What is Michael Zapata reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Michael Zapata, author of The Lost Book of Adana Moreau.

His entry begins:

In November 2019, Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming won the National Book Award for translated literature. If anything, this is one indication that a certain type of strange and mad literature, with all its vast interiority and mind-bending possibility, is still vital in the data drowned 21st century. In Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming, there is the Professor, “one of the three most important moss experts in the entire world,” his embittered daughter, a proto-fascist biker gang, immigrants, and, yes, Baron Wenckheim himself, an exiled 19th century-like tragic-romantic returning to his childhood home in Hungary to see once again...[read on]

About The Lost Book of Adana Moreau, from the publisher:

The mesmerizing story of a Latin American science fiction writer and the lives her lost manuscript unites decades later in post-Katrina New Orleans

In 1929 in New Orleans, a Dominican immigrant named Adana Moreau writes a science fiction novel titled Lost City. It is a strange and beautiful novel, set in a near future where a sixteen-year-old Dominican girl, not all that unlike Adana herself, searches for a golden eternal city believed to exist somewhere on a parallel Earth. Lost City earns a modest but enthusiastic readership, and Adana begins a sequel. Then she falls gravely ill. Just before she dies, she and her son, Maxwell, destroy the only copy of the manuscript.

Decades later in Chicago, Saul Drower is cleaning out his dead grandfather’s home when he discovers a mysterious package containing a manuscript titled A Model Earth, written by none other than Adana Moreau.

Who was Adana Moreau? How did Saul’s grandfather, a Jewish immigrant born on a steamship to parents fleeing the aftershocks of the Russian Revolution, come across this unpublished, lost manuscript? Where is Adana Moreau’s mysterious son, Maxwell, a theoretical physicist, and why did Saul’s grandfather send him the manuscript as his final act in life? With the help of his friend Javier, Saul tracks down an address for Maxwell in New Orleans, which is caught at that moment in the grip of Hurricane Katrina. Unable to reach Maxwell, Saul and Javier head south through the heartland of America toward that storm-ravaged city in search of answers.

Blending the high-stakes mystery of The Shadow of the Wind, the science fiction echoes of Exit West, and the lyrical signatures of Bolaño and Márquez, Michael Zapata’s debut shines a breathtaking new light on the experiences of displacement and exile that define our nation. The Lost Book of Adana Moreau is a brilliantly layered masterpiece that announces the arrival of a bold new literary talent.

Visit Michael Zapata's website.

Writers Read: Michael Zapata.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Katrin Schumann's "This Terrible Beauty"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: This Terrible Beauty: A Novel by Katrin Schumann.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the bestselling author of The Forgotten Hours comes an unforgettable story of one woman’s journey to reclaim what she lost in a country torn apart by the devastating legacy of WWII.

On the windswept shores of an East German island, Bettina Heilstrom struggles to build a life from the ashes. World War II has ended, and her country is torn apart. Longing for a family, she marries Werner, an older bureaucrat who adores her. But after joining the fledgling secret police, he is drawn deep into its dark mission and becomes a dangerous man.

When Bettina falls in love with an idealistic young renegade, Werner discovers her infidelity and forces her to make a terrible choice: spend her life in prison or leave her home forever. Either way she loses both her lover and child.

Ten years later, Bettina has reinvented herself as a celebrated photographer in Chicago, but she’s never stopped yearning for the baby she left behind. Surprised by an unexpected visitor from her past, she resolves to return to her ravaged homeland to reclaim her daughter and uncover her beloved’s fate, whatever the cost.

Visit Katrin Schumann's website.

Writers Read: Katrin Schumann.

The Page 69 Test: This Terrible Beauty.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Melissa R. Klapper's "Ballet Class: An American History"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Ballet Class: An American History by Melissa R. Klapper.

About the book, from the publisher:

Surveying the state of American ballet in a 1913 issue of McClure's Magazine, author Willa Cather reported that few girls expressed any interest in taking ballet class and that those who did were hard-pressed to find anything other than dingy studios and imperious teachers. One hundred years later, ballet is everywhere. There are ballet companies large and small across the United States; ballet is commonly featured in film, television, literature, and on social media; professional ballet dancers are spokespeople for all kinds of products; nail polish companies market colors like "Ballet Slippers" and "Prima Ballerina;" and, most importantly, millions of American children have taken ballet class. Beginning with the arrival of Russian dancers like Anna Pavlova, who first toured the United States on the eve of World War I, Ballet Class: An American History explores the growth of ballet from an ancillary part of nineteenth-century musical theater, opera, and vaudeville to the quintessential extracurricular activity it is today, pursued by countless children nationwide and an integral part of twentieth-century American childhood across borders of gender, class, race, and sexuality.

A social history, Ballet Class takes a new approach to the very popular subject of ballet and helps ground an art form often perceived to be elite in the experiences of regular, everyday people who spent time in barre-lined studios across the United States. Drawing on a wide variety of materials, including children's books, memoirs by professional dancers and choreographers, pedagogy manuals, and dance periodicals, in addition to archival collections and oral histories, this pathbreaking study provides a deeply-researched national perspective on the history and significance of recreational ballet class in the United States and its influence on many facets of children's lives, including gender norms, consumerism, body image, children's literature, extracurricular activities, and popular culture.

Learn more about Ballet Class: An American History at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Ballet Class: An American History.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six soulful, life-changing books

Glennon Doyle is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Love Warrior, an Oprah’s Book Club selection, as well as the New York Times bestseller Carry On, Warrior. An activist, speaker, and thought leader, she is also the founder and president of Together Rising, an all-women led nonprofit organization that has revolutionized grassroots philanthropy—raising over $20 million for women, families, and children in crisis, with a most frequent donation of just $25. Doyle was named among OWN Network’s SuperSoul 100 inaugural group as one of 100 “awakened leaders who are using their voices and talent to elevate humanity.” She lives in Florida with her wife and three children.

Her new memoir is Untamed.

At The Week magazine, Doyle tagged six "soulful, life-changing" books, including:

The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd (2020).

I kept having to close this novel and breathe deeply, again and again. A radical re­imagining of the New Testament that reflects on women's longing and silencing and awakening, it is a true masterpiece

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Michael Farris Smith's "Blackwood"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Blackwood by Michael Farris Smith.

About the book, from the publisher:

In this timeless, mythical tale of unforgiving justice and elusive grace, rural Mississippi townsfolk shoulder the pain of generations as something dangerous lurks in the enigmatic kudzu of the woods.

The town of Red Bluff, Mississippi, has seen better days, though those who’ve held on have little memory of when that was. Myer, the county’s aged, sardonic lawman, still thinks it can prove itself — when confronted by a strange family of drifters, the sheriff believes that the people of Red Bluff can be accepting, rational, even good.

The opposite is true: this is a landscape of fear and ghosts — of regret and violence — transformed by the kudzu vines that have enveloped the hills around it, swallowing homes, cars, rivers, and hiding a terrible secret deeper still.

Colburn, a junkyard sculptor who’s returned to Red Bluff, knows this pain all too well, though he too is willing to hope for more when he meets and falls in love with Celia, the local bar owner. The Deep South gives these noble, broken, and driven folks the gift of human connection while bestowing upon them the crippling weight of generations. With broken histories and vagabond hearts, the townsfolk wrestle with the evil in the woods — and the wickedness that lurks in each and every one of us.

Learn more about the book and author at Michael Farris Smith's website and Facebook page.

The Page 69 Test: Rivers.

The Page 69 Test: Blackwood.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Carl Rollyson's "The Last Days of Sylvia Plath"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Last Days of Sylvia Plath by Carl Rollyson.

About the book, from the publisher:

In her last days, Sylvia Plath struggled to break out from the control of the towering figure of her husband Ted Hughes. In the antique mythology of his retinue, she had become the gorgon threatening to bring down the House of Hughes. Drawing on recently available court records, archives, and interviews, and reevaluating the memoirs of the formidable Hughes contingent who treated Plath as a female hysteric, Carl Rollyson rehabilitates the image of a woman too often viewed solely within the confines of what Hughes and his collaborators wanted to be written.

Rollyson is the first biographer to gain access to the papers of Ruth Tiffany Barnhouse at Smith College, a key figure in the poet’s final days. Barnhouse was a therapist who may have been the only person to whom Plath believed she could reveal her whole self. Barnhouse went beyond the protocols of her profession, serving more as Plath’s ally, seeking a way out of the imprisoning charisma of Ted Hughes and friends he counted on to support a regime of antipathy against her.

The Last Days of Sylvia Plath focuses on the train of events that plagued Plath’s last seven months when she tried to recover her own life in the midst of Hughes’s alternating threats and reassurances. In a siege-like atmosphere a tormented Plath continued to write, reach out to friends, and care for her two children. Why Barnhouse seemed, in Hughes’s malign view, his wife’s undoing, and how biographers, Hughes, and his cohort parsed the events that led to the poet’s death, form the charged and contentious story this book has to tell.

Visit Carl Rollyson's website, blog, and Facebook page.

The Page 99 Test: American Isis.

My Book, The Movie: American Isis.

The Page 99 Test: Hollywood Enigma: Dana Andrews.

The Page 99 Test: The Last Days of Sylvia Plath.

--Marshal Zeringue

Sixteen of the most perfect murders in crime fiction

Peter Swanson's new novel is Eight Perfect Murders.

The murders of title refer to a list of the genre’s most unsolvable murders compiled years ago by bookseller and mystery aficionado Malcolm Kershaw, those that are almost impossible to crack—which he titled “Eight Perfect Murders”—chosen from among the best of the best including Agatha Christie’s A. B. C. Murders, Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train, Ira Levin’s Death Trap, A. A. Milne's Red House Mystery, Anthony Berkeley Cox's Malice Aforethought, James M. Cain's Double Indemnity, John D. Macdonald's The Drowner, and Donna Tartt's A Secret History.

At CrimeReads, Swanson tagged eight more books which nearly made the original list, including:

The Ax (1997) by Donald E. Westlake

In this addictive (and disturbing) novel, Westlake puts the reader into the head of murderer Burke Devore, a laid-off executive from a paper mill, who systematically begins to kill his competition in order to position himself for a new job. With an untraceable gun he lies in wait for his victims like a hunter in the woods, knowing that there is one moment in the day when these men will be vulnerable.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Marty Ambrose reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Marty Ambrose, author of A Shadowed Fate.

Her entry begins:

I hate to admit this, but as a historical mystery author I didn’t choose the novel which I’m currently reading because of the genre. It was the cover. I spied The Indigo Girl in my local independent bookstore and found myself entranced by the cover art’s dreamy blend of blue colors around the lone figure of a woman in eighteenth-century dress—without a face. Just a blank space where the woman’s features would be drawn. Why so cryptic? Then, I read the blurb about the protagonist: sixteen-year old, Eliza Lucas Pickney, who takes over running her family’s plantations in 1739 and becomes a local legend for introducing indigo farming to South Carolina. I was hooked. And the book hasn’t disappointed me. The author has a delicate narrative style that fits the age of the heroine, giving such a complex portrait of Eliza who is stubborn, compassionate, and adventurous—compelling at every turn, especially in her relationship with...[read on]

About A Shadowed Fate, from the publisher:

A shocking revelation from an old friend leads Claire Clairmont on a dangerous quest in this second in a fascinating historical trilogy based on the 'summer of 1816' Byron/Shelley group.

1873, Florence. Claire Clairmont, the last survivor of the 'haunted summer of 1816' Byron/Shelley circle, determines to travel to Ravenna to learn the true fate of Allegra, her daughter by Lord Byron. But Claire soon finds herself shadowed at every turn and in increasing danger. Can Claire uncover what really happened in Ravenna so many years ago?

Visit Marty Ambrose's website.

The Page 69 Test: A Shadowed Fate.

My Book, The Movie: A Shadowed Fate.

Writers Read: Marty Ambrose.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Margarita Montimore's "Oona Out of Order"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Oona Out of Order: A Novel by Margarita Montimore.

About the book, from the publisher:

Just because life may be out of order, doesn’t mean it’s broken.

It’s New Year’s Eve 1982, and Oona Lockhart has her whole life before her. At the stroke of midnight she will turn nineteen, and the year ahead promises to be one of consequence. Should she go to London to study economics, or remain at home in Brooklyn to pursue her passion for music and be with her boyfriend? As the countdown to the New Year begins, Oona faints and awakens thirty-two years in the future in her fifty-one-year-old body. Greeted by a friendly stranger in a beautiful house she’s told is her own, Oona learns that with each passing year she will leap to another age at random. And so begins Oona Out of Order...

Hopping through decades, pop culture fads, and much-needed stock tips, Oona is still a young woman on the inside but ever changing on the outside. Who will she be next year? Philanthropist? Club Kid? World traveler? Wife to a man she’s never met?

Surprising, magical, and heart-wrenching, Margarita Montimore has crafted an unforgettable story about the burdens of time, the endurance of love, and the power of family.

Visit Margarita Montimore's website.

The Page 69 Test: Oona Out of Order.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven books that will help you understand COVID-19

Jeva Lange is the culture critic at TheWeek.com.

At The Week magazine she tagged seven favorite books that "give us a chance to better understand what's unfolding now with COVID-19," including:

The American Plague: The Untold Story of Yellow Fever, The Epidemic That Shaped Our History, by Molly Caldwell Crosby

President Trump's much-criticized response to the coronavirus outbreak has parallels with another president and another epidemic — Rutherford B. Hayes, and the yellow fever of 1878. As the disease, borne by mosquitos from Africa, bloomed in Memphis, killing thousands, city officials begged the White House for help. Rutherford waved away the concern: "I suspect the Memphis sorrow is greatly exaggerated by the panic-stricken people," he wrote in reply. Soon, some 20,000 people in the Mississippi Valley were dead, surpassing "the Chicago fire, San Francisco earthquake, and Johnstown flood combined." By the end of the year, nearly a third of Memphis, some 5,000 people, had lost their lives to the disease. While yellow fever is still around, it might feel like something that belongs to a distant place and time — but American Plague, as much as it is a check on leaders' hubris, is also a reminder that in an increasingly interconnected world, an isolated outbreak soon becomes everybody's problem.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

William Boyle's "City of Margins," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: City of Margins: A Novel by William Boyle.

The entry begins:

Heavily inspired by films with big ensemble casts by directors like Robert Altman, Alan Rudolph, and John Sayles, City of Margins has that same double VHS sprawl, with nine key players and lots of bit parts. If it was to get made into a film, here's who I'd like to play the lead roles:

Ava Bifulco: Marisa Tomei

Donna Rotante: Elisabeth Moss

Donnie Parascandolo: Vince Vaughn

Mikey Baldini: Alex Wolff

Antonina Divino: Florence Pugh

Nick Bifulco: Jesse Plemons

Rosemarie Baldini: Amy Ryan

Ralph Sottile: Robert Longstreet

Pags: Kevin Corrigan

This was tough. I’m a big film lover, and I often think about certain actors as I write. Edie Falco, John Turturro, and Steve Buscemi are just a few saints of my imagination. I also write a lot with James Gandolfini in mind, and I’m sad I’ll never get to write something he could actually star in—that would’ve been the greatest. City of Margins presented other challenges, as it was...[read on]

Visit William Boyle's website.

My Book, The Movie: Gravesend and The Lonely Witness.

The Page 69 Test: Gravesend and The Lonely Witness.

Writers Read: William Boyle.

The Page 69 Test: City of Margins.

My Book, The Movie: City of Margins.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Cassia Roth's "A Miscarriage of Justice"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: A Miscarriage of Justice: Women’s Reproductive Lives and the Law in Early Twentieth-Century Brazil by Cassia Roth.

About the book, from the publisher:

A Miscarriage of Justice examines women's reproductive health in relation to legal and medical policy in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. After the abolition of slavery in 1888 and the onset of republicanism in 1889, women's reproductive capabilities—their ability to conceive and raise future citizens and laborers—became critical to the expansion of the new Brazilian state. Analyzing court cases, law, medical writings, and health data, Cassia Roth argues that the state's approach to women's health in the early twentieth century focused on criminalizing fertility control without improving services or outcomes for women. Ultimately, the increasingly interventionist state fostered a culture of condemnation around poor women's reproduction that extended beyond elite discourses into the popular imagination.

By tracing how legal thought and medical knowledge became cemented into law and clinical practice, how obstetricians, public health officials, and legal practitioners approached fertility control, and how women experienced and negotiated their reproductive lives, A Miscarriage of Justice provides a new way of interpreting the intertwined histories of gender, race, reproduction, and the state—and shows how these questions continue to reverberate in debates over reproductive rights and women's health in Brazil today.

Visit Cassia Roth's website.

The Page 99 Test: A Miscarriage of Justice.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five SFF books with dogs as key characters

Vanessa Armstrong is a book lover and writer with bylines at the LA Times, SYFY WIRE, StarTrek.com and other publications. She lives in Los Angeles with her dog Penny and her husband Jon.

At Tor.com Armstrong tagged five SFF books with dogs (and dog-adjacent individuals) as key characters," including:

Bumbersnoot the Mechanical Dog in The Finishing School series by Gail Carriger

If dogs and steampunk are two things you enjoy, then Bumbersnoot the mechanical dachshund from Gail Carriger’s Finishing School series will be right up your alley. This young adult series takes place in a school that’s located in a dirigible floating around a city set in a time period that’s the steampunk version of 1850s London. The main character is a girl named Sophorina, a student at the school who has a mechanimal named Bumbersnoot, a robot dog who eats coal and steamwhistles out warnings. Bumbersnoot is a reliable companion to Sophorina; he helps her out of more than a few pickles and even gets the chance to meet Queen Victoria at one point, making him a very special dog indeed.

Read about another entry on the list.

Etiquette & Espionage of The Finishing School series is among Feliza Casano's seventeen killer schoolgirls in fiction and Katherine Monasterio's four unique YA steampunk novels. The series is among Meghan Ball's ten top fictional educational institutions from SFF books.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Katrin Schumann reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Katrin Schumann, author of This Terrible Beauty: A Novel.

Her entry begins:

To be honest, I'm in the middle of reading four books right now because I'm doing research for my next novel. It's hard for me to really enjoy an immersive reading experience when I'm in research mode. However, I read Rick Moody's atmospheric novel, The Ice Storm, about the 1970s recently and was utterly engrossed and transported. It's definitely the kind of book I'll read again: full of incredible period details, but also thoughtful about...[read on]

About This Terrible Beauty, from the publisher:

From the bestselling author of The Forgotten Hours comes an unforgettable story of one woman’s journey to reclaim what she lost in a country torn apart by the devastating legacy of WWII.

On the windswept shores of an East German island, Bettina Heilstrom struggles to build a life from the ashes. World War II has ended, and her country is torn apart. Longing for a family, she marries Werner, an older bureaucrat who adores her. But after joining the fledgling secret police, he is drawn deep into its dark mission and becomes a dangerous man.

When Bettina falls in love with an idealistic young renegade, Werner discovers her infidelity and forces her to make a terrible choice: spend her life in prison or leave her home forever. Either way she loses both her lover and child.

Ten years later, Bettina has reinvented herself as a celebrated photographer in Chicago, but she’s never stopped yearning for the baby she left behind. Surprised by an unexpected visitor from her past, she resolves to return to her ravaged homeland to reclaim her daughter and uncover her beloved’s fate, whatever the cost.

Visit Katrin Schumann's website.

Writers Read: Katrin Schumann.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten mentors in fiction

Benjamin Myers was born in Durham, UK, in 1976. He is an author and journalist, translated into several languages.

His new novel is The Offing.

At the Guardian, Myers tagged ten top mentors--"inspiring, sometimes ambiguous figures [who] are a perennial flint-spark for storytelling"--in fiction, including:

Teddy Prince in Daisy Jones and The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

An inventive subversion of the music biography-as-oral-history, the Fleetwood Mac-like band’s story here covers all the rock pitfalls during their rise and fall in heady 1970s LA – complete with a mentor figure in Teddy Price. In fact, the oversized British CEO of Runner Records may be a Svengali figure – the more insidious sibling of the mentor – but as the line between the two is so often blurred he warrants inclusion, if only as a reminder that behind every successful performer, whether real or imagined, there is usually a mentor; some entirely altruistic, others less so.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Daniel Markey's "China's Western Horizon"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: China's Western Horizon: Beijing and the New Geopolitics of Eurasia by Daniel Markey.

About the book, from the publisher:

Under the ambitious leadership of President Xi Jinping, China is zealously transforming its wealth and economic power into potent tools of global political influence. But China's foreign policy initiatives, even the vaunted "Belt and Road," will be shaped and redefined as they confront the ground realities of local and regional politics outside China. In China's Western Horizon, Daniel S. Markey, a scholar of international relations and former member of the U.S. State Department's policy planning staff, previews how China's efforts are likely to play out along its "western horizon:" across the swath of Eurasia that includes South Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East.

Drawing from extensive interviews, travels, and historical research, Markey describes how perceptions of China vary widely within states such as Pakistan, Kazakhstan, and Iran. Powerful and privileged groups across the region often expect to profit from their connections to China, while others fear commercial and political losses. Similarly, Eurasian statesmen are scrambling to harness China's energy purchases, arms sales, and infrastructure investment. These leaders are working with China in order to outdo their strategic competitors, including India and Saudi Arabia, and simultaneously negotiating relations with Russia and America. On balance, Markey anticipates that China's deepening involvement will play to the advantage of regional strongmen and exacerbate the political tensions within and among Eurasian states. To make the most of America's limited influence in China's backyard (and elsewhere), he argues that U.S. policymakers should pursue a selective and localized strategy to serve America's specific aims in Eurasia and to better compete with China over the long run.

Visit Daniel Markey's website.

The Page 99 Test: China's Western Horizon.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: William Boyle's "City of Margins"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: City of Margins: A Novel by William Boyle.

About the book, from the publisher:

A vivid new cast of characters collide in gritty 1990s Brooklyn, in this latest from acclaimed neo-noir author William Boyle.

In City of Margins, the lives of several lost souls intersect in Southern Brooklyn in the early 1990s. There’s Donnie Parascandolo, a disgraced ex-cop with blood on his hands; Ava Bifulco, a widow whose daily work grind is her whole life; Nick, Ava’s son, a grubby high school teacher who dreams of a shortcut to success; Mikey Baldini, a college dropout who’s returned to the old neighborhood, purposeless and drifting; Donna Rotante, Donnie’s ex-wife, still reeling from the suicide of their teenage son; Mikey’s mother, Rosemarie, also a widow, who hopes Mikey won’t fall into the trap of strong arm work; and Antonina Divino, a high school girl with designs on breaking free from Brooklyn. Uniting them are the dead: Mikey’s old man, killed over a gambling debt, and Donnie and Donna’s poor son, Gabe.

These characters cross paths in unexpected ways, guided by coincidence and the pull of blood. There are new things to be found in the rubble of their lives, too. The promise of something different beyond the barriers that have been set out for them. This is a story of revenge and retribution, of facing down the ghosts of the past, of untold desires, of yearning and forgiveness and synchronicity, of the great distance of lives lived in dangerous proximity to each other. City of Margins is a Technicolor noir melodrama pieced together in broken glass.

Visit William Boyle's website.

My Book, The Movie: Gravesend and The Lonely Witness.

The Page 69 Test: Gravesend and The Lonely Witness.

Writers Read: William Boyle.

The Page 69 Test: City of Margins.

--Marshal Zeringue

Marty Ambrose's "A Shadowed Fate," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: A Shadowed Fate by Marty Ambrose.

The entry begins:

As a theatre minor in college, I always imagined how different actors might play the characters in my favorite books; and, needless to say, I’ve thought quite a bit about who might portray my major characters on the big screen. Although I write about mostly larger-than life actual literary figures from the nineteenth century, I still think there are actors who could play them with depth and complexity.

My heroine, Claire Clairmont is probably the most challenging because in my historical mysteries she is both a young woman of seventeen and an older woman in her early 70s. So, I always imagined her as being played by two actors. I would cast Jessica Brown Findlay as a young Claire. She is the British actress who played Sybil in Downton Abbey, and I think she captures the rebellious quality and the intense romantic longings that are so much a part of Claire as a young woman. The older Claire would have to be played by...[read on]

Visit Marty Ambrose's website.

The Page 69 Test: A Shadowed Fate.

My Book, The Movie: A Shadowed Fate.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is William Boyle reading?

Featured at Writers Read: William Boyle, author of City of Margins: A Novel.

His entry begins:

My new novel, City of Margins, comes out on the same day as books by three of my favorite writers: Lee Durkee’s The Last Taxi Driver; Michael Farris Smith’s Blackwood; and Scott Phillips’s That Left Turn at Albuquerque. I’ve read advance copies of The Last Taxi Driver and Blackwood, and they’re both masterpieces; I’ll be first in line for the new Phillips the day...[read on]

About City of Margins, from the publisher:

A vivid new cast of characters collide in gritty 1990s Brooklyn, in this latest from acclaimed neo-noir author William Boyle.

In City of Margins, the lives of several lost souls intersect in Southern Brooklyn in the early 1990s. There’s Donnie Parascandolo, a disgraced ex-cop with blood on his hands; Ava Bifulco, a widow whose daily work grind is her whole life; Nick, Ava’s son, a grubby high school teacher who dreams of a shortcut to success; Mikey Baldini, a college dropout who’s returned to the old neighborhood, purposeless and drifting; Donna Rotante, Donnie’s ex-wife, still reeling from the suicide of their teenage son; Mikey’s mother, Rosemarie, also a widow, who hopes Mikey won’t fall into the trap of strong arm work; and Antonina Divino, a high school girl with designs on breaking free from Brooklyn. Uniting them are the dead: Mikey’s old man, killed over a gambling debt, and Donnie and Donna’s poor son, Gabe.

These characters cross paths in unexpected ways, guided by coincidence and the pull of blood. There are new things to be found in the rubble of their lives, too. The promise of something different beyond the barriers that have been set out for them. This is a story of revenge and retribution, of facing down the ghosts of the past, of untold desires, of yearning and forgiveness and synchronicity, of the great distance of lives lived in dangerous proximity to each other. City of Margins is a Technicolor noir melodrama pieced together in broken glass.

Visit William Boyle's website.

My Book, The Movie: Gravesend and The Lonely Witness.

The Page 69 Test: Gravesend and The Lonely Witness.

Writers Read: William Boyle.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Abigail C. Saguy's "Come Out, Come Out, Whoever You Are"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Come Out, Come Out, Whoever You Are by Abigail C. Saguy.

About the book, from the publisher:

While people used to conceal the fact that they were gay or lesbian to protect themselves from stigma and discrimination, it is now commonplace for people to "come out" and encourage others to do so as well. Come Out, Come Out, Whoever You Are systematically examines how coming out has moved beyond gay and lesbian rights groups and how different groups wrestle with the politics of coming out in their efforts to resist stigma and enact social change. It shows how different experiences and disparate risks of disclosure shape these groups' collective strategies. Through scores of interviews with LGBTQ+ people, undocumented immigrant youth, fat acceptance activists, Mormon fundamentalist polygamists, and sexual harassment lawyers and activists in the era of the #MeToo movement, Come Out, Come Out, Whoever You Are explains why so many different groups gravitate toward the term coming out. By focusing on the personal and political resonance of coming out, it provides a novel way to understand how identity politics work in America today.

Visit Abigail C. Saguy's website.

The Page 99 Test: Come Out, Come Out, Whoever You Are.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top heroic women in literature

Candice Carty-Williams is a British writer, best known for her 2019 bestselling debut novel, Queenie.

Queenie has been described as "vital," "disarmingly honest," and "boldly political," and has been shortlisted for the Waterstones, Foyles and Goodreads Book of 2019, as well as selected as the Blackwell’s Debut of the Year.

At the Waterstones blog, Carty-Williams tagged "six characters who taught me all of the different but powerful faces that heroism can have," including:

Sethe in Beloved by Toni Morrison

So many of my literary heroes are black women who are completely oppressed by a burden we can never know, and Sethe really tops that list. She is literally haunted by her dead daughter, who returns as a ghost to upheave Sethe’s whole life. Beloved isn’t a story of overcoming and triumph, it’s a story of living with a pain of your own making that’s in turn a making of the environment you’re in. The character of Sethe is a masterclass in black women’s endurance, in fragile strength, and in a heroism that comes at a painful price.

Read about another entry on the list.

Beloved also appears on Kate Racculia's list of ten gothic fiction titles that meant something to her, Emily Temple's list of the ten books that defined the 1980s, Megan Abbott's list of six of the best books based on true crimes, Melba Pattillo Beals's 6 favorite books list, Sarah Porter's list of five favorite books featuring psychological hauntings, Matthew Fellion and Katherine Inglis' list of ten books that were subject to silencing or censorship, Jeff Somers's list of ten fictional characters based on real people, Christopher Barzak's top five list of books about magical families, Ayelet Gundar-Goshen's ten top list of wartime love stories, Judith Claire Mitchell's list of ten of the best (unconventional) ghosts in literature, Kelly Link's list of four books that changed her, a list of four books that changed Libby Gleeson, The Telegraph's list of the 15 most depressing books, Elif Shafak's top five list of fictional mothers, Charlie Jane Anders's list of ten great books you didn't know were science fiction or fantasy, Peter Dimock's top ten list of books that challenge what we think we know as "history", Stuart Evers's top ten list of homes in literature, David W. Blight's list of five outstanding novels on the Civil War era, John Mullan's list of ten of the best births in literature, Kit Whitfield's top ten list of genre-defying novels, and at the top of one list of contenders for the title of the single best work of American fiction published in the last twenty-five years.

--Marshal Zeringue

Coffee with a canine: Elizabeth Atkinson & Obadiah

Featured at Coffee with a Canine: Elizabeth Atkinson & Obadiah.

The author, on how Obadiah got his name:

Actually, that’s a funny story. At the time, we had an original portrait of my husband’s great-great grandfather, Obadiah Eames, hanging on the living room wall. He was a Mississippi River Boat Captain in the mid-1800s and the portrait had been passed down through the generations. Prior to our little puppy’s arrival, we had written down a bunch of possible names as everyone does. But when he arrived, there was just something about his eyes and expression that reminded us of our ancestor on the wall. And since they were both associated with Mississippi, we all agreed on Obadiah. His most...[read on]

About Fly Back, Agnes by Elizabeth Atkinson, from the publisher:

A heartfelt story that sensitively tackles the everyday inner turmoil of growing up and staying true to oneself.

Twelve-year-old Agnes hates everything about her life: her name, her parents’ divorce, her best friend’s abandonment, her changing body .... So while staying with her dad over the summer, she decides to become someone else. She tells people she meets that her name is Chloe, she’s fourteen, her parents are married, and she’s a dancer and actor—just the life she wants.

But Agnes’s fibs quickly stack up and start to complicate her new friendships, especially with Fin, whose mysterious relative runs a local raptor rehab center that fascinates Agnes. The birds, given time and care, heal and fly back home. Agnes, too, wants to get back to wherever she truly belongs. But first she must come to see the good in her real life, however flawed and messy it is, and be honest with her friends, her family, and herself.

Visit Elizabeth Atkinson's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Elizabeth Atkinson & Obadiah.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Marty Ambrose's "A Shadowed Fate"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: A Shadowed Fate by Marty Ambrose.

About the book, from the publisher:

A shocking revelation from an old friend leads Claire Clairmont on a dangerous quest in this second in a fascinating historical trilogy based on the 'summer of 1816' Byron/Shelley group.

1873, Florence. Claire Clairmont, the last survivor of the 'haunted summer of 1816' Byron/Shelley circle, determines to travel to Ravenna to learn the true fate of Allegra, her daughter by Lord Byron. But Claire soon finds herself shadowed at every turn and in increasing danger. Can Claire uncover what really happened in Ravenna so many years ago?

Visit Marty Ambrose's website.

The Page 69 Test: A Shadowed Fate.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Joseba Zulaika's "Hellfire from Paradise Ranch"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Hellfire from Paradise Ranch: On the Front Lines of Drone Warfare by Joseba Zulaika.

About the book, from the publisher:

In this intimate and innovative work, terror expert Joseba Zulaika examines drone warfare as manhunting carried out via satellite. Using Creech Air Force Base near Las Vegas as his center of study, he interviews drone operators as well as resisters to the war economy of the region to expose the layers of fantasy on which counterterrorism and its self-sustaining logic are grounded.

Hellfire from Paradise Ranch exposes the terror and warfare of drone killings that dominate our modern military. It unveils the trauma drone operators experience, in part due to their visual intimacy with their victims, and explores the resistance to drone killings in the same apocalyptic Nevada desert where nuclear testing, pacifist militancy, and Shoshone tradition overlap.

Stunning and absorbing, Zulaika offers a richly detailed account of how we continue to manufacture, deconstruct, and perpetuate terror.

Learn more about Hellfire from Paradise Ranch at the University of California Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Hellfire from Paradise Ranch.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top recent novels about climate catastrophe

Anne Charnock won the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 2018 for Dreams Before the Start of Time. Her latest novel is Bridge 108.

At Tor.com, Charnock tagged five recent novels about climate catastrophe, including:

The Wall by John Lanchester

Kavanagh is conscripted for two years to patrol a National Coastal Defence Structure with orders to prevent any climate refugees, or ‘others’, reaching British shores. The stakes are high for Kavanagh, for if he fails in his duties he is shipped out to sea. John Lanchester writes in pared back prose to match the monotonous life of a coastal defender. I found myself completely drawn into his fearful world. During his leave, Kavanagh visits his parents and we witness the inter-generational aggravation between them. His parents had experienced the good life of plentiful food, jobs and travel in the days before political extremism and climate catastrophe. In the latter part of The Wall, Kavanagh encounters offshore communities of refugees and deserters, introducing a slightly more upbeat note to the novel.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Serena Kent's "Death in Avignon," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Death in Avignon: A Penelope Kite Novel by Serena Kent.

The entry begins:

There’s no doubt in my mind [writes Deborah] that Jennifer Aniston would make a brilliant Penelope Kite: she has impeccable comic timing and there’s a lot of self-deprecating humour in Penelope. Aniston would bring exactly the right balance of quirky and adorable, too – and she is exactly the same age as Penelope, looking great for 50.

The trouble is that I didn’t write this book on my own, and my co-author has equally strong views, so this post is going to be an insight into our creative differences behind the scenes! Husband Rob and I have even being doing book talks entitled “How to Write a Murder Mystery with your Spouse – without Actually Committing One”. At least we’re still laughing.

For the role of Clémence Valencourt, the ultra-chic Parisian real estate agent who becomes Penelope’s unlikely friend, I would have no hesitation in casting...[read on]

Visit Serena Kent's website.

The Page 69 Test: Death in Provence.

The Page 69 Test: Death in Avignon.

My Book, The Movie: Death in Avignon.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Ismée Williams's "This Train Is Being Held"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: This Train Is Being Held by Ismée Williams.

About the book, from the publisher:

Alex is a baseball player. A great one. His papi is pushing him to go pro, but Alex maybe wants to be a poet. Not that Papi would understand or allow that.

Isa is a dancer. She'd love to go pro, if only her Havana-born mom weren't dead set against it...just like she's dead set against her daughter falling for a Latino. And Isa's privileged private-school life—with her dad losing his job and her older brother struggling with mental illness—is falling apart. Not that she'd ever tell that to Alex.

Fate—and the New York City subway—bring Alex and Isa together. Is it enough to keep them together when they need each other most?

Visit Ismée Williams's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Ismée Amiel Williams & Rowan.

My Book, The Movie: Water in May.

My Book, The Movie: This Train Is Being Held.

Writers Read: Ismée Williams.

The Page 69 Test: This Train Is Being Held.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Kathleen Barber reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Kathleen Barber, author of Follow Me.

Her entry begins:

I’m currently reading For the Best by Vanessa Lillie (releasing September 8), and I’m struggling to put it down. I love an unreliable narrator and—thus far at least—the narrator of For the Best seems as unreliable as they come. She wakes up one morning after getting blackout drunk to discover that a colleague was murdered … and her wallet was found next to the body. I loved Lillie’s debut Little Voices, and so I’m eagerly...[read on]

About Follow Me, from the publisher:

Everyone wants new followers…until they follow you home.

Audrey Miller has an enviable new job at the Smithsonian, a body by reformer Pilates, an apartment door with a broken lock, and hundreds of thousands of Instagram followers to bear witness to it all. Having just moved to Washington, DC, Audrey busies herself impressing her new boss, interacting with her online fan base, and staving off a creepy upstairs neighbor with the help of the only two people she knows in town: an ex-boyfriend she can’t stay away from and a sorority sister with a high-powered job and a mysterious past.

But Audrey’s faulty door may be the least of her security concerns. Unbeknownst to her, her move has brought her within striking distance of someone who’s obsessively followed her social media presence for years—from her first WordPress blog to her most recent Instagram Story. No longer content to simply follow her carefully curated life from a distance, he consults the dark web for advice on how to make Audrey his and his alone. In his quest to win her heart, nothing is off-limits—and nothing is private.

With “compelling, suspenseful” (Liz Nugent) prose, Kathleen Barber’s electrifying new thriller will have you scrambling to cover your webcam and digital footprints.

Visit Kathleen Barber's website.

The Page 69 Test: Follow Me.

Writers Read: Kathleen Barber.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five happy literary novels

Jojo Moyes is a novelist and journalist. Her books include the bestsellers Me Before You, After You and Still Me, The Girl You Left Behind, The One Plus One and her short story collection Paris for One and Other Stories. Her novels have been translated into forty-six languages, have hit the number one spot in twelve countries and have sold over thirty-eight million copies worldwide.

Me Before You has now sold over fourteen million copies worldwide and was adapted into a major film starring Sam Claflin and Emilia Clarke.

A Guardian reader set a challenge for Moyes: "I'm tired of sad and depressing themes, but want something that’s not a romcom in book form. Are there any happy novels that are also literary?"

One of five books Moyes offered in reply:

Paradise Lodge by Nina Stibbe. Or in fact any novel by Nina Stibbe. She has a very British comedic way of writing, in which it’s possible to detect everything from Wodehouse to the Mitfords, but in a grubbier, modern setting.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Katherine Stewart's "The Power Worshippers"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism by Katherine Stewart.

About the book, from the publisher:

For readers of Democracy in Chains and Dark Money, a revelatory investigation of the Religious Right's rise to political power.

For too long the Religious Right has masqueraded as a social movement preoccupied with a number of cultural issues, such as abortion and same-sex marriage. In her deeply reported investigation, Katherine Stewart reveals a disturbing truth: this is a political movement that seeks to gain power and to impose its vision on all of society. America's religious nationalists aren't just fighting a culture war, they are waging a political war on the norms and institutions of American democracy.

Stewart pulls back the curtain on the inner workings and leading personalities of a movement that has turned religion into a tool for domination. She exposes a dense network of think tanks, advocacy groups, and pastoral organizations embedded in a rapidly expanding community of international alliances and united not by any central command but by a shared, anti-democratic vision and a common will to power. She follows the money that fuels this movement, tracing much of it to a cadre of super-wealthy, ultraconservative donors and family foundations. She shows that today's Christian nationalism is the fruit of a longstanding antidemocratic, reactionary strain of American thought that draws on some of the most troubling episodes in America's past. It forms common cause with a globe-spanning movement that seeks to destroy liberal democracy and replace it with nationalist, theocratic and autocratic forms of government around the world. Religious nationalism is far more organized and better funded than most people realize. It seeks to control all aspects of government and society. Its successes have been stunning, and its influence now extends to every aspect of American life, from the White House to state capitols, from our schools to our hospitals.

The Power Worshippers is a brilliantly reported book of warning and a wake-up call. Stewart's probing examination demands that Christian nationalism be taken seriously as a significant threat to the American republic and our democratic freedoms.

Visit Katherine Stewart's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Power Worshippers.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Suzanne Redfearn's "In An Instant"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: In an Instant by Suzanne Redfearn.

About the book, from the publisher:

A deeply moving story of carrying on even when it seems impossible.

Life is over in an instant for sixteen-year-old Finn Miller when a devastating car accident tumbles her and ten others over the side of a mountain. Suspended between worlds, she watches helplessly as those she loves struggle to survive.

Impossible choices are made, decisions that leave the survivors tormented with grief and regret. Unable to let go, Finn keeps vigil as they struggle to reclaim their shattered lives. Jack, her father, who seeks vengeance against the one person he can blame other than himself; her best friend, Mo, who bravely searches for the truth as the story of their survival is rewritten; her sister Chloe, who knows Finn lingers and yearns to join her; and her mother, Ann, who saved them all but is haunted by her decisions. Finn needs to move on, but how can she with her family still in pieces?

Heartrending yet ultimately redemptive, In an Instant is a story about the power of love, the meaning of family, and carrying on…even when it seems impossible.

Visit Suzanne Redfearn's website, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.

Coffee with a Canine: Suzanne Redfearn and Cooper.

My Book, The Movie: Hush Little Baby.

The Page 69 Test: Hush Little Baby.

The Page 69 Test: No Ordinary Life.

Writers Read: Suzanne Redfearn (February 2016).

My Book, The Movie: No Ordinary Life.

My Book, The Movie: In an Instant.

The Page 69 Test: In an Instant.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven psychology titles that explore why we are who we are

Sarah Butcher is an assistant marketing manager for Oxford University Press. At the OUP Blog she tagged "seven books about a range of issues within social psychology—identity, gender and sexuality, radicalism, social assumptions and biases—address just a few of the questions about who we are." One title on the list:

Old Man Country: My Search for Meaning Among the Elders Thomas R. Cole

Today, a 65-year-old man will more likely than not live to see his 85th birthday. What life looks like in a man’s ninth decade can be a daunting unknown. Thomas R. Cole spoke with a dozen prominent American men—including former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Paul Volcker and spiritual leader Ram Dass—to answer four questions about old age: am I still a man? Do I still matter? What is the meaning of my life? Am I loved?

Read about another entry on the list.

The Page 99 Test: Old Man Country.

--Marshal Zeringue