Pg. 69: Meg Waite Clayton's "Typewriter Beach"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Typewriter Beach: A Novel by Meg Waite Clayton.

About the book, from the publisher:

Set in Carmel-by-the-Sea and Hollywood, Typewriter Beach is an unforgettable story of the unlikely friendship between an Oscar-nominated screenwriter and a young actress hoping to be Alfred Hitchcock's new star.

1957. Isabella Giori is ten months into a standard seven-year studio contract when she auditions with Hitchcock. Just weeks later, she is sequestered by the studio’s “fixer” in a tiny Carmel cottage, waiting and dreading.

Meanwhile, next door, Léon Chazan is annoyed as hell when Iz interrupts his work on yet another screenplay he won’t be able to sell, because he’s been blacklisted. Soon, they’re together in his roadster, speeding down the fog-shrouded Big Sur coast.

2018. Twenty-six-year-old screenwriter Gemma Chazan, in Carmel to sell her grandfather’s cottage, finds a hidden safe full of secrets—raising questions about who the screenwriter known simply as Chazan really was, and whether she can live up to his name.

In graceful prose and with an intimate understanding of human nature, Meg Waite Clayton captures the joys and frustrations of being a writer, being a woman, being a star, and being in love. Typewriter Beach is the story of two women separated by generations—a tale of ideas and ideals, passion and persistence, creativity, politics, and family.

Learn more about the book and author at Meg Waite Clayton's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Four Ms. Bradwells.

The Page 69 Test: The Wednesday Daughters.

The Page 69 Test: Beautiful Exiles.

The Page 69 Test: The Last Train to London.

The Page 69 Test: Typewriter Beach.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jeri Westerson's "The Misplaced Physician," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Misplaced Physician by Jeri Westerson.

The entry begins:

The Misplaced Physician is book #3 in my An Irregular Detective Mystery series, about a former Baker Street Irregular – one of Sherlock Holmes’ hired street urchins, his eyes and ears of London – who aged out of that group and decided to become a detective like the guv. Tim Badger is the one with enough chutzpah to believe he can do it, and when he met a black bloke from the East End named Ben Watson, he deemed it Fate that they should work together, but it wasn’t until Mr. Holmes himself stepped in to sponsor them that they started to succeed. In this book, Doctor Watson has been kidnapped and Holmes is out of the country and can’t be reached. So it’s up to Badger and Watson to save the day! But if they can’t, that’s the end of the Badger & Watson Detecting Agency.

Actually, I’d rather have a television series, preferably a British production perhaps on Masterpiece Mystery or BritBox.

Because I write cinematically – that is, with dialogue that actors love to speak (my audiobook narrator says this is true!), and a sense of place and action, it flows nicely. The books are all easily translated to a script. They’re moody, accessible, and drawn in such a way that readers know exactly what they are “seeing” and experiencing. And because it is a Victorian cozy mystery, there is no bad language and no sex (but there is romancing). This is in keeping with the canon of the Doyle material. I treat it as if they are historical documents and I don’t deviate from them or their sensibilities. Hence, the “swearing” is “bloomin’” this and “ruddy” that. With some “By Joves!” and “Great Heavens!” thrown in as well. Not that the London Badger & Watson travel through isn’t a bit gritty at times. It can be, depending on what they investigate. But for the most part, they stay strictly Victorian and could be seen as an extension of the Arthur Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes adventures.

Tim Badger is a man of action and guts, but despite his tough childhood, he always has a smile on his face. That’s why I might choose an actor like Callum Woodhouse (Tristan Farnon from All Creatures Great and Small) for him. He has that playful, carefree, and sometimes irresponsible sensibility for Tim Badger. As long as he can go full Cockney.

As for Ben Watson, he’s a little tougher to cast...[read on]

Visit Jeri Westerson's website.

The Page 69 Test: Veil of Lies.

The Page 69 Test: Serpent in the Thorns.

The Page 69 Test: The Demon's Parchment.

My Book, The Movie: The Demon's Parchment.

The Page 69 Test: Troubled Bones.

The Page 69 Test: Blood Lance.

The Page 69 Test: Shadow of the Alchemist.

The Page 69 Test: Cup of Blood.

The Page 69 Test: The Silence of Stones.

The Page 69 Test: A Maiden Weeping.

Q&A with Jeri Westerson.

The Page 69 Test: The Deadliest Sin.

