What is Karen Odden reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Karen Odden, author of An Artful Dodge.

Her entry begins:

I read a lot for nonfiction to research for my own novels, but as I was putting together this list of “other books,” I realized I’m the reader equivalent of a lemming, easily led! These are some of my favorites over the past few months.

Elena Ferrante, My Brilliant Friend (trans. from the Italian)

My friend Filiz recommended this book so highly that I bought it. For a year I took it down off my shelf, read the first twenty or thirty pages, and put it back, several times. I just couldn’t get into it—and then recently, I pulled it down to give it one more try and read it in two days. Some books are like that. This novel, the first of four in the Neopolitan Novels, begins with Elena receiving a phone call that sets her to committing to paper all her memories of her childhood friend Lila, beginning with their childhoods in rough-and-tumble 1950s Naples, Italy. In her own mind, Elena is the more “ordinary” of the two, studious and rather plain; her friend Lila is beautiful, fierce, and fearless. By the end, it becomes clear that Lila views Elena differently. The narrative style is unusual—although purportedly written by an adult recalling her childhood, much of it reads almost like a teenage girl’s journal, almost as if she has slipped back into her teenage self, complete with changeful emotions, dramatic utterances, actions driven by whim, and shifting allegiances. But once I let myself sink in, I was absorbed in the world, with the feeling of shifting ground under my feet and violence always...[read on]

About An Artful Dodge, from the publisher:

Victorian London comes to vivid life in this riveting heist novel about an all-female thieving gang and one young woman’s heroic plan to escape a life of crime, from the USA Today bestselling author of Down a Dark River.

She’s stolen gems, purses, and hearts—but can she steal her life back from the ring of thieves that’s claimed it?

London, 1879: Twenty-year-old Kit Jimeson has fingers so nimble she can nick a necklace off a lady in a crowded theater without raising alarm. Kit and her dodge partner, Mary, are the highest earners in the notorious all-women thieving ring in South London’s Elephant and Castle district.

Kit, whose mother had been a thief before her, dreams of a different life, one where she’s not constantly on the lookout for constables and plainclothes detectives, and where a mistake or pure bad luck won’t land her in the hangman’s noose. She has been saving her earnings so her younger sister, a maid for a wealthy Mayfair family, might have a shot at respectability.

Kit is very close to leaving the life entirely when the legendary former thief Maggie O’Connell brings her plans to a halt. Beautiful, charismatic Maggie has returned to reclaim leadership of the ring after twenty years in a brutal Australian penal colony. But Maggie desires more than mere wealth or power: She longs for revenge against those who sent her away. Kit, with her quick mind and dangerously clever hands, is Maggie’s best weapon. If Kit wants to walk away with her life, she must carry out a heist that will demand every skill she possesses.

Visit Karen Odden's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Karen Odden and Rosy.

The Page 69 Test: A Lady in the Smoke.

My Book, The Movie: A Lady in the Smoke.

My Book, The Movie: A Dangerous Duet.

The Page 69 Test: A Dangerous Duet.

Writers Read: Karen Odden (January 2020).

Q&A with Karen Odden.

My Book, The Movie: Down a Dark River.

The Page 69 Test: Down a Dark River.

My Book, The Movie: Under a Veiled Moon.

The Page 69 Test: Under a Veiled Moon.

Writers Read: Karen Odden (October 2022).

Writers Read: Karen Odden.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top mysteries featuring miniatures, effigies, and tiny scenes

Diane Josefowicz is the author of Guardians & Saints: Stories, L’Air du Temps (1985), and Ready, Set, Oh: A Novel. She is also the author, with Jed Z. Buchwald, of two histories of Egyptology: The Zodiac of Paris and The Riddle of the Rosetta. She serves as managing editor of the Victorian Web, the internet’s oldest and largest website devoted to Victoriana. A graduate of Brown University, she holds a PhD in History of Science from MIT and an MFA in fiction from Columbia University. She lives in Providence, Rhode Island.

Josefowicz's new novel is The Great Houses of Pill Hill.

