayal of the characters, including the famous figures of the era. The novel has been praised for its fresh take on a well-known historical figure and its ability to shift the reader's perception of America's most famous traitor.

At The Nerd Daily Parry tagged five titles about historic betrayals, including:

Tatiana de Rosnay’s SARAH’S KEY takes the story of a ten year old French girl, and the American journalist excavating her case, to dramatize the unthinkably massive betrayal of 76000 Jewish men, women and children by French citizens and authorities in 1942.

With a plot like clockwork and clear, vivid prose, de Rosnay makes history indelible. Through spare details and deep feeling she conjures the bond between siblings, the casual cruelty of a concierge, and Parisians who profited from properties vacated by the round-up, and the Vichy-pleasing French police who exceeded even Nazi expectations. With a seamless dual timeline, the book’s momentum doesn’t let up.

Though de Rosnay’s focus is the cost of hate, more than its agents, she includes the chilling detail of Le Juif et La France, an anti-semitic propaganda exhibition in Paris staged in the run up to the round-up, and sends the reader to Chirac’s 1995 speech marking the anniversary of July 16 with its enjoinder to vigilance. Watch for cynical politics, the propagation of fear and exclusion, remember, horror is not impossible and refuse to be “passive onlookers, or accomplices, to the unacceptable”.

A novel that illuminates and disseminates history as well as fiction can.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Dale J. Stahl's "Two Rivers Entangled"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Two Rivers Entangled: An Ecological History of the Tigris and Euphrates in the Twentieth Century by Dale J. Stahl.

About the book, from the publisher:

During the twentieth century, the Tigris and Euphrates rivers underwent a profound physical transformation, one that mirrored the region's political shift from imperial rule to nation-state. Here, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey took shape in the wake of the Ottoman Empire, and the two rivers became sites of economic development planning and large-scale environmental engineering. It is a modern conceit that industrial, technological societies transcend ecological change, that technology and ecology operate separately. With this book, Dale J. Stahl instead centers riverine ecologies within the context of social and political projects and shows how natural processes encounter human intentions to manage, control, or modernize.

Weaving imperial and national histories with ecological ones, Two Rivers Entangled undermines familiar accounts of the invention of states, the advance of nations, and the triumphs of technical expertise. Stahl entangles a wide range of human and nonhuman actors―knitting together the movement of engineers and bureaucrats with that of salt particles, linking the disappointment of revolutionaries to the dissolution of unreliable rock, and following the flow of water over embankments and into poetry. Ultimately, this book offers an alternative account of twentieth-century Middle Eastern history, one subject as much to ecological change as to human visions and intentions.

Visit Dale J. Stahl's website.

The Page 69 Test: Two Rivers Entangled.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Travis Mulhauser's "Fair Chase"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Fair Chase by Travis Mulhauser.

About the book, from the publisher:

From Travis Mulhauser, “who always honors his characters with firebrand intelligence, knife-sharp wit, and reckless heart,” (Nickolas Butler) comes the gripping story of a desperately hopeful foster child who’s searching for his family—even though they’re dangerous, complicated, and never see him coming.

There hasn't been a gray wolf in Michigan's lower peninsula in over 100 years, but when one migrates onto the Sawbrook family's vast acreage, the small community of Cutler finds itself in the throes of a panic. A trail of mutilated chickens and barn cats have peppered the area's remote outskirts, and concerns about safety are accompanied by the economic and political cost of an endangered species' uninvited return to northern Michigan. The Sawbrook siblings—Lucy, Buckner, and Jewell—find themselves at odds with locals, property owners, and the state's department of resources.

When fourteen-year-old runaway, Delos Harris, arrives on the family property claiming to be the siblings’ second cousin, and to have knowledge of the wolf’s exact location, the Sawbrooks are skeptical, but desperate, and can’t deny something about the boy seems oddly familiar. With time running out, they forge ahead together against gathering threats.

The state wants the wolf moved, the locals and the developers want it dead, and the Sawbrooks see its return as a decisive victory in their battle to preserve the natural world in northern Michigan. But when a poacher is hired to settle the matter permanently, the Sawbrooks must fight to protect each other, their land, and the brave child whose mysterious connection to the wolf will either save them all, or deliver the Sawbrooks to their final ruin.

Visit Travis Mulhauser's website.

Q&A with Travis Mulhauser.