My Book, The Movie: The Misplaced Physician

--Marshal Zeringue

Four top horror books about America

At Book Riot Emily Martin tagged "four horror novels to get you in the mood for the 4th of July this year (…or not)." One title on the list:

Wake Up and Open Your Eyes by Clay McLeod Chapman

If you’re angered by the way social media and cable news have dictated contemporary politics in America, then reading this book will make your deepest fears a reality. Wake Up and Open Your Eyes is set in an America possessed by the media it consumes. Once taken over by the media, the American people are compelled to commit terrible acts of violence.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Priyanka Taslim reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Priyanka Taslim, author of Always Be My Bibi.

Her entry begins:

I recently finished Park Avenue by Renée Ahdieh. I’ve been a fan of her work in the young adult fantasy space for a long time, so I was very intrigued by the concept of her adult contemporary debut, especially because my own upcoming adult debut also involves the dramatic, sometimes cutthroat lives of an affluent Asian family. For being a completely new genre and age category, I think she...[read on]

About Always Be My Bibi, from the publisher:

Clueless meets Jenna Evans Welch in this young adult rom-com about a spoiled American teenager who faces some major culture shock—and potential romance—when she jets off to Bangladesh for her sister’s wedding.

Bibi Hossain was supposed to get her first kiss this summer.

Too bad her father finds out and grounds her for breaking his most arcane rule: No boys until your sister gets married.

Just when Bibi thinks she’ll be stuck helping him at their popular fried chicken chain until school reopens, her oh-so-perfect older sister Halima drops a bombshell: she’s marrying the heir of a princely estate turned tea garden in Bangladesh. Soon, Bibi is hopping on the next flight to Sylhet for Halima’s Big Fat Bengali Wedding, hoping Abbu might even rethink the dating ban while they’re there.

Unfortunately, the stuffy Rahmans are a nightmare—especially Sohel, the groom’s younger brother. The only thing they can agree on is that their siblings are not a good match. But as the two scheme to break their siblings up, Bibi finds it impossible to stay away from the infuriatingly handsome boy.

Could her own happily ever after be brewing even as she stirs up trouble for her sister’s engagement—or is there more steeping at the tea estate than Bibi knows?

Visit Priyanka Taslim's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Love Match.

Q&A with Priyanka Taslim.

The Page 69 Test: The Love Match.

The Page 69 Test: Always Be My Bibi.

Writers Read: Priyanka Taslim.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Gila Stopler's "Women's Rights in Liberal States"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Women's Rights in Liberal States: Patriarchy, Liberalism, Religion and the Chimera of Rights by Gila Stopler.

About the book, from the publisher:

The rise of religious conservatism and right-wing populism has exposed the fallibility of women's rights in liberal states and has seriously undermined women's ability to trust liberal states to protect their rights against religious and populist attacks. Gila Stopler argues that right-wing populists and religious conservatives successfully attack women's rights in liberal democracies because of the patriarchal foundations of liberalism and liberal societies. Engaging with political theories such as feminism, liberalism and populism, and examining concepts like patriarchy, culture, religion and the public-private distinction, the book uncovers the deep entrenchment of patriarchy in legal structures, social and cultural systems, and mainstream religions within liberal democracies. It analyses global cases and legal frameworks, focusing on liberal democracies and especially the USA, demonstrating how patriarchy fuels right-wing populism, accelerates the erosion of women's rights and threatens the future of liberal democracy.

Visit Gila Stopler's website.

The Page 99 Test: Women's Rights in Liberal States.

--Marsha Zeringue

Eight mysteries and thrillers featuring older sleuths and criminals

Sue Hincenbergs is a former television producer who has worked on multiple award-winning programs. She lives in Toronto with her (very much alive) husband, her scruffy, middle-aged rescue dog, Kramer, and the rooms full of the stuff her three sons left behind when they moved out. The porch light is always on in case one comes by for a visit.

The Retirement Plan is her first novel.

At People magazine Hincenbergs tagged eight mysteries and thrillers "that prove that age really can be just a number — for both those seeking to solve the crime and the ones committing it." One title on the list:

Murder Takes a Vacation by Laura Lippman

After years as a sidekick, 68-year-old widow Muriel Blossom moves out from the shadows of Laura Lippman’s Tess Monaghan series to take on a starring role in her own book. Muriel, a woman of size who's sometimes self-conscious about it has found a lottery ticket and can finally afford her first vacation abroad. But soon she’s embroiled in nefarious doings, making for a charming and cozy European adventure.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Page 69 Test: Murder Takes a Vacation.