[Q&A with Diane Josefowicz]

At CrimeReads the author tagged six favorite mysteries featuring miniatures, effigies, and tiny scenes. One title on the list:

Jessie Burton, The Miniaturist

Set in seventeenth-century Amsterdam, this novel focuses on eighteen-year-old Nella Oortman, manipulated into marriage to a neglectful (and perhaps worse) wealthy merchant who brings her to the sumptuous yet conflict-riven home he shares with his gloomy sister. After he gives Nella a miniature version of their house as a wedding present, only the miniaturist whom Nella engages to help her furnish the house really understands what’s going on inside the household—but it’s not clear whose side he’s on.

In lucid strokes, Burton evokes the opulent world of the painter Johannes Vermeer, whose intimate and detailed interior scenes opened a window onto seventeenth-century Amsterdam and its powerful merchants. A treat for art lovers who adore the luminous paintings of the Dutch Masters, it’s also a meditation on feeling like an outsider while also being part of a family.

Read about another mystery on the list.

The Miniaturist is among Simon Garfield's eight top reads about miniature worlds.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Sean Keilen's "Shakespeare's Scholars"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Shakespeare's Scholars: Three Lessons from the Liberal Arts by Sean Keilen.

About the book, from the publisher:

What Love’s Labor’s Lost, Hamlet, and The Tempest can teach us about discovery, growth, and change

Shakespeare was a keen and discerning reader who was mocked by writers who, unlike him, had been to university—so it’s not surprising that his portrait of scholarly life is critical. As Sean Keilen shows in this engaging book, Shakespeare’s scholars lack humility, shun wisdom, underestimate people who are not scholars, and, by keeping aloof from society, fail to see themselves clearly. In examining Shakespeare’s scholars, Keilen finds parallels in the modern academy.

Keilen examines three plays with scholars as protagonists, tracing these characters’ arduous paths to self-knowledge and meaningful connection with others. In Love’s Labor’s Lost, four noblemen, seeking fame for knowledge and virtue, establish an academy—but the real purpose of their studies is to exclude women, scorn men of inferior standing, and treat each other with hostility. In Hamlet, the prodigiously intelligent Prince of Denmark retreats to the solitude of his own thoughts, with unfortunate results. And in The Tempest, Prospero abandons his duty to others for the rapture of secret studies, a choice that leads him to seek the false consolation of self-protective bitterness. In each play, Keilen finds important lessons about humility, wisdom, and self-knowledge. Inspired by these, he argues for a new approach to teaching literature—one that views literary education not as an esoteric discipline but as the renewal of an intellectual heritage all readers hold in common.

Learn more about Shakespeare's Scholars at the Princeton University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Shakespeare's Scholars.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: J.P. Lacrampe's "Valet"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Valet: A Novel by J.P. Lacrampe.

About the book, from the publisher:

For fans of Kevin Wilson and Andrew Sean Greer, a helper robot and his 35—year—old ward embark on a mad—cap adventure to save the fate of the family company in this whimsically speculative ode to Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster.

Cy wants nothing more than to be useful, raise his utility score, and receive the next update for his operating system. But that’s easier said than done when he's tasked with helping his owner’s 35—year—old son “get out of his funk.” Grayson is nothing like his go—getter, CEO sister Charlotte. He didn’t inherit the family robotics company when their dad passed last year, he doesn’t have a master’s degree, and he just can’t seem to figure out the San Francisco dating scene. He’d rather eat synthesized mozzarella sticks and make pottery at his studio, Kilning Time.

When Grayson learns of Charlotte’s plan to sell the company to a tech conglomerate, he panics. It’s not just the family business at stake, it’s all the technology—like Cy—their dad invented over the years. So he does what anyone would do: he steals the flash drive with his father’s most important work stored on it and plans a corporate takeover. If only he knew what that meant.

