Tessa Harris's "Beneath A Starless Sky," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Beneath a Starless Sky by Tessa Harris.

The entry begins:

With an original title like The Woman Who Danced with Fred Astaire of course I always hoped – and still do - that my novel will make it to the big screen.

It’s a sweeping tale, that blends fact with fiction, and which stretches from Germany in 1930 to Portugal in 1940, taking in America, France and England in between. Chapters are set in Hollywood, on the Cote d’Azur, London and in English country houses, so, it’s certainly got lots of scope for glamorous locations.

The story centers around Lilli Sternberg, a Jewish dancer, who wants to escape her increasingly oppressive life in Munich and become a Hollywood film star. When her romance with a dashing young Army officer, Marco Zeiller, is brought to an abrupt end, she leaves her family and heads to America to seek fame and fortune. Achieving her dream of dancing with Fred Astaire, she is introduced to high society and befriends Prince Edward and his mistress, Wallis Simpson. But a cruel twist of fate puts an end to Lilli’s career and the prince and Mrs Simpson, both Nazi sympathisers, have other plans for her. The book was inspired by true events and culminates in a real plot to kidnap the former king of England and make him Germany’s puppet ruler.

In writing the book I owe a debt of gratitude to a real-life Hollywood legend, Leslie Caron. I’d already started to write the story when, as a journalist, I was fortunate enough to interview Ms Caron when she came to England on a book tour. She actually partnered Fred Astaire in the classic films Daddy Long Legs and Something’s Gotta Give. Her own story – a poor ballet student in Paris who becomes a Hollywood star - contained uncanny echoes of the one I was already writing. It gave me fresh impetus.

As for my cast list, Lilli Sternberg would be played by Lily Collins. She’s a dark and exotic beauty who...[read on]

Visit Tessa Harris's Facebook page and Twitter perch.

My Book, The Movie: The Devil's Breath.

The Page 69 Test: The Lazarus Curse.

My Book, The Movie: The Sixth Victim.

The Page 69 Test: The Angel Makers.

My Book, The Movie: Beneath a Starless Sky.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven novels by or about folk musicians

Henry Adam Svec is the author of American Folk Music as Tactical Media, a scholarly monograph, and Life Is Like Canadian Football and Other Authentic Folk Songs, a novel. His writing has also appeared in Noisey, MOTHERBOARD, C Magazine, The New Quarterly, and elsewhere. He holds a PhD in media studies from the University of Western Ontario, and currently teaches at the University of Waterloo in Canada.

At Electric Lit Svec tagged seven novels that honor grassroots musical traditions. One title on the list:

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Zora Neale Hurston was less a musician per se than a folklore and music collector, and author. However, she incorporated music into some of her literary projects in the 1930s. She displays a folklorist’s attention to speech and myth in the writing of her most celebrated book, Their Eyes Were Watching God. The novel centers on a young Black woman in Florida who seeks to find her way in love, through a sequence of uniquely challenging partnerships, on her own terms. The evocative imagery of the narrator, and the no less memorable rhetorical power of the characters, make Hurston’s 1937 novel an entrancing work to this day.

Read about another entry on the list.

Their Eyes Were Watching God also appears among Micheline Aharonian Marcom's eight epic quest stories, Michael Zapata's ten books that were almost lost to history, Yann Martel's five favorite books, and Benjamin Obler's top ten fictional coffee scenes in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Michael Lenox & Rebecca Duff's "The Decarbonization Imperative"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Decarbonization Imperative: Transforming the Global Economy by 2050 by Michael Lenox and Rebecca Duff.

About the book, from the publisher:

Time is of the essence. Climate change looms as a malignant force that will reshape our economy and society for generations to come. If we are going to avoid the worst effects of climate change, we are going to need to effectively "decarbonize" the global economy by 2050.

This doesn't mean a modest, or even a drastic, improvement in fuel efficiency standards for automobiles. It means 100 percent of the cars on the road being battery-powered or powered by some other non-carbon-emitting powertrain. It means 100 percent of our global electricity needs being met by renewables and other non-carbon-emitting sources such as nuclear power. It means electrifying the global industrials sector and replacing carbon-intensive chemical processes with green alternatives, eliminating scope-one emissions—emissions in production—across all industries, particularly steel, cement, petrochemicals, which are the backbone of the global economy. It means sustainable farming while still feeding a growing global population.

Responding to the existential threat of climate change, Michael Lenox and Rebecca Duff propose a radical reconfiguration of the industries contributing the most, and most harmfully, to this planetary crisis. Disruptive innovation and a particular calibration of industry dynamics will be key to this change. The authors analyze precisely what this might look like for specific sectors of the world economy—ranging from agriculture to industrials and building, energy, and transportation—and examine the possible challenges and obstacles to introducing a paradigm shift in each one. With regards to existent business practices and products, how much and what kind of transformation can be achieved? The authors assert that markets are critical to achieving the needed change, and that they operate within a larger scale of institutional rules and norms. Lenox and Duff conclude with an analysis of policy interventions and strategies that could move us toward clean tech and decarbonization by 2050.

Learn more about The Decarbonization Imperative at the Stanford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: The Decarbonization Imperative.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Kerry Anne King's "Other People's Things"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Other People's Things: A Novel by Kerry Anne King.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the Amazon Charts bestselling author of Whisper Me This comes a witty, magical story about improbable connections, difficult gifts, and the unexpected events that heal us and bring us together.

Jailbird. Klepto. Spectacular failure to launch. Nicole Wood’s sticky fingers have earned her many names, but it’s not that she’s stealing―some objects just need to be moved elsewhere, and the universe has chosen her to do it. Still, being a relocator of objects isn’t easy. With her marriage on the rocks, no real-world skills, and the threat of prison hanging over her head, Nicole is determined to change her ways.

Things seem to be looking up, thanks to a godsent job with her sister’s housecleaning business―until she encounters a seemingly harmless paperback that insists on moving from one client’s home to another’s. Nicole hopes no one will notice, but the action stirs up long-hidden secrets and triggers a series of fateful events that threatens to destroy the life she’s creating and hurt those closest to her. She’ll need to embrace her unwieldy gift and take a chance on love in order to unravel the mystery and fix what’s gone wrong.

Visit Kerry Anne King's website.

The Page 69 Test: Everything You Are.

The Page 69 Test: A Borrowed Life.

Writers Read: Kerry Anne King.

The Page 69 Test: Other People's Things.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six of the best books featuring father-daughter relationships

Kimi Cunningham Grant is the author of three books. Silver Like Dust is a memoir chronicling her Japanese-American grandparents and their internment during World War II. Her second book, Fallen Mountains, is a literary mystery set in a small town in Pennsylvania, where fracking has just begun. The newly released These Silent Woods is her third book.

At CrimeReads she tagged six favorite books featuring father-daughter relationships, including:

When Ghosts Come Home by Wiley Cash

Winston, the quiet, humble sheriff who finds himself in the midst of investigating a murder and a plane crash, just as he’s about to lose a bid for reelection, is at the heart of this book. His daughter, Colleen, reels from a major loss of her own, and, as she struggles to regain her footing, heads back to her parents’ home in North Carolina. I especially loved the backstory of these two. From childhood, through adolescence, and into adulthood, Winston tries hard to connect with and support his daughter.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Michael S. Neiberg's "When France Fell"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: When France Fell: The Vichy Crisis and the Fate of the Anglo-American Alliance by Michael S. Neiberg.

About the book, from the publisher:

Shocked by the fall of France in 1940, panicked U.S. leaders rushed to back the Vichy government—a fateful decision that nearly destroyed the Anglo–American alliance.

According to U.S. Secretary of War Henry Stimson, the “most shocking single event” of World War II was not the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, but rather the fall of France in spring 1940. Michael Neiberg offers a dramatic history of the American response—a policy marked by panic and moral ineptitude, which placed the United States in league with fascism and nearly ruined the alliance with Britain.

The successful Nazi invasion of France destabilized American planners’ strategic assumptions. At home, the result was huge increases in defense spending, the advent of peacetime military conscription, and domestic spying to weed out potential fifth columnists. Abroad, the United States decided to work with Vichy France despite its pro-Nazi tendencies. The U.S.–Vichy partnership, intended to buy time and temper the flames of war in Europe, severely strained Anglo–American relations. American leaders naively believed that they could woo men like Philippe Pétain, preventing France from becoming a formal German ally. The British, however, understood that Vichy was subservient to Nazi Germany and instead supported resistance figures such as Charles de Gaulle. After the war, the choice to back Vichy tainted U.S.–French relations for decades.

Our collective memory of World War II as a period of American strength overlooks the desperation and faulty decision making that drove US policy from 1940 to 1943. Tracing the key diplomatic and strategic moves of these formative years, When France Fell gives us a more nuanced and complete understanding of the war and of the global position the United States would occupy afterward.

Learn more about When France Fell at the Harvard University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Dance of the Furies.

The Page 99 Test: The Blood of Free Men.

The Page 99 Test: Potsdam.

The Page 99 Test: When France Fell.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten postmodern books

Stuart Jeffries is a journalist and author. He was for many years on the staff of the Guardian, working as subeditor, TV critic, Friday Review editor and Paris correspondent. He now works as a freelance writer, mostly for the Guardian, Spectator, Financial Times and the London Review of Books.

Jeffries's latest book is Everything, All the Time, Everywhere: How We Became Postmodern.

"[P]ostmodernism," Jeffries writes, is "the slippery successor to modernism which seems to be an expression of neoliberal economics as much as it is an effort to dismantle cultural hierarchies."

At the Guardian he tagged ten top postmodern books. One title on the list:

The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie

The storm that resulted from this book’s publication typified the clash of civilisations Samuel Huntington would later argue was arising in the aftermath of the cold war. On the one side, a pre-modern Islamic faithful believing in the absolute truth of the Qur’an. On the other, a sophisticated godless novelist apparently betraying his heritage and sneering at the Muslim sanctities. Even if you’re not convinced that The Satanic Verses is postmodern, then you will I hope admit that the episode of Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm about the affair is pure po-mo. There Larry produces a Broadway musical called Fatwa! that, before passing through countless veils of irony and pastiche, culminates in Rushdie and Ayatollah Khomeini duetting about their clashing worldviews.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Satanic Verses is among Monique Alice's seven books for readers who love Haruki Murakami, Felicity Capon and Catherine Scott's twenty top famously banned books, Seth Satterlee's top six famously banned books, Diarmaid MacCulloch's five best books about blasphemy, Atul Gawande's favorite books, and Karl O. Knausgaard's top ten angel books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: William Boyle's "Shoot the Moonlight Out"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Shoot the Moonlight Out: A Novel by William Boyle.

About the book, from the publisher:

A haunting crime story about the broken characters inhabiting yesterday's Brooklyn, this is the new novel from modern master of neo-noir William Boyle.

An explosive crime drama, Shoot the Moonlight Out evokes a mystical Brooklyn where the sidewalks are cracked, where Virgin Mary statues tilt in fenced front yards, and where smudges of moonlight reflect in puddles even on the blackest nights.

Southern Brooklyn, July 1996. Fire hydrants are open and spraying water on the sizzling blacktop. Punk kids have to make their own fun. Bobby Santovasco and his pal Zeke like to throw rocks at cars getting off the Belt Parkway. They think it’s dumb and harmless until it’s too late to think otherwise. Then there’s Jack Cornacchia, a widower who lives with his high school age daughter Amelia and reads meters for Con Ed but also has a secret life as a vigilante, righting neighborhood wrongs through acts of violence. A simple mission to strong-arm a Bay Ridge con man, Max Berry, leads him to cross paths with a tragedy that hits close to home.

Fast forward five years: June 2001. The summer before New York City and the world changed for good. Charlie French is a low-level gangster-wannabe trying to make a name for himself. When he stumbles onto a bowling alley locker stuffed with a bag full of cash, he brings it to his only pal, Max Berry, for safekeeping while he cleans up the mess surrounding it. Bobby Santovasco—with no real future mapped out and the big sin of his past shining brightly in his rearview mirror—has taken a job working as an errand boy for Max Berry. On a recruiting run for Max’s Ponzi scheme, Bobby meets Francesca Clarke, born in the neighborhood but an outsider nonetheless. They hit it off. Bobby gets the idea to knock off Max’s safe so he and Francesca can escape Brooklyn forever. Little does he know what Charlie French has stashed there.

Meanwhile, Bobby’s former stepsister, Lily Murphy, is back home in the neighborhood after college, teaching a writing class in the basement of St. Mary's church. She's also being stalked by her college boyfriend. One of her students is Jack Cornacchia. When she opens up to him about her stalker, Jack decides to take matters into his own hands.

A riveting portrait of lives crashing together at the turn of the century, Shoot the Moonlight Out is tragic and tender and funny and strange. A sense of loss is palpable—what has been lost and what will be lost—and Boyle’s characters face down old ghosts with grim determination, as ripples of consequence radiate in dangerous directions.

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.

Q&A with William Boyle.

The Page 69 Test: Shoot the Moonlight Out.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Meghan R. Henning's "Hell Hath No Fury"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Hell Hath No Fury: Gender, Disability, and the Invention of Damned Bodies in Early Christian Literature by Meghan R. Henning.

About the book, from the publisher:

The first major book to examine ancient Christian literature on hell through the lenses of gender and disability studies

Throughout the Christian tradition, descriptions of hell’s fiery torments have shaped contemporary notions of the afterlife, divine justice, and physical suffering. But rarely do we consider the roots of such conceptions, which originate in a group of understudied ancient texts: the early Christian apocalypses.

In this pioneering study, Meghan Henning illuminates how the bodies that populate hell in early Christian literature—largely those of women, enslaved persons, and individuals with disabilities—are punished after death in spaces that mirror real carceral spaces, effectually criminalizing those bodies on earth. Contextualizing the apocalypses alongside ancient medical texts, inscriptions, philosophy, and patristic writings, this book demonstrates the ways that Christian depictions of hell intensified and preserved ancient notions of gender and bodily normativity that continue to inform Christian identity.

Learn more about Hell Hath No Fury at the Yale University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Hell Hath No Fury.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five African-inspired YA fantasy novels

Lauren Blackwood is a Jamaican American New Yorker living in Virginia who writes Romance-heavy Fantasy for most ages. When not writing, she's a physical therapist assistant and violinist who really doesn't know how to settle on one career field.

Her debut YA novel, Within These Wicked Walls, is a NYT/Indie Bestseller and the Reese’s Book Club Fall 2021 YA Pick.

At Tor.com Blackwood tagged "a Fantasy Starter Set into the beauty and power of Africa and it’s many cultures." One title on the list:

Beasts of Prey by Ayana Gray

Koffi works at Night Zoo, striving to pay off her family’s debt by caring for strange and magical creatures. Ekon is set to follow in his father’s footsteps and become an elite warrior, known as a Son of the Six. But, one fateful night, Koffi discovers she has a power that isn’t supposed to exist, and at the same time Ekon’s final warrior test is ruined. Now, despite hating each other, the only way they’ll both get what they want is to hunt a vicious monster through a dangerous and magical jungle. However, they soon wonder if they’re doing the hunting, or if they’re being hunted. Beasts of Prey is a fun, fantasy adventure which Ayana herself refers to as having “Pan-African” influence—so not only one country or region, but flavors of the continent in the broad sense as well as the diaspora.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Kerry Anne King reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Kerry Anne King, author of Other People's Things: A Novel.

Her entry begins:

I love to read across genres (including cereal boxes if that’s what happens to be in front of me) so it’s no big surprise that Other People’s Things borrows from all of my favorite genres: psychological suspense, mystery, fantasy, magical realism, and literary fiction! I’ve been reading a lot lately so all I’m going to give you only the short list of books I’ve recently adores.

I finally read Anxious People by Fredrik Backman, a book that lit me up with surprise and delight. He writes about people with incredible insight and compassion and humor, for one thing. For another, every time I thought I knew where the story was going it took a detour into the wonderfully unexpected. Absolute brilliance.

And then I stumbled over my new favorite mystery series...[read on]

About Other People's Things, from the publisher:

From the Amazon Charts bestselling author of Whisper Me This comes a witty, magical story about improbable connections, difficult gifts, and the unexpected events that heal us and bring us together.

Jailbird. Klepto. Spectacular failure to launch. Nicole Wood’s sticky fingers have earned her many names, but it’s not that she’s stealing―some objects just need to be moved elsewhere, and the universe has chosen her to do it. Still, being a relocator of objects isn’t easy. With her marriage on the rocks, no real-world skills, and the threat of prison hanging over her head, Nicole is determined to change her ways.

Things seem to be looking up, thanks to a godsent job with her sister’s housecleaning business―until she encounters a seemingly harmless paperback that insists on moving from one client’s home to another’s. Nicole hopes no one will notice, but the action stirs up long-hidden secrets and triggers a series of fateful events that threatens to destroy the life she’s creating and hurt those closest to her. She’ll need to embrace her unwieldy gift and take a chance on love in order to unravel the mystery and fix what’s gone wrong.

Visit Kerry Anne King's website.

Writers Read: Kerry Anne King (October 2019).

The Page 69 Test: Everything You Are.

The Page 69 Test: A Borrowed Life.

Writers Read: Kerry Anne King.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top books about alienated women in their 20s

Alexandria Juarez is a Chicanx lesbian writer, editor, and pop culture enthusiast from Southern California. A recent graduate of the BFA Writing Program at Pratt Institute, they are currently an assistant editor for Electric Literature.

At Electric Lit Juarez tagged ten novels "that capture the uneasiness of young womanhood in a patriarchal society," including:

Mona at Sea by Elizabeth Gonzalez James

When I read the description for this book, I realized, “I have never had an original experience in my life.” Mona, a 23-year-old Chicana, graduates college during a recession only to find herself jobless, and back in her dysfunctional parent’s house. On top of that, (thankfully unlike my life), Mona becomes the subject of a viral meme, “Sad Millenial,” after a reporter captures her reaction to losing the finance job she had lined up. Because of this, she mopes around Tucson, smoking weed in an existential funk, until her mom encourages her to join a support group for job seekers.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Robert Cohen & Sonia E. Murrow's "Rethinking America's Past"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Rethinking America's Past: Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States in the Classroom and Beyond by Robert Cohen and Sonia E. Murrow.

About the book, from the publisher:

No introductory work of American history has had more influence over the past forty years than Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, which since its publication in 1980 has sold more than three million copies. Zinn's iconoclastic critique of American militarism, racism, and capitalism has drawn bitter criticism from the Right, most recently from President Donald Trump, who at his White House Conference on American History in 2020 denounced Zinn as a Left propagandist and accused teachers aligned with Zinn of indoctrinating students to hate America and be ashamed of its history.

Rethinking America's Past is the first work to use archival and classroom evidence to assess the impact that Zinn's classic work has had on historical teaching and learning and on American culture. This evidence refutes Trump's charges, showing that rather than indoctrinating students, Zinn's book has been used by teachers to have students debate and rethink conventional versions of American history. Rethinking America's Past also explores the ways Zinn's work fostered deeper, more critical renderings of the American past in movies and on stage and television and traces the origins and assesses the strengths and weaknesses of A People's History in light of more recent historical scholarship.

Learn more about Rethinking America's Pastat the University of Georgia Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Rethinking America's Past.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Carly Heath's "The Reckless Kind"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Reckless Kind by Carly Heath.

About the book, from the publisher:

A genre-defying debut, this queer historical YA centers a wild and reckless trio who fly in the face of small town tradition—full of compassion, love, and determination to live the lives of their choosing.

It’s 1904 on an island just west of Norway, and Asta Hedstrom doesn’t want to marry her odious betrothed, Nils. But her mother believes she should be grateful for the possibility of any domestic future given her single-sided deafness, unconventional appearance, and even stranger notions. Asta would rather spend her life performing in the village theater with her fellow outcasts: her best friend Gunnar Fuglestad and his secret boyfriend, wealthy Erlend Fournier.

But the situation takes a dire turn when Nils lashes out in jealousy—gravely injuring Gunnar. Shunning marriage for good, Asta moves with Gunnar and Erlend to their secluded cabin above town. With few ties left to their families, they have one shot at gaining enough kroner to secure their way of life: win the village’s annual horse race.

Despite Gunnar’s increasing misgivings, Asta and Erlend intend to prove this unheard-of arrangement will succeed. Asta trains as a blacksmith; Erlend cares for recovering Gunnar. But as race day approaches, the villagers’ hateful ignorance only grows stronger. With this year’s competition proving dangerous for the trio, Asta and Erlend soon find they face another equally deadly peril: the possibility of losing Gunnar, and their found family, forever.

Visit Carly Heath's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Reckless Kind.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine top YA survival thrillers

Rektok Ross is the pen name of Liani Kotcher, a trial attorney turned award-winning young adult author and book blogger. An avid reader since childhood, Kotcher writes exactly the kind of books she loves to escape into herself: exciting thrillers with strong female leads, swoon-worthy love interests, and life-changing moments. She graduated from the University of Florida School of Journalism and obtained her juris doctorate at the University of Miami School of Law. Originally from South Florida, she currently splits her time between San Francisco and Los Angeles with her husband, stepkids, and her dogs.

Ross's debut YA survival thriller is Ski Weekend.

At CrimeReads she tagged nine favorite YA survival thrillers, including:

No Exit by Taylor Adams

Although this one may technically be categorized as New Adult/Adult, college kids feel close enough in age to fit under the YA umbrella and I would be remiss not to include one of the most intense, gripping road trip thrillers you will ever read. On the way home to see her sick mother, college student Darby Thorne is stranded by a blizzard at a Colorado highway rest stop in the middle of nowhere. Unfortunately, she finds herself forced to spend the night in the rest stop with four complete strangers, which seems bad enough but only gets worse after she stumbles across a horrifying discovery. A kidnapped little girl is locked inside one of the parked cars! Full of shocking twists and turns, this book will have you on the edge of your seat, unable to put it down until you reach the shocking conclusion.

Read about another entry on the list.

No Exit is among Sophia LeFevre's six top isolated, snowy thrillers.

The Page 69 Test: No Exit.

--Marshal Zeringue

Steph Mullin & Nicole Mabry's "The Family Tree," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Family Tree by Steph Mullin and Nicole Mabry.

The entry begins:

The Family Tree centers around Liz Catalano who finds out from a 23andMe kit that she’s adopted. But during her journey to find her biological family, the FBI get a familial hit on her DNA to the notorious Tri-State Killer, who’s been abducting and murdering pairs of women for over 40 years. When the FBI show up on Liz’s doorstep and inform her she’s related to a serial killer, she must now decide if it’s safe to continue getting to know the few biological relatives she’s already tracked down or if she’s walking into the den of a killer. Nicole works in television and both Steph and Nicole come from visual backgrounds, so when we were writing The Family Tree, we both saw it as a movie in our heads. The idea of casting our novel was exciting for us. Because of how complex the story is, we have several lead characters beyond Liz. Andie, who is Liz’s cousin and roommate, Cris and Rosie, who are Liz’s biological great Aunt and Uncle who she was able to track down, and Mickey, the bartender at the bar next to Liz and Andie’s apartment in Greenpoint Brooklyn, who becomes Liz’s sounding board during her struggles in re-discovering her self-identity. For these characters, here is who we’d see playing the roles.

Liz Catalano: Selena Gomez. Liz finds out from her test that she’s not Italian, like the rest of her adoptive family, but is actually mostly Mexican. Selena would play a fantastic Liz, hunting down the serial killer lurking in her family tree and trying to find out…[read on]

Visit the authors' website.

The Page 69 Test: The Family Tree.

My Book, The Movie: The Family Tree.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five novels featuring fantasy clergy

Margaret Rogerson is the author of the New York Times bestsellers An Enchantment of Ravens and Sorcery of Thorns. She has a bachelor’s degree in cultural anthropology from Miami University. When not reading or writing she enjoys sketching, gaming, making pudding, and watching more documentaries than is socially acceptable (according to some). She lives near Cincinnati, Ohio, beside a garden full of hummingbirds and roses.

Rogerson's new novel is Vespertine.

At Tor.com she tagged five books featuring fantasy clergy, including:

Deeplight by Frances Hardinge

Frances Hardinge is one of my favorite YA authors, whose wonderfully weird, inventive worlds are unlike anything I’ve ever read before. Her most recent novel, Deeplight, takes place among a group of islands called the Myriad, whose surrounding seas were not long ago ruled by the violent and unpredictable gods of the Undersea. Gods like the Glass Cardinal, who resembled a giant man-of-war jellyfish, and emitted terrible screams to harden its skin as it pursued ships across the ocean. Or the Swallower—also known as Devour-All, Father Gullet, Custodian of the Great Purse—a ravenous, gulper eel-like monster whose “great belly was supple as black silk.” Once, these gods were worshipped out of terror; now, many years after they suddenly went into an unexplained frenzy and tore each other to pieces, divers scavenge their colossal bodies for parts. The protagonist, Hark, lands a job in a monastery tending to the troubled monks of the Hidden Lady, who both fear and yearn for the song of their dead goddess.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Robert B. Talisse's "Sustaining Democracy"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Sustaining Democracy: What We Owe to the Other Side by Robert B. Talisse.

About the book, from the publisher:

Democracy is not easy. Citizens who disagree sharply about politics must nonetheless work together as equal partners in the enterprise of collective self-government. Ideally, this work would be conducted under conditions of mutual civility, with opposed citizens nonetheless recognizing one another's standing as political equals. But when the political stakes are high, and the opposition seems to us severely mistaken, why not drop the democratic pretences of civil partnership, and simply play to win? Why seek to uphold properly democratic relations with those who embrace political ideas that are flawed, irresponsible, and out of step with justice? Why sustain democracy with political foes?

Drawing on extensive social science research concerning political polarization and partisan identity, Robert B. Talisse argues that when we break off civil interactions with our political opponents, we imperil relations with our political allies. In the absence of engagement with our political critics, our alliances grow increasingly homogeneous, conformist, and hierarchical. Moreover, they fracture and devolve amidst internal conflicts. In the end, our political aims suffer because our coalitions shrink and grow ineffective. Why sustain democracy with our foes? Because we need them if we are going to sustain democracy with our allies and friends.

Learn more about Sustaining Democracy at the Oxford University Press website. 

The Page 99 Test: Overdoing Democracy.

The Page 99 Test: Sustaining Democracy.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Tess Little

From my Q&A with Tess Little, author of The Last Guest: A Novel:

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

The Last Guest has had almost as many titles as full drafts. It began as a novella, with an extremely long title to balance out the brevity of the story—When we Called the Police to Collect my Ex-husband’s Body,—and that title ended with a comma because the first words of the prose continued on from the title: ‘We believed he had died from an overdose’.

This first sentence survived various edits because the story still launches from the same jetty. The narrator, Elspeth Bryant Bell, arrives at the Hollywood house of her ex-husband, British film director Richard Bryant, for his fiftieth birthday party. She expects to find an enormous, sprawling celebration in his honor, but instead she is met by only seven other guests. In the morning, Elspeth finds Richard’s body, sprawled across his couch. The director is dead, seemingly due to an overdose. Then the police discover that Richard was murdered, and each one of his guests becomes a suspect.

But of course, the original title was...[read on]

Visit Tess Little's website.

Q&A with Tess Little.

--Marshal Zeringue

Thirteen witchy books reads for spooky season

At B&N Reads Kat Sarfas tagged thirteen enchanted reads for spooky season, including:

Circe
Madeline Miller

A journey to self-discovery of epic proportions, Circe is a retelling from the queen of mythology herself: Madeline Miller. An enigmatic sorceress discovers powers she never knew she possessed and unlocks a destiny she never thought she would have. Circe shares her scars, her broken parts, and in doing so, speaks to the humanity we all share: “That is one thing gods and mortals share: when we are young, we think ourselves the first to have each feeling in the world.” This intoxicating epic will make you rethink everything you thought you knew about The Odyssey.

Read about another entry on the list.

Circe is among Fire Lyte's nine current classics in magic and covens and spells, Elodie Harper's six top novels set in the ancient world, 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: Catherine Evans's "Unsound Empire"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Unsound Empire: Civilization and Madness in Late-Victorian Law by Catherine L. Evans.

About the book, from the publisher:

A study of the internal tensions of British imperial rule told through murder and insanity trials

Unsound Empire is a history of criminal responsibility in the nineteenth‑century British Empire told through detailed accounts of homicide cases across three continents. If a defendant in a murder trial was going to hang, he or she had to deserve it. Establishing the mental element of guilt—criminal responsibility—transformed state violence into law. And yet, to the consternation of officials in Britain and beyond, experts in new scientific fields posited that insanity was widespread and growing, and evolutionary theories suggested that wide swaths of humanity lacked the self‑control and understanding that common law demanded. Could it be fair to punish mentally ill or allegedly “uncivilized” people? Could British civilization survive if killers avoided the noose?

Catherine Evans is assistant professor at the Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies at the University of Toronto.

Learn more about Unsound Empire at the Yale University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Unsound Empire.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten books on neocolonialism

Susan Williams is a senior research fellow in the School of Advanced Study, University of London. Her pathbreaking books include Who Killed Hammarskjöld?, which in 2015 triggered a new, ongoing UN investigation into the death of the UN Secretary General. Spies in the Congo spotlights the link between US espionage in the Congo and the atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945. Colour Bar, the story of Botswana’s founding President, was made into the major 2016 film A United Kingdom. A People’s King presents an original perspective on the abdication of Edward VIII and his marriage to Wallis Simpson.

Williams's new book is White Malice: The CIA and the Covert Recolonization of Africa.

At the Guardian she tagged ten "books [to] help to answer the questions posed by Abderrahmane Sissako’s remarkable 2006 film Bamako, in which the World Bank and the IMF are put on trial in Mali: 'Why when Africa sows does she not reap? Why when Africa reaps does she not eat?'” One title on the list:

The Quiet American by Graham Greene (1955)

In this gripping novel set in Saigon in 1952, the “quiet American” is a CIA agent, Alden Pyle, who is covertly backing a third force led by a Vietnamese warlord. In Greene’s portrayal, Pyle represents America’s strategy of insinuating itself between French colonialism and the communists. He supplies the explosives for a murderous attack by the warlord on innocent people. But in the Hollywood version of 1958, the ending was changed: the communists are responsible for the bombings and Pyle is a good guy who is framed. Greene was infuriated. He did not live to see the 2002 remake, which is largely faithful to the book.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Quiet American is among six books recommended by Joseph Kanon, Pete Buttigieg’s ten favorite books, Cat Barton's five top titles on Southeast Asian travel literature, Richard Haass's six top books for understanding global politics, Sara Jonsson's seven best literary treatments of envy, Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones's top ten classic spy novels, Tom Rachman's top ten journalist's tales, John Mullan's ten best journalists in literature, Charles Glass's five best books on Americans abroad, Robert McCrum's books to inspire busy public figures, Malcolm Pryce's top ten expatriate tales, Catherine Sampson's top ten Asian crime fiction, and Pauline Melville's top 10 revolutionary tales.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Steph Mullin & Nicole Mabry's "The Family Tree"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Family Tree by Steph Mullin and Nicole Mabry.

About the book, from the publisher:

The DNA results are back. And there’s a serial killer in her family tree…

Liz Catalano is shocked when an ancestry kit reveals she’s adopted. But she could never have imagined connecting with her unknown family would plunge her into an FBI investigation of a notorious serial killer…

The Tri-State Killer has been abducting pairs of women for forty years, leaving no clues behind – only bodies.

Can Liz figure out who the killer in her new family is? And can she save his newest victims before it’s too late?

A gripping, original thriller for fans of My Lovely Wife, Netflix’s Making a Murderer, and anyone who’s ever wondered what their family tree might be hiding…

Visit the authors' website.

The Page 69 Test: The Family Tree.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: David A. Harrisville's "The Virtuous Wehrmacht"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Virtuous Wehrmacht: Crafting the Myth of the German Soldier on the Eastern Front, 1941-1944 by David A. Harrisville.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Virtuous Wehrmacht explores the myth of the German armed forces' innocence during World War II by reconstructing the moral world of German soldiers on the Eastern Front. How did they avoid feelings of guilt about the many atrocities their side committed? David A. Harrisville compellingly demonstrates that this myth of innocence was created during the course of the war itself—and did not arise as a postwar whitewashing of events.

In 1941 three million Wehrmacht troops overran the border between German- and Soviet-occupied Poland, racing toward the USSR in the largest military operation in modern history. Over the next four years, they embarked on a campaign of wanton brutality, murdering countless civilians, systemically starving millions of Soviet prisoners of war, and actively participating in the genocide of Eastern European Jews. After the war, however, German servicemen insisted that they had fought honorably and that their institution had never involved itself in Nazi crimes.

Drawing on more than two thousand letters from German soldiers, contextualized by operational and home front documents, Harrisville shows that this myth was the culmination of long-running efforts by the army to preserve an illusion of respectability in the midst of a criminal operation. The primary authors of this fabrication were ordinary soldiers cultivating a decent self-image and developing moral arguments to explain their behavior by drawing on a constellation of values that long preceded Nazism.

The Virtuous Wehrmacht explains how the army encouraged troops to view themselves as honorable representatives of a civilized nation, not only racially but morally superior to others.

Visit David A. Harrisville's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Virtuous Wehrmacht.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven crime books that challenge notions of inherent female goodness

Christina Dalcher earned her doctorate in theoretical linguistics from Georgetown University. She specializes in the phonetics of sound change in Italian and British dialects and has taught at several universities.

Her short stories and flash fiction appear in more than one hundred journals worldwide. Recognition includes the Bath Flash Fiction Award short list, nominations for the Pushcart Prize, and multiple other awards. She lives in Norfolk, Virginia, with her husband.

Dalcher's latest novel is Femlandia.

At CrineReads she tagged seven recent books that challenge the "traditional world view that the fairer sex is, well, fairer." One title on the list:

Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage — Hanna Jensen

Move over, Bad Seed. There’s a new girl in town, the daddy-adoring, selectively-mute, seven-year-old Hanna, who works devilishly hard to get her mother out of the way. Part horror, part psychological thriller, and part commentary on the challenges a couple faces when their family unit expands, Stage’s debut is perfectly plotted and incredibly tense. The reader is tempted to feel sympathy for poor little psychopathic Hanna, but she’s just so nasty (see the thumbtack scene) that we all breathe a collective sigh of relief when Mommy and Daddy finally fight back.

Read about another entry on the list.

Baby Teeth is among May Cobb's five psychological thrillers featuring single-minded villains & anti-heroes, Jae-Yeon Yoo's top ten books about the promise & perils of alternative schooling, Pamela Crane's five top novels featuring parenting gone wild, Damien Angelica Walters's five titles about the horror of girlhood, and Sally Hepworth's eight messed up fictional families.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Jenny C. Mann's "The Trials of Orpheus"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Trials of Orpheus: Poetry, Science, and the Early Modern Sublime by Jenny C. Mann.

About the book, from the publisher:

In ancient Greek mythology, the lyrical songs of Orpheus charmed the gods, and compelled animals, rocks, and trees to obey his commands. This mythic power inspired Renaissance philosophers and poets as they attempted to discover the hidden powers of verbal eloquence. They wanted to know: How do words produce action? In The Trials of Orpheus, Jenny Mann examines the key role the Orpheus story played in helping early modern writers and thinkers understand the mechanisms of rhetorical force. Mann demonstrates that the forms and figures of ancient poetry indelibly shaped the principles of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century scientific knowledge.

Mann explores how Ovid’s version of the Orpheus myth gave English poets and natural philosophers the lexicon with which to explain language’s ability to move individuals without physical contact. These writers and thinkers came to see eloquence as an aesthetic force capable of binding, drawing, softening, and scattering audiences. Bringing together a range of examples from drama, poetry, and philosophy by Bacon, Lodge, Marlowe, Montaigne, Shakespeare, and others, Mann demonstrates that the fascination with Orpheus produced some of the most canonical literature of the age.

Delving into the impact of ancient Greek thought and poetry in the early modern era, The Trials of Orpheus sheds light on how the powers of rhetoric became a focus of English thought and literature.

Learn more about The Trials of Orpheus at the Princeton University Press website and follow Jenny Mann on Twitter.

The Page 99 Test: The Trials of Orpheus.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine top books on the very human importance of walking

Katherine May is a New York Times bestselling author, whose titles include Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times and The Electricity of Every Living Thing, her memoir of being autistic. Her fiction includes The Whitstable High Tide Swimming Club and Burning Out. She is also the editor of The Best, Most Awful Job, an anthology of essays about motherhood. Her journalism and essays have appeared in a range of publications including The New York Times, The Observer and Aeon.

May lives in Whitstable, UK with her husband, son, three cats and a dog.

Her latest book is The Electricity of Every Living Thing: A Woman's Walk In The Wild To Find Her Way Home.

At Lit Hub May tagged nine books on the very human importance of walking, including:

Cheryl Strayed, Wild

This is probably the best-known walking memoir, and the one I turned to when I was wondering how to write The Electricity of Every Living Thing. I so envy Cheryl Strayed’s spare, elegant style, which perfectly captures the grand, inhospitable landscape of the Pacific Crest Trail. That very directness allows us to walk through some uncompromising emotional landscapes, too, as she explores the aftermath of her mother’s death.

Read about another entry on the list.

Wild is among Monique Alice's six books that will inspire you to lace up your hiking boots and Jeff Somers's five top books with Mother Nature as antagonist.

--Marshal Zeringue

James Kestrel's "Five Decembers," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Five Decembers by James Kestrel.

The entry begins:

When I set out to write Five Decembers, I wanted to write a murder mystery set in Honolulu during World War II, but early on my vision for the book grew to something on a much larger scale. Yes, it’s a murder mystery, but it stretches across the entire war and its aftermath, and there is a turn of events about midway through that may place it in another genre altogether. It’s a big book, and couldn’t be shot on the cheap, so if I had my choice of any director it would have to be Steven Spielberg. He’s tackled the period from many angles, but much of Five Decembers would be new to him, so perhaps he’d have some fun with it.

But, in thinking about the book, perhaps there is an opportunity to do something fairly novel in filming it. The most significant elements take place in either Honolulu or Tokyo. A hefty portion of the Tokyo scenes would need to be shot in Japanese. The producers of...[read on]

Follow James Kestrel on Twitter.

My Book, The Movie: Five Decembers.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Jessica Pierce & Marc Bekoff's "A Dog’s World"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: A Dog's World: Imagining the Lives of Dogs in a World without Humans by Jessica Pierce and Marc Bekoff.

About the book, from the publisher:

What would happen to dogs if humans simply disappeared? Would dogs be able to survive on their own without us? A Dog’s World imagines a posthuman future for dogs, revealing how dogs would survive—and possibly even thrive—and explaining how this new and revolutionary perspective can guide how we interact with dogs now.

Drawing on biology, ecology, and the latest findings on the lives and behavior of dogs and their wild relatives, Jessica Pierce and Marc Bekoff—two of today’s most innovative thinkers about dogs—explore who dogs might become without direct human intervention into breeding, arranged playdates at the dog park, regular feedings, and veterinary care. Pierce and Bekoff show how dogs are quick learners who are highly adaptable and opportunistic, and they offer compelling evidence that dogs already do survive on their own—and could do so in a world without us.

Challenging the notion that dogs would be helpless without their human counterparts, A Dog’s World enables us to understand these independent and remarkably intelligent animals on their own terms.

The Page 99 Test: Wild Justice.

The Page 99 Test: A Dog's World.

--Marshal Zeringue

Twelve of the spookiest books

The staff at USA Today tagged "the spookiest, most spine-tingling books [they]'ve ever read," including:

Occultation by Laird Barron

The horror story is a form versatile enough to accomplish many things, but its basic root purpose is to scare the reader. And Barron writes some scary stories. The highlight of his second volume of short fiction, a novella titled "–30–," brings the creepy with both claws. Two researchers work at a remote outpost in an unforgiving wilderness when nature stops acting natural. If bugs are your phobia, this story will crawl straight into your nightmare closet. "–30–" starts slowly, softly, with disembodied whispers, strange sounds, midnight knocks at the door, then gradually, steadily cranks up the paranoia to a climactic pitch of mindless terror. Barron can even make a sunset unsettling: "He limped across a plain that stretched beneath a wide, carnivorous sky."
–Jonathan Briggs

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven top crime and suspense novels set on the river

Rebecca Hodge is an author of fiction, a veterinarian, and a clinical research scientist who lives and writes in North Carolina. Fiction writing is the space where her creative side comes out to play, and her writing centers on characters who discover that life is not a spectator sport. She has three grown sons, two crazy dogs, and one patient husband. When not writing on the back porch or brewing yet another mug of tea, she loves hiking, travel, and (of course) curling up with a good book.

[The Page 69 Test: Over the Falls; Coffee with a Canine: Rebecca Hodge & Tess and Kalen]

Hodge's new novel is Over the Falls.

At CrimeReads she tagged seven top crime and suspense novels set on the river, including:

The River – Peter Heller

A leisurely canoe trip on the Maskwa River in Canada takes on extra urgency for two paddlers when a wildfire begins making its way through the forest. One night, the men overhear a man and woman arguing—and the next day, they discover the man is paddling alone. As the two search for answers, this story becomes a taut saga of wilderness survival.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Jules Stewart's "Policing the Big Apple"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Policing the Big Apple: The Story of the NYPD by Jules Stewart.

About the book, from the publisher:

As debates about defunding US police forces continue, this book offers an enlightening historical overview of one of the largest metropolitan contingents: the New York City Police Department.

The NYPD is America’s largest and most celebrated law enforcement agency. This book examines the history of policing in New York City, from colonial days and the formation of the NYPD at the turn of the twentieth century, through 1930s battles with the Mafia to the Zero Tolerance of the 1990s. Jules Stewart explores political influence, corruption, reform, and community relations through stories of the NYPD’s commissioners and the visions they had for the force and the city, as well as at the level of cops on the beat.

This book is an indispensable chronicle for anyone interested in policing and the history of New York.

Visit Jules Stewart's website.

The Page 99 Test: Policing the Big Apple.

--Marshal Zeringue