What is Vicki Delany reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Vicki Delany, author of Tea with Jam & Dread (Tea by the Sea Mysteries).

Her entry begins:

I’m a summertime reader. I get far more reading done in the summer than any other time of year, except when I’m on vacation. I love nothing more than sitting in the sun by the pool, reading reading reading. And my house looks it, but I can tidy it in September.

What have I been enjoying this summer?

Shipwrecked Souls by Barbara Fradkin. Full disclaimer here, Barbara is a very close friend of mine. But that shouldn’t prevent me from enjoying her books and I do. This is the 12th of her popular Inspector Green series, set in Canada’s capital city of Ottawa. The books are gritty and tough, with difficult themes handled sensitively and well. In Shipwrecked Souls, the death of a woman recently arrived from Ukraine unravels...[read on]

About Tea with Jam & Dread, from the publisher:

Cape Cod tearoom owner Lily Roberts leaves New England for old England to attend a party for an aristocratic centenarian—but what goes on there is anything but noble...

Long ago, Lily’s grandmother Rose worked as a kitchen maid at Thornecroft Castle, and now Elizabeth, dowager countess of Frockmorton, is celebrating her one hundredth birthday. Rose still has fond feelings for her onetime employer, so a group trip to Yorkshire is planned. It’s also an opportunity for Lily to visit her boyfriend, who’s currently working in England—and to indulge in some British tea.

Much has changed, however, and the ancestral home is now a luxury hotel, which will be closed for a week to accommodate the big bash, much to the chagrin of Elizabeth’s grandson, Julien—leading Lily to overhear an argument among the younger generation about the fate of the family fortune. Little do they know that Elizabeth plans to sell the famous Frockmorton Sapphires out of the family for the first time in centuries...

The icing on the cake comes when the jewels suddenly vanish—and things really go nuts when a party guest dies from an allergic reaction to almonds that someone smuggled into Lily’s coronation chicken sandwiches. Now she’ll have to scour the property to find out who would commit murder in such a manor...

Visit Vicki Delany's website, and follow her on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.

The Page 69 Test: Rest Ye Murdered Gentlemen.

The Page 69 Test: A Scandal in Scarlet.

The Page 69 Test: Murder in a Teacup.

Writers Read: Vicki Delany (September 2021).

The Page 69 Test: Deadly Summer Nights.

The Page 69 Test: The Game is a Footnote.

Writers Read: Vicki Delany (January 2023).

Writers Read: Vicki Delany (January 2024).

The Page 69 Test: The Sign of Four Spirits.

The Page 69 Test: A Slay Ride Together With You.

Writers Read: Vicki Delany (December 2024).

The Page 69 Test: The Incident of the Book in the Nighttime.

Writers Read: Vicki Delany.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Carolyn Dasher

From my Q&A with Carolyn Dasher, author of American Sky: A Novel:

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

The original working title of the book was American Girls. That was too close to other titles already out in the world, so my publisher requested a change. Between my editor, my agent, myself, and my family, we generated a list of probably twenty possibilities, none of which fit the book. After a lot of back and forth, and some growing despair on my part, the words American Sky popped into my head. And that was the one.

The title nods at the aspirations of the characters and the tone of the book, but it doesn’t suggest much about the plot. It’s more of a vibes title.

What's in a name?

One of the main characters in the book is a young, female pilot who becomes a WWII WASP (Women Airforce Service Pilot). I called her...[read on]

Visit Carolyn Dasher's website.

Q&A with Carolyn Dasher.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Stefan K. Stantchev's "Venice, the Ottomans, and the Sea"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Venice, the Ottomans, and the Sea (1381–1517) by Stefan K. Stantchev.

About the book, from the publisher:

The later Middle Ages and the early modern period were important and overlapping historical moments for both Venice and the Ottoman Empire, yet the two--both the periods themselves and the Republic and Empire more generally--have often been considered in isolation. Seeking to understand better this interrelated transition, Venice, the Ottomans, and the Sea offers for the first time an integrated view of trade and sea power that transcends the overworn paradigms of trade--the Ottoman territories as a land of opportunity--and crusade--the Ottomans as a military threat--to uncover the complex interplay between economic structures and political decision making that shaped the period between the end of Venice's most devastating war with Genoa in 1381 and the Ottoman conquest of Mamluk Egypt in 1517.