The Page 69 Test: Fair Chase.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top suspense novels with heart

Allison Winn Scotch is the New York Times bestselling author of eleven novels, including Cleo McDougal Regrets Nothing, In Twenty Years, and Time of My Life.

She lives in Los Angeles with her family and their two rescue dogs, Hugo and Mr. Peanut.

Her new novel is The Insomniacs.

At CrimeReads Scotch tagged five mysteries that pack an emotional punch, including:

The Ghostwriter by Julie Clark

This isn’t just a book about a ghostwriter solving a decades-old mystery, it’s a read about a daughter trying to understand her father before she loses the chance to make peace with him. That relationship spurs so many of the actions that Clark masterfully takes us through, and that exploration turns this book into a masterclass.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Richard Elwes's "Huge Numbers"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Huge Numbers: A Story of Counting Ambitiously, from 4 1/2 to Fish 7 by Richard Elwes.

About the book, from the publisher:

How humanity’s long pursuit of ever-larger numbers broke the boundaries of mathematics and propelled us into the Information Age

What if, every time you wanted to write down 1,000,000, you had to draw a picture of a god? And what if that number were the biggest you had a symbol for? If you were doing math in ancient Egypt, those were the rules: anything bigger broke math.

As mathematician Richard Elwes shows in Huge Numbers, this is the strange story of math. Even today, writing down some numbers is beyond us: try it with all the zeroes in a googolplex, or an outrageous alien number like TREE(3). Safer not to try: even harnessing every particle in the universe, you wouldn’t come close. But this book is no mere bestiary of numerical monsters. It shows how, by hunting down and studying ever-bigger numbers, arithmetic has reshaped human thought and made our modern era of science and computation possible.

Where many math books celebrate abstract algebra or ineffable infinities, Huge Numbers is both more practical and far weirder. It reveals a world where most numbers remain out of reach until we discover how to chase them down and tame them, and so remake our world again.

Visit Richard Elwes's website.

The Page 99 Test: Huge Numbers.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Leslie Karst reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Leslie Karst, author of Murder, Local Style (An Orchid Isle Mystery, 3).

Her entry begins:

I’m currently reading Fell Murder, by E.C.R. Lorac, the pen name of Edith Caroline Rivett, who was a member (along with Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and G.K. Chesterton) of the prestigious “Detection Club.” First published in 1944, this mystery novel is set in the fells and dales of England not far from the Lake District, and concerns the murder of the patriarch of a family who’d farmed the north country for generations.

What I most love about Fell Murder is the slow pace and detailed descriptions of the tight-knit and insular farming community, the dramatic landscape, and the World War II setting. Reading this book reminds me of...[read on]

About Murder, Local Style, from the publisher:

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

A dinner to die for!

It’s been an eventful transition, but retired caterer Valerie Corbin and her wife Kristen are finally settling into life on the Big Island of Hawai’i. Val’s even joined the neighborhood orchid society to make some new friends. So when she’s asked to step in to cater their latest social event, as the newbie of the group she can’t exactly say no.

But what should have been a straightforward gig is soon a dining disaster when the food from the event poisons and kills the society president. As Val herself becomes a suspect in the murder investigation, she’s determined to uncover the truth. Who would want to kill the mild-mannered president of the orchid society?

Turns out the list is longer than a celebrity chef's tasting menu. Apparently some of the residents did not "love thy neighbor." Can she reveal the killer’s identity before they strike again?

This mouthwatering cozy mystery is perfect for fans of Ellen Byron, Jennifer J Chow, Lucy Burdette, and Raquel V Reyes, and includes a selection of delicious Hawaiian recipes to cook at home.

Visit Leslie Karst’s website.

Coffee with a Canine: Leslie Karst & Ziggy.

My Book, The Movie: The Fragrance of Death.

Q&A with Leslie Karst.

The Page 69 Test: Waters of Destruction.

My Book, The Movie: Waters of Destruction.

Writers Read: Leslie Karst (April 2025).

The Page 69 Test: Murder, Local Style.

Writers Read: Leslie Karst.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight books about women with secret lives

Bonnie Friedman is the author of the bestselling, widely anthologized Writing Past Dark: Envy, Fear, Distraction, and Other Dilemmas in the Writer’s Life. She is also the author of the memoirs The Thief of Happiness: The Story of an Extraordinary Psychotherapy and Surrendering Oz.