--Marshal Zeringue

Julie Hensley's "Five Oaks," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Five Oaks: A Novel by Julie Hensley.

The entry begins:

It’s fun to think about how Five Oaks might play out on the screen. Olivia Newman would be a great director. She really captures the feel of southern landscapes and generational secrets in her adaptation of Where the Crawdads Sing. She would find a way to tease out the slightly gothic elements.

In terms of the current temporal frame, I would cast it this way:

Sylvie Pritchard: Quin Copeland

Wren Pritchard: Ava Phillipe

Georgia (Mamaw) Stone: Sally Field

Byron (Papaw) Stone: Pierce...[read on]

Visit Julie Hensley's website.

Q&A with Julie Hensley.

My Book, The Movie: Five Oaks.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Camilla Trinchieri's "Murder in Pitigliano"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Murder in Pitigliano by Camilla Trinchieri.

About the book, from the publisher:

Ex-NYPD detective Nico Doyle finds himself unwittingly stepping into the role of a PI to investigate a murder that has torn a young family apart in this rustic mystery set in the beautiful Medieval village of Pitigliano, Italy.

One morning at his favorite café, Nico Doyle notices Cilia, a seven-year-old girl he has never seen before, frolicking with his dog on the floor. He later discovers she has left a note in his collar—Please help my babbo.

With help from the local carabinieri, Nico discovers that Cilia’s father, Saverio, has fled town following an unfortunate incident. His business partner was killed at their electronics store, and Saverio is the hot-headed local carabiniere’s main suspect. Cilia’s mother, Livia, who just moved to Gravigna to get away from Pitigliano’s wagging tongues, asks Nico to find the real killer and hands him a long list of suspects. Against his better judgment, Nico accepts for Cilia’s sake. Since the case is outside of the local carabinieri’s jurisdiction, Nico finds himself on his own as he travels back and forth to Pitigliano. He goes down Livia’s list of suspects one by one in pursuit of the truth, putting his skills as a retired NYPD detective to work. But will Livia and her little girl be happy with what Nico finds?

Visit Camilla Trinchieri's website.

Q&A with Camilla Trinchieri.

The Page 69 Test: Murder in Pitigliano.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Elisabeth Paling Funk's "The Dutch World of Washington Irving"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Dutch World of Washington Irving: Knickerbocker's History of New York and the Hudson Valley Folktales by Elisabeth Paling Funk.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Dutch World of Washington Irving tells an alternative origin story of American literary culture.

In December of 1809, before finding fame with "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," Washington Irving published his satirical A History of New York, from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty under the pseudonym Diedrich Knickerbocker. Elisabeth Paling Funk explains that the History of New York and the Hudson Valley folktales that followed were part of an early trend of responding to the national desire for a historical record. Funk argues that these works uniquely describe this part of the American scene in the period of the Early Republic and bring forward the Dutch strain in its history and culture.

Funk explores what the young Irving would have read, heard, and observed during his early life and career in New York City, once part of the former colony of New Netherland, where he was surrounded by Dutch-speaking neighbors and relatives and Dutch literature. Based on these sources, The Dutch World of Washington Irving argues that Irving's Knickerbocker works―not only his History but also his Hudson Valley stories―represent a crucial effort to preserve Dutch life and folk customs in the Hudson Valley in the face of Anglo-Americanization.

Providing the first complete glossary of Irving's Dutch vocabulary and drawing on untranslated Dutch sources, Funk offers cultural historians, scholars of American folklore and literature, and the latest generation of Irving's readers unprecedented access into the Dutch world of Washington Irving and his American contemporaries.

Learn more about The Dutch World of Washington Irving at the Cornell University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: The Dutch World of Washington Irving.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine top London-set historical mysteries

Julia Seales is a novelist and screenwriter. She earned an MFA in screenwriting from UCLA, and a BA in English from Vanderbilt University. She is a lifelong Anglophile with a passion for both murder mysteries and Jane Austen. Seales is originally from Kentucky, where she learned about manners (and bourbon).

Her new novel is A Terribly Nasty Business.

