Pg. 69: Caitlin Starling's "Last to Leave the Room"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Last to Leave the Room: A Novel by Caitlin Starling.

About the book, from the publisher:

Last to Leave the Room is a new novel of genre-busting speculative horror from Caitlin Starling, the acclaimed author of The Death of Jane Lawrence.

The city of San Siroco is sinking. The basement of Dr. Tamsin Rivers, the arrogant, selfish head of the research team assigned to find the source of the subsidence, is sinking faster.

As Tamsin becomes obsessed with the distorting dimensions of the room at the bottom of the stairs, she finds a door that didn’t exist before - and one night, it opens to reveal an exact physical copy of her. This doppelgänger is sweet and biddable where Tamsin is calculating and cruel. It appears fully, terribly human, passing every test Tamsin can devise. But the longer the double exists, the more Tamsin begins to forget pieces of her life, to lose track of time, to grow terrified of the outside world.

With her employer growing increasingly suspicious, Tamsin must try to hold herself together long enough to figure out what her double wants from her, and just where the mysterious door leads…

Visit Caitlin Starling's website.

Writers Read: Caitlin Starling (May 2019).

The Page 69 Test: The Luminous Dead.

The Page 69 Test: The Death of Jane Lawrence.

The Page 69 Test: Last to Leave the Room.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Steven Conn's "The Lies of the Land"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Lies of the Land: Seeing Rural America for What It Is―and Isn’t by Steven Conn.

About the book, from the publisher:

A new history that boldly challenges the idea of a rural American crisis.

It seems everyone has an opinion about rural America. Is it gripped in a tragic decline? Or is it on the cusp of a glorious revival? Is it the key to understanding America today? Steven Conn argues that we’re missing the real question: Is rural America even a thing? No, says Conn, who believes we see only what we want to see in the lands beyond the suburbs—fantasies about moral (or backward) communities, simpler (or repressive) living, and what it means to be authentically (or wrongheadedly) American. If we want to build a better future, Conn argues, we must accept that these visions don’t exist and never did.

In The Lies of the Land, Conn shows that rural America—so often characterized as in crisis or in danger of being left behind—has actually been at the center of modern American history, shaped by the same forces as everywhere else in the country: militarization, industrialization, corporatization, and suburbanization. Examining each of these forces in turn, Conn invites us to dispense with the lies and half-truths we’ve believed about rural America and to pursue better solutions to the very real challenges shared all across our nation.

Learn more about The Lies of the Land the University of Chicago Press website.

The Page 99 Test: History's Shadow.

The Page 99 Test: Americans Against the City.

The Page 99 Test: The Lies of the Land.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five historical mysteries featuring unforgettable & unconventional women

Ritu Mukerji was born in Kolkata, India, and raised in the San Francisco Bay area. From a young age, she has been an avid reader of mysteries, from Golden Age crime fiction to police procedurals and the novels of PD James and Ruth Rendell. She received a BA in history from Columbia University and a medical degree from Sidney Kimmel Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. She completed residency training at the University of California, Davis and has been a practicing internist for fifteen years. She lives in Marin County, California, with her husband and three children.

At CrimeReads Mukerji tagged five historical mysteries that "feature an unforgettable heroine who challenges societal expectations with verve. And each showcases a setting, be it a physical place or historical period, that is so evocative it is like a character itself." One title on the list:

Murder at the Porte de Versailles, Cara Black

It might be a stretch to categorize 1990s Paris as “historical”, but I couldn’t omit the Aimee Leduc mysteries from this list. Aimee is independent and resourceful, a computer hacker turned private investigator. I love the wonderful details of the character, from her chipped red manicure to her vintage couture clothing. The reader is immersed into the distinctive neighborhoods of Paris and gets a deeper sense of the city through its smaller marginalized communities. This novel, the 20th in the series, is set in the aftermath of 9/11 amidst heightened tensions in Paris. When a bombing occurs and Aimee’s close friend is a suspect, she must act. The stories are full of political intrigue and incomparable supporting characters, as well as haunting echoes of Aimee’s past.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Christopher Bosso's "Why SNAP Works"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Why SNAP Works: A Political History―and Defense―of the Food Stamp Program by Christopher John Bosso.