Drawing on the full range of available Venetian sources, as well as Ottoman, Genoese, Florentine, and papal materials, the book clarifies the trajectory of Venice's trade with the Ottomans, the evolution of Venetian defensive measures in the Balkans and of Venetian naval warfare, Venice's attempt to aid the Byzantine Empire in 1453, the dynamics of the Venetian-Ottoman war of 1463-79, and the interconnections between Venice's social and political structures and its Italian and Ottoman politics. In so doing, it offers a comprehensive analysis of Venetian-Ottoman relations, ranging from macro to micro scales, and across matters of economic, political, and military history. From a broader Mediterranean perspective, this highlights the intersections of political, social, economic, and technological factors behind accelerated historical change in the late medieval and early modern periods and offers a case study in the ways in which a Mediterranean elite maintained its privileged position over time.

Learn more about Venice, the Ottomans, and the Sea (1381–1517) at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Spiritual Rationality.

The Page 99 Test: Venice, the Ottomans, and the Sea.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top novels set in realistic but imaginary places

Dan Fesperman served as a foreign correspondent for The Baltimore Sun, based in Berlin. His coverage of the siege of Sarajevo led to his debut novel, Lie in the Dark, which won Britain’s John Creasey Memorial Dagger Award for best first crime novel. Subsequent books have won the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award for best thriller, the Hammett Prize from the International Association of Crime Writers, the Barry Award for best thriller, and selection by USA Today as the year’s best mystery/thriller novel.

Fesperman's new novel is Pariah.

At Lit Hub he tagged five favorite novels "set in seemingly realistic locations that exist in the here and now, and often within real continents and regions." One title on the list:

Ann Patchett, Bel Canto

Everything in this 2001 novel takes place within a few acres of an unnamed capital city of an unnamed country in South America, within the grounds of the home of the Vice President. The action begins when a diva soprano’s birthday performance for a wealthy Japanese businessman and a few hundred privileged guests is raided by terrorists.

Their botched kidnapping (their intended target, the President, never showed) evolves into a months-long hostage situation, an ordeal which transforms the house into a compact nation with its own tidy dramas of love, music, tension, tragedy and sublime beauty.

Read about another novel on the list.

Bel Canto is among Harriet Constable's five best books about classical music, Jamie Day's seven crime titles featuring special events going off the rails, Mark Skinner's twenty great contemporary love stories, Nicole Holofcener’s ten favorite books, Jenny Shank's top five fabulous works of fiction for musicians, Jeff Somers's top five novels set in a single pressure cooker location, Tatjana Soli's six favorite books that conjure exotic locales, Kathryn Williams's six top novels set in just one place, Dell Villa's top eight books to read when you’re in the mood to cry for days, John Mullen's ten best birthday parties in literature, and Joyce Hackett's top ten musical novels.

--Marshal Zeringue

Third reading: D.W. Buffa on the Novels of W.H. Hudson

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 is on the Novels of W.H. Hudson. It begins:

Ford Madox Ford, who knew every great writer of his time, and helped more than one of them with his writing, thought W.H. Hudson, not Henry James, or D.H. Lawrence, or Thomas Hardy, or even his close friend Joseph Conrad, “the greatest prose writer of his day.” Ford was not alone in this judgment. In London, before the Great War, the First World War, the war that changed everything, including, Ford would have argued, the way the world, especially the English speaking world, looked upon literature and those who spent their lives trying to make a serious contribution to what was worth reading, there was a “French restaurant called the Mont Blanc where, on Tuesdays, the elect of the city’s intelligentsia lunched and discussed with grave sobriety the social problems of the day.” Ford was there, of course; and so also were Joseph Conrad, John Galsworthy, Hilaire Belloc and W.B. Yeats.

The conversation followed a predictable pattern: talk about “Flaubert and Maupassant and Huysman and Mendes and Monet and Maeterlinck and Turgenev. And if Belloc came bustling in and Conrad was there, the noise would grow to exceed the noise of Irish fairs when shillelaghs were in use.” And that because “Belloc with his rich brogue and burr would loudly assert that his ambition was to make by writing four thousand pounds a year and to order a monthly ten dozen of Clos Vougeot or Chateau Brane Cantenac…and this to Conrad who would go rigid with fury if you suggested that anyone, not merely himself, but any writer of position, could possibly write for money.”

