What is Finley Turner reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Finley Turner, author of The Tarot Reader: A Novel.

Her entry begins:

I'm currently reading The First Witch of Boston by Andrea Catalano and listening to Ruth Ware's newest novel The Woman in Suite 11. In the fall months, especially as Halloween approaches, I always love to read something witchy. What I'm loving about The First Witch of Boston so far is its critique of misogyny in the late 1600s. The woman in question is a talented healer with a loose tongue and a passion for life. These factors, along with her success as a local healer make her an easy target for accusations of witchcraft. Social commentary makes a good story even better and...[read on]

About The Tarot Reader, from the publisher:

A phony psychic vision goes wrong when a woman unexpectedly finds herself involved in a murder investigation, perfect for fans of May Cobb and Catherine McKenzie.

Twenty-five-year-old Jade Crawford spends her days selling crystals, conducting séances, and reading tarot cards in her shop in Winston-Salem, NC. But her connection to the other side is all a facade. After losing their mother to a terrible accident and their father serving jail time, Jade and her younger sister Stevie do what they can to survive. When a local politician goes missing, Jade sees a lucrative opportunity to drum up new clients and inject some much-needed cash into their pockets.

Jade submits a “psychic vision” to the police tipline only to discover that her shot in the dark is chillingly accurate when the police find the politician’s body. Caught in a media whirlwind, Jade revels in her newfound popularity and success, but she quickly finds herself the target of not only a police investigation but of the killer who is still on the loose.

With stunning suspense that is perfect for fans of Samantha M. Bailey, Finley turns the screws tighter into a taut and thrilling read.

Visit Finley Turner's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Engagement Party.

Q&A with Finley Turner.

Writers Read: Finley Turner.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Ryan D. Griffiths's "The Disunited States"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Disunited States: Threats of Secession in Red and Blue America and Why They Won't Work by Ryan D. Griffiths.

About the book, from the publisher:

Is the breakup of an increasingly polarized America into separate red and blue countries even possible?

There is a growing interest in American secession. In February 2023, Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted that "We need a national divorce...We need to separate by red states and blue states." Recent movements like Yes California have called for a national divorce along political lines. A 2023 Axios poll shows that 20 percent of Americans favor a national divorce. These trends show a sincere interest in American secession, and they will likely increase in the aftermath of the 2024 Presidential election.

Proponents of secession make three arguments: the two sides have irreconcilable differences; secession is a legal right; and smaller political units are better. Through interviews with secessionist advocates in America, Ryan Griffiths explores the case for why Red America and Blue America should split up.

But as The Disunited States shows, these arguments are fundamentally incorrect. Secession is the wrong solution to the problem of polarization. Red and Blue America are not neatly sorted and geographically concentrated. Splitting the two parts would require a dangerous unmixing of the population, one that could spiral into violence and state collapse. Drawing on his expertise on secessionism worldwide, he shows how the process has played out internationally-and usually disastrously. Ultimately, this book will disabuse readers of the belief that secession will fix America's problems. Rather than focus on national divorce as a solution, the better course of action is to seek common ground.

Visit Ryan D. Griffiths's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Disunited States.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten books of real Black women in history

Jessica Pryde is a Contributing Editor for Book Riot, where she is the co-host of the When In Romance podcast and writes about bookish things of all kinds. Having earned an AB in the Interdisciplinary Project in the Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis and her MLIS at San Jose State University, she is now a librarian for a public library system in Southern Arizona, where she lives with her husband and an ever-growing collection of Funko!Pops. Black Love Matters is her first book.

At Book Riot Pryde tagged ten books, nonfiction and historical fiction, that place real Black women in history front and center. One title on the list:

The Woman Who Would Be King by Kara Cooney

Many of us went through an Ancient Egypt phase as kids (and some of us never grew out of it). How much of that time was spent learning about Hatshepsut? If you got more than a few minutes, you were lucky! Hatshepsut, the daughter of a general, was a master of strategy who maneuvered her way into being the second woman in Egypt to be named a Pharaoh. Kara Cooney is a storied Egyptologist who has done several deep dives through the thousand-year-long Egyptian civilization, and her writing is incredibly approachable, no matter your starting point. (Note: while some people might draw a line between Southwest Asia and North Africa identity and Sub-Saharan African identity when it comes to who might be considered “Black,” I attribute the title to anyone with full ties to the continent.)