To make matters worse, a fellow VALET deserts his owner and asks Cy to help him hightail it out of town, Grayson’s first real date—and her dog—keeping showing up at inopportune times, and the behemoth tech company wants this deal closed yesterday. Grayson, Cy, and their trusty golden retriever, Sasha III, must go on the lam until they figure out exactly what to do, and whom to trust.

A hilarious, mad—cap adventure that is as tender as it is insightful, Valet asks not just what it means to be human, but what it means to be family.

Visit J.P. Lacrampe's website.

The Page 69 Test: Valet.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six can’t-miss thrillers for "Black Mirror" fans

At Book Riot Addison Rizer tagged six top thrillers for fans of Black Mirror, including:

The Last One by Alexandra Oliva

Twelve people sign up for a mysterious wilderness-based reality TV show that promises to push them to their physical limits and test their survival skills. A few weeks into filming, though, one of the contestants, Zoo, stumbles across evidence of a global disaster. She assumes the corpses and destruction are all just part of the game. But as she comes face to face with more worrying details, her confidence in the crew that’s allegedly nearby to keep her safe dwindles until she can’t tell what’s real and what’s fake.

Read about another novel on the list.

The Last One is among Heather Gudenkauf's five mysteries & thrillers with a reality TV twist, Molly Odintz's seven crime novels that engage with reality TV and Heather Chavez's seven novels where fun & games threaten to turn fatal.

The Page 69 Test: The Last One.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Katie Holt

From my Q&A with Katie Holt, author of The Last Page: A Novel:

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

In the past, I’ve had trouble naming my novels, but this one was extremely easy. From the minute I got the idea, I knew that The Last Page would be named after the store. The store is as much of a character as anyone else. The store is pivotal in the romance—Ella and Henry would’ve never even met without the store. They need to band together to save the bookstore, but along the way they fall in love.

Originally, though, I had named the bookstore in the novel The Next Page, but my brilliant editor had the idea to name it after Taylor Swift’s song New Year’s Day. She sings, “Don’t read the last page, I’ll stay when it’s hard or it’s wrong or we’re making mistakes.” I love this song and do think it summarizes the thesis of the book well. It’s not easy at all to save an indie bookstore, but both of them do their best and...[read on]

Visit Katie Holt's website.

Writers Read: Katie Holt.

Q&A with Katie Holt.

--Marshal Zeringue

John Katzenbach's "The Architect," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Architect by John Katzenbach.

The entry begins:

This is intriguing for me. I have had four of my novels filmed, so I’m well versed with the movie-making process, which frequently contains more twists, turns, ups, downs and off-the-wall moments/disasters than a Stephen King tome. There are many cooks – writers, producers, executives, directors, actors, designers, cameramen -- making the stew of a film, which, as any lonely author knows, is not necessarily a good recipe. Too many opinions often result in the folks making the film forgetting why they wanted to adapt the story in the first place.

But – all that acknowledged – let’s really indulge when it comes to The Architect.

The plot is this: A young woman graduating at the very top of her architecture school class at a moment of great personal turmoil (possibly suicidal and disappeared mother, stalking ex-boyfriend) is given a potentially life-altering job by a mysterious anonymous wealthy man, who wants her to design a memorial for six people he claims influenced him greatly. As my main character, Sloane Connolly investigates, she discovers that none of these six were admirable. Each represented some evil – whether it was betrayal or bullying and other misdeeds. As she travels into the discovery of who her benefactor is and who these people are – she is thrust into mysteries of her own past. The plot spans many years. The past influences the present.

Not the easiest adaptation.

The good: Plenty of action. Guns. Confrontations. Violence. And... Great locations. (Harvard Square. The 9/11 Museum in lower Manhattan. San Diego. Miami. Rural Maine. Isolated Martha’s Vineyard...)

The bad: The novel’s plot is often advanced by internal observation and interpretation – the hardest elements to capture in a film.

Who could write this screenplay?

I think we should resurrect two famous guys, both sadly gone now: William Goldman or Robert Towne. Both were incredibly skilled at evoking subtleties of personality in their scripts. Classics and classy. Dialogue that soars.

Let’s hire to direct...

