What is J.T. Ellison reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: J.T. Ellison, author of the critically acclaimed Taylor Jackson series: All the Pretty Girls, 14, and Judas Kiss.

One paragraph from her entry:

The holidays have just ended, which means I’ve done my annual revamp of my writing system and set my goals for the year. Every Christmas, I take a week off from writing and focus on the art of the craft. First up is Stephen King’s glorious On Writing, one of the best writing books out there. By the end of the year, I’ve become so bogged down with deadlines and To Do lists that I stop reading for pleasure. King’s book helps me refocus, gives me permission to read what I want, to enjoy the art of reading for its own sake instead of simply for research. It’s invaluable advice, because I find that when I’m reading, I write cleaner and more voraciously.[read on]

Visit J.T. Ellison's website and MySpace page.

The Page 69 Test: All the Pretty Girls.

The Page 99 Test: 14.

The Page 69 Test: 14.

The Page 99 Test: Judas Kiss.

Writers Read: J.T. Ellison.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: David Lozell Martin's "Losing Everything"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Losing Everything by David Lozell Martin.

About the book, from the publisher:

In Losing Everything, his first book of nonfiction, acclaimed novelist David Lozell Martin tells his wildest, most outlandish story yet -- his own.

One evening in the mountainous forest of his isolated West Virginia farmhouse, Martin became disoriented when searching for a horse who had wandered off the property. Wading through the dark and guiding his horse with a belt around its neck, Martin felt as though every step was taking him deeper into the mountains. Instead, he unknowingly spent the night walking in a wide circle that brought him back to where he started. This quickly became a metaphor for Martin's life. "The more lost I get, the closer to home I come."

After growing up with a violent father who nearly killed Martin's clinically insane mother, Martin pursued a writer's life with a vengeance, becoming vulnerable to struggles with alcohol, financial ruin, and legal feuds. Then, after a betrayal by his soul mate, Martin's sanity was in as much jeopardy as his mother's had ever been -- a state of mind that in his case led to gunfire, divorce, and at least one trip to the emergency room.

But Losing Everything is less about getting lost and more about finding your way home again. In his pursuit of stability, Martin uncovered lessons that might help others who have encountered loss: take pleasure in something as small as an ampersand, keep a list of people you know who have died, meet your own death like a warrior, and be glad you don't own a monkey.

Deeply personal yet surprisingly universal, Martin's story is for anyone who has wandered astray. If not a road map, his journey is a guide, providing hard-earned wisdom to illuminate the path home.

Learn more about Losing Everything at the publisher's website, and read Dwight Garner's review in the New York Times.

David Lozell Martin's novels include 2007's Our American King, the international bestsellers Lie to Me and Tap, and the critically acclaimed The Crying Heart Tattoo, The Beginning of Sorrows, and Crazy Love. Of Facing Rushmore (2005), Martin's eleventh book, Elmore Leonard said, "What I like best about a David Martin suspense novel -- and it will grab you, I guarantee -- is that the man knows how to write."

The Page 69 Test: Our American King.

The Page 69 Test: Losing Everything.

--Marshal Zeringue

Michael Wiley’s "The Last Striptease," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: The Last Striptease by Michael Wiley.

The entry begins:

I wrote The Last Striptease with the big screen in mind but didn’t think about real actors until I’d finished.

My private detective, Joe Kozmarski, is a six-foot-tall Polish-American in his mid-forties. He looks sort of like Rod Blagojevich but with abs and a haircut. One of the other characters, who’s trying to flirt with him, sees in him “a little of Robert De Niro and a lot of Bill Murray.” But De Niro and Murray have too much sheen – and Blagojevich is probably going to jail – so, given the chance, I would cast Russell Crowe as Joe. Joe is a lifelong Chicagoan and he’s constantly making and sometimes overcoming mistakes. Crowe grew up in New Zealand and Australia, but he got arrested in New York for throwing a telephone at a man – which is something that Joe might do (in fact, he more or less does do in Bad Kitty Lounge).

For Joe’s ex-wife Corrine...[read on]

Read an excerpt from The Last Striptease, and learn more about the book and author at Michael Wiley's website.

Wiley’s The Last Striptease (St. Martin’s Press) received the Best First Novel award from the Private Eye Writers of American and St. Martin’s in 2007 as was nominated for a Shamus in the same category in 2008. His Bad Kitty Lounge is forthcoming.

The Page 69 Test: The Last Striptease.

My Book, The Movie: The Last Striptease.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five best: books about high society

Meryl Gordon, author of Mrs. Astor Regrets: The Hidden Betrayals of a Family Beyond Reproach, compiled a list of the five best "chronicles of high society" for the Wall Street Journal.

One title to make her list:

Little Gloria . . . Happy at Last
By Barbara Goldsmith
Knopf, 1980

Hard to believe that a custody battle among the rich and famous in the 1930s would still prove riveting, but social historian Barbara Goldsmith's best-selling account of the fight over young Gloria Vanderbilt stands the test of time. For those who know Vanderbilt now primarily as the mother of CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, or vaguely remember her as the woman who launched the trend of socialite designer jeans, this book will be a revelation. It is a well-written tale of the cruelties inflicted on a famously wealthy and frightened child. Alternating between the two perpetrators -- Gloria's widowed, frivolous and financially strapped mother and her domineering aunt -- Goldsmith creates a suspense-filled saga as well as a richly reported portrait of society in a bygone era.

