Pg. 69: Erin McGraw's "Better Food for a Better World"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Better Food for a Better World by Erin McGraw.

About Better Food for a Better World, from the publisher:

Better Food for a Better World by Erin McGraw is a wrenching satire exploring the boundaries of fidelity and commitment, friendship and business. It is the story of the often-disastrous path taken by those striving to do good in the world. Three couples, college friends who reunite in middle age, pool their money, energy, and hipster idealism to start an ice cream store-Natural High Ice Cream: Better Food for a Better World. The store finds a ready clientele in its bucolic, marijuana-tinged northern California town filled with amiable ex-hippies who are happy to contribute to a better world, even if all they have to contribute is an ice cream cone. But the store is financially unsustainable and rifts start to appear between the friends, one of whom, without telling her partners, starts to rev up her old business as a booking agent for a crew of contortionists, jugglers, musicians, and dancers. She's going to save them all-and Natural High too, but this turns out to be harder than it appears, as she discovers she's not the only one with secrets. "Erin McGraw has a consistently winning stance in her wide-ranging stories-she is insightful, funny, deeply humane. I love the way her mind works," said Amy Hempel of McGraw's previous book, The Good Life.

Learn more about the book and author at Erin McGraw's website.

Read--Coffee with a Canine: Erin McGraw & Max and Sister.

The Page 69 Test: Better Food for a Better World.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Dennis Palumbo reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Dennis Palumbo, author of Night Terrors.

His entry begins:

As it happens, I’m reading two completely engrossing books at the moment, neither of which bears any similarity to the other.

The first is a terrific, intriguing and psychologically astute novel by Dan Chaon called Await Your Reply. It’s hard to define exactly, though, having just finished it, I guess I’d call it a literary thriller. More importantly, it’s a beautifully complex meditation on the illusion of personal identity, and how today’s technology can play havoc with that particular concept. Though it’s a publishing cliché, there’s no disputing that in this well-plotted novel, nothing and no one is...[read on]

About Night Terrors, from the publisher:

After twenty years spent inside the heads of the nation’s worst serial killers, retired FBI profiler Lyle Barnes is falling apart mentally. Psychologist and trauma expert Daniel Rinaldi thinks he can help Barnes through his terrible night visions. Barnes, however, is also the target of an unknown assassin whose mounting list of victims paralyzes the city and lands Lyle in protective custody. When Barnes flies the coop, he draws Daniel and the joint FBI-Pittsburgh PD Task Force into a desperate manhunt.

Meanwhile, a secondcase competes for Daniel’s attention. The mother of a youthful confessed killer awaiting trial is convinced that her son is innocent and appeals to Daniel for help. Against his better judgment, he becomes involved, and soon suspects that much about the case is not as it appears.

Daniel is faced with a number of questions. Can he and the law officials find the missing Barnes before the killer does? Will the danger closing in around him begin to affect his personal life, such as his deepening relationship with Detective Eleanor Lowrey? And are these two seemingly unconnected cases somehow linked?

Learn more about the book and author at Dennis Palumbo's website.

My Book, The Movie: Night Terrors.

Writers Read: Dennis Palumbo.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Brent Hendricks's "A Long Day at the End of the World"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: A Long Day at the End of the World by Brent Hendricks.

About the book, from the publisher:

A chilling memoir of the Tri-State Crematory incident

In February 2002, hundreds of abandoned and decayed bodies were discovered at the Tri-State Crematory in rural Georgia, making it the largest mass desecration in modern American history. The perpetrator—a well-respected family man and a former hometown football star—had managed to conceal the horror for five years.

Among the bodies found at the Tri-State Crematory was that of Brent Hendricks’s father. To quell the psychic disturbance surrounding the desecration, Hendricks embarked on a pilgrimage to the crematory site in Georgia. In A Long Day at the End of the World, he reveals his very complicated relationship with the South as he tries to reconcile his love-hate feelings for the culture with his own personal and familial history there, and his fascination with the disturbed landscape. In achingly beautiful prose, Hendricks explores his fraught relationship with his father—not just the grief that surrounded his death but the uncanniness of his resurrection.

It’s a story that’s so heart-wrenching, so unbelievable, and so sensational that it would be easy to tell it without delving deep. But Hendricks’s inquiry is unrelenting, and he probes the extremely difficult questions about the love between a parent and a child, about the way human beings treat each other—in life and in death—and about the sanctity of the body. It’s the perfect storm for a true Southern Gothic tale.

Learn more about the book and author at Brent Hendricks's website.

The Page 99 Test: A Long Day at the End of the World.

--Marshal Zeringue

Coffee with a canine: Marianne Wesson & Mo and Amos

Today's featured trio at Coffee with a Canine: Marianne Wesson & Mo and Amos.

The author, on how the dogs got their names:

Mo was named by my husband Ben; his real name is Monster. Ben had just gotten a Ducati Monster motorcycle and was very infatuated with it. But the dog lasted much longer than the bike, and these days we just call him Mo. Or Mojo, Mo-man, and any other stupid two-syllable name that starts with Mo-. Or Mope, when he is wearing that dejected dog look like he is just so very disappointed.