At CrimeReads Seales tagged nine "fantastic London-set historical mysteries ... which wonderfully showcase the fictional detectives who populate the City of Mystery." One title on the list:

Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Lord by Celeste Connally

What is it about the Regency era that makes it the perfect setting for murder mysteries? Perhaps there’s something about the seemingly polished time period with all its glittering balls and empire waistlines that makes us yearn to see the dark underbelly. Connally delivers plenty of this in the first of her Lady Petra series: when her friend dies in a questionable manner, Lady Petra takes the investigation into her own hands, leaving no stone unturned as she seeks the truth.

Read about another title on the list.

The Page 69 Test: Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Lord.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Julie Hensley

From my Q&A with Julie Hensley, author of Five Oaks: A Novel:

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

The title Five Oaks is indicative of how important setting and landscape are to the story. It is the name of the family lake cottage where the current temporal frame of the novel takes place across a summer in 1988. The historical chapters all branch into that space eventually, as well. It is truly a nexus. The working title for this novel was actually The Recklessness of Water, a reference to the REM song “Night Swimming.” I changed the title to Five Oaks at my agent’s urging. I spent about a day worrying over it, but ultimately, I grew to love the new title. Both that lake cottage and the five sprawling oaks for which it is named anchor the lives and secrets of all the women in the Stone/Pritchard lineage.

What's in a name?

I found the name my narrator, Sylvie, in a cemetery. I love to...[read on]

Visit Julie Hensley's website.

Q&A with Julie Hensley.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Nathan K. Hensley's "Action without Hope"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Action without Hope: Victorian Literature after Climate Collapse by Nathan K. Hensley.

About the book, from the publisher:

A study of how writers from the early phases of our prolonged climate emergency used aesthetic strategies to redefine the category of action.

What does it feel like to live helplessly in a world that is coming undone? Nathan Hensley turns to Victorian literature to uncover a prehistory of this deeply contemporary sense of powerlessness. For many in nineteenth-century Britain, their world seemed so scarred by human rapacity that restoring it seemed beyond the powers of any one individual. Like George Eliot’s characters in Middlemarch or the doomed lovers of Wuthering Heights, observers of the gathering carbon economy felt themselves ensnared by interlocked and broken systems. In the face of damage so vast and apparently irreversible, what could possibly be done?

To answer this question, Hensley shows that nineteenth-century writers and artists devised new ways to understand action—and hope. They rescaled action away from the grandly heroic and toward minor adjustments and collaborative interventions. They turned away from logical proofs and direct argumentation and instead called on aesthetic technologies like sonnets and fractured lyrics, watercolor sketches, and vast, multiplot novels, finding scope for action not at the level of the theme or the thesis but in gestures and details. Ranging from J. M. W. Turner’s painterly technique to Emily Brontë’s dreamlike fragments (and reading along the way works by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, H. G. Wells, Lewis Carroll, Gerard Manley Hopkins, William Berryman, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, and Christina Rossetti), Hensley’s study makes an important contribution to Victorian studies and the environmental humanities.

Visit Nathan K. Hensley's website.

The Page 99 Test: Action without Hope.

--Marshal Zeringue

Twenty top authors' summer reading

The Guardian asked twenty authors (including Anne Enright, Rutger Bregman, David Nicholls, Zadie Smith, and Colm Tóibín) about their summer reading.

Curtis Sittenfeld's contribution to the survey:

Animal Instinct by Amy Shearn is a delicious, sexy, insightful, big-hearted joy (that, believe it or not, features both the pandemic and divorce). After her marriage ends, middle-aged Brooklyn mom-of-three Rachel Bloomstein goes on many dates with men and women, has wild yet as-responsible-as-possible sex, and works on creating an AI chatbot that will combine the best parts of all her romantic prospects. Rachel is so open, generous-hearted and funny that reading about her makes you feel like one of the friends who comes over for drinks on her balcony.

Read about more books in the survey.

The Page 69 Test: Animal Instinct.

My Book, The Movie: Animal Instinct.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Simon Toyne reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Simon Toyne, author of The Black Highway.

His entry begins:

I just this second finished reading Fatherland by Robert Harris.

Harris is always dependable and is back in the limelight again recently after the success of Conclave, which weaves a taut thriller around the selection of a new Pope.

Fatherland was his first novel, written after a successful career in journalism, and is speculative fiction that follows the investigation of a senior Nazi official after the end of the Second World war after Germany won, Hitler is about to celebrate his seventieth birthday, Europe is United under the swastika, and the president of the United States, Joseph Kennedy (JFK’s dad), is about to visit the country to cement friendly ties between the two nations.

