Seven novels that enhance the suspense by using weather

Jody Gehrman is a native of Northern California, where she can be found writing, teaching, reading, or obsessing over her three cats most days. She is also the author of numerous award-winning plays and novels, including The Girls Weekend.

Her Young Adult novel Babe in Boyland was optioned by the Disney Channel and won the International Reading Association's Teen Choice Award.

Gehrman's plays have been produced in Ashland, New York, San Francisco, Chicago and L.A. She and her partner David Wolf won the New Generation Playwrights Award for their one-act, Jake Savage, Jungle P.I.

She is a professor of English and Communications at Mendocino College.

At CrimeReads, Gehrman tagged seven favorite "books that use the weather beautifully to enhance the reader’s sense of imminent danger," including:

The Widow’s House by Carol Goodman

My husband and I listened to this during a Christmas road trip, and we loved the rich descriptions of winter in the Hudson Valley. We’re both suckers for a gothic mansion with ghosty undertones and sudden, violent storms, so this book checked plenty of boxes for us. Set in the dilapidated estate known as Riven House, a crumbling mansion once owned by the protagonist’s old college professor, this book has some of the claustrophobic dread of Daphne du Maurier’s classic Rebecca, another one of our favorites. There’s lots of swirling fog and hazy figures emerging from the mist; what’s not to love?

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Darin Strauss

From my Q&A with Darin Strauss, author of The Queen of Tuesday:

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

Tough one. I picked The Queen of Tuesday because I hoped it a) sounded cool, b) was mysterious, c) made sense once you realized the book was about the most famous television star of all time.

The book has tough to name because it's tough to peg: It's a half memoir/half fiction hybrid, about a speculative affair between my grandfather and Lucille Ball.

What's in a name?

Letters, generally.

More serious answer: I wanted to show how much sway Lucille had over America at that time. Her show (which in real-life aired on Monday nights, but in my book -- to show that it was a novel -- ran on Tuesdays) had the country all to itself on that night.

The nation's reservoirs are said to have dipped when her show broke for a commercial. (The whole country, flushing as one). Also, Lucille Ball was kind of a proto-feminist and progressive. She had one of the first famous American interracial marriages, and she fought to get her Latinx husband on primetime TV; she was a secret communist; and she invented the idea of...[read on]

Follow Darin Strauss on Twitter.

The Page 99 Test: Half a Life.

Q&A with Darin Strauss.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Patty Dann's "The Wright Sister"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Wright Sister: A Novel by Patty Dann.

About the book, from the publisher:

An epistolary novel of historical fiction that imagines the life of Katharine Wright and her relationship with her famous brothers, Wilbur and Orville Wright.

On December 17, 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright flew the world’s first airplane at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, establishing the Wright Brothers as world-renowned pioneers of flight. Known to far fewer people was their whip-smart and well-educated sister Katharine, a suffragette and early feminist.

After Wilbur passed away, Katharine lived with and took care of her increasingly reclusive brother Orville, who often turned to his more confident and supportive sister to help him through fame and fortune. But when Katharine became engaged to their mutual friend, Harry Haskell, Orville felt abandoned and betrayed. He smashed a pitcher of flowers against a wall and refused to attend the wedding or speak to Katharine or Harry. As the years went on, the siblings grew further and further apart.

In The Wright Sister, Patty Dann wonderfully imagines the blossoming of Katharine, revealed in her “Marriage Diary”—in which she emerges as a frank, vibrant, intellectually and socially engaged, sexually active woman coming into her own—and her one-sided correspondence with her estranged brother as she hopes to repair their fractured relationship. Even though she pictures “Orv” throwing her letters away, Katharine cannot contain her joie de vivre, her love of married life, her strong advocacy of the suffragette cause, or her abiding affection for her stubborn sibling as she fondly recalls their shared life.

An inspiring and poignant chronicle of feminism, family, and forgiveness, The Wright Sister is an unforgettable portrait of a woman, a sister of inventors, who found a way to reinvent herself.

Visit Patty Dann's website.

Q&A with Patty Dann.

The Page 69 Test: The Wright Sister.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Timothy K. Kuhner's "Tyranny of Greed"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Tyranny of Greed: Trump, Corruption, and the Revolution to Come by Timothy K. Kuhner.

About the book, from the publisher:

Democracy is being destroyed by an ancient evil, and modernity is in denial. In the Tyranny of Greed, Timothy K. Kuhner reveals the United States to be a government by and for the wealthy, with Trump—the spirit of infinite greed—at its helm. Taking readers on a tour through evolutionary biology, psychology, and biblical sources, Kuhner explores how democracy emerged from religious and revolutionary awakenings. He argues that to overcome Trump's regime and establish real democracy, we must reconnect with that radical heritage. Our political tradition demands a revolution against corruption.

Learn more about Tyranny of Greed at the Stanford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Tyranny of Greed.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten cousins in fiction

Jude Cook is the author of Byron Easy, which was published by Heinemann in 2013. He writes for the Guardian, The Spectator, Literary Review, New Statesman, TLS and the i paper, while his essays and short fiction have appeared in Stockholm Review, The Moth, The Tangerine and The Honest Ulsterman, among others. In 2017, he was longlisted for the Pin Drop RA short story award, and in 2018 for the Colm Tóibín International Short Story Award. He is an editor for The Literary Consultancy and teaches creative writing at the University of Westminster. He lives in London.

Cook's new novel is Jacob's Advice.

At the Guardian he tagged ten top cousins in fiction, including:

The Emperor’s Children by Claire Messud

Marina, Danielle and Julius are wealthy Manhattanite thirtysomethings, creatives and friends. When Marina’s young cousin Bootie arrives from a bland New York suburb, he’s intent on disrupting their complacent lives. A college dropout, Dostoyevskyan malcontent and wannabe philosopher, Bootie becomes amanuensis to Marina’s father, a legendary journalist. When Bootie takes against the great man in the run-up to 9/11, he proves his favourite quotation from Emerson correct: “Great geniuses have the shortest biographies. Their cousins can tell you nothing about them.”

Read about another entry on the list.

The Emperor’s Children is on Jia Tolentino's list of recommended books, Rebecca Jane Stokes's list of ten must-reads for Liane Moriarty fans, Porochista Khakpour's top ten list of novels about 9/11, Jimmy So's list of five novels that deal with 9/11 in significant if oblique ways, Rachel Syme's list of the ten most attractive men in literature, the (London) Times' list of the 100 best books of the last decade, and the New York Times' list of the 10 best books of 2006.

--Marshal Zeringue

Kylie Schachte's "You're Next," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: You're Next by Kylie Schachte.

The entry begins:

You’re Next is about sixteen-year-old detective Flora Calhoun. When she was a freshman, Flora went out for a run one morning and found the beaten, mutilated body of a classmate. Ever since, she’s been working as a private investigator for the kids at school--solving every kind of case from stolen laptops to cheating significant others. She’s thrown herself into her work as a way to escape those demons of her past, so when her ex-girlfriend Ava McQueen is murdered, Flora knows she must solve the case. But her obsession spirals out of control, and soon Flora & everyone she loves are in danger of becoming next on the killer’s list.

This story is told from Flora’s perspective, so that actor really has to carry the whole movie. Flora is prickly, clever, obsessive, and paranoid. For a while, I couldn’t imagine anyone pulling it off--and then I watched Season 2 of Stranger Things. When I saw Sadie Sink as Max--the skater girl from California--I knew she was the one. She’s young, but she has a lot of gravitas, and I think she could effortlessly slip into Flora’s specific combination of vulnerability, fury, and frantic kinetic energy. I once told a friend, “Flora looks like Sadie Sink if she hadn’t slept in about two weeks, and was running purely on...[read on]

Visit Kylie Schachte's website.

My Book, The Movie: You're Next.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten California crime novels not set in Los Angeles or San Francisco

Johnny Shaw’s novels have been set in the California settings of Indio, Calexico, Thermal, Holtville, Blythe, El Centro, Plaster City, and Campo. His most recent novel, The Southland, is hypocritically set in Los Angeles.

At CrimeReads, Shaw tagged ten favorite California crime novels that aren't set in Los Angeles or San Francisco. One title on the list:

WONDER VALLEY by Ivy Pochoda (2017)

I cheated a little here, as a considerable amount of this novel is set in Los Angeles. But I’m such a fan of Pochoda’s work that I was willing to bend the nonexistent rules that I made for myself. Plus, as a desert rat myself, I wanted more desolation represented. She nails something about Twentynine Palms and the area around it that isn’t easy to capture. Not just the heat and the isolation, but what that does to the people. This complex literary crime novel is well worth the read. And while you’re at it, pick up These Women which is equally fantastic.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Page 69 Test: Wonder Valley.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Ronald Niezen's "#HumanRights"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: #HumanRights: The Technologies and Politics of Justice Claims in Practice by Ronald Niezen.

About the book, from the publisher:

Social justice and human rights movements are entering a new phase. Social media, artificial intelligence, and digital forensics are reshaping advocacy and compliance. Technicians, lawmakers, and advocates, sometimes in collaboration with the private sector, have increasingly gravitated toward the possibilities and dangers inherent in the nonhuman. #HumanRights examines how new technologies interact with older models of rights claiming and communication, influencing and reshaping the modern-day pursuit of justice.

Ronald Niezen argues that the impacts of information technologies on human rights are not found through an exclusive focus on sophisticated, expert-driven forms of data management but in considering how these technologies are interacting with other, "traditional" forms of media to produce new avenues of expression, public sympathy, redress of grievances, and sources of the self. Niezen considers various ways that the pursuit of justice is happening via new technologies, including crowdsourcing, social media–facilitated mobilizations (and enclosures), WhatsApp activist networks, and the selective attention of Google's search engine algorithm. He uncovers how emerging technologies of data management and social media influence the ways that human rights claimants and their allies pursue justice, and the "new victimology" that prioritizes and represents strategic lives and types of violence over others. #HumanRights paints a striking and important panoramic picture of the contest between authoritarianism and the new tools by which people attempt to leverage human rights and bring the powerful to account.

Learn more about #HumanRights at the Stanford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: #HumanRights.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five of the best books to build mental resilience

Matt Haig is an author for children and adults. His memoir Reasons to Stay Alive was a number one bestseller, staying in the British top ten for 46 weeks. His children’s book A Boy Called Christmas was a runaway hit and is translated in over 40 languages. It is being made into a film by Studio Canal and The Guardian called it an ‘instant classic’. His novels for adults include the award-winning How To Stop Time, The Radleys and The Humans.

Haig's new book is The Midnight Library.

At the Guardian he tagged five books that helped him to build mental resilience, including:

Rachel Clarke weaves together an account of her training as a doctor who came to specialise in palliative care, the stories of her patients, and her father’s death in Dear Life. I read it while coming to terms with the death of a family friend, and found it full of honesty and tender wisdom about life and the process of dying. It managed the brilliant and paradoxical feat of helping you love life a little more and fear death a little less.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Celia Rees

From my Q&A with Celia Rees, author of Miss Graham's Cold War Cookbook: A Novel:

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

I find that a title is there, almost from the beginning, or it is not. If it’s not there, it can take a while to find. Miss Graham’s Cold War Cookbook began as The Cold War Cookbook. Short, simple words with an assonant ring to them and I liked the contrast. Cold War and Cookbook shouldn’t go together, and I thought that was intriguing. I never wanted the book to be called anything else. A good title should do what it says on the tin and I felt this one did just that. It’s set in the Cold War, a time synonymous with spying, and has recipes! Miss Graham was added much later. It puts the main character on the cover and into the reader’s consciousness right away. The title is unusual, a bit quirky and I...[read on]

Visit Celia Rees's website.

Q&A with Celia Rees.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Kali White's "The Monsters We Make"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Monsters We Make: A Novel by Kali White.

About the book, from the publisher:

For fans of Rene Denfeld and Shari Lapena comes a rich, atmospheric family drama set in the 1980’s following the disappearances of two paperboys from a small midwestern town.

It’s August 1984, and paperboy Christopher Stewart has gone missing.

Hours later, twelve-year-old Sammy Cox hurries home from his own paper route, red-faced and out of breath, hiding a terrible secret.

Crystal, Sammy’s seventeen-year-old sister, is worried by the disappearance but she also sees opportunity: the Stewart case has echoes of an earlier unsolved disappearance of another boy, one town over. Crystal senses the makings of an award winning essay, one that could win her a scholarship – and a ticket out of their small Iowa town.

Officer Dale Goodkind can’t believe his bad luck: another town and another paperboy kidnapping. But this time he vows that it won’t go unsolved. As the abductions set in motion an unpredictable chain of violent, devastating events touching each life in unexpected ways, Dale is forced to face his own demons.

Told through interwoven perspectives–and based on the real-life Des Moines Register paperboy kidnappings in the early 1980’s–The Monsters We Make deftly explores the effects of one crime exposing another and the secrets people keep hidden from friends, families, and sometimes, even themselves.

Visit Kali White's website.

Q&A with Kali White.

The Page 69 Test: The Monsters We Make.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jennifer Greer's "A Desperate Place," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: A Desperate Place: A McKenna and Riggs novel by Jennifer Greer.

The entry begins:

When I wrote A Desperate Place, I pictured each scene in my head as if I were watching a movie. It’s all very visual for me. Not only do I want to see and feel the scene I want my readers to be with me one hundred percent. The experience is what it’s all about. Walking around in someone else’s life for a time. Gaining new understanding of the world and the people in it.

With my lead character, journalist Whit McKenna, I envisioned Julianne Moore playing her part. I think she has a strength of character that suits McKenna, who is also a red head. I could picture Ms. Moore in a war zone and also as a mother. There is a grace about her and yet a hint of playfulness also surfaces when she lets down that hard guard.

My never flinching Medical Examiner Detective, Katie Riggs transferred from the murder squad to the M.E.’s office after experiencing a life-threatening skin cancer. She has a quiet strength and a strong faith in God. A natural beauty in her character that...[read on]

Visit Jennifer Greer's website.

Q&A with Jennifer Greer.

My Book, The Movie: A Desperate Place.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top books on loss and longing

Karolina Waclawiak is the author of the novels How to Get into the Twin Palms, The Invaders, and Life Events.

At The Week magazine she tagged six favorite books on loss and longing. One title on the list:

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee (2017).

Pachinko is breathtaking in scope as it builds a portrait of an early-20th-century Korean family who eventually immigrate to Japan to create a new life for themselves. Lee paints an incredibly complex intergenerational portrait of immigration, familial ties, and family secrets. The word "epic" was made for novels like this.

Read about another entry on the list.

Pachinko is among Allison Patkai's top six books with strong female voices, Tara Sonin's twenty-one books for fans of HBO’s Succession, and six books Jia Tolentino recommends.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Michael Kagan's "The Battle to Stay in America"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Battle to Stay in America: Immigration's Hidden Front Line by Michael Kagan.

About the book, from the publisher:

The national debate over American immigration policy has obsessed politicians and disrupted the lives of millions of people for decades. The Battle to Stay in America focuses on Las Vegas, Nevada–a city where more than one in five residents was born in a foreign country, and where the community is struggling to defend itself against the federal government’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants. Told through the eyes of an immigration lawyer on the front lines of that battle, this book offers an accessible, intensely personal introduction to a broken legal system. It is also a raw, honest story of exhaustion, perseverance, and solidarity. Michael Kagan describes how current immigration law affects real people’s lives and introduces us to some remarkable individuals—immigrants and activists—who grapple with its complications every day. He explains how American immigration law often gives good people no recourse. He shows how under President Trump the complex bureaucracies that administer immigration law have been re-engineered to carry out a relentless but often invisible attack against people and families who are integral to American communities.

Kagan tells the stories of people desperate to escape unspeakable violence in their homeland, children separated from their families and trapped in a tangle of administrative regulations, and hardworking long-time residents suddenly ripped from their productive lives when they fall unwittingly into the clutches of the immigration enforcement system. He considers how the crackdown on immigrants negatively impacts the national economy and offers a deeply considered assessment of the future of immigration policy in the United States. Kagan also captures the psychological costs exacted by fear of deportation and by increasingly overt expressions of hatred against immigrants.

Visit Michael Kagan's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Battle to Stay in America.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Patty Dann

From my Q&A with Patty Dann, author of The Wright Sister:

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I am very interested in family life. In this book I write about adult siblings, which I find a fascinating topic, how family dynamics can change or stay the same after the death of the parents. Wilbur, Orville and Katharine were such a tight unit, for so long. Katharine's marriage was such a dramatic move, that I felt compelled to write about it.

I'm also fascinated by inventions. The first automobile, as it was called, was sold in 1903, the same year of the Wright Brothers' first flight. I'm constantly thinking about how...[read on]

Visit Patty Dann's website.

Q&A with Patty Dann.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Julie E. Czerneda's "Mirage"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Mirage by Julie E. Czerneda.

About the book, from the publisher:

The second book in the Web Shifter’s Library series returns to the adventures of Esen, a shapeshifting alien who must navigate the perils of a hostile universe.

Relationships get complicated when you don’t know who—or what—you really are. Esen must find a way to rescue a hapless group of chimeras, beings who are a new and unique blend of species she knows, when she can’t become one herself. When Evan Gooseberry tries to help, he is shattered to learn he himself isn’t entirely Human and begins to suspect his new friend Esen isn’t what she seems.

Complicating matters, a mysterious contagion has killed the crew of the ship that brought the chimeras—and Evan—to Botharis. Everyone’s been quarantined inside the All Species’ Library of Linguistics and Culture, including over a hundred disgruntled alien scholars.

The risks climb as Skalet and Lionel continue their quest to solve the disappearance of Paul’s mother’s ship, the Sidereal Pathfinder, only to find themselves caught in a tangle of loyalties as Skalet is betrayed by her own Kraal affiliates, who infiltrate the Library.

All of which would be quite enough for one Web-being’s day, but Paul Ragem hopes to rekindle the romance of his first love. A shame Esen hasn’t told him who’s hiding in their greenhouse.

Visit Julie E. Czerneda's website.

The Page 69 Test: To Guard Against the Dark.

The Page 69 Test: The Gossamer Mage.

The Page 69 Test: Mirage.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight top non-human narrators in fiction

Kathleen Rooney is a founding editor of Rose Metal Press, a nonprofit publisher of literary work in hybrid genres, as well as a founding member of Poems While You Wait, a team of poets and their typewriters who compose commissioned poetry on demand. She teaches in the English Department at DePaul University, and her most recent books include the national best-seller, Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk (2017) and The Listening Room: A Novel of Georgette and Loulou Magritte (2018). Her new novel, Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey, is based on a true story of the Great War.

At Lit Hub, Rooney tagged eight books that "send messages and promises to their readers that, far from standing outside of so-called 'nature,' humans are animals too." One title on the list:

Tania James, The Tusk That Did the Damage
(Vintage)

Set in South India, Tania James’ 2015 novel The Tusk That Did the Damage isn’t told entirely from an animal point of view, but her move of including the perspective of a bull elephant known as Gravedigger adds complexity and heartbreak to her examination of the ivory trade. Weaving the exploited and long-suffering Gravedigger’s voice in with those of a young poacher and an American documentary filmmaker lets James depict interspecies conflicts and power imbalances with nuance and freshness. In the book’s first chapter, Gravedigger, as a calf, witnesses his mother’s murder as she tries to protect the herd from a human attack: “The man in the tree was pointing a long-snouted gun. Another blast—the tusker bellowed, deep and doomed. The Gravedigger whirled in search of his mother, and when at last he caught her scent, he found her roaring in the face of the gunman who aimed into her mouth and shot.” Motivated by revenge and self-preservation, Gravedigger comes to trample humans to death, then covers them with dirt (hence the name) before returning to the forest where he lives in hiding. Through her use of the close third person, James makes Gravedigger as morally multifaceted a character as any of the humans who surround him.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Pepper Glass's "Misplacing Ogden, Utah"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Misplacing Ogden, Utah: Race, Class, Immigration, and the Construction of Urban Reputations by Pepper Glass.

About the book, from the publisher:

How do we draw the lines between "good" and "bad" neighborhoods? How do we know “ghettos”? This book questions the widely held assumption that divisions between urban areas are reflections of varying amounts of crime, deprivation, and other social, cultural, and economic problems. Using Ogden, Utah, as a case study, Pepper Glass argues that urban reputations are “moral frontiers” that uphold and create divides between who is a good and respectable—or a bad and vilified—member of a community.

Ogden, a working-class city with a history of racial and immigrant diversity, has long held a reputation among Utahns as a “sin city” in the middle of an entrenched religious culture. Glass blends ethnographic research with historical accounts, census reports, and other secondary sources to provide insight into Ogden’s reputation, past and present. Capturing residents’ perceptions of an entire city, as opposed to only some of its neighborhoods, and exploring the regional contexts shaping these views, is rare among urban researchers. Glass’s unique approach suggests we can better confront urban problems by rethinking assumptions about place and promoting interventions that break down boundaries.

Learn more about Misplacing Ogden, Utah.

The Page 99 Test: Misplacing Ogden, Utah.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven top thrillers about filmmakers & subversive art

Kate Reed Petty's new novel is True Story.

At CrimeReads she tagged "seven thrillers that go behind the camera to expose what the art and craft of filmmaking reveal about how we all think of ourselves and our life stories." One title on the list:

The Song is You by Megan Abbott

The earliest books in Abbott’s renowned oeuvre are accomplished, twisty L.A. noirs that dangle the noir tradition off a fire escape by the heels. The Song is You, her second novel, is a subversive gutting of the starlet “dead girl” trope. Abbott’s gumshoe, Hop, is a former tabloid journalist turned publicist who is only barely troubled by his own self-serving lack of empathy, especially for the women whose public images and lives he is supposed to control (on behalf of his own studio bosses). The novel starts two years after Hop helped brush something under the rug—the disappearance of Jean Spangler (a real-life true-crime mystery), a night when Hop was nearby; the appearance of another bystander, Iolene, gives Hop a task of covering up almost as much as he uncovers. The mystery is dark and intelligent, whizzing through a version of old Hollywood’s underbelly that almost seems familiar to noir fans—but which spotlights the cracks in that old story. For Abbott fans who haven’t gone back to the beginning, don’t wait.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Song is You is among Laura Lippman's top ten books about missing persons.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Kali White

From my Q&A with Kali White, author of The Monsters We Make: A Novel:

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

I typically go through multiple titles before landing on the one that finally feels right, and this book was no different. I think I went through four working titles in all.

The novel premise is based on the idea of one crime exposing another. The story begins with two missing paperboys two years apart in the early 1980s, but the cases themselves are just the center tentpole the main plot is built around. They set in motion a chain of events for my fictional characters who live in the same neighborhood as one of the missing boys—twelve-year-old Sammy Cox, who also has a neighborhood paper route and is keeping a terrible secret, his eighteen-year-old sister, Crystal, who dreams of going to college to become a serious journalist and is desperate to win a major writing scholarship to pay for school, and Sergeant Dale Goodkind, who has been assigned to both missing paperboy cases and has a complicated past of his own clouding his professional judgement.

The title then comes from the idea that by dehumanizing criminals as “monsters,” we can blind ourselves to perpetrators who are just average, everyday people. It also eventually becomes, by the end of the story, the...[read on]

Visit Kali White's website.

Q&A with Kali White.

--Marshal Zeringue