Her essays have been selected for inclusion in The Best Writing on Writing, The Best American Movie Writing, The Best Buddhist Writing, and The Best Spiritual Writing. Her new novel is Don’t Stop.

At Lit Hub Friedman tagged eight "books that reveal covert lives, truths that society forbids or shames, and an effusion of vibrant spirit." One title on the list:

The Words of Dr. L., and Other Stories, Karen E. Bender

Suspenseful speculative fiction about isolated women hiding something dangerous. Pregnancy and a quest for the illegal means to end it in a surveillance society features in one story; people becoming physically (and to them shamefully) invisible due to their being treated with an oblivious daily cruelty that has become endemic centers another. Further stories illuminate emotional realities burrowed deep within enormously likeable characters, often moving the reader (or this reader anyway) to astonished tears. To read it is to sit at the feet of a master of the short story form. Speculative fiction has never been my thing. This book changed that.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Benjamin A. Saltzman's "Turning Away"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Turning Away: The Poetics of an Ancient Gesture by Benjamin A. Saltzman.

About the book, from the publisher:

A sweeping account of how we are at our most human when we turn away from the pains of the world.

Why do we look away from the suffering of others? Why do we cover our faces in shame? Why do we lower our heads in grief? Few gestures are as universal as the averted gaze. Fewer still are as ambivalent and inscrutable. In this incisive study, Benjamin A. Saltzman reveals how the kaleidoscopic appearance of these gestures in art, poetry, and philosophy has turned them into an essential language for our uncomfortable engagements with the world, challenging us to reflect on the ways we fundamentally relate to others.

Into the horizon of contemporary discourse, Turning Away sets out from five influential scenes in which figures avert their gaze: Timanthes's Sacrifice of Iphigenia, Plato's Republic, Augustine's Confessions, Christ's Crucifixion, and the Fall and Expulsion of Adam and Eve. The gestures of aversion in these scenes refract across visual media, through philosophy and politics, into modernity and the present day, having been reimagined along the way by thinkers like Hannah Arendt, artists like Marc Chagall and Salvador Dalí, poets like Langston Hughes, and many others. Saltzman offers a timely critique of the privilege of turning away and of the too-easy condemnation of our tendencies to do so.

Visit Benjamin A. Saltzman's website.

The Page 99 Test: Turning Away.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Catherine Mack

From my Q&A with Catherine Mack, author of This Weekend Doesn't End Well for Anyone: A Novel:

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

A lot! The titles are everything in this series! Usually, I come up with a concept first, but it was the title that came to me first with Every Time I Go on Vacation, Someone Dies, and each title after that has to live up to that one. They convey the tone, the topic, and the genre.

What's in a name?

The main character of my books is called Eleanor Dash. She’s named after...[read on]

Visit Catherine McKenzie's website.

The Page 69 Test: Every Time I Go on Vacation, Someone Dies.

Q&A with Catherine Mack.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight mysteries about cryptids & cryptozoology

Elisa Shoenberger is a freelance writer and journalist. At Book Riot she tagged eight "mystery books [that] explore the wide world of cryptids, from werewolves to Big Foot and the Loch Ness Monster." One title on the list:

A Death in Door County by Annelise Ryan

Some people knit; others fix up old cars. Morgan Carter tries to find cryptids when she’s not tending her bookshop in Door County, Wisconsin. But her hobby becomes serious when she’s asked to look into some mysterious deaths. Several bodies found in the water appear to have been mauled by a large creature. Will she get to the bottom of the crime, or will she become another victim of this nameless creature? It’s the first book in the Mystery Hunter series, which just saw book four, Monster in the Moonlight, drop in January.

Read about another entry on the list.

Q&A with Annelise Ryan.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Kayla Hardy's "The Quarter Queen"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Quarter Queen: A Novel by Kayla Hardy.

About the book, from the publisher:

A Voodoo witch must navigate a magically and racially divided nineteenth-century New Orleans to save her mother—and the soul of the city itself—in this lush debut novel inspired by the life of Marie Laveau.

In 1843 New Orleans, the reigning Voodoo queen is Marie Laveau, feared by her enemies and followers alike. Her daughter, Marie "Ree" Laveau the Second, is everything her cutthroat and principled mother is not—spoiled and entitled, with a wickedly rebellious streak—and defies her mother at every turn. But Ree’s world is turned upside down when she finds Marie comatose in the bayou, cursed by exiled Voodoo king Jon the Conjurer—Marie’s former teacher, lover, and greatest enemy.