It’s a brilliant book, so well thought out and going into just enough detail about how things work post-war that you totally understand the repressive world you are in without ever losing sight of the central mystery, which involves...[read on]

About The Black Highway, from the publisher:

Laughton Rees is back in the latest novel from the bestselling author of the Sanctus trilogy—this time, with a case that hits uncomfortably close to home and threatens the thing Laughton values most: her daughter.

Forensic specialist Laughton Rees is not ashamed of her checkered past—after all, her youthful indiscretions led to the birth of her daughter Gracie, the person she loves most in the world—but when Gracie’s father unexpectedly turns up in their lives again, Laughton is automatically wary.

Shelby Facer is a dangerous man, formerly imprisoned for his involvement in an international drug trafficking ring, and no matter what Laughton once felt for him, she doesn’t want him anywhere near Gracie. But when Shelby claims that he has information about an especially difficult murder case she is working, she can’t turn him down.

A body with no head or hands has recently turned up in the river Thames, and the police are at a loss until Shelby identifies the man. The victim was part of a highly secretive smuggling ring Shelby was involved with during his and Laughton’s youth—which Laughton’s father, former commissioner for the Metropolitan police, was investigating before he died.

Laughton throws herself into her father’s old files to try to trace the connections between past and present, but as she and DCI Tannahill Khan circle closer to the truth, the case becomes dangerously personal. When another body turns up, mutilated just like the first, the victim is no stranger to Laughton. She’ll have to face the darkest parts of her past to find the man behind the murders—before he takes away everything she loves.

Visit Simon Toyne's website, Facebook page, Twitter perch, and Instagram page.

My Book, The Movie: Sanctus.

The Page 69 Test: Sanctus.

The Page 69 Test: The Tower.

My Book, The Movie: The Tower.

My Book, The Movie: The Searcher.

Writers Read: Simon Toyne (October 2015).

The Page 69 Test: The Searcher.

The Page 69 Test: The Clearing.

My Book, The Movie: The Clearing.

Q&A with Simon Toyne.

Writers Read: Simon Toyne.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Michael Matthews's "Sex and Love in Porfirian Mexico City"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Sex and Love in Porfirian Mexico City: A Social History of Working-Class Courtship by Michael Matthews.

About the book, from the publisher:

Exploring the sexual lives of the poor and working class in turn-of-the-century Mexico

This social history explores the romantic and sexual lives of the poor and working class in Mexico City during the rule of dictator Porfirio Díaz from 1876 to 1911. By analyzing sexually based crime cases and stories in the penny press, Michael Matthews sheds light on everyday struggles, joys, and desires. Matthews argues that lower-class individuals had more liberated sexual lives than their wealthier counterparts, influenced by the city’s growth and cultural changes.

In this book, Matthews examines how Mexico City’s expanding infrastructure, increasing factory work, and new leisure and entertainment activities shaped courtship and sexual practices. He delves into the world of tenement buildings and street life to reconstruct days defined by love and desire, romance and rape, seduction and sex work, and promises kept and broken. Matthews connects the sexual culture of the poor to the changes taking place as the Mexican state modernized and underwent tremendous capitalist growth and development.

Sex and Love in Porfirian Mexico City provides insights into how social and economic developments shaped cultural norms surrounding honor, marriage, morality, and parental authority during this period. It will spur new reflections on the possible influence of lower-class culture on modern-day romance and sexual values.

Learn more about Sex and Love in Porfirian Mexico City at the University Press of Florida website.

The Page 99 Test: Sex and Love in Porfirian Mexico City.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine stories & folktales featuring sisters

Fran Littlewood is the author of Amazing Grace Adams, which was an instant New York Times bestseller and a #ReadWithJenna book club pick. She has an MA in creative writing from Royal Holloway, University of London. Before her MA, she worked as a journalist, including a stint at the Times. She lives in London with her husband and their three daughters.

Littlewood's new novel is The Accidental Favorite.

At Lit Hub the author tagged nine favorite stories and folktales featuring sisters. One title on the list:

Claire Lombardo, The Most Fun We Ever Had

Sister quartets in literature have been having a moment, from Ann Napolitano’s Hello Beautiful (billed as an homage to those OG four sisters, Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women), to Coco Mellors’ Blue Sisters, and Claire Lombardo’s completely wonderful The Most Fun We Ever Had. Immersive and complex, funny and insightful, it’s one of the books I’ve recommended most to friends and family these past few years.

