Pg. 69: Marcus Sakey's "Good People"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Marcus Sakey's Good People.

About the book, from the publisher:

The spectacular Dutton debut of a thriller writer whose ecstatically acclaimed work draws comparisons to luminaries such as Elmore Leonard, George Pelecanos, and Dennis Lehane

A family, and the security to enjoy it: that’s all Tom and Anna Reed ever wanted. But years of infertility treatments, including four failed attempts at in-vitro fertilization, have left them with neither. The emotional and financial costs are straining their marriage and endangering their dreams. So when their downstairs tenant—a recluse whose promptly delivered cashier’s checks were barely keeping them afloat—dies in his sleep, the $400,000 they find stashed in his kitchen seems like fate. More than fate: a chance for everything they’ve dreamed of for so long. A fairy-tale ending.

But Tom and Anna soon realize that fairy tales never come cheap. Because their tenant wasn’t a hermit who squirreled away his pennies. He was a criminal who double-crossed some of the most dangerous men in Chicago. Men who won’t stop until they get revenge, no matter where they find it.

Among the early praise for Good People:

"GOOD PEOPLE is gleefully dread-filled, mercilessly tense, and moves with the speed of something fired from a sawed-off. Based on his first three novels, one can't help but feel Marcus Sakey is exactly the electric jolt American crime fiction needs."
--Dennis Lehane, bestselling author of Mystic River and The Given Day

"Sakey creates a moral dilemma fit for an advanced ethics class... I felt [the protagonists's] pain to the point of flinching."
--Chicago Sun-Times

"Dark, disturbing, and timely...Marcus Sakey is a prodigious talent."
--Laura Lippman, bestselling author of What the Dead Know

"Crime drama for the 21st century."
--National Public Radio

"Sakey may have trouble equaling this stellar performance."
--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"A killer of a book. If you could read it with one eye closed, you'd feel safer — edge of the reader's seat stuff, and yet a wondrous streak of compassion tears your heart out. This is the novel that truly launches Sakey into the majors. Magnificent."
--Ken Bruen, Edgar-nominated author of Priest

"This is neither a simple nor a stereotypical thriller. The action is frenetic, the suspense high, and the results shocking. Highly recommended."
--Library Journal

Read an excerpt from Good People, and learn more about the author and his work at Marcus Sakey's website.

Marcus Sakey is the author of The Blade Itself and At the City's Edge.

The Page 69 Test: The Blade Itself.

The Page 69 Test: At the City's Edge.

The Page 69 Test: Good People.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Nalini Jones reading?

The latest featured contributor to Writers Read: Nalini Jones, author of What You Call Winter.

One paragraph from her entry:

I’ve recently finished Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping, a strange and haunting novel about two sisters growing up near a lake in which both their mother and their grandfather have been lost. Her sentences have the clarity of lake water, cold and pure and perfect, and I was dazzled by the descriptions. I had barely finished Elisa Albert’s novel, The Book of Dahlia, before pressing it on several friends; the book is bold, funny, ruthless, and heart-breaking. The final lines leave me aching still. And in Greece, I picked up a book I reread every summer, Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love, out of sheer fondness for The Bolter and the surprise, every time, of her final remarks. [read on]

Nalini Jones graduated from Amherst College, and received an M.F.A. from Columbia University. Her work has appeared in the Ontario Review, Glimmer Train, Dogwood, and Creative Nonfiction's "Living Issue." Her first book, What You Call Winter, is a collection of interconnected stories.

Among the praise for What You Call Winter:

"Nalini Jones stories twine round each other in a rich exploration of time and place, in a particular town, Santa Clara, in post-colonial India. The family in What You Call Winter is devout in its Catholic heritage, its culture within their country’s culture carried on in English. The reader may have a sense that we’ve not been here before, but perhaps we have for Jones’ beautifully crafted stories recall Chekov’s plays with their moving portrayal of the sorrows and steady belief of those who stay; the trials and accommodations of those who go away. At times the visits back to India are heartbreaking in their revelations; at other times amusing in their presumption of the better life abroad. Much like Eudora Welty’s extraordinary collection of stories, The Golden Apples, time unfolds in these stories from the Edenic garden of childhood to the broken lives and the salvaged hopes of those who endure."
-–Maureen Howard

Read an excerpt from What You Call Winter, and learn more about the author and her work at Nalini Jones' website.

Writers Read: Nalini Jones.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Sarah Lyall's "The Anglo Files"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Sarah Lyall's The Anglo Files: A Field Guide to the British.

About the book, from the publisher:

Dispatches from the new Britain: a slyly funny and compulsively readable portrait of a nation finally refurbished for the twenty-first century.

Sarah Lyall, a reporter for the New York Times, moved to London in the mid-1990s and soon became known for her amusing and incisive dispatches on her adopted country. As she came to terms with its eccentric inhabitants (the English husband who never turned on the lights, the legislators who behaved like drunken frat boys, the hedgehog lovers, the people who extracted their own teeth), she found that she had a ringside seat at a singular transitional era in British life. The roller-coaster decade of Tony Blair’s New Labor government was an increasingly materialistic time when old-world symbols of aristocratic privilege and stiff-upper-lip sensibility collided with modern consumerism, overwrought emotion, and a new (but still unsuccessful) effort to make the trains run on time. Appearing a half-century after Nancy Mitford’s classic Noblesse Oblige, Lyall’s book is a brilliantly witty account of twenty-first-century Britain that will be recognized as a contemporary classic.

Among the early praise for The Anglo Files:

“The Anglo Files should be handed out, as a public service, in the immigration line at Heathrow.”
--Malcolm Gladwell, author of Blink

“Superb social and cultural anthropology by a reporter who has lived among her subjects without losing her sense of wonder for them. Imagine Margaret Mead channeling Jon Stewart and you have Sarah Lyall.”
--Eric Lax, author of Conversations with Woody Allen

“By turns wry, mordant, affectionate, bitter, and sweet. I never miss any of her dispatches, because, while they manage to remind me why I left, they also contrive to make me feel occasionally homesick.”
--Christopher Hitchens, author of God Is Not Great

“For years now, Sarah Lyall has been the writer observer of the English and their curious habits. Now she’s written a book that takes her game to an entirely new level. It’s funny, it’s delightful, and anyone with even a passing interest in these strange people should read it.”
--Michael Lewis, author of Moneyball

“Fresh, funny and occasionally wicked.”
--Kirkus

Read an excerpt from The Anglo Files, and learn more about the book and author at Sarah Lyall's website.