Amos is named in a tradition of rechristening the Pyrenees after we get them home from the rescue shelter. His name was Aramis, like the Musketeer (and the aftershave). But that was just way too pompous a name for a ranch dog, so we tried to find a better name that would sound enough like Aramis that he’d know we were talking to him. (He’s deaf now, so it probably doesn't matter what we call him. Unless he can lip-read, which is possible.) We had to go through...[read on]

About Wesson's new book, A Death at Crooked Creek: The Case of the Cowboy, the Cigarmaker, and the Love Letter, from the publisher:

One winter night in 1879, at a lonely Kansas campsite near Crooked Creek, a man was shot to death. The dead man’s traveling companion identified him as John Hillmon, a cowboy from Lawrence who had been attempting to carve out a life on the blustery prairie. The case might have been soon forgotten and the apparent widow, Sallie Hillmon, left to mourn—except for the $25,000 life insurance policies Hillmon had taken out shortly before his departure. The insurance companies refused to pay on the policies, claiming that the dead man was not John Hillmon, and Sallie was forced to take them to court in a case that would reach the Supreme Court twice. The companies’ case rested on a crucial piece of evidence: a faded love letter written by a disappeared cigarmaker, declaring his intent to travel westward with a “man named Hillmon.”

In A Death at Crooked Creek, Marianne Wesson re-examines the long-neglected evidence in the case of the Kansas cowboy and his wife, recreating the court scenes that led to a significant Supreme Court ruling on the admissibility of hearsay evidence. Wesson employs modern forensic methods to examine the body of the dead man, attempting to determine his true identity and finally put this fascinating mystery to rest.

This engaging and vividly imagined work combines the drama, intrigue, and emotion of excellent storytelling with cutting-edge forensic investigation techniques and legal theory. Wesson’s superbly imagined A Death at Crooked Creek will have general readers, history buffs, and legal scholars alike wondering whether history, and the Justices, may have misunderstood altogether the events at that bleak winter campsite.

Learn more about the book and author at Marianne Wesson's website.

Read--Coffee with a Canine: Marianne Wesson & Mo and Amos.

--Marshal Zeringue

Allison Amend's "A Nearly Perfect Copy," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: A Nearly Perfect Copy by Allison Amend.

The entry begins:

So I’m sitting in the casting chair, a binder full of Hollywood super stars open on the desk (because such things exist, right? And because authors get to choose who stars in the movie version of their book?). I have turned down Leo (we’re on a first name basis) because, while I like his work, he’s just not right for the role.

A Nearly Perfect Copy is set in the high-intrigue, high-stakes art worlds of Paris and New York. Grieving the loss of her son, art director Elmira “Elm” Howells starts to explore ways in which she might bring him back. Meanwhile, Gabriel Connois is a 40-something Spanish artist living in Paris who can’t seem to catch a break in the art world. They both turn to forging art, with disastrous consequences.

Jeremy Sisto plays Gabriel with just the right amount of frustration, vulnerability, and self-denial. (Full disclosure: Jeremy is a friend and classmate from high school). His girlfriend, Colette, a scheming young Frenchwoman, will be played by Clémence Poésy or...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Allison Amend's website.

My Book, The Movie: A Nearly Perfect Copy.

--Marshal Zeringue

Therese Anne Fowler's 6 favorite books

Therese Anne Fowler's new book is Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald.

One of Fowler's six favorite books, as told to The Week magazine:

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

Wharton's novel of desire and emotional tragedy prefigured the kinds of fraught stories F. Scott Fitzgerald would go on to tell in his novels. When society not only dictates but controls our behaviors, what is really to be gained from following the rules?

Read about another book on the list.

The Age of Innocence also appears on the Barnes & Noble Review's list of five top books on Gilded Age New York, Frances Kiernan's five best list of books that helped her understand the ways of New York society and David Kamp's list of six books that are notable for their food prose, and is among Elaine Sciolino's six favorite books, Mika Brzezinski's 6 best books and Honor Blackman's 6 best books.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Beth Hoffman reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Beth Hoffman, author of Saving CeeCee Honeycutt and Looking for Me.

Her entry begins:

When I love a book I’ll often read it more than once, and right now I’m immersed in my second reading of Truman Capote’s The Grass Harp. Every page offers countless reasons to reflect on the art of superb writing. I say superb because Capote’s genius shines in his ability to observe the ordinary through an extraordinary lens. I believe this sentence pretty much sums it up: “The nearest winter came was to frost the windows with its zero blue breath.”

Up next...[read on]

About the book, from the publisher:

A Southern novel of family and antiques from the bestselling author of the beloved Saving CeeCee Honeycutt

Beth Hoffman’s bestselling debut, Saving CeeCee Honeycutt, won admirers and acclaim with its heartwarming story and cast of unforgettable characters. Now her unique flair for evocative settings and richly drawn Southern personalities shines in her compelling new novel, Looking for Me.

Teddi Overman found her life’s passion for furniture in a broken-down chair left on the side of the road in rural Kentucky. She learns to turn other people’s castoffs into beautifully restored antiques, and eventually finds a way to open her own shop in Charleston. There, Teddi builds a life for herself as unexpected and quirky as the customers who visit her shop. Though Teddi is surrounded by remarkable friends and finds love in the most surprising way, nothing can alleviate the haunting uncertainty she’s felt in the years since her brother Josh’s mysterious disappearance. When signs emerge that Josh might still be alive, Teddi is drawn home to Kentucky. It’s a journey that could help her come to terms with her shattered family—and to find herself at last. But first she must decide what to let go of and what to keep.

Looking for Me brilliantly melds together themes of family, hope, loss, and a mature once-in-a-lifetime kind of love. The result is a tremendously moving story that is destined to make bestselling author Beth Hoffman a novelist to whom readers will return again and again as they have with Adriana Trigiani, Fannie Flagg, and Joshilyn Jackson.

Learn more about the book and author at Beth Hoffman's website and blog.

Writers Read: Beth Hoffman.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Reed Farrel Coleman's "Onion Street"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Onion Street by Reed Farrel Coleman.

About Onion Street, from the publisher:

The eighth Moe Prager mystery.