And then, suddenly, Hudson would walk in and the room would go silent, the immediate tribute of those who understood the nature, and the extent, of his achievement, “the greatest prose writer of his day.” Hudson would try to deny it, insisting that, “I’m not one of you damned writers: I’m a naturalist from LaPlata.” And then he would laugh, because he did not really mind at all that they held him in such high regard. It had taken him long enough to earn it.

Hudson was born in Argentina of American parents in 1841, and until he moved to London when he was forty had never, other than a few visits to Buenos Aires, been off the pampas. He never spent a day in a forest, or an hour in a jungle, and had never so much as stepped on the soil of Venezuela, but Green Mansions, one of the two great novels he wrote, is set in the jungle, and the other one, The Purple Land, is set in and around Venezuela. If Hudson was the “greatest living writer of English,” it was, at least in part, because...[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.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Polly Stewart's "The Felons' Ball"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Felons' Ball: A Novel by Polly Stewart.

About the book, from the publisher:

The critically acclaimed author of The Good Ones returns with an edge-of-your-seat thriller about a powerful Southern family whose dark secrets set in motion a chain of events with deadly consequences.

In their younger years, Trey Macready and his best friend Ben Marsh were distributors and enforcers for the local distillers who made their small hamlet of Ewald, Virginia, the moonshine capital of the world. But that was years ago, and now the only tie to their criminal past is the Felons’ Ball—Trey’s annual birthday party where they regale the crowed with tales of their youthful exploits. But when Ben is found dead after Trey’s fiftieth celebration, it’s clear those connections may not be past at all.

Finding Ben’s body propels his much-younger secret lover, Natalie—Trey’s daughter—to search for Ben’s estranged son, Lanny, and to find the truth about his killing. Her quest will lead to a battle with a police department that refuses to ignore her family’s history, and to form unexpected connections with Hardy, the sheriff investigating the case, and her brother-in-law Jay, who had a very public fight with Ben on the night of his murder.

When Jay goes missing on the morning he planned to meet Natalie, she begins to wonder if her mother was right . . . and if the past should be left in the past.

Visit Polly Stewart's website and follow her on Instagram.

The Page 69 Test: The Good Ones.

The Page 69 Test: The Felons' Ball.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Andrew Porwancher's "American Maccabee"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: American Maccabee: Theodore Roosevelt and the Jews by Andrew Porwancher.

About the book, from the publisher:

A major biography of a mesmerizing statesman whose complex bond with the Jewish people forever shaped their lives—and his legacy

A scion of the Protestant elite, Theodore Roosevelt was an unlikely ally of the waves of impoverished Jewish newcomers who crowded the docks at Ellis Island. Yet from his earliest years he forged ties with Jews never before witnessed in a president. American Maccabee traces Roosevelt’s deep connection with the Jewish people at every step of his dazzling ascent. But it also reveals a man of contradictions whose checkered approach to Jewish issues was no less conflicted than the nation he led.

As a rising political figure in New York, Roosevelt barnstormed the Lower East Side, giving speeches to packed halls of Jewish immigrants. He rallied for reform of the sweatshops where Jewish laborers toiled for pitiful wages in perilous conditions. And Roosevelt repeatedly venerated the heroism of the Maccabee warriors, upholding those storied rebels as a model for the American Jewish community. Yet little could have prepared him for the blood-soaked persecution of Eastern European Jews that brought a deluge of refugees to American shores during his presidency. Andrew Porwancher uncovers the vexing challenges for Roosevelt as he confronted Jewish suffering abroad and antisemitic xenophobia at home.

Drawing on new archival research to paint a richly nuanced portrait of an iconic figure, American Maccabee chronicles the complicated relationship between the leader of a youthful nation and the people of an ancient faith.

Visit Andrew Porwancher's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Jewish World of Alexander Hamilton.

The Page 99 Test: American Maccabee.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine books for a feral girl summer

Beth Kanter is a writer with more than 20 years of experience working for national magazines and newspapers. Her essays, features, humor pieces, and reported stories have appeared in a wide variety of publications including the Chicago Tribune, New York Daily News, Paste, The Writer, Shape, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The Belladonna, Business Insider, Parents, Kveller, and Curbed.

At Provoked by Susan, Kanter tagged nine "loud, messy, sexy, wild, and unhinged ... books [that] tingle in all the right places: the brain, the body, and the memory." One title on the list:

Animal Instinct by Amy Shearn

Pandemic. Divorce. Midlife horniness. Sexual exploration. Intimacy. Welcome to Amy Shearn’s wildly smart, honest, and totally unfiltered tale of a woman who creates an AI lover to avoid bad dates. And maybe also to avoid herself.

