Pg. 69: Randall Silvis's "Only the Rain"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Only the Rain by Randall Silvis.

About the book, from the publisher:

When family man and war veteran Russell loses his job as a quarry worker, his life suddenly seems more like a waking nightmare than a chance to finally live the American dream. Facing bills, a new baby, and a bone-dry bank account, he’s got nothing left to lose. Russell comes to the rescue of a naked stranger dancing in the rain, and what was supposed to be a straightforward good deed turns into a spiral of danger. When Russell finds an enticing stash of money in the woman’s house, he knows the cash could be his only hope. Taking just a handful will save his family’s future.

His “victimless crime” seems to be anything but risky—until the criminals he robbed come looking for their dirty money. Russell’s ready to surrender it, but then his daughter gets sick…and he must choose between saving her or giving the devils their due. Someone’s going to pay. The question is, how much?

Learn more about the book and author at Randall Silvis's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Boy Who Shoots Crows.

My Book, The Movie: The Boy Who Shoots Crows.

My Book, The Movie: Only the Rain.

The Page 69 Test: Only the Rain.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight of the sexiest fictional curmudgeons

At the B&N Reads blog, Cristina Merrill tagged eight of the sexiest curmudgeons in romance, including:

Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen

There are many mighty good reasons why Mr. Darcy ALWAYS comes up in romantic conversations. He didn’t always have the best manners, and he could hardly be called the life of the party, but when a guy is willing to help your crazy family by keeping your nutty sister on the straight and narrow, well, there’s a lot to be said for that. (Imagine a guy who stays with you even though your extended family posts weird things on social media on an hourly basis.) Mr. Darcy, you practically invented the smolder, so you can smolder all you want!

Read about another entry on the list.

Pride and Prejudice also appears on Sarah Ward's ten top list of brothers and sisters in fiction, Tara Sonin's lists of fifty must-read regency romances and seven sweet and swoony romances for wedding season, Grant Ginder's top ten list of book characters we love to hate, Katy Guest's list of six of the best depictions of shyness in fiction, Garry Trudeau's six favorite books list, Ross Johnson's list of seven of the greatest rivalries in fiction, Helen Dunmore's six best books list, Jenny Kawecki's list of eight fictional characters who would make the best travel companions, Peter James's top ten list of works of fiction set in or around Brighton, Ellen McCarthy's list of six favorite books about weddings and marriage, the Telegraph's list of the ten greatest put-downs in literature, Rebecca Jane Stokes' list of ten fictional families you might enjoy more than the one you'll actually spend the holidays with, Melissa Albert's lists of five fictional characters who deserved better, [fifteen of the] romantic leads (and wannabes) of Austen’s brilliant books and recommended reading for eight villains, Molly Schoemann-McCann's list of ten fictional men who have ruined real live romance, Emma Donoghue's list of five favorite unconventional fictional families, Amelia Schonbek's list of five approachable must-read classics, Jane Stokes's top ten list of the hottest men in required reading, Gwyneth Rees's top ten list of books about siblings, the Observer's list of the ten best fictional mothers, Paula Byrne's list of the ten best Jane Austen characters, Robert McCrum's list of the top ten opening lines of novels in the English language, a top ten list of literary lessons in love, Simon Mason's top ten list of fictional families, Cathy Cassidy's top ten list of stories about sisters, Paul Murray's top ten list of wicked clerics, John Mullan's lists of ten of the best housekeepers in fiction, ten great novels with terrible original titles, and ten of the best visits to Brighton in literature, Luke Leitch's top ten list of the most successful literary sequels ever, and is one of the top ten works of literature according to Norman Mailer. Richard Price has never read it, but it is the book Mary Gordon cares most about sharing with her children.

The Page 99 Test: Pride and Prejudice.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Michael Moreci reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Michael Moreci, author of Black Star Renegades.

His entry begins:

An Echo of Things to Come by James Inslington.

Everything they say about this series is true--it's doorstopper epic fantasy that calls to mind both Jordan and Sanderson. It's big in scope, but intimate in character and action. This is the second book--of three--in the series, and I couldn't recommend it more. It's funny, smart, and...[read on]

About Black Star Renegades, from the publisher:

In the tradition of Star Wars, a galaxy-hopping space adventure about a galactic kingdom bent on control and the young misfit who must find the power within before it’s too late.

Cade Sura holds the future of the galaxy in his hands: the ultimate weapon that will bring total peace. He didn’t ask for it, he doesn’t want it, and there’s no worse choice to wield it in all of space, but if he doesn’t, everyone’s totally screwed. The evil Praxis kingdom is on the cusp of having every star system under its control, and if that happens, there’ll be no contesting their cruel reign. Especially if its fanatical overlord, Ga Halle, manages to capture Cade and snag the all-powerful weapon for herself.

Cade can’t hide from Praxis, and he can’t run from the destiny that’s been shoved into his hands. So he only has one option:

He has to fight.

Cade’s not going to let destiny send him on a suicide run, though. With some help from his friends—rebels and scoundrels alike—Cade’s going to use this weapon to chart a new destiny for the galaxy, and for himself.

He just has to do so before everyone around him discovers that he’s a complete and total fraud.

Blending the space operatics of Star Wars and the swagger of Guardians of the Galaxy, Black Star Renegades is a galaxy-hopping adventure that blasts its way from seedy spacer bars to sacred temples guarded by deadly creatures—all with a cast of misfit characters who have nowhere to go and nothing to lose.

Visit Michael Moreci's website.

Writers Read: Michael Moreci.

--Marshal Zeringue

Laura Creedle's "The Love Letters of Abelard and Lily," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Love Letters of Abelard and Lily by Laura Creedle.

The entry begins:

When you start to write a YA book with actors in mind they will age out of your role before you finish. I always imagined Lily as Emma Stone at her absolute House Bunny goofiest.

Selena Gomez as her best friend Rosalind.

Dylan Minette would be perfect for...[read on]

Visit Laura Creedle's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Love Letters of Abelard and Lily.

My Book, The Movie: The Love Letters of Abelard and Lily.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Karen L. Cox's "Goat Castle"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Goat Castle: A True Story of Murder, Race, and the Gothic South by Karen L. Cox.

About the book, from the publisher:

In 1932, the city of Natchez, Mississippi, reckoned with an unexpected influx of journalists and tourists as the lurid story of a local murder was splashed across headlines nationwide. Two eccentrics, Richard Dana and Octavia Dockery—known in the press as the “Wild Man” and the “Goat Woman”the Page 99 Test: Goat Castle—enlisted an African American man named George Pearls to rob their reclusive neighbor, Jennie Merrill, at her estate. During the attempted robbery, Merrill was shot and killed. The crime drew national coverage when it came to light that Dana and Dockery, the alleged murderers, shared their huge, decaying antebellum mansion with their goats and other livestock, which prompted journalists to call the estate “Goat Castle.” Pearls was killed by an Arkansas policeman in an unrelated incident before he could face trial. However, as was all too typical in the Jim Crow South, the white community demanded “justice,” and an innocent black woman named Emily Burns was ultimately sent to prison for the murder of Merrill. Dana and Dockery not only avoided punishment but also lived to profit from the notoriety of the murder by opening their derelict home to tourists.

Strange, fascinating, and sobering, Goat Castle tells the story of this local feud, killing, investigation, and trial, showing how a true crime tale of fallen southern grandeur and murder obscured an all too familiar story of racial injustice.

Visit Karen L. Cox's website.

My Book, The Movie: Goat Castle.

The Page 99 Test: Goat Castle.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top books for aspiring novelists

James Lee Burke's new novel is Robicheaux.

One of the author's six favorite books for aspiring novelists, as shared at The Week magazine:

Mystic River by Dennis Lehane

I believe this to be the best crime novel in the English language. The talent and craft at work in this fine novel are head-reeling. Many of the paragraphs are sonnets, and the characters, both good and evil, are among the best and most intriguing in American literature.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Ada Palmer reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Ada Palmer, author of The Will to Battle: Terra Ignota (Volume 3).

Her entry begins:

Right now I’m reading John Milton’s Areopagitica (1644), one of the very earliest works defending freedom speech and the importance of a free press. The tail end of 2017 is a powerful moment to revisit our first articulation of the value of free expression. Milton addressed the book to Parliament because in the 1640s lots of people in England supported tightening control of the press, largely in response to Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan (1641) which was so hated and feared that by itself it sparked a widespread call for more censorship. Publishers hoping to make money from controlling intellectual property were also—contrary to what you might expect—in favor of more censorship since it meant more control. We tend to assume that that notions of copyright have existed since time immemorial, and that censorship tools like the Inquisition existed throughout the Middle Ages, but in fact both developed into their mature forms only in response to the spread of the printing press after 1450, and of the Reformation after 1517. So Milton’s book...[read on]

About The Will to Battle, from the publisher:

The long years of near-utopia have come to an abrupt end.

Peace and order are now figments of the past. Corruption, deception, and insurgency hum within the once steadfast leadership of the Hives, nations without fixed location.

The heartbreaking truth is that for decades, even centuries, the leaders of the great Hives bought the world’s stability with a trickle of secret murders, mathematically planned. So that no faction could ever dominate. So that the balance held.

The Hives’ façade of solidity is the only hope they have for maintaining a semblance of order, for preventing the public from succumbing to the savagery and bloodlust of wars past. But as the great secret becomes more and more widely known, that façade is slipping away.

Just days earlier, the world was a pinnacle of human civilization. Now everyone—Hives and hiveless, Utopians and sensayers, emperors and the downtrodden, warriors and saints—scrambles to prepare for the seemingly inevitable war.

Visit Ada Palmer's website.

The Page 69 Test: Too Like the Lightning.

Writers Read: Ada Palmer.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Susan Furlong's "Splintered Silence"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Splintered Silence by Susan Furlong.

About the book, from the publisher:

Among the Irish Travellers living in the Appalachian Mountains of Tennessee, no one forgets and no one forgives. And as former Marine MP Brynn Callahan finds out when she returns home, it's hard to bury the past when bodies keep turning up...

After an IED explosion abruptly ends her tour of duty, Brynn arrives stateside with PTSD and her canine partner, Wilco—both of them bearing the scars of battle. With a mix of affection, curiosity, and misgivings, she goes back to Bone Gap, Tennessee, and the insular culture she'd hoped to escape by enlisting in the Marine Corps.

Marginalized and wary of outsiders, the Irish Travellers keep to themselves in a secluded mountain community, maintaining an uneasy coexistence with the “settled” townspeople of McCreary. When Wilco’s training as a cadaver dog leads Brynn to discover a body in the woods, the two worlds collide. Soon it’s clear that Brynn and Wilco are in danger – and they’re not the only ones.

After the police identify the dead woman, Brynn is shocked to learn she has a personal connection—and everything she’s been told about her past is called into question.

Forming a reluctant alliance with local sheriff Frank Pusser, Brynn must dig up secrets that not only will rattle her close-knit clan to its core, but may forever change her perception of who she is ... and put her back in the line of fire.

Visit Susan Furlong's website.

Writers Read: Susan Furlong.

My Book, The Movie: Splintered Silence.

The Page 69 Test: Splintered Silence.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five of the best medical books

Adam Kay is a former doctor in the UK's National Health Service turned comedian, and the author of This is Going to Hurt. One of his five favorite medical reads, as shared at the Waterstones blog:

The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson

This is the story of John Snow – not the newsreader, or the fictional sap on that kids’ show – but a doctor, who in 1854 set about to save the life of every Londoner by tracing the source of a deadly cholera epidemic. The story is cleverly told as a historical thriller, and tricks you into learning a shit-ton about bacteriology and epidemiology. Much better than I’ve made it sound.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Scott Kaufman's "Ambition, Pragmatism, and Party"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Ambition, Pragmatism, and Party: A Political Biography of Gerald R. Ford by Scott Kaufman.

About the book, from the publisher:

Within eight turbulent months in 1974 Gerald Ford went from the United States House of Representatives, where he was the minority leader, to the White House as the country’s first and only unelected president. His unprecedented rise to power, after Richard Nixon’s equally unprecedented fall, has garnered the lion’s share of scholarly attention devoted to America’s thirty-eighth president. But Gerald Ford’s (1913–2006) life and career in and out of Washington spanned nearly the entire twentieth century. Ambition, Pragmatism, and Party captures for the first time the full scope of Ford’s long and remarkable political life.

The man who emerges from these pages is keenly ambitious, determined to climb the political ladder in Washington, and loyal to his party but not a political ideologue. Drawing on interviews with family and congressional and administrative officials, presidential historian Scott Kaufman traces Ford’s path from a Depression-era childhood through service in World War II to entry into Congress shortly after the Cold War began. He delves deeply into the workings of Congress and legislative-executive relations, offering insight into Ford’s role as the House minority leader in a time of conservative insurgency in the Republican Party.

Kaufman’s account of the Ford presidency provides a new perspective on how human rights figured in the making of U.S. foreign policy in the Cold War era, and how environmental issues figured in the making of domestic policy. It also presents a close look at the 1976 presidential election—emphasizing the significance of image in that contest—and extensive coverage of Ford’s post-presidency. In sum, Ambition, Pragmatism, and Party is the most comprehensive political biography of Gerald Ford and will become the definitive resource on the thirty-eighth president of the United States.

The Page 99 Test: Ambition, Pragmatism, and Party.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six classic books that almost had terrible titles

At the B&N Reads blog Brian Boone tagged six "beloved classic novels whose authors nearly cursed with a terrible title," including:

Trimalchio in West Egg, by F. Scott Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgerald suggested many high-fallutin’ titles for what ultimately became The Great Gatsby, his book about the rise and fall of the personification of the American Dream in the Jazz Age. Under the Red, White, and Blue was a little too on the nose, as was Gold-Hatted Gatsby. The High-Bounding Lover was just a little-too-1920s. Fitzgerald also really wanted to call his book Trimalchio in West Egg. The latter part reflects the book’s setting; the first part is a literary reference to Trimalchio, a character who enjoys life in obscene excess in the 1st century Roman book The Satyricon.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Great Gatsby appears among four books that changed C.K. Stead, Jeff Somers's seven most disastrous parties in fiction, four books that changed Jodi Picoult, Joseph Connolly's top ten novels about style, Nick Lake’s ten favorite fictional tricksters and tellers of untruths in books, the Independent's list of the fifteen best opening lines in literature, Molly Schoemann-McCann's list of five of the lamest girlfriends in fiction, Honeysuckle Weeks's six best books, Elizabeth Wilhide's nine illustrious houses in fiction, Suzette Field's top ten literary party hosts, Robert McCrums's ten best closing lines in literature, Molly Driscoll's ten best literary lessons about love, Jim Lehrer's six favorite 20th century novels, John Mullan's lists of ten of the best clocks in literature and ten of the best misdirected messages, Tad Friend's seven best novels about WASPs, Kate Atkinson's top ten novels, Garrett Peck's best books about Prohibition, Robert McCrum's top ten books for Obama officials, Jackie Collins' six best books, and John Krasinski's six best books, and is on the American Book Review's list of the 100 best last lines from novels. Gatsby's Jordan Baker is Josh Sorokach's biggest fictional literary crush.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Bryon MacWilliams reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Bryon MacWilliams, author of With Light Steam: A Personal Journey through the Russian Baths.

His entry begins:

Poet Derek Walcott said so much of his work depended on inspiration that he envied prose writers who returned, day after day, to the same project. But so much of my day-in-day-out prose can feel like Work that I find myself searching out especially imaginative, even playful, reads.

Over the past month I've started, continued, revisited or finished:

In Sandy Gingras's first collection of poems, Not Even Close to What She Planned On, men fall out of the sky (“He hit at her feet like an issue resolved”), God rallies everyone for a Christmas card photo, a giant egg appears in a driveway, a brother brings a stripper to Thanksgiving, and a mother tranquilizer-darts an escaped lion at a local pond. Another (the same?) mother wants her head cryogenically frozen, to which the speaker says...[read on]

About With Light Steam, from the publisher:

In 1996 Bryon MacWilliams left the relative stability of the United States for the chaos of post-Soviet Russia, and stayed. Over the course of nearly twelve years he reported on academe and the sciences for the world’s leading publications, and sought out the best baths—or banyas—everywhere he went. His story of Russia through its cult of steam begins on a frosty Sunday morning in a gypsy cab traveling to a bathhouse in Moscow, where the steam is conjured by an out-of-work carpenter named Grisha, who takes on MacWilliams as a kind of apprentice, allowing him into an otherwise closed world through which MacWilliams could see himself, and Russia, with different eyes. The Russian bathers insist, only half-jokingly, that the American is a spy.

Writing in a highly engaging style, MacWilliams travels the country to convey the breadth of banya culture and what it means to steam, a process that is at once a simple cleansing and a deep purification. It awakens the body and quiets the mind, generating waves of good feeling akin to an endorphin high. Each chapter of this splendid book is an episode—spanning from several hours to several days—from the Far North, Moscow, the Ural Mountains, the Solovetsky Islands, and a southern stretch of the Volga River.

With Light Steam, the title is derived from the phrase used in banyas in lieu of goodbye, is the only book in English devoted to the banya and the only volume in any language to present Russia through the lens of its bath culture, the most Russian thing there is. General readers and scholars alike will be enchanted with this unforgettable portrait of a people and a millennia-spanning tradition.

Learn more about banya culture at the With Light Steam website.

The Page 99 Test: With Light Steam.

Writers Read: Bryon MacWilliams.

--Marshal Zeringue

Randall Silvis's "Only the Rain," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Only the Rain by Randall Silvis.

The entry begins:

For the film version of Only the Rain, I would cast Ryan Gosling in the lead. I suspect that Gosling is an intelligent individual, but that deadpan, pensive look of his could also convey confusion, uncertainty, and regret—qualities in full flower in the novel’s protagonist, Russell, a man who, while suffering from PTSD, struggles to do what’s best for his family, even if it means breaking the law.

Two other males play pivotal roles in the novel: Pops, who is Russell’s grandfather and mentor, and Phil McClaine, the antagonist. When I envision Pops, a veteran of bloody Hamburger Hill, I see someone like...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Randall Silvis's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Boy Who Shoots Crows.

My Book, The Movie: The Boy Who Shoots Crows.

My Book, The Movie: Only the Rain.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top weird books for the jaded reader

Robert Brockway's latest novel is Kill All Angels: The Vicious Circuit (Volume 3). One of five weird books for the jaded reader he tagged at Tor.com:

Wylding Hall by Elizabeth Hand

If you enjoy behind-the-scenes music documentaries, but always find them lacking in possibly murderous ghosts, rejoice! Wylding Hall is here. It’s the making-of story of a seminal acid folk album, as told by candid interviews with the band decades later—but Wylding Hall takes all the sex, drugs, and interpersonal drama and throws in mysterious disappearances, strange suicides, and supernatural rumblings. And then the twist kicks in.

That’s right: None of that was the twist. That was all just set-up.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Laura Creedle's "The Love Letters of Abelard and Lily"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Love Letters of Abelard and Lily by Laura Creedle.

About the book, from the publisher:

When Lily Michaels-Ryan ditches her ADHD meds and lands in detention with Abelard, she’s intrigued—he seems thirty seconds behind, while she feels thirty seconds ahead. It doesn't hurt that he’s brilliant and beautiful.

When Abelard posts a quote from The Letters of Abelard and Heloise online, their mutual affinity for ancient love letters connects them. The two fall for each other. Hard. But is it enough to bridge their differences in person?

This hilarious, heartbreaking story of human connection between two neurodivergent teens creates characters that will stay with you long after you finish reading.

Visit Laura Creedle's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Love Letters of Abelard and Lily.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Scott Deitche's "Garden State Gangland"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Garden State Gangland: The Rise of the Mob in New Jersey by Scott M. Deitche.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Mafia in the United States might be a shadow of its former self, but in the New York/New Jersey metro area, there are still wiseguys and wannabes working scams, extorting businesses, running gambling, selling drugs, and branching out into white collar crimes. And they are continuing a tradition that’s over 100 years old. Some of the most powerful mobsters on a national level were from New Jersey, and they spread their tentacles down to Florida, across the Atlantic, and out to California. And many of the stories have never been told. Deitche weaves his narrative through significant, as well as some lesser-known, mob figures who were vital components in the underworld machine.

New Jersey’s organized crime history has been one of the most colorful in the country, serving as the home of some of the most powerful, as well as below-the-radar, mobsters in the Country. And though overshadowed by the emphasis on New York City, the mob and New Jersey have, over the years, become synonymous, in both pop culture and in law enforcement. But for all the press that has been dedicated to the mob and New Jersey, for all the law enforcement activity against the mob, and for all the pop culture references, there has never truly been an examination of the rise of the mob in New Jersey from a historical perspective. Until now.

In Garden State Gangland, Scott M. Deitche sets the historical record straight by providing the first overall history of the mob in New Jersey, from the early turn of the century Black Hand gangs to the present, and looks at how influential they were was, not only to goings-on the Garden State but across the New York metro region and the country as a whole.

Visit Scott Deitche's website.

The Page 99 Test: Garden State Gangland.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Susan Furlong reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Susan Furlong, author of Splintered Silence.

Her entry begins:

I’ve just picked up a new-to-me author, Jennifer McMahon. I’d heard good things about her work and decided to give her a try. I’m glad I did. The One I Left Behind is a classic psychological thriller about a small town plagued by several gruesome serial killings. The author keeps the pace strong while seamlessly weaving in back story. Her imagery is excellent, and the premise is fascinating. Every time...[read on]

About Splintered Silence, from the publisher:

Among the Irish Travellers living in the Appalachian Mountains of Tennessee, no one forgets and no one forgives. And as former Marine MP Brynn Callahan finds out when she returns home, it's hard to bury the past when bodies keep turning up...

After an IED explosion abruptly ends her tour of duty, Brynn arrives stateside with PTSD and her canine partner, Wilco—both of them bearing the scars of battle. With a mix of affection, curiosity, and misgivings, she goes back to Bone Gap, Tennessee, and the insular culture she'd hoped to escape by enlisting in the Marine Corps.

Marginalized and wary of outsiders, the Irish Travellers keep to themselves in a secluded mountain community, maintaining an uneasy coexistence with the “settled” townspeople of McCreary. When Wilco’s training as a cadaver dog leads Brynn to discover a body in the woods, the two worlds collide. Soon it’s clear that Brynn and Wilco are in danger – and they’re not the only ones.

After the police identify the dead woman, Brynn is shocked to learn she has a personal connection—and everything she’s been told about her past is called into question.

Forming a reluctant alliance with local sheriff Frank Pusser, Brynn must dig up secrets that not only will rattle her close-knit clan to its core, but may forever change her perception of who she is ... and put her back in the line of fire.

Visit Susan Furlong's website.

My Book, The Movie: Splintered Silence.

Writers Read: Susan Furlong.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight of the best philosophy books for beginners

Julian Baggini's latest book is A Short History of Truth: Consolations for a Post-Truth World. One of eight of the best philosophy books for students he tagged for Waterstones blog:

Elbow Room by Daniel C. Dennett

The question of whether we have free will is one of the most fascinating and important ones in philosophy. In Elbow Room, I think Dennett gets us as close to the final answer to it as is possible. Dennett's strategy is to do away with the idea that there is one thing called “free will” which we have or do not have. Instead, he talks about the “varieties of free will worth having”. The book is full of insight and is a masterclass in clarity of expression and argument.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Barry Wolverton's "The Sea of the Dead," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Sea of the Dead by Barry Wolverton.

The entry begins:

When I think about The Chronicles of the Black Tulip being brought to the big screen, I actually fantasize about a single animated movie condensing all three books, made by the legendary Studio Ghibli (Princess Mononoke; My Friend Totoro; Spirited Away). That may seem odd — perhaps more commercially plausible would be something akin to Steven Spielberg’s Tintin movie. But when I think about what my series is really about, and all the passages involving Asian folklore and mythology, I...[read on]

Visit Barry Wolverton's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Vanishing Island.

My Book, The Movie: The Sea of the Dead.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top writers’ tips on writing

Travis Elborough and Helen Gordon are the anthologizers behind Being a Writer: Advice, Musings, Essays and Experiences From the World's Greatest Authors. One of their ten favorite writers' tips, as shared at the Guardian:

Hilary Mantel – a little arrogance can be a great help

“The most helpful quality a writer can cultivate is self-confidence – arrogance, if you can manage it. You write to impose yourself on the world, and you have to believe in your own ability when the world shows no sign of agreeing with you.”

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Catherine Reef reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Catherine Reef, author of Victoria: Portrait of a Queen.

Her entry begins:

Right now Sylvia Plath is the subject of an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. Letters, photographs, original artwork, objects as diverse as Plath’s typewriter and handmade paper dolls—the artifacts reveal a Plath whom readers of her poetry might not know. I was especially intrigued because I had just read a book that showed me another lesser-known side of the confessional poet, Plath the writer of short prose. Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams, first published in 1977, is a collection of short stories, essays, and diary entries.

Writing fiction did not come as naturally to Plath as composing poetry did. Plath’s husband, Ted Hughes, called her ambition to write salable stories a burden to her. It seemed to me as I read this collection that plotting was not one of her strengths, or perhaps one of her interests. She was better at exploring characters and situations on the page. To make a story from what she had written, she often...[read on]

About Victoria: Portrait of a Queen, from the publisher:

Catherine Reef brings history vividly to life in this sumptuously illustrated account of a confident, strong-minded, and influential woman.

Victoria woke one morning at the age of eighteen to discover that her uncle had died and she was now queen. She went on to rule for sixty-three years, with an influence so far-reaching that the decades of her reign now bear her name—the Victorian period. Victoria is filled with the exciting comings and goings of royal life: intrigue and innuendo, scheming advisors, and assassination attempts, not to mention plenty of passion and discord. Includes bibliography, notes, British royal family tree, index.

Visit Catherine Reef's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Catherine Reef & Nandi.

The Page 69 Test: Frida & Diego.

My Book, The Movie: Noah Webster.

The Page 99 Test: Florence Nightingale.

My Book, The Movie: Victoria: Portrait of a Queen.

Writers Read: Catherine Reef.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Bryon MacWilliams's "With Light Steam"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: With Light Steam: A Personal Journey through the Russian Baths by Bryon MacWilliams.

About the book, from the publisher:

In 1996 Bryon MacWilliams left the relative stability of the United States for the chaos of post-Soviet Russia, and stayed. Over the course of nearly twelve years he reported on academe and the sciences for the world’s leading publications, and sought out the best baths—or banyas—everywhere he went. His story of Russia through its cult of steam begins on a frosty Sunday morning in a gypsy cab traveling to a bathhouse in Moscow, where the steam is conjured by an out-of-work carpenter named Grisha, who takes on MacWilliams as a kind of apprentice, allowing him into an otherwise closed world through which MacWilliams could see himself, and Russia, with different eyes. The Russian bathers insist, only half-jokingly, that the American is a spy.

Writing in a highly engaging style, MacWilliams travels the country to convey the breadth of banya culture and what it means to steam, a process that is at once a simple cleansing and a deep purification. It awakens the body and quiets the mind, generating waves of good feeling akin to an endorphin high. Each chapter of this splendid book is an episode—spanning from several hours to several days—from the Far North, Moscow, the Ural Mountains, the Solovetsky Islands, and a southern stretch of the Volga River.

With Light Steam, the title is derived from the phrase used in banyas in lieu of goodbye, is the only book in English devoted to the banya and the only volume in any language to present Russia through the lens of its bath culture, the most Russian thing there is. General readers and scholars alike will be enchanted with this unforgettable portrait of a people and a millennia-spanning tradition.

Learn more about banya culture at the With Light Steam website.

The Page 99 Test: With Light Steam.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top books about fighting for broken worlds

Marie Lu's latest book is Batman: Nightwalker, part of the DC Icons series written by megastar young adult authors. At Tor.com, she tagged five books that "capture the fight for and the fixing of broken worlds—whether that world is a dark wonderland of roses and death, or a real place of gangs and injustice." One title on the list:

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein

I read this book years ago, but it still stays with me today. I wept for Verity and Maddie, two young female best friends fighting for their countries, for survival, and for each other during World War II. It’s a story of how friendship can endure during a time when real evil threatened to tear the world apart, and of how treasuring one another is, in the end, the entire reason why we try to fix broken worlds in the first place. Nowadays, this message resonates more than ever.

Read about another entry on the list.

Code Name Verity also appears on Avery Hastings's top five list of books featuring unreliable narrators, Ryan Graudin's top five list of historical YAs, all set during World War II, Kelly Anderson's list of seven awesome books that celebrate female friendship, Natalie Zutter's top seven list of YA books where friendship trumps romance, Arwen Elys Dayton's top five list od books about false identities, Melissa Albert's top five list of YA books that might make one cry, Sara Brady's list of six of the best spies in romance, Lenore Appelhans's top ten list of teen books featuring flashbacks and Lydia Syson's list of ten of the best historical novels for young readers.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Thomas Perry's "The Bomb Maker"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Bomb Maker by Thomas Perry.

About the book, from the publisher:

A bomb is more than a weapon. A bomb is an expression of the bomber’s thoughts about you, his predictions of your behavior—a performance designed to fool you into making one fatally wrong move. In The Bomb Maker, Edgar Award-winning author Thomas Perry introduces us to the dark corners of a mind intent on transforming a simple machine into an act of murder—and to those committed to preventing that outcome at any cost.

A threat is called into the LAPD Bomb Squad, a team dispatched to a house whose owner is away, and a bomb disguised inside photography equipment explodes in the kitchen. But it is a second bomb hidden in the basement that has devastating consequences—half of the entire Bomb Squad is obliterated within seconds. The fragmented unit turns to Dick Stahl, a former Bomb Squad commander who now operates his own private security company. Stahl is reluctant to accept the offer, but senior technicians he had trained were among those killed. On his first day back as the head of the squad, Stahl’s team is dispatched to a suspected car bomb outside a gas station. It quickly becomes clear to him that they are dealing with the same mastermind behind the weapon that killed fourteen highly trained men and women barely twenty-four hours before—and that the intended target may be the Bomb Squad itself.

As the shadowy organization sponsoring this campaign of terror puts increasing pressure on the bomb maker, and Stahl becomes dangerously entangled with a member of his own team, the fuse on this high-stakes plot only burns faster. The Bomb Maker is Thomas Perry’s biggest, most unstoppable thriller yet.

Learn more about the book and author at Thomas Perry's website and Facebook page.

The Page 69 Test: Silence.

The Page 99 Test: Nightlife.

The Page 69/99 Test: Fidelity.

The Page 69/99 Test: Runner.

The Page 69 Test: Strip.

The Page 69 Test: The Informant.

The Page 69 Test: The Boyfriend.

The Page 69 Test: A String of Beads.

The Page 69 Test: Forty Thieves.

The Page 69 Test: The Old Man.

Writers Read: Thomas Perry.

The Page 69 Test: The Bomb Maker.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Helen Dickson reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Helen Dickson, author of Carrying the Gentleman's Secret.

Her entry begins:

The books I read are many and varied. I am the author of many Historical Romance books but Historical Romance is my least read genre. I read mainly fiction, non-fiction if I am doing research for the books I am writing.

I am currently reading Origin, Dan Brown’s latest book. I have read most of his books, my favourite being The Da Vinci Code, one of the best-selling novels of all time. Right from the beginning to the end of his books Dan Brown’s stories follow the same exhausting, rollercoaster yet exhilarating pattern at a cracking pace. Origin is set in Spain. Robert Langdon, Harvard professor of symbiology and religious iconology, is a compelling character, claustrophobic and still wearing his Mickey Mouse watch – which I found quite endearing. I didn’t find the story as exhausting as the others I have read but it is equally as compulsive a read. Langdon’s former student and friend, Edmund Kirsch, an inventor, futurist and atheist who is about to reveal to the world his breakthrough that will challenge the fundamentals of human existence, is murdered. Langdon must...[read on]

About Carrying the Gentleman's Secret, from the publisher:

Unmarried and pregnant!

Alex Golding had a duty to stop his brother-in-law’s bigamous marriage. But when he saw the bride, he offered whatever comfort he could to sweet young seamstress Lydia Brook…

Lydia has spent weeks trying to forget her brief encounter with Mr. Golding—she knows the rich widower can never love her. But when it’s Alex who offers her the investment to open her own shop, she can’t say no. This time their passion is as unexpected as its dramatic consequences…she’s expecting his baby!

Visit Helen Dickson's website.

My Book, The Movie: Carrying the Gentleman's Secret.

The Page 69 Test: Carrying the Gentleman's Secret.

Writers Read: Helen Dickson.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top gardens in literature

Penelope Lively’s latest book, Life in the Garden, is partly a memoir of her own life in gardens, and also a wise, engaging and far-ranging exploration of gardens in literature.

At the Waterstones blog she tagged five of her favorite gardens in literature, including:

Rebecca
Daphne Du Maurier

Few readers of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca will forget the Cornish coastal garden evoked there, with its rhododendrons fifty feet high: "crimson faces, massed one upon another in incredible profusion, showing no leaf, no twig, nothing but the slaughterous red." This is the fictional garden designed to supply atmosphere, to suggest the hidden secret of the place, the threatening climate that confronts Maxim de Winter's young bride. And, for me, it is a perfect instance of the written garden that is both vivid to the reader and an essential ingredient of the story.

Read about another entry on the list.

Rebecca appears on Xan Brooks's top ten list of terrible houses in fiction, Tom Easton's top ten list of fictional "houses which themselves seem to have a personality which affects the story," Martine Bailey's list of six of the best marriage plots in novels, Stella Gonet's six best books list, John Mullan's list of ten of the best conflagrations in literature, Tess Gerritsen's list of five favorite thrillers, Mary Horlock's list of the five best psychos in literature, and Derwent May's critic's chart of top country house books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Susan Furlong's "Splintered Silence," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Splintered Silence by Susan Furlong.

The entry begins:

Splintered Silence is set in deep Appalachia and portrays a secretive subsect of American culture, the Irish Travellers. I like to think of it as My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding meets The Fall meets The Outsiders, with a dark and twisted tone.

When I think dark and twisted, I think of Arya Stark in Game of Thrones, played by actress Maisie Williams. Fast forward Arya about ten years and you have Brynn, an Irish Traveller and the protagonist of Splintered Silence. Brynn is damaged, but strong and carries a deep sense of justice. She loves her family, and especially her dog and K9 partner, Wilco. An ex-marine, Brynn is a warrior, powerful, aggressive, and willing to fight and die for a cause. As Arya Stark, Maisie Williams epitomizes this type of woman. She’d be...[read on]

Visit Susan Furlong's website.

My Book, The Movie: Splintered Silence.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Juliet Hooker's "Theorizing Race in the Americas"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Theorizing Race in the Americas: Douglass, Sarmiento, Du Bois, and Vasconcelos by Juliet Hooker.

About the book,from the publisher:

In 1845 two thinkers from the American hemisphere - the Argentinean statesman Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, and the fugitive ex-slave, abolitionist leader, and orator from the United States, Frederick Douglass - both published their first works. Each would become the most famous and enduring texts in what were both prolific careers, and they ensured Sarmiento and Douglass' position as leading figures in the canon of Latin American and U.S. African-American political thought, respectively. But despite the fact that both deal directly with key political and philosophical questions in the Americas, Douglass and Sarmiento, like African-American and Latin American thought more generally, are never read alongside each other. This may be because their ideas about race differed dramatically. Sarmiento advocated the Europeanization of Latin America and espoused a virulent form of anti-indigenous racism, while Douglass opposed slavery and defended the full humanity of black persons. Still, as Juliet Hooker contends, looking at the two together allows one to chart a hemispheric intellectual geography of race that challenges political theory's preoccupation with and assumptions about East / West comparisons, and questions the use of comparison as a tool in the production of theory and philosophy.

By juxtaposing four prominent nineteenth and twentieth-century thinkers - Frederick Douglass, Domingo F. Sarmiento, W. E. B. Du Bois, and José Vasconcelos - her book will be the first to bring African-American and Latin American political thought into conversation. Hooker stresses that Latin American and U.S. ideas about race were not developed in isolation, but grew out of transnational intellectual exchanges across the Americas. In so doing, she shows that nineteenth and twentieth-century U.S. and Latin American thinkers each looked to political models in the 'other' America to advance racial projects in their own countries. Reading these four intellectuals as hemispheric thinkers, Hooker foregrounds elements of their work that have been dismissed by dominant readings, and provides a crucial platform to bridge the canons of Latin American and African-American political thought.

Learn more about Theorizing Race in the Americas at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Theorizing Race in the Americas.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Thomas Perry reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Thomas Perry, author of The Bomb Maker.

His entry begins:

I’ve read quite a few books this year that I would say are special in one way or another. The first that comes to mind is Deon Meyer’s Fever. Deon Meyer is a crime writer who has produced some of the most suspenseful fiction of the past few years—books like Thirteen Hours. He’s South African and writes in Afrikaans, but has an able translator. Fever is a departure for him, a post-apocalyptic story about the South African survivors of a worldwide plague who try to survive, then to rebuild a new, practical, and just society. But as always in Meyer’s books, it’s...[read on]

About The Bomb Maker, from the publisher:

A bomb is more than a weapon. A bomb is an expression of the bomber’s thoughts about you, his predictions of your behavior—a performance designed to fool you into making one fatally wrong move. In The Bomb Maker, Edgar Award-winning author Thomas Perry introduces us to the dark corners of a mind intent on transforming a simple machine into an act of murder—and to those committed to preventing that outcome at any cost.

A threat is called into the LAPD Bomb Squad, a team dispatched to a house whose owner is away, and a bomb disguised inside photography equipment explodes in the kitchen. But it is a second bomb hidden in the basement that has devastating consequences—half of the entire Bomb Squad is obliterated within seconds. The fragmented unit turns to Dick Stahl, a former Bomb Squad commander who now operates his own private security company. Stahl is reluctant to accept the offer, but senior technicians he had trained were among those killed. On his first day back as the head of the squad, Stahl’s team is dispatched to a suspected car bomb outside a gas station. It quickly becomes clear to him that they are dealing with the same mastermind behind the weapon that killed fourteen highly trained men and women barely twenty-four hours before—and that the intended target may be the Bomb Squad itself.

As the shadowy organization sponsoring this campaign of terror puts increasing pressure on the bomb maker, and Stahl becomes dangerously entangled with a member of his own team, the fuse on this high-stakes plot only burns faster. The Bomb Maker is Thomas Perry’s biggest, most unstoppable thriller yet.

Learn more about the book and author at Thomas Perry's website and Facebook page.

The Page 69 Test: Silence.

The Page 99 Test: Nightlife.

The Page 69/99 Test: Fidelity.

The Page 69/99 Test: Runner.

The Page 69 Test: Strip.

The Page 69 Test: The Informant.

The Page 69 Test: The Boyfriend.

The Page 69 Test: A String of Beads.

The Page 69 Test: Forty Thieves.

The Page 69 Test: The Old Man.

Writers Read: Thomas Perry.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top books every teacher should read

Carl Hendrick is head of Learning and Research at Wellington College, an English teacher completing PhD at King’s College in English education, and the author of What Does This Look Like in the Classroom?. One title on his list of ten books every teacher should read, as shared at the Guardian:

Why Don’t Students Like School? by Daniel Willingham

Understanding is remembering in disguise

In this eminently readable book, Willingham takes findings from cognitive science and applies them to the classroom in a straightforward and practical way. A central claim in this book is that while we are naturally curious, we are not naturally good at thinking and can only truly think about things we know. It also contains one of the best lines ever to feature in a book on education: “Memory is the residue of thought.”

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Cathy Ace's "The Case of The Unsuitable Suitor"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Case of The Unsuitable Suitor by Cathy Ace.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Women of the WISE Enquiries Agency are back.

When the village's prodigal son, Huw Hughes, returns and sets his cap at Annie Parker, Annie's colleagues at the WISE Enquiries Agency make it their business to unearth the truth as to why Huw has been widowed three times. Is Annie in danger?

Visit Cathy Ace's website, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.

The Page 69 Test: The Case of The Unsuitable Suitor.

--Marshal Zeringue