Read about another entry on the list.

The Page 99 Test: The Woman Who Would Be King.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Charlene Wang's "I'll Follow You"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: I'll Follow You: A Novel by Charlene Wang.

About the book, from the publisher:

For two best friends desperate to escape their dead-end town, a viral online persona becomes a dangerous game of control in a twisting psychological thriller about class, power, and identity.

Faith and her charismatic best friend, Kayla, always vowed to escape their trailer park together. After their social media persona, Hannah Primrose, goes viral, their fates seem more entwined than ever. But when Faith is accepted into prestigious Harkness College, she must decide whether to keep her promise to Kayla or learn to tell her own story.

By the time Faith arrives on campus, Kayla is no longer speaking with her. Struggling to fit in with her wealthy classmates, Faith reinvents herself, drawing the attention of her enigmatic art history professor. Then Kayla shows up outside her dormitory one night. I need to stay with you.

Having Kayla on campus is thrilling―and dangerous. Posing as a student, Kayla charms everyone she encounters, and soon enough they’re posting together again. Hannah Primrose, after all, is perfect for a place like Harkness. But as Faith risks her future for the persona she helped create, she begins to realize that Kayla is playing a deadly game…and it may be too late to regain control of the narrative.

Visit Charlene Wang's website.

The Page 69 Test: I'll Follow You.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: G. Edward White's "Robert H. Jackson"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Robert H. Jackson: A Life in Judgment by G. Edward White.

About the book, from the publisher:

Discover the meteoric rise of one of the most extraordinary and singular figures in American jurisprudence, Robert H. Jackson, from self-trained lawyer to influential Supreme Court Justice and chief U.S. prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials, in this compelling new biography.

Until he joined the U.S. government in 1934, Robert H. Jackson had been a lawyer in private practice in Upstate New York who was admitted to the bar without going to college and after completing only one year of law school. Once part of FDR's administration, Jackson became, in rapid succession, United States Solicitor General and United States Attorney General, where he successfully defended New Deal programs before the Supreme Court, including the legality of Lend Lease, which helped the U.S. give war supplies to England in exchange for grants of territory and harbors. Jackson played a central role in formulating the arguments justifying a number of initiatives on constitutional grounds and in drafting the policy statements that accompanied them. In 1941, FDR nominated him to be Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, on which he served until his death in 1954, only months after his adding his vote to the unanimous decision in Brown V. Board of Education.

It was a meteoric rise for someone from outside the elite, and essentially self-trained. That didn't stop Jackson from becoming one of the most influential and independent-minded judges of his day, unafraid to question the status quo and leave his mark on a number of landmark cases, including West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnett, which guaranteed First Amendment rights by holding that students in public schools did not have to salute the flag or recite the Pledge of Allegiance. He dissented from the notorious decision in Korematsu v. U.S., which condoned the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War Two. To many, however, Jackson's most significant contribution was as chief U.S. prosecutor at the Nuremberg war trials following the war.

Drawing on Jackson's extensive personal papers in the Library of Congress and the Jackson Center, as well as a substantial oral history, G. Edward White's biography offers the first full-length portrait in decades of this fascinating and seminal figure.

Learn more about Robert H. Jackson at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Robert H. Jackson.

--Marshal Zeringue

Sixteen cozy novels that feature travel & international intrigue

Lucy Connelly travels around the world, usually with her bossy dog in tow. Her favorite pastime is sipping tea in a quaint cafe as she turns each passerby into a murder victim, witness, or suspect. If she stares at you strangely, don’t worry. She only murdered you in her book.

[The Page 69 Test: Death at a Scottish Wedding; Q&A with Lucy Connelly]

Connelly's new novel is Death on a Scottish Train.

At CrimeReads the author tagged sixteen favorite cozy novels that feature travel and international intrigue. One title on the list:

Ann Cleeves, Raven Black

To cool off, dive into Ann Cleeve’s Shetland Series. The first book, Raven Black, is set in Shetland during January. Jimmy Perez and his crew must break through frozen ground to find the killer. These are intense mysteries within a wonderful community of odd fellows.

Read about another entry on the list.

Raven Black is among William Shaw’s top ten mysteries set in the British countryside.

The Page 99 Test: Raven Black.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Ian Chorão

From my Q&A with Ian Chorão, author of When We Talk to the Dead: A Novel:

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

My book’s title, When We Talk to the Dead, was a last-minute decision. For the longest time it was called, She’s Not There. Both titles work, but are wildly different, vibe wise. She’s not there is a refrain said several times in the book; it has multiple meanings (no spoilers but trust me).

But alluding to what the book’s about isn’t enough. A title needs to capture more: tone, genre. My book is a gothic, psychological horror. I needed a title to speak to that. When We Talk to the Dead instantly tells you the type of story you’re about to read. This is a scary book, a story of darkness. This is the tale of 19-year-old Sally da Gama, so haunted by tragic loss that she will follow a path that might offer release or might plunge her deeper into madness.

The title also has an energy and action I really liked. It sets up a dynamic. When we talk to the dead, what then happens? Get ready. Once you enter the book, you will...[read on]

Follow Ian Chorão on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.

Writers Read: Ian Chorão.

Q&A with Ian Chorão.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Gillen D’Arcy Wood's "The Wake of HMS Challenger"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Wake of HMS Challenger: How a Legendary Victorian Voyage Tells the Story of Our Oceans' Decline by Gillen D’Arcy Wood.

About the book, from the publisher:

A scientific adventure story that dramatizes how profoundly our oceans have changed over the past 150 years

In December 1872, HMS Challenger embarked on the first round-the-world oceanographic expedition. Its goal: to shine a light for the first time on the mysteries of the deep sea. For the next four years, Challenger’s naturalists explored the oceans, encountering never-before-seen marvels of marine life. The expedition’s achievements are the stuff of legend. It identified major ocean currents and defining features of the seafloor, including the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and Mariana Trench. It measured worldwide sea temperatures and chemistry, creating baseline data for all ocean research since. And, most spectacularly of all, it collected nearly five thousand sea creatures and plants new to science. In The Wake of HMS Challenger, Gillen D’Arcy Wood looks afresh at this legendary scientific odyssey and shows why, 150 years later, its legacy looms larger than ever.

The Challenger’s scientists had no way of knowing that the incredible undersea aquarium they were documenting was on the verge of catastrophic change. Off Portugal, they encountered a brilliant starfish now threatened with extinction by microplastics; in St. Thomas, teeming coral habitats that today have been decimated by ocean warming; and at remote Ascension Island, the breeding grounds of the now-endangered green turtle. Lyrical and elegiac, The Wake of HMS Challenger offers a stunning before-and-after picture of our global oceans. It is both a reminder of what we have lost since the Victorian age and an urgent call to preserve what remains of the diverse life and wild beauty of our planet’s final frontier.

Learn more about The Wake of HMS Challenger at the Princeton University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Tambora.

The Page 99 Test: The Wake of HMS Challenger.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top classic basketball books

Yaron Weitzman is an award-winning NBA writer and the author of Tanking to the Top: The Philadelphia 76ers and the Most Audacious Process in the History of Professional Sports and A Hollywood Ending: The Dreams and Drama of the LeBron Lakers. His work has appeared in outlets such as The Ringer, Bleacher Report, Yahoo Sports, FOX Sports, The New Yorker, and GQ, and was recognized in 2020's "The Best American Sports Writing." None of this, however, matches his career highlight of being the ESPN Radio college intern tasked with delivering Stephen A. Smith his daily bag of Cheez Doodles.

At Lit Hub Weitzman tagged five classic basketball "books that moved me the first time I read them and have stayed with me ever since." One title on the list:

Jack McCallum, :07 Seconds or Less

This is one of those books that I still can’t believe happened. McCallum, a longtime NBA writer for Sports Illustrated, and not only just one of the best to ever do it but one of those writers beloved and revered by his peers, somehow convinced Phoenix Suns head coach Mike D’Antoni to let him embed with the team’s coaching staff for the 2005-06 season. This may sound simple, and may sound common; it’s far from both. The more sports have grown over the years, the more access has been limited, to the point where, around the turn of the century, reporters had to start fighting to hold on to the ability to talk to a team’s star player after games. And yet here was McCallum spending a season in coaches meetings, team bus rides and player huddles.

McCallum was the perfect writer for this, too. No one is better at mixing sharp analysis with simple, joyful and lighthearted prose. You can feel McCallum saying, Can you believe I’m in this room right now?! and his eagerness to bring readers along for the ride. So many basketball books—my own included—pitch themselves as true windows into how that world operates. But none of us get anything close to the access that McCallum received, and no one was better equipped to take advantage of it all. Given how big the sports industry has become, and how guarded and corporate that world has become, I think :07 Seconds or Less will likely end up being the last of its kind.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Jaime Parker Stickle's "Vicious Cycle"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Vicious Cycle: A Thriller by Jaime Parker Stickle.

About the book, from the publisher:

A former reporter gets a new spin on life in this gripping debut from author Jaime Parker Stickle, whose psychological roller-coaster ride set in sunny Los Angeles tackles motherhood and murder.

New mother Corey Tracey-Lieberman wakes up to nightmarish news: two teenage girls found hanged in a nearby park. Even more unsettling is how the news casually casts the tragedy as the result of increasing street crime, as if the victims’ lives didn’t really matter.

Corey knows better. In the six years she’s lived in Highland Park, she’s seen gentrification but no uptick in criminal activity. A former broadcast journalist, she knows all about spin―and not just the media kind. She now teaches spin classes in the neighborhood, between caring for her nine-month-old son and battling postpartum anxiety.

When police efforts fall short, Corey launches her own investigation into the hangings, flexing her idle sleuthing skills with baby in tow. And after a third murder strikes too close to home, she knows she’s onto something big.

An emotional gut punch tempered by belly laughs, Vicious Cycle is a tour de force certain to thrill all readers.

Visit Jaime Parker Stickle's website.

My Book, The Movie: Vicious Cycle.

The Page 69 Test: Vicious Cycle.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Wendell Marsh's "Textual Life"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Textual Life: Islam, Africa, and the Fate of the Humanities by Wendell Marsh.

About the book, from the publisher:

Textual Life is a groundbreaking book that recasts the role of knowledge in the making of a colonial and postcolonial nation. It makes a case for a new literary and intellectual-historical approach to Islam in Africa.

The Senegalese Muslim scholar Shaykh Musa Kamara (1864–1945) wrote History of the Blacks, a monumental history of West Africa, in a time when colonial discourses asserted that Africans lacked both writing and history. He sought to publish a bilingual Arabic and French edition of the book by working with humanists in colonial institutions, but the project was ultimately undermined by the disregard of the French state.

Textual Life considers Kamara’s story as a parable about the fate of the humanities amid epistemic and technological change. Wendell H. Marsh argues that Kamara’s scholarship reflected what he calls the textual attitude, an orientation to the world mediated by reading. Colonial humanists shared this attitude even while upholding racial and religious hierarchies, and they took an interest in African texts and traditions. The bureaucrats and technocrats who succeeded them, however, disdained such dialogue―for reasons that bear a striking resemblance to the algorithmic antihumanism that is ascendant today.

Drawing on Kamara’s body of work, colonial archival documents, and postcolonial knowledge production within Senegal, Textual Life offers a decolonial vision of the humanities. By engaging with African and Muslim intellectual resources, Marsh shows how thinkers like Kamara who were subjected to colonialism can help us find a future after empire.

Visit Wendell H. Marsh's website and learn more about Textual Life at the Columbia University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Textual Life.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven books about the power of political imagination

Mai Serhan is the author of CAIRO: the undelivered letters, winner of the 2022 Center for Book Arts Poetry Chapbook Award and I Can Imagine It For Us, a finalist for the 2022 Narratively Memoir Prize. Her writing has appeared in The London Magazine, The Adroit Journal, Magma Poetry, The Oxford Magazine, Flash Fiction Magazine and elsewhere.

At Electric Lit Serhan tagged seven titles about the power of political imagination. One book on the list:

House of Stone by Anthony Shadid

This memoir caught me off guard. I began reading it at Beirut airport and was in tears within the first few pages. Leaving Beirut is always emotionally charged for me. It’s my family’s adopted home following their exile from Palestine, the city of my father’s youth, and where my aunt, the last surviving member of our Nakba generation, still lives, though she now has dementia. In this elegantly written memoir, Shadid returns to his ancestral home in Southern Lebanon, once a splendid Ottoman structure, now destroyed by Israeli bombardment, to rebuild it. The act of rebuilding becomes a meditation on memory, ancestry, migration to America, and the destruction wrought by occupation and war. In my memoir, I too rebuild my ancestral home, word by word, as a way to meditate on loss and return. Like Matar, Shadid showed me how a sentence can carry grief, and still land in grace.

Read about another entry on the list.

House of Stone is among Naji Bakhti's top ten books about Lebanon and Tatjana Soli's six favorite books that conjure exotic locales.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Ian Chorão reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Ian Chorão, author of When We Talk to the Dead: A Novel.

One novel he mentions:

The Shining by Stephen King. I know, strange that I've never read it. Usually my experience is seeing a movie of a book I love, but this is the reverse--I know the movie by heart, so I have to actively push it out of my head, so I can read the actual book. What is really great about it is how down to earth the characters and tone of the story are. Planting the supernatural in a very naturalistic setting makes the impact of the horror so much more intense. And I love how much he enjoys giving space to the...[read on]

About When We Talk to the Dead, from the publisher:

The island was abandoned years ago–but something dark was left behind, and it’s waiting for those bold enough to return.

Perfect for fans of Iain Reid, this slow-burning horror novel will sweep you out, and like a churning ocean, before you realize, it will pull you under its turbulent spell.

A remote deserted island off the coast of Maine holds dark memories and disturbing secrets for the family who once lived on its rocky shores. Though nineteen-year-old Sally de Gama remembers nothing about the accident that took place on Captain’s Island and destroyed her family when she was a little girl, she suffers from intense anxiety, pervasive bouts of dissociation, and gruesome nightmares.

All Sally knows is that her mother hasn’t spoken since the accident that took the life of Sally’s twin sister. Following the tragedy, her family fled and never looked back.

When her mother suddenly dies, Sally and three college friends travel to the island–for her friends it’s an adventure to a strange, abandoned place. For Sally, it’s a desperate bid to recover some of her memories and understand what really happened to her family. But when memories begin to return, Sally is overcome by grief and rage that threaten to plunge her into madness–a madness that is fed by a malevolent presence stalking them on the island.

Follow Ian Chorão on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.

Writers Read: Ian Chorão.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jaime Parker Stickle's "Vicious Cycle," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Vicious Cycle: A Thriller by Jaime Parker Stickle.

The entry begins:

I love to think about casting once I am deeply into the characters. I hold back in the beginning, mostly because the characters must form themselves. Once they have become a second language to me, I begin to hear them in my dreams, in music (lyrics become conversations between all my characters) then I can start to think about the dream cast. As a screenwriter and actor myself who has done a bit of casting for projects, I wouldn’t for a second dismiss the possibility of a series or film. I think it would be an incredible feat.

For my protagonist, Corey, who is a new mom in her late thirties, I really thought about someone who had the confidence, life experience, and vulnerability it would take to play a character that suffers from severe postpartum anxiety and panic attacks while caring for her newborn and solving a murder and immediately thought Christina Hendricks based on her role in Good Girls. It was a slam dunk for me and I often picture her delivering the lines while I write. Today, I think a lot about Brianne Howey from Ginny and Georgia. She definitely has the hutzpah and attitude to embrace a character as complex as Corey.

Corey’s husband, Evan, is already based on...[read on]

Visit Jaime Parker Stickle's website.

My Book, The Movie: Vicious Cycle.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven historical horror novels inspired by true events

C. J. Cooke is an award-winning poet and novelist published in twenty-three languages. She teaches creative writing at the University of Glasgow, where she also researches the impact of motherhood on women’s writing and creative writing interventions for mental health.

Cooke's newest novel is The Last Witch.

At CrimeReads she tagged seven novels "that not only chill but also takes a long hard look at the histories that have haunted us for centuries," including:

Karen Maitland, Company of Liars

When the Black Death arrives in England, nine strangers band together on the road, each hiding secrets as they flee north to outrun the pestilence. But the further they travel, the more it becomes clear that the danger lies not only in the plague, but in the lies, betrayals, and sins carried within the group.

Maitland blends folklore, medieval superstition, and historical detail into a dark fable about human frailty and fear, where survival comes at a terrible price.

Read about another novel on Cooke's list.

Company of Liars is among Laura Purcell's ten top historical crime novels.

The Page 69 Test: Company of Liars.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Celene Reynolds's "Unlawful Advances"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Unlawful Advances: How Feminists Transformed Title IX by Celene Reynolds.

About the book, from the publisher:

The remarkable story of the women who defined sexual harassment as unlawful sex discrimination under Title IX

When the US Congress enacted Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, no one expected it to become a prominent tool for confronting sexual harassment in schools. Title IX is the civil rights law that prohibits education programs from discriminating “on the basis of sex.” At the time, however, the term “sexual harassment” was not yet in use; this kind of misconduct was simply accepted as part of life for girls and women at schools and universities. In Unlawful Advances, Celene Reynolds shows how the women claiming protection under Title IX made sexual harassment into a form of sex discrimination barred by the law. Working together, feminist students and lawyers fundamentally changed the right to equal opportunity in education and schools’ obligations to ensure it.

Drawing on meticulously documented case studies, Reynolds explains how Title IX was applied to sexual harassment, linking the actions of feminists at Cornell, Yale, and Berkeley. Through analyses of key lawsuits and an original dataset of federal Title IX complaints, she traces the evolution of sexual harassment policy in education—from the early applications at elite universities to the growing sexual harassment bureaucracies on campuses today—and how the work of these feminists has forever shaped the law, university governance, and gender relations on campus. Reynolds argues that our political and interpretive struggle over this application of Title IX is far from finished. Her account illuminates this ongoing effort, as well as the more general process by which citizens can transform not only the laws that govern us, but also the very meaning of equality under American law.

Learn more about Unlawful Advances at the Princeton University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Unlawful Advances.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight fictional books that read like reality TV

Natalie Zutter is a playwright and pop culture critic whose work has appeared on Reactor, NPR Books, Lit Hub, and elsewhere.

At Paste magazine she tagged eight fictional works that read like reality television. One title on the list:

All This and More by Peng Shepherd
For Fans of: Trading Spaces crossed with MTV’s Made

While the premise of this thriller utilizes quantum technology to let one woman explore parallel universes, the rules are all reality TV: unhappy fortysomething Marsh is allowed to jump from one “Bubble” to the next, trying on careers and men like outfits she will discard, but there must be continuity. In comes the Show Bible, which collects her every branching path and the consequences that ripple out from each choice. Add a peanut gallery of viewers watching and commenting on her every move in real-time, and it’s enough to make even the most vast and promising Bubble feel downright claustrophobic.

A setup this trippy feels like a throwback to early-2000s reality TV, in which normal people got to switch places, transform each others’ spaces, and beg TV networks to help them achieve their dreams… then decide if the dream is better than their previous reality.

Read about another book on the list.

The Page 69 Test: All This and More.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Vicki Delany's "O, Deadly Night"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: O, Deadly Night: A Year-Round Christmas Mystery by Vicki Delany.

About the book, from the publisher:

’Tis the season for mischief and murder in the eighth Year-Round Christmas mystery from national bestselling author Vicki Delany.

It’s Christmastime in Rudolph, New York, which means it’s time for the December Santa Claus parade. This year, shop owner Merry Wilkinson has decided to decorate her float as Santa’s elves' workshop and invites her landlady, Mabel D’Angelo, to help supervise the excited children playing the elves. But when Mrs. D’Angelo doesn’t show up, Merry begins to worry.

Worry quickly turns into frustration when Mrs. D’Angelo reveals she was delayed by new neighbors moving in. As the center for all things gossip, Mrs. D’Angelo is determined to introduce the new arrivals to the neighborhood. As the days pass, Mrs. D’Angelo notices strange things about the newcomers, but Merry, busier than an elf in Santa’s workshop, has little time for matters that really don’t concern her. But things turn from jolly to downright concerning when Mrs. D’Angelo disappears, and Merry is forced to admit that something might be terribly wrong.

With family and friends counting on her during this stressful holiday season, it is up to Merry to make sure this Christmas doesn’t end up wrapped in blood red.

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 (July 2025).

The Page 69 Test: Tea with Jam & Dread.

Writers Read: Vicki Delany.

The Page 69 Test: O, Deadly Night.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Addie E. Citchens

From my Q&A with Addie E. Citchens, author of Dominion: A Novel:

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

The title Dominion shoves readers into the book, and ultimately, for me, the moral of the story is that the concept of dominion itself is both relative to the forces at hand and dependent upon the willingness of other entities to be subjected. I don’t know if I’m supposed to say this, but I have a love/hate relationship with my title. It feels powerful, yet literal. The first title, or rather the working title was In the Image of the Beast, which also felt literal, though, so I don’t know. I’ve never been good at titles. Dominion was a joint effort, which I could dig, but I sometimes wish I would have held out until we could come up with something even harder and more poignant.

What's in a name?

Emanuel’s name is the most deliberately chosen in Dominion, but...[read on]

Visit Addie E. Citchens's website.

Q&A with Addie E. Citchens.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten titles featuring devils, doppelgängers, ghosts, and creepy dolls

Laura Venita Green is a writer and translator with an MFA from Columbia University, where she was an undergraduate teaching fellow. Her fiction won the Story Foundation Prize, received a Pushcart Prize Special Mention, and appears in The Missouri Review, Story, Joyland, Fatal Flaw, and translated to Italian in Spazinclusi. Her translations appear in World Literature Today and The Apple Valley Review. Born in San Angelo, TX, she's lived in New Orleans and now lives with her husband in New York City. Sister Creatures is her debut novel.

At Electric Lit Green tagged "ten books, all published within the last decade, feature some sort of entity or presence that looms over the lives of their characters, and they’re all incredibly enjoyable reads." One title on the list:

The Need by Helen Phillips

I have a theory that every one of us contains a doppelgänger story, and Phillips’s is one of the best. Molly, a paleobotanist and mother of two small children, works

in a fossil quarry called the Pit, where, in addition to ancient plant life, they discover objects that are just slightly…off: a Coca-Cola bottle with the wrong font, a plastic toy soldier manufactured with a monkey’s tail, a wrongly-shaped Altoids tin, a Bible with one conspicuous alteration. The Bible in particular brings more visitors and more funding to the Pit, but it also brings a fair share of hostility. These work stresses bleed into Molly’s home life, where an unwelcome presence enters and threatens the wellbeing of her children. With one of the tensest openings I’ve ever read, The Need explores the bewilderment and dread of motherhood, of caretaking, of being responsible for such tiny, vulnerable bodies.

Read about another book on the list.

The Need is among Clare Beams's nine titles about haunted motherhood, Chin-Sun Lee's five top gothic novels about distressed women, Ainslie Hogarth's eight novels about monstrous mothers, Amanda Mactas's five top horror novels driven by maternal instinct, Michael J. Seidlinger's top ten terrifying home invasions in fiction.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Lars Cornelissen's "Neoliberalism and Race"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Neoliberalism and Race by Lars Cornelissen.

About the book, from the publisher:

Lars Cornelissen argues that the category of race constitutes an organizing principle of neoliberal ideology. Using the methods of intellectual history and drawing on insights from critical race studies, Cornelissen explores the various racial constructs that structure neoliberal ideology, some of which are explicit, while others are more coded. Beginning in the interwar period and running through to recent developments, Neoliberalism and Race shows that racial themes have always pervaded neoliberal thinking. The book's key argument is that neoliberal thought is constitutively racialized―its racial motifs cannot be extracted from neoliberalism without rendering it theoretically and politically incoherent. The book aptly explores a wide variety of racial constructs through the structure of neoliberal ideology, deconstructing the conceptualizations in the works of landmark thinkers such as Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Peter Bauer, Thomas Sowell, Charles Murray, and others from the early twentieth century to the present. In this original―perhaps controversial―critique, Cornelissen asserts that neoliberal thinkers were not just the passive recipients of racial discourse, but also directly impacted it.

Learn more about Neoliberalism and Race at the Stanford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Neoliberalism and Race.

--Marshal Zeringue