The novel tracks the Sorenson sisters as they move through life’s chaos in the orbit of their besotted parents. There’s Wendy, the eldest (who “was always cause for concern”), Violet, (who “made a habit of avoiding Wendy,” despite them being “practically twins“), Liza (a tenured professor at thirty-two), and Grace, the youngest by nine years (the “only only-child in the world who has three sisters”).

An astute and compassionate portrait of sisterhood, flaws and all, the dynamics between the characters are sublime.”Come in, I guess,” Wendy tells Violet in one scene. “Though, it behooves me to point out that if I ever showed up at your house uninvited you’d have me tasered.” The kind of novel that makes you fall in love with reading all over again, I did not want it to end.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Most Fun We Ever Had is among Alison Espach's ten best novels about sisters and Tara Sonin's twenty-one books for fans of HBO’s Succession.

The Page 69 Test: The Most Fun We Ever Had.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Priyanka Taslim's "Always Be My Bibi"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Always Be My Bibi by Priyanka Taslim.

About the book, from the publisher:

Clueless meets Jenna Evans Welch in this young adult rom-com about a spoiled American teenager who faces some major culture shock—and potential romance—when she jets off to Bangladesh for her sister’s wedding.

Bibi Hossain was supposed to get her first kiss this summer.

Too bad her father finds out and grounds her for breaking his most arcane rule: No boys until your sister gets married.

Just when Bibi thinks she’ll be stuck helping him at their popular fried chicken chain until school reopens, her oh-so-perfect older sister Halima drops a bombshell: she’s marrying the heir of a princely estate turned tea garden in Bangladesh. Soon, Bibi is hopping on the next flight to Sylhet for Halima’s Big Fat Bengali Wedding, hoping Abbu might even rethink the dating ban while they’re there.

Unfortunately, the stuffy Rahmans are a nightmare—especially Sohel, the groom’s younger brother. The only thing they can agree on is that their siblings are not a good match. But as the two scheme to break their siblings up, Bibi finds it impossible to stay away from the infuriatingly handsome boy.

Could her own happily ever after be brewing even as she stirs up trouble for her sister’s engagement—or is there more steeping at the tea estate than Bibi knows?

Visit Priyanka Taslim's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Love Match.

Q&A with Priyanka Taslim.

The Page 69 Test: The Love Match.

The Page 69 Test: Always Be My Bibi.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Eugenia Zuroski's "A Funny Thing"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: A Funny Thing: Eighteenth-Century Literature Undisciplined by Eugenia Zuroski.

About the book, from the publisher:

Eighteenth-century literature is weirder than we realize. A Funny Thing invites readers to be taken by its oddities, its silliness, and its absurdities – both because reading this way is fun, and because this challenges colonialism's disciplinary epistemes of propriety that have consistently bound liberal selfhood to extractive capitalism. Focusing on three aesthetic modes largely unnamed in existing studies of the period's literature – the anamorphic, the ludic, and the orificial – this book offers fresh readings of work by Haywood, Walpole, Bentley, and Burney that point to unexpected legacies from the so-called Age of Reason. This book is for any reader curious about the wilder flights of fancy in eighteenth-century fiction, the period's queer sense of humour, and how writing and art of the time challenge colonial reality.

Visit Eugenia Zuroski's website.

The Page 99 Test: A Funny Thing.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five great literary mysteries set in coastal Massachusetts

Dwyer Murphy is the author of An Honest Living and The Stolen Coast, both of which were New York Times Editors’ Choice selections. He is the editor in chief of Literary Hub‘s CrimeReads vertical.

Murphy's new book is The House on Buzzards Bay.

At CrimeReads he tagged five favorite literary mysteries set in coastal Massachusetts, including:

Richard Russo, Chances Are

Russo’s 2009 novel, That Old Cape Magic remains for me his ur-coastal Massachusetts story, but Chances Are offers readers a different and worthwhile perspective: a novel with a more explicit mystery propelling it forward. In Chances Are, three old college friends reunite on Martha’s Vineyard mourning their lost youth and also one special woman who disappeared some decades before. The Vietnam War, and in particular the vagaries of the draft, factor into the story in profound ways, and shining through all of it is Russo’s deep appreciation for humanity in all its variety and melancholy absurdity.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Mary Anna Evans's "The Dark Library," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Dark Library: A Novel by Mary Anna Evans.