As Marie hovers on the brink of death, Ree races to uncover the secrets of her mother’s life in search of a cure and gradually uncovers a web of alliances, dangers, and deception. What’s worse, Henryk Broussard, Ree’s long-missing childhood best friend, returns as a witch hunter of the Church, tasked with investigating her. With so many enemies circling, including a puritanical-minded Brotherhood of alchemists and the slave-holding mayor of the city, Ree must confront the past and face her mother’s demons that have now become her own—or die trying.

Told in alternating timelines between Ree in the present and Marie’s rise to power twenty-five years earlier, The Quarter Queen is an intimate yet epic portrait of a mother and daughter who have struggled all their lives to understand one another, and a captivating exploration of racism, family, and womanhood.

Visit Kayla Hardy's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Quarter Queen.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jennifer Pearson's "Drop Dead Famous," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Drop Dead Famous by Jennifer Pearson.

The entry begins:

In Drop Dead Famous, global popstar Blair Baker is murdered during her triumphant hometown show. The world is shaken but for her younger sister Stevie, it’s deeply personal. What starts as a search for answers pulls Stevie into the dark, toxic side of fame, where secrets, lies, and betrayal hit closer to home than she ever expected.

When I was writing Stevie, I had Emily Hampshire who plays Stevie Budd in Schitt’s Creek in my mind, but as she’s even older than me, so, unfortunately, I don’t think I can cast her in the role. Instead, I’d go for Jessica Barden. Stevie needs someone who can balance vulnerability with an offbeat edge, and Barden excels at exactly that. Known for her ability to portray complex, emotionally layered characters, shecould capture Stevie’s inner struggles and sharp wit effortlessly.

Colby brings the spark of fun and energy that keeps the story from getting too heavy. That’s why...[read on]

Visit Jenny Pearson's website.

My Book, The Movie: Drop Dead Famous.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven music-themed books

Delphine Seddon writes female-driven contemporary fiction and poetry. She is a graduate of Faber & Faber’s writing academy and studied poetry at Goldsmiths University.

Her debut novel is Darkening Song.

For the past 20 years she has worked in the music business.

At The Nerd Daily Seddon tagged seven favorite music-themed books. One title on the list:

Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins-Reid

Band member + new lead singer + falling in love = band imploding
This is a gorgeous book. The story is told via a series of interviews with the former members of fictional band, The Six, and their new lead singer, Daisy Jones and it just feels real, even down to the language the characters use which is reflective of the time (1970s). Daisy is a very strong female lead, but there’s also a real vulnerability to her which is beautifully conveyed. Lots of early reader reviews say Darkening Song reminds them of Daisy Jones & The Six but a darker, present day version – every time I see someone write that I nearly faint with joy because it’s such a huge compliment.

Read about another entry on the list.

Daisy Jones and the Six is among Pamela Spradlin Mahajan's five best books about the fabulous—and painful—parts of fame, Isabelle McConville's ten Taylor Swift song-to-book recommendations, Julia Fine's seven novels inspired by other art forms, Elvin James Mensah's seven top novels that celebrate pop music, Glenn Dixon's ten best novels about fictional bands, and Benjamin Myers's top ten mentors in fiction.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Curtis Dozier's "The White Pedestal"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The White Pedestal: How White Nationalists Use Ancient Greece and Rome to Justify Hate by Curtis Dozier.

About the book, from the publisher:

How white nationalist thought leaders use ancient Greece and Rome to claim historical precedent for their violent and oppressive politics

It is difficult to ignore the resurgence of white nationalist movements in the United States, many of which employ symbols and slogans from Greco-Roman antiquity. A long-established neo-Nazi website incorporates an image of the Parthenon into its logo, and rioters wore Spartan helmets in the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. These juxtapositions may appear incongruous to people who associate the ancient world with enlightened political ideals and sophisticated philosophical inquiry. But, as Curtis Dozier points out in this thought-provoking book, it’s hard to imagine a historical period better suited to rhetorical use by white nationalists. Indeed, some of the most widely admired voices from ancient literature and philosophy endorsed ideas that modern white supremacists promote, and the social and political realities of the ancient world provide models for political systems that white supremacists would like to establish today.

Part introduction to contemporary white nationalist thought, part exploration of ancient racism and xenophobia, and part intellectual history of the political entanglements of academic study of the past, this book reveals that contemporary white nationalist intellectuals know much more about history than many people assume—and they deploy this knowledge with disturbing success.

Learn more about The White Pedestal at the Yale University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: The White Pedestal.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: April Howells's "The Unforgettable Mailman"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Unforgettable Mailman: A Novel by April Howells.

About the novel, from the publisher:

It's never too late for the adventure of a lifetime, even if you can't remember why you started.

The Unforgettable Mailman is a heartwarming story about intergenerational friendship and the power of human connection, perfect for fans of Fredrik Backman and Virginia Evans' The Correspondent.

1966, Chicago. Backlogged with millions of undelivered letters, the post office announces a temporary closure. But eighty-one-year-old Henry Walton can't stand idly by when there’s mail waiting to be delivered. He believes letters are what keep people connected, and he’s not about to let them get lost in the chaos.

Plus, connection keeps the mind sharp—according to a note someone’s pinned up in his kitchen.

While the post office scrambles to get things under control, Henry races against time and forgetfulness. Taking it upon himself to deliver the mail, he discovers hatred and tragedy, triumph and joy in the letters he carries and the people he meets along the way.

Inspired by true events, this delightful story will linger with readers long after they turn the last page—and might just inspire someone to write a letter, the old-fashioned way.

Visit April Howells's website.

Q&A with April Howells.

My Book, The Movie: The Unforgettable Mailman.

The Page 69 Test: The Unforgettable Mailman.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top books for "Devil Wears Prada" lovers

At People magazine Shyla Watson and Lizz Schumer tagged ten must-read workplace dramas for Devil Wears Prada lovers. One title on the list:

Charity Trickett Is Not So Glamorous by Christine Stringer

Charity Trickett arrives in Los Angeles in 1997 to assist on a major blockbuster and quickly learns the industry is far less glamorous than it seems. Determined to become a screenwriter and producer, she works tirelessly to prove herself while navigating cutthroat coworkers, financial struggles, heartbreak and a mistake that could cost the studio millions.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg 99: Craig Fehrman's "This Vast Enterprise"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: This Vast Enterprise: A New History of Lewis & Clark by Craig Fehrman.

About the book, from the publisher:

A major revisionist history of the Lewis and Clark expedition: For the first time in a generation, This Vast Enterprise offers a fresh and more accurate account of one of the most important episodes in American history, humanizing forgotten figures and shattering long-held myths.

In 1806, when Meriwether Lewis and William Clark return from their journey—having led the Corps of Discovery across eight thousand miles of rapids, mountains, forests, and ravines—they bring an incredible tale starring themselves as courageous explorers, skilled survivalists, underrated scientists, and peaceful ambassadors. While there is truth in those descriptions, there is also distortion.

From one of the most exciting new historians to emerge in the past decade, This Vast Enterprise offers a novel take on the expedition: a gripping narrative that draws on lost documents, stunning analysis, and Native perspectives. Craig Fehrman spent five years visiting more than thirty archives, interviewing more than a hundred sources, and collecting oral history passed down over centuries. He came to see that the success of Lewis and Clark depended on much more than just Lewis and Clark. We all know Sacajawea, and some of us know York, the Black man Clark enslaved. But here we meet John Ordway, a working-class soldier who fought grizzlies and towed the captains’ hulking barge. We hear from Wolf Calf, a Blackfoot teenager who watched his friend die in a battle with Lewis and his men.

Each chapter moves to a different person’s point of view, describing their desires and contradictions. We see Thomas Jefferson operating in an age of bitter partisan unrest—his secret political maneuvers to fund the expedition, revealed here for the first time, are a case study in presidential power. We witness the strategy and strength of Black Buffalo, completely upending our understanding of Lakota-American diplomacy. York, in his chapters, finds ways to wield power and make choices in an era that didn’t allow him much of either. Clark is not a folksy Kentuckian but a student of the Enlightenment. (Fehrman discovered his college notebook; no previous biographer even realized that he went to college.) Lewis is someone willing to sacrifice everything for his country and his mentor, Jefferson.

In the end, the captains are men who needed help—from Sacajawea, from the Corps, and from each other. Mile after mile, the expedition pushes on through hailstorms and flash floods, frostbite and infections, rattlesnakes and rabid wolves, with the Spanish cavalry in fierce pursuit. Fehrman balances the story’s adventure with the humanity of its protagonists. The result is a thrilling reminder that even the most familiar moments in history can still surprise us.

Visit Craig Fehrman's website.

The Page 99 Test: This Vast Enterprise.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Michael O'Donnell reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Michael O'Donnell, author of Concert Black.

His entry begins:

I always seem to be reading too many books, evenly divided between fiction and non-fiction. I’m thoroughly enjoying Michael Crummey’s The Adversary, a wonderful novel about a pair of nemesis siblings—a crude, violent brother and a brilliant, amoral sister—living on a remote coast of Newfoundland in the early nineteenth century. I recently found myself traveling without a book to read and its brilliant cover design and sparkling first page jumped out at me in a local bookstore. It reminds me a good deal of Ian McGuire’s The North Water, a remarkable novel from 2016 about physical and spiritual warfare on a whaler during...[read on]

About Concert Black, from the publisher:

From the acclaimed author of Above the Fire comes Concert Black, a hauntingly elegant novel that unspools a tale of music, obsession, and the fragile architecture of legacy.

Ellen Wroe, a celebrated biographer known for her piercing insight, sets her sights on Cecil Woodbridge, the legendary conductor whose name reverberates through concert halls and conservatories. But Woodbridge, imperious and elusive, rebuffs her approach and conspires to thwart her efforts. Undeterred, Wroe embarks on a relentless pursuit, trailing the maestro across continents—through the archives of his correspondence, into the confidences of his colleagues, and deeper still into the long shadow of his past.

Maestro, cellist, king of the baton—Woodbridge is a man enshrined in myth and bristling with contradictions. Beneath the grandeur lies a hidden lattice of ambition, betrayal, and sorrow. As Wroe attempts to chart his ascent, she uncovers not only the cost of genius but the wreckage it often leaves behind.

With lyrical precision and atmospheric sweep, Concert Black echoes the psychological depth of Ian McEwan’s Atonement and the philosophical resonance of Julian Barnes’s The Noise of Time. From the frostbitten avenues of postwar London to the symphonic stages of Boston and Chicago, biographer and subject circle each other in an elegiac dance—until they collide in a reckoning neither can escape.

A novel of ambition and artistry, Concert Black is a symphony of human complexity: piercing, poised, and unforgettable.

Visit Michael O'Donnell's website.

Q&A with Michael O'Donnell.

The Page 69 Test: Above the Fire.

Writers Read: Michael O'Donnell (December 2023).

The Page 69 Test: Concert Black.

Writers Read: Michael O'Donnell.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven books featuring self-sabotaging characters

Pardeep Toor is a winner of the PEN America Dau Prize. His writing has appeared in Best Debut Short Stories: The PEN America Dau Prize, Southern Humanities Review, Electric Literature, Catapult, and Longreads. His new short story collection is Hands (Cornerstone Press). Toor grew up in Brampton, Ontario, Canada, and now lives in Colorado.

At Electric Lit the author tagged seven

stories of characters who can’t get out of their own way. These characters are both the aggressors and victims of their circumstances. They are hard to love, but it’s still painful to read about their collapses. In the end, readers are left feeling queasy, hoping for the best while realizing that the worst is inevitable.

One title on Toor's list:

Oksana, Behave! by Maria Kuznetsova

Oksana is selfish and self-destructive. She sleeps with a married man at her grandmother’s funeral. She drinks a lot and is generally unlikeable. But she’s funny. Is that enough? It is in Oksana, Behave!, which follows a family’s immigration journey to the United States through Oksana’s engaging and brutally honest perspective. She recalls the story of her family moving from Kiev to Florida, and describes her education in middle and high school, college, and then graduate school. The immigrant themes of losing social status, language, and homeland are integrated within this coming-of-age story. Oksana’s comedic charm makes her likeable and hateable at the same time. Ultimately, her hurtful antics induce a guilty laugh—even though she should know better.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Shay Kauwe

From my Q&A with Shay Kauwe, author of The Killing Spell:

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

The original title of The Killing Spell was a reference to a popular ʻŌlelo Noʻeau (Hawaiian proverb) I ka ʻōlelo no ke ola; i ka ʻōlelo no ka make, which roughly translates to “In language there is life; In language there is death.” My publisher let me know that title may be a bit of a mouthful to remember and suggested the The Killing Spell, arguing that it would be catchier.