The young James Cameron. When he made Aliens. Action and emotions in equal parts up on the screen. He knows how to make characters psychologically sophisticated and eminently memorable even while they are chambering a round in an automatic weapon.

And let’s give him a good cast...

Four main roles:

The lead – the young architect.

Easy...[read on]

Visit John Katzenbach's website.

My Book, The Movie: Red 1-2-3.

Writers Read: John Katzenbach (January 2014).

The Page 69 Test: Red 1-2-3.

Writers Read: John Katzenbach.

Q&A with John Katzenbach.

The Page 69 Test: The Architect.

My Book, The Movie: The Architect.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six books about the American Dream & social striving

Heather Eng is a third-generation Chinese American who grew up in Queens, New York. A lifelong writer, she graduated from Boston University with a journalism degree, and worked as a newspaper journalist, web editor, and senior marketing leader in the tech industry.

Eng lives in Manhattan with her husband and daughter.

Double Happiness is her first novel.

At Lit Hub the author tagged six titles about the American Dream and social striving, including:

Shilpi Somaya Gowda, A Great Country

The Shah family has just moved from Irvine to Pacific Hills, a cliffside Southern California neighborhood with sprawling homes and ocean views. For Ashok, the patriarch, the move signals that he’s finally achieved the American Dream. His other family members are more conflicted, though. Ashok’s wife, Priya, and eldest daughter, Deepa, miss the diverse, mostly immigrant, old neighborhood they left behind. Middle daughter Maya is more open to her family’s change in fortune. But when twelve-year-old Ajay, the Shah’s youngest child, is arrested, the family must face whether their newfound social status will protect them—or whether they’re just another brown family in the eyes of the U.S. justice system. I was awed at how skillfully Gowda tackled race, class, and social striving in this deeply empathetic, page-turning novel. I recommend A Great Country to everyone I know—and everyone who’s read it loves it.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Ainsley LeSure's "Locating Racism in the World"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Locating Racism in the World by Ainsley LeSure.

About the book, from the publisher:

In Locating Racism in the World, Ainsley LeSure develops a worldly theory of antiblack racism rooted in the analytic promise of phenomenology, a philosophical examination of lived experience, to help explain why and how American democracy is confronting its greatest existential threat since the Civil War on the eve of its 250th anniversary. She argues that racism is best understood as a reality-violating common sense generated and perfected through racist practices that produce a white, antiblack world. This worldly theory of antiblack racism is developed over the course of four chapters that explore how five central texts in political theory and black studies - Kwame Ture and Charles V. Hamilton's Black Power: The Politics of Liberation (1967), Frantz Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks (1952), Hannah Arendt's infamous essay, “Reflections on Little Rock” (1957/1959), Saidiya Hartman's Scenes of Subjection and Hortense Spiller's “Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: An American Grammar Book” - theorize the dilemma of antiblack racism. This worldly understanding avoids the key pitfall of post-Civil Rights theories of racism: the assumption that one needs to account for the emotional and mental states of individuals to validate beyond dispute that certain racial practices and their outcomes are instances of racism. And it also avoids Black studies' recent pessimism by clarifying that the aim of a democratic politics strong enough to combat racial common sense is to make the world appear, that is normatively bound citizens to substantiality of reality, by bolstering plurality and making equality an inspiring source of action in our everyday lives.

Visit Ainsley LeSure's website.

The Page 99 Test: Locating Racism in the World.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: James L. Cambias's "The Ishtar Deception"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Ishtar Deception by James L. Cambias.

About the novel, from the publisher:

A SPY, A MURDER, AND ONE SARCASTIC AI; MYSTERY, ACTION, AND ADVENTURE FROM THE BILLION WORLDS!

The Billion Worlds’ Greatest Spy Faces His Greatest Challenge

At the end of the Tenth Millennium, Sabbath Okada, agent of a nameless branch of Deimos’ labyrinthine government comes to the vast city of Ishtar on Venus to investigate the suspicious death of an undercover agent. His companion, Daslakh, is an old and cunning AI with its own self-imposed mission: to act as Okada’s conscience.

Searching for the truth takes Sabbath and Daslakh to the glittering towers of Ishtar’s elite, a brutal combat sport arena, and the unforgiving, wind-lashed face the highest peak on Venus. Along the way they face ruthless Lunar Republic spies, double agents, and sadistic Ishtar police, but Sabbath’s greatest challenge comes from Meili Tewa, his deadliest enemy—and his only love.

Each twist in the case reveals a new layer of deception, another betrayal. Hunted and on the run, with no one he can trust and no help from home—it’s time for Sabbath Okada to remind everyone why he’s the greatest spy in the Billion Worlds of the Solar System.

Visit James L. Cambias's website.

My Book, The Movie: A Darkling Sea.

Writers Read: James L. Cambias (January 2019).

My Book, The Movie: Arkad's World.

The Page 69 Test: Arkad's World.

My Book, The Movie: The Godel Operation.

Q&A with James L. Cambias.

The Page 69 Test: The Godel Operation.

The Page 69 Test: The Miranda Conspiracy.

My Book, The Movie: The Miranda Conspiracy.

Writers Read: James L. Cambias (February 2025).

The Page 69 Test: The Ishtar Deception.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven books in which obsession is the plot

Emily Haworth-Booth teaches at the Royal Drawing School and is an illustrator, graphic novelist, and the author of three children's books: The King Who Banned the Dark (short-listed for the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize, the Carnegie Medal for Illustration, and the Klaus Flugge Prize), The Last Tree, and Protest.

Mare is her debut adult novel. She lives in Devon with her husband, dog, and several horses.

At Electric Lit Haworth-Booth tagged seven books, written by women, in which obsession is the plot. One title on the list:

I’m a Fan by Sheena Patel

I’m a Fan plays with all the conventions of obsession, both traditional (stalking, creepy letters) and contemporary (endlessly refreshing instagram stories). “The woman I am obsessed with” is what the narrator names the woman that “the man I want to be with” has left her for. Yes, the narrator of I’m a Fan is obsessed with the man with whom she is having an ill-advised affair. But it is this foundational obsession that carries the more interesting one: the painfully perfect object of his obsession: a pretentious Californian influencer whose fans fawn over her online. “She would be complimented for farting,” thinks the narrator, “someone would write, ‘I usually hate farts but when you do them, my god, so floral and unusual!’” Over the course of the book, in short vignettes that criss-cross time and space, the narrator sharpens her scalpel and gradually dismantles the woman she is obsessed with.

Read about another title on the list.

I’m a Fan is among Alana B. Lytle's eight novels about destructive women and Christine Ma-Kellams's seven titles about unconventional situationships.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Jason G. Green's "Too Precious to Lose"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Too Precious to Lose: A Memoir of Family, Community, and Possibility by Jason G. Green.

About the book, from the publisher:

A moving and inspiring memoir from a former Obama White House staffer, about his rural Maryland family’s untold history, the merger of three churches—one Black, two white—and how a radical embrace of community became their salvation, and his.

Jason G. Green was raised on fellowship—literally. Fellowship Lane served as a spiritual metaphor throughout his coming of age. A precocious preacher’s kid, Green felt a call to the ministry but ultimately devoted himself to public service. After working on Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, the young attorney spent four and a half years serving in the White House as special assistant to President Obama.

However, Green’s government career was cut short by a devastating call. It seemed his beloved ninety-five-year-old grandmother was on her deathbed. At her side, he listened in disbelief while she detailed her life story dating back to her 1918 birth in Quince Orchard, a town that once stood where they now sat, erased by the vestiges of time. How could he have never known the legacy of this robust community that he’d descended from? How could its entire existence have vanished from history but for the memory of a few elders? Green’s historical research uncovered a surprising trove of tales about his newly freed ancestors who built an African American house of worship, and whose progeny, on the eve of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination, made the brave decision to create an integrated church. Quince Orchard’s lost story is part of what Green calls the texture in the American fabric: the moral leadership of the Black church, the longstanding resilience of the Black community, and the transformative love of the Black family.