It’s 1967 and Moe Prager is wandering aimlessly through his college career and his life. All that changes when his girlfriend Mindy is viciously beaten into a coma and left to die on the snow-covered streets of Brooklyn. Suddenly, Moe has purpose. He is determined to find out who’s done this to Mindy and why. But Mindy is not the only person in Moe’s life who’s in danger. Someone is also trying to kill his best and oldest friend, Bobby Friedman.

Things get really strange when Moe enlists the aid of Lids, a half-cracked, genius drug pusher from the old neighborhood. Lids hooks Moe up with his first solid information. Problem is the info seems to take Moe in five directions at once and leads to more questions than answers. How is a bitter old camp survivor connected to the dead man in the apartment above his fixit shop or to the OD-ed junkie found on the boardwalk in Coney Island? What could an underground radical group have to do with the local Mafioso capo? And where do Mindy and Bobby fit into any of this?

Moe will risk everything to find the answers. He will travel from the pot-holed pavement of Brighton Beach to the Pocono Mountains to the runways at Kennedy Airport. But no matter how far he goes or how fast he gets there, all roads lead to Onion Street.

Learn more about the book and author at Reed Farrel Coleman's website.

The Page 69 Test: Redemption Street.

The Page 69 Test: Empty Ever After.

My Book, the Movie: The Moe Prager Mystery Series.

The Page 69 Test: Innocent Monster.

Writers Read: Reed Farrel Coleman (October 2010).

The Page 69 Test: Hurt Machine.

Writers Read: Reed Farrel Coleman.

The Page 69 Test: Onion Street.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Glen Weldon's "Superman: The Unauthorized Biography"

This weekend's feature at the Page 99 Test: Superman: The Unauthorized Biography by Glen Weldon.

About the book, from Publishers Weekly:

Weldon, who reviews comics for NPR, has penned an excellent portrait of the Man of Steel, managing to be fan-crazed and critical at the same time. Starting with a look at Superman’s goody-two-shoes reputation, Weldon dares to ask, “Why has a schmuck like that endured for seventy-five years?” His answer is Superman’s motivation—he “puts the needs of others over those of himself” and he “never gives up.” Weldon wonderfully details the many twists and turns in Superman’s career, beginning with a look at how the comic’s creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster borrowed many traits from other comic figures in the 1930s, from Popeye to The Shadow. Weldon analyzes the shift from going after “petty crooks, crooked politicians, and those who exploited the working class” in the 1930s and 1940s to a trend towards “increasingly kid-oriented” stories after the Comic Code was instituted in the 1950s. Weldon is excellent at showing how, in the 1960s, “when Superman’s writers gave themselves license to dream up anything they could, they invariably dreamed the American dream of the fifties.”

Learn more about the book and author at Glen Weldon's website and follow him on Twitter.

The Page 99 Test: Superman: The Unauthorized Biography.

--Marshal Zeringue

Bill Loehfelm's "The Devil in Her Way," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: The Devil in Her Way by Bill Loehfelm.

The entry begins:

It’s always a fun game to play, who would you cast if... My favorite for Maureen Coughlin, a small cop with a big brain and a bigger ambitions, came as a surprise.

My brother, a movie buff who can conduct entire conversations in quotes from his favorites, insists on Jessica Chastain, a favorite actress of mine as well, especially after The Debt and Zero Dark Thirty. She’s got tenacity and portrays a desperate need to succeed really well. Hard to argue with, and not just because my brother is a lawyer.

Another actress who’s really well suited is Rose...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Bill Loehfelm's website.

Loehfelm is also the author of Fresh Kills, the first winner of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, and the novels The Devil She Knows and Bloodroot. He was born in Brooklyn and grew up on Staten Island; he lives in New Orleans with his wife, the writer AC Lambeth.

The Page 69 Test: Fresh Kills.

My Book, The Movie: The Devil in Her Way.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five of the best books for the Anglomaniac

Raymond Sokolov is the author of The Saucier’s Apprentice, the novel Native Intelligence, and a biography of A. J. Liebling, Wayward Reporter. His new book is Steal the Menu: A Memoir of Forty Years in Food.

For the Wall Street Journal he named five top books for the Anglomaniac, including:

No More Parades
by Ford Madox Ford (1925)

This is the second volume of the best war novel not by Tolstoy. Ford's whole great tetralogy "Parade's End" was recently compressed into a TV miniseries, which did a fine but ultimately inadequate job of re-creating the inner world of the decent, self-lacerating Edwardian Tory intellectual Christopher Tietjens, who is too good to be true but true anyway to his vile, evil, unfaithful, endlessly seductive wife, Sylvia. The marriage withers, as does his civil-service career. Tietjens soldiers on, literally, in the trenches and, figuratively, at country estates and in the upper reaches of British politics. But the real action, thanks to Ford's deft application of the then-hot technique of internal monologue, occurs in Tietjens's stoical mind. The committed reader will acquire the re-edited and (very usefully) annotated edition of 2011.

Read about another book on Sokolov's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Freda Warrington's "Grail of the Summer Stars"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Grail of the Summer Stars by Freda Warrington.

About Grail of the Summer Stars, from the publisher:

The climactic concluding novel in the spellbinding magical contemporary fantasy Aetherial Tales trilogy

A painting, depicting haunting scenes of a ruined palace and a scarlet-haired goddess in front of a fiery city, arrives unheralded in an art gallery with a cryptic note saying, “The world needs to see this.” The painting begins to change the lives of the woman who is the gallery's curator and that of an ancient man of the fey Aetherial folk who has mysteriously risen from the depths of the ocean. Neither human nor fairy knows how they are connected, but when the painting is stolen, both are compelled to discover the meaning behind the painting and the key it holds to their future.

In Grail of the Summer Stars, a haunting, powerful tale of two worlds and those caught between, Freda Warrington weaves an exciting story of suspense, adventure and danger that fulfills the promise of the Aetherial Tales as only she can.