Sarah Lyall is a London correspondent for the New York Times.

The Page 99 Test: The Anglo Files.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top books by classical musicians

Neil Fisher, classical, opera and dance editor of The Times (London), compiled a critic's chart of "the best books written by classical musicians."

One title on his list:

The Glenn Gould Reader

Disarmingly lucid commentaries and anecdotes from the legendary pianist.

Read about another title on Fisher's list.

Related: Writers Read: Mark Kingwell.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Sydney Bauer's "Undertow"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Sydney Bauer's Undertow.

About the book, from the author's website:

A girl is dead…and not just any girl.

Christina Haynes is the teenage daughter of a popular US Senator, and when she drowns moments after a conversation at sea with her best friend’s mother, Boston Lawyer David Cavanaugh faces his toughest case to date.

What appears to be a straightforward, tragic accident in the waters off Cape Ann Massachusetts, turns into something else entirely as Rayna Martin, a respected African-American attorney, is charged with her murder.

With the victim’s father one of the most powerful politicians in the country and the Assistant District Attorney prepared to put his personal ambition ahead of legal justice, David soon discovers that his most dangerous battle is taking place outside the court room.

Lies, deception, blackmail, threats…and finally the precision of an assassin’s bullet combine to create a shocking finale in this exciting debut from Australian author Sydney Bauer.

Among the praise for Undertow:

“Compelling from start to finish, this fast-paced thriller combines engaging characters, sharp dialogue, and a plot so gripping that the pages seem to turn themselves. A handsome job.”
—Richard North Patterson.

“Terrific legal suspense – a great debut.”
—Lee Child

“Undertow is an impressive debut. Written with urgency… The climaxes and about turns and surprises just keep coming until the final showdown… Watch out Grisham.”
—Sydney Morning Herald

“Undertow is all handled with dexterity and no little style...her locations have the right sense of place, her plotting is economical and concise…Bauer is credibly packaged.”
—The Australian

Listen to an excerpt from Undertow, and learn more about the author and her work at Sydney Bauer's website.

The Page 69 Test: Undertow.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Christie Hodgen reading?

The latest featured contributor to Writers Read: Christie Hodgen, author of the novel Hello, I Must Be Going and the short fiction collection A Jeweler's Eye for Flaw.

One book mentioned in her entry:

B.S. Johnson's The Unfortunates, a book which comes in a box with each of its chapters separately bound, to be read in any order. [read on]

About Hodgen's Hello, I Must Be Going, from the publisher:

It's the early 1980s, and tomboy Frankie Hawthorne's world is overturned when her beloved father—a Vietnam amputee who masks depression by playing comedian—shoots himself. Frankie's neighborhood, in a down-at-the-heels industrial city near Boston, has had its own happier times. Left behind along with Frankie are her mother, Gerrie, a waitress at Friendly's, and a sweetly innocent younger brother, Teddy.

Soon, Frankie decides not to talk, resisting the overly ebullient school psychologist, and comforting herself by drawing cartoons. Gerri, now chain-smoking and addicted to television—Doris Day! Rock Hudson!—wears an imaginary charm bracelet of disappointments. The once-adorable Teddy runs wild and is frequently summoned to the principal's office.

Finally, with some unlikely help, Frankie understands the possibility of growing beyond grief. Balancing perfectly between funny and sad, this poignant novel is about the tenacity of ghosts and the stubbornness of love.

Writers Read: Christie Hodgen.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Jeff Carlson's "Plague War"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Jeff Carlson's Plague War.

About the book, from the publisher:

Researcher Ruth Goldman has developed a vaccine with the potential to inoculate the world’s survivors against the nanotech plague that devastated humanity. But the fractured U.S. government will stop at nothing to keep it for themselves.

Among the early praise for Plague War:

"A break-neck ride."
--Sean Williams, New York Times bestselling author

"A grim and fascinating new twist on the postholocaust story."
--Kevin J. Anderson

"This one is a literary level-four hot zone."
--SF Reviews

"Mr. Carlson shares a well-written and riveting tale that draws a spark of hope out of the midst of despair. Nicely paced, tension filled, and thoroughly believable, Plague War is easily a worthwhile read."
--Kimberly Swan, Darque Reviews

Read an excerpt from Plague War and watch the video trailer.

Visit Jeff Carlson's website and his blog. His first novel, Plague Year, was published last year.

The Page 69 Test: Plague Year.

The Page 99 Test: Plague War.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five best: books about historical conquest

David Day, author of Conquest: How Societies Overwhelm Others, named a five best list of books about historical conquest for the Wall Street Journal.

One book on his list:

Ceremonies of Possession in Europe's Conquest of the New World, 1492-1640
by Patricia Seed
Cambridge, 1995

The assertion of control over newly conquered lands is usually marked by an act that has symbolic meaning, at least for the conquerors. In her landmark history, Patricia Seed describes the competing ways in which European powers asserted their right to territory in the Americas, with each country refusing to recognize the claims of the others. Her book is peppered with fascinating vignettes of Portuguese and Dutch who thought that mastering the navigation of distant seas entitled explorers to seize the lands that their ships chanced upon. In contrast, the British emphasized enclosing and farming as a means of establishing their dominion, while the French preferred to enact a ceremony that mimicked the forms of a coronation back home. As for the Spanish, "it was the words that counted," Seed writes. "A highly formalized and stylized speech known as the Requirement had to be made when encountering indigenous peoples for the first time. The text of the speech was not a request for consent, but a declaration of war."

Read about Number One on Day's list.

Learn more about Conquest: How Societies Overwhelm Others and the author at the Oxford University Press website and David Day's website.

The Page 99 Test: David Day's Conquest.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Anisha Lakhani's "Schooled"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Schooled by Anisha Lakhani.

About the book, from the publisher:

“You’re making how much an hour?”
“Two hundred dollars.”
“Do you ride in on a pony?”

All she wants to do is teach. For Anna Taggert, an earnest Ivy League graduate, pursuing her passion as a teacher means engaging young hearts and minds. She longs to be in a place where she can be her best self, and give that best to her students.

