Six top social thrillers that will make you wonder who you can trust

Anna Barrington has worked in galleries and auction houses in the art world for over five years. She received an MA from the Courtauld Institute of Art and a BA from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Originally from Atlanta, she currently lives in London, where she worked at a leading international art gallery.

The Spectacle is her first novel.

At CrimeReads Barrington tagged "six novels to remind us that just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean people aren’t out to get you." One title on the list:

Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin

Rosemary’s Baby gains its strength from the superficially girlish, clipped realism of Ira Levin’s deadpan prose. We see 1960s New York through the eyes of Rosemary, a hopeful young housewife who has just married the actor Guy. When a stroke of luck delivers them a beautiful apartment in the legendary Bramford building, the couple meets a bunch of elderly neighbors who cook them dinner, offer ideas for Guy’s stilted career, and eagerly encourage her to get pregnant. But something satanic is growing inside Rosemary. Levin allows us to make up our own mind slowly about Rosemary’s husband, obstetrician and neighbors, who surround her with cheery advice even as she becomes more isolated, sick and scared. The novel has a feminist subtext; I found myself horrified at how Rosemary allows her peers to assuage her fears with their ‘rational’ and ‘medical’ advice, dismissing her own gut instinct that something is powerfully wrong.

Read about another novel on the list.

Rosemary's Baby is among Chin-Sun Lee's five best gothic novels about distressed women, Lisa Unger's five top horror novels that explore the darkest corners of our minds, Alice Blanchard's ten chilling thrillers to get you through a winter storm, Ania Ahlborn's ten scariest books of all time, Jeff Somers's twenty-one books that will give you an idea of how the horror genre has evolved and "twenty-five books that might not necessarily be the best horror novels, but are certainly the scariest," Christopher Shultz's top ten literary chillers, and Kat Rosenfield's top seven scary autumnal stories.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Turner Gable Kahn

From my Q&A with Turner Gable Kahn, author of The Dirty Version: A Novel:

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

The Dirty Version does a lot of subtle heavy lifting. It hints at what’s going on behind the scenes — both in Hollywood and in the emotional lives of the characters. There’s a cheeky nod to “dirty” in the steamy sense, but the title also points to creative compromise, blurred boundaries, and the messier corners of power and control. The story centers on a feminist author whose novel is being adapted for TV — only to find that the project has landed in the hands of a macho director who insists on “sexing it up.” He says he wants the “dirty version” of the story.

The title is also a little meta. There’s no explicit sex on the page — but that doesn’t mean it isn’t sexy. It’s all about foreplay, tension, and emotional intimacy. I wanted to write a slow burn that made space for desire without defaulting to a standard template.

I actually came up with the title at the eleventh hour. I’d been calling it Very Hands-On as a placeholder, and just before I sent out my first query, I typed in The Dirty Version instead. It stuck — and now...[read on]

Visit Turner Gable Kahn's website.

Q&A with Turner Gable Kahn.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Elizabeth Shakman Hurd's "Heaven Has a Wall"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Heaven Has a Wall: Religion, Borders, and the Global United States by Elizabeth Shakman Hurd.

About the book, from the publisher:

An urgent exploration of borders as sacred objects in American culture.

Our national conversation about the border has taken a religious turn. When televangelists declare, “Heaven has a wall,” activists shout back, “Jesus was a refugee.” For Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, the standoff makes explicit a longstanding truth: borders are religious as well as political objects.

In this book, Hurd argues that Americans share a bipartisan border religion, complete with an array of beliefs and practices, including a reverence for national security, a liturgy for immigration, and an eschatological foreign policy. Through an analysis of the many ways the United States creates, enforces, and ignores borders at home and abroad, Hurd offers a bold new perspective on the ties that bind American religion, politics, and public life.

Visit Elizabeth Shakman Hurd's website.

The Page 99 Test: Heaven Has a Wall.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven top books about women doing dirty jobs

Kelly Ramsey was born in Frankfort, Kentucky. She studied poetry writing at the University of Virginia and earned an MFA in fiction from the University of Pittsburgh. She co-founded The Lighthouse Works, an artists’ residency program on Fishers Island, New York, and later moved to Northern California, where she worked for the U.S. Forest Service as a trail maintenance worker, wilderness ranger, and wildland firefighter on a hotshot crew. Her writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Sierra, Electric Literature, Catapult, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the anthology Letter to a Stranger. She loves creeks, lakes, coffee, the ocean, punishing hikes, diner breakfasts, getting too much sun, and plants—even if their care remains a mystery. She lives in Redding, California, with her partner, their daughter, and their dog, a lab mix who won’t swim named Rookie.

Ramsey's new book is Wildfire Days: A Woman, a Hotshot Crew, and the Burning American West.

At Electric Lit she tagged seven books

about ladies who work hard in mysterious, misunderstood industries. They suffer and struggle and can’t find anywhere to pee. Sometimes they’re victimized. And yet, in each of these stories, the women grow stronger than they ever imagined. Their books are about finding strength, resilience, joy, belonging, and so much more in the grittiest, most “masculine” workplaces.

One title on the list:

Shoot Like a Girl: One Woman’s Dramatic Fight in Afghanistan and on the Home Front by Mary Jennings Hegar

“Many don’t think that there are women serving in combat roles. Others think that the women who do serve in combat shrink in fear when the bullets fly. I know differently, and I wanted you to know, too.” Hegar could be writing a manifesto on behalf of all the women on this list. Her memoir tracks heroism on two fronts: first, as an Air Force pilot who, despite sustaining an injury during a medevac mission, saves the lives of her patients and crew; second, as an activist in the battle to end a policy that excluded women from ground combat. I love all the little moments I can identify with, like when Hegar wonders how she’ll pee while flying a helicopter, noting that the men around her can pee in a bottle anytime. But more than that, I love that she puts a name to the invisibility of women in male-dominated fields and the rampant underestimation of their strengths.

Read about another book on Ramsey's list.

Shoot Like a Girl is on People magazine's Memorial Day reading list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Julie Hensley's "Five Oaks"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Five Oaks: A Novel by Julie Hensley.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the Arkansas mountains, three generations of fiercely determined young women are poised for self-discovery in a decades-spanning novel about the bonds of family and secrets.

Spending summer away from home for the first time, fifteen-year-old Wren Pritchard and her younger sister, Sylvie, arrive at Five Oaks, their grandparents’ Arkansas lake house. As it was for their grandmother and mother before them, it’s a place for coming of age, first love, triumphs and failures, and keeping secrets.

This year, it’s Wren’s end-of-girlhood season. And Sylvie vows to keep all her secrets: Wren slipping away in the middle of the night, the boy on the dock, racing with him on the dark back roads, and slipping quietly into bed before dawn, carrying the scent of adventure. And still, as Wren’s behavior begins changing and the moonlit escapes become more daring, Sylvie holds her tongue. Even when it feels like Wren is speeding toward disaster. Then one night, Wren doesn’t come home.

The halcyon days in the Ouachita Mountains are not what they appear. When the truth comes to light―about mothers, daughters, and sisters―no one in the family will ever be the same.

Visit Julie Hensley's website.

Q&A with Julie Hensley.

My Book, The Movie: Five Oaks.

The Page 69 Test: Five Oaks.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Jules Holroyd's "Oppressive Praise"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Oppressive Praise by Jules Holroyd.

About the book, from the publisher:

Oppressive Praise examines the expressions we often use to elevate others, esteem them, and celebrate the things they do. These expressions are a pervasive feature of social life: within families, between friends or colleagues, in institutional settings such as education and employment. Despite this, praise has attracted comparatively little philosophical attention, perhaps because--unlike blame--praise is assumed to be a benefit, an expression of positive appraisal that requires little scrutiny or justification. Jules Holroyd argues that, on the contrary, our practices of praising can be harmful, and implicated in oppression. The book addresses the following key questions: when and why is praise oppressive? What are the mechanisms by which expressions of praise sustain oppression? How does thinking about oppressive praise illuminate our understanding of the function of praise in our social practices more generally? What norms should govern our expressions of praise, and how can we improve our practices--both interpersonal and institutional--of praising? Cases of oppressive praise are employed to develop a diagnosis of when and why praise is oppressive, and an account of praise that focuses on its function in affirming and entrenching values in a community. This role of praise is essential to understanding moral appraisal as a social practice, and one that can be implicated in social hierarchy and oppression. Holroyd offers an ameliorative framework: a set of norms for how to express praise; and for how we might respond to and resist oppressive praise. Oppressive Praise connects philosophical work on oppression with debates about responsibility, epistemic, distributive, and standing norms of appraisal, structural injustices, and practices of honorific commemoration.

Learn more about Oppressive Praise at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Oppressive Praise.

--Marshal Zeringue

Fifteen of the best political nonfiction books

For Esquire Charles P. Pierce tagged fifteen of the best political nonfiction books ever, including:

The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Vol. IV, by Robert Caro

Monumental already, you can feel the calamity coming like a great freight train through almost every page.

Read about another entry on the list.

Caro's Johnson biographies are among Jeff Somers's best presidential biographies and Steve Richards and Gaby Hinsliff's fifteen best political biographies and diaries. Master of the Senate (vol. 3) is among Jonathan Alter's six favorite books. The Passage of Power (vol. 4) is among five top books about the civil rights movement.

--Marshal Zeringue

Molly MacRae's "There'll Be Shell to Pay," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Molly MacRae's There'll Be Shell to Pay.

The entry begins:

There’ll Be Shell to Pay is the second book in the Haunted Shell Shop Mysteries. The books follow Maureen Nash, a fairly recent widow in her early fifties. She’s a malacologist—a scientist who studies mollusks—and a storyteller who’s inherited a shell shop on Ocracoke, a barrier island off the North Carolina coast. The shop is haunted by the ghost of an eighteenth-century pirate.

In this new story, Maureen travels back to Ocracoke, having spent several weeks settling affairs in her hometown in Tennessee. She expects a warm welcome from Emrys Lloyd, the ghost. He’d written a letter telling her he’d discovered treasure in the shop’s attic. But Emrys doesn’t appear when she arrives. Instead she finds an envelope addressed to Rob Tate, captain of the Ocracoke station of the Hyde County Sheriff’s Department. When Tate comes to get the envelope, he finds a note inside consisting of a single line and a signature. The line reads The dead woman is Lenrose. It’s signed Maureen Nash. The handwriting and the signature are Maureen’s.

I cast most of the series characters last year when book one, Come Shell or High Water, came out. Those choices still stand and you can read them here. But I neglected to cast Rob Tate or his deputy, Matt Kincaid. Tate is in his mid-forties. He’s the kind of man with a clear, calm voice who shakes a hand without trying to crush it. Jake Gyllenhaal would make a fine Rob Tate. Matt Kincaid, Tate’s deputy, is young (mid- to late-twenties), good-hearted, and a bit...[read on]

Visit Molly MacRae's website.

My Book, The Movie: Plaid and Plagiarism.

The Page 69 Test: Plaid and Plagiarism.

The Page 69 Test: Scones and Scoundrels.

My Book, The Movie: Scones and Scoundrels.

The Page 69 Test: Crewel and Unusual.

The Page 69 Test: Heather and Homicide.

Q&A with Molly MacRae.

Writers Read: Molly MacRae (July 2024).

The Page 69 Test: Come Shell or High Water.

My Book, The Movie: Come Shell or High Water.

Writers Read: Molly MacRae.

My Book, The Movie: There'll Be Shell to Pay.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: John Sanbonmatsu's "The Omnivore’s Deception"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Omnivore’s Deception: What We Get Wrong about Meat, Animals, and Ourselves by John Sanbonmatsu.

About the book, from the publisher:

Offers the most powerful case yet for ending our exploitation of animals for food

Millions of Americans see themselves as "conflicted omnivores," worrying about the ethical and environmental implications of their choice to eat animals. Yet their attempts to justify their choices only obscure the truth of the matter: in John Sanbonmatsu’s view, killing and eating animals is unethical, regardless of whether they are "free range" or factory farmed. Shattering the conventional wisdom around the meat economy, he reframes the question of animal agriculture from one of "sustainability" to one of existential and moral purpose, presenting a powerful case for the total abolition of the animal economy. In a rejoinder to Michael Pollan and other critics who have told us that we can have our meat and our consciences, too, he shows why "humane meat" is always a contradiction in terms.

The Omnivore’s Deception provides a deeply observed philosophical meditation on the nature of our relationship with animals. Peeling back the myriad layers of myth, falsehoods, and bad faith that keep us eating meat, the book offers a novel perspective on our troubled relations with animals in the food economy. The problem with raising and killing animals for food isn't just that it's "bad for the environment,” but the wrong way to live a human life.

A tour de force of moral philosophy and cultural critique, The Omnivore's Deception will change the way we think about meat, animals, and human purpose.

Visit John Sanbonmatsu's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Omnivore’s Deception.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top laugh-out-loud mysteries

Jo Firestone is a comedian and writer best known for her work on After Midnight with Taylor Tomlinson, ZIWE, and Joe Pera Talks With You. You can watch her most recent comedy special, Good Timing, currently streaming on Peacock. She can be heard hosting the long-running podcast, Dr. Gameshow, with comedian Manolo Moreno. She is also the co-author of two card games: Punderdome: A Card Game for Pun Lovers and Fruits.

Her debut murder mystery novel is Murder on Sex Island.

At CrimeReads Firestone tagged five favorite laugh-out-loud mysteries, including:

I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai

This woman, Bodie Kane, returns to her old prep school to teach a true crime podcasting class and ultimately uncover a decades-old murder from her time there as a student. The writing is dark and funny and the twists are very unexpected. Makkai manages to satirize the true crime genre in full, skewering both its fans and its creators. As I read this one, I think I said out loud, “THIS IS DELICIOUS!”

Read about another title on Firestone's list.

I Have Some Questions For You is among Jacqueline Faber's seven top thrillers about the role of the witness, Kat Davis's top ten feminist crime novels subverting the Dead Girl trope, Elise Juska’s eight best campus novels ever written, Nicole Hackett's six top mysteries about motherhood and crime, Brittany Bunzey's ten books that take you inside their characters’ heads, Anne Burt's four top recent titles with social justice themes, and Heather Darwent's nine best campus thrillers.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Molly MacRae reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Molly MacRae, author of There'll Be Shell to Pay.

Her entry begins:

Shirley Rousseau Murphy’s Joe Gray books have been on my radar since the first one, Cat on the Edge, came out in 1996. I finally started reading them this spring and I’m up to book ten, Cat Cross Their Graves. The books are cozy with dashes of police procedure and fantasy. The three main characters are Joe Gray, Dulcie, and Kit, sentient house cats able to understand, speak, and read English. The mysteries are good and twisty and they aren’t told for the laughs one might expect from the set up. Except for their unusual talents, the cats act like cats. They’re also serious and successful amateur sleuths. There’s great situational humor, though. Not laughing at the cats, but at the issues they have using human technology, like computers and cell phones, and their very reasonable reactions to...[read on]

About There'll Be Shell to Pay, from the publisher:

When she’s not selling seashells by the North Carolina seashore from her shell shop, Maureen Nash is a crime-solving sleuth with a ghost pirate for a supernatural sidekick...

Maureen is still getting used to life on Ocracoke Island, learning how to play the “shell game” of her business—and ghost whispering with the spirit of Emrys Lloyd, the eighteenth-century Welsh pirate who haunts her shop, The Moon Shell. The spectral buccaneer has unburied a treasure hidden in the shop’s attic that turns out to be antique shell art stolen from Maureen’s late husband’s family years ago.

Victor “Shelly” Sullivan and his wife Lenrose visit the shop and specifically inquire about these rare items. Not only is it suspicious that this shell collector should arrive around the time Maureen found the art, but Emrys insists that Sullivan’s wife is an imposter because Lenrose is dead. A woman’s corpse the police have been unable to identify was discovered by the Fig Ladies, a group who formed an online fig appreciation society. They’re meeting on Ocracoke for the first time in person and count Lenrose among their number, so the woman can’t possibly be dead.

But Lenrose’s behavior doesn’t quite match the person the Fig Ladies interacted with online. Now, Maureen and Emrys—with assistance from the Fig Ladies—must prove the real Lenrose is dead and unmask her mysterious pretender before a desperate murderer strikes again . . .

Visit Molly MacRae's website.

My Book, The Movie: Plaid and Plagiarism.

The Page 69 Test: Plaid and Plagiarism.

The Page 69 Test: Scones and Scoundrels.

My Book, The Movie: Scones and Scoundrels.

The Page 69 Test: Crewel and Unusual.

The Page 69 Test: Heather and Homicide.

Q&A with Molly MacRae.

Writers Read: Molly MacRae (July 2024).

The Page 69 Test: Come Shell or High Water.

My Book, The Movie: Come Shell or High Water.

Writers Read: Molly MacRae.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Simon Toyne's "The Black Highway"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Black Highway by Simon Toyne.

About the book, from the publisher:

Laughton Rees is back in the latest novel from the bestselling author of the Sanctus trilogy—this time, with a case that hits uncomfortably close to home and threatens the thing Laughton values most: her daughter.

Forensic specialist Laughton Rees is not ashamed of her checkered past—after all, her youthful indiscretions led to the birth of her daughter Gracie, the person she loves most in the world—but when Gracie’s father unexpectedly turns up in their lives again, Laughton is automatically wary.

Shelby Facer is a dangerous man, formerly imprisoned for his involvement in an international drug trafficking ring, and no matter what Laughton once felt for him, she doesn’t want him anywhere near Gracie. But when Shelby claims that he has information about an especially difficult murder case she is working, she can’t turn him down.

A body with no head or hands has recently turned up in the river Thames, and the police are at a loss until Shelby identifies the man. The victim was part of a highly secretive smuggling ring Shelby was involved with during his and Laughton’s youth—which Laughton’s father, former commissioner for the Metropolitan police, was investigating before he died.

Laughton throws herself into her father’s old files to try to trace the connections between past and present, but as she and DCI Tannahill Khan circle closer to the truth, the case becomes dangerously personal. When another body turns up, mutilated just like the first, the victim is no stranger to Laughton. She’ll have to face the darkest parts of her past to find the man behind the murders—before he takes away everything she loves.

Visit Simon Toyne's website, Facebook page, Twitter perch, and Instagram page.

My Book, The Movie: Sanctus.

The Page 69 Test: Sanctus.

The Page 69 Test: The Tower.

My Book, The Movie: The Tower.

My Book, The Movie: The Searcher.

Writers Read: Simon Toyne (October 2015).

The Page 69 Test: The Searcher.

The Page 69 Test: The Clearing.

My Book, The Movie: The Clearing.

Q&A with Simon Toyne.

The Page 69 Test: The Black Highway.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Jennifer Crane's "'Gifted Children' in Britain and the World"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: 'Gifted Children' in Britain and the World: Elitism and Equality since 1945 by Jennifer Crane.

About the book, from the publisher:

The idea that a child is intellectually 'gifted' has a social and cultural history. This book analyses that social history at multiple scales, and makes the 'voices' of the 'gifted' young themselves central through examination of their poetry, letters, and life-writing. In daily encounters, those labelled 'gifted' sometimes loved this label, and felt special in comparison to peers at school and siblings at home.

For others, 'gifted' was a silly or embarrassing label, and many questioned the idea of separating off young people in terms of intelligence, as well as the specific forms of testing being used. Ideas of the 'gifted' child also reshaped family lives -- parents dedicated time to providing special leisure spaces for those thought of as 'gifted', running them in their own homes and taking their children significant distances to spend time with others that were also 'gifted'.

Voluntary organisations were critical here, as the network through which young people and adults encountered the term, 'gifted', and lived and created it relationally, through interactions with one another. Voluntary organisations, looking to gain attention and visibility, also critically shaped the idea that the 'gifted' young were elites of 'the future', central to answering challenges of economic decline, global warfare, or humanitarian aid. The hopes placed on 'gifted' children between the 1960s and the 1990s were often sky high -- yet many 'gifted' young still felt that the community 'wasted' their talents, and did not support them. This book, then, provides new perspectives on the tensions between elitism and equality in modern Britain. It also offers vivid stories of optimism, hope, disappointment, and criticism, in which young people themselves play a central role.

Learn more about 'Gifted Children' in Britain and the World at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: 'Gifted Children' in Britain and the World.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top novels on smart, quirky women facing personal struggles

Ruth F. Stevens likes to create stories that will make readers laugh and cry. A former public relations executive in New York and Los Angeles, she is a produced playwright and author of the novels Stage Seven, My Year of Casual Acquaintances, and The Unexpected Guests. Stevens is a proud member of the Women's Fiction Writers Association and the Dramatists Guild of America and serves as a volunteer and acquisitions editor for AlzAuthors. She lives in Torrance, California, with her husband. In her spare time, she enjoys travel, hiking, hip-hop and fitness classes, yoga, Broadway musicals, wine tasting, leading a book club, and visiting her grandsons in NYC.

At Shepherd Stevens tagged five of the best novels on smart, quirky women facing personal struggles. One title on the list:

I Thought You Said This Would Work by Ann Garvin

I love stories in which the characters are thrust into unusual and unexpected circumstances. This was the case for Samantha Arias, who had to carry a heavier load than most middle-aged moms. Early widowhood, a chronic sleep disorder, a serious lack of self-esteem, and a close friend gravely ill with cancer were just a few of her challenges that made me empathize with her plight.

When Samantha and a third estranged friend embarked on a mission to rescue their sick friend’s dog, they took us on a long road trip that was both comical and action-packed. I laughed and cried as Samantha slowly opened herself up to embracing both new love and old friendship.

Read about another entry on Stevens's list.

Coffee with a Canine: Ann Garvin & Peanut.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Miriam Gershow

From my Q&A with Miriam Gershow, author of Closer:

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

As soon as I typed the last sentence of my first draft, I knew the title of Closer would be Closer. Even if I also know that I was choosing a title that could be read one of two ways. I began saying, almost immediately: “Closer as in opposite of further, not closer as in the last person to close down the bar at night.” So why choose this title? It’s similar to when I knew in my first trimester that my son would be Eli. When you know, you know. The idea of closer - getting closer, being closer - embodies everything this story is about. This novel is the story of a community, full of people who make heedless mistakes, often at a very high cost, all in service of trying to get closer to those they love, whether that be a child, a lover, a spouse, a friend. They get it wrong more than they get it right, and that’s what interests me. Closer is different than already being close to someone. Closer is aspirational; a...[read on]

Visit Miriam Gershow's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Local News.

Q&A with Miriam Gershow.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Elizabeth Eva Leach & Jonathan Morton's "Performing Desire"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Performing Desire: Knowledge, Self, and Other in Richard de Fournival's "Bestiaire d'amours" by Elizabeth Eva Leach and Jonathan Morton.

About the book, from the publisher:

Performing Desire examines the intellectual and philosophical complexity of a monument of medieval literature: the mid-thirteenth-century Bestiaire d'amours of Richard de Fournival. Although the Bestiaire was recognized in its time as significant, as evinced by numerous surviving manuscript copies and its influence on other literary works, modern scholarship has tended to neglect it. Performing Desire remedies this omission by detailing the contributions of the Bestiaire to medieval literature and thought.

Attending to the phenomenology, psychology, and philosophy of Fournival's Bestiaire, Elizabeth Eva Leach and Jonathan Morton reconsider the work as a literary experiment that explores erotic desire and the construction of a self. Leach and Morton further show that the Bestiaire is as much a meditation on sound and performance as it is a study of desire. Synthesizing methods from musicology, literary studies, and manuscript studies, Leach and Morton consider the complex and hybridized workings of text, image, sound, and cues for performance in the surviving manuscripts of the Bestiaire.

Through their analysis, Leach and Morton find that the distinctive aspect of the Bestiaire's philosophical method is its self-conscious status as a performance between the oral and the literary, the voice and the page. It is this aspect, they contend, that left such a mark on the medieval European tradition of philosophical fiction. In Performing Desire, Richard de Fournival's hybrid text emerges as one of the most philosophically sophisticated and important works of medieval literature not only in French but in any language.

Learn more about Performing Desire at the Cornell University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Medieval Sex Lives: The Sounds of Courtly Intimacy on the Francophone Borders by Elizabeth Eva Leach.

The Page 99 Test: Performing Desire.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six stellar Greek mythology retellings

John Wiswell is a disabled author who lives where New York keeps all its trees. His fiction has been translated into 10 languages. He won the 2021 Nebula Award for Best Short Story for "Open House on Haunted Hill," and the 2022 Locus Award for Best Novelette for "That Story Isn't The Story." He has also been a finalist for the Hugo, World Fantasy and British Fantasy Awards.

Wiswell's new novel is Wearing the Lion.

At People magazine he tagged six Greek mythology retellings, including:

Winter Harvest by Ioanna Papadopoulou

This one is for die-hard fans of Madeline Miller’s Circe. Papadopoulou’s novel collects all the major myths and fragments of folklore surrounding Demeter, the Goddess of Harvest. Despite her ability to freeze the world to death, she is relegated to the back row of Olympians in most classic literature, less favored than the likes of Zeus and Athena.

Winter Harvest’s brilliance is filling in the gaps between where Demeter appears in myths: first fighting against her tyrannical parents and later growing up to become a violently protective mother. It envisions a full life of a misunderstood woman and goddess, complete with strength, bitterness, and longing.

Read about another entry on the list.

Also see Mark Skinner's nineteen top Greek myth retellings and Christine Hume's ten top feminist retellings of mythology, the B&N Reads editors' twenty-four best mythological retellings.

--Marshal Zeringue

Priyanka Taslim's "Always Be My Bibi," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Priyanka Taslim's Always Be My Bibi.

The entry begins:

Since Always Be My Bibi is a little inspired by romcoms from the nineties like Clueless, you would think it would be easy to cast a movie version, but alas, it’s a lot simpler to find your perfect Cher Horowitz in Alicia Silverstone than it is to cast a Bangladeshi American teen fashionista like Bibi Hossian. The reason for this is because there’s still a major lack of South Asian, especially Bangladeshi, actors in Hollywood. If there was ever a movie or show, I’d love for the casting director to seek out fresh new talent and give young Bangladeshi American actors a chance.

However, when I was asked for cover references for Bibi, the following models and actresses came up on my list: Firstly, Bangladeshi-Australian influencer, Mishti Rahman, whose glamorous online life Bibi would probably aspire to. Second, real life Disney princess Charithra Chandran, whose wide eyed, naive beauty on Bridgerton’s second season was a perfect foil for her drop dead gorgeous older sister, played by the ever stunning Simone Ashley. Lastly, actress Megan Suri, who is a style icon in her own right, just like the other two. I think having impeccable taste in fashion would be key to playing Bibi.

Sohel Rahman, Bibi’s love interest, would probably be...[read on]

Visit Priyanka Taslim's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Love Match.

Q&A with Priyanka Taslim.

The Page 69 Test: The Love Match.

The Page 69 Test: Always Be My Bibi.

Writers Read: Priyanka Taslim.

My Book, The Movie: Always Be My Bibi.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Josée Johnston, Shyon Baumann, Emily Huddart, and Merin Oleschuk's "Happy Meat"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Happy Meat: The Sadness and Joy of a Paradoxical Idea by Josée Johnston, Shyon Baumann, Emily Huddart, and Merin Oleschuk.

About the book, from the publisher:

North Americans love eating meat. Despite the increased awareness of the meat industry's harms–violence against animals, health problems, and associations with environmental degradation–the rate of meat eating hasn't changed significantly in recent years. Instead, what has emerged is an uncomfortable paradox: a need to square one's values with the behaviors that contradict those values. Using a large-scale, multidimensional, and original dataset, Happy Meat explores the thoughts and emotions that underpin our moral decision-making in this meat paradox. Conscientious meat-eaters turn to the notion of "happy meat" to make sense of their behaviors by consuming meat they see as more healthy, ethical, and sustainable. Happy meat might be labeled grass fed, free-range, antibiotic free, naturally raised, or humane. The people who produce and consume it, together, make up the complex landscape of conscientious meat-eating in modern Western societies. The discourse of happy meat ultimately may not be a sufficient response to all the critiques of meat eating, rife as it is with contradictions. However, it offers a powerful case for understanding how moral boundaries and notions of the 'good eater' are constructed through negotiations of values, identity, and status.

Learn more about Happy Meat at the Stanford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Happy Meat.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven titles featuring parents & children at the end of the world

Barnaby Martin is a multi-talented storyteller and creator. Besides his writing, he is an award-winning and self-taught composer, video essayist and teacher. His music has been performed widely in the UK and internationally by groups including the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestra of Opera North and Westminster Cathedral Choir. His YouTube channel, Listening In, which he began in 2019 and for which he makes videos that explore the cross-section between pop culture and classical music, has garnered over 200,000 subscribers and ten million views. He studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge and now teaches in London, where he lives with his husband.

Martin's new novel is The Quiet.

At CrimeReads he tagged seven "novels where a parent, or surrogate parent, just wants to save their child from the end of the world." One title on the list:

Cormac McCarthy, The Road

This is the go-to example. The Road follows the story of a man and his son trying to travel south in a world that has been set on fire by an unknown disaster. There are cannibals and limited ammunition and it’s written in beautiful, poetic prose. I found it surprisingly hopeful considering the setting.

Read about another novel on the list.

The Road appears on Nick Newman's list of five novels that feature the uncanny suspense of a third character's arrival, Linda Rodriguez McRobbie's list of thirty of literature's best parents, Robert Lee Brewer's list of the ten best dystopian novels ever written, Pedro Hoffmeister's list of five titles with lessons to turn a post-apocalyptic novel into a thriller, Malcolm Devlin’s list of eight zombie stories without any zombies, Michael Christie's list of ten novels to reconfigure our conception of nature for the better, Emily Temple's list of the ten books that defined the 2000s, Ceridwen Christensen's list of ten novels that end their apocalypses on a beach, Steph Post's top ten list of classic (and perhaps not so classic) road trip books, a list of five of the best climate change novels, Claire Fuller's top five list of extreme survival stories, Justin Cronin's top ten list of world-ending novels, Rose Tremain's six best books list, Ian McGuire's ten top list of adventure novels, Alastair Bruce's top ten list of books about forgetting, Jeff Somers's lists of five science fiction novels that really should be considered literary classics and eight good, bad, and weird dad/child pairs in science fiction and fantasy, Amelia Gray's ten best dark books list, Weston Williams's top fifteen list of books with memorable dads, ShortList's roundup of the twenty greatest dystopian novels, Mary Miller's top ten list of the best road books, Joel Cunningham's list of eleven "literary" novels that include elements of science fiction, fantasy or horror, Claire Cameron's list of five favorite stories about unlikely survivors, Isabel Allende's six favorite books list, the Telegraph's list of the 15 most depressing books, Joseph D’Lacey's top ten list of horror books, the Barnes & Noble Review's list of five unforgettable fathers from fiction, Ken Jennings's list of eight top books about parents and kids, Anthony Horowitz's top ten list of apocalypse books, Karen Thompson Walker's list of five notable "What If?" books, John Mullan's list of ten of the top long walks in literature, Tony Bradman's top ten list of father and son stories, Ramin Karimloo's six favorite books list, Jon Krakauer's five best list of books about mortality and existential angst, William Skidelsky's list of the top ten most vivid accounts of being marooned in literature, Liz Jensen's top 10 list of environmental disaster stories, the Guardian's list of books to change the climate, David Nicholls' top ten list of literary tear jerkers, and the Times (of London) list of the 100 best books of the decade. In 2009 Sam Anderson of New York magazine claimed "that we'll still be talking about [The Road] in ten years."

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Camilla Trinchieri reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Camilla Trinchieri, author of Murder in Pitigliano.

Her entry begins:

I am presently engrossed in two very different novels: The Searcher by the Irish writer Tana French and Jumping the Queue by the deceased English author Mary Wesley.

In The Searcher, Cal Hooper, a retired and divorced American police officer has bought a ramshackle house in a small Irish town. When a young boy asks for his help finding his brother, Cal, at first reluctant, accepts the challenge. French’s depiction of Cal is so well done I want to follow him as he gets in deeper and deeper. Through her incredible talent French brings the setting and the inhabitants so alive I felt I was hearing the rooks, feeling the wind in the trees and smelling the beer. That is...[read on]

About Murder in Pitigliano, from the publisher:

Ex-NYPD detective Nico Doyle finds himself unwittingly stepping into the role of a PI to investigate a murder that has torn a young family apart in this rustic mystery set in the beautiful Medieval village of Pitigliano, Italy.

One morning at his favorite café, Nico Doyle notices Cilia, a seven-year-old girl he has never seen before, frolicking with his dog on the floor. He later discovers she has left a note in his collar—Please help my babbo.

With help from the local carabinieri, Nico discovers that Cilia’s father, Saverio, has fled town following an unfortunate incident. His business partner was killed at their electronics store, and Saverio is the hot-headed local carabiniere’s main suspect. Cilia’s mother, Livia, who just moved to Gravigna to get away from Pitigliano’s wagging tongues, asks Nico to find the real killer and hands him a long list of suspects. Against his better judgment, Nico accepts for Cilia’s sake. Since the case is outside of the local carabinieri’s jurisdiction, Nico finds himself on his own as he travels back and forth to Pitigliano. He goes down Livia’s list of suspects one by one in pursuit of the truth, putting his skills as a retired NYPD detective to work. But will Livia and her little girl be happy with what Nico finds?

Visit Camilla Trinchieri's website.

Q&A with Camilla Trinchieri.

The Page 69 Test: Murder in Pitigliano.

Writers Read: Camilla Trinchieri.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Katherine Wood's "Sunburned"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Sunburned: A Novel by Katherine Wood.

About the book, from the publisher:

St. Barth’s has a murder rate of zero. But that’s about to change.

When Audrey Collet’s ex Tyson calls, threatening to expose the skeletons in her closet unless she helps him figure out who is blackmailing him, she wants nothing more than to refuse. Though their relationship ended over a decade ago, the scars are deep. And since his tech company made him a billionaire, he’s become more than a little eccentric . . . and paranoid.

But a foot has washed ashore in the Everglades—that’s right, an actual human foot, encased in an Air Jordan—and Tyson is quick to remind Audrey that it’s one whose long-dead owner they both have a connection to. A connection that could prove problematic, if it got out.

Audrey reluctantly agrees to meet Tyson at his home on the swanky Caribbean island of St. Barth’s to help him figure out who in his entourage is extorting him and what they know about the secrets he and Audrey share. Once there, she realizes that each person staying at Tyson’s lavish estate has a reason to wish him harm. Could the culprit be the gorgeous Belgian wife whose wings he’s clipped? The celebrity business partner he’s essentially holding hostage? The older brother who’s always been in his shadow? Or the sexy French butler he seems to trust more than he should?

Audrey has only just scratched the surface of what’s going on behind closed doors when Tyson’s birthday dive turns deadly, and she realizes that one of the seven people trapped on his yacht with her is not just a blackmailer but a murderer. If Audrey can’t catch the killer in time, she might become the next victim.

Visit Katherine Wood's website.

Q&A with Katherine St. John.

The Page 69 Test: The Vicious Circle.

The Page 69 Test: Sunburned.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Niall Docherty's "Healthy Users"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Healthy Users: The Governance of Well-Being on Social Media by Niall Docherty.

About the book, from the publisher:

We are often told that social media well-being is simply the result of individual users making healthy digital choices. All it takes is a little self-discipline. In this book, Niall Docherty looks closely at this belief and exposes the complex relations of power expressed through its articulation and enactment. Docherty creatively and empirically shows how the discourses, designs, and habits of online well-being push user conduct in certain directions, at the expense of others. This is a contingent mode of governance that combines logics of neoliberalism, practices of psychologized person-making, and persuasive capitalist interfaces. By highlighting the damaging effects of this current arrangement, Healthy Users charts a path that will change how we understand and study social media well-being in the future.

Learn more about Healthy Users at the University of California Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Healthy Users.

--Marshal Zeringue

Fourteen of the best essay collections

At GQ (UK edition) Josiah Gogarty tagged the "best essay collections for proving how amazingly well-read you are." One title on the list:

Mantel Pieces by Hilary Mantel

Hilary Mantel’s trio of novels about Thomas Cromwell, Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies and The Mirror and the Light, are among the very best fiction of the 21st century. She was supremely accomplished at non-fiction too – and, as the title of this collection indicates, not above a good pun. The pieces, picked from her extensive contributions to the London Review of Books, range in topic from Saudi Arabia to Madonna to witchcraft and much more. As with her most famous work, a lot of attention is paid to kings and queens, notably in “Royal Bodies”, a piercing essay about the objectification of royal women that whipped up media hysteria due to her description of Kate Middleton as a “shop-window mannequin”.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Sarah Strohmeyer

From my Q&A with Sarah Strohmeyer, author of A Mother Always Knows: A Novel:

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

A Mother Always Knows relates to the beginning of the novel – in which the mother is murdered in front of her daughter while trying to flee a Vermont cult – and throughout the rest of the book, all the way to the end. Do mothers always know? Can a mother beyond the grave know? (There’s a supernatural element to the book since it involves a cult of “spiritual dowsers.”) Or, does a mother think she knows, when she really doesn’t? In the end, A Mother Always Knows is about mother/daughter relationships and how a mother’s poor decision(s) can affect her child’s future years later.

What's in a name?

This is a great question for A Mother Always Knows. For example, the protagonist’s common name is...[read on]

Visit Sarah Strohmeyer's website.

The Page 69 Test: This Is My Brain on Boys.

My Book, The Movie: This Is My Brain on Boys.

My Book, The Movie: We Love to Entertain.

Writers Read: Sarah Strohmeyer (April 2023).

The Page 69 Test: We Love to Entertain.

Q&A with Sarah Strohmeyer.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Eunji Kim's "The American Mirage"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The American Mirage: How Reality TV Upholds the Myth of Meritocracy by Eunji Kim.

About the book, from the publisher:

How the entertainment narrative of upward mobility distorts the harsh economic realities in America

In an age of growing wealth disparities, politicians on both sides of the aisle are sounding the alarm about the fading American Dream. Yet despite all evidence to the contrary, many still view the United States as the land of opportunity. The American Mirage addresses this puzzle by exposing the stark reality of today’s media landscape, revealing how popular entertainment media shapes politics and public opinion in an increasingly news-avoiding nation.

Drawing on an eclectic array of original data, Eunji Kim demonstrates how, amid a dazzling array of media choices, many Americans simply are not consuming the news. Instead, millions flock to entertainment programs that showcase real-life success stories, such as American Idol, Shark Tank, and MasterChef. Kim examines how shows like these leave viewers confoundingly optimistic about the prospects of upward mobility, promoting a false narrative of rugged individualism and meritocracy that contradicts what is being reported in the news.

By taking seriously what people casually watch every day, The American Mirage shows how rags-to-riches programs perpetuate the myth of the American Dream, glorifying the economic winners, fostering tolerance for income inequality, and dampening support for redistributive policies that could improve people’s lives.

Visit Eunji Kim's website.

The Page 99 Test: The American Mirage.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six amateur sleuths with offbeat jobs

Molly MacRae spent twenty years in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Upper East Tennessee, where she managed The Book Place, an independent bookstore; may it rest in peace. Before the lure of books hooked her, she was curator of the history museum in Jonesborough, Tennessee’s oldest town.

MacRae lives with her family in Champaign, Illinois, where she recently retired from connecting children with books at the public library.

Her latest novel is There'll Be Shell to Pay.

[My Book, The Movie: Plaid and Plagiarism; The Page 69 Test: Plaid and Plagiarism; The Page 69 Test: Scones and Scoundrels; My Book, The Movie: Scones and Scoundrels; The Page 69 Test: Crewel and Unusual; The Page 69 Test: Heather and Homicide; Q&A with Molly MacRae; Writers Read: Molly MacRae (July 2024); The Page 69 Test: Come Shell or High Water; My Book, The Movie: Come Shell or High Water]

At CrimeReads MacRae tagged a few favorite amateur sleuths with offbeat jobs, including:

Tempest Raj is a stage magician following in her mother’s footsteps as a master illusionist. She’s Gigi Pandian’s protagonist in the Secret Staircase Mysteries. Tempest has stepped away from her job, headlining huge shows in Las Vegas, after a disastrous accident on stage. She lost her career, and the life she built, and returned to Hidden Creek, her small hometown in California’s Bay Area. She’s returned to her childhood home and bedroom, too. The bedroom is only accessible by a secret staircase activated by a hidden lever. Tempest is now working part-time for Secret Staircase Construction, her father’s home renovation company. They specialize in architectural misdirection—secret staircases, hidden libraries and passages, sliding bookcases, etc. In her spare time, Tempest unravels puzzling crimes. Tempest is twenty-seven, half Indian, half Scottish, and she likes poori masala for breakfast as much as a bowl of porridge. Pandian is rightfully called the modern-day queen of the locked room mystery. To date there are four books in the series. They’re available in print, e-book and audiobook editions.

Read about another entry on MacRae's list.

--Marshal Zeringue