Learn more about the book and author at Freda Warrington's website, blog, and Facebook page.

The Page 69 Test: Elfland.

The Page 69 Test: Midsummer Night.

My Book, The Movie: Midsummer Night.

Writers Read: Freda Warrington.

The Page 69 Test: Grail of the Summer Stars.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Reed Farrel Coleman reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Reed Farrel Coleman, author of Onion Street.

His entry begins:

Lately, I have been on a big Stuart Neville kick. I’ve known Stuart for years, but hadn’t read his work. I read a review of Stuart’s Ratlines and thought it sounded quite interesting. Of course it was and since I liked it so much I’ve gone back and read Ghosts of Belfast and Collusion. I have always been fascinated by the concept and the absurdity of the law and the legal system during...[read on]

About Onion Street, from the publisher:

The eighth Moe Prager mystery.

It’s 1967 and Moe Prager is wandering aimlessly through his college career and his life. All that changes when his girlfriend Mindy is viciously beaten into a coma and left to die on the snow-covered streets of Brooklyn. Suddenly, Moe has purpose. He is determined to find out who’s done this to Mindy and why. But Mindy is not the only person in Moe’s life who’s in danger. Someone is also trying to kill his best and oldest friend, Bobby Friedman.

Things get really strange when Moe enlists the aid of Lids, a half-cracked, genius drug pusher from the old neighborhood. Lids hooks Moe up with his first solid information. Problem is the info seems to take Moe in five directions at once and leads to more questions than answers. How is a bitter old camp survivor connected to the dead man in the apartment above his fixit shop or to the OD-ed junkie found on the boardwalk in Coney Island? What could an underground radical group have to do with the local Mafioso capo? And where do Mindy and Bobby fit into any of this?

Moe will risk everything to find the answers. He will travel from the pot-holed pavement of Brighton Beach to the Pocono Mountains to the runways at Kennedy Airport. But no matter how far he goes or how fast he gets there, all roads lead to Onion Street.

Learn more about the book and author at Reed Farrel Coleman's website.

The Page 69 Test: Redemption Street.

The Page 69 Test: Empty Ever After.

My Book, the Movie: The Moe Prager Mystery Series.

The Page 69 Test: Innocent Monster.

Writers Read: Reed Farrel Coleman (October 2010).

The Page 69 Test: Hurt Machine.

Writers Read: Reed Farrel Coleman.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten books about siblings

Gwyneth Rees is half Welsh and half English and grew up in Scotland. She is a child and adolescent psychiatrist but has now stopped practicing so that she can write full-time. She is the author of many bestselling books, including the Fairies series, the Cosmo series and the Marietta’s Magic Dress Shop series, as well as several books for older readers. Rees’s new books, My Super Sister and My Super Sister and the Birthday Party mark the start of an exciting new series about two sisters, Emma and Saffie, who have superpowers.

For the Guardian, Rees named her ten favorite books about siblings. One title on the list:

Pride and Prejudice by Charlotte Bronte – Jane, Elizabeth, Mary, Kitty and Lydia

Obviously this one differs from the others on my list in that it is not a children's book. However, it is a book I first read as a teenager - and one in which siblings abound. I must have read it two or three times since and I still have the same feelings about the five Bennet sisters - that they represent both the best and the worst aspects of having siblings. Much as I envy the warm, confiding relationship between the two elder sisters, I think I'd rather be an only child than have to grow up alongside any of the other three. Again, the sisters are all very distinct from each other, with the relationship between Elizabeth and Jane being, in my opinion, one of the strongest and most memorable sibling bonds in literature. Also interesting is the contrasting, more formal sibling relationship found between Mr Darcy and his much younger sister Georgiana.

Read about another book on the list.

Pride and Prejudice also appears on the Observer's list of the ten best fictional mothers, Paula Byrne's list of the ten best Jane Austen characters, Robert McCrum's list of the top ten opening lines of novels in the English language, a top ten list of literary lessons in love, Simon Mason's top ten list of fictional families, Cathy Cassidy's top ten list of stories about sisters, Paul Murray's top ten list of wicked clerics, John Mullan's lists of ten of the best housekeepers in fiction, ten great novels with terrible original titles, and ten of the best visits to Brighton in literature, Luke Leitch's top ten list of the most successful literary sequels ever, and is one of the top ten works of literature according to Norman Mailer. Richard Price has never read it, but it is the book Mary Gordon cares most about sharing with her children.

The Page 99 Test: Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Don Herzog"s "Household Politics"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Household Politics: Conflict in Early Modern England by Don Herzog.

About the book, from the publisher:

Early modern English canonical sources and sermons often urge the subordination of women. In Household Politics, Don Herzog argues that these sources were blather—not that they were irrelevant, but that plenty of people rolled their eyes at them. Indeed many held that a man had to be an idiot or a buffoon to try to act on their hoary “wisdom.” Households didn’t bask serenely in naturalized or essentialized patriarchy. Instead, husbands, wives, and servants struggled endlessly over authority. Nor did some insidiously gendered public/private distinction make the political subordination of women invisible. Conflict, Herzog argues, doesn't corrode social order: it's what social order usually consists in. He uses the argument to impeach conservatives and their radical critics for sharing confused alternatives. The social world Herzog brings vibrantly alive is much richer—and much pricklier—than many imagine.

Learn more about Household Politics at the Yale University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Household Politics.

--Marshal Zeringue

Sheri Joseph's "Where You Can Find Me," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: Where You Can Find Me by Sheri Joseph.