Turns out it isn’t that easy.

Landing a job at an elite private school in Manhattan, Anna finds her dreams of chalk boards and lesson plans replaced with board families, learning specialists, and benefit-planning mothers. Not to mention the grim realities of her small paycheck.

And then comes the realization that the papers she grades are not the work of her students, but of their high-priced, college-educated tutors. After uncovering this underground economy where a teacher can make the same hourly rate as a Manhattan attorney, Anna herself is seduced by lucrative offers—one after another. Teacher by day, tutor by night, she starts to sample the good life her students enjoy: binges at Barneys, dinners at the Waverly Inn, and a new address on Madison Avenue.

Until, that is, the truth sets in.

Among the early praise for Schooled:

“If you count yourself among those who eagerly await the second season of Gossip Girl, Anisha Lakhani's debut novel Schooled might be just the thing to tide you over, as it takes yet another peek into the gilded lives of Manhattan's über-rich. Coming from the same family tree as The Devil Wears Prada and The Nanny Diaries, Schooled is about recent Ivy League graduate Anna Taggert, who lands her dream job teaching at Langdon Hall School, an oh-so-exclusive Upper East Side private school (Ms. Lakhani taught English at Dalton). Anna is disturbed to find out that the majority of her students get by through the use of expensive private tutors—who basically do the work for them—until she's lured into taking advantage of the lucrative benefits herself. The plot will be familiar to anyone who has sampled the assistant-to-the-wealthy oeuvre; and much like its predecessors, Schooled's writing is breezy and fun, with winking references to fashion labels and N.Y.C. hot spots sprinkled generously throughout.”
—Sara Vilkomerson, The New York Observer

“I stayed up way past midnight, alternately laughing and cringing as I made plans to go and blow some money on designer clothes with all the money I'd save by home schooling my children.”
—Paulina Porizkova, author of A Model Summer and judge, America's Next Top Model

“By turns dishy, delightful, and hilarious, Anisha Lakhani’s debut novel is also a biting teach and tell. Required reading!”
—Claire Cook, author of Summer Blowout, Life’s a Beach and Must Love Dogs

“From the exclusive upper Eastside world of Chanel bags and Juicy Couture, Anisha Lakhani has captured the idiom, rituals and taboos of the society first-year teacher Anna Taggert encounters at a Manhattan private school. Part Margaret Mead, part Tina Fey, the author of Schooled provides a knowing, insightful, witty and delightful window into the aggressively successful families of her charges and provides a lesson on how to survive them. Besides all that, this book is fun to read. An entertaining, wickedly observant debut.”
—Diana Meehan, LA Times bestselling author of Learning Like a Girl: Educating Our Daughters in Schools of Their Own and co-founder of The Archer School For Girls

“Utterly terrifying and delicious. I inhaled this novel in hours.”
—Jane Green, author of The Beach House and Jemima J.

“Lakhani paints a darkly comic picture of what a five-figure tuition bill really gets you at an elite Manhattan private school. The former Dalton English teacher knows the territory, and it is bleak. Here's Anna, a newbie teacher with Ivy credentials whose passion for the low-paying teaching profession is cause for celebration at the upper-crust Langdon school, where as the exotic-looking newcomer, she is mistakenly identified as a coveted minority hire. With low pay and even lower expectations from teachers and parents, Anna realizes there's no way she can survive—until she learns about lucrative after-school tutoring gigs. And just like that, Anna's ideals go out the window. In a hilarious out-of-control spiral into obsession with all-things designer, expensive and showy, Anna transforms into someone who believes money can buy everything and everyone. There is redemption, of course, in the form of a teacher who bucks the system, and Anna discovers some of her students are pretty wonderful… the romp through an unsettling, soulless world of adults and children who'd rather coast through life than live it provides plenty of laughs.”
—Publishers Weekly

Learn more about Schooled and its author at Anisha Lakhani's website.

Until 2006, Anisha Lakhani taught English at the Dalton School on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Soon after she started teaching, she was named chair of the Middle School English Department. Lakhani received both her B.A. and M.A. degrees from Columbia University.

The Page 69 Test: Schooled.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: David Lebedoff's "The Same Man"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: David Lebedoff's The Same Man: George Orwell & Evelyn Waugh in Love and War.

About the book, from the publisher:

One climbed to the very top of the social ladder, the other chose to live among tramps. One was a celebrity at twenty-three, the other virtually unknown until his dying days. One was right-wing and religious, the other a socialist and an atheist. Yet, as this ingenious and important new book reveals, at the heart of their lives and writing, Evelyn Waugh and George Orwell were essentially the same man.

Orwell is best known for Animal Farm and 1984, Waugh for Brideshead Revisited and comic novels like Scoop and Vile Bodies. However different they may seem, these two towering figures of twentieth-century literature are linked for the first time in this engaging and unconventional biography, which goes beyond the story of their amazing lives to reach the core of their beliefs–a shared vision that was startlingly prescient about our own troubled times.

Both Waugh and Orwell were born in 1903, into the same comfortable stratum of England’s class-obsessed society. But at first glance they seem to have lived opposite lives. Waugh married into the high aristocracy, writing hilarious novels that captured the amoral time between the wars. He converted to Catholicism after his wife’s infidelity and their divorce. Orwell married a moneyless student of Tolkien’s who followed him to Barcelona, where he fought in the Spanish Civil War. She saved his life there–twice–but her own fate was tragic.

Waugh and Orwell would meet only once, as the latter lay dying of tuberculosis, yet as The Same Man brilliantly shows, in their life and work both writers rebelled against a modern world run by a privileged, sometimes brutal, few. Orwell and Waugh were almost alone among their peers in seeing what the future–our time–would bring, and they dedicated their lives to warning us against what was coming: a world of material wealth but few values, an existence without tradition or community or common purpose, where lives are measured in dollars, not sense. They explained why, despite prosperity, so many people feel that our society is headed in the wrong direction. David Lebedoff believes that we need both Orwell and Waugh now more than ever.

Unique in its insights and filled with vivid scenes of these two fascinating men and their tumultuous times, The Same Man is an amazing story and an original work of literary biography.