The entry begins:

The Dark Library is set in 1942, and it is heavily influenced by books and movies of the area, especially the brooding and atmospheric movies of Alfred Hitchcock and the dark suspense novels of Daphne du Maurier. If, like me, you love Hitchcock’s adaptation of du Maurier’s Rebecca, then you know exactly the vibe I had in mind.

My protagonist, Estella Ecker, who would much prefer that you called her E, is a scholar of Gothic literature, which she says are stories of “unhappy people in big houses,” so The Dark Library also nods to even earlier novels like Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. (I almost called the book Unhappy People in Big Houses.) These are novels that are incredibly cinematic, so I hope you read The Dark Library with mental images of old stone mansions surrounded by overgrown gardens, brooding over the wind-tossed Hudson River.

Because this is a book that has one foot in the present and one foot in the past, I’m going to cast the movie twice, once with actors who are currently working and once with actors working in or around 1942. That’s twice the fun!

The Cast of The Dark Library, Now/Then

Dr. Estella “E” Ecker: Brie Larson/Veronica Lake at 32

Mother: Nicole Kidman/Veronica Lake at 52

Father: Kenneth Branagh...[read on]

Learn more about the author and her work at Mary Anna Evans's website.

The Page 69 Test: Floodgates.

Writers Read: Mary Anna Evans (October 2010).

The Page 69 Test: Strangers.

My Book, The Movie: Strangers.

The Page 69 Test: Plunder.

Writers Read: Mary Anna Evans (November 2013).

The Page 69 Test: Rituals.

Q&A with Mary Anna Evans.

My Book, The Movie: The Physicists' Daughter.

The Page 69 Test: The Physicists' Daughter.

Writers Read: Mary Anna Evans (June 2023).

The Page 69 Test: The Traitor Beside Her.

My Book, The Movie: The Traitor Beside Her.

The Page 69 Test: The Dark Library.

Writers Read: Mary Anna Evans.

My Book, The Movie: The Dark Library.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Erin Shevaugn Schlumpf's "Remnants of Refusal"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Remnants of Refusal: Feminist Affect, National Trauma by Erin Shevaugn Schlumpf.

About the book, from the publisher:

Analyzes how French and Chinese literary and filmic texts enact a series of feminist affective responses to the erasure of historical trauma.

Remnants of Refusal traces an affective discourse of feminist refusal across a series of French and Chinese works of film and literature. Developing an inventive comparative approach, Erin Shevaugn Schlumpf argues that this discourse takes shape in response to two national traumas and their aftermath: the German Occupation and the Tiananmen Square Massacre, respectively. In both contexts, events associated with the trauma were effectively erased from the official historical record and replaced by an unwritten code of public secrecy. And, in both contexts, three affects-melancholy, ambivalence, and exhaustion-provide means of expressing mourning without breaking the taboo of direct representation. In films and literary texts by Wang Anyi, Chen Ran, Jia Zhangke, Nathalie Sarraute, Marguerite Duras, Jean-Luc Godard, and others, mourning is most frequently borne by and through the bodies of women, generating a broader feminist counternarrative to historical forgetting and burgeoning neoliberalism.

Learn more about Remnants of Refusal at the SUNY Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Remnants of Refusal.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight novels that capture the drama & intrigue of filmmaking

Joanna Howard is the author of the novel Porthole (2025) and the memoir Rerun Era (2019). Other works include Foreign Correspondent (2013), On the Winding Stair(2009), and In the Colorless Round, a prose collaboration with artist Rikki Ducornet (2006). She co-wrote Field Glass, a speculative novel, with Joanna Ruocco (2017). Her work has appeared in Conjunctions, The Paris Review, Verse, Bomb, and parts elsewhere. She lives in Denver and Providence and teaches at University of Denver.

At Electric Lit Howard tagged eight novels that "offer some compelling explorations of the drama and intrigue of filmmaking." One title on the list:

The Third Hotel by Laura Van Den Berg

This magnificent story of a woman in search of her dead or presumed dead or walking-dead husband is set to the backdrop of a horror film festival in Cuba and is reminiscent of Brian De Palma at his high point. As the protagonist of The Third Hotel follows a ghost through the streets of Havana in her own kind of horror story, Van Den Berg investigates the horrors behind horror film history, the cultural inheritance of gendered violence in the genre, and the mixed bag of seduction and dread inherent in the form.

Read about another novel on the list.

The Third Hotel is among Jae-Yeon Yoo's eleven top fictional hotels for your fictional vacation and Katie Yee's twenty books that are laced with sinister magic.

--Marshal Zeringue