The entry begins:

This exercise is a challenge for me since I don’t watch a lot of movies or pay much attention to actors. When I’m working on a book, my characters have vivid reality in my mind, but they almost never correspond to a person I’ve seen in life, or on the screen. This new book was an exception for at least one character, Marlene Vincent, the mother of a kidnapped boy, who at a certain point in the draft became cast as Mary-Louise Parker in my head. Marlene is an artist and bartender turned suburban mom: petite, tattooed, and later in the book, quite pretty. At the opening, though, she’s spent three years searching for a missing child; despite the joy of his return, the experience has rendered her haggard, hollow-eyed, brutally hardened. So the make-up artist might have some work to do at the outset. Most of the story takes place after Marlene and her two children escape to the cloud forest of Costa Rica, where she undergoes a rejuvenation that makes Parker a great fit. She has left behind her husband, Jeff, who struggles to...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Sheri Joseph's blog and Twitter perch.

The Page 69 Test: Where You Can Find Me.

Writers Read: Sheri Joseph.

My Book, The Movie: Where You Can Find Me.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Katherine Keenum's "Where the Light Falls"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Where the Light Falls by Katherine Keenum.

About Where the Light Falls:

As the Belle Epoque dawns, Paris attracts artists from everywhere. One is Jeanette Palmer, daughter of a prominent Ohio family, who has left Vassar College under a cloud of scandal.

Amid the city’s great bohemian neighborhoods and teaching studios, Jeanette befriends other female artists, as well as an American Civil War veteran named Edward Murer. She begins to achieve a level of artistic success. And her happiness increases as she and Edward grow more intimate with each other.

But Edward is plagued by his demons and addicted to laudanum—and as the world opens its arms to Jeanette, and the society around her is transformed by cultural and scientific innovations, she must resolve a conflict utterly new to so many women: the choice between ambition and love.

Learn more about the book and author at Katherine Keenum's website and blog.

Read--Coffee with a Canine: Katherine Keenum and Palmer.

The Page 69 Test: Where the Light Falls.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Freda Warrington reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Freda Warrington, author of Grail of the Summer Stars.

Her entry begins:

For a fantasy writer, I don’t read much fantasy these days. I certainly don’t have the patience for multi-book volumes full of war, slaughter and sexual abuse (unless it’s by Jacqueline Carey!). That said, there’s a mountain of unread books beside my bed that I’m working my way through, according to what floats to the top and takes my fancy. Lately I’ve been reading some crime novels passed on by my thriller-devouring hubby. Then along came this one, recommended by a friend:

Talking About Jane Austen in Baghdad by Bee Rowlatt and May Witwit (Penguin). This is a true story, in the form of a long exchange of emails between Bee, a journalist living in London, and May, an Iraqi university lecturer trying to carry on with her life in Baghdad while dodging bullets and bombs in the aftermath of Saddam Hussein’s downfall. It’s an extraordinary read and extremely hard to put down – being in email form, rather than chapters, you just keep reading one more, and one more… Bee is a mum of three who chats engagingly about the ups and downs of her everyday life, while May, in return, describes the difficulties of teaching English literature to female students who – however bright and eager to learn – struggle to grasp the concept of basic human rights.

That’s if her students turn up at all. That’s if May can even...[read on]

About Grail of the Summer Stars, from the publisher:

The climactic concluding novel in the spellbinding magical contemporary fantasy Aetherial Tales trilogy

A painting, depicting haunting scenes of a ruined palace and a scarlet-haired goddess in front of a fiery city, arrives unheralded in an art gallery with a cryptic note saying, “The world needs to see this.” The painting begins to change the lives of the woman who is the gallery's curator and that of an ancient man of the fey Aetherial folk who has mysteriously risen from the depths of the ocean. Neither human nor fairy knows how they are connected, but when the painting is stolen, both are compelled to discover the meaning behind the painting and the key it holds to their future.

In Grail of the Summer Stars, a haunting, powerful tale of two worlds and those caught between, Freda Warrington weaves an exciting story of suspense, adventure and danger that fulfills the promise of the Aetherial Tales as only she can.

Learn more about the book and author at Freda Warrington's website, blog, and Facebook page.

The Page 69 Test: Elfland.

The Page 69 Test: Midsummer Night.

My Book, The Movie: Midsummer Night.

Writers Read: Freda Warrington.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top 10 books about Haiti

Ben Fountain is the author of a short story collection, Brief Encounters with Che Guevara, and a novel, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk.

At the Guardian, Fountain named his top ten books about Haiti. One title on the list:

Hadriana of All My Dreams by René Depestre

A delirious, brilliant novel by the Haitian-born Depestre, who should be on every shortlist for the Nobel prize in literature. The story of young, precociously horny Patrick's love for the beautiful Hadriana is a blast of high-octane language, headlong storytelling, and weirdly plausible implausibility. Alas, poor Patrick's chance at love is thwarted by Hadriana's untimely death. Or is it? Depestre's narrative unfolds like an MC Escher-designed hall of mirrors.

Read about another book on the list.

Also see: Amy Wilentz's ten best books on Haiti.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Thane Rosenbaum's "Payback: The Case for Revenge"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Payback: The Case for Revenge by Thane Rosenbaum.

About the book, from the publisher:

We call it justice—the assassination of Osama bin Laden, the incarceration of corrupt politicians or financiers like Rod Blagojevich and Bernard Madoff, and the climactic slaying of cinema-screen villains by superheroes. But could we not also call it revenge? We are told that revenge is uncivilized and immoral, an impulse that individuals and societies should actively repress and replace with the order and codes of courtroom justice. What, if anything, distinguishes punishment at the hands of the government from a victim’s individual desire for retribution? Are vengeance and justice really so very different? No, answers legal scholar and novelist Thane Rosenbaum in Payback: The Case for Revenge—revenge is, in fact, indistinguishable from justice.

Revenge, Rosenbaum argues, is not the problem. It is, in fact, a perfectly healthy emotion. Instead, the problem is the inadequacy of lawful outlets through which to express it. He mounts a case for legal systems to punish the guilty commensurate with their crimes as part of a societal moral duty to satisfy the needs of victims to feel avenged. Indeed, the legal system would better serve the public if it gave victims the sense that vengeance was being done on their behalf. Drawing on a wide range of support, from recent studies in behavioral psychology and neuroeconomics, to stories of vengeance and justice denied, to revenge practices from around the world, to the way in which revenge tales have permeated popular culture—including Hamlet, The Godfather, and Braveheart—Rosenbaum demonstrates that vengeance needs to be more openly and honestly discussed and lawfully practiced.

Fiercely argued and highly engaging, Payback is a provocative and eye-opening cultural tour of revenge and its rewards—from Shakespeare to The Sopranos. It liberates revenge from its social stigma and proves that vengeance is indeed ours, a perfectly human and acceptable response to moral injury. Rosenbaum deftly persuades us to reconsider a misunderstood subject and, along the way, reinvigorates the debate on the shape of justice in the modern world.

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

The Page 99 Test: Payback.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ben Greenman's "The Slippage," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: The Slippage by Ben Greenman.

His entry begins:

When I was writing The Slippage, it occurred to me that it could be a movie. When I imagined that happening, though, it wasn't in a movie theater—it was on TV, long after the movie first existed. I was older and I was watching it with people who I think may have been nieces and nephews, maybe even some of my children, but they were older too. Whatever the case, it was definitely the future. Because of that, I...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Ben Greenman's website.

Greenman is an editor at The New Yorker and the author of several other acclaimed books of fiction, including Superbad, Superworse, and A Circle is a Balloon and Compass Both: Stories About Human Love.

The Page 99 Test: A Circle Is a Balloon and Compass Both.

Writers Read: Ben Greenman.

The Page 69 Test: The Slippage.

My Book, The Movie: The Slippage.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Tiffany Hawk's "Love Me Anyway"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Love Me Anyway by Tiffany Hawk.

About the book, from the publisher:

A darkly funny, compulsively readable debut novel about two young flight attendants coming of age at 35,000 feet

When twenty-three-year-old Emily Cavenaugh’s marriage to her abusive high school sweetheart ends, she trades in her dull smalltown life for an all-access pass to see the world as a flight attendant. Hoping for a new start, she moves to San Francisco to bunk with six other new flight attendants. Among them is KC Valentine, a free spirit who encourages Emily to shed her mousy ways and start collecting experiences as exciting as her passport stamps. Emily soon follows KC’s advice a little too well, falling in love with an older, married co-worker named Tien, a father to two young girls. But as Emily and Tien become more deeply entangled, KC grows distraught. Neither her friends nor co-workers know the real reason she became a flight attendant: to find her father who abandoned her as a child. As Emily and KC fly from Vegas to Boston, San Francisco to London, Chicago to Delhi, each searching for love and acceptance, they’re torn between passion and moral conviction, freedom and belonging.

An assured debut from a former flight attendant, Love Me Anyway deftly captures the complexities of love, friendship, and family, the excitement and loneliness that come from living everywhere and nowhere, and the surprising detours life can take when you set out to discover the world.

Learn more about the book and author at Tiffany Hawk's website.

My Book, The Movie: Love Me Anyway.

The Page 69 Test: Love Me Anyway.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Bridget Siegel reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Bridget Siegel, author of Domestic Affairs: A Campaign Novel.

One book Siegel mentioned:

Fly Away Home -- Jennifer Weiner. She's my hero of character writing. The people her stories come off the page and into your head so easily and with such vivacity. This book is no exception....[read on]

About Domestic Affairs, from the publisher:

A provocative campaign novel—Primary Colors meets The Devil Wears Prada—of a talented and beautiful young politico who falls in love and in bed with the wrong man—the leading presidential candidate.

When twentysomething political fundraiser Olivia Green gets tapped to work on the presidential campaign of Georgia governor, Landon Taylor, it’s her dream job. Her best friend in the world is the campaign manager, and Taylor is a decent, charismatic, and idealist, and he has a real chance to be a great leader. Sacrificing her sleep, comfort, friends, family and income for a year to make the world a better place is the right call, but what happens when both Campaign Lesson #1, No Kissing the Boss, and Lesson #2, Loyalty Above All, go down in flames before the first primary?

Bridget Siegel, veteran of the John Edwards and Obama campaigns, vividly captures the idealism and chaos, as well as the emotional heat and corruption of the candidate’s bubble. What becomes of Olivia’s best friends when she must keep from them the biggest secret of her life? Is the candidate a true romantic or a political hypocrite? How far can she go to justify her happiness?

Told with savvy, humor, and delicious inside-the-Beltway detail, Domestic Affairs is a page-turning tale of love on the campaign trail—and its consequences—from a consummate Beltway insider.

Learn more about the book and author at Bridget Siegel's website, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.

My Book, The Movie: Domestic Affairs.

The Page 69 Test: Domestic Affairs.

Writers Read: Bridget Siegel.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top books on film directors

The night director William Friedkin won his Academy Award for directing The French Connection (1971), he was riding with his manager when their Rolls-Royce broke down several miles from the ceremony. They had to hitch a ride from a driver at a gas station in order to arrive in time.

Friedkin's memoir, The Friedkin Connection, has just been published.

