Pg. 69: Cynthia Swanson's "This Isn’t New"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: This Isn't New by Cynthia Swanson.

About This Isn't New, from the publisher:

The female leads in these stories have disparate lives but share a singular trait: their sex dictates the expectations stamped onto them. Each woman, in her time, must fight for who she is against the forces working to constrain her.

Visit Cynthia Swanson's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Bookseller.

The Page 69 Test: The Glass Forest.

Writers Read: Cynthia Swanson (February 2018).

Q&A with Cynthia Swanson.

The Page 69 Test: Anyone But Her.

My Book, The Movie: This Isn't New.

Writers Read: Cynthia Swanson.

The Page 69 Test: This Isn't New.

--Marshal Zeringue

Third reading: D.W. Buffa on Duff Cooper’s "Talleyrand"

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 Duff Cooper’s Talleyrand. It begins:

No one now remembers Duff Cooper, but in Great Britain in the l930s, and in the years of the Second World War, everyone who paid attention to what Winston Churchill was trying to do knew Duff Cooper’s name. Alfred Duff Cooper was part of the English aristocracy that in 1890 when he was born still considered itself to have not just the right to rule, but the duty to prepare itself for the task. Cooper, 1st Viscount Norwich, attended Eton and Oxford, and was elected to Parliament as a Conservative in 1924. He became First Lord of the Admiralty in 1938, but resigned when Neville Chamberlain signed the Munich agreement with Adolf Hitler. When the war broke out, and Churchill replaced Chamberlain as Prime Minister, he asked Cooper to become Minister of Information, a position he retained until 1944 when he became England’s ambassador to France. Cooper knew more about France than many of the public officials with whom he was to deal, and, more importantly, understood the precise relationship that needed to exist between England and France if the peace of Europe was to be maintained. He had written about it before the war, in l932, in his remarkable biography of one of the greatest, and most misunderstood, statesmen the world has ever seen.

Born in 1754 into the French aristocracy, Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord was treated like most of the children of his class: he was ignored by his parents and sent at the age of eight to boarding school, to college, where he spent most of his time in the library, “reading works of history and biographies of statesmen, feeding his hopes for the future upon the record of the past.” Trading one monastic life for another, he was ordained a priest in 1779. This then was not really a monastic life at all. If Talleyrand ever prayed, it was for the swift departure of anyone who failed to keep up their end of a dinner table conversation. Talleyrand could talk, and to “talk well was then considered the highest attribute that any person could possess,” and the “great ladies were the leaders of talk as well as of fashion.” Though not especially attractive, women, even those who thought they would hate him, fell easily, sometimes too easily, under his spell.

In 1788 Talleyrand became the Bishop of Autun, and at the age of thirty-five was one of the most important men in Paris. He soon had a reputation for seduction so great that in “an age of universal latitude and easily condoned license,” he “acquired notoriety even before he acquired fame.” Cooper sums it up: “Noble birth, influential connections, and a powerful intelligence, supported by high ambition and unburdened by scruples,” he seemed destined to become “a worthy successor to the great ecclesiastical statesmen who in the past had controlled the destiny of France.” He had already made one important contribution to the destiny of France:...[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; Duff Cooper’s Talleyrand.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Carmela Dutra

From my Q&A with Carmela Dutra, author of Hot Wings and Homicide: A Food Truck Mystery:

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

A surprising amount. I wanted something that felt catchy, cozy, and immediately signaled “culinary cozy mystery,” but also made readers pause and smile, or do a double take. I went through an entire list of possibilities and couldn’t quite land on the right one, so I asked my agent for help. She’s very collaborative, and that’s one of the things I love most about working together. I sent her a few options, and she immediately chose Hot Wings and Homicide. Marketing loved it, and readers have responded in exactly the way I’d hoped: curiosity, humor, and yes, hunger. People see the title and immediately have a comment or want to know more.

What’s in a name?

The name Beth Lloyd was...[read on]

Visit Carmela Dutra's website.

Q&A with Carmela Dutra.

--Marshal Zeringue

Twelve books about losing perspective in Los Angeles

Luke Goebel is an American novelist, screenwriter, producer, and publisher.

He is the author of Fourteen Stories, None of Them Are Yours, winner of the Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize, and the novel Kill Dick.

He co-wrote the films Causeway and Eileen, starring Thomasin McKenzie and Anne Hathaway; for Causeway, Brian Tyree Henry received an Academy Award nomination.

At Electric Lit Goebel tagged twelve titles about losing perspective in Los Angeles. One novel on the list:

White Oleander by Janet Fitch

Fitch maps Los Angeles through the instability of Astrid, a teen who’s suddenly parentless in every practical sense when her mother goes to jail. She moves between foster homes and identities, adapting to survive each new environment. Beauty appears throughout the novel, but it offers no protection, like the relationship between mother and daughter that is both floral and poisonous. Still, flowers are pretty, right? Isn’t beauty a protection of its own? Isn’t beauty enough? LA sharpens some people and dulls others. In Fitch’s telling, LA becomes a sequence of tests, each one demanding a version of the self that may not survive the next transition.

Read about another entry on the list.

White Oleander is among Allison Gibson's eleven novels expectant parents should read and Michelle Sacks's top five novels with complex and credible child narrators.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Whitney E. Laemmli's "Making Movement Modern"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Making Movement Modern: Science, Politics, and the Body in Motion by Whitney E. Laemmli.

About the book, from the publisher:

Explores how researchers used systems for recording human movement to navigate the relationship between mind and body, freedom and control, and the individual and the state.

In the early twentieth century, human bodily movement garnered interest among researchers who were convinced that understanding and controlling it could help govern an increasingly frazzled, fragmented world. Making Movement Modern traces one movement visualization technique, Labanotation, from its origins in expressionist dance, Austro-Hungarian military discipline, and contemporary physiology to its employment in factories and offices a half-century later. Frustrated by societies that seemed plagued by regimentation and alienation, the users of Laban-inspired systems—from artists and scientists to factory owners, politicians, lawyers, anthropologists, psychiatrists, and computer scientists—hoped to provide opportunities for individual expression while simultaneously harnessing movement to serve the needs of larger communities, businesses, and states.

Making Movement Modern reveals how Labanotation’s creator, choreographer Rudolf Laban, and his acolytes offered this system to a surprising variety of individuals and groups. It was a technique that promised liberation through expressive movement; it was also a means of organizing fascist displays of pure “Aryan” culture. The book explores these political ambiguities as Laban-based systems entered postwar society in the United States and the United Kingdom, where they were used to document disappearing folk cultures, treat Holocaust survivors, and make even the dullest, most repetitive work feel spiritually meaningful. Central to these efforts were vast programs to collect and store new kinds of personal movement data, and this history also has much to tell us about mass data collection today. This is a book for anyone interested in the relationship between art, science, data, and the human body across the tumultuous twentieth century.

Visit Whitney E. Laemmli's website.

The Page 99 Test: Making Movement Modern.

--Marshal Zeringue

K.M. Colley's "The Roaring Ridleys," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Roaring Ridleys: A Novel by K.M. Colley.

The entry begins:

This is my dream question because, as an actress and author, I love blending these worlds together. I always have in mind who I would like to play my characters. So in The Roaring Ridleys, each sibling comes from a different part of the world, such as India, Egypt, Hong Kong, France, the UK, Argentina, and the USA. So I had to be incredibly visual when writing these characters.

Kavita would have to be Avantika. She was the first character I imagined with only her in mind. I don't know how I would go further if Avantika couldn't do it! She is absolutely perfect for this role.

Adesua was definitely me. So, getting to create my own worlds, I always saw myself playing her!

For Amelia, that was a tricky one for reasons the reader will know, but I eventually thought of Nico Parker. She is an absolutely accurate representation of Amelia’s character, and I feel she would give the same energy.

I have to start off strong with the brothers; Wei gives Simu Liu vibes, for sure.

Diego was one of the first characters I thought of, and...[read on]

Visit K.M. Colley’s website.

My Book, The Movie: The Roaring Ridleys.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top historical romance books set in France

At Book Riot Julia Rittenberg tagged five historical romance titles set in France, including:

Passing Love by Jacqueline E. Luckett

A beautiful story of lost love, this book initially follows Nicole as she runs away from an engagement and off to Paris to find herself. She accidentally comes across a picture of her father with a love note on the back, and tries to track down the woman who wrote it. The book then catapults back to the 1950s, when Paris was full of different possibilities, and people like the mystery woman finding themselves and falling in love.

Read about another book on the list.

The Page 69 Test: Passing Love.

My Book, The Movie: Passing Love.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg 69: Robert J. Sawyer's "The Downloaded 2: Ghosts in the Machine"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Downloaded 2: Ghosts in the Machine by Robert J. Sawyer.

About the book, from the publisher:

Finalist, Best Novel, 2026 Aurora Awards

To see yourself as others see you

As an asteroid is about to slam into Earth, ex-convict Roscoe Koudoulian along with Captain Letitia Garvey and her starship crew re-upload their consciousnesses into cyberspace. In that digital realm, Roscoe is confronted by someone he left for dead centuries ago, and the astronauts face younger versions of themselves—ghosts in the machine—whose continued existence could destroy the last survivors of the human race.

Visit Robert J. Sawyer's website.

The Page 69 Test: WWW: Wake.

The Page 69 Test: WWW: Watch.

The Page 69 Test: WWW: Wonder.

The Page 69 Test: Triggers.

The Page 69 Test: Red Planet Blues.

The Page 69 Test: Quantum Night.

The Page 69 Test: The Downloaded 2: Ghosts in the Machine.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Cynthia Swanson reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Cynthia Swanson, author of This Isn't New: Women's Historical Stories.

Her entry begins:

My latest read is Circe by Madeline Miller. I’ve been in a book club for 25 years, and one of the things I love most about book club is that we read books that either I hadn’t heard of before or hadn’t gotten around to reading. Circe falls into the second category: it was on my radar but hadn’t risen to the top of my To-Read list until another book club member selected it for her month hosting. I loved this novel, which is both an alternative take on The Odyssey and a fleshed-out relating of the goddess Circe’s own story. Much mythology focuses on men’s adventures but doesn’t go into depth about what women (and goddesses) were doing, other than seducing men and leading them down dangerous paths. I love how Miller turns that on its head and...[read on]

About This Isn't New, from the publisher:

The female leads in these stories have disparate lives but share a singular trait: their sex dictates the expectations stamped onto them. Each woman, in her time, must fight for who she is against the forces working to constrain her.

Visit Cynthia Swanson's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Bookseller.

The Page 69 Test: The Glass Forest.

Writers Read: Cynthia Swanson (February 2018).

Q&A with Cynthia Swanson.

The Page 69 Test: Anyone But Her.

My Book, The Movie: This Isn't New.

Writers Read: Cynthia Swanson.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six thrillers that sit with discomfort & ethical ambiguities

A confirmed Francophile, Michael Cowan taught writing at UCLA School of Law, sang professionally, argued and won a case before the California Supreme Court, had two songs published, co-owned a dairy manufacturing business, and became the general counsel of two major corporations. Born and raised in Buffalo, NY, Cowan attended Amherst High School, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Michigan Law School. Father of three and grandfather of four, he lives in Los Angeles with his wife and their eccentric rescue dog Percie.

Cowan's new novel is John B. Peoples.

At CrimeReads he tagged six favorite thrillers that sit with discomfort and ethical ambiguities. One title on the list:

Scott Turow, Presumed Innocent

Talk about corruption in the legal system! This blockbuster is replete with conflicts of interest and outright corruption. A prosecutor, Rusty Sabich, despite a clear conflict of interest, takes charge of the investigation into the murder of Carolyn Polhemus, someone he had an affair with. Eventually, Rusty is charged with the murder, and it turns out just about everyone has had an affair with Carolyn, including the judge who is also involved in a bribery scheme for letting defendants off.

When we are finished with Scott Turow’s book, our confidence in the legal system is shaken. We question whether anyone in that system—any prosecutor, attorney judge—is not corrupt. What is their background, what are their prejudices, how could that affect me the reader some day?

Turow also leaves us with the moral ambiguity of Rusty not turning in his wife after he finds out she was the one who had killed Carolyn. His reason was that he did not want to deprive his son of a mother. Really? A killer as a good mother? That certainly sits with some discomfort for me.

Read about another entry on the list.

Presumed Innocent is among Jane Casey's twelve novels with top courtroom scenes, Bonnie Kistler's four classic fictional trials that subverted the truth, five books that changed Reece Hirsch's life, Fiona Barton's ten favorite books centering on marriages that hold dark secrets and Alafair Burke's favorite "Lawyers are People Too" books. Sandy Stern in Presumed Innocent is one of Simon Lelic's top ten lawyers in fiction.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Youngjae Lee's "Criminalizing Disobedience"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Criminalizing Disobedience by Youngjae Lee.

About the book, from the publisher:

Many laws penalize conduct not because it is inherently wrongful but because the government has prohibited it. Criminalizing Disobedience examines this important yet underexplored aspect of modern criminal law. Such "disobedience offenses" include: administration of justice crimes (contempt, obstruction of justice, perjury); failure-to-assist crimes (hindering prosecution, receiving stolen property, money laundering, failure to register or to report); regulatory offenses (involving, for example, environmental, drug, or medical device laws); preventive offenses (attempt, possession of weapons or drugs); and national security offenses (treason, espionage, export control and sanctions violations). What unifies these otherwise disparate offenses is that their core wrong lies in noncompliance with legal directives, not in unjustifiably harming or endangering others. The principal reason to refrain from such conduct is simply that the government has said not to do it. By contrast, laws against, say, murder or rape prohibit conduct that is morally wrongful even in the absence of legal prohibition.

This book addresses the important normative and conceptual questions these laws raise: How should disobedience be understood? Is it blameworthy to disobey the state? In what ways does the state criminalize and punish disobedience? What should be the limits to the state's power to demand obedience and punish disobedience?

Criminalizing Disobedience explores these questions across a range of legal domains and develops a philosophically sophisticated framework for evaluating such laws. In the process, it sheds new light on longstanding questions of political obligation, criminalization, and punishment. It will be of interest to scholars of criminal law, the administrative state, law and philosophy, and political philosophy.

Learn more about Criminalizing Disobedience at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Criminalizing Disobedience.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Emma Garman

From my Q&A with Emma Garman, author of The Kindness of Strangers. A Novel:

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

One reader called the title ironic—meaning, I guess, that some very unkind acts are committed in the story, which is true! But I see the title as having a double meaning. Strangers can be dangerous, but so can those we know most intimately. And in The Kindness of Strangers, both possibilities play out. Ultimately, the title gestures to the idea of found family. In the novel, a disparate group—individuals of different ages, class backgrounds, nationalities, sexes and sexualities—end up living together and forming lifelong bonds.

What's in a name?

I love over-the-top Dickensian names that broadcast exactly what we, the readers, are meant to think. But...[read on]

Visit Emma Garman's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Kindness of Strangers.

Writers Read: Emma Garman.

Q&A with Emma Garman.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top love stories for the romance reluctant

Andrew Forrester is a writer and former English teacher whose work has appeared in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and Parents magazine. He holds a PhD in nineteenth-century British literature and lives in Austin, Texas with his family.

How The Story Goes is his first novel.

At The Nerd Daily Forrester tagged "ten love stories that may or may not be capital-R romances, but which have a little something extra going on, too." One title on the list:

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

A book that boldly asks the question: what if Kate & Leopold (2001), starring Hugh Jackman and national treasure Meg Ryan, were good? The narrator works for a secretive faction of the British government, where she is tasked with looking after Graham Gore, a British naval officer who (in real life) died on an arctic expedition but who, in this story, has been time-traveled to present-day London. While helping Graham understand the modern world, sparks fly… but so do bullets. In fact, it gets very spy thriller towards the end. I loved it, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since I finished it.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: David Hirshberg's "Crossing the Bronx"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Crossing the Bronx by David Hirshberg.

About the novel, from the publisher:

Crossing the Bronx is an historical literary novel set primarily in the 1950s in The Bronx. It is a modern retelling of the Jacob and Esau story from Genesis. The narrative that propels the story forward concerns the destruction of a neighborhood in the guise of progress. Jay and Eric, the sons of Ike (an Italian Jew), and Rebekeh, (a Mountain Jew), are estranged-as are their parents-and find themselves on opposite sides of a bitter struggle that pits those in power against the defenseless people of a local community.

Eric has aligned himself with his father Ike, who by day is a cop-and at other times works surreptitiously for a mobbed-up construction company engaged in major projects transforming New York City-while his younger brother Jay is allied with his mother and with a neighborhood group fighting to preserve its very soul. Their fractious relationship speaks to the issues of how families split apart, and whether or not the pieces can ever be put back together.

In addition to sustained tension-filled action, Crossing the Bronx is a story of romance, commitments, beliefs, and triumphs over adversities (lies, theft, murder, concealment, prejudice). Through vivid descriptions, perceptive insights, humor and sensitivity, the reader identifies with the characters who come to life in a realistic fashion to illustrate who we are, how we behave, and what causes us to change.

The novel is fast-paced, with uncompromising realism, reflecting the unrelenting tension between antagonists and the anxieties that overwhelm those without power. The underbelly of the criminal and political world is evidenced by brutality, rapaciousness, and a never-ending desire to seek retribution. A love story between Jay and his girlfriend Francesca counter-balances the grimness to show how some people can overcome the odds stacked against them by their birth and places of origin. Smart, savvy women (Francesca, Rebekah, Francesca's grandmother "Nonna Ebrea"-who thinks she is descended from Conversos-and Jay's therapist Dr. Leah Silverman) provide a strong counterbalance to the lies, thefts, beatings, concealments, murders, and prejudice evidenced by the men.

It is populated by colorful Italian, Irish, Black, Puerto Rican, and Jewish characters from a variety of different backgrounds; the novel sparkles with dialogue that is representative of their respective cultures.

The book can be read on three levels: (1) The story of what it was like to have lived through the Depression and World War II era, and into the one that emerged after 1945-a society that was being altered almost unknowingly into something that would turn out to be significantly different in terms of social activism and ethnic politics; (2) A metaphor for what is going on in cities today, in terms of the conflicts between 'ordinary people' and powerful politicians and business interests; and (3) How a Jewish family emerges from dysfunction to find its way despite daunting implacable obstacles in its way.

Visit David Hirshberg's website.

The Page 69 Test: Crossing the Bronx.

--Marshal Zeringue

Susan McGuirk's "Dear Missing Friend," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Dear Missing Friend by Susan McGuirk.

The entry begins:

I spent years working in film programming. I read a lot of scripts and felt comfortable with dramatic writing. I’m also a big theater fan, so dialogue and images are how I thought about stories. I’m also a visual person, so being able to see the characters faces in my mind’s eye was important to me. I found images on antique photo sites to use as mental illustrations of each character. I did the same with the settings to better imagine the characters’ dwelling places.

So, picking a dream director and cast for a movie adaption of Dear Missing Friend is my idea of fun!

To start here is a short version of the story:

Catherine McGuirk leaves Ireland and a shipboard suitor behind for a new life in Sag Harbor, New York. At the height of the 1840s whaling era, Cath marries a handsome sailor who promises to forsake the sea. Instead, he leaves for the gold rush, spurring her quest to become a governess in Manhattan. Cath continues to be torn between her ambition, her missing husband, and her former beau, now a wealthy speculator.

My dream director: Joe Wright. He directed one of the all-time great historical fiction films, the 2005 version of Pride and Prejudice. His 2017 Darkest Hour is one of the great Winston Churchill movies of all.

Here’s my dream team cast (culled from past and present).

Catherine McGuirk, protagonist who goes from teenager to bride to governess: Jesse Buckley

Michael Heffernan, husband who goes off whaling and then to the gold rush: Paul...[read on]

Visit Susan McGuirk's website.

My Book, The Movie: Dear Missing Friend.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven top books about actually-old women

Laurie Frankel is the New York Times bestselling, award-winning author of six novels. Her writing has also appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, Poets & Writers, Publishers Weekly, People Magazine, Lit Hub, The Sydney Morning Herald, and other publications. She is the recipient of the Washington State Book Award and the Endeavor Award. Her novels have been translated into more than twenty-five languages and been optioned for film and TV. A former college professor, she now writes full-time in Seattle, Washington where she lives with her family and makes good soup.

[Coffee with a Canine: Laurie Frankel and Calli; The Page 69 Test: The Atlas of Love; My Book, The Movie: Goodbye for Now; The Page 69 Test: Goodbye for Now; My Book, The Movie: This Is How It Always Is; The Page 69 Test: This Is How It Always Is; Writers Read: Laurie Frankel (February 2017); The Page 69 Test: One Two Three; Q&A with Laurie Frankel; The Page 69 Test: Enormous Wings]

Frankel's new novel is Enormous Wings.

At Lit Hub the author tagged seven great books about "actually-old women behaving as actually old." One title on Frankel's list:

Loved and Missed by Susie Boyt

To begin at a beginning—the cover—this might be the most perfectly titled book I’ve ever read. (I wouldn’t dare spoil the eponymous moment, but it moved me to tears.) Its protagonist, Ruth, takes over caring for her granddaughter Lily as it becomes clear—gradually and then all at once—that her drug-addicted daughter Eleanor cannot. Ruth is an extraordinary heroine, rock-solid strong in a completely unshowy, sincere, vulnerable way. Her relationship with Lily is central—and it’s striking, smart, and unusual—but her relationship with Eleanor is also astute, heartbreaking, and beautifully explored. This novel is simultaneously quiet, stripped down, hyper focused AND can’t-stop-turning-pages tense, and that’s owing to how deeply you feel for Ruth and this family. Boyt gives us much needed, different-than-usual takes on grandmothering, family, and addiction. Moving, harrowing, and mind-blowing.

Read about another title on Frankel's list.

Loved and Missed is among Karleigh Frisbie Brogan's seven books that reckon with larger-than-life mothers.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Lawrence Douglas's "The Criminal State"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Criminal State: War, Atrocity, and the Dream of International Justice by Lawrence Douglas.

About the book, from the publisher:

A sweeping history of the struggle to hold states to account for their gravest crimes

The Criminal State offers a gripping account of how law has confronted the most radical forms of state violence. Beautifully written, broad in scope, and bracingly original, it weaves history with political thought to trace the shifting legal response to state aggression and atrocities, from Leopold’s rule over the Congo to Putin’s war in Ukraine.

At its heart is Lawrence Douglas’s fresh interpretation of the law’s reckoning with Nazi aggression and atrocity. He shows how the Nuremberg trials challenged centuries of thought—rooted in Hobbes and other canonical thinkers—that shielded sovereigns from legal scrutiny. Yet Nuremberg’s bid to frame aggression as the cornerstone of a new order of international criminal law largely failed, giving way to a system now centrally concerned with crimes against humanity and genocide—while leaving unresolved the legality and effectiveness of using force to stop the worst violations of human rights.

Providing rare historical perspective on the dilemmas facing international courts, The Criminal State is a sweeping, provocative history of the struggle to bring perpetrators of state violence to justice.

Learn more about The Criminal State at the Princeton University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: The Criminal State.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Christina Baker Kline's "The Foursome"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Foursome: A Novel by Christina Baker Kline.

About the novel, from the publisher:

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Christina Baker Kline comes a boldly original reimagining of the astonishing true story of two sisters in nineteenth-century North Carolina — Kline’s own distant relatives — who married world-famous conjoined twins from Siam.

When Eng and Chang Bunker arrive in Wilkes County in 1839, they’re not just a curiosity—they’re a sensation. Everyone is eager to learn whether the salacious rumors about them are true. Within months, the twins have opened a general store, bought land, and begun building a plantation. Now, word has it, they’re looking for wives—and in a place that thrives on gossip and legacy, their ambitions set the community on edge.

Sarah and Adelaide Yates, daughters of a once-prominent local family brought low by scandal, are drawn into their orbit. Bold, beautiful Adelaide sees in the twins’ fame a chance to reclaim her future. Sarah, quiet and observant, isn’t so sure. When the twins’ lives become entangled with theirs, they must navigate loyalty, longing, and identity in a world where everything—including race, class, and gender—is rigidly defined.

Spanning five decades and unfolding against the backdrop of a fractured nation hurtling toward war, The Foursome is both intimate and epic: a story of love and constraint, identity and reinvention. With piercing insight and emotional precision, Kline brings to life a forgotten chapter of American history and the complex, boundary-defying marriages at its center.

Visit Christina Baker Kline's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Christina Baker Kline & Lucy.

The Page 69 Test: Bird in Hand.

Writers Read: Christina Baker Kline (March 2017).

The Page 69 Test: The Foursome.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Emma Garman reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Emma Garman, author of The Kindness of Strangers. A Novel.

Her entry begins:

Although I mostly read novels, at the moment I happen to be reading and immensely enjoying two nonfiction books.

Like a Cat Loves a Bird is a new biographical study of Muriel Spark by the literary scholar James Bailey. Spark, in my opinion, is one of the greatest novelists of all time (I’d say she influenced me, but such is her genius it sounds presumptuous!), and Bailey is such a perceptive, witty, and clever writer. If you think you don’t need to read another book on Spark, I promise that you do. Here’s Bailey on her habit of...[read on]

About The Kindness of Strangers, from the publisher:

A wildly entertaining debut and homage to the classic murder mystery set in post—WWII London where a stranger’s arrival at a boarding house sets a deadly chain of events in motion—perfect for fans of Kate Atkinson, Agatha Christie, and Richard Osman.

London, 1953. Jimmy Sullivan lies dying on the drawing room floor while his housemates look on, their lives about to change forever.

One foggy night in the dead of February, a young man arrives unannounced at 42 Tregunter Road in Chelsea. Self—styled Bohemian Mrs. Honor Wilson—who runs a minor literary journal and lodgings from this timeworn Victorian house—introduces him to her “dear house guests”: Robbie, the writer; Mina, the teenage sleuth; George, the debutante; and Saul, the haunted refugee. Jimmy Sullivan is a family friend, Honor says—yet clearly, something is not right. Despite everyone’s misgivings, she lets the stranger move into the attic.

As they each try to disprove Jimmy’s dubious account of himself, secrets, jealousies, and disturbing schemes come to light, fracturing the household’s delicate allegiances and setting in motion, unstoppably, a tale of perilous self—invention, complicated love, and murderous revenge.

In a house built on lies, the truth will get you killed.

Visit Emma Garman's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Kindness of Strangers.

Writers Read: Emma Garman.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top novels set in the 1970s

At Book Riot Julia Rittenberg tagged six novels set in the 1970s, including:

Jasmine Zumideh Needs a Win by Susan Azim Boyer

Eager to get out of high school and start her real life as the coolest musical journalist in New York City, Jasmine is a funny, deeply relatable teenage protagonist. To make her college application iron-clad, she runs for class president (after saying on her application that she already was). But because of the Iranian Revolution in 1978, she and her Iranian family are seen as enemies by their neighbors. Jasmine wants to move on with her life, but her competing priorities aren’t so easy to reconcile.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Marc Stein's "Bicentennial"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Bicentennial: A Revolutionary History of the 1970s by Marc Stein.

About the book, from the publisher:

As the United States marks its semiquincentennial in 2026, renowned historian Marc Stein looks back at the politics of another landmark celebration during a time of striking similarities and surprising differences: the US bicentennial in 1976.

In the aftermath of Vietnam and Watergate, the bicentennial sparked an extraordinary national conversation about the country’s past, present, and future. As patriots, planners, profiteers, and protesters argued about how to commemorate the national birthday, they collectively reimagined the promises and perils of democracy during a transformational decade.

From award-winning historian Marc Stein, Bicentennial: A Revolutionary History of the 1970s is an original, illuminating, and insightful study of that era. While focusing on festivities and fights in Philadelphia, the nation’s birthplace, the book also explores the many proposed and abandoned celebrations that percolated up around the country. It tells a broadly democratic story of both the “official” bicentennial and counter-bicentennial activism, offering revolutionary perspectives on national politics, social movements, and popular culture. From the queer courtship of President Richard Nixon and Philadelphia Mayor Frank Rizzo to parades and protests with millions of participants, and from a deadly outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease at Philadelphia’s most prestigious hotel to the establishment of groundbreaking African American, ethnic, and Jewish museums, the bicentennial reveals a kaleidoscope of American peculiarities, problems, and possibilities.

The lasting influence of 1976 on one of the nation’s great urban centers and the United States as a whole is undeniable. As the nation—once again enmeshed in political and social upheaval—marks its two-hundred-fiftieth birthday in 2026, there is no better time to look back at its two-hundredth and marvel at what has changed, and what has not.

Learn more about Bicentennial at the University of Chicago Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Bicentennial.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight quintessentially Québécois novels set in Montreal

Jake Pitre is a writer and scholar based in Montreal. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Globe and Mail, JSTOR Daily, Fast Company, and elsewhere.

At Electric Lit he tagged eight novels that "capture the diversity and cultural wealth of Québec’s storied metropolis." One title on the list:

Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O’Neill

O’Neill, one of Montreal’s most-beloved working writers in English, is an excellent place to start for any reader eager to immerse themselves in the life of the city. You could go with The Lonely Hearts Hotel, about two Montreal orphans in the early 20th-century, or When We Lost Our Heads, about the clash of the classes in 19th century Montreal; but your best bet would be her debut, Lullabies for Little Criminals, a rough and often dark story of a young girl with a junkie father, growing up in squalor and, ultimately, being forced to raise herself. What stands out in each novel is O’Neill’s careful attention to Montreal itself, from the dangerous to the stunningly beautiful and how the two uncomfortably overlap.

Read about another novel on the list.

Q&A with Heather O'Neill.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Emma Garman's "The Kindness of Strangers"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Kindness of Strangers: A Novel by Emma Garman.

About the novel, from the publisher:

A wildly entertaining debut and homage to the classic murder mystery set in post—WWII London where a stranger’s arrival at a boarding house sets a deadly chain of events in motion—perfect for fans of Kate Atkinson, Agatha Christie, and Richard Osman.

London, 1953. Jimmy Sullivan lies dying on the drawing room floor while his housemates look on, their lives about to change forever.

One foggy night in the dead of February, a young man arrives unannounced at 42 Tregunter Road in Chelsea. Self—styled Bohemian Mrs. Honor Wilson—who runs a minor literary journal and lodgings from this timeworn Victorian house—introduces him to her “dear house guests”: Robbie, the writer; Mina, the teenage sleuth; George, the debutante; and Saul, the haunted refugee. Jimmy Sullivan is a family friend, Honor says—yet clearly, something is not right. Despite everyone’s misgivings, she lets the stranger move into the attic.

As they each try to disprove Jimmy’s dubious account of himself, secrets, jealousies, and disturbing schemes come to light, fracturing the household’s delicate allegiances and setting in motion, unstoppably, a tale of perilous self—invention, complicated love, and murderous revenge.

In a house built on lies, the truth will get you killed.

Visit Emma Garman's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Kindness of Strangers.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Lisa Lee

From my Q&A with Lisa Lee, author of American Han: A Novel:

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

The title is doing a lot of work in that American han is what the book is about. But many readers won’t know what han is or what I mean by “American” han, and since I don’t define or use the word anywhere in the book other than in the title and epigraph, for some readers it might take reading the whole book and maybe a little research to understand the meaning.

What's in a name?

I chose the name Jane Kim for my narrator because ...[read on]

Visit Lisa Lee's website.

Q&A with Lisa Lee.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top thrillers set in the suburbs

Nicole Blades is a novelist and journalist with nearly two decades of experience in the media industry. Her cover stories and features have been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Runner’s World, Women's Health, and more. An active member of the International Thriller Writers organization, her novels often focus on the facade and filters people put on to face the world. Her latest novel is Would I Lie to You?. The domestic thriller joins Blade’s previous novels, Have You Met Nora?, The Thunder Beneath Us, and Earth's Waters. A proud Caribbean Canadian, Blades currently lives in New England with her husband and their son.

At CrimeReads the author tagged five "must-read thrillers set in seemingly idyllic environs crowded with the sinful secrets and base behaviors of the wealthy that tickle the nosiest parts of our brains." One title on the list:

Janelle Brown, Pretty Things

Two women, one a grifter, the other a socialite and heiress, have their wildly different worlds collide in a twisty, complicated story about wealth, entitlement, secrets, revenge, and how sometimes the line between rich and poor, between aspiration and desperation, can become a live wire.

Read about another novel on the list.

Pretty Things is among Trisha Sakhlecha's eleven thrillers featuring the mega-rich, Julie Clark's four top books featuring female con artists, and Lindsay Cameron's five thrillers to warn you away from social media.

The Page 69 Test: Pretty Things.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Thomas Doherty's "How Film Became History"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: How Film Became History: The Rise of the Archival Documentary in 1930s America by Thomas Doherty.

About the book, from the publisher:

By the 1930s, filmmakers had access to a backlog of footage from nearly forty years of motion pictures, allowing them to create a new kind of film stitched together from the raw material of older films. At around the same time, the transition to synchronous sound added a transformative new element to the grammar of cinema: the voiceover narration. Together, the film inventory and offscreen commentary gave rise to the archival documentary, the motion picture genre that preserves and rewinds history.

Thomas Doherty tells the story of the archival documentary, spotlighting the first films that set out deliberately to preserve history on screen. He shows how newsreels and documentaries challenged the era’s restrictive censorship and how film began to engage with the great political issues of the day. Doherty considers a range of films―some well-known, others obscure―including J. Stuart Blackton’s The Film Parade (1933), Laurence Stallings and Truman Talley’s The First World War (1934), Cornelius Vanderbilt Jr.’s Hitler’s Reign of Terror (1934), Max Eastman and Herbert Axelbank’s Tsar to Lenin (1937), and the March of Time screen magazine. Tracing the creation of the archival documentary, How Film Became History illuminates how motion pictures have come to shape our vision of the past.

Learn more about How Film Became History at the Columbia University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Hollywood and Hitler, 1933-1939.

The Page 99 Test: Show Trial.

The Page 99 Test: How Film Became History.

--Marshal Zeringue

Cynthia Swanson's "This Isn’t New," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: This Isn't New: Women's Historical Stories by Cynthia Swanson.

The entry begins:

Because This Isn’t New: Women’s Historical Stories is a short story collection, I’m focusing on a singular story as I think about the book as a movie. This is something we’ve seen Hollywood do: the movies Brokeback Mountain, based on Annie Proulx’s story of the same title, and Hitchcock’s Rear Window, based on Cornell Woolrich’s story “It Had to Be Murder,” are but two examples.

There’s potential for quite a few of the stories in This Isn’t New to be expanded into movies, but one story that stands out to me as a possibility is, ironically, titled “A Possibility Nonetheless.” It’s 1965, and the main character, Caro, is an aspiring musician who has just spent several weeks cold turkey detoxing from heroin as she and her boyfriend, Gene, drive cross-country to relocate from New York City to San Diego. In this place of hippies on the beach and surfers in the waves, Caro feels like her soul has come home. Gene is less enamored, especially when, as an unemployed college dropout, he’s confronted with the sight of transport ships filled with draftees headed to Vietnam. When Gene flees San Diego, Caro must grapple head-on with a potential slide back into addiction.

So who would play Caro? I...[read on]

Visit Cynthia Swanson's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Bookseller.

The Page 69 Test: The Glass Forest.

Writers Read: Cynthia Swanson (February 2018).

Q&A with Cynthia Swanson.

The Page 69 Test: Anyone But Her.

My Book, The Movie: This Isn't New.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Andrew Welsh-Huggins reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Andrew Welsh-Huggins, author of The Delivery (Mercury Carter Thrillers).

His entry begins:

Though I read widely, including the genres of memoir, horror, literary fiction, true crime, short fiction, and narrative nonfiction (among others), as a mystery writer, I definitely consume a lot of crime fiction. Several recent titles in that genre reflect my intercests and also informed my own writing.

A Grave Deception, by c. The sixth book in Berry’s traditional mystery Kate Hamilton series, featuring an American antiquities expert transplanted to England, where she feeds her professional passion while solving mysteries. The latest includes a several centuries-old murder that may be connected to a present-day killing. Berry masterfully layers fair play clues throughout, as well as creating original and...[read on]

About The Delivery, from the publisher:

Freelance courier Mercury Carter races against time and across New England to rescue a trafficking victim in this new thriller from the author of The Mailman.

Merc Carter is not your typical deliveryman. A former postal inspector, he specializes in moving sensitive or dangerous packages—of all sorts—from point A to B. And sometimes he needs his gun to do so. Carter’s current mission leads him to Providence, Rhode Island, but his delivery is interrupted when he comes across a woman badly injured in a car wreck in the pouring rain. Then a man with a gun appears warning Carter away from the scene and Carter leaps into action, disarming the attacker and rescuing the crash victim.

Just as Carter thinks the danger has passed, he discovers a deeper mystery stemming from the crash, a deadly puzzle involving a memorable pair of grifters, a crooked ex-cop, stolen identities, human trafficking, and murder. And it appears that Carter’s next assignment will put him right in this conspiracy’s perilous center . . .

The follow-up to last year’s acclaimed hit, The Mailman, which launched the Mercury Carter series, The Delivery is a fast-paced, unpredictable thriller following a memorable protagonist whose resourcefulness is matched only by his quick wit and determination to never miss a delivery.

Visit Andrew Welsh-Huggins's website.

My Book, The Movie: An Empty Grave.

Q&A with Andrew Welsh-Huggins.

The Page 69 Test: An Empty Grave.

Writers Read: Andrew Welsh-Huggins (April 2023).

My Book, The Movie: The End of the Road.

The Page 69 Test: The End of the Road.

Writers Read: Andrew Welsh-Huggins (November 2024).

My Book, The Movie: Sick to Death.

The Page 69 Test: Sick to Death.

The Page 69 Test: The Mailman.

Writers Read: Andrew Welsh-Huggins (March 2025).

The Page 69 Test: The Delivery.

Writers Read: Andrew Welsh-Huggins.

--Marshal Zeringue