About the book, from the publisher:

The first book to tell the whole story of SNAP and to explain why all Americans should support it.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program is the nation’s largest government effort for helping low-income Americans obtain an adequate diet. How did SNAP, formerly the food stamp program, evolve from a Depression-era effort to use up surplus goods into America’s foundational food assistance program? And how does SNAP survive? Incisive and original, Why SNAP Works is the first book to provide a comprehensive history and evaluation of the nation’s most important food insecurity and poverty alleviation effort.

Everyone has an opinion about SNAP, not all of them positive, but its benefits are felt broadly and across party lines. Christopher Bosso makes a clear, nuanced, and impassioned case for protecting this unique food program, exploring its history and breaking down the facts for readers across the political spectrum. Why SNAP Works is an essential book for anyone concerned about food access, poverty, and the “welfare system” in the United States.

Learn more about Why SNAP Works at the University of California Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Why SNAP Works.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five novels for fans of "Something Is Killing the Children"

Tobias Carroll is the managing editor of Vol.1 Brooklyn. He is the author of the short story collection Transitory and the novel Reel.

At Tor.com he writes:

There’s a lot to like about the comic book series Something Is Killing the Children, beginning with its ominously-named protagonist Erica Slaughter and proceeding from there. The series—written by James Tynion IV and illustrated by Werther Dell’Edera—follows Erica, part of a secret society of monster hunters, as she deals with terrifying eldritch beings around the country. A Hollywood Reporter article published earlier this year called it “one of the biggest titles not published by DC or Marvel”—and announced that a Netflix adaptation is in the works.

Carroll tagged five novels in which "you may find monsters of mysterious origin and secret societies abounding with internal tensions—or some combination of both." One title on the list:

Big Machine by Victor LaValle

Spoiler alert: The idea came for this list when looking at my bookshelves and thinking, “You know, someone who enjoyed Big Machine would probably like Something Is Killing the Children, and vice versa.” The protagonist of LaValle’s novel ends up working for a group called the Unlikely Scholars, based in a Vermont space called the Washburn Library—and when he does so, this novel moves from the realm of realism into a world where the bizarre and supernatural are waiting for the unwary.

At the center of this book is a schism within the Unlikely Scholars—and it’s what sends this novel’s protagonist across the country to investigate another man who broke with the organization. If you’re fond of some palace intrigue within your mysterious organizations—and who isn’t?—this novel delivers. A sense of place, a penchant for mysteries, and a touch of body horror: This book has you covered.

Read about another entry on the list.

Big Machine is among Tara Isabella Burton's six books searching for meaning in times of despair and Laura van den Berg's six favorite unconventional mystery novels.

The Page 69 Test: Big Machine.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Kellie M. Parker's "Thin Air"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Thin Air by Kellie M. Parker.

About the book, from the publisher:

Eight hours. Twelve contestants. A flight none of them might survive. A flight to Paris full of teenagers seeking opportunity turns deadly in this suspenseful, locked-door YA thriller. Perfect for fans of Diana Urban, Karen McManus, and Jessica Goodman.

Seventeen-year-old boarding school student Emily Walters is selected for an opportunity of a lifetime—she’ll compete abroad for a cash prize that will cover not only tuition to the college of her choice, but will lift her mother and her out of poverty.

But almost from the moment she and 11 other contestants board a private jet to Europe, Emily realizes somebody is willing to do anything to win. Between keeping an eye on her best friend’s flirty boyfriend and hiding her own dark secrets, she’s not sure how she’ll survive the contest, much less the flight. Especially when people start dying…

As loyalties shift and secrets are revealed, Emily must figure out who to trust, and who’s trying to kill them all, before she becomes the next victim.

Visit Kellie M. Parker's website.

Q&A with Kellie M. Parker.

The Page 69 Test: Thin Air.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten allegories

Adam Biles is an English writer and translator based in Paris. He is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company, from where he hosts their weekly podcast. In 2022, he conceived and presented Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses—an epic, polyphonic celebration of James Joyce’s masterwork. Feeding Time, his first novel, was published by Galley Beggar Press in 2016, and was chosen by The Guardian as a Fiction Pick for 2016 and was a book of the year for The Observer, The Irish Times, The Millions and 3:AM Magazine. It was published by Editions Grasset in France in 2018 to great critical acclaim. His second novel, Beasts of England, was published in September 2023 by Galley Beggar Press, and in 2025 by Editions Grasset. It was selected as a "2023 highlight" by The Guardian.