They were right.

What's in a name?

In Hawaiian culture, names are taken seriously which is why Kea’s holds so much weight. Kealaokaleo literally translates to...[read on]

Visit Shay Kauwe's website.

Q&A with Shay Kauwe.

--Marshal Zeringue

Third reading: D.W. Buffa on "The Education of Henry Adams"

The Dark Backward is among D.W. Buffa's more recent novels to be released. The story revolves around not just the strangest case William Darnell had ever tried;

it was the strangest case ever tried by any lawyer anywhere. It was impossible to explain; or rather, impossible to believe. The defendant, who did not speak English or any other language anyone could identify, had been found on an island no one knew existed, and charged with murder, rape and incest. He was given the name Adam, and Adam, as Darnell comes to learn, is more intelligent, quicker to learn, than anyone he has ever met. Adam, he learns to his astonishment, is a member of an ancient civilization that has remained undiscovered for more than three thousand years.

Buffa is also the author of ten legal thrillers involving the defense attorney Joseph Antonelli. He has also published a series that attempts to trace the movement of western thought from ancient Athens, in Helen; the end of the Roman Empire, in Julian's Laughter; the Renaissance, in The Autobiography of Niccolo Machiavelli; and America in the twentieth century, in Neumann's Last Concert.

Buffa's latest take in his "Third Reading" series covers The Education of Henry Adams. It begins:

Written in 1905, The Education of Henry Adams was printed in a private edition of one hundred copies, limited, perhaps, to that number because it was thought to be as large an audience as it was likely to command. Adams explains at the very beginning the somewhat unusual ambition he had for the book.

“American literature offers scarcely one working model for high education…. Except in the abandoned sphere of the dead languages, no one has discussed what part of education has, in his personal experience, turned out to be useful, and what not. This volume attempts to discuss it.”

Five hundred pages later, in a chapter entitled, “The Abyss of Ignorance,” Adams tells us what he had hoped his education would teach him and why this was a necessary sequel to something else he had written. The century 1150-1250, expressed in Amiens Cathedral and the Works of Thomas Aquinas, was, he believed, “the unit from which he might measure down to his own time, without assuming anything as true or untrue, except relation.” He had written Mont Saint Michel: a study of thirteenth-century unity so that he could, from that point, “fix a position for himself, which he would label: The Education of Henry Adams: a study of twentieth-century multiplicity. With the help of these two points of relation, he hoped to project his line forward and backward indefinitely, subject to correction from anyone who should know better.” Adams was serious. This was not some generalized scheme of historical movement; he had something quite specific in mind: to trace, to “triangulate,” not just the movement, the “acceleration of movement in politics since the year 1200, as he was trying to fix it in philosophy and physics; in finance and force.”

Born on February 2, 1838, Adams had more than the ordinary chances of acquiring the education he needed. His great-grandfather, John Adams, and his grandfather, John Quincy Adams, had both been President, and his father, Charles Francis Adams, was the American minister to England during the Civil War. Henry Adams, however, was never to have anything like the same kind of career. “As it happened he never got to the point of playing the game at all; he lost himself in the study of it….” It was not because he was a particularly good student. He hated school, “and the prejudice became deeper with years. He always reckoned his school-days from ten to sixteen years old, as time thrown away.” There were, really, only four things he thought he needed to know: Mathematics, French, German, and Spanish. “With these he could master in very short time any special branch of inquiry, and feel at home in any society.” It is a mark of how much has changed in what we mean by education, that Adams added, “Latin and Greek, he could, with the help of the modern languages, learn more completely by the intelligent work of six weeks than in the six years he spent on them at school.”

After the wasted years of ten to sixteen, Adams wasted four more at Harvard. Looking back on it...[read on]

Visit D.W. Buffa's website.

Buffa's previous third reading essays: The Great Gatsby; Brave New World; Lord Jim; Death in the Afternoon; Parade's End; The Idiot; The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; The Scarlet Letter; Justine; Patriotic Gore; Anna Karenina; The Charterhouse of Parma; Emile; War and Peace; The Sorrows of Young Werther; Bread and Wine; “The Crisis of the Mind” and A Man Without Qualities; Eugene Onegin; The Collected Works of Thomas Babington Macaulay; The Europeans; The House of Mirth and The Writing of Fiction; Doctor Faustus; the reading list of John F. Kennedy; Jorge Luis Borges; History of the Peloponnesian War; Mansfield Park; To Each His Own; A Passage To India; Seven Pillars of Wisdom; The Letters of T.E. Lawrence; All The King’s Men; The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus; Naguib Mahfouz’s novels of ancient Egypt; Main Street; Theodore H. White's The Making of the President series, part I; Theodore H. White's The Making of the President series, part II; Thus Spoke Zarathustra; Fiction's Failure; Hermann Hesse's Demian; Frederick Douglass, Slavery, and The Fourth of July; Caesar’s Ghost; The American Constitution; A Tale of Two Cities; The Leopard; Madame Bovary; The Sheltering Sky; Tocqueville’s America and Ours; American Statesmen; Ancient and Modern Writers Reconsidered; Père Goriot; The Remarkable Edmund Burke; The Novels of W.H. Hudson; America Revised; The City And Man; "The Use And Abuse Of History"; I, Claudius; The Closing of The American Mind; History of Rome; Before The Deluge; Herodotus's Histories; The Education of Henry Adams.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five historical fiction books featuring older women

Rachel Brittain is a writer, Day Dreamer, and Amateur Aerialist. Her short fiction has appeared in Luna Station Quarterly, Andromeda Spaceways, and others. She is a contributing editor for Book Riot, where she screams into the void about her love of books. Brittain lives in Northwest Arkansas with a rambunctious rescue pup, a snake, and a houseful of plants (most of which aren’t carnivorous).

At Book Riot she tagged five historical fiction books in which "older women prove that it’s never too late to begin a new adventure." One entry on the list:

The Woman With No Name by Audrey Blake

Based on the life of a remarkable real woman, The Woman With No Name tells the story of Yvonne Rudellat, the first woman recruited by Britain to become a saboteur during WWII. Estranged from her husband and with her adult daughter working in a factory for the war effort, Yvonne is already feeling adrift when her apartment is bombed in the Blitz. She wants to do her part, but no one wants anything from an unassuming, middle-aged woman. That is, until she’s recruited by SOE (Special Operations Executive) to become a sabotage agent. Defying the expectations of all the men who underestimated her, Yvonne takes to spy school with enthusiasm and is soon off to France, where her work will set her against Nazis who will go to any length to uncover the spies in their midst.

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Eamonn Gearon's "The Arab Bureau"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Arab Bureau: The Story of Britain's Most Ingenious Intelligence Unit by Eamonn Gearon.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the midst of the First World War, an extraordinary intelligence unit operated from Cairo's Savoy Hotel, combining the skills of archaeologists, academics and soldiers to revolutionize how Britain gathered information and shaped events in the Middle East. Overshadowed by Lawrence of Arabia, the Arab Bureau's true significance has remained hidden in plain sight ever since.

This fascinating study uncovers the Bureau's remarkable story through newly discovered Arabic documents and previously overlooked archives. At its heart lies an astonishing find: Thawrat al-Arab, an ambitious Arabic-language book and the longest piece of British propaganda produced during the war. From the Arab Bulletin's secret intelligence reports to sophisticated propaganda campaigns, the Bureau was decades ahead of its time. The team--including archaeologists fresh from desert digs and scholars fluent in local dialects--developed new methods of cultural intelligence that would influence future generations.

Eamonn Gearon's compelling narrative reveals how this unique organization navigated the complexities of Arab politics, tribal rivalries and Ottoman intelligence, while developing techniques that resonate with today's challenges in intelligence-gathering. Essential reading for anyone interested in intelligence history, the Middle East or how innovation occurs in wartime, this book transforms our understanding of a crucial moment in world history.

Visit Eamonn Gearon's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Arab Bureau.

--Marshal Zeringue

April Howells's "The Unforgettable Mailman," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Unforgettable Mailman by April Howells.

The entry begins:

If The Unforgettable Mailman got optioned for a movie, I would cast Harrison Ford as Henry. (Please say yes, Harrison!) I can picture him bringing the humour and determination of Henry to the role, capturing hearts the same way he has in Shrinking and the Indiana Jones franchise.

I’d also cast Morgan Freeman as Stan, Henry’s close friend and confidante. Morgan Freeman was a...[read on]

Visit April Howells's website.

Q&A with April Howells.

My Book, The Movie: The Unforgettable Mailman.

--Marshal Zeringue