Read about another book on Gordon's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: J.T. Ellison's "Judas Kiss"

This weekend's feature at the Page 99 Test: Judas Kiss by J.T. Ellison.

About the book, from the publisher:

Sex, lies and videotape.

It was a murder made for TV: a trail of tiny bloody footprints. An innocent toddler playing beside her mother's bludgeoned body. Pretty young Corinne Wolff, seven months pregnant, brutally murdered in her own home.

Cameras and questions don't usually phase Nashville Homicide Lieutenant Taylor Jackson, but the media frenzy surrounding the Wolff case is particularly nasty...and thorough. When the seemingly model mommy is linked to an amateur porn website with underage actresses and unwitting players, the sharks begin to circle.

The shock is magnified when an old adversary uses the sexy secret footage to implicate Taylor in a murder--an accusation that threatens her career, her reputation and her relationship.

Both cases hinge on the evidence--real or manufactured--of crimes that go beyond passion, into the realm of obsessive vengeance and shocking betrayal. Just what the networks love.

Learn more about the book and author at J.T. Ellison's website and MySpace page.

The Page 69 Test: All the Pretty Girls.

The Page 99 Test: 14.

The Page 69 Test: 14.

The Page 99 Test: Judas Kiss.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Hallie Ephron's "Never Tell A Lie"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Never Tell A Lie by Hallie Ephron.

About the book, from the publisher:

It all started with the yard sale. Ivy was eight months and one week pregnant when she insisted that she and her husband, David, clean out the junk they'd inherited with the old Victorian house they'd bought three years before. Call it nesting, call it nerves—she just wanted it all gone: the old electrical fixtures, the boxes of National Geographics from the 1960s, the four black wool greatcoats.

Neither she nor David recognized the woman at first. But it turned out that the customer asking about the lime-green glass swan dish—the woman who looks just about as pregnant as Ivy—was none other than Melinda White, a former high school classmate of David and Ivy's. When Melinda was a child she used to play in their new house, she explained. It looked like they'd been doing some work. Would it be all right if she took a look around? David took Melinda inside. And she never came out.

Now David's under police suspicion, and Ivy finds herself digging deep into the past to clear his name. But David's history, she begins to discover, is not necessarily the history she remembers, and before long Ivy has uncovered a twisted web of deceit, betrayal, and lies, both the ones we tell those we love and the ones we tell ourselves....

Relentlessly fast-paced and disturbingly creepy, Never Tell a Lie is a page-turning thrill ride about how well we know the people we love, and how far we are willing to go to protect the secrets of our past.

Browse inside Never Tell A Lie, and learn more about the novel and author at Hallie Ephron's website and blog.

Hallie Ephron is an award-winning mystery reviewer for the Boston Globe. She is the author of 1001 Books for Every Mood and Writing and Selling Your Mystery, which was nominated for both an Edgar and an Anthony award.

The Page 69 Test: Never Tell A Lie.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Steven Cramer reading?

This weekend's featured contributor to Writers Read: Steven Cramer, author of four poetry collections.

Part of his entry:

I’ve been reading and rereading Jonathan Weinert's first book of poetry, In the Mode of Disappearance (Nightboat Books, 2008), one of the thornier and more rewarding first collections I've encountered in long awhile. It's hard to write about poetry—which is an event of language or it is nothing—without quoting. From "Suave": "If I could climb into death now/as into a foreign car, where/in all of France would you drive me?" Who wouldn't want to read on? Suave, indeed.

Weinert is a difficult poet influenced by difficult poets—Blake, Stevens—and he takes an angular, often oblique approach to his subjects. His imagery, diction, and syntax, though, are always acute....[read on]

Steven Cramer's four poetry collections are The Eye that Desires to Look Upward (1987), The World Book (1992), Dialogue for the Left and Right Hand (1997), and Goodbye to the Orchard (2004), which won the 2005 Sheila Motton Prize from the New England Poetry Club, and was named a 2005 Honor Book in Poetry by the Massachusetts Center for the Book.

Recipient of fellowships from the Massachusetts Artists Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, he currently directs the Low-Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at Lesley University in Cambridge.

Visit Steven Cramer's website and read many of his poems available online.

Writers Read: Steven Cramer.

--Marshal Zeringue

Best books: Bill Maher

In October 2008, The Week ran a best books list from the host of HBO’s Real Time With Bill Maher.

A great book on his list--with a very odd justification for including it:

Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

I haven’t actually read this one, but I’ve heard such good things I thought I should mention it.

Read about another book on Maher's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: G. Lock and D. Murray's "The Hearing Eye"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: The Hearing Eye: Jazz & Blues Influences in African American Visual Art, edited by Graham Lock and David Murray.

About The Hearing Eye, from the publisher:

The widespread presence of jazz and blues in African American visual art has long been overlooked. The Hearing Eye makes the case for recognizing the music's importance, both as formal template and as explicit subject matter. Moving on from the use of iconic musical figures and motifs in Harlem Renaissance art, this groundbreaking collection explores the more allusive - and elusive - references to jazz and blues in a wide range of mostly contemporary visual artists.

There are scholarly essays on the painters Rose Piper (Graham Lock), Norman Lewis (Sara Wood), Bob Thompson (Richard H. King), Romare Bearden (Robert G. O'Meally, Johannes Völz) and Jean-Michel Basquiat (Robert Farris Thompson), as well an account of early blues advertising art (Paul Oliver) and a discussion of the photographs of Roy DeCarava (Richard Ings). These essays are interspersed with a series of in-depth interviews by Graham Lock, who talks to quilter Michael Cummings and painters Sam Middleton, Wadsworth Jarrell, Joe Overstreet and Ellen Banks about their musical inspirations, and also looks at art's reciprocal effect on music in conversation with saxophonists Marty Ehrlich and Jane Ira Bloom.

With numerous illustrations both in the book and on its companion website, The Hearing Eye reaffirms the significance of a fascinating and dynamic aspect of African American visual art that has been too long neglected.

Read more about The Hearing Eye on the Oxford University Press web site.

An excerpt from the book, in which Joe Overstreet discusses his painting Strange Fruit, is available in the December 2008 issue of the online magazine Point of Departure.

Graham Lock is a freelance writer, Special Lecturer in American Music, University of Nottingham, and author, Forces in Motion: Anthony Braxton and the Meta-reality of Creative Music, Chasing the Vibration: Meetings with Creative Musicians, and Blutopia: Visions of the Future and Revisions of the Past in the Work of Sun Ra, Duke Ellington and Anthony Braxton, and editor, Mixtery: A Festschrift for Anthony Braxton.

David Murray is Professor of American Studies, University of Nottingham, and author, Indian Giving: Economies of Power in Early Indian-White Exchanges, Forked Tongues: Speech, Writing and Representation in North American Indian Texts, and Matter, Magic and Spirit: Representing Indian and African American Belief.

The Page 99 Test: Thriving on a Riff.

The Page 99 Test: The Hearing Eye.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Simon Lewis' "Bad Traffic"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Bad Traffic by Simon Lewis.

About the book, from the publisher:

Inspector Jian is a tough Chinese cop who thinks he's seen it all. But his search for his missing daughter takes him to the meanest streets he's ever faced -- in rural England.

Migrant worker Ding Ming is distressed -- his gang master is making demands, he owes a lot of money to the snakeheads, and no one will tell him where his wife has been taken. Maybe England isn't the Gold Mountain he was promised.

Two desperate men, lost in a baffling foreign land, are pitted against a ruthless band of human traffickers in this breathtaking thriller.

Read an excerpt from Bad Traffic and learn more about the book and author at Simon Lewis' website and blog.

Simon Lewis was born in Wales and grew up in Scotland. He is the author of the Rough Guides to China, Beijing, and Shanghai, and the backpacker novel Go, which he wrote in a village in the Himalayas. He spends half his time in Brixton, London, and the rest in Asia, mostly China and Japan.

The Page 69 Test: Bad Traffic.

--Marshal Zeringue

Books about the media: critic's chart

George Brock, International Editor of the Times (London), named six favorite books about the media.

One title on his list:

Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky

Not confined to media, but explains the digital revolution better than any other book.

Read about another book on Brock's chart.

Here Comes Everybody also appeared on a critic's chart of books with big ideas.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Kathleen M. Blee reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Kathleen M. Blee, Distinguished Professor & Chair of the Department of Sociology at the University of Pittsburgh.

Her entry begins:

I just finished Kwame Anthony Appiah’s terrific book, Experiments in Ethics (2008, Harvard University Press) which explores when people behave in accord with their sense of morality and when they do not. What I found particularly valuable is his distinction between an honest person and a person that behaves honestly across a range of circumstances. Too often....[read on]

Kathleen Blee's books include Inside Organized Racism: Women in the Hate Movement and Women of The Klan: Racism and Gender in the 1920s, now available in paperback with a new preface.

About Women of the Klan, from the publisher:

Ignorant. Brutal. Male. One of these stereotypes of the Ku Klux Klan offers a misleading picture. In Women of the Klan, sociologist Kathleen M. Blee dismantles the popular notion that politically involved women are always inspired by pacifism, equality, and justice. In her new preface, Blee reflects on how recent scholarship on gender and right-wing extremism suggests new ways to understand women's place in the 1920s Klan's crusade for white and Christian supremacy.

Learn more about Kathleen Blee's teaching and research at her faculty webpage.

Writers Read: Kathleen M. Blee.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: G. Lock and D. Murray's "Thriving on a Riff"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Thriving on a Riff: Jazz & Blues Influences in African American Literature and Film, edited by Graham Lock and David Murray.

About Thriving on a Riff, from the publisher:

From the Harlem Renaissance to the present, African American writers have drawn on the rich heritage of jazz and blues, transforming musical forms into the written word. In this companion volume to The Hearing Eye, distinguished contributors ranging from Bertram Ashe to Steven C. Tracy explore the musical influence on such writers as Sterling Brown, J.J. Phillips, Paul Beatty, and Nathaniel Mackey. Here, too, are Graham Lock's engaging interviews with contemporary poets Michael S. Harper and Jayne Cortez, along with studies of the performing self, in Krin Gabbard's account of Miles Davis and John Gennari's investigation of fictional and factual versions of Charlie Parker. The book also looks at African Americans in and on film, from blackface minstrelsy to the efforts of Duke Ellington and John Lewis to rescue jazz from its stereotyping in Hollywood film scores as a signal for sleaze and criminality. Concluding with a proposal by Michael Jarrett for a new model of artistic influence, Thriving on a Riff makes the case for the seminal cross-cultural role of jazz and blues.

Read more about Thriving on a Riff on the Oxford University Press web site.

An excerpt from the book, in which Krin Gabbard discusses Miles Davis’s autobiography, will appear in the February 2009 issue of the online magazine Point of Departure.

Graham Lock is a freelance writer, Special Lecturer in American Music, University of Nottingham, and author, Forces in Motion: Anthony Braxton and the Meta-reality of Creative Music, Chasing the Vibration: Meetings with Creative Musicians, and Blutopia: Visions of the Future and Revisions of the Past in the Work of Sun Ra, Duke Ellington and Anthony Braxton, and editor, Mixtery: A Festschrift for Anthony Braxton.

David Murray is Professor of American Studies, University of Nottingham, and author, Indian Giving: Economies of Power in Early Indian-White Exchanges, Forked Tongues: Speech, Writing and Representation in North American Indian Texts, and Matter, Magic and Spirit: Representing Indian and African American Belief.

The Page 99 Test: The Hearing Eye.

The Page 99 Test: Thriving on a Riff.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jeffrey Hantover’s “The Jewel Trader of Pegu,” the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: Jeffrey Hantover’s The Jewel Trader of Pegu.

The entry begins:

As a writer in these dark economic days with royalties far south of John Grisham’s, I follow a prudent investment strategy – I buy weekly lottery tickets and daydream who will star in the movie of my book. An East-West love story set in 16th century Venice and a Burmese city turned to ashes will not come cheap, but I keep dreaming and have a neighborhood tailor on call ready to let out my tux for Oscar night.

When writing The Jewel Trader of Pegu, Adrien Brody was always Abraham, the tall, melancholy Venetian Jew who reluctantly travels to Pegu to buy stones for his uncle. In his Academy Award winning performance in The Pianist and the recent Cadillac Records, we sense beneath Brody’s angular face a churning inner world. He could with a simple expression or glance convey Abraham’s doubts and ethical turmoil.

For Mya, the Peguan peasant woman whose love redeems Abraham...[read on]

Read an excerpt from The Jewel Trader of Pegu, and learn more about the author and his work at Jeffrey Hantover's website.

The Jewel Trader of Pegu, now available in paperback.

Browse inside the paperback with its P.S. section of insights, interviews and more.

The Page 69 Test: The Jewel Trader of Pegu.

My Book, The Movie: The Jewel Trader of Pegu.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Bill Cameron's "Chasing Smoke"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Chasing Smoke by Bill Cameron.

About the book, from the publisher:

Portland homicide detective Skin Kadash just wants to survive cancer treatment so he can get back to work he loves. But when his partner tries to drag him into an unofficial investigation of a series of deaths, he’s not interested — he’s dead-dog sick and doesn’t need the grief — until she reveals the victims all suffered from cancer themselves, and all had one thing in common with Skin. His oncologist.

The police have closed the books on the deaths, all apparent suicides, yet a mysterious young woman, daughter of the first victim, surfaces and insists that the dead men were all murdered. Before her story can be probed more deeply, she disappears, leaving Kadash with no support from the cops and little to go on except a nagging belief the missing woman knew more than she revealed.

Kadash is left to chase elusive leads among the bitter and broken widows of the dead men. Struggling with his own illness and with a growing rift between himself and his partner, Kadash finds himself entangled in a web of resentment, jealousy, and deceit. Ultimately, he finds that not is he only seeking a missing woman and the truth about the dead men, but also the meaning of his own life in the face of his impending mortality.

Read an excerpt from Chasing Smoke and view the video trailer.

Visit Bill Cameron's website and blog.

Cameron's debut mystery is Lost Dog; his stories have appeared in Portland Noir, Killer Year, and elsewhere.

The Page 69 Test: Lost Dog.

My Book, The Movie: Lost Dog.

The Page 69 Test: Chasing Smoke.

--Marshal Zeringue

Best books of 2008: January Magazine

One title from January Magazine's best books of 2008 list:

The Toss of A Lemon by Padma Viswanathan (Harcourt) 640 pages

Padma Viswasathan’s debut novel pads in on little cat feet and rips you along. You don’t realize you’re on an epic journey in the midst of a generational saga until you’re well along and it’s far, far too late to turn back. Not that you’d want to. Not that you even could. Inspired by the author’s own family history, we join Sivakami in a village in India in 1892, the year of her marriage to the healer, Hanumarathnam. She is ten. What astonishes here is Viswasathan’s virtuosity. In The Toss of A Lemon, we join India at a time of great social and political upheaval. Nevertheless, we experience this only at a distance. The way, in fact, Sivakami might experience it. Our concerns are more immediate, more domestic, though never more mundane. The marriage of a daughter, a granddaughter. The obedience of a son-in-law. The disturbingly progressive thoughts of a son. These concern Sivakami exclusively and, with her as our proxy, they are all that concern us, as well. -- Linda L. Richards

Read about another title among January Magazine's selections.

Related: crime fiction maven J. Kingston Pierce, editor of The Rap Sheet and contributor to January Magazine, named his top 10 crime novels of 2008.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Michael Welland's "Sand"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Sand: The Never-Ending Story by Michael Welland.

About the book, from the publisher:

From individual grains to desert dunes, from the bottom of the sea to the landscapes of Mars, and from billions of years in the past to the future, this is the extraordinary story of one of nature's humblest, most powerful, and most ubiquitous materials. Told by a geologist with a novelist's sense of language and narrative, Sand examines the science—sand forensics, the physics of granular materials, sedimentology, paleontology and archaeology, planetary exploration—and at the same time explores the rich human context of sand. Interwoven with tales of artists, mathematicians, explorers, and even a vampire, the story of sand is an epic of environmental construction and destruction, an adventure in staggering scales of time and distance, yet a tale that encompasses the ordinary and everyday. Sand, in fact, is all around us—it has made possible our computers, buildings and windows, toothpaste, cosmetics, and paper, and it has played dramatic roles in human history, commerce, and imagination. In this luminous, kinetic, revelatory account, we do indeed find the world in a grain of sand.

Learn more about the book and author at Michael Welland's blog, "Through the Sandglass."

Welland is a geologist who has worked around the world in the energy industry. He is a fellow of the Geological Societies of America and London and the Royal Society for the Arts and Commerce.

The Page 99 Test: Sand: The Never-Ending Story.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Katy Lederer reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Katy Lederer, author of the poetry collections Winter Sex and The Heaven-Sent Leaf, and the memoir Poker Face: A Girlhood Among Gamblers.

One paragraph from her entry:

I have been avidly reading Paul Krugman in the New York Times. His rancor over what has happened bothers me (why not this rancor and deep analysis of the mechanics of Wall Street while the boom was still happening--when it might have done some good?), but his opinions on what Obama should do about the economy once he gets into office are fascinating to read about.[read on]

Visit Katy Lederer's website and read some of her poems online.

Lederer's poems and prose have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Harvard Review, GQ, and elsewhere.

She has been anthologized in Body Electric (Norton), From Poe to the Present: Great American Prose Poems (Scribner), and State of the Union (Wave Books), among other compilations.

Publishers Weekly included Poker Face on its list of the Best Nonfiction Books of the Year and Esquire Magazine named one of its eight Best Books of the Year.

Writers Read: Katy Lederer.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: M. Bart & L. Corona's "Until Our Last Breath"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Until Our Last Breath: A Holocaust Story of Love and Partisan Resistance by Michael Bart and Laurel Corona.

About the book, from the publisher:

At Leizer Bart’s funeral, one of the mourners told his son Michael that the gravestone should include a reference to the Freedom Fighters of Nekamah, to honor his late father’s involvement in the Jewish resistance movement in Vilna (now Vilnius), Lithuania, at the end of World War II. Michael had never heard of the Freedom Fighters.

Following his father’s death, and with his mother in failing health, Michael embarked on a ten-year research project to find out more details about his parents’ time in the Vilna ghetto, where they met, fell in love, and married, and about their activities as members of the Jewish resistance. Until Our Last Breath is the culmination of his research, and his parents’ story of love and survival is seamlessly tied into the collective story of the Vilna ghetto, the partisans of Vilna, and the wider themes of world history.

Zenia, Bart’s mother, was born and raised in Vilna. Leizer fled there to escape the Nazi invasion of his hometown of Hrubieshov in Poland. They were married by one of the last remaining rabbis ninety days before the liquidation of the ghetto. Leizer was friends with Zionist leader Abba Kovner and became a member of the Vilna ghetto underground. Shortly before the total liquidation of the ghetto, Zenia and Leizer, along with about 120 members of the underground, were able to escape to the Rudnicki forest, about 25 miles away. They became part of the Jewish partisan fighting group led by Abba Kovner—known as the Avengers—which carried out sabotage missions against the Nazi army and eventually participated in the liberation of Vilna.

Until Our Last Breath is intensely personal and painstakingly researched, a lasting memorial to the Jews of Vilna, including the resistance fighters and the author’s family.

Visit Michael Bart's website.

Visit Laurel Corona's website and blog, and read the Page 69 Test entry for her novel, The Four Seasons.

The Page 99 Test: Until Our Last Breath.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Stewart O'Nan's "Songs for the Missing"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Songs for the Missing by Stewart O'Nan.

About the book, from the publisher:

An enthralling portrait of one family in the aftermath of a daughter’s disappearance.

It was the summer of her Chevette, of J.P. and letting her hair grow. It was also the summer when, without warning, popular high school student Kim Larsen disappeared from her small midwestern town. Her loving parents, her introverted sister, her friends and boyfriend must now do everything they can to find her. As desperate search parties give way to pleading television appearances, and private investigations yield to personal revelations, we see one town’s intimate struggle to maintain hope and, finally, to live with the unknown.

Stewart O’Nan’s new novel begins with the suspense and pacing of a thriller and soon deepens into an affecting family drama of loss. On the heels of his critically acclaimed and nationally bestselling Last Night at the Lobster, Songs for the Missing is an honest, heartfelt account of one family’s attempt to find their child. With a soulful empathy for these ordinary heroes, O’Nan draws us into the world of this small American town and allows us to feel a part of this family.

Listen to an excerpt from Songs for the Missing, and learn more about the author and his work at Stewart O'Nan's website.

Stewart O'Nan's novels include Snow Angels, The Speed Queen, A Prayer for the Dying, and Last Night at the Lobster. His works of nonfiction include the bestselling book with Stephen King on the Boston Red Sox, Faithful. Granta named him one of the twenty Best Young American Novelists in 1995.

The Page 69 Test: Songs for the Missing.

--Marshal Zeringue

Best collections of literary letters 2008

For National Public Radio, Troy Patterson selected the year's best collections of literary letters, genuine and otherwise.

One title on his list:

Dear American Airlines, by Jonathan Miles

Employing a highly risky device to deeply rewarding effect, Miles structures his first novel as a harangue handwritten during a torturous airport delay. As protagonist Benjamin Ford writes to request a refund in the amount of $392.68, the titular salutation develops into a ritual incantation — "Dear American Airlines, enclosed please find my sciatic nerve" — and the howl of complaint builds into a vibrantly bellowing, Saul-Bellowing confession. Bennie, profane and pithy, itches to make it to Los Angeles to reunite with his daughter, whom he hasn't seen since she was an infant, and walk her down the aisle at her "commitment ceremony." This is an account of how life deposited him in the purgatory of O'Hare. The narrative pushes full-thrust through droll remembrance and weathered self-remonstrance, the author hitting the jets with a confidence that lets us take his wild comedy very sincerely.

Read about another collection to make the list.

The Page 69 Test: Dear American Airlines.

--Marshal Zeringue

Per Petterson in "The Guardian"

From Per Petterson's interview by James Campbell in the Guardian:

"When I started Out Stealing Horses, I had no idea that the war would be in that book. Then some friction crept in - an unease between the two fathers. And I thought to myself: what can that be? Well, this is the 1940s. It has to be something about the war. Shit. I'll have to write about the war. Then I have to do research, and I hate research. Of course, now it seems that the war is essential to the story."

Read the complete interview.

See Ray Taras' reviews of Per Petterson's Out Stealing Horses and To Siberia.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Jennifer Ouellette reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Jennifer Ouellette, author of Black Bodies and Quantum Cats: Tales From the Annals of Physics (2006) and The Physics of the Buffyverse (2007).

One paragraph from her entry:

For bedtime reading, I prefer non-fiction with shorter chapters -- if I get TOO engrossed in a novel, I'll stay up all night to finish it, which really isn't the point of bedtime reading. Most recently, I've read Barack Obama's Dreams from My Father, a highly literate memoir that makes me proud and a bit awed that such an eloquent, thoughtful person is going to be our next president. Mary Roach's Bonk was a sheer delight, particularly the hilarious footnotes -- you definitely don't want to miss those. Tom Parker-Bowles' The Year of Eating Dangerously was interesting and amusing, but the vivid accounts of all that gastronomic excess (he claims he gained 20 or so pounds while writing the book) made me feel a bit ill by proxy -- so perhaps not the best bedtime reading. Right now I'm working my way through Steve Dublanica's Waiter Rant, about the dark side of waiting tables in a trendy Manhattan bistro -- based on a popular blog of the same name.[read on]

Jennifer Ouellette is associate editor of APS News, the monthly publication of The American Physical Society; and writes for the American Institute of Physics’ TV project, Discoveries and Breakthroughs in Science, as well as its Inside Science News Service. She was also a contributing editor for the now-defunct The Industrial Physicist magazine; a 1997 article on concert hall acoustics garnered her an award in science writing from the Acoustical Society of America.

Ouellette writes about science in the popular press, most notably for Discover, Salon, New Scientist, and On Earth. She holds a black belt in jujitsu.

Learn more about Jennifer Ouellette at her website and at the popular general science blog, Cocktail Party Physics.

Writers Read: Jennifer Ouellette.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Mark Wolverton's "A Life in Twilight"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: A Life in Twilight: The Final Years of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Mark Wolverton.

About the book, from the publisher:

A Life in Twilight reveals the least-known and most enigmatic period of J. Robert Oppenheimer’s life, from the public humiliation he endured after the 1954 Atomic Energy Commission’s investigation into his alleged communist leanings and connections to his death in 1967. It covers Oppenheimer’s continued work as a scientist and philosopher and head of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, his often controversial public appearances, as well as parts of his private life.

What emerges is a portrait of a man who was toppled from the highest echelons of politics and society, had to see his honor and name blackened, but succeeded in maintaining his dignity and rebuilding a shattered life, although he never truly recovered from the McCarthy-inspired persecution he suffered. Previously unpublished FBI files round out the picture and cast a sinister cloud over Oppenheimer’s final years, during which he remained under occasional surveillance.

Mark Wolverton has succeeded in presenting an evenhanded and very well- researched account of a life that ended in twilight. It reads like a written version of the acclaimed film Good Night, and Good Luck, and indeed Murrow’s interview with Oppenheimer is one of the central elements of the story.

A Life in Twilight is an important exploration, not only of a prominent scientist and philosopher, but also of an unforgettable era in American history.

Watch the video preview of A Life in Twilight.

Learn more about the author and his work at Mark Wolverton's website.

Mark Wolverton is the author of The Depths of Space and The Science of Superman. His articles on science, technology, and history have appeared in Scientific American, American Heritage of Invention & Technology, Air & Space Smithsonian, Skeptical Inquirer, Quest, and American History, among other magazines.

The Page 99 Test: A Life in Twilight.

--Marshal Zeringue

J.M. Hayes' Mad Dog & Englishman series, the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: J.M. Hayes' Mad Dog & Englishman series.

The entry begins:

A rural Kansas sheriff, his oddball-born-again Cheyenne brother, and their efforts to solve the rare crimes of a small community are the essence of the Mad Dog & Englishman series. But when those crimes hit, it's with a Murphy's Law kind of fury—everything that can go wrong will. I'm delighted to make casting suggestions for the series, especially since I have nothing better to do while I wait by the phone for the Coen Brothers to call.

There aren't many actors who do bald leading men or who are willing to shave their heads the way Mad Dog does since his hair is just too curly for braids. So Bruce Willis gets the nod. Mad Dog was a local football hero. That makes Willis' muscular frame appropriate. And Willis is about the right age for the beginning of the series. Let's just hope he doesn't mind donning a pair of Speedos and slathering himself with body paint for the vision quest scenes.

Englishman, aka Benteen County's Sheriff English, is harder to cast. If we could...[read on]

Learn more about the books and author at The Words & Worlds of J.M. Hayes website.

J.M. Hayes is also the author of The Grey Pilgrim (2000), Mad Dog & Englishman (2000), Prairie Gothic (2003), Plains Crazy (2004), Broken Heartland (2007) and, coming in May 2009, Server Down.

The Page 69 Test: Broken Heartland.

My Book, The Movie: J.M. Hayes' Mad Dog & Englishman series.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five best: books about Cold War culture

Daniel Johnson, the editor of Standpoint and author of White King and Red Queen: How the Cold War Was Fought on the Chessboard, named a five best list of books about Cold War culture for the Wall Street Journal.

One title on his list:

The Master and Margarita
by Mikhail Bulgakov
Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky; Penguin, 1997

In many respects, Mikhail Bulgakov's "The Master and Margarita" is a Cold War book, even though it was written between 1928 and the author's death in 1940. The novel was not published until 1966-67 in the Russian journal Moskva (Moscow), and even then the editors cut about 60 pages, which soon enough made their way into samizdat publications. This scathing satire on every aspect of life under Stalin immediately caused a sensation. Today, Bulgakov's riotously funny Faustian tale of the Devil arriving in Moscow has lost none of its freshness. The boldness of the conception is demonstrated by the contrast Bulgakov provides between the phantasmagorical nightmare of Soviet totalitarianism and the stark reality of the execution of Jesus as seen through the eyes of Pontius Pilate -- a story within the novel's story.

Read about the book that topped Johnson's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Brian Raftery's "Don't Stop Believin'"

This weekend's feature at the Page 69 Test: Don't Stop Believin': How Karaoke Conquered the World and Saved My Life by Brian Raftery.

About the book, from the publisher:

Armed with a keen eye and a terrible singing voice, writer Brian Raftery sets out across the globe, tracing karaoke's evolution from cult fad to multi-million dollar phenomenon. In Japan, he meets Daisuke Inoue, the godfather of karaoke; in Thailand, he follows a group of Americans hoping to win the Karaoke World Championships; and in New York City, he hangs out backstage with the world's longest-running heavy-metal karaoke band. Along the way, Raftery chronicles his own time as an obsessive karaoke fan, recalling a life's worth of noisy relationships and poor song choices, and analyzing the karaoke-bar merits of such artists as Prince, Bob Dylan and Fugazi. Part cultural history, part memoir, Don't Stop Believin': How Karaoke Conquered the World and Changed My Life is a hilarious and densely reported look at the liberating effects of a good sing-along.

Read an excerpt from Don’t Stop Believin’ and learn more about the book and author at Brian Raftery's website.

Brian Raftery's features, profiles, and criticism have appeared in such publications as Wired, Spin, GQ, and Entertainment Weekly. His favorite karaoke song is Night Ranger's "Sister Christian."

Watch the Don’t Stop Believin’ video.

The Page 69 Test: Don't Stop Believin'.

--Marshal Zeringue

Asia's best books, 2008: WSJ

John Krich compiled the Wall Street Journal's list of Asia's best books of 2008.

One book on the list:

BEIJING COMA
Ma Jian

Since 2008 was the year of Beijing's Olympics -- its coming-out party -- here's another, even more dissident view of the city's reality.

Seven years in the making, this is bitter exile Ma Jian's magnum opus: a brilliant argument for the facts as only fiction can tell. A disembodied mind sifts through memories and ideals where individuality has been reduced to the ultimate form of powerlessness -- along the way, almost incidentally, offering the most insightful depiction of the 1989 Tiananmen Square revolt to come along thus far.

"Beijing Coma" is as telling in its tiniest details of grubby Chinese domesticity and callous family relations as it is sweeping in its metaphor of the country's promising democracy movement reduced, like the quasi-comatose narrator, to a paralyzed, vegetal state.

Read about another book on the Journal's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Joan Wickersham reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Joan Wickersham, author of The Suicide Index: Putting My Father's Death in Order.

Her entry begins:

I'm reading Great Expectations, for what I think is the fourth time. Of all the books I know, this one seems to expand the most with each re-reading. What I'm seeing this time is the perfect balance between self-delusion and self-awareness. You have patience with Pip's follies and vanities because...[read on]

Read reviews and an excerpt from The Suicide Index.

Among the praise for The Suicide Index:

[A] remarkable memoir... she exposes the whole messy territory of inheritance, of heritage, of what our families leave us, the treacherous trail of genetics and psychology and unhappiness, the legacy of all those generations as they play out in ways that we can see and ways that we will never see across the patterns of our lives. . . true in a way that transcends mere recollection ... [S]he arrives at an almost perfect balance, producing a survivor's story, a portrait of suicide from the outside, one that finds clarity in its inability to be clarified.
--David Ulin, Los Angeles Times

Wickersham also wrote the novel The Paper Anniversary, and her fiction has appeared in magazines including AGNI, Glimmer Train, the Hudson Review, Ploughshares, and Story, and has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories. She has published essays in Glamour, Yankee, and the Boston Globe, and she has contributed and read on-air essays for National Public Radio’s On Point and Morning Edition.

Learn more about Joan Wickersham and her work at her website.

Writers Read: Joan Wickersham.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Jan Zalasiewicz's "The Earth After Us"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: The Earth After Us: What Legacy Will Humans Leave in the Rocks?, by Jan Zalasiewicz.

About the book, from the publisher:

Geologist Jan Zalasiewicz takes the reader on a fascinating trip one hundred million years into the future--long after the human race becomes extinct--to explore what will remain of our brief but dramatic sojourn on Earth. He describes how geologists in the far future might piece together the history of the planet, and slowly decipher the history of humanity from the traces we will leave impressed in the rock strata. What story will the rocks tell of us? What kind of fossils will humans leave behind? What will happen to cities, cars, and plastic cups? The trail leads finally to the bones of the inhabitants of petrified cities that have slept deep underground for many millions of years. As thought-provoking as it is engaging, this book simultaneously explains the geological mechanisms that shape our planet, from fossilization to plate tectonics, illuminates the various ingenious ways in which geologists and paleontologist work, and offers a final perspective on humanity and its actions that may prove to be more objective than any other.

Learn more about The Earth After Us at the Oxford University Press website.

Jan Zalasiewicz is a Lecturer in Geology at the University of Leicester, before that working at the British Geological Survey. A field geologist, palaeontologist and stratigrapher, he teaches various aspects of geology and Earth history to undergraduate and postgraduate students, and is a researcher into fossil ecosystems and environments across over half a billion years of geological time. He has published over a hundred papers in scientific journals.

The Page 99 Test: The Earth After Us.

--Marshal Zeringue

The Independent: best books of 2008

Britain's Independent asked its "critics and favourite writers [to] pick the fiction and non-fiction that will stand the test of time."

A sample of the findings:

Christopher Fowler

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga (Atlantic), an assured first novel and Man Booker winner, was rightly acclaimed. It's about an India that can't provide sanitation or discipline, yet is filled with entrepreneurs.

In Churchill's Wizards by Nicholas Rankin (Faber), the truth is out: we won the war through bluff, trickery, turning the road-signs around, hiding large objects and dressing up. It's a true account of wartime deceit that's very English.

Don't be put off by the fact that Malcolm Gladwell is a global phenomenon. Outliers: The Story of Success (Allen Lane), an encapsulation of his populist thinking, goes only part of the way toward explaining why some people are so successful, but it's a great read.

Read the complete feature.

Related:

• The Page 69 Test: Christopher Fowler's The Victoria Vanishes.
• The Page 69 Test: Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Mark Budman's "My Life at First Try"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: My Life at First Try by Mark Budman.

About the book, from the publisher:

In this semi-autobiographical debut novel, Mark Budman chronicles the life of Alex, a boy born in Siberia in 1950. Short chapters—sometimes hilarious, sometimes sobering—chronicle Alex’s life year by year as he matures, starts a family, gets a chance to leave the Soviet Union, and then goes on to discover the rhythms, disappointments, and small pleasures of suburban life in upstate New York.

Mark Budman's works have appeared or are about to appear in such magazines as Weird Tales, Mississippi Review, Virginia Quarterly, The London Magazine, Iowa Review, McSweeney's, Turnrow, Connecticut Review, the W.W. Norton anthology Flash Fiction Forward, and elsewhere. He is the publisher of a flash fiction magazine Vestal Review.

Learn more about the author and his work at Mark Budman's website, his blog, and his blog in Russian.

The Page 69 Test: My Life at First Try.

--Marshal Zeringue