Coffee with a canine: Shannon Stoker & Nucky

Featured at Coffee with a Canine: Shannon Stoker & Nucky.

The author, on Nucky's contribution to her writing:

The whole reason I decided to seriously try writing is because I was working long hours at a law firm and I missed Nucky so bad! I thought maybe if I got something published I could spend more time at home with him. So he is a huge inspiration for my writing. Sometimes he wants to pets though and will jump on my lap while using his head to knock my hands away from the keyboard until I pay attention to him. If I ever try to...[read on]

About Shannon Stoker's latest book, The Collection, from the publisher:

How far would you go to control your own destiny?

Mia Morrissey has escaped: from America, from the Registry, from the role she was raised to play—a perfect bride auctioned to the highest bidder. She's enemy number one to the world's largest power, and there's no turning back now.

From the moment she and her friends Andrew and Carter cross the border into Mexico, it's clear their troubles are only beginning. Mexico may have laws to protect runaway brides, but as U.S. Army deserters, Andrew and Carter face deportation or worse. The young men are immediately picked up by a violent and omnipotent militia—the Collection—and it's Mia's turn to rescue them.

With time running out, her ex-fiancé's henchman on her trail, and a dangerous tide shifting back in America, Mia will do whatever she has to. Even if that means risking everything and putting herself back on an auction block. The price of freedom is never too high . . . but what if the cost is her life?

Visit Shannon Stoker's website.

Read--Coffee with a Canine: Shannon Stoker & Nucky.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q & A: Tara Ellison

From a Q & A with Tara Ellison, author of Synchronized Breathing:

How would you complete this line: "You might well enjoy my book if you like..."?

You might well enjoy my book if you like… Bridget Jones or if those old reruns of Sex in the City still make you laugh. Movies and books about dating mishaps have always grabbed my attention and everyone can relate to a romance derailing or a bad break-up. When I decided to write Synchronized Breathing (the story of a marriage imploding and one woman’s disastrous efforts to get back in the dating game), I knew exactly...[read on]

Visit Tara Ellison's website, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Justin Gustainis's "Known Devil"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Known Devil: An Occult Crimes Unit Investigation by Justin Gustainis.

About the book, from the publisher:

Meet Stan Markowski or the Scranton PD’s Occult Crimes Unit.

“My name’s Markowski. I carry a badge. Also, a crucifix, some wooden stakes, a big vial of holy water, and a 9mm Beretta loaded with silver bullets.

A new supernatural gang is intent on invading Scranton and it looks like I’m going to have to work with the current mob to prevent a demonic gang war.

If there’s one thing I hate more than living with supernatural scumbags, it’s working with them! But you know that they say, better the devil you know…”

Learn more the book and author at Justin Gustainis' website.

The Page 69 Test: Known Devil.

--Marshal Zeringue

Peter Mountford's "The Dismal Science," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Dismal Science by Peter Mountford.

The entry begins:

I have not really thought of this book as a movie, truth be told. But it does have a sort of filmic shape, I realize now, a three act thing. Not terribly Hollywood in its tone, mind you. This is not exactly X-Men. For Vincenzo, I suppose I’d like to use a time machine and go get F. Murray Abram back when he played Salieri in Amadeus. Maybe Robert De Niro could do it? Whatever happened to him, though? I know everyone’s supposed to be in awe of his acting abilities, but hasn’t he just been making schmaltz for decades?

Lenka was in the first book, and I...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Peter Mountford's website.

The Page 69 Test: A Young Man's Guide to Late Capitalism.

My Book, The Movie: A Young Man's Guide to Late Capitalism.

Writers Read: Peter Mountford.

The Page 69 Test: The Dismal Science.

My Book, The Movie: The Dismal Science.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five recent dark thrillers to soothe your Valentine’s Day hangover

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog Melissa Albert tagged five "recent releases that’ll warm (or further chill) your Cupid-intolerant heart," including:

After I’m Gone, by Laura Lippman

There’s just something about an unsolved murder that gets a writer’s wheels turning. In this seamlessly plotted work, semi-retired detective Sandy Sanchez teases out the hidden web of connections between the 26-year-old disappearance of crooked businessman Felix Brewer, and the killing a decade later of his mistress. The book is both a whodunit and a moving character drama, exploring the effects of Felix’s loss on the wife and three daughters he left behind.

Read about another book on the list.

Learn more about After I’m Gone.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Steve Longenecker's "Gettysburg Religion"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Gettysburg Religion: Refinement, Diversity, and Race in the Antebellum and Civil War Border North by Steve Longenecker.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the borderland between freedom and slavery, Gettysburg remains among the most legendary Civil War landmarks. A century and a half after the great battle, Cemetery Hill, the Seminary and its ridge, and the Peach Orchard remain powerful memories for their embodiment of the small-town North and their ability to touch themes vital to nineteenth-century religion. During this period, three patterns became particularly prominent: refinement, diversity, and war. In Gettysburg Religion, author Steve Longenecker explores the religious history of antebellum and Civil War–era Gettysburg, shedding light on the remarkable diversity of American religion and the intricate ways it interacted with the broader culture. Longenecker argues that Gettysburg religion revealed much about larger American society and about how trends in the Border North mirrored national developments. In many ways, Gettysburg and its surrounding Border North religion belonged to the future and signaled a coming pattern for modern America.

Learn more about Gettysburg Religion at the Fordham University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Gettysburg Religion.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Mignon F. Ballard reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Mignon F. Ballard, author of Miss Dimple Picks a Peck of Trouble.

Her entry begins:

For Christmas my daughter gave me a copy of Rachel Joyce’s The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, and I enjoyed it so much I’m recommending it for my book club. Set in England in the present, the story follows the peculiar adventure of a lackluster man in his early retirement years who sets off to mail a letter one early summer morning and decides to deliver it in person. The fact that the recipient of the letter is some 600 miles away is the carrot of the story that...[read on]

About Miss Dimple Picks a Peck of Trouble, from the publisher:

It's the summer of 1944 and the world seems mired in a war that will never end. On the home front, the people of Elderberry, Georgia, are doing everything they can to support the troops. Even with a war on, the peaches are ripe for picking. As veteran teacher Miss Dimple Kilpatrick and her colleagues work in the orchard, they hear frantic calls for help: An eighteen-year-old girl, Prentice, has been missing—and is later found murdered.

Miss Dimple and her fellow teachers-turned-sleuths are determined to find the killer. Although Prentice had recently broken up with her boyfriend, the most obvious suspect isn't always the right one: Prentice may have been keeping some secrets; and a local woman claims to have witnessed the whole abduction—except she also believes she is Scarlett O’Hara, that Nazi spies are pursuing her, and that she knows where the Confederate gold is buried. Figuring out what really happened to Prentice is sure to be a challenge. But Miss Dimple, who has taught the town's first graders for decades, has never been daunted by a challenge.

Mignon F. Ballard's newest edition to her Miss Dimple mystery series, Miss Dimple Picks a Peck of Trouble, is filled with period charm and a wonderfully brave band of amateur sleuths.

Learn more about the author and her work at Mignon Ballard's website.

My Book, The Movie: Miss Dimple Rallies to the Cause.

The Page 69 Test: Miss Dimple Rallies to the Cause.

Writers Read: Mignon F. Ballard (December 2011).

The Page 69 Test: Miss Dimple Suspects.

The Page 69 Test: Miss Dimple Picks a Peck of Trouble.

Writers Read: Mignon F. Ballard.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Christian Jungersen's "You Disappear"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: You Disappear by Christian Jungersen.

About the book, from the publisher:

An unnerving and riveting psychological drama that challenges our notions of how we view others and how we construct our own sense of self.

Mia is an elementary schoolteacher in Denmark, while her husband, Frederik, is the talented, highly respected headmaster of a local private school. During a vacation in Spain, Frederik has an accident and his visit to the hospital reveals a brain tumor that is gradually altering his personality, confirming Mia's suspicions that her husband is no longer the man he used to be. Now she must protect herself and their teenage son, Niklas, from the strange, blunted being who lives in her husband's body—and with whom she must share her home, her son, and her bed.

When it emerges that one year ago Frederik had defrauded his school of millions of crowns, the consequences of his condition envelope the entire community. Frederick's apparent lack of concern doesn't help, and longstanding friendships with colleagues are thrown by the wayside. Increasingly isolated, Mia faces more tough questions. Had his illness already changed him back then when he still seemed so happy? What are the legal ramifications?

In her support group for spouses of people with brain injuries, Mia meets a defense attorney named Bernhard. Together they help prepare for Frederik's court case by immersing themselves in the latest brain research and in classic philosophical questions of free will, while simultaneously navigating the uncertain waters of their growing mutual infatuation. Jungersen's clear, spare prose and ceaseless plot twists will keep readers hooked until the last page.

Learn more about the book and author at Christian Jungersen's website.

The Page 69 Test: You Disappear.

--Marshal Zeringue

Susanne Antonetta's "Make Me a Mother," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Make Me a Mother: A Memoir by Susanne Antonetta.

The entry begins:

Make Me a Mother is the story of my adoption of, and life with, my son Jin, who came to me from South Korea. Always funny, though sometimes just a little harrowing (hello, age thirteen! It inaugurated a period of a year and a half that Jin’s father and I still refer to as the Dark Ages), my book takes readers from Jin’s arrival at a few months of age to our trip back to Korea to visit the dozens of cribs of babies—and too few exhausted caretakers--at the orphanage where he once lived.

We first met our Jin at the South Satellite of SeaTac Airport in Seattle, “meeting cute” with our baby under the harsh lights outside of Customs. I was so nervous I raced through the airport security gate, all but tackled by the guards. My husband Bruce and I learned to stay up strolling him through our house all night, and later, how to connect with our son’s Korean culture. We joined a Korean church where we had barely a word in common with much of the congregation, but which we attended for years and with great love on all sides. There we had the signal joy of celebrating Thanksgiving with a feast of Korean meats and vegetables—bulgogi, kimchee, rice in nori—followed by a flock of roasted American-style turkeys.

In the end, through learning to be a mother I learned to be a daughter—to forgive and care for my own aging parents, to overcome my history as a high school dropout and drug user to become a mother. I learned how, time and time again, all families have to learn to adopt one another.

Casting? My tall, dimpled and adorable son is the easy choice. He’s a dead ringer for...[read on]

Visit Susanne Antonetta's website.

My Book, The Movie: Make Me a Mother.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best courtroom dramas

Louise Doughty is the author of seven novels, including Apple Tree Yard. One of her ten best courtroom dramas, as shared at the Guardian:

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963)

In his cold war novel, adapted as a film starring Richard Burton, John Le Carré sets his denouement in an East German courtroom where the spy Alec Leamas learns the real reason for his mission behind the Berlin Wall. It isn’t strictly speaking a courtroom drama but earns its place for the power of the concluding line of Chapter 23. “And suddenly, with the terrible clarity of a man too long deceived, Leamas understood the whole ghastly trick.” Leamas realises how he has been used by the British Secret Service at just the moment the reader realises: superb.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is among Jon Stock's top ten John le Carré novels, the Barnes & Noble Review's list of five top books on The Cold War, Charles Cumming's best books, and Keith Jeffery's five best books about Britain's Secret Service.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Leah Vincent's "Cut Me Loose"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Cut Me Loose: Sin and Salvation After My Ultra-Orthodox Girlhood by Leah Vincent.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the vein of Prozac Nation and Girl, Interrupted, an electrifying memoir about a young woman's promiscuous and self-destructive spiral after being cast out of her ultra-Orthodox Jewish family

Leah Vincent was born into the Yeshivish community, a fundamentalist sect of ultra-Orthodox Judaism. As the daughter of an influential rabbi, Leah and her ten siblings were raised to worship two things: God and the men who ruled their world. But the tradition-bound future Leah envisioned for herself was cut short when, at sixteen, she was caught exchanging letters with a male friend, a violation of religious law that forbids contact between members of the opposite sex. Leah's parents were unforgiving. Afraid, in part, that her behavior would affect the marriage prospects of their other children, they put her on a plane and cut off ties. Cast out in New York City, without a father or husband tethering her to the Orthodox community, Leah was unprepared to navigate the freedoms of secular life. She spent the next few years using her sexuality as a way of attracting the male approval she had been conditioned to seek out as a child, while becoming increasingly unfaithful to the religious dogma of her past. Fast-paced, mesmerizing, and brutally honest, Cut Me Loose tells the story of one woman's harrowing struggle to define herself as an individual. Through Leah's eyes, we confront not only the oppressive world of religious fundamentalism, but also the broader issues that face even the most secular young women as they grapple with sexuality and identity.

Learn more about the book and author at Leah Vincent's website and Facebook page.

The Page 99 Test: Cut Me Loose.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Gregory Spatz reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Gregory Spatz, author of Half as Happy.

His entry begins:

The past couple of weeks I’ve had the opportunity to re-read two of my all-time favorite books for a graduate novel writing workshop that I’m teaching: So Long See You Tomorrow, by William Maxwell and Stoner, by John Williams.

So Long See You Tomorrow has one of the most interesting hybrid forms I’ve encountered—half meditative essay/memoir exploring the death of Maxwell’s mother and the period of time immediately following, told in a dispassionate but heartrending first-person retrospective; part third-person omniscient story of adultery, murder and suicide. Through all of it, Maxwell’s transparent and understated style of narration, his patient and capacious voice, works like magic. The scenes and paragraphs seem to digress and dissolve sideways but always land you exactly where you need to be for the story to progress. The viewpoint shifts fluidly from murderer, to estranged lover, to child, to great aunt, to the farm dog, and back again, with no whiplash or confusion. Like the Alberto Giacometti sculpture, The Palace at 4 AM, which evidently inspired some of the book’s writing or conception, So Long See You Tomorrow seems to imply...[read on]

About Half as Happy, from the publisher:

A grieving couple rents a desperate landlord’s house in an effort to recover lost intimacy. Twins are irrevocably separated by events both beyond and within their control. A nighttime prank and its gruesome aftermath forge human connections no one could have anticipated.

The eight stories in Half as Happy reveal with startling clarity their characters’ secrets, losses, and desires. Each with the depth of a novel, these insightful portraits of the darkness and light within us reverberate long after they’ve ended, like beautiful and disturbing dreams.

Learn more about the book and author at Gregory Spatz's website.

The Page 69 Test: Half as Happy.

Writers Read: Gregory Spatz.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Michelle Wildgen's "Bread and Butter"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Bread and Butter: A Novel by Michelle Wildgen.

About the book, from the publisher:

Kitchen Confidential meets Three Junes in this mouthwatering novel about three brothers who run competing restaurants, and the culinary snobbery, staff stealing, and secret affairs that unfold in the back of the house.

Britt and Leo have spent ten years running Winesap, the best restaurant in their small Pennsylvania town. They cater to their loyal customers; they don't sleep with the staff; and business is good, even if their temperamental pastry chef is bored with making the same chocolate cake night after night. But when their younger brother, Harry, opens his own restaurant—a hip little joint serving an aggressive lamb neck dish—Britt and Leo find their own restaurant thrown off-kilter. Britt becomes fascinated by a customer who arrives night after night, each time with a different dinner companion. Their pastry chef, Hector, quits, only to reappear at Harry's restaurant. And Leo finds himself falling for his executive chef-tempted to break the cardinal rule of restaurant ownership. Filled with hilarious insider detail—the one-upmanship of staff meals before the shift begins, the rivalry between bartender and hostess, the seedy bar where waitstaff and chefs go to drink off their workday—Bread and Butter is both an incisive novel of family and a gleeful romp through the inner workings of restaurant kitchens.

Learn more about the author and her work at Michelle Wildgen's website.

The Page 99 Test: You’re Not You.

The Page 69 Test: But Not for Long.

The Page 69 Test: Bread and Butter.

--Marshal Zeringue

Adrian Bonenberger's "Afghan Post," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Afghan Post by Adrian Bonenberger.

The entry begins:

If I had an opportunity to bring Afghan Post to screen, the first thing I’d do is cast Channing Tatum as myself. Tatum is a healthy, strong young man (like I was at the time – I mean, I was probably a bit stronger, and I remember myself being handsomer), and capable of delivering emotionally honest performances with an intensity that many other mainstream actors seem to lack these days (see his work in Side Effects). At the same time, his comedic timing is usually dead on, and much of living through war, is keeping a very wide bandwidth for possible laughs – 21 Jump Street and its sequel look to be equal blends action and humor, which would be perfectly suited for Afghan Post. The book walks a line between dark humor and drama, and the movie would require an agile protagonist, capable of inhabiting several roles simultaneously, as so much of what occurs is emotional.

Because Afghan Post is epistolary, and delivered entirely by my voice, the movie would have to...[read on]

Learn more about Afghan Post at The Head and The Hand Press.

Read about Bonenberger's list of ten of the best contemporary war novels.

The Page 99 Test: Afghan Post.

My Book, The Movie: Afghan Post.

--Marshal Zeringue

Diane Johnson's 6 favorite books

Diane Johnson's new memoir is Flyover Lives.

One of her six favorite books, as shared with The Week magazine:

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

The younger daughter of an eccentric, impoverished English family longs for a normal life. Why can't their father break his writer's block? What will they do when the money runs out? Smith makes it all delightfully real and engrossing.

Read about another book on the list.

I Capture the Castle is one of Sophia Bennett's top ten stylish reads.

--Marshal Zeringue

Coffee with a canine: Erin Lindsay McCabe & Roxy

Featured at Coffee with a Canine: Erin Lindsay McCabe & Roxy.

The author, on how Roxy got her name:

My husband likes to joke that I stole Roxy. But what really happened was I looked out the window one morning just before Thanksgiving eleven years ago and there was this cute black dog heading down the street, toward a busy road. I ran out to catch her and ended up carrying her (which she absolutely hates to this day) back to our yard. It turned out she belonged to a man who lived a few blocks away, but when he learned we had Roxy, he told us to just keep her. We weren’t really in the market for a dog (despite the window-shopping I had been doing on black lab rescue sites), but we fell in love with her. Since Roxy seemed to know her name, we...[read on]

About I Shall Be Near to You, from the publisher:

An extraordinary novel about a strong-willed woman who disguises herself as a man in order to fight beside her husband, inspired by the letters of a remarkable female soldier who fought in the Civil War.

Rosetta doesn't want her new husband Jeremiah to enlist, but he joins up, hoping to make enough money that they'll be able to afford their own farm someday. Though she's always worked by her father’s side as the son he never had, now that Rosetta is a wife she's told her place is inside with the other women. But Rosetta decides her true place is with Jeremiah, no matter what that means, and to be with him she cuts off her hair, hems an old pair of his pants, and signs up as a Union soldier.

With the army desperate for recruits, Rosetta has no trouble volunteering, although she faces an incredulous husband. She drills with the men, proves she can be as good a soldier as anyone, and deals with the tension as her husband comes to grips with having a fighting wife. Rosetta's strong will clashes with Jeremiah's while their marriage is tested by broken conventions, constant danger, and war, and she fears discovery of her secret even as they fight for their future, and for their lives. Inspired by more than 250 documented accounts of the women who fought in the Civil War while disguised as men, I Shall Be Near To You is the intimate story, in Rosetta’s powerful and gorgeous voice, of the drama of marriage, one woman’s amazing exploits, and the tender love story that can unfold when two partners face life’s challenges side by side.

Visit Erin Lindsay McCabe's website and Facebook page.

Read--Coffee with a Canine: Erin Lindsay McCabe & Roxy.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Catherine Zuromskis's "Snapshot Photography"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Snapshot Photography: The Lives of Images by Catherine Zuromskis.

About the book, from the publisher:

Snapshots capture everyday occasions. Taken by amateur photographers with simple point-and-shoot cameras, snapshots often commemorate something that is private and personal; yet they also reflect widely held cultural conventions. The poses may be formulaic, but a photograph of loved ones can evoke a deep affective response. In Snapshot Photography, Catherine Zuromskis examines the development of a form of visual expression that is both public and private.

Scholars of art and culture tend to discount snapshot photography; it is too ubiquitous, too unremarkable, too personal. Zuromskis argues for its significance. Snapshot photographers, she contends, are not so much creating spontaneous records of their lives as they are participating in a prescriptive cultural ritual. A snapshot is not only a record of interpersonal intimacy but also a means of linking private symbols of domestic harmony to public ideas of social conformity.

Through a series of case studies, Zuromskis explores the social life of snapshot photography in the United States in the latter half of the twentieth century. She examines the treatment of snapshot photography in the 2002 film One Hour Photo and in the television crime drama Law and Order: Special Victims Unit; the growing interest of collectors and museum curators in "vintage" snapshots; and the"snapshot aesthetic" of Andy Warhol and Nan Goldin. She finds that Warhol's photographs of the Factory community and Goldin's intense and intimate photographs of friends and family use the conventions of the snapshot to celebrate an alternate version of "family values."

In today's digital age, snapshot photography has become even more ubiquitous and ephemeral — and, significantly, more public. But buried within snapshot photography's mythic construction, Zuromskis argues, is a site of democratic possibility.

Learn more about Snapshot Photography: The Lives of Images at the MIT Press website.

Writers Read: Catherine Zuromskis.

The Page 99 Test: Snapshot Photography.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Mignon Ballard's "Miss Dimple Picks a Peck of Trouble"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Miss Dimple Picks a Peck of Trouble by Mignon F. Ballard.

About the book, from the publisher:

It's the summer of 1944 and the world seems mired in a war that will never end. On the home front, the people of Elderberry, Georgia, are doing everything they can to support the troops. Even with a war on, the peaches are ripe for picking. As veteran teacher Miss Dimple Kilpatrick and her colleagues work in the orchard, they hear frantic calls for help: An eighteen-year-old girl, Prentice, has been missing—and is later found murdered.

Miss Dimple and her fellow teachers-turned-sleuths are determined to find the killer. Although Prentice had recently broken up with her boyfriend, the most obvious suspect isn't always the right one: Prentice may have been keeping some secrets; and a local woman claims to have witnessed the whole abduction—except she also believes she is Scarlett O’Hara, that Nazi spies are pursuing her, and that she knows where the Confederate gold is buried. Figuring out what really happened to Prentice is sure to be a challenge. But Miss Dimple, who has taught the town's first graders for decades, has never been daunted by a challenge.

Mignon F. Ballard's newest edition to her Miss Dimple mystery series, Miss Dimple Picks a Peck of Trouble, is filled with period charm and a wonderfully brave band of amateur sleuths.

Learn more about the author and her work at Mignon Ballard's website.

My Book, The Movie: Miss Dimple Rallies to the Cause.

The Page 69 Test: Miss Dimple Rallies to the Cause.

Writers Read: Mignon F. Ballard (December 2011).

The Page 69 Test: Miss Dimple Suspects.

The Page 69 Test: Miss Dimple Picks a Peck of Trouble.

--Marshal Zeringue

James L. Cambias's "A Darkling Sea," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: A Darkling Sea by James L. Cambias.

The entry begins:

A Darkling Sea is probably the most unfilmable story ever told. Most of the action takes place in the dark, and half the characters are giant lobsters without facial expression who communicate with sonar images.

That being said, if James Cameron were to call me up and say "Unfilmable? I take that as a challenge! We're making the best damned giant alien lobster movie ever! It'll have an hour of black screen with no sound but clicks and pings. It's surefire Oscar bait!" . . . well, then this is the cast I'd request.

The Humans:

Alicia Neogri: She needs an actress who can be geeky and obsessive, but also a romantic pairing for Rob Freeman, so I'll pick Natalie Portman.

Henri Kerlerec: He's a brash, self-promoting French archaeologist....[read on]

Visit James L. Cambias's website.

My Book, The Movie: A Darkling Sea.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine works inspired by writers’ real-life love lives

Joni Rendon and Shannon McKenna Schmidt are the authors of Writers Between the Covers: The Scandalous Romantic Lives of Legendary Literary Casanovas, Coquettes, and Cads.

For The Daily Beast they came up with a list of nine works inspired by writers’ love lives, including:

Tender is the Night
By F. Scott Fitzgerald

Not one but two romantic relationships influenced Tender is the Night: Scott’s tempestuous marriage to Zelda and his infatuation with teenage actress Lois Moran. Like the novel’s Nicole Diver, who leaves her husband for a mercenary soldier, Zelda once considered dumping Scott for a French aviator. In retaliation, Scott blatantly squired Moran around Hollywood. It’s not known for certain if the pair’s relationship ever turned physical, but the actress made enough of an impression to inspire beautiful young temptress Rosemary Hoyt.

Read about another entry on the list.

Also see: Simon Gough's top nine writers' muses.

--Marshal Zeringue