Read about another book on the list.

Animal Instinct is among the Guardian's twenty top authors' summer reading list and Liz Doupnik's thirteen top books about breakups.

The Page 69 Test: Animal Instinct.

My Book, The Movie: Animal Instinct.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Shelly Sanders

From my Q&A with Shelly Sanders, author of The Night Sparrow: A Novel:

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

My working title was Red Army Woman, because my novel is about a female Red Army sniper. Still, this is not exactly a gripping title and you can’t assume 2025 readers know what Red Army means. Then, I came across a sniper’s diary entry which reads: “We are but a sparrow’s feather.” This enthralling comparison led me on a tangential search for everything about sparrows. I discovered that these small birds are actually mighty in numbers (like snipers), look identical in their grey and brown feathers (like snipers in uniform), and nest in trees (like snipers in camouflage). I wanted “sparrow” in the title but couldn’t come up with a catchy title. My editor brainstormed the idea with the marketing department, which is hugely involved in choosing the title, and they came up with The Night Sparrow. I like the oblique metaphor which alludes to the story, ignites curiosity, and is memorable. And I do reference sparrows a few times in the narrative, giving readers a chance to...[read on]

Visit Shelly Sanders's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Night Sparrow.

Q&A with Shelly Sanders.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Bradley Morgan's "Frank Zappa's America"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Frank Zappa's America by Bradley Morgan.

About the book, from the publisher:

From his early albums with the Mothers of Invention, Frank Zappa established a reputation as a musical genius who pushed the limits of culture throughout the 1960s and 1970s, experimenting with a blend of genres in innovative and unheard-of ways. Not only did his exploratory styles challenge the expectations of what popular music could sound like, but his prolific creative endeavors also shaped how audiences thought about the freedom of artistic expression.

In Frank Zappa’s America, Bradley Morgan casts the artist as an often-misunderstood figure who critiqued the actions of religious and political groups promoting a predominantly white, Christian vision of the United States. A controversial and provocative satirist, often criticized for the shocking subject matter of his songs, Zappa provided social commentary throughout his career that spoke truth to power about the nefarious institutions operating in the lives of everyday Americans. Beginning in the late 1970s, his music frequently addressed the rise of extremist religious influence in American politics, specifically white Christian nationalism.

Despite commercial and critical pressure, Zappa refused to waver in his support for free speech during the era of Reagan and MTV, including his pointed testimony before the U.S. Senate at the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) hearings. Throughout the 1980s, and until his death in 1993, Zappa crafted his art form to advocate for political engagement, the security of individual liberties, and the advancement of education. Music became his platform to convey progressive views promoting the rights of marginalized communities most at risk in a society governed by the principles of what he perceived as Christian radicalism.

Frank Zappa’s America examines the musician’s messaging through song, tracing the means by which Zappa created passionate, at times troubling, art that combats conservativism in its many manifestations. For readers in the twenty-first century, his music and public advocacy demonstrate the need to preserve democracy and the voices that uphold it.

Visit Bradley Morgan's website.

The Page 99 Test: Frank Zappa's America.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight compelling thrillers about influencers and the world of influencing

Elisa Shoenberger is a freelance writer and journalist.

At Book Riot she tagged eight "compelling, sometimes ripped-from-the-headlines thrillers about influencers and the world of influencing." One title on the list:

Dark Corners by Megan Goldin

True crime podcaster Rachel Krall has been brought back to try to find a missing influencer, Maddison Logan. Hours before her disappearance, Maddison had visited Terence Bailey, a man who is incarcerated for breaking and entering. The police suspect he may have killed several women, but they don’t have proof. They all fear Maddison’s disappearance may be connected to his release. Krall has to go undercover to find out more about this enigmatic influencer including going to BuzzCon. Will she be able to find out what happened to Maddison or will she be left with an unsolved crime?

Read about another title on the list.

Dark Corners is among Lori Roy's four crime novels that tackle the trappings of fame.

The Page 69 Test: Dark Corners.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Shelly Sanders's "The Night Sparrow"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Night Sparrow: A Novel by Shelly Sanders.

About the book, from the publisher:

For fans of Kate Quinn and The Nightingale, a gripping story of a young Jewish girl who joins an elite Russian sniper unit and embarks on a mission targeting the highest prize of World War II: Adolph Hitler.