At the Guardian Biles tagged ten of his favorite "allegories, from classics that defined the form (and our view of the world), to surreal and unsettling parables and contemporary masterpieces." One title on the list:

The Vegetarian by Han Kang

This novel grew out of Kang’s 1997 short story, The Fruit of My Woman, in which the protagonist literally turns into a plant. Much less directly allegorical than its source, The Vegetarian follows a Korean woman, Yeong-hye, who stops eating meat after dreaming of animal slaughter. Her decision leads to an increasing gulf between Yeong-hye and her husband, wider family and society in general. It has been read as a satire of the patriarchal Korean system, but it also functions more universally as a powerful allegory for the ultimate impossibility of human connection.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Vegetarian is among M. S. Coe's eleven titles about women on the brink and Amy Sackville's ten top novels about painters.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Dan Stone's "Fate Unknown"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Fate Unknown: Tracing the Missing after World War II and the Holocaust by Dan Stone.

About the book, from the publisher:

Dan Stone tells the story of the last great unknown archive of Nazism, the International Tracing Service. Set up by the Allies at the end of World War II, the ITS has worked until today to find missing persons and to aid survivors with restitution claims or to reunite them with loved ones. From retracing the steps of the 'death marches' with the aim of discovering the burial sites of those murdered across the towns and villages of Central Europe, to knocking on doors of German foster homes to find the children of forced labourers, Fate Unknown uncovers the history of this remarkable archive and its more than 30 million documents.

Under the leadership of the International Committee of the Red Cross, the tracing service became one of the most secretive of postwar institutions, unknown even to historians of the period. Delving deeply into the archival material, Stone examines the little-known sub-camps and, after the war, survivors' experience of displaced persons' camps, bringing to life remarkable stories of tracing. Fate Unknown combs the archives to reveal the real horror of the Holocaust by following survivors' horrific journeys through the Nazi camp system and its aftermath.

The postwar period was an age of shortage of resources, bitterness, and revenge. Yet the ITS tells a different story: of international collaboration, of commitment to justice, and of helping survivors and their relatives in the context of Cold War suspicion. These stories speak to a remarkable attempt by the ITS, before the Holocaust was a matter of worldwide interest, to carry out a programme of ethical repair and to counteract some of the worst effects of the Nazis' crimes.

Learn more about Fate Unknown at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Goodbye to All That?.

The Page 99 Test: The Liberation of the Camps.

The Page 99 Test: Fate Unknown.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Allison Epstein reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Allison Epstein, author of Let the Dead Bury the Dead.

Her entry begins:

I'm currently about halfway through In Memoriam by Alice Winn, a queer love story set at the front during World War I. Books about 20th century wars are generally not what I go for, but I was persuaded to pick this one up, and I'm glad I did. The two main characters are only eighteen years old, and it really captures the feeling of being that age, when everything is desperately important and embarrassment could kill you. It's wonderful and heartbreaking and I'll need something very lighthearted to follow.

Before that...[read on]

About Let the Dead Bury the Dead, from the publisher:

An urgent, immersive alternate history set in an imperial Russia on the brink of disaster, following a surprising cast of characters seeking a better future as Saint Petersburg struggles in the wake of Napoleon’s failed invasion.

Saint Petersburg, 1812. Russian forces have defeated Napoleon at great cost, and the tsar’s empire is once again at peace. Sasha, a captain in the imperial army, returns home to Grand Duke Felix, the disgraced second son of the tsar and his irrepressibly charming lover, but their reunion is quickly interrupted by the arrival of Sofia, a mysteriously persuasive figure whose disruptive presence Sasha suspects to be something more than human. Felix, insisting that Sasha’s old-fashioned superstitions are misplaced, takes Sofia into his confidence—a connection that quickly becomes both personal and political. On her incendiary advice, Felix confronts his father about the brutal conditions of the common people in the aftermath of the war, to disastrous results, separating him from Sasha and setting him on a collision course with a vocal group of dissidents: the Koalitsiya.

Meanwhile, the Koalitsiya plan to gridlock Saint Petersburg with a citywide strike in hopes of awakening the upper classes to the grim circumstances of the laboring people. Marya, a resourceful sometimes-thief and trusted lieutenant of the Koalitsiya, also falls under Sofia’s spell and, allied with Felix and her fellow revolutionaries, she finds herself in the middle of a battle she could never have predicted. As Sofia’s influence grows and rising tensions threaten the tsar’s peace, Sasha, Felix, and Marya are forced to choose between the ideals they hold close and the people they love.

Allison Epstein combines cleverly constructed plot with unforgettable characters in this exuberant historical page-turner, intercut with fractured retellings of traditional Eastern European folk stories that are equal parts deadly dark and slyly illuminating. Vividly written and emotionally intense, Let the Dead Bury the Dead reminds us that the concerns of the past aren’t quite as far behind us as we like to believe.

Visit Allison Epstein's website.

My Book, The Movie: A Tip for the Hangman.

The Page 69 Test: A Tip for the Hangman.

Q&A with Allison Epstein.

My Book, The Movie: Let the Dead Bury the Dead.

The Page 69 Test: Let the Dead Bury the Dead.

Writers Read: Allison Epstein.

--Marshal Zeringue

Kim DeRose's "For Girls Who Walk through Fire," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: For Girls Who Walk through Fire by Kim DeRose.

The entry begins:

My YA novel, For Girls Who Walk Through Fire, was pitched as The Craft meets Promising Young Woman and has been called “a searing examination of sexual assault centering teen witches who fight back” by Kirkus Reviews and described as a “bold and compassionate debut” by Booklist.

Now, you might think that because two films were used as comparative titles, and because I earned an MFA in film directing, I thought about this book as a movie all along. But while, when writing, I did often visualize the book’s scenes almost as if they were film scenes, I rarely considered how I’d approach the book as an actual film.

Until now! And I have opinions!

First off is our pink-haired, fearless coven leader and protagonist, Elliott. And this one is easy. Hands down, my dreamcasting would be Jenna Ortega. I love her in Wednesday and loved her in The Fallout. And while Elliott is white in the book, I’d love the movie’s casting to be more expansive by making her Latina or bi-racial. Jenna Ortega would absolutely nail this part.

Elliott’s dad is also easy. My...[read on]

Visit Kim DeRose's website.

Q&A with Kim DeRose.

The Page 69 Test: For Girls Who Walk through Fire.

My Book, The Movie: For Girls Who Walk through Fire.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven top books featuring home invasions

Nolan Cubero is a writer and director originally from Louisville, Kentucky. He studied linguistics at Brooklyn College and is currently a law student at UCLA School of Law. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and son.

Shadow Drive is his first novel.

At CrimeReads Cubero tagged seven "books that feature home invasions, but not necessarily just the kind where people break in and threaten your life, but also the kind where they sneakily intrude into your home and then slowly make you question everything." One title on the list:

Heat 2 by Michael Mann, Meg Gardiner

That includes the unlimited potential of violence. When someone barges into your home, and they take you captive, there’s nothing keeping them from doing whatever they want to you. It’s not like a mugging, or even a bar fight, where the violence is quick, maybe even public. In a home invasion, the violence is behind closers doors and possibly indefinite. In Heat 2, the lead home invader seems to have no moral line he won’t cross, and as he’s standing there over his victims, his potential for cruelty and violence seems limitless.

Read about another entry on the list.

Heat 2 is among Brittany Bunzey's ten must-read cat-and-mouse thrillers and Vannessa Cronin's eight top action/adventure thrillers.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Allison Epstein's "Let the Dead Bury the Dead"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Let the Dead Bury the Dead by Allison Epstein.

About the book, from the publisher:

An urgent, immersive alternate history set in an imperial Russia on the brink of disaster, following a surprising cast of characters seeking a better future as Saint Petersburg struggles in the wake of Napoleon’s failed invasion.

Saint Petersburg, 1812. Russian forces have defeated Napoleon at great cost, and the tsar’s empire is once again at peace. Sasha, a captain in the imperial army, returns home to Grand Duke Felix, the disgraced second son of the tsar and his irrepressibly charming lover, but their reunion is quickly interrupted by the arrival of Sofia, a mysteriously persuasive figure whose disruptive presence Sasha suspects to be something more than human. Felix, insisting that Sasha’s old-fashioned superstitions are misplaced, takes Sofia into his confidence—a connection that quickly becomes both personal and political. On her incendiary advice, Felix confronts his father about the brutal conditions of the common people in the aftermath of the war, to disastrous results, separating him from Sasha and setting him on a collision course with a vocal group of dissidents: the Koalitsiya.

Meanwhile, the Koalitsiya plan to gridlock Saint Petersburg with a citywide strike in hopes of awakening the upper classes to the grim circumstances of the laboring people. Marya, a resourceful sometimes-thief and trusted lieutenant of the Koalitsiya, also falls under Sofia’s spell and, allied with Felix and her fellow revolutionaries, she finds herself in the middle of a battle she could never have predicted. As Sofia’s influence grows and rising tensions threaten the tsar’s peace, Sasha, Felix, and Marya are forced to choose between the ideals they hold close and the people they love.

Allison Epstein combines cleverly constructed plot with unforgettable characters in this exuberant historical page-turner, intercut with fractured retellings of traditional Eastern European folk stories that are equal parts deadly dark and slyly illuminating. Vividly written and emotionally intense, Let the Dead Bury the Dead reminds us that the concerns of the past aren’t quite as far behind us as we like to believe.

Visit Allison Epstein's website.

My Book, The Movie: A Tip for the Hangman.

The Page 69 Test: A Tip for the Hangman.

Q&A with Allison Epstein.

My Book, The Movie: Let the Dead Bury the Dead.

The Page 69 Test: Let the Dead Bury the Dead.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Stephen R. Bown's "Dominion"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Dominion: The Railway and the Rise of Canada by Stephen Bown.

About the book, from the publisher:

Stephen R. Bown continues to revitalize Canadian history with this thrilling account of the engineering triumph that created a nation.

In The Company, his bestselling work of revisionist history, Stephen Bown told the dramatic, adventurous and bloody tale of Canada’s origins in the fur trade. With Dominion he continues the nation’s creation story with an equally gripping and eye-opening account of the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway.

In the late 19th century, demand for fur was in sharp decline. This could have spelled economic disaster for the venerable Hudson’s Bay Company. But an idea emerged in political and business circles in Ottawa and Montreal to connect the disparate British colonies into a single entity that would stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific. With over 3,000 kilometers of track, much of it driven through wildly inhospitable terrain, the CPR would be the longest railway in the world and the most difficult to build. Its construction was the defining event of its era and a catalyst for powerful global forces.

The times were marked by greed, hubris, blatant empire building, oppression, corruption and theft. They were good for some, hard for most, disastrous for others. The CPR enabled a new country, but it came at a terrible price.

In recent years Canadian history has been given a rude awakening from the comforts of its myths. In Dominion, Stephen Bown again widens our view of the past to include the adventures and hardships of explorers and surveyors, the resistance of Indigenous peoples, and the terrific and horrific work of many thousands of labourers. His vivid portrayal of the powerful forces that were molding the world in the late 19th century provides a revelatory new picture of modern Canada’s creation as an independent state.

Learn more about the book and author at Stephen R. Bown's website and Facebook page.

My Book, The Movie: The Last Viking.

The Page 99 Test: White Eskimo.

My Book, The Movie: Island of the Blue Foxes.

Writers Read: Stephen R. Bown (November 2017).

The Page 99 Test: Island of the Blue Foxes.

The Page 99 Test: Dominion.

--Marshal Zeringue

Sixteen top new books by Indigenous authors

Eliza Browning is an intern at Electric Literature.

She tagged sixteen top "new works by and about Native North American writers," including:

Stealing by Margaret Verble

In the 1950s, Kit Crockett and her widowed father live on a small farm in the Midwest, where she befriends her new neighbor Bella. After finding herself at the center of a tragic crime, Kit is removed from her father’s custody at the age of twelve and becomes a ward of the court. Although her Cherokee family wants to raise her, she is instead sent to a religious boarding school, where she is subjected to abuse and religious indoctrination. Instead of giving in to her circumstances, Kit keeps a journal chronicling her experiences and plotting a way out. This eye-opening story was originally written in 2007, but didn’t find an audience until the Canadian First Nations boarding school scandal broke in 2021. With this renewed social context, Verble powerfully examines the impact of forced Christianity on Indigenous children who had their family, language, and culture brutally ripped away.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Paula Munier's "Home at Night"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Home at Night: A Mercy Carr Mystery by Paula Munier.

About the book, from the publisher:

Beware the blackbirds…

It’s Halloween in Vermont, winter is coming, and five humans, two dogs, and a cat are a crowd in Mercy Carr’s small cabin. She needs more room—and she knows just the place: Grackle Tree Farm, with thirty acres of woods and wetlands and a Victorian manor to die for. They say it’s haunted by the ghosts of missing children and lost poets and a murderer or two, but Mercy loves it anyway. Even when Elvis finds a dead body in the library.

There’s something about Grackle Tree Farm that people are willing to kill for—and Mercy needs to figure out what before they move in. A coded letter found on the victim points to a hidden treasure that may be worth a fortune—if it’s real. She and Captain Thrasher conduct a search of the old place—and end up at the wrong end of a Glock. A masked man shoots Thrasher, and she and Elvis must take him down before he murders them all. Under fire, she and Elvis manage to run the guy off, but not before they are wounded, leaving Thrasher fighting for his life in the hospital, Mercy on crutches, and Elvis on the mend.

Now it’s up to Mercy and Troy and the dogs to track down the masked murderer in a county overflowing with leaf peepers, Halloween revelers, and treasure hunters and bring him to justice before he strikes again and the treasure is lost forever, along with the good name of Grackle Tree Farm….

Visit Paula Munier's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Paula Munier & Bear.

My Book, The Movie: A Borrowing of Bones.

The Page 69 Test: A Borrowing of Bones.

Writers Read: Paula Munier (October 2019).

My Book, The Movie: Blind Search.

The Page 69 Test: Blind Search.

My Book, The Movie: The Hiding Place.

The Page 69 Test: The Hiding Place.

Q&A with Paula Munier.

My Book, The Movie: The Wedding Plot.

The Page 69 Test: The Wedding Plot.

Writers Read: Paula Munier (July 2022).

Writers Read: Paula Munier.

My Book, The Movie: Home at Night.

The Page 69 Test: Home at Night.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten creepy Halloween books

Jeff Somers is the author of Writing Without Rules, the Avery Cates series, The Ustari Cycle, Lifers, and Chum (among many other books) and numerous short stories.

In 2016 at B&N Reads he tagged ten creepy Halloween books to get you in the Halloween spirit, including:

Night Film, by Marisha Pessl

Pessl combines modern technology with a classic story of an underground artist whose cult-like following has spun up several impenetrable legends about both their lives and their work. As a writer investigates the death of a cult filmmaker’s daughter, the films themselves—legendary and difficult to view—may be the most disturbing aspect of this twisting descent into madness. A much better choice than watching horror movies—none of which will approach the dread of the fictional films within.

Read about another entry on the list.

Night Film is among Lauren Acampora's nine top novels of art and seduction, Kate Reed Petty's seven thrillers about filmmakers & subversive art, and Jeff Somers's four huge books that will hurt your brain—but in a good way.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: David Menconi's "Oh, Didn't They Ramble"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Oh, Didn't They Ramble: Rounder Records and the Transformation of American Roots Music by David Menconi.

About the book, from the publisher:

What is American roots music? Any definition must account for a kaleidoscope of genres from bluegrass to blues, western swing to jazz, soul and gospel to rock and reggae, Cajun to Celtic. It must encompass the work of artists as diverse as Alice Gerard and Alison Kraus, George Thorogood and Sun Ra, Bela Fleck and Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, the Blake Babies and Billy Strings. What do all these artists and music styles have in common? The answer is a record label born in the wake of the American folk revival and 1960s movement politics, formed around the eclectic tastes and audacious ideals of three recent college grads who lived, listened, and worked together. The answer is Rounder Records.

For more than fifty years, Rounder has been the world's leading label for folk music of all kinds. David Menconi's book is the label's definitive history, drawing on previously untapped archives and extensive interviews with artists, Rounder staff, and founders Ken Irwin, Marian Leighton Levy, and Bill Nowlin. Rounder's founders blended ingenuity and independence with serendipity and an unfailing belief in the small-d democratic power of music to connect and inspire people, forging creative partnerships that resulted in one of the most eclectic and creative catalogs in the history of recorded music. Placing Rounder in the company of similarly influential labels like Stax, Motown, and Blue Note, this story is destined to delight anyone who cares about the place of music in American culture.

Visit the author’s blog.

The Page 99 Test: Ryan Adams: Losering.

My Book, The Movie: Ryan Adams: Losering.

The Page 99 Test: Step It Up and Go.

The Page 99 Test: Oh, Didn't They Ramble.

--Marshal Zeringue

Paula Munier's "Home at Night," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Home at Night: A Mercy Carr Mystery by Paula Munier.

The entry begins:

In my Mercy Carr series, former MP Mercy and her bomb-sniffing dog Elvis team up with game warden Troy Warner and his search-and-rescue dog Susie Bear to solve mysteries in the Vermont wilderness. My heroine Mercy is a smart, fierce redhead; Rose Leslie, who played Ygritte on Game of Thrones, would be perfect. My hero Troy Warner is the stand-up guy you can count on in every emergency, the boy next door who’s more at home in the woods than in town, protector of forest and family alike. Luke Grimes (Yellowstone, American Sniper) has the right look; he’d wear the uniform of a game warden well.

In Home at Night, it’s Halloween and Mercy needs...[read on]

Visit Paula Munier's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Paula Munier & Bear.

My Book, The Movie: A Borrowing of Bones.

The Page 69 Test: A Borrowing of Bones.

Writers Read: Paula Munier (October 2019).

My Book, The Movie: Blind Search.

The Page 69 Test: Blind Search.

My Book, The Movie: The Hiding Place.

The Page 69 Test: The Hiding Place.

Q&A with Paula Munier.

My Book, The Movie: The Wedding Plot.

The Page 69 Test: The Wedding Plot.

Writers Read: Paula Munier (July 2022).

Writers Read: Paula Munier.

My Book, The Movie: Home at Night.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Kellie M. Parker

From my Q&A with Kellie M. Parker, author of Thin Air:

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

I admit that coming up with book titles is normally a challenge for me, but the title for Thin Air came to me pretty early on in the drafting process. This title stuck out to me for a few reasons. It’s short, which usually works well for thrillers. It implies a sense of danger or mystery since it’s hard to breathe when there’s not enough oxygen. Last of all, it relates to the book’s setting--almost the entire story takes place on an airplane at 42,000 feet. And as readers will find out, the characters find...[read on]

Visit Kellie M. Parker's website.

Q&A with Kellie M. Parker.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine top demon and possession novels

Jennifer McMahon is the New York Times Bestselling author of twelve suspense novels including The Winter People and Promise Not To Tell.

[The Page 69 Test: Promise Not to Tell; The Page 69 Test: Island of Lost Girls; The Page 69 Test: Dismantled; The Page 69 Test: The One I Left Behind]

She's written about ghosts, serial killers, shape shifting monsters, an evil fairy king, a kidnapping rabbit, a terrifying swimming pool, and more.

McMahon's newest novel is My Darling Girl.

At CrimeReads she tagged nine favorite demon and possession novels, including:

A Good and Happy Child by Justin Evans

Something is wrong with George Davies. It’s not just that he won’t hold his own baby. It’s far deeper than that. It goes back to when George was a boy who’d recently lost his father. Lonely and alienated, he met a secret friend. A secret friend who changed everything, George most of all. After years of suppressing memories, the adult George, with the encouragement of his psychiatrist, delves back into the horrors of his own past and begins writing them down. And horrors they are. But he has to face them if he has any hope of moving on and being a father to his son. A beautifully written literary page turner with true darkness at its heart. I love any story about childhood secrets long buried, especially if they involve a friend no one else can see who may or may not be a demon.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue