The seven weirdest high schools in literature

Bethany Ball was born in Detroit and now lives in New York with her family.

She is the author of What To Do About The Solomons and the newly released, The Pessimists.

[The Page 69 Test: What To Do About The Solomons.]

At Electic Lit Ball tagged seven "books set in schools where things aren't quite what they seem," including:

Hailsham Boarding School in Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

I love books where the slow reveal of the reality of a place is the central mystery. Indoctrination is the central theme of Ishiguro’s dystopian novel Never Let Me Go where young students reside unwittingly at a boarding school for future organ donors. The writing is gorgeous and gripping and as both a love story and a mystery, it also manages to explore questions of science decoupled from ethics.

Read about another entry on the list.

Never Let Me Go is on Zak Salih's eight books about childhood pals—and the adults they become, Rachel Donohue's list of seven coming-of-age novels with elements of mystery or the supernatural, Chris Mooney's list of six top intelligent, page-turning, genre-bending classics, James Scudamore's top ten list of books about boarding school, Caroline Zancan's list of eight novels about students and teachers behaving badly, LitHub's list of the ten books that defined the 2000s, Meg Wolitzer's ten favorite books list, Jeff Somers's lists of nine science fiction novels that imagine the future of healthcare and "five pairs of books that have nothing to do with each other—and yet have everything to do with each other" and eight tales of technology run amok and top seven speculative works for those who think they hate speculative fiction, a list of five books that shaped Jason Gurley's Eleanor, Anne Charnock's list of five favorite books with fictitious works of art, Esther Inglis-Arkell's list of nine great science fiction books for people who don't like science fiction, Sabrina Rojas Weiss's list of ten favorite boarding school novels, Allegra Frazier's top four list of great dystopian novels that made it to the big screen, James Browning's top ten list of boarding school books, Jason Allen Ashlock and Mink Choi's top ten list of tragic love stories, Allegra Frazier's list of seven characters whose jobs are worse than yours, Shani Boianjiu's list of five top novels about coming of age, Karen Thompson Walker's list of five top "What If?" books, Lloyd Shepherd's top ten list of weird histories, and John Mullan's lists of ten of the best men writing as women in literature and ten of the best sentences as titles.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Rhacel Salazar Parreñas's "Unfree"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Unfree: Migrant Domestic Work in Arab States by Rhacel Salazar Parreñas.

About the book, from the publisher:

A stirring account of the experiences of migrant domestic workers, and what freedom, abuse, and power mean within a vast contract labor system.

In the United Arab Emirates, there is an employment sponsorship system known as the kafala. Migrant domestic workers within it must solely work for their employer, secure their approval to leave the country, and obtain their consent to terminate a job. In Unfree, Rhacel Salazar Parreñas examines the labor of women from the Philippines, who represent the largest domestic workforce in the country. She challenges presiding ideas about the kafala, arguing that its reduction to human trafficking is, at best, unproductive, and at worst damaging to genuine efforts to regulate this system that impacts tens of millions of domestic workers across the globe.

The kafala system technically renders migrant workers unfree as they are made subject to the arbitrary authority of their employer. Not surprisingly, it has been the focus of intense scrutiny and criticism from human rights advocates and scholars. Yet, contrary to their claims, Parreñas argues that most employers do not abuse domestic workers or maximize the extraction of their labor. Still, the outrage elicited by this possibility dominates much of public discourse and overshadows the more mundane reality of domestic work in the region. Drawing on unparalleled data collected over 4 years,this book diverges from previous studies as it establishes that the kafala system does not necessarily result in abuse, but instead leads to the absence of labor standards. This absence is reflected in the diversity of work conditions across households, ranging from dehumanizing treatment, infantilization, to respect and recognition of domestic workers.

Unfree shows how various stakeholders, including sending and receiving states, NGOs, inter-governmental organizations, employers and domestic workers, project moral standards to guide the unregulated labor of domestic work. They can mitigate or aggravate the arbitrary authority of employers. Parreñas offers a deft and rich portrait of how morals mediate work on the ground, warning against the dangers of reducing unfreedom to structural violence.

Visit Rhacel Salazar Parreñas's website.

The Page 99 Test: Unfree.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Georgie Blalock's "The Last Debutantes"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Last Debutantes: A Novel by Georgie Blalock.

About the book, from the publisher:

They danced the night away, knowing their world was about to change forever. They were the debutantes of 1939, laughing on the outside, but knowing tragedy— and a war—was just around the corner.

When Valerie de Vere Cole, the niece of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, makes her deep curtsey to the King and Queen of England, she knows she’s part of a world about to end. The daughter of a debt-ridden father and a neglectful mother, Valerie sees firsthand that war is imminent.

Nevertheless, Valerie reinvents herself as a carefree and glittering young society woman, befriending other debutantes from England’s aristocracy as well as the vivacious Eunice Kennedy, daughter of the U.S. Ambassador. Despite her social success, the world’s troubles and Valerie’s fear of loss and loneliness prove impossible to ignore.

How will she navigate her new life when everything in her past has taught her that happiness and stability are as fragile as peace in our time? For the moment she will forget her cares in too much champagne and waltzes. Because very soon, Valerie knows that she must find the inner strength to stand strong and carry on through the challenges of life and love and war.

Visit Georgie Blalock's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Other Windsor Girl.

The Page 69 Test: The Other Windsor Girl.

My Book, The Movie: The Last Debutantes.

Q&A with Georgie Blalock.

The Page 69 Test: The Last Debutantes.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine top books in magic and covens and spells

For more than ten years, Fire Lyte has interviewed self-identified witches, fairy experts, goblin hunters, paranormal investigators, and even a werewolf on his podcast Inciting A Riot. His thousands of listeners worldwide tune in as he examines magic, witchcraft, Paganism, and spiritual seekership through a diverse, inclusive lens with a balance of modern science, critical thought, and pop culture. He lives in the Chicago suburbs with his husband and vast array of fur children.

Fire Lyte's new book is The Dabbler's Guide to Witchcraft: Seeking an Intentional Magical Path.

At Lit Hub he tagged nine "stories of witches, a coven of stories if you will, that encompass the history of the witch through time and how these stories are thriving in the modern era." One title on the list:

Signe Pike, The Lost Queen

The Lost Queen puts a magical spin on a nearly forgotten story of a very real queen from history, Languoureth, who ruled in sixth-century Scotland. She is the twin sister of the man who went on to inspire the legend of Merlin, but that isn’t the only magical tie in the book. Languoureth allies herself with a woman whose strength and magic forever change the course of her life. If you have been pining to go back to Camelot but want a fresh take on the legend, this trilogy will hit all the right spots.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Audrey Watters's "Teaching Machines"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Teaching Machines: The History of Personalized Learning by Audrey Watters.

About the book, from the publisher:

How ed tech was born: Twentieth-century teaching machines—from Sidney Pressey's mechanized test-giver to B. F. Skinner's behaviorist bell-ringing box.

Contrary to popular belief, ed tech did not begin with videos on the internet. The idea of technology that would allow students to “go at their own pace” did not originate in Silicon Valley. In Teaching Machines, education writer Audrey Watters offers a lively history of predigital educational technology, from Sidney Pressey's mechanized positive-reinforcement provider to B. F. Skinner's behaviorist bell-ringing box. Watters shows that these machines and the pedagogy that accompanied them sprang from ideas—bite-sized content, individualized instruction—that had legs and were later picked up by textbook publishers and early advocates for computerized learning.

Watters pays particular attention to the role of the media—newspapers, magazines, television, and film—in shaping people's perceptions of teaching machines as well as the psychological theories underpinning them. She considers these machines in the context of education reform, the political reverberations of Sputnik, and the rise of the testing and textbook industries. She chronicles Skinner's attempts to bring his teaching machines to market, culminating in the famous behaviorist's efforts to launch Didak 101, the “pre-verbal” machine that taught spelling. (Alternate names proposed by Skinner include “Autodidak,” “Instructomat,” and “Autostructor.”) Telling these somewhat cautionary tales, Watters challenges what she calls “the teleology of ed tech”—the idea that not only is computerized education inevitable, but technological progress is the sole driver of events.

Visit Audrey Watters's website.

The Page 99 Test: Teaching Machines.

--Marshal Zeringue

David R. Slayton's "Trailer Park Trickster," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Trailer Park Trickster by David R. Slayton.

The entry begins:

In White Trash Warlock we meet Adam Binder, a working class witch living in Guthrie, Oklahoma. The complex and shifting relationships between the characters is the core of the book in my opinion, so it would take talented actors to coax that onto the screen.

Setting-wise, the books shift back and forth between the normal world and the Spirit Realm, so it would need a director or a showrunner like Noah Hawley, who made Legion to capture that sometimes subtle, sometimes jarring, differences.

The main character, Adam, has a lot of innocence and a dash of cockiness that hides his insecurities, which mostly come from his rural background. He knows he doesn’t have a lot of magic and that makes him cautious when dealing with the beings and threats he sometimes has to. I’d love to see somebody play him who could show those sides, someone like Ross Lynch (The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina) or Sean Grandillio (Youth or Consequences, MTV’s Scream series).

Vic Martinez is a rookie cop whose whole world gets turned upside down when Adam saves him from a Grim Reaper, an intervention with...[read on]

Visit David R. Slayton's website.

My Book, The Movie: Trailer Park Trickster.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight crime novels in which a small town is the perfect incubator

L. Alison Heller is the author of The Neighbor’s Secret, The Never Never Sisters and The Love Wars. In a former life, she was an attorney in New York City. She now lives in Colorado with her family.

At CrimeReads Heller tagged eight "favorite novels in which a small town is the perfect incubator for some truly grisly secrets." One title on the list:

Bluebird, Bluebird by Attica Locke

If you blink, you might miss Lark, Texas, a tiny former plantation in Shelby County. There’s a restaurant at one end of town, a bar on the other, and very little in between—although one of the residents does live in a replica of Monticello.

When two dead bodies—that of a black lawyer from Chicago and a local white woman— are found in town, Ranger Darren Matthews travels to Lark to investigate. Through his outsiders’ eyes, the reader can sense the town secrets and subtext just out of grasp. As the novel unspools, so do they.

Read about another entry on the list.

Bluebird, Bluebird is among Janice Hallett's five gripping mysteries set in small towns and Katie Tallo's top ten crime novels about returning home.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Dan Breznitz's "Innovation in Real Places"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Innovation in Real Places: Strategies for Prosperity in an Unforgiving World by Dan Breznitz.

About the book, from the publisher:

A challenge to prevailing ideas about innovation and a guide to identifying the best growth strategy for your community.

Across the world, cities and regions have wasted trillions of dollars on blindly copying the Silicon Valley model of growth creation. Since the early years of the information age, we've been told that economic growth derives from harnessing technological innovation. To do this, places must create good education systems, partner with local research universities, and attract innovative hi-tech firms. We have lived with this system for decades, and the result is clear: a small number of regions and cities at the top of the high-tech industry but many more fighting a losing battle to retain economic dynamism.

But are there other models that don't rely on a flourishing high-tech industry? In Innovation in Real Places, Dan Breznitz argues that there are. The purveyors of the dominant ideas on innovation have a feeble understanding of the big picture on global production and innovation. They conflate innovation with invention and suffer from techno-fetishism. In their devotion to start-ups, they refuse to admit that the real obstacle to growth for most cities is the overwhelming power of the real hubs, which siphon up vast amounts of talent and money. Communities waste time, money, and energy pursuing this road to nowhere. Breznitz proposes that communities instead focus on where they fit in the four stages in the global production process. Some are at the highest end, and that is where the Clevelands, Sheffields, and Baltimores are being pushed toward. But that is bad advice. Success lies in understanding the changed structure of the global system of production and then using those insights to enable communities to recognize their own advantages, which in turn allows to them to foster surprising forms of specialized innovation. As he stresses, all localities have certain advantages relative to at least one stage of the global production process, and the trick is in recognizing it. Leaders might think the answer lies in high-tech or high-end manufacturing, but more often than not, they're wrong. Innovation in Real Places is an essential corrective to a mythology of innovation and growth that too many places have bought into in recent years. Best of all, it has the potential to prod local leaders into pursuing realistic and regionally appropriate models for growth and innovation.

Learn more about Innovation in Real Places at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Innovation in Real Places.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Rebecca Hodge's "Over the Falls"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Over the Falls by Rebecca Hodge.

About the book, from the publisher:

For fans of The River at Night, Rebecca Hodge’s next thrilling read explores how far one woman will go to find her sister.

Bryn Collins moved to the Eastern Tennessee mountains and never looked back when, fourteen years ago, her fiancé, Sawyer, jilted her for her despised sister, Del. Sawyer was later killed in a plane crash, but Bryn has never been able to forgive her sister for what she did, and instead chooses to spend her days in the idyllic beauty of the rugged landscape. Although a life-threatening accident ended her days navigating the perils of whitewater, she still finds refuge kayaking in the local lakes.

But Bryn’s placid life hits the skids when an unwelcome cast of characters reenters her life. Del goes mysteriously missing, leading her fourteen-year-old son, Josh, to Bryn’s doorstep for help. Then Carl, a trouble-making outcast the sisters knew years before, is desperate to find Del because she owes him money, pulling Bryn into the orbit of his schemes.

On the hunt for Del, Bryn and Josh follow an ever-elusive trail to Colorado, and at the annual Mountain Games competition in Vail, they finally confront the truth. For Bryn, all roads lead to the river, and on vicious Colorado whitewater, she is forced to muster every ounce of courage and strength she has to piece her family back together again.

Visit Rebecca Hodge's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Rebecca Hodge & Tess and Kalen.

The Page 69 Test: Over the Falls.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Georgie Blalock

From my Q&A with Georgie Blalock, author of The Last Debutantes: A Novel:

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

The title works pretty hard to take readers into the story. The Last Debutantes is set in 1939, during the last debutante season before World War II. Once war breaks out, many things, including the lives and futures of the debutantes, change forever. The title indicates that the 1939 Season was the last one of normalcy before everything changed. Although the debutante tradition would return after World War II, the war and the world that had spawned that tradition was, like the debutantes, irrevocably altered. These were the last debutantes to celebrate their...[read on]

Visit Georgie Blalock's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Other Windsor Girl.

The Page 69 Test: The Other Windsor Girl.

My Book, The Movie: The Last Debutantes.

Q&A with Georgie Blalock.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven top books about older women behaving badly

Amy Lee Lillard is the author of Dig Me Out from Atelier26 Books. She was shortlisted for the 2017 Berlin Writing Prize and named one of Epiphany’s Breakout 8 Writers in 2018. Her fiction and nonfiction appears in Barrelhouse, Foglifter, Epiphany, Off Assignment, and other publications.

Lillard has worked as a copywriter and marketer for over twenty years, working in advertising, corporate communications, trade journalism, and medical education. She has also taught writing at local community colleges and mentored in the PEN America Prison Writing Program.

Lillard is the co-creator, co-host, and producer of Broads and Books, the funny and feminist book podcast.

At Electric Lit she tagged seven books "about women who refuse to disappear and insist on being seen." including:

A Certain Hunger by Chelsea G. Summers

A gruesome story with a beautifully self-aware narrator, one who knows the violence and cruelty behind men, and haute cuisine. And she will use her knowledge to make her true mark.

On the first night we meet Dorothy, a renowned food critic in her 50s, she’s picking up a younger man at a bar. After a few wild weeks together, she brutally kills him. But not just that: she slices off pieces of him and makes him the centerpiece of her fancy dinner. The rest of the story is spectacularly visceral prose charting the evolution of a truly wild and dangerous woman.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Antulio J. Echevarria II's "War's Logic"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: War's Logic: Strategic Thought and the American Way of War by Antulio J. Echevarria II.

About the book, from the publisher:

Antulio J. Echevarria II reveals how successive generations of American strategic theorists have thought about war. Analyzing the work of Alfred Thayer Mahan, Billy Mitchell, Bernard Brodie, Robert Osgood, Thomas Schelling, Herman Kahn, Henry Eccles, Joseph Wiley, Harry Summers, John Boyd, William Lind, and John Warden, he uncovers the logic that underpinned each theorist's critical concepts, core principles, and basic assumptions about the nature and character of war. In so doing, he identifies four paradigms of war's nature - traditional, modern, political, and materialist - that have shaped American strategic thought. If war's logic is political, as Carl von Clausewitz said, then so too is thinking about war.

Learn more about War's Logic at the Cambridge University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: War's Logic.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Vicki Delany's "Deadly Summer Nights"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Deadly Summer Nights by Vicki Delany.

About the book, from the publisher:

A summer of fun at a Catskills resort comes to an abrupt end when a guest is found murdered, in this new 1950s set mystery series.

It’s the summer of 1953, and Elizabeth Grady is settling into Haggerman’s Catskills Resort. As a vacation getaway, Haggerman’s is ideal, and although Elizabeth’s ostentatious but well-meaning mother is new to running the resort, Elizabeth is eager to help her organize the guests and the entertainment acts. But Elizabeth will have to resort to untested abilities if she wants to save her mother’s business.

When a reclusive guest is found dead in a lake on the grounds, and a copy of The Communist Manifesto is found in his cabin, the local police chief is convinced that the man was a Russian spy. But Elizabeth isn’t so sure, and with the fate of the resort hanging in the balance, she’ll need to dodge red herrings, withstand the Red Scare, and catch a killer red-handed.

Visit Vicki Delany's website, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.

The Page 69 Test: Rest Ye Murdered Gentlemen.

The Page 69 Test: A Scandal in Scarlet.

The Page 69 Test: Murder in a Teacup.

Writers Read: Vicki Delany.

The Page 69 Test: Deadly Summer Nights.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top books about migration and Caribbean identity in America

Antonio Michael Downing grew up in southern Trinidad, Northern Ontario, Brooklyn, and Kitchener. He is a musician, writer, and activist based in Toronto. His 2010 debut novel, Molasses, was published to critical acclaim. In 2017 he was named by the RBC Taylor Prize as one of Canada's top Emerging Authors for nonfiction. He performs and composes music as John Orpheus.

Downing's new book is Saga Boy: My Life of Blackness and Becoming.

At Lit Hub he tagged six favorite books about migration and Caribbean identity in America, including:

Audre Lorde, Zami

Audre Lorde was, in her own words, a “Black, lesbian, mother, warrior poet.” Born in the Virgin Islands to a father from Barbados and a mother from Grenada, Lorde wrote Zami as a memoir of her early years in New York City and the formative experiences that brought her into living fully “out” as a queer person. What strikes me is not only the vibrancy of her prose but the power of her mythmaking; her sheer determination to draw the contours of her own life in a world where she did not recognize herself. Finally, her celebration of connections between women is triumphant—she writes, “Every woman I have ever loved has left her print upon me.”

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Daniel Groll's "Conceiving People"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Conceiving People: Genetic Knowledge and the Ethics of Sperm and Egg Donation by Daniel Groll.

About the book, from the publisher:

Each year, tens of thousands of children are conceived with donated gametes (sperm or eggs). By some estimates, there are over one million donor-conceived people in the United States and, of course, many more the world over. Some know they are donor-conceived. Some do not. Some know the identity of their donors. Others never will.

Questions about what donor-conceived should know about their genetic progenitors are hugely significant for literally millions of people, including donor-conceived people, their parents, and donors. But the practice of gamete donation also provides a vivid occasion for thinking about questions that matter to everyone. What is the value of knowing who your genetic progenitors are? How are our identities bound up with knowing where we come from? What obligations do parents have to their children? And what makes someone a parent in the first place?

In Conceiving People: Identity, Genetics and Gamete Donation, Daniel Groll argues that people who plan to create a child with donated gametes should choose a donor whose identity will be made available to the resulting child. This is not, Groll argues, because having genetic knowledge is fundamentally important. Rather, it is because donor-conceived people are likely to develop a significant interest in having genetic knowledge and parents must help satisfy their children's significant interests. In other words, because a donor-conceived person is likely to care about having genetic knowledge, their parents should care too.

Visit Daniel Groll's website.

Learn more about Conceiving People at the Oxford University Press website.

Visit Daniel Groll's website.

The Page 99 Test: Conceiving People.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top books focused on opulent wealth, family secrets & suspense

The author of Nanny Needed, The Stepdaughter, and The Missing Woman, Georgina Cross worked as a journalist and then spent nine years in business development for an aerospace and defense contractor before joining the Huntsville/Madison County Chamber of Commerce as the workforce director. She lives in Alabama with her husband and four sons.

At CrimeReads Cross tagged ten books focused on opulent wealth, family secrets and suspense. One title on the list:

The Receptionist by Kate Myles

Emily is a top talent agent in Los Angeles who works with multiple talk show host celebrities while her husband Doug is a successful CEO. The couple is keenly aware of how good they have it and their glamorous one-percenter lifestyle. But a surprise pregnancy and the birth of their child changes everything for Emily, except for one problem: Doug isn’t quite ready to settle down yet. He still wants to play. And his reckless behavior leads him to having an affair with his beautiful young receptionist, Chloe. But not only will Chloe disrupt their lives and threaten to destroy their marriage, she will also entangle them in the dark secrets she has been desperately trying to hide. For Emily and Doug, will money buy them happiness? And how far will Emily go to be rid of the receptionist and protect her family?

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Margaret Mizushima's "Striking Range"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Striking Range: A Timber Creek K-9 Mystery by Margaret Mizushima.

About the book, from the publisher:

A deadly secret is buried in the Colorado high country–and murder is only the beginning in the seventh gripping installment of Margaret Mizushima’s Timber Creek K-9 mysteries.

He was suspect number one–the man who tried to kill Deputy Mattie Cobb and may have killed her father thirty years earlier. But when Mattie and cold case detective Jim Hauck reach the Colorado state prison where they will finally get to interview him, he’s found dead in his cell. There’s only one clue: a map leading to Timber Creek and rugged Redstone Ridge.

Though she usually works with veterinarian Cole Walker, Mattie’s K-9 partner Robo has just sired a litter of pups, who require special, time-consuming care at Cole’s clinic. Left to explore the map’s clue without him, Mattie and Robo journey into the burned forest surrounding Redstone Ridge. But before they can finish their search they’re called to help investigate the death of a young woman found in a campground filled with elk hunters. Identification of the deceased points to her having recently given birth, but the infant is nowhere to be found.

As a deadly storm descends upon the mountains, covering everything with a layer of ice and snow, Mattie and her team search for the missing newborn. The storm batters the area, taking its toll on the team and forcing the sheriff to call in reinforcements. When new evidence surfaces, they decide that finding the woman’s killer will lead them to her baby, making them even more desperate to solve the case.

Then Cole goes missing, stranded alone in the high country with a person that Mattie now suspects is the mastermind behind several murders, including her father’s. She and Robo take to the trail to find Cole–but the killer has a cold-blooded plan that threatens them all.

Visit Margaret Mizushima's website, Twitter perch, and Facebook and Instagram pages.

Coffee with a Canine: Margaret Mizushima & Hannah, Bertie, Lily and Tess.

Coffee with a Canine: Margaret Mizushima & Hannah.

My Book, The Movie: Burning Ridge.

The Page 69 Test: Burning Ridge.

The Page 69 Test: Tracking Game.

My Book, The Movie: Hanging Falls.

The Page 69 Test: Hanging Falls.

Q&A with Margaret Mizushima.

The Page 69 Test: Striking Range.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten books about theatre

Michael Billington has written about theatre for the Guardian since 1971.

His books include The 101 Greatest Plays, State of the Nation: British Theatre Since 1945, and Affair of the Heart: British Theatre from 1992 to 2020.

At the Guardian Billington tagged his top ten books "on the fugitive art" of theatre, including:

Finishing the Hat by Stephen Sondheim

This is not only a collection of Sondheim’s lyrics from 1954 to 1981 but a critical commentary on them by their author. I can’t think of any theatre book that gives so clear a picture of the artistic process: Sondheim reveals that his greatest hit, Send in the Clowns, was written in short breathy phrases, made up of questions rather than statements, because its original performer, Glynis Johns, was unable to sustain a note. Sondheim is sometimes harsh on fellow lyricists but this is still the one indispensable book about musical theatre.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Katherine Ashenburg

From my Q&A with Katherine Ashenburg, author of Her Turn: A Novel:

Photo by Joy von Tiedemann

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

I was well into writing the novel when I settled on the title. Liz, my heroine, edits a newspaper column of personal essays called “My Turn.” Calling the novel Her Turn indicates that Liz is going to take centerstage now, and also suggests that it’s finally her turn to make sense of her divorce. There’s also a little word-play in the title, in that Liz changes quite a bit in the course of the book: she turns.

With the first meaning, of Liz coming forward, the emphasis is “Her Turn.” With the second meaning, the emphasis is “Her Turn.”

What’s in a name?

When I used to read about novelists saying their characters took over, I rolled my eyes: it all seemed...[read on]

Visit Katherine Ashenburg's website.

Q&A with Katherine Ashenburg.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Samuel Moyn's "Humane"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War by Samuel Moyn.

About the book, from the publisher:

A prominent historian exposes the dark side of making war more humane

In the years since 9/11, we have entered an age of endless war. With little debate or discussion, the United States carries out military operations around the globe. It hardly matters who’s president or whether liberals or conservatives operate the levers of power. The United States exercises dominion everywhere.

In Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War, Samuel Moyn asks a troubling but urgent question: What if efforts to make war more ethical—to ban torture and limit civilian casualties—have only shored up the military enterprise and made it sturdier? To advance this case, Moyn looks back at a century and a half of passionate arguments about the ethics of using force. In the nineteenth century, the founders of the Red Cross struggled mightily to make war less lethal even as they acknowledged its inevitability. Leo Tolstoy prominently opposed their efforts, reasoning that war needed to be abolished, not reformed—and over the subsequent century, a popular movement to abolish war flourished on both sides of the Atlantic. Eventually, however, reformers shifted their attention from opposing the crime of war to opposing war crimes, with fateful consequences.

The ramifications of this shift became apparent in the post-9/11 era. By that time, the US military had embraced the agenda of humane war, driven both by the availability of precision weaponry and the need to protect its image. The battle shifted from the streets to the courtroom, where the tactics of the war on terror were litigated but its foundational assumptions went without serious challenge. These trends only accelerated during the Obama and Trump presidencies. Even as the two administrations spoke of American power and morality in radically different tones, they ushered in the second decade of the “forever” war.

Humane is the story of how America went off to fight and never came back, and how armed combat was transformed from an imperfect tool for resolving disputes into an integral component of the modern condition. As American wars have become more humane, they have also become endless. This provocative book argues that this development might not represent progress at all.

Visit Samuel Moyn's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History.

The Page 99 Test: Christian Human Rights.

The Page 99 Test: Humane.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven books that grapple with memory and loss

Tom Lin was born in China and immigrated to the United States when he was four. A graduate of Pomona College, he is currently in the PhD program at the University of California, Davis.

The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu is his first novel.

At Electric Lit Lin tagged seven titles that grapple with memory and loss, including:

The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro

Published two years before he received the Nobel Prize in Literature, Ishiguro’s novel follows an elderly couple, Axl and Beatrice, as they move through a medieval Britain beset by an amnestic mist. With enormous difficulty, people remember: wars, lovers, children. Axl and Beatrice know they have a son, but struggle to remember much beyond this bare fact. They embark on a quest to find him once more, encountering relics, residues, artifacts of memories without remembrances. Ishiguro’s prose is rhythmic, placid, profound; this book took him ten years to write, and it may well stay with you for longer.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Louise Guy's "Her Last Hope"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Her Last Hope by Louise Guy.

About the book, from the publisher:

Will new friends almost ruined by their husbands find the strength to fight for each other?

Abi’s life has been turned upside down by her husband’s death―in more ways than she could ever have imagined. With his dodgy business dealings now exposed, gone is her glamorous lifestyle and the trust of her family and friends. How could the man who said he loved her have betrayed her so spectacularly?

Abi’s new neighbour Lucinda and her four-year-old son Max are struggling to overcome their own betrayal by Max’s violent, vengeful father. The pieces of Lucinda’s life seem finally to be coming together when she is given a new identity and finds an ally in Abi. But an unexpected twist throws both women’s lives into fresh turmoil.

Faced with a tougher time than they ever thought possible, Abi and Lucinda turn to each other. It’s an unlikely friendship built on common ground―but is it strong enough to help them rebuild their lives from rock bottom?

Visit Louise Guy's website.

The Page 69 Test: A Life Worth Living.

My Book, The Movie: A Life Worth Living.

Q&A with Louise Guy (November 2020).

My Book, The Movie: A Winning Betrayal.

The Page 69 Test: A Winning Betrayal.

Writers Read: Louise Guy.

The Page 69 Test: Her Last Hope.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight top books based on real-life female spies

Stephanie Marie Thornton is a USA Today bestselling author and a high school history teacher. She lives in Alaska with her husband and daughter.

[The Page 69 Test: The Conqueror's Wife; Writers Read: Stephanie Thornton; My Book, The Movie: The Conqueror's Wife]

Her latest book, A Most Clever Girl: A Novel of an American Spy is a novel of love, loyalty, and espionage, based on the incredible true story of Elizabeth Bentley, a Cold War double agent spying for the Russians and the United States.

At CrimeReads Thornton tagged eight favorite books based on real-life female spies. One title on the list:

The Alice Network by Kate Quinn

While both protagonists in this stellar blockbuster novel are fictional, the unforgettable Eve Gardiner is tapped to spy for the real Alice Network in France during World War I. The real-life spy network was run by Louise de Bettignies—the “Queen of Spies” who trains Eve—and reported on the German front so accurately that new artillery placements were often bombed within days of being set up. The stakes are high for Eve and her life as a spy will haunt her for decades to come.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Alice Network is among Suzanne Rindell's top ten novels that use large-scale events as a catalyst.

The Page 69 Test: The Alice Network.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with M. J. Kuhn

From my Q&A with M. J. Kuhn, author of Among Thieves:

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

The title of my debut, Among Thieves, is based on one of two common idioms: “There is honour among thieves,” and “No honour among thieves.” It’s purposely ambiguous which one I mean, and when you dive into the story you’ll see why!

The plot centers around a mercenary named Ryia, but it is ultimately the tale of six thieves teaming up to steal a magical artifact… while each thief secretly plots their own betrayal. They all have their own designs for the heist’s loot, and the multi-perspective story will have readers wondering who will be victorious in the end.

I’m hoping the title calls to mind both the obvious meaning (thieves), and the implied meaning of these commonly used and misused idioms. Are the characters in the story to be trusted? Do they have any sense of loyalty or honor? The reader will...[read on]

Visit M. J. Kuhn's website.

Q&A with M. J. Kuhn.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine top books to put your job in perspective

Sophie Stein is an intern at Electric Literature. She was born in Chicago and is currently an MFA candidate at Indiana University, where she is the Fiction Editor of the Indiana Review. Her short fiction has won awards from The Hypertext Review and december magazine; her work has also appeared in The Briar Cliff Review, The Tangerine, and elsewhere.

At Electric Lit Stein tagged nine books that "tackle the clashes inherent in everyday work environments and demonstrate that there can be a light at the end of the tunnel," including:

The Beautiful Bureaucrat by Helen Phillips

This novel is an incredible blend of black comedy, thriller, and love story. Josephine has just moved with her husband to a big city, where she finds work putting strings of meaningless numbers and letters into a database. The agency responsible for the database is monolithic and perplexing, but Josephine had such difficulty getting a job that she doesn’t question it until strange things start to happen: her husband disappears overnight, and a series of “delivery failed” notices appears on her door, though nobody has her new address.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Page 69 Test: The Beautiful Bureaucrat.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Yveline Alexis's "Haiti Fights Back"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Haiti Fights Back: The Life and Legacy of Charlemagne Péralte by Yveline Alexis.

About the book, from the publisher:

Haiti Fights Back: The Life and Legacy of Charlemagne Péralte is the first US scholarly examination of the politician and caco leader (guerrilla fighter) who fought against the US military occupation of Haiti. The occupation lasted close to two decades, from 1915-1934. Alexis argues for the importance of documenting resistance while exploring the occupation’s mechanics and its imperialism. She takes us to Haiti, exploring the sites of what she labels as resistance zones, including Péralte’s hometown of Hinche and the nation’s large port areas--Port-au-Prince and Cap-Haïtien. Alexis offers a new reading of U.S. military archival sources that record Haitian protests as banditry. Haiti Fights Back illuminates how Péralte launched a political movement, and meticulously captures how Haitian women and men resisted occupation through silence, military battles, and writings. She locates and assembles rare, multilingual primary sources from traditional repositories, living archives (oral stories), and artistic representations in Haiti and the United States. The interdisciplinary work draws on legislation, cacos’ letters, newspapers, and murals, offering a unique examination of Péralte’s life (1885-1919) and the significance of his legacy through the twenty-first century. Haiti Fights Back offers a new approach to the study of the U.S. invasion of the Americas by chronicling how Caribbean people fought back.

Learn more about Haiti Fights Back at the Rutgers University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Haiti Fights Back.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top books set in, and about, New York

Vince Passaro is the author of the novel Crazy Sorrow.

His criticism and essays have appeared in many prominent publications, including Harper’s Magazine, of which he is a contributing editor, The Nation, The New York Times Sunday Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, Elle, Salon, and others, along with short fiction in such national magazines and literary journals as Esquire, GQ, Open City, Agni, Story, Boulevard, and Quarterly West. His first book, Violence, Nudity, Adult Content: A Novel, was published in 2002. He lives a few miles north of New York City in an old Huguenot town with his wife, son, and a smattering of film cameras, fountain pens, and other fellow-traveling refuse from the mid-20th century.

At Lit Hub Passaro tagged six favorite books set in, and about, New York. One title on the list:

Norman Mailer, An American Dream

Mailer often worked close to the edge, and here he was working as close to the edge as possible. It is the story of a man who marries into a corrupt political/financial family unmistakably modeled on the Kennedys; it was written in installments on monthly deadline for Esquire in late 1963 and through 1964, right in the teeth of national mourning for the slain president. An amazing, daring, dark work, set over three days in NYC, with writing sometimes sublime and other times ridiculously over-the-top as only Mailer could be. The first lines, so you can’t mistake the themes: “I met Jack Kennedy in November, 1946. We were both war heroes and both of us had just been elected to Congress.” It flies from there. Almost literally. With one of American literature’s great, weary, existential, NYC Irish cop.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Andrew Welsh-Huggins's "An Empty Grave"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: An Empty Grave: An Andy Hayes Mystery by Andrew Welsh-Huggins.

About the book, from the publisher:

Private investigator Andy Hayes takes the assignment against his better judgment.

In 1979, a high-profile burglar shot a cop, was apprehended, and then disappeared without ever being prosecuted. Forty years later, after the wounded cop’s suicide, his son, Preston Campbell, is convinced there’s been a cover-up that allowed his father’s attacker to go free. At first, Hayes dismisses Campbell’s outlandish conspiracy theories. But when a mysterious Cold War connection to the burglar emerges, the investigation heats up, and Hayes discovers a series of deaths that seem to be connected, one way or another, to the missing criminal. Nothing seems to add up, though, and Hayes finds himself hurtling headlong down a decades-old path of deadly secrets.

In the midst of cracking the cold case, Hayes has another mystery to solve closer to home: What’s been troubling his younger son, Joe, and why is his ex-wife so eager to have the boy out of her house? Further complicating matters, Hayes learns that another private eye, the captivating but inscrutable Hillary Quinne, is also on the trail of the vanished burglar and needs Hayes’s help. As their professional and personal lives blur, Hayes wonders what he’s gotten himself into, and whether he really wants out.

Visit Andrew Welsh-Huggins's website.

My Book, The Movie: An Empty Grave.

Q&A with Andrew Welsh-Huggins.

The Page 69 Test: An Empty Grave.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top novels set in the ancient world

Elodie Harper is a journalist and prize-winning short story writer. Her story 'Wild Swimming' won the 2016 Bazaar of Bad Dreams short story competition, which was judged by Stephen King.

She is currently a reporter at ITV News Anglia, and before that worked as a producer for Channel 4 News. Her job as a journalist has seen her join one of the most secretive wings of the Church of Scientology and cover the far right hip hop scene in Berlin, as well as crime reporting in Norfolk where her first two novels were set – The Binding Song and The Death Knock.

Harper studied Latin poetry both in the original and in translation as part of her English Literature degree at Oxford, instilling a lifelong interest in the ancient world. The Wolf Den is the first in a trilogy of novels about the lives of women in ancient Pompeii.

At the Waterstones blog Harper tagged six favorite novels set in the ancient world, including:

Circe by Madeline Miller

This is one of the best known novels set in the ancient world, and also my favourite. The voice of the central protagonist is utterly beguiling. Her humour, her vulnerability and her refusal to fit expectations make her a wonderful companion. Miller blends so many elements from the ancient myths, creating scenes and characters which hark back to familiar stories while remaining wholly original. I loved the way Odysseus becomes a minor character in Circe’s rich and varied life, mirroring the role she plays in The Odyssey. And the last line of the book sent shivers down my spine.

Read about another entry on the list.

Circe is among Kiran Millwood Hargrave's seven best books about islands, Zen Cho's six SFF titles about gods and pantheons, Jennifer Saint's ten top books inspired by Greek myth, Adrienne Westenfeld's fifteen feminist books that will inspire, enrage, & educate you, Ali Benjamin's top ten classic stories retold, Lucile Scott's eight books about hexing the patriarchy, E. Foley and B. Coates's top ten goddesses in fiction, Jordan Ifueko's five fantasy titles driven by traumatic family bonds, Eleanor Porter's top ten books about witch-hunts, Emily B. Martin's six stunning fantasies for nature lovers, Allison Pataki's top six books that feature strong female voices, Pam Grossman's thirteen stories about strong women with magical powers, Kris Waldherr's nine top books inspired by mythology, Katharine Duckett's eight novels that reexamine literature from the margins, and Steph Posts' thirteen top novels set in the world of myth.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Alex Gregory's "Desire as Belief"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Desire as Belief: A Study of Desire, Motivation, and Rationality by Alex Gregory.

About the book, from the publisher:

A popular model of human action treats it as universally explicable by appeal to what we want. A related view evaluates our actions as rational or otherwise by appeal to what we want. However, these dominant views sit in tension with two other common sense ideas. First, that our normative beliefs — such as our beliefs about what we ought to do — sometimes explain our actions. Second, that those beliefs are crucial for determining whether our actions are rational. To try and resolve these tensions, this book defends 'desire-as-belief', the view that desires are just a special subset of our normative beliefs. This view entitles us to accept orthodox models of human motivation and rationality that explain those things with reference to desire, while also making room for our normative beliefs to play a role in those domains. This view also tells us to diverge from the orthodox view on which desires themselves can never be right or wrong. Rather, according to desire-as-belief, our desires can themselves be assessed for their accuracy, and they are wrong when they misrepresent normative features of the world. Hume says that it is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of your finger, but he is wrong: it is foolish to have this preference, and this is so because this preference misrepresents the relative worth of these things. This book mounts an engaging and comprehensive defence of these ideas.

Visit Alex Gregory's webpage.

The Page 99 Test: Desire as Belief.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top bookstore romances

Mimi Granger began her publishing career writing historical romance. Many years later, there’s still nothing she likes better than a happily-ever-after...as long as there’s a little murder and mayhem thrown in. Her Love is Murder mystery series provides the perfect opportunity to salute the two genres she loves most—romance and mystery—and to play out every reader’s dream of owning a fabulous bookstore. Granger lives outside of Cleveland with her own personal romance hero and two dogs: Eliot, an enthusiastic Airedale, and Lucy, who provides the inspiration for Violet in her stories (including the incredible amount of shed fur).

The newest Love is Murder mystery is Death of a Red-Hot Rancher.

At CrimeReads Granger tagged six novels in which romance blooms in the stacks, including:

The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George

From his floating bookstore on a barge in the Seine, Monsieur Perdu prescribes novels for the hardships of life. Using his intuitive feel for the exact book a reader needs, Perdu mends broken hearts and souls. The only person he can’t seem to heal through literature is himself; he’s still haunted by heartbreak after his great love disappeared. After he reads the letter she left him, Perdu hauls anchor and departs on a mission to the south of France, hoping to make peace with his loss and discover the end of the story. Joined by a bestselling but blocked author and a lovelorn Italian chef, Perdu dispenses wisdom and books, showing that the literary world can take the human soul on a journey to heal itself.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Little Paris Bookshop is among Martha Greengrass's top fifteen books to read on a French holiday.

My Book, The Movie: The Little Paris Bookshop.

The Page 69 Test: The Little Paris Bookshop.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jane Casey's "The Killing Kind," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Killing Kind by Jane Casey.

About the book, from the publisher:

In my standalone thriller The Killing Kind, Ingrid Lewis is a young lawyer who becomes convinced someone is trying to kill her. There’s an obvious suspect: John Webster, the man who stalked her after she represented him on a harassment charge. Because of him she lost her fiancé, her home and very nearly her life. But he denies any involvement. In fact, he offers to help her find out who is targeting her – at a price.

The Killing Kind is set in the London legal world, which is at the heart of London. It begins at the main criminal court, the Old Bailey, with St Paul’s Cathedral overlooking a gruesome murder – if you know anything at all about London, you will be able to imagine the scene! It’s a glamorous yet gritty world, very historical, and completely unique.

Ingrid is half-Danish and appears to be something of an ice queen. She keeps up a confident façade but she’s actually very vulnerable and sweet-natured. I think my ideal Ingrid would be Saoirse Ronan. She could be a believable lawyer, standing up to argue a case with devastating, incisive intelligence, but she would also let you see the impact that Ingrid’s fear has on her. As the plot progresses Ingrid allows herself to show her true feelings more and more. I think Saoirse would do a brilliant job of letting us see this process. I’m a huge fan of hers since her first appearances in Atonement and Hanna, and...[read on]

Follow Jane Casey on Twitter.

My Book, The Movie: The Killing Kind.

--Marshal Zeringue