Fueled by a new understanding of his own roots, Green traces his paternal family through a century of life in a single place. Seeking answers to deeply personal, contemporary questions about belonging, he finds that and more truths from the compassionate, communal-led lives of his forebearers.

Visit Jason G. Green's website.

The Page 99 Test: Too Precious to Lose.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Katie Holt reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Katie Holt, author of The Last Page: A Novel.

Her entry begins:

I’ve just finished two books that had me hooked. I read a physical copy of If Not for My Baby by Kate Golden. It’s been on my list for a while, and it’s awakened something in me. I’m obsessed with Hozier because of it and developing a bit of a parasocial relationship…The romance is so tender, tense, and hits all the right emotional beats. I read it in...[read on]

About The Last Page, from the publisher:

A bookseller with a dream of running her beloved bookstore vs. the owner’s out-of-touch grandson who inherits everything. Game on.

From the author of Not in My Book comes another irresistible, bookish contemporary romance.

Ella has grown up at The Last Page, a charming local bookstore in New York City where she now works. Her first kiss was in the women’s health section. A boyfriend dumped her in comedy. The owner is like a second father to her and has begun training her to take over the store. So when he unexpectedly dies and his estranged grandson is left everything in the will, Ella is devastated.

Henry doesn’t know the first thing about running a bookstore. With his aging mom back in Tennessee, he plans to stay in New York just long enough to ensure things are running smoothly and then head back home. What he never could have counted on was the beautiful, funny bookseller who loves The Last Page more than any place in the world—and who sees him as the villain who’s come to ruin her life.

But when it becomes evident that the store is in deep financial trouble and Henry and Ella are both at risk of losing everything, they have no choice but to put their differences aside and team up—despite the inconvenient chemistry blossoming between them.

Fans of Christina Lauren and Ali Hazelwood will adore this rivals-to-friends-to-lovers bookish romance!

Visit Katie Holt's website.

Writers Read: Katie Holt.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with David Hirshberg

From my Q&A with David Hirshberg, author of Crossing the Bronx:

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

Crossing the Bronx was the fourth title chosen, and as soon as it was adopted, the reaction of the cover designer and the copy editor could be characterized as, “Now that’s what it should have been from the beginning!”

It’s obvious that the action takes place in The Bronx, the northernmost part of New York City. And crossing is a double entendre, meaning both spanning the borough (the Cross Bronx Expressway bifurcates The Bronx connecting the George Washington Bridge to the west and the New England Thruway to the east alongside Long Island Sound) and implying a double-cross, as evidenced by the scheme cooked up by city officials and the mobbed-up construction company to route the roadway in such a manner as to make huge profits, some of which are funneled back into campaign contributions…the local community be damned in the process.

What's in a name?

The best example of the origin of a character’s name is related to the father of...[read on]

Visit David Hirshberg's website.

The Page 69 Test: Crossing the Bronx.

My Book, The Movie: Crossing the Bronx.

Q&A with David Hirshberg.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six horror novels where the setting itself is evil

Mary Berman is a Philadelphia-based writer. She earned her MFA in creative writing from the University of Mississippi, where she was a Graduate Excellence Fellow, and she also holds a BA in writing seminars from Johns Hopkins University.

Her short works have been published in Cicada, PseudoPod, Fireside Magazine, and elsewhere.

Until Death is Berman's debut novel.

At CrimeReads the author tagged "six horror novels where the place is the problem." One title on the list:

Helen Phillips, The Beautiful Bureaucrat

Does an office building count as a house? This quiet novel about the horrors of capitalism kicks off with, “The person who interviewed her had no face,” and only gets weirder from there. Our protagonist Josephine is, believe it or not, lucky to have landed this creepy job, where she spends entire days entering strange and mysterious strings of numbers into a database, ensconced in a mysterious, nameless building where the keyboards clack eerily and the numbers echo in her head and the walls, slowly, slowly, slowly, begin to seem alive.

I read this novel in one sitting. It’s a perfect horror novel about being a working stiff: nightmarish, dreamlike, but peppered with concrete moments. It’s also totally grounded in the sweetest, truest sense of what it feels like to be human.

Read about another novel on the list.

The Beautiful Bureaucrat is among Josh Riedel's ine novels about losing (and finding) yourself in work and Sophie Stein's nine top books to put your job in perspective.

The Page 69 Test: The Beautiful Bureaucrat.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Stuart Schrader's "Blue Power"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Blue Power: How Police Organized to Protect and Serve Themselves by Stuart Schrader.

About the book, from the publisher:

A history of police unions that reveals how American law enforcement built a political movement that made cops untouchable.

In America today, police enjoy unmatched power. On the streets, officers employ violence at their own discretion. Behind closed doors, they are even more powerful. In city halls, police strong-arm local leaders and nullify attempts at public oversight. And in state legislatures and Washington, DC, police lobbyists and union leaders zealously uphold a bipartisan consensus against even mild reform. Yet as recently as fifty years ago, police still served at the pleasure of democratically elected politicians, not the other way around. In Blue Power, Stuart Schrader narrates the rise of a bottom-up movement of rank-and-file officers who lifted policing above the law.

Organizers launched their campaign in the 1960s, courting a public backlash to urban uprisings and civil rights. City by city, county by county, they formed unions and other organizations and won control over working conditions, impunity from oversight, and insulation from lean budgets. By the 2000s, this movement had triumphed nationally, shoring up the power of the police to overrule the public interest in the name of law and order.

Through deep archival detective work, Blue Power reveals how police forced American democracy to back the blue.

Visit Stuart Schrader's website.

The Page 99 Test: Badges without Borders.

The Page 99 Test: Blue Power.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven essential novels of sisterhood

Rachel Mills is Director and literary agent at Rachel Mills Literary.

She is a regular contributor across UK media, including The Telegraph, Front Row, The Times and as a columnist for the Bookseller.

Her new novel is The Players Club.

At Lit Hub Mills tagged seven novels featuring some of her favorite fictional sisters. One title on the list:

Today Will Be Different by Maria Semple

I love all of Maria Semple’s books—the new Go Gentle is completely amazing. But the sisterhood story at the heart of Today Will Be Different must be one of the most moving. Over the course of the one day setting, we piece together narrator Eleanor Flood’s backstory—who is this mysterious sister her own son does not know about? Why are they estranged? And what is the significance of this poignant graphic novel-within-a-novel ‘The Flood Sisters’? Being by Maria Semple, it’s about so, so much else, and also incredibly funny alongside the tears.

Read about another novel on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: John Katzenbach's "The Architect"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Architect by John Katzenbach.

About the novel, from the publisher:

From #1 internationally bestselling author John Katzenbach comes this pulse-pounding thriller that proves there’s nothing more dangerous than digging up secrets from your own family’s past.

“Remember what your name means. I’m so sorry.”

Just two weeks before her final architecture exams, Sloane Connolly receives this cryptic handwritten note from her estranged mother. When her calls go unanswered, Sloane returns to her hometown in northwest Massachusetts to discover that her mother has vanished. A thorough search turns up no trace of her—and the police are ultimately forced to give up and rule her disappearance a suicide.

As Sloane deals with the aftermath, she distracts herself by taking on a mysterious commission: to design a memorial for six strangers whose connection to her anonymous client—known to her only as The Employer—is deliberately kept in the dark. To complete this project, Sloane must trace the lives of all six individuals and uncover the hidden links between them. With the promise of a multimillion-dollar payday and a prestigious jump start to her career, it’s an opportunity too important to pass up.

But as the trail pulls her from Maine to Miami, Sloane begins to realize that the memorial is far more than just an academic exercise. The secrets she uncovers begin to weave dangerously into her own family’s tragic history, forcing her to question everything she thought she knew—and to discover for herself just how far she’s willing to go to survive.

Visit John Katzenbach's website.

My Book, The Movie: Red 1-2-3.

Writers Read: John Katzenbach (January 2014).

The Page 69 Test: Red 1-2-3.

Writers Read: John Katzenbach.

Q&A with John Katzenbach.

The Page 69 Test: The Architect.

--Marshal Zeringue

David Hirshberg's "Crossing the Bronx," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Crossing the Bronx by David Hirshberg.

From the entry:

The screenplay can be summarized as the crime, corruption, and love story of On the Waterfront meet the intrigue and intensity of Reservoir Dogs, written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, who would be the ideal director for Crossing the Bronx. Tarantino is a master of interweaving multiple story arcs that appear at the outset to be independent of each other, yet are woven into a fabric that encompasses all of them at the end (note especially how he directed Pulp Fiction in this manner). He would be able to knit together the strands of the criminal conspiracies, the corrupted politics, the destruction of the neighborhood, the love story, and the family relationships in a way that allows the narrative to dig down to give a full picture of the complexity of behaviors, and how the decisions—that have both intended and unintended consequences—are made by those who are powerful and connected, as well as by those who are...[read on]

Visit David Hirshberg's website.

The Page 69 Test: Crossing the Bronx.

My Book, The Movie: Crossing the Bronx.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven top novels about dysfunctional (but charming) families

Jessika Bouvier is a queer Cajun writer. Her work appears in The Rumpus, Waxwing, HAD, Split Lip, and elsewhere. She is currently writing a novel about a friendship that falls apart in the Alaskan wilderness. She is also a founding editor of Chatterbox!, a journal dedicated to longform fiction.

At Electric Lit Bouvier tagged seven "family portraits [that] are full of chaos and sometimes sadness, but also deep love." One title on the list:

Candelaria by Melissa Lozada-Oliva

You are Candelaria, an 86-year-old Guatemalan immigrant living in Boston. You are making tortillas on Christmas Eve when your daughter Lucia calls: Candy, the youngest of your three granddaughters, is in trouble again. But she is not the only one. Your boyfriend Mauricio soon returns home smelling of nothing, a harbinger of the apocalypse to come. You stab him in the gut with your kitchen knife, and the earth begins to tremble. This is the opening scene that launches a romp of a novel, one that follows three generations of women—Candelaria, Lucia, and her daughters, Paola, Bianca, and Candy. Narrated in alternating second-person (Candelaria) and third-person (the granddaughters) perspectives, they grapple with a multitude of crises. Addiction and intergenerational trauma and Latinidad, but also, zombies, a fertility cult, cannibals, and the most persistent of horrors: men. Together, these women endure it all, laughing maniacally along the way.

Read about another novel on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Donald F. Kettl's "The Right-Wing Idea Factory"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Right-Wing Idea Factory: From Traditionalism to Trumpism by Donald F. Kettl.

About the book, from the publisher:

An incisive analysis of one of the most disruptive forces in modern American politics, The Right-Wing Idea Factory is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the fundamental transformation of conservatism in the Trump era and beyond.

While Donald Trump's 2024 re-election was hailed by many as a personal triumph, political scientist Donald F. Kettl argues it marked the apex of a movement that began long before Trump entered politics--and one that will continue to shape the American landscape long after he's gone.

In The Right-Wing Idea Factory, Kettl traces the rise of a revolutionary political force that has redefined the American right. Fueled by soft money and amplified by social media, a network of determined activists and organizations worked to dismantle traditional free-market conservatism and replace it with a populist agenda rooted in cultural and social issues. From abortion and gender to critical race theory, book bans, immigration, and the "deep state," this movement built a powerful new political base--one designed not just to win elections, but to reshape the rules of governance for generations.

Kettl reveals how this idea factory has profoundly influenced policy at every level of government, driving polarization and upending long-standing political norms. With sharp insight and deep research, he offers a vital account of how the American right has evolved--and what that means for the future of democracy.

Learn more about The Right-Wing Idea Factory at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: The Right-Wing Idea Factory.

--Marshal Zeringue