One of his five best books on film directors, as told to the Wall Street Journal:

Hitchcock
by François Truffaut (1967)

The reader is a fly on the wall in these absorbing dialogues between two great filmmakers. Hitchcock was the master not only of suspense but of all aspects of filmmaking. Like Kazan, he is remarkably self-critical, describing his own anxieties and fears as they affected the subtext of his films. From his Jesuit education, he had developed a "fear of being involved in anything evil," as well as a physical fear of being punished by the loss of his freedom at the hands of the police. He explains his methods in detail and also reveals the origin of "the MacGuffin," his term for a plot device that leads the audience down the wrong path until he's ready to uncover his true intentions. Hitchcock and Truffaut exchange anecdotes with clarity and simplicity, qualities they both valued most as filmmakers.

Read about another book on Friedkin's list.

Also see Stefan Kanfer's five best books on remarkable Hollywood lives and Richard Schickel's five best show-biz biographies.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Dale R. Herspring's "Civil-Military Relations and Shared Responsibility"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Civil-Military Relations and Shared Responsibility: A Four-Nation Study by Dale R. Herspring.

About the book, from the publisher:

Dale R. Herspring considers the factors that allow some civilian and military organizations to operate more productively in a political context than others, bringing into comparative study for the first time the military organizations of the U.S., Russia, Germany, and Canada. Refuting the work of scholars such as Samuel P. Huntington and Michael C. Desch, Civil-Military Relations and Shared Responsibility approaches civil-military relations from a new angle, military culture, arguing that the optimal form of civil-military relations is one of shared responsibility between the two groups.

Herspring outlines eight factors that contribute to conditions that promote and support shared responsibility among civilian officials and the military, including such prerequisites as civilian leaders not interfering in the military's promotion process and civilian respect for military symbols and traditions. He uses these indicators in his comparative treatment of the U.S., Russian, German, and Canadian militaries.

Civilian authorities are always in charge and the decision on how to treat the military is a civilian decision. However, Herspring argues, failure by civilians to respect military culture will antagonize senior military officials, who will feel less free to express their views, thus depriving senior civilian officials, most of whom have no military experience, of the expert advice of those most capable of assessing the far-reaching forms of violence. This issue of civilian respect for military culture and operations plays out in Herspring's country case studies.

Scholars of civil-military relations will find much to debate in Herspring's framework, while students of civil-military and defense policy will appreciate Herspring's brief historical tour of each countries' post–World War II political and policy landscapes.

Learn more about Civil-Military Relations and Shared Responsibility at the Johns Hopkins University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Civil-Military Relations and Shared Responsibility.

--Marshal Zeringue

Coffee with a canine: Darden North & Valerie and Foxy

The current featured trio at Coffee with a Canine: Darden North & Valerie and Foxy.

The author, on how he and his dogs were united and how the dogs got their names:

Valerie was originally a Valentine’s Day gift to my daughter when she was in the eleventh grade. Valerie seemed to go well with Valentine, so Valerie Valentine North it was. I doubt if there are many other Chihuahuas named Valerie. Because she was so difficult to housetrain as a puppy, my wife and I became Valerie’s keeper. We’re still working on that seven years later and finally rolled-up the hall rug and put it away. When the same daughter was in college, she secretly bought Foxy from a kennel in Tennessee and gave her a name that I cannot remember. But...[read on]

About Darden North's new novel, Wiggle Room:

Brad Cummins is an Air Force surgeon who returns from overseas deployment after serving four months at the height of the Iraq War, during which he fails to save an injured soldier but mends the GI’s attacker. He endures rigid criticism from his peers, yet survives the medical tribunal’s investigation. Back in Jackson, Mississippi, still blaming himself for returning the insurgent to the killing fields, Cummins discovers his look-alike brother shot to death and is certain that he was the intended target. Both the police and Brad’s fiancée discount his fears as paranoia, forcing Brad to consult a psychiatrist. Then his fiancée is found murdered in his apartment. Now there is no doubt in his mind that he is marked for murder. But who will believe him?

Learn more about the book and author at Darden North's website and blog.

Read--Coffee with a Canine: Darden North & Valerie and Foxy.

--Marshal Zeringue

Caroline Leavitt's "Is This Tomorrow," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: Is This Tomorrow by Caroline Leavitt.

The entry begins:

Ah, my book, the movie. As someone who has had numerous film options that all fell apart (for three days Madonna was considering my novel Into Thin Air as her directorial debut, and then she decided to go on tour instead! For one day at Sundance, Vera Farmiga was considering Pictures of You before she was offered an HBO series!) this question has special meaning for me. I actually wrote the script for my latest novel, Is This Tomorrow, and it made the finals at Sundance last year. (Close, but not close enough, sigh.)

But I haven’t given up! I want James...[read on]

View the trailer for Is This Tomorrow, and learn more about the book and author at Caroline Leavitt's website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: Pictures of You.

My Book, the Movie: Pictures of You.

Writers Read: Caroline Leavitt (January 2011).

Writers Read: Caroline Leavitt.

The Page 69 Test: Is This Tomorrow.

My Book, The Movie: Is This Tomorrow.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Bridget Siegel's "Domestic Affairs"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Domestic Affairs: A Campaign Novel by Bridget Siegel.

About the book, from the publisher:

A provocative campaign novel—Primary Colors meets The Devil Wears Prada—of a talented and beautiful young politico who falls in love and in bed with the wrong man—the leading presidential candidate.

When twentysomething political fundraiser Olivia Green gets tapped to work on the presidential campaign of Georgia governor, Landon Taylor, it’s her dream job. Her best friend in the world is the campaign manager, and Taylor is a decent, charismatic, and idealist, and he has a real chance to be a great leader. Sacrificing her sleep, comfort, friends, family and income for a year to make the world a better place is the right call, but what happens when both Campaign Lesson #1, No Kissing the Boss, and Lesson #2, Loyalty Above All, go down in flames before the first primary?

Bridget Siegel, veteran of the John Edwards and Obama campaigns, vividly captures the idealism and chaos, as well as the emotional heat and corruption of the candidate’s bubble. What becomes of Olivia’s best friends when she must keep from them the biggest secret of her life? Is the candidate a true romantic or a political hypocrite? How far can she go to justify her happiness?

Told with savvy, humor, and delicious inside-the-Beltway detail, Domestic Affairs is a page-turning tale of love on the campaign trail—and its consequences—from a consummate Beltway insider.

Learn more about the book and author at Bridget Siegel's website, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.

My Book, The Movie: Domestic Affairs.

The Page 69 Test: Domestic Affairs.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Samuel Sattin reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Samuel Sattin, author of League of Somebodies.

His entry begins:

I’ve been reading an odd combination of highbrow and lowbrow lately. One of my favorite literary works in recent months has been Etgar Keret’s Suddenly, a Knock on the Door. It’s one of those works that barely needs any page space at all to conjure up elaborate, meaty tales that leave you both devastatingly nostalgic and intellectually fulfilled. I’ve never read anything quite like it, and I think Keret is probably one of those global geniuses whose brain was simply assembled from earth’s finest materials by pure happy accident.

On the less upmarket end, however, I’ve been consuming a mix of non-fiction, graphic novels, and...[read on]

About League of Somebodies:

Lenard Sikophsky’s father has been feeding him plutonium since the age of six in the hopes of making him the world’s first bona fide superhero. First, he must pass the unusual tests of manhood locked in the centuries old tomb, The Manaton, a secret relic passed down for generations. Falling in love with the beautiful, compulsively suicidal Laura Rabinowitz doesn’t make his life any easier. But with the guidance of the Sikophsky men, the antiquated rulebook, and of course a healthy amount of plutonium, Lenard learns to accept his fate as an exactor of justice....

Twenty years later, Lenard’s son Nemo is introduced to the same destiny as his father, only this time the violent entity called THEY are in dangerous pursuit. Lenard’s life and the legacy of his family are put to the test when he is forced to defend everything he loves.

Learn more about the book and author at Samuel Sattin's website.

Writers Read: Samuel Sattin.

--Marshal Zeringue

The best John le Carré novels

Ted Scheinman is a doctoral candidate and freelance writer based in Chapel Hill.

He has read all 23 of John le Carré’s novels...and ranked them for Slate. Number 2 and #3 in Scheinman's reckoning:

The Honourable Schoolboy beats out Tinker, Tailor at No. 2 for the simple reason that it contains le Carré’s finest prose. The first chapter, in which the novelist sketches the Hong Kong press corps in the vivid curlicues of classic English burlesque, could practically be Dickens.

Read about the best of le Carré’s novels.

The Honourable Schoolboy appears among Joss Ackland's six favorite books and Jeffrey Archer's top ten romans-fleuves.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is on John Mullan's list of ten of the best pairs of glasses in literature and among Jon Stock's top ten John le Carré novels, Jeffrey Archer's top ten romans-fleuves, Robert Baer's five best books on being a spy and Stella Rimington's six favorite secret agent novels; Peter Millar includes it among John le Carré's best books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Gary Steiner's "Animals and the Limits of Postmodernism"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Animals and the Limits of Postmodernism by Gary Steiner.

About the book, from the publisher:

While postmodern approaches to politics and ethics have offered some intriguing and influential insights in philosophy and theory, Gary Steiner illuminates the fundamental inability of these approaches to arrive at viable ethical and political principles. Ethics require notions of self, agency, and value that are not available to postmodernists. Therefore much of what is published under the rubric of theory lacks a proper basis for a systematic engagement with ethics.

Steiner provocatively critiques postmodernist approaches to the moral status of animals against the background of a broader indictment of postmodern thought and its inability to establish clear principles for action. He revisits the work of Derrida, Foucault, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, together with recent work by their American interpreters, and shows that the basic terms of postmodern thought are incompatible with any definitive claims about the moral status or rights of animals -- and humans. Steiner acknowledges the failures of liberal humanist thought regarding the moral status of animals; but instead of following postmodern thinkers who reject humanist thought outright, he argues for the need to rethink humanist notions in a way that avoids the anthropocentric limitations of traditional humanist thought. Drawing on the achievements of the Stoics and Kant, Steiner builds on his earlier work, developing his ideas of cosmic holism and non-anthropocentric cosmopolitanism in order to arrive at a more concrete foundation for animal rights.

Learn more about Animals and the Limits of Postmodernism at the Columbia University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Animals and the Limits of Postmodernism.

--Marshal Zeringue

Tiffany Hawk's "Love Me Anyway," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: Love Me Anyway by Tiffany Hawk.

The entry begins:

I had so much fun with this. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that my writer friends and I sometimes fantasize about seeing our books on the big screen, as wildly unrealistic as that is. It’s funny, though, to reimagine these characters for what turns out to be the second time. Very early on, my book was inspired by real people, but as their characters took on a life of their own, they began to form their own distinctive appearances in my mind, not quite like their inspirations, and not like actors either.

I would love to see Kirsten Dunst as Emily, the shy 23 year-old who finds both her awakening and her undoing up there in the sky. Dunst was brilliant as a flight attendant in the movie Elizabethtown. She absolutely embodied the complexity of the airline life – she had this innocence and openness, and yet you could tell she’d seen everything.

KC is young, beautiful, and blonde, but she’s also carrying a lot of baggage. As a flight attendant, she has the whole world in front of her, but all she really wants is to bring her mom back to health and her estranged father back into their lives. I think Adrienne...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Tiffany Hawk's website.

My Book, The Movie: Love Me Anyway.

--Marshal Zeringue