With the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, Elena Bruskina’s world collapses. The ambitious university student and her Jewish family are quickly forced into the Minsk ghetto where thousands are immediately murdered, including her father and brother. Then her younger sister is publicly executed on false charges and her mother is shot. Alone with her grief, Elena escapes the ghetto, determined to avenge her family’s deaths.

Heading to Moscow, she enrolls in the Red Army’s newly created Central Women’s Sniper Training School. After rigorous training, she becomes a member of an all-female sniper platoon, a community of brave young women willing to give their lives to defend their country. Then Elena is chosen for a secret mission—a daring and highly dangerous plan to capture the face of evil itself: Hitler.

Inspired by the real-life female snipers and interpreters in the Red Army during World War II, The Night Sparrow is a portrait of friendship, resilience, courage, and sacrifice under extraordinary circumstances.

Visit Shelly Sanders's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Night Sparrow.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Anthony C. Infanti's "The Human Toll"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Human Toll: Taxation and Slavery in Colonial America by Anthony C. Infanti.

About the book, from the publisher:

How the thirteen colonies deployed the power of taxation to support, promote, and perpetuate the institution of slavery

The Human Toll documents how the American colonies used tax law to dehumanize enslaved persons, taxing them alongside valuable commodities upon their forced arrival and then as wealth-generating assets in the hands of slaveholders. Anthony C. Infanti examines how taxation also proved to be an important component for subjugating and controlling enslaved persons, both through its shaping of the composition of new arrivals to the colonies and through its funding of financial compensation to slaveholders for the destruction of their “property” to ensure their cooperation in the administration of capital punishment. The variety of tax mechanisms chosen to fund slaveholder compensation payments conveyed messages about who was thought to benefit from―and, therefore, who should shoulder the burden of―slaveholder compensation while opening a revealing window into these colonial societies.

While the story of colonial tax law is intrinsically linked to advancing slavery and racism, Infanti reveals how several colonies used the power of taxation as a means of curtailing the slave trade. Though often self-interested, these efforts show how taxation can be used not only in the service of evil but also to correct societal injustices. Providing a fascinating account of slavery’s economic entrenchment through the history of American tax law, The Human Toll urges us to consider the lessons that fiscal history holds for those working in the reparations movement today.

Learn more about The Human Toll at the NYU Press website.

The Page 99 Test: The Human Toll.

--Marshal Zeringue

Four novels that twist the slasher model into something darker & more personal

Daphne Woolsoncroft is a thriller author and podcaster drawn to the shadowy corners of human nature. Born and raised in Los Angeles, she found her creative pulse deepened by the mist-laced forests and rain-slicked streets of Oregon, where she lived for several years. She is the co-host of the acclaimed true crime podcast Going West, which she created with her husband, Heath Merryman, in 2019.

When she’s not chasing down stories of the strange and sinister, Woolsoncroft can be found sinking into films at the cinema or curled up on the couch of her California home with a good book -preferably a literary classic or terrifying modern horror- alongside her loyal English bulldog, Dewey.

Her debut thriller is Night Watcher.

At CrimeReads Woolsoncroft tagged four novels "that echo themes of surveillance, female resilience, and the fixation on catching the ones who lurk in the margins." One title on the list:

The Last Girl Left by A.M. Strong and Sonya Sargent

Five years ago, Tessa was the sole survivor of a horrific mass murder on Cassadaga Island – a remote beach town off the coast of Maine now plagued by dark tourists who are obsessed with the gruesome slayings. Although Tessa has spent years trying to move on, she discovers that maybe the only way out is through, and perhaps writing a book about her experience can help in more ways than settling her trauma.

But the island in winter is more ghost town than getaway, and it soon becomes clear that Tessa isn’t just patching up old wounds, she’s being hunted again. But is the person that’s after her now -as she stays in the very same house her friends were slain in- connected to the original killer? This is a classic slasher wrapped in a modern psychological package: foggy coastal home, missing memories, and the gnawing sense that the past is circling back to get her.

Tessa, like Night Watcher’s Nola, is a woman who refuses to stay a victim. And they both know what it means to just barely survive a menacing killer – twice…

Read about another novel on Woolsoncroft's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Kashana Cauley reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Kashana Cauley, author of The Payback: A Novel.