Among the early praise for The Same Man:

"For those wearied by doorstop biographies, this lean and urbane dual portrait is a breath of fresh air. As lawyer and writer Lebedoff (Cleaning Up) makes clear, on the surface no two British writers could be more different. Evelyn Waugh was a loud convert to Catholicism, an even louder social climber and very much a man of Empire. George Orwell (Eric Blair) could best be described as a long-suffering atheistic humanist, a utopian socialist and dreamer. Waugh succeeded early; Orwell was an obscure polemicist until his masterpieces Animal Farm and 1984, which were written at the end of his life. But both men were born the same year (1903) and came from the same class. They admired each other's writing and moral courage, says Lebedoff, and finally met six months before the bed-ridden Orwell's death in 1950. Both men, the author says, rejected not only the immorality of dictators in their own time but the moral relativism they foresaw in the future. Aside from a slightly rambling chapter of summation, Lebedoff nimbly compares and contrasts the lives and art of these literary titans."
--Publishers Weekly

"Lebedoff's (The Uncivil War) thesis is that writers George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh, opposites in nearly all other respects, were at heart alike, namely, in their fierce and undying opposition to and foreseeing of such evils as moral relativism and the corruption of language. Lebedoff's unpretentious writing style, marked by a preference for proletarian short sentences, crackles with wit and playfulness as well as ardent advocacy for these embattled twin prophets. He laces his two brief biographies with sharp-edged details that brightly illuminate his subjects' innermost characters. The 19-year-old Orwell (whose life story Lebedoff treats as an Ein Heldenleben) grew to hate the English class system and his role in Burma as "visible overseer of empire." So began his willed descent down the social ladder, to a point of view that thereafter informed his writing. Concurrently, his contemporary, Waugh, who hungered after wealth and fame as a writer, too, reached a point of self-loathing, abandoning "the vacuity of life without faith" through conversion to Catholicism. Brief and to the point, this thrillingly written study of two of the 20th century's great social icons will impel readers to return to their timeless works."
--Charles C. Nash, Library Journal

Learn more about The Same Man at the Random House website.

David Lebedoff is the award-winning author of five books, including Cleaning Up, about the Exxon Valdez case, and The Uncivil War: How a New Elite Is Destroying Our Democracy.

The Page 99 Test: The Same Man.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Mark Kingwell reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Mark Kingwell, author of the newly released Concrete Reveries: Consciousness and the City. Kingwell is a philosopher and critic who is currently professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto. He is the author of many books, including Better Living: In Pursuit of Happiness from Plato to Prozac and Nearest Thing to Heaven: The Empire State Building and American Dreams. He is a contributing editor for Harper’s Magazine and he has written for The New York Times Magazine, Adbusters, Forbes, and Utne Reader.

About Concrete Reveries:

An exploration of urbanism, personal identity, and how the space we live in shapes us

According to philosopher and cultural critic Mark Kingwell, the transnational global city—New York and Shanghai—is the most significant machine our species has ever produced. And yet, he says, we fail again and again to understand it. How do cities shape us, and how do we shape them? That is the subject of Concrete Reveries, which investigates how we occupy city space and why place is so important to who we are.

Kingwell explores the sights, smells, and forms of the city, reflecting on how they mold our notions of identity, the limits of social and political engagement, and our moral obligations as citizens. He offers a critique of the monumental architectural supermodernism in which buildings are valued more for their exteriors than for what is inside, as well as some lively writing on the significance of threshold structures like doorways, lobbies, and porches and the kinds of emotional attachments we form to ballparks, carnival grounds, and gardens. In the process, he gives us a whole new set of models and metaphors for thinking about the city.

With a spectacular interior design and more than seventy-five photos, Concrete Reveries will appeal to fans of Jane Jacobs, Witold Rybczynski, and Alain de Botton’s The Architecture of Happiness.

From Kingwell's Writers Read entry:

I read Cormac McCarthy’s The Road ... [which] strikes me as a book without a good ending. I was surprised at the acclaim since it is really just a pallid version of Russell Hoban’s post-apocalyptic masterpiece, Riddley Walker. Where McCarthy describes (brilliantly, yes) the workaday details of survival, Hoban extends and expands language as a form of endgame consciousness. George Saunders’s Civilwarland in Bad Decline, which I read earlier this summer, is more inventive than McCarthy, and funnier (not hard!). The stories are a little too similar, but taken apart are like nothing else being written today. [read on]

Learn more about Mark Kingwell and his work at his University of Toronto faculty webpage.

Writers Read: Mark Kingwell.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Michael Koryta's "Envy the Night"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Michael Koryta's Envy the Night.

About the book, from the publisher:

In this first stand-alone novel from the critically acclaimed Edgar Award-finalist, Michael Koryta fulfills his early promise with a dark and mature novel of a young man trying to escape his past.

It has been seven years since Frank Temple III joined the rest of the world in learning his father's bloody secret: The U.S. marshal maintained a covert career as a contract killer, a double-life that ended in suicide to avoid prosecution and prison.

The shocking revelation triggered years of anonymous drifting for Frank, time spent running from his legacy and struggling to believe that the father he’d loved so dearly was entirely in the wrong. After all, the victims hadn't been innocents. And Devin Matteson, the man who’d lured his father into the killing game only to later give him up to the FBI, is probably the darkest of the lot. Those are troubling thoughts, and Frank tries to stay away from them. But when an old family friend calls to say that Matteson is returning to the isolated Wisconsin lake that was once sacred ground for their families, it’s a homecoming Frank knows he can’t allow.

His arrival in town reveals a situation far from the expected, though.

While Matteson is nowhere to be found, his old cabin is indeed occupied---by a strange, beautiful woman and a nervous man with a gun. When a pair of assassins from Miami arrive on their heels, Frank knows Matteson can’t be far behind. And while the wise move would be to call in the police and get out of town fast, that just doesn't feel right. After all, contract killer or not, Frank’s father was at heart a teacher. And his son excelled at the lessons.

Family secrets, mob hitmen, and a father’s shadowy legacy combine to make this Koryta’s most compelling thriller yet.

Among the early praise for the novel:

"Revenge drives this superb stand-alone... Koryta's dialogue is as sharp as the knives his characters wield, and his plot twists at the most unexpected moments. This thriller places Koryta solidly in the company of the genre's most powerful voices."—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Superb writing and storytelling from Michael Koryta... Envy the Night represents his best work to date."
—New York Times bestselling author George Pelecanos

"This diabolical novel, laid out in simple but eloquent prose and pitch-perfect dialogue, heralds a changing of the guard. I have seen the future of 'The Best Mystery Writer in America' and its name is Michael Koryta."
—New York Times bestselling author Ridley Pearson

"One of the best of the best, plain and simple."
—#1 New York Times bestselling author Michael Connelly

Read an excerpt from Envy the Night, and learn more about the author and his work at Michael Koryta's website.

Michael Koryta's debut novel Tonight I Said Goodbye earned an Edgar nomination for best first novel and won the Great Lakes Book Award for Best Mystery. He is also the author of three Lincoln Perry novels.

The Page 69 Test: Envy the Night.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jennifer Rardin's Jaz Parks Series, the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: Jennifer Rardin's Jaz Parks Series.

Rardin's entry begins:

The Jaz Parks Series in THX, Surround Smell and Possibly 3D!

“OMG, not another vampire movie!” Okay, that’s not exactly what our Hollywood agent said when we introduced him to the Jaz-gang. But he seemed doubtful. After all, the pile of vampire schlock on video shelves could induce coma-style symptoms in even the most tightly wound insomniac. And I can see why you might feel the same.

But, dudes, you gotta go with me on this one.

First we pull in a kickass director. Somebody who can really do action, because my books are pretty much fueled by adrenalin and PowerBars. So I’m thinking a duo, as in the Wachowski brothers. Why? Ahem. As of August 12, Orbit will have published four books in the Jaz Parks series: Once Bitten, Twice Shy; Another One Bites the Dust; Biting the Bullet and Bitten to Death. Between them we enjoy car chases, attempted assassinations, successful assassinations, roof falls, hand-to-hand combat, gun battles, plus some way cool monsters and their associated gore. [read on]

Read an excerpt from the latest volume in the series, Bitten to Death, and learn more about the author and her work at Jennifer Rardin's website, MySpace page, and Facebook page.

My Book, The Movie: the Jaz Parks Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Brenda Cooper's "Reading the Wind"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Brenda Cooper's Reading the Wind.

About the book, from the publisher:

The colony planet of Fremont was supposed to be free of all genetically altered beings--a new home for a pure race. So when Chelo and her brother Joseph, along with two other genetically altered teenagers, were abandoned on Fremont, they were not welcome. They vowed to get off the planet by any means necessary. Joseph and the others managed to escape, but Chelo was left behind with her new found love, forced to live underground.

Joseph and the others find that their homeworld is full of vengeance. Believing that the people of Fremont killed the teenaged castaways, they sent a technologically advanced mercenary team to Fremont to eliminate the entire planet's population. With the help of Joseph's father, the youngsters head back to Fremont to try to save Chelo.

Reading the Wind is the second book in The Silver Ship trilogy.

Reading the Wind earned a starred review from Booklist, and Paul Di Filippo wrote in SciFi Weekly that "Cooper's achievements here are quiet and smaller in scale than many other showoffish books, but highly laudable.... [E]asy and smooth and very worthwhile."

Learn more about Reading the Wind at the publisher's website, Brenda Cooper's website, and her LiveJournal.

Brenda Cooper is the author of The Silver Ship and the Sea and the co-author of the novel Building Harlequin's Moon, which she wrote with Larry Niven. Her solo and collaborative short fiction has appeared in multiple magazines, including Analog, Asimov's, Strange Horizons, Oceans of the Mind, and The Salal Review.

The Page 99 Test: The Silver Ship and the Sea.

The Page 99 Test: Reading the Wind.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten literary Gypsies

Jessica Duchen's most recent novel is Hungarian Dances.

For the Guardian, she named her top 10 literary Gypsies.

She writes: "It's fascinating that century after century, Gypsies are both the most romanticised people on earth and the most vilified: this is almost as much the case now as it was two centuries ago. Writers, of course, have been milking the situation for donkey's years. My second novel, Hungarian Dances, tells the story of a British-born violinist, Karina, whose discovery of hidden truths about her Hungarian family history and her formidable grandmother Mimi's Roma background challenges her own sense of identity."

One Gypsy on Duchen's list:

Esmeralda in Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Esmeralda, her story set in Paris in 1482, is as archetypal as Carmen – maybe more so, as Hugo endows this Gypsy dancer with a nearly Christ-like quality. An orphaned girl of almost superhuman kindness and the sufferer of a desperate unrequited love, she's first glorified and later destroyed by the crowd that loves her dancing, but succumbs to hysteria when accusing her of witchcraft. She's victimised, humiliated by the man she loves, and finally killed when she chooses death in preference to a loveless marriage. Hugo's saga exemplifies the romantic fascination for Gypsies as exotic sex symbols on the one hand and hapless victims of superstition and prejudice on the other; and Quasimodo, helping Esmeralda to sanctuary in the cathedral, finds redemption through his compassion for her.

Read about another title on Duchen's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Ben Tanzer's "Most Likely You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Ben Tanzer's Most Likely You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine.

About the novel:

Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine takes place in an early nineties New York City and follows the romance between Jen and Geoff the novel's two main characters. It is a story about fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, the value of friends, the reason its best to go out for coffee on first dates and what exactly defines being on the rebound. The characters riff on their favorite books, channel Yoda and Bob Dylan, deal with siblings and try to make sense of a world that shouldn't be as confusing as it seems to be. They also seek greater self-awareness and debate why Dallas will always be superior to Knots Landing, even as they find love, lose it and find it again.

Among the early blurbs for Most Likely You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine:

"Sounds like fun to me. Who doesn't like a novel about questionable choices, pop culture and porn?"
--Wasi-Sabi

"[Most Likely You Go Your Way] looks just as good [as Lucky Man]. As Ben is so fond of saying, it very well might change your life."
--Pete Anderson

"Tanzer is most definitely quite gifted with words and characters and plot...."
--Nick Ostdick

"I love the dialogue between the characters. Sometimes all you need is a few distinct lines or sentences to get your imagination rolling. And the title: 'Most likely you go your way and I'll go mine' is compelling to me. It has a kind of 'punch' to it that most titles do not. I think it's a feeling or mood we can all relate to on a personal or emotional level. It stays with you."
--Michael Paige Glover

Watch the video trailer for Most Likely You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine.

Learn more about the author and his work at Ben Tanzer's MySpace page and This Blog Will Change Your Life.

Ben Tanzer is the spokesperson for This Blog Will Change Your Life and author of Lucky Man.

My Book, The Movie: Lucky Man.

The Page 69 Test: Most Likely You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Jeremy Salt's "The Unmaking of the Middle East"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Jeremy Salt's The Unmaking of the Middle East: A History of Western Disorder in Arab Lands.

About the book, from the publisher:

Written for those who want to know more about the Middle East than the mainstream media is willing or able to tell, this book begins by examining a question that has been asked by numerous commentators since September 11, 2001: "Why do they hate us?" Jeremy Salt offers the background essential for understanding the Middle East today by chronicling the long and bloody history of Western intervention in Arab lands. In lucid detail, he examines the major events that have shaped the region—ranging from the French in Algeria and the British in Egypt in the nineteenth century to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and to the continuing war in Iraq. Linking all of these together, Salt paints a damning picture of a sustained campaign by Western powers to dominate the Middle East by whatever means necessary. Throughout, he emphasizes the human cost of the policies put in place to preserve "Western interests" or in the name of bringing civilization, democracy, or freedom to the region. Making use of extensive research in U.S. and British archives that reveals what politicians were deciding behind closed doors, and why, this isa book that will change the way we see the Middle East.

Among the early praise for the book:

"Devastating in its portrayal of the depths to which the West (France, Britain, and the US especially) sank in conquering the Middle East. Starting off with Huntington's quote about 'Islam's bloody borders,' Salt argues that it was the West that made these borders bloody, though in the process it had no trouble finding native accomplices who helped, wittingly or not."
—Mehran Kamrava, author of The Modern Middle East

"This will be of much use to general readers who are ill-served by the preponderance of books in the marketplace that explain political events by recourse to stereotypical representations of 'Arabs' and 'Islam,' while neglecting important historical events that define current political and social reality in the region. None of the general history books on the Middle East offer comparable comprehensive details."
—Joseph A. Massad, author of Desiring Arabs

"This excellent book is comprehensive in scope, scholarly and yet highly readable. Focusing on the damaging role of western policy in the Middle East, well exemplified in the current debacle in Iraq. It will be essential reading for students and historians of the region."
—Ghada Karmi, author of Married to Another Man: Israel's Dilemma in Palestine

"Salt makes it abundantly clear that when it comes to the Middle East, 'the West' talks idealistically and acts brutally. This excellent book should be required reading for future American policymakers thinking about invading another Arab or Islamic country."
—John J. Mearsheimer, R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago

Learn more about The Unmaking of the Middle East at the publisher's website.

Jeremy Salt teaches in the Department of Political Science at Bilkent University in Ankara and is author of Imperialism, Evangelism, and the Ottoman Armenians, 1878-1896.

The Page 99 Test: The Unmaking of the Middle East.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Paul M. Collins reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Paul M. Collins, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of North Texas and author of the newly released book, Friends of the Supreme Court: Interest Groups and Judicial Decision Making.

About the book, from the publisher:

The U.S. Supreme Court is a public policy battleground in which organized interests attempt to etch their economic, legal, and political preferences into law through the filing of amicus curiae ("friend of the court") briefs. In Friends of the Supreme Court: Interest Groups and Judicial Decision Making, Paul M. Collins, Jr. explores how organized interests influence the justices' decision making, including how the justices vote and whether they choose to author concurrences and dissents. Collins presents theories of judicial choice derived from disciplines as diverse as law, marketing, political science, and social psychology. This theoretically rich and empirically rigorous treatment of decision-making on the nation's highest court, which represents the most comprehensive examination ever undertaken of the influence of U.S. Supreme Court amicus briefs, provides clear evidence that interest groups play a significant role in shaping the justices' choices.

Visit Paul M. Collins' faculty webpage.

See what the professor has been reading at: Writers Read: Paul M. Collins.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Amanda Boyden's "Babylon Rolling"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Babylon Rolling by Amanda Boyden.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the acclaimed author of Pretty Little Dirty ("a first novel of complex truth and beauty"--San Francisco Chronicle), comes a glittering, gritty, and unflinching story of five families--black, white, and Indian--living along one block of Uptown, New Orleans.

It is the summer of 2004, and Orchid Street is changing. Newcomers Ariel May and her husband, Ed, relocated from Minnesota, are trying to make sense of the Southern city. From her front porch, Philomenia Beauregard de Bruges watches her new neighbors, the Guptas, as they move into one of the biggest homes. Across the way, Daniel Harris, aka Fearius, has just been released from juvenile detention. And Cerise Brown, a longtime resident now in her late seventies, hopes only to pass the rest of her days in peace.

But with one random accident, a scene of horror on Cerise's front lawn, the whole neighborhood converges on the sidewalk to help, to cast blame, and to offer hope. And as Hurricane Ivan churns his way toward the city, bringing a different series of challenges, these new relationships tighten, intertwining the families' paths for better and for worse.

Told in five achingly real voices, Babylon Rolling is the story of one year on Orchid Street, a place where lives clash and collide, and where the humid air is charged with constant wanting. Offering a bold understanding of human nature and the hidden prejudices we harbor, Babylon Rolling is a powerful portrait of racism in America and a city on the edge of transformation.

Among the early praise for the novel:

“Set in the chaotic months surrounding a treacherous hurricane, Boyden’s second novel is an adroit, compulsively readable study of a city and the shared humanity that unites its diverse inhabitants.”
–People, four out of four stars

“Once in a great while, a novel comes along that makes you sit up and look around at your world and see it anew, in all its richness and complexity, as if you had just arrived there from a great distance. Amanda Boyden's second novel, Babylon Rolling, does that for New Orleans…. She surprises at every turn, seizing upon the way violence -- and joy -- can erupt in a moment. Babylon Rolling is many books in one -- a brilliant, nuanced portrait of pre-Katrina New Orleans; a passionate defense of the city; a clear-eyed critique of the problems that remain. Gracefully weaving together strands of race relations, food, music and Mardi Gras (‘Babylon rolls at 5:45, the paper said, Chaos at 6’), Boyden shoots right to the heart of a fabulous, flawed city. Her aim is true. In Babylon Rolling, as in life, New Orleanians stand and fall together, rescue one another and, in doing so, themselves.”
–Times-Picayune (New Orleans)

“Threats of natural disaster bracket this novel of New Orleans, which opens just prior to Hurricane Ivan in September 2004 and ends with the ominous approach of Katrina the following summer. In the intervening year, certain residents of the Uptown district weather personal tragedies rivaling the impact of killer storms. Orchid Street, diverse by any standard, includes two African American families, upstanding senior citizens Roy and Cerise Brown and the more struggling Harrises, as well as a young family of well-meaning but clueless whites recently arrived from Minnesota, a half-mad gentlewoman of the old school, and the exotic, intellectual Gupta clan. Neighborhood bar Tokyo Rose serves all as both haven from and catalyst of neighborhood disturbances. As lives and cultures overlap, the author of Pretty Little Dirty melds an enticing sense of place and a kaleidoscope of distinctive voices into a cautionary tale of ambition, desire, and conflict.”
–Library Journal

"Boyden has a chameleon-like ability to inhabit any persona, of any race or age, so fully and seamlessly it's hard to remember that these people are invented rather than real. Pre-Katrina New Orleans leaps to life on every page, a beautiful, seamy, fragile city on the brink of chaos and ruin. Babylon Rolling is a heart-breaking and riveting novel."
–Kate Christensen, author of The Great Man, winner of the 2008 PEN/Faulkner Award

"Boyden invoked an array of New Orleans voices on Uptown's Orchid Street . . . an American Babylon that batters and woos with delights and disasters . . . The book's nuanced story of people who 'choose to live . . . inside the big lasso of river' reveals a side of the Crescent City not often seen in fiction."
–Publishers Weekly

Read an excerpt from Babylon Rolling, and learn more about the book at the Pantheon website.

Amanda Boyden was born in Minnesota and raised in Chicago and St. Louis. Formerly a circus trapeze artist and contortionist, she earned her MFA from the University of New Orleans, where she now teaches writing. Her first novel, Pretty Little Dirty, was published in 2006.

The Page 69 Test: Babylon Rolling.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Sheryll Cashin's "The Agitator's Daughter"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Sheryll Cashin's The Agitator's Daughter.

About the book, from the publisher:

A renowned law professor's intimate chronicle of her family's history as pioneers of social justice, and the price her father paid for their achievements

During Reconstruction, Herschel V. Cashin was a radical republican legislator who championed black political enfranchisement throughout the South. His grandson, Dr. John L. Cashin, Jr., inherited that passion for social justice and formed an independent Democratic party to counter George Wallace's Dixiecrats, electing more blacks to office than in any Southern state. His "uppity" ways attracted many enemies. Twice the private plane Cashin owned and piloted was sabotaged. His dental office and boyhood home were taken by eminent domain. The IRS pursued him, as did the FBI. Ultimately his passions would lead to ruin and leave his daughter, Sheryll, wondering why he would risk so much.

In following generations of Cashins through the eras of slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, civil rights, and post-civil rights political struggles, Sheryll Cashin conveys how she came to embrace being an agitator's daughter with humor, honesty, and love.

Among the early praise for the book:

“Books of family lore—part oral history, part anecdote with loads of juicy tidbits from diaries and journals, engaging old photographs, newspaper quotes and entries from the public record—serve to put meat on the bones of history. In the smoothly written The Agitator's Daughter, Sheryll Cashin, a law professor at Georgetown University, adds her firsthand experiences as a participant and witness to civil rights history to enliven the text with a close and often heartbreaking point of view.”
--Washington Post

“[A] clear-eyed assessment of living in a family of civil rights leaders that stretched back four generations.”
--Cleveland Plain Dealer

Read an excerpt from The Agitator's Daughter; learn more the book at the publisher's website and more about the author at her Georgetown Law webpage.

Sheryll Cashin, professor of law at Georgetown University, writes about race relations and inequality in America. Her book The Failures of Integration was an Editors' Choice in the New York Times Book Review, and was a finalist for the 2005 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for non-fiction.

Listen to the NPR interview with Cashin about The Agitator's Daughter.

The Page 99 Test: The Agitator's Daughter.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jonathan Kozol: most important books

Jonathan Kozol is an activist and National Book Award winner best known for his works on public education. His latest book is Letters to a Young Teacher.

He told Newsweek about his five most important books, and addressed two related issues:

A book to which you will always return:

"The House at Pooh Corner" by A. A. Milne. No other book reflects so tenderly the magic of childhood.

A classic book that, upon revisiting, disappointed:

"The Four Quartets" by T. S. Eliot. I don't think he had enough red wine or erotic juices in his veins. Dry as British skeleton bones.

Read more about Kozol's 5 most important books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Preeta Samarasan's "Evening Is the Whole Day"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Evening Is the Whole Day by Preeta Samarasan.

About the book, from the publisher:

Set in Malaysia, this spellbinding and already internationally acclaimed debut introduces us to the prosperous Rajasekharan family as its closely guarded secrets are slowly peeled away.

When Chellam, the family's rubber-plantation-bred servant girl, is dismissed for unnamed crimes, her banishment is the latest in a series of recent, precipitous losses that have shaken six-year-old Aasha's life. A few short weeks before, Aasha's grandmother Paati passed away under mysterious circumstances and her older sister, Uma, departed for Columbia University--leaving Aasha alone to cope with her mostly absent father, her bitter mother, and her imperturbable older brother.

Beginning with Aasha's grandfather's ascension from Indian coolie to illustrious resident of the Big House on Kingfisher Lane, and going on to tell the story of how Appa, the family's Oxford-educated patriarch, courted Amma, the humble girl next door, Evening Is the Whole Day moves gracefully backward and forward in time to answer the many questions that haunt the family: What was Chellam's unforgivable crime? Why was Uma so intent on leaving? How and why did Paati die? What did Aasha see? And, underscoring all of these mysteries: What ultimately became of Appa's once-grand dreams for his family and his country? Sweeping in scope, sumptuously lyrical, and masterfully constructed, Evening Is the Whole Day offers an unflinching look at relationships between parents and children, brothers and sisters, the wealthy and the poor, a country and its citizens--and the ways in which each sometimes fails the other. Illuminating in heartbreaking detail one Indian immigrant family's secrets and lies while exposing the complex underbelly of Malaysia itself, Preeta Samarasan's debut is a mesmerizing and vital achievement sure to earn her a place alongside Arundhati Roy, Kiran Desai, and Zadie Smith.

Among the praise for Evening Is the Whole Day:

"[A] delicious first novel...Samarasan's fabric is gorgeous. Her ambitious spiraling plot, her richly embroidered prose, her sense of place, and her psychological acuity are stunning. Readers, responding to the setting, will immediately compare her to Kiran Desai. I think Smarasan's dialogue and description are reminiscent of Eudora Welty, another woman who knew how to write about family and race and class and secrets and heat."
—New York Times Book Review

“... a surpassingly wise and beautiful debut novel about the tragic consequences of the inability to love.”
—Booklist, starred review

"[A] beautifully written debut novel [...]. Because the description of Malaysia and its diverse population is so achingly lyrical, readers will want to slow down to absorb each word; at other times, as when they get caught up in the family drama, they will want to quicken their pace. This book is destined to be highly sought after by fans of Zadie Smith and Arundhati Roy."
—Library Journal, starred review

"A wonderfully engaging novel, poignant yet comical, about the contradictions and hazards inherent in a modern, postcolonial world."
—M.G. Vassanji, author of The In-Between World of Vikram Lall, two-time winner of Canada's Giller Prize

"A magical, exuberant tragic-comic vision of postcolonial Malaysia reminiscent of Rushdie and Roy. In prose of acrobatic grace, Samarasan conjures a vibrant portrait, by turns intimate and sweeping, of characters and a country coming of age. The début of a significant, and thrilling, new talent."
—Peter Ho Davies, Man Booker Prize-longlisted author of The Welsh Girl

Read an excerpt from Evening Is the Whole Day, and learn more about the author and her work at Preeta Samarasan's website.

Preeta Samarasan was born and raised in Malaysia, and moved to the United States in high school. After spending several years ostensibly working on a dissertation on gypsy music in France, but all the while writing fiction, she decided to switch tracks. She recently received her M.F.A. from the University of Michigan.

The Page 69 Test: Evening Is the Whole Day.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Rob Walker's "Buying In"

The current feature at The Page 99 Test: Rob Walker's Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We.

About the book, from the publisher:

Brands are dead. Advertising no longer works. Weaned on TiVo, the Internet, and other emerging technologies, the short-attention-span generation has become immune to marketing. Consumers are “in control.” Or so we’re told.

In Buying In, New York Times Magazine “Consumed” columnist Rob Walker argues that this accepted wisdom misses a much more important and lasting cultural shift. As technology has created avenues for advertising anywhere and everywhere, people are embracing brands more than ever before–creating brands of their own and participating in marketing campaigns for their favorite brands in unprecedented ways. Increasingly, motivated consumers are pitching in to spread the gospel virally, whether by creating Internet video ads for Converse All Stars or becoming word-of-mouth “agents” touting products to friends and family on behalf of huge corporations. In the process, they–we–have begun to funnel cultural, political, and community activities through connections with brands.

Walker explores this changing cultural landscape–including a practice he calls “murketing,” blending the terms murky and marketing–by introducing us to the creative marketers, entrepreneurs, artists, and community organizers who have found a way to thrive within it. Using profiles of brands old and new, including Timberland, American Apparel, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Red Bull, iPod, and Livestrong, Walker demonstrates the ways in which buyers adopt products, not just as consumer choices, but as conscious expressions of their identities.

Part marketing primer, part work of cultural anthropology, Buying In reveals why now, more than ever, we are what we buy–and vice versa.

Among the praise for the book:

“Fascinating … A compelling blend of cultural anthropology and business journalism.”
—Andrea Sachs, Time Magazine

“An often startling tour of new cultural terrain.”
—Laura Miller, Salon

“Marked by meticulous research and careful conclusions, this superbly readable book confirms New York Times journalist Walker as an expert on consumerism. … [A] thoughtful and unhurried investigation into consumerism that pushes the analysis to the maximum…”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Walker lays out his theory in well-written, entertaining detail.”
—Seth Stevenson, Slate

“The most trenchant psychoanalyst of our consumer selves is Rob Walker. This is a fresh and fascinating exploration of the places where material culture and identity intersect.”
—Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food

Read an excerpt from Buying In, and learn more about the author and his work at Rob Walker's website.

Rob Walker writes the weekly column “Consumed,” a blend of business journalism and cultural anthropology, for The New York Times Magazine. Previously, he created and wrote the popular “Ad Report Card” column for Slate, and he has contributed to a wide range of publications, from Fast Company and Fortune to The New Republic and AdBusters.

The Page 99 Test: Buying In.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Guy Geltner reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Guy Geltner, author of The Medieval Prison: A Social History and a postdoctoral fellow in medieval history at Lincoln College, University of Oxford.

His entry begins:

Killing time on a recent visit to Chicago I picked up Don DeLillo’s Underworld and Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song, two mammoth works I’ve been meaning to read for some time. I swallowed the transfixing Mailer, and am about to assault DeLillo with a due sense of trepidation, as I am a DeLillo virgin…. [read on]

About Geltner's The Medieval Prison, from the publisher:

The modern prison is commonly thought to be the fruit of an Enlightenment penology that stressed man's ability to reform his soul. The Medieval Prison challenges this view by tracing the institution's emergence to a much earlier period beginning in the late thirteenth century, and in doing so provides a unique view of medieval prison life.

G. Geltner carefully reconstructs life inside the walls of prisons in medieval Venice, Florence, Bologna, and elsewhere in Europe. He argues that many enduring features of the modern prison--including administration, finance, and the classification of inmates--were already developed by the end of the fourteenth century, and that incarceration as a formal punishment was far more widespread in this period than is often realized. Geltner likewise shows that inmates in medieval prisons, unlike their modern counterparts, enjoyed frequent contact with society at large. The prison typically stood in the heart of the medieval city, and inmates were not locked away but, rather, subjected to a more coercive version of ordinary life. Geltner explores every facet of this remarkable prison experience--from the terror of an inmate's arrest to the moment of his release, escape, or death--and the ways it was viewed by contemporary observers.

The Medieval Prison rewrites penal history and reveals that medieval society did not have a "persecuting mentality" but in fact was more nuanced in defining and dealing with its marginal elements than is commonly recognized.

Writers Read: Guy Geltner.

--Marshal Zeringue