Her entry begins:

I just finished Great Black Hope, by Rob Franklin, and loved it. It’s paced how the most relaxing part of summer feels, languid as our narrator drifts into more and more situations that cause him trouble. I also loved the book because it asks the fundamental question of how Black people deal with the fact that our Americanness is often conditional, and dependent on how much we subsume ourselves into the dominant culture, and how unsatisfying it can be to shoehorn ourselves into the sort of...[read on]

About The Payback, from the publisher:

When Jada Williams is relentlessly pursued by the Debt Police, she is left with no choice but to take down her student loan company with the help of two mall coworkers—from the author of the “lethally witty” (The New York Times Book Review) The Survivalists.

Jada Williams is good at judging people by their looks. From across the mall, she can tell not only someone’s inseam and pants size, but exactly what style they need to transform their life. Too bad she’s no longer using this superpower as a wardrobe designer to Hollywood stars, but for minimum wage plus commission at the Glendale mall.

When Jada is fired yet again, she is forced to outrun the newly instated Debt Police who are out for blood. But Jada, like any great antihero, is not going to wait for the cops to come kick her around. With the help of two other debt-burdened mall coworkers, she hatches a plan for revenge. Together the three women plan a heist to erase their student loans forever and get back at the system that promised them everything and then tried to take it back.

“A novel of great fun and unforgettable fury” (Megha Majumdar, bestselling author of A Burning) The Payback is a razor-sharp and hilarious dissection of race, power, and the daily grind, from one of the most original and exciting writers at work today.

Visit Kashana Cauley's website.

Q&A with Kashana Cauley.

Writers Read: Kashana Cauley.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: John G. Turner's "Joseph Smith"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Joseph Smith: The Rise and Fall of an American Prophet by John G. Turner.

About the book, from the publisher:

From an award-winning biographer, a riveting and deeply researched portrait of Mormonism’s charismatic founder

Joseph Smith Jr. (1805–1844) was one of the most successful and controversial religious leaders of nineteenth-century America, publishing the Book of Mormon and starting what would become the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He built temples, founded a city-state in Illinois, ran for president, and married more than thirty women. This self-made prophet thrilled his followers with his grand vision of peace and unity, but his increasingly grandiose plans tested and sometimes shattered their faith.

In this vivid biography, John G. Turner presents Smith as a consummate religious entrepreneur and innovator, a man both flawed and compelling. He sold books, land, and merchandise. And he relentlessly advanced doctrines that tapped into anxieties about the nature and meaning of salvation, the validity of miracles, the timing of Christ’s second coming, and the persistence of human relationships for eternity. His teachings prompted people to gather into communities, evoking fierce opposition from those who saw those communities as theocratic threats to republicanism.

With insights from newly accessible diaries, church records, and transcripts of sermons, Turner illuminates Smith’s stunning trajectory, from his beginnings as an uneducated, impoverished farmhand to his ultimate fall at the hands of a murderous mob, revealing how he forged a religious tradition that has resonated with millions of people in the United States and beyond.

Visit John G. Turner's website.

The Page 99 Test: They Knew They Were Pilgrims.

The Page 99 Test: Joseph Smith.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight books about space that reimagine what it means to live on Earth

Daisy Atterbury is the author of The Kármán Line, a debut book of experimental prose and poetry described as "a new cosmology" (Lucy Lippard) and "a cerebral altar to the desert" (Raquel Gutiérrez). Their work investigates queer life and fantasies of space with an interest in unraveling colonial narratives in the American Southwest. They’ve published articles, interviews and poetry with The Paris Review, BOMB, Technikart, Makhzin, and Post45/Contemporaries.

At Electric Lit Atterbury tagged eight books that "remind us that another world is always possible, whether here, 'out there,' or somewhere between." One title on the list:

After Spaceship Earth: Art, Techno-utopia, and Other Science Fictions by Eva Díaz

Eva Díaz’s brilliant rethinking of R. Buckminster Fuller’s utopian vision of our planet as a shared spaceship, “Spaceship Earth,” is a secret way to dive into a critical history of art about space. But After Spaceship Earth is not a survey—it comes with its own distinct lens that is itself a politics. I was struck by how Díaz weaves Fuller’s geodesic domes and techno-optimism into the work of over thirty contemporary artists who dismantle the imperialist, corporate, and patriarchal myths of space exploration. Through artists like John Akomfrah, Mary Mattingly, and Farhiya Jama, Díaz reveals that outer space is not just a playground for billionaires but a contested site where histories of colonialism, racial injustice, and gender exclusion are reimagined. I appreciated how she connects Afrofuturism and ecofeminism to Fuller’s experimental spirit, yet exposes his blind spots. This book is a counter-narrative to the exploitative dreams of SpaceX and Blue Origin, insisting that just, sustainable, and plural futures are possible.

Read about another entry on Atterbury's list.

The Page 99 Test: After Spaceship Earth.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Alie Dumas-Heidt's "The Myth Maker"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Myth Maker: A Novel by Alie Dumas-Heidt.

About the book, from the publisher:

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

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

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

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

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

Visit Alie Dumas-Heidt's website.

Q&A with Alie Dumas-Heidt.

Writers Read: Alie Dumas-Heidt.

My Book, The Movie: The Myth Maker.

The Page 69 Test: The Myth Maker.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Stacy Alaimo's "The Abyss Stares Back"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Abyss Stares Back: Encounters with Deep-Sea Life by Stacy Alaimo.

About the book, from the publisher:

In an era of accelerating extinctions, what does it mean to discover thousands of new species in the deep sea?

As we see the catastrophic effects of the Anthropocene proliferate, advanced technologies also grant us greater access to the furthest reaches of the world’s oceans, facilitating the discovery of countless new species. Sorting through the implications of this strange paradox, Stacy Alaimo explores the influence this newfound intimacy with the deep sea might have on our broader relationship to the nonhuman world. While many images of these abyssal creatures circulate as shallow clickbait, aesthetic representations can be enticing lures for speculating about their lives, profoundly expanding our environmental concern.

The Abyss Stares Back analyzes a diverse range of scientific, literary, and artistic accounts of deep-sea exploration, including work from the naturalist William Beebe and the artist Else Bostelmann as well as results of the Census of Marine Life that began at the turn of the twenty-first century. As she focuses on oft-overlooked creatures of the deep, such as tubeworms, hatchetfish, siphonophores, and cephalopods, which are typically cast as “alien,” Alaimo shows how depictions of the deep seas have been enmeshed in long colonial histories and racist constructions of a threatening abyss.

Drawing on feminist environmentalism, posthumanism, science and technology studies, and Indigenous and non-Western perspectives, Alaimo details how our understanding of science is fundamentally altered by aesthetic encounters with these otherworldly life forms. She argues that, although the deep sea is often thought of as a lifeless void with little connection to human existence, our increasing devastation of this realm underscores our ethical obligation to protect the biodiverse life in the depths. When the abyss stares back, it demands recognition.

Visit Stacy Alaimo's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Abyss Stares Back.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five books touching on Effective Altruism

Ben Brooks is the author of books for children and adults, including The Greatest Possible Good and the million-copy series Stories for Boys Who Dare to Be Different, both a Sunday Times (London) and New York Times bestseller, which has been translated into twenty-eight languages and received a British National Book Award. He received a Somerset Maugham Award and Jerwood Fiction Prize for his debut novel Lolito, and the Celsius 232 and Premio Torres del Agua for The Impossible Boy. He also writes for television and is developing original TV projects in the UK and Germany.

A Lit Hub Brooks tagged five books featuring people who decided to give away large amounts of money. One title on the list:

Dave Eggers, You Shall Know Our Velocity

In Dave Eggers’ third novel, Will makes $32,000 after one of his photographs is used for the logo of a lightbulb company. Feeling undeserving of the windfall and struggling with grief after the loss of a friend, Will and his friend Hand set out on a road trip to give the money away to people who need it. What they discover is how messy and unfulfilling trying to give well is. How do you decide who is deserving of your help? How can you resist helping those stood in front of you, even when there might be people further afield who need help more dearly?

Read about another book on Brooks's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Samuel Hawley

From my Q&A with Samuel Hawley, author of Daikon: A Novel:

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

The title Daikon is the nickname that the Japanese give to the atomic bomb they recover from the wreckage of the B-29 that crashes in chapter one. The bomb is very much a main character in the story in its own right. The other main characters Dr. Keizo Kan and Petty Officer Yagi open it up and explore it and get to know it, and then must put it together again for use in a suicide mission.

Actually, the title of the book was originally One Hundred Million Eat Stones, a reference to the determination that the Japanese people (the “Hundred Million”) would fight to the death rather than surrender. The Japanese had several popular slogans like that during the war referring to the “Hundred Million.” In the early days of victory the slogans were upbeat, like “One Hundred Million Hearts Beating Together.” Toward the end of the war, with defeat looming, they had become grimmer, “One Hundred Million as a Suicide Squad,” that sort of thing.

My agent suggested that a shorter title would be better, maybe something enigmatic and even whimsical to contrast with the seriousness of the story. “The Americans referred to the bomb as ‘Little Boy’ or the ‘gadget’ or the ‘gimmick,’” he said. “Maybe the Japanese came up with a nickname for it too. That could be the title.” He was right. It was a great idea. So that’s what I did. One of the characters observes that the bomb looks like a big black daikon radish. So it became "the Daikon," and that became the title of the book.

When the book was purchased by Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster, the publisher wanted to try other titles. I struggled for ages to come up with something else, but nothing worked. “The Light That Falls,” “We Live in Ruins,” and “The Flowers of Adversity” are three I came up with. The more I struggled to find another title, however, the more convinced I became that “Daikon” was the best title. And eventually...[read on]

Visit Samuel Hawley's website.

The Page 69 Test: Daikon.

Q&A with Samuel Hawley.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Benjamin Wardhaugh's "Counting"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Counting: Humans, History and the Infinite Lives of Numbers by Benjamin Wardhaugh.

About the book, from the publisher:

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO COUNT? WHY ARE HUMANS THE ONLY SPECIES ON EARTH THAT CAN DO IT? WHERE DID COUNTING COME FROM? HOW HAS IT SHAPED SOCIETIES ALONG THE WAY? AND WHY DOES IT MATTER?

Counting is an innovative, erudite, world-wrapping journey through humanity’s marvellous ability to impose numbers on things. Acclaimed historian and mathematician Benjamin Wardhaugh draws on stories from the Stone Age to cyberspace in pursuit of the elusive, fascinating, endlessly diverse history of human counting.

Starting with the roots of counting in human brains, bodies and environments, Wardhaugh tours us around the world and through time while exploring the different flavours of counting that have developed over millennia. We meet the makers of bead necklaces in ancient South Africa, the inventors of writing in the world ’ s first metropolis, and the ‘counter culture’ of classical Athens. We see counting used – and changed – by Indian scholars, Chinese peasants and Papuan shopkeepers; we meet the distinctive numerate agendas of Mayan kings, US governments and Korean vloggers.

Weaving these stories together, Wardhaugh shows how cultures have shaped counting, and how counting has shaped culture, in a rich tapestry spanning thousands of years. This is the vast story of human attempts to find some order in an unruly world; or, perhaps, to impose on a reluctant world the order that humans find within themselves. It is a history as wide, deep and tangled as that of humanity itself.

Visit Benjamin Wardhaugh's website.

The Page 99 Test: Poor Robin's Prophesies.

The Page 99 Test: Counting.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five essential books for the Bigfoot-curious

Giano Cromley is the author of two indie YA novels, The Prince of Infinite Space, and The Last Good Halloween, and a short story collection, What We Build Upon the Ruins. He is a recipient of an Artists Fellowship from the Illinois Arts Council and was a BookEnds Fellow with Stonybrook University.

[Coffee with a Canine: Giano Cromley & Kaiya and Tanka; My Book, The Movie: The Last Good Halloween]

Originally from Billings, Montana, he graduated from Dartmouth College and received an MFA from the University of Montana. He has worked as a speech writer and deputy press secretary in Washington, DC, and he has taught GED and ESL classes in Chicago. He is currently an English professor at Kennedy-King College, where he is chair of the Communications Department. He is also an amateur woodworker and a certified wildlife tracker. He lives on the South Side of Chicago with his wife and two dogs.

Cromley's new novel is American Mythology.

At CrimeReads the author tagged five "books to broaden your Sasquatch knowledge (whether you believe or not)." One title on Cromley's list:

Where Bigfoot Walks: Crossing the Dark Divide by Robert Michael Pyle

A Yale-educated lepidopterist with a PhD in insect conservation ecology and a Guggenheim Fellow, Pyle brings a naturalist’s sensibility to his explorations of the Gifford Pinchot National Forest in western Washington. While conducting biological fieldwork, Bigfoot remains an intellectual itch Pyle can’t help but scratch. “Yet just there and then I was perfectly prepared: not to believe in Bigfoot necessarily, but to believe that the world is wider than we normally wish to accept.” No matter where you fall in the Bigfoot debate, this book is a profound exploration of mankind’s relationship to the natural world.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue