What is Jenny Milchman reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Jenny Milchman, author of The Usual Silence (Arles Shepherd Thriller).

Her entry begins:

Getting lost in a book with nothing else to do besides read it is a unique joy that got me through childhood, but is now pretty much relegated to taking a rare—like, as in a hundred year storm rare—vacation, my birthday, and those fleeting bits of summer when time suddenly and fleetingly expands.

So I am juggling three books right now.

One is a novel called You Will Never Be Me by Jesse Q. Sutanto. I’m reading this as research to inform an aspect of my forthcoming novel, which has a subplot concerning influencer culture. Sultano captures the more outrageous details of being an influencer—purchasing organic carrots at a farmers market, then burying them in your own fallow garden so you can dig them up for a TikTok—which she wraps in a novel that’s less of a whodunnit than a...[read on]

About The Usual Silence, from the publisher:

A psychologist haunted by childhood trauma must unearth all that is buried in her past in this twisting, lyrical novel of suspense by Mary Higgins Clark Award–winning author Jenny Milchman.

Psychologist Arles Shepherd treats troubled children, struggling with each case to recover from her own traumatic past, much of which she’s lost to the shadows of memory. Having just set up a new kind of treatment center in the remote Adirondack wilderness, Arles longs to heal one patient in particular: a ten-year-old boy who has never spoken a word―or so his mother, Louise, believes.

Hundreds of miles away, Cass Monroe is living a parent’s worst nightmare. His twelve-year-old daughter has vanished on her way home from school. With no clues, no witnesses, and no trail, the police are at a dead end. Fighting a heart that was already ailing, and struggling to keep both his marriage and himself alive, Cass turns to a pair of true-crime podcasters for help.

Arles, Louise, and Cass will soon find their lives entangled in ways none of them could have anticipated. And when the collision occurs, a quarter-century-old secret will be forced out of hiding. Because nothing screams louder than silence.

Learn more about the book and author at Jenny Milchman's website.

My Book, The Movie: Cover of Snow.

The Page 69 Test: Cover of Snow.

The Page 69 Test: Ruin Falls.

My Book, The Movie: Ruin Falls.

My Book, The Movie: The Second Mother.

The Page 69 Test: The Second Mother.

Q&A with Jenny Milchman.

My Book, The Movie: The Usual Silence.

The Page 69 Test: The Usual Silence.

Writers Read: Jenny Milchman.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight books about finding magic in the domestic

Cameron Walker is a writer whose work often focuses on the connections between people and the world around them. She is the author of three books, including the award-winning children’s book National Monuments of the U.S.A. and the debut short story collection How to Capture Carbon.

At Electric Lit Walker tagged eight books of

Kitchen Surrealism or perhaps Domestic Fantastic for the charming consonance. Stories of this type can interweave fairytale with fixing a broken faucet, or find the uncanny in untangling the box of charger cords (one of my least favorite tasks), or tell a ghost story in which the haunting is less about horror and more of a way to understand the world of the living.

One title on Walker's list:

Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson

“Ordinary things have always seemed numinous to me,” Marilynne Robinson said in an interview with the Paris Review. In her first novel, Housekeeping, the numinous shines through the ironing, tidying, sewing, and scrubbing that several generations of a family of women do to hold on to their home and to each other after a series of losses in the town of Fingerbone. The rhythm of daily tasks feels like a charm that two sisters, Ruth and Lucille, use to ward off further disaster, and run counterpoint to Ruth’s growing connection to the more dream-like world of her unusual aunt. For me, the novel is less about whether the choice to lean into routine or into the unknown is the right one, but about the courage to continue living, day by day.

Read about another entry on the list.

Housekeeping is among four books that changed Karen Foxlee, Yiyun Li's six favorite novels, Claire Cameron's five favorite stories about unlikely survivors, Sara Zarr's top ten family dramas, Philip Connors's top 10 wilderness books, Kate Walbert's best books, and Aryn Kyle's favorite books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Galina Vromen's "Hill of Secrets"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Hill of Secrets: A Novel by Galina Vromen.

About the book, from the publisher:

In a desert outpost, nuclear scientists and their families face the toll of the secrets they keep from the world and from each other in this gripping wartime novel from debut author Galina Vromen.

Los Alamos, 1943. The US Army has gathered scientists to create the world’s first nuclear weapon. Their families, abruptly moved to the secret desert base with no explanation, have simple orders: Stand by. Make do. Above all, don’t ask questions.

Christine, forced to abandon her art restoration business in New York for her husband’s career, struggles to reinvent herself and cope with his increasing aloofness.

Gertie, the inquisitive teenage daughter of a German Jewish refugee physicist enlists Christine to help her unravel hidden truths and deal with parents haunted by their past.

Gertie’s father, Kurt, anguished by what the Nazis have done to his family and bent on defeating them, carries burdens he longs to share but cannot confide in his wife―leading him to find comfort elsewhere.

And Jimmy, a young army technician, falls for Gertie but is unsure if even her deep affection can overcome his agonizing self-doubts.

Will so much secrecy save them or destroy them?

Visit Galina Vromen's website.

The Page 69 Test: Hill of Secrets.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Stephanie Booth

From my Q&A with Stephanie Booth, author of Libby Lost and Found: A Novel:

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

My original title was The Falling Children Find Their Way Home, which is a nod to the mega-best-selling fantasy book series, The Falling Children, that the main character, Libby Weeks, writes. It took a lot of soul-searching to admit that while I was fond of the title, it wasn't the best entrance into the story.

Libby Lost and Found kinda says it all: Libby has been recently diagnosed with early-onset dementia and feels absolutely adrift in her life. But as she enlists her biggest superfan, an 11-year-old girl named Peanut Bixton, to help her finish her last book in the Falling Children series, they both find parts of themselves they didn't know existed.

So...some heartbreak, but not...[read on]

Visit Stephanie Booth's website.

Q&A with Stephanie Booth.

--Marshal Zeringue

Four crime fiction titles that features children

Julia Dahl is the author of Conviction, Run You Down, and Invisible City, which was a finalist for the Edgar Award for Best First Novel, one of the Boston Globe’s Best Books of 2014, and has been translated into eight languages. A former reporter for CBS News and the New York Post, she now teaches journalism at NYU.

Dahl's newest novel is I Dreamed of Falling.

At CrimeReads the author tagged four works of crime fiction with children as prominent characters, including:

Jordan Harper, She Rides Shotgun

Eleven-year-old Polly is the beating heart of this Edgar-winning first novel by Jordan Harper. Taken in the first chapter by her ex-con father, she is thrown into his world of violence, playing the role of both victim and savior. Harper draws Polly lovingly, balancing her genius-level natural intelligence and psychological immaturity with the emotional clarity that children possess and that too many adults have long lost. I can’t wait for the film version—out next year!

Read about another entry on the list.

She Rides Shotgun is among Kerry Lonsdale's five crime novels about overcoming self-doubt.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Eli Revelle Yano Wilson's "Handcrafted Careers"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Handcrafted Careers: Working the Artisan Economy of Craft Beer by Eli Revelle Yano Wilson.

About the book, from the publisher:

Unpacks the problems and privileges of pursuing a career of passion by exploring work inside craft breweries.

As workers attempt new modes of employment in the era of the Great Resignation, they face a labor landscape that is increasingly uncertain and stubbornly unequal. With Handcrafted Careers, sociologist Eli Revelle Yano Wilson dives headfirst into the everyday lives of workers in the craft beer industry to address key questions facing American workers today: about what makes a good career, who gets to have one, and how careers progress without established models.

Wilson argues that what ends up contributing to divergent career paths in craft beer is a complex interplay of social connections, personal tastes, and cultural ideas, as well as exclusionary industry structures. The culture of work in craft beer is based around “bearded white guy” ideals that are gendered and racialized in ways that limit the advancement of women and people of color. A fresh perspective on niche industries, Handcrafted Careers offers sharp insights into how people navigate worlds of work that promote ideas of authenticity and passion-filled careers even amid instability.

Visit Eli Revelle Yano Wilson's website.

The Page 99 Test: Handcrafted Careers.

--Marshal Zeringue

Twenty top scary books for Halloween

At People magazine Sharon Virts tagged twenty books of creepy suspense, scary thrillers and ghoulish ghost stories.

One title on the list:

The Devil and Mrs. Davenport by Paulette Kennedy

Strange voices, eerie premonitions and a killer on the loose — what more do you need? It’s 1955 and Loretta Davenport has lived a sheltered life, that is until a local girl is found dead and strange visions of the girl’s murder fill Loretta’s head. Her husband thinks she’s possessed by the devil. But is she? This is a gothic, atmospheric read for sure.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Page 69 Test: The Devil and Mrs. Davenport.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Jenny Milchman's "The Usual Silence"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Usual Silence (Arles Shepherd Thriller) by Jenny Milchman.

About the book, from the publisher:

A psychologist haunted by childhood trauma must unearth all that is buried in her past in this twisting, lyrical novel of suspense by Mary Higgins Clark Award–winning author Jenny Milchman.

Psychologist Arles Shepherd treats troubled children, struggling with each case to recover from her own traumatic past, much of which she’s lost to the shadows of memory. Having just set up a new kind of treatment center in the remote Adirondack wilderness, Arles longs to heal one patient in particular: a ten-year-old boy who has never spoken a word―or so his mother, Louise, believes.

Hundreds of miles away, Cass Monroe is living a parent’s worst nightmare. His twelve-year-old daughter has vanished on her way home from school. With no clues, no witnesses, and no trail, the police are at a dead end. Fighting a heart that was already ailing, and struggling to keep both his marriage and himself alive, Cass turns to a pair of true-crime podcasters for help.

Arles, Louise, and Cass will soon find their lives entangled in ways none of them could have anticipated. And when the collision occurs, a quarter-century-old secret will be forced out of hiding. Because nothing screams louder than silence.

Learn more about the book and author at Jenny Milchman's website.

My Book, The Movie: Cover of Snow.

The Page 69 Test: Cover of Snow.

The Page 69 Test: Ruin Falls.

My Book, The Movie: Ruin Falls.

My Book, The Movie: The Second Mother.

The Page 69 Test: The Second Mother.

Q&A with Jenny Milchman.

My Book, The Movie: The Usual Silence.

The Page 69 Test: The Usual Silence.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Rachel Robbins

From my Q&A with Rachel Robbins, author of The Sound of a Thousand Stars:

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

My original working title was actually Enola Spelled Backwards, which was a nod to the Enola Gay. I thought it was fascinating that Paul Tibbets, the pilot who flew the aircraft that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, named the plane after his mother Enola, who was named for the titular character in the novel Enola: Or Her Fatal Mistake, by Mary Young Ridenbaugh. I loved the self-fulfilling prophecy in that name; when it was reflected in the water over the Pacific, the nose of the plane would spell out the word alone. That’s why I also wrote the storyline of my Japanese character, a Hibakusha who has survived the bomb and must suffer its consequences, in reverse. Through his eyes, we time travel backwards, beginning with the toll the bomb has taken on his world by the end of his life, all the way back to its horrific inception.

In the end, we landed on the title, The Sound of a Thousand Stars, because it connected thematically. I liked that it was a nod to Fred J. Olivi’s famous words on the evening news after the bombing of Nagasaki: “Suddenly, the light of a thousand suns illuminated the cockpit.” It’s also apt because it’s a nod to understanding the world through numbers, and the book is inspired by my grandfather, who was always solving math riddles and quizzing us on square roots. Finally, it’s a paradox. Because there’s no...[read on]

Visit Rachel Robbins's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Sound of a Thousand Stars.

Q&A with Rachel Robbins.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight books that go behind the scenes of publishing

Amy Reading is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment of the Humanities and the New York Public Library. She is the author of The World She Edited: Katharine S. White at The New Yorker and The Mark Inside: A Perfect Swindle, a Cunning Revenge, and a Small History of the Big Con. She lives in upstate New York, where she has served on the executive board of Buffalo Street Books, an indie cooperative bookstore, since 2018.

At Electric Lit Reading tagged "eight nonfiction books that tell stories of the behind-the-scenes relationships that have resulted in some of our most beloved books and magazines." One title on the list:

Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep

Sure, there’s are grisly murders and an unbelievably corrupt acquittal in this book, the stuff of cinema, but Furious Hours also contains a heartbreaking story about writing, not writing, and editing.

In 1978, eighteen years after Tay Hohoff, the lone female editor at Lippincott, had published Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird and nineteen years after helping her friend Truman Capote research In Cold Blood, Lee began researching her own true crime novel, The Reverend, about the Alabama serial killer Reverend Willie Maxwell. She sat on the benches at Maxwell’s trial and spent more than a year researching the case. Cep portrays how Hohoff had gained Lee’s trust by working with her over several years to revise the original manuscript of Mockingbird, turning it into something quite different (as would be seen in 2015 when the original was published as Go Set a Watchman). Hohoff desperately wanted a second book from Lee but also guarded her against writing something commercial merely to capitalize on her fame. Hohoff died in her sleep in 1974, which devastated Lee, and when she began to think of Maxwell’s crime as her next book, she had no one to receive it. With astonishing detail, Cep portrays the not-writing that ensued, the gaping holes in Maxwell’s story that Lee would try to bridge in an unchanging routine of writing in longhand and typing the words up each night, an average of a page a day—a routine that was flooded with alcohol. No editor ever wrote Lee letters about her genius or penciled notes in the margins of her pages. The manuscript never appeared.

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Jeffrey M. Pilcher's "Hopped Up"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Hopped Up: How Travel, Trade, and Taste Made Beer a Global Commodity by Jeffrey M. Pilcher.

About the book, from the publisher:

A lively history of beer and brewing traditions as globally connected commodities created through borrowing and exchange from precapitalist times to the present.

Virtually every country has a bestselling or iconic national beer brand: from Budweiser in the United States and Corona in Mexico, to Tsingtao in China and Heineken in Holland. Yet, with the sole exception of Ireland's Guinness, every label represents the same style: light, crisp, clear, Pilsner lager. The global spread of lager can be told as a story of Western cultural imperialism: a European product travels through merchants, migrants, and imperialists to upend local patterns and transform faraway consumers' tastes. But this modern beer is just as much a product of globalization, invented and reinvented around the world. While distinctive craft beers such as London Porter, India Pale Ale, and Belgian sour ales have been revived by aficionados over the past half-century, they too have globalized through the same circuits of trade, migration, and knowledge that carried lager.

Here eminent food historian Jeffrey M. Pilcher narrates the brewing traditions and contemporary production of beer across Europe, North America, Africa, Asia, and Latin America--from the fermented beverages of precapitalist societies to the present. Over the centuries, he shows, the exchange of technological advances in brewing contributed to regional divergences and convergences in beer varieties, but always in tandem with other social and cultural developments. Unique local products, often homebrewed by women, were transformed into homogenous global commodities as giant brewing factories exported their beers using new refrigeration technology, railroads, and steamships. Industrial food processing helped to recast strong flavors as a source of potential contamination, turning lager, with its clean, fresh taste, into a symbol of hygiene and civilization. Local elites demonstrated their modernity and sophistication by opting for chilled lagers over traditional beverages. These beers became so standardized that most consumers could not tell the difference between them, leading to cutthroat competition that bankrupted countless firms. Over the past half-century, the global concentration of the brewing industry has spawned a reaction among those seeking to return brewing to the local, artisanal, and communitarian roots of the premodern alehouse, but microbrewers have often been driven by the same capitalist quest for profit and expansion.

Based on a wealth of multinational archives and industry publications, Hopped Up explores not only how humans have made beer but also how consumers--from nobility and clergy in the past to those raising a pint today--have used beer to make meaning in their lives.

Learn more about Hopped Up at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Hopped Up.

--Marshal Zeringue

Susan Walter's "Running Cold," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Running Cold: A Novel by Susan Walter.

The entry begins:

Of all my books, this is the one I most want to see as a movie … because it was inspired by a movie! Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones starred in a 1993 film called The Fugitive about a doctor (Ford) who was framed for killing his wife (the impossibly beautiful Sela Ward) and escapes arrest in a spectacular collision between a bus and a train. Ford is pursued by a scrappy U.S. Marshal (brilliantly played by Tommy Lee Jones) while trying to solve the murder and clear his name. Thirty years later, I still can’t get this movie out of my head. So I decided to do a version with women in the starring roles, and then up the stakes by setting it in the Canadian Rockies during a blizzard.

Julie Weston Adler is working as a chambermaid in the spooky Banff Springs Hotel (yes it’s a real place!) because her husband lost all their money then took his own life. Not your average hotel employee, Julie is a former Olympian. Her sport, the biathlon, combines skiing and sharp shooting … and yes she has her rifle with her … and may be forced to use it!

I imagine Julie as a Canadian Katniss Everdeen - fearless and athletic with a strong connection to nature. So of course I wrote her with Jennifer Lawrence in mind! Other actresses I think would make excellent Julies are Blake Lively (so tall and commanding!) and...[read on]

Visit Susan Walter's website.

Q&A with Susan Walter.

My Book, The Movie: Running Cold.

--Marshal Zeringue

The best (and most cynical) fixers in fiction

Matthew FitzSimmons is the author of the Wall Street Journal bestselling Gibson Vaughn series, which includes Origami Man, Debris Line, Cold Harbor, Poisonfeather, and The Short Drop, and the Constance series. Born in Illinois and raised in London, he makes his home in Washington, DC.

[The Page 69 Test: Constance]

FitzSimmons's new novel is The Slate.

At CrimeReads he tagged four of the best (and most cynical) fixers in fiction, including:

Mae Pruett / Everybody Knows / Jordan Harper / 2023

There are two different kinds of readers: the ones who hope the good guys triumph over the bad guys, and the ones who think the whole notion of good guys and bad guys is nothing but wistful thinking. Enter noir, stage left. This latter group prefers a story told in greyscale and stocked with damaged, jaded, and cynical characters. There are no heroes and no redemption to be found here. Their bookshelves are thick with first editions of James Ellroy novels.

Picking up on themes from L.A. Confidential, Jordan Harper’s Everybody Knows gives us the latest and greatest entry in the Fixer pantheon: Mae Pruett. It isn’t hard to imagine Mae as a distant relative of Jack Vincennes. Leaping forward to present day Los Angeles, she skillfully navigates a city where nothing has fundamentally changed in seventy years apart from the sophistication of the tactics that shield the powerful from repercussions or responsibility. Mae Pruett would be equally at home in either time period. Though young, she is calculating and eye-wateringly cynical. Qualities that make her exceptional but also come at a steep price. The price that all Fixers pay: her profound isolation. In the end, Fixers are prisoners of their own cynicism since the last thing they will risk is showing genuine vulnerability and getting played the way they’ve played so many others. For the Fixer that is a fate worse than death.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Rachel Robbins's "The Sound of a Thousand Stars"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Sound of a Thousand Stars: A Novel by Rachel Robbins.

About the book, from the publisher:

Oppenheimer meets Hidden Figures in this sweeping historical debut where two Jewish physicists form an inseverable bond amidst fear and uncertainty.

Sure to captivate readers of Kate Quinn and Bonnie Garmus, The Sound of a Thousand Stars eerily mirrors modern-day questions of wartime ethics and explores what it means to survive—at any cost.

Alice Katz is a young Jewish physicist, one of the only female doctoral students at her university, studying with the famed Dr. Oppenheimer. Her well-to-do family wants her to marry a man of her class and settle down. Instead, Alice answers her country’s call to come to an unnamed city in the desert to work on a government project shrouded in secrecy.

At Los Alamos, Alice meets Caleb Blum, a poor Orthodox Jew who has been assigned to the explosives division. Around them are other young scientists and engineers who have quietly left their university posts to come live in the desert.

No one seems to know exactly what they are working on—what they do know is that it is a race and that they must beat the Nazis in developing an unspeakable weapon. In this atmosphere of fear and uncertainty, and despite their many differences, Alice and Caleb find themselves drawn to one another.

Inspired by the author’s grandparents and sure to appeal to fans of Good Night, Irene, The Sound of a Thousand Stars is a propulsive novel about love in desperate times, the consequences of our decisions, and the roles we play in history.

Learn more about The Sound of a Thousand Stars at the publisher's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Sound of a Thousand Stars.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Eugenie Montague

From my Q&A with Eugenie Montague, author of Swallow the Ghost: A Novel:

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

I like what my super-smart and talented friend and writer, Brendan Park, has to say about titles: that they should open up rather than shut down, evoke, rather than diagnose. And, actually, he suggested the title here. I had originally chosen another title, and my (also super-smart and talented) editors encouraged a change. When I mentioned that I needed a new title to Brendan, he recommended "swallow the ghost," which came from a line in the book. The specific sentence the title comes from did not make it into the final book, but I think Swallow the Ghost is a title that begins to make sense within the context of the novel and that it works on both plot and thematic levels....[read on]

Visit Eugenie Montague's website.

Q&A with Eugenie Montague.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top contemporary and genre-spanning vampire books

Claudia Guthrie is a writer covering culture, entertainment, and lifestyle content. Her work has appeared in ELLE, The Muse, Food52, and more. Originally from Kansas City, she now resides
 in Denver, where you can find her reading the newest thriller or knitting sweaters for her cats.

At Electric Lit Guthrie tagged ten of "the best contemporary and genre-spanning vampire books," including:

Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Cañas

Nena and Néstor were inseparable as children … until one night when Nena is attacked by an enigmatic beast. Thinking his friend dead, Néstor flees, unable to face a new world without her. When events of the Mexican-American War call him home nine years later, he learns Nena survived the attack … and that the Anglos aren’t the only thing for the people of El Norte to fear.

Like Isabel Cañas’ first novel The Hacienda, Vampires of El Norte is a deeply romantic and deeply spooky historical gothic tale.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Yujin Nagasawa's "The Problem of Evil for Atheists"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Problem of Evil for Atheists by Yujin Nagasawa.

About the book, from the publisher:

The problem of evil has long perplexed traditional theists: Why do terrible events, such as crimes, wars, and natural disasters, occur in a world believed to be created by an omnipotent and wholly good God? In The Problem of Evil for Atheists, Yujin Nagasawa offers a fresh perspective that seeks to transform the perennial philosophical debate on this matter.

The book contends that the problem of evil surpasses its conventional understanding, impacting not only traditional theists but also posing a challenge for atheists and other 'non-theists', including pantheists, axiarchists, and followers of Eastern religious traditions. Moreover, it posits that traditional theists, who typically embrace some form of supernaturalism, are better equipped to address the problem than naturalist atheists/non-theists because the only potentially successful response requires supernaturalism. Conversely, it suggests that if atheists/non-theists can develop a successful naturalist response, traditional theists can also adopt it. The volume concludes that traditional theists are better positioned than atheists/non-theists to grapple with the problem-an unexpected assertion, given that the problem of evil is normally viewed as an argument against traditional theism and in favour of atheism/non-theism.

The Problem of Evil for Atheists presents a comprehensive defence of a fundamentally new approach to tackling the age-old philosophical conundrum. By challenging the conventional perspective, it endeavours to reshape our understanding and interpretation of evil in a profound manner.

Visit Yujin Nagasawa's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Problem of Evil for Atheists.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Paula Munier reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Paula Munier, author of The Night Woods: A Mercy Carr Mystery.

From her entry:

Death at the Sign of the Rook, by Kate Atkinson / Kate Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie ranks among my all-time most beloved detectives, right up there with Maigret and Morse and Vera. In this new entry in the series, #6, Atkinson brings back some of my favorite characters—most notably Reggie and Louise—to play with Jackson in a send-up of Golden Age mysteries that’s as funny as it is clever. Atkinson is the only crime writer I read with a dictionary by my side, which I naturally consider a plus.

Argos: The Story of Odysseus as Told by His Loyal Dog, by Ralph Hardy / Just in time for the publication of The Night Woods, Mercy Carr #6 and my humble homage to The Odyssey, I met Ralph Hardy, who’s penned the most wonderful adaptation of Homer’s epic poem, written from the point of view of the dog....[read on]

About The Night Woods, from the publisher:

The sixth Mercy Carr Mystery in which Mercy and Elvis must prove the innocence of a new friend accused of murder.

Record snow and sleet and rain are pummeling Vermont and a wild boar has escaped from an exclusive hunting club nearby—but that won’t stop a very pregnant and very bored Mercy Carr from hiking her beloved woods with her loyal dog Elvis. She’s supposed to be decorating the nursery and helping her mother plan the baby shower, but she’d much rather be playing Scrabble with Homer Grant, a word-loving, shotgun-toting hermit living deep in the forest. But when she and Elvis drop by Homer’s cabin for their weekly game, they arrive to find an unknown dead man—and no sign of Homer.

As they search the woods, Mercy discovers a patch of devastation that could only be left behind by wild boar. She’s relieved when Elvis tracks Homer, injured but alive. But Homer’s troubles are far from over, as he’s still the number one suspect and he remembers nothing of the attack. When another corpse with a link to Homer is found, Mercy is determined to help her friend, an effort complicated by the unexpected arrival of her young cousin Tandie, sent by Mercy’s mother to keep an eye on her until the baby is born.

As the floods worsen, Troy and Susie Bear are called out with all the other first responders, and Mercy finds herself alone at Grackle Tree Farm with a concussed Homer, Tandie, and Elvis. As waters rise and the wild boar rampages, Mercy realizes that the murderer is out there ready to strike again, this time much closer to home.

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 (October 2023).

My Book, The Movie: Home at Night.

The Page 69 Test: Home at Night.

My Book, The Movie: The Night Woods.

The Page 69 Test: The Night Woods.

Writers Read: Paula Munier.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five books that explore the complexities of the stock market

Samantha Greene Woodruff is the author of Amazon #1 bestseller The Lobotomist’s Wife. She studied history at Wesleyan University and continued her studies at NYU’s Stern School of Business, where she earned an MBA. Woodruff spent nearly two decades working on the business side of media, primarily at Viacom’s Nickelodeon, before leaving corporate life to become a full-time mom. In her newfound “free” time, she took classes at the Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College, where she accidentally found her calling as a historical fiction author. Her writing has appeared in Newsweek, Writer’s Digest, Female First, Read 650, and more.

Woodruff's new novel is The Trade Off.

[My Book, The Movie: The Lobotomist's Wife; My Book, The Movie: The Trade Off; Q&A with Samantha Greene Woodruff]

At Lit Hub the author tagged five standout books that explore the complexities of the stock market:

David Liss, A Conspiracy of Paper

This historical mystery isn’t a book about the New York Stock Exchange, instead, it takes place in eighteenth-century London, in the earliest days of the first stock market. A story about a Jewish former boxer turned investigator who seeks to uncover the truth about his father’s death, is both a stealth examination of the complex social pecking order of the 1700s, and a rare glimpse into the beginning of the trading of “paper money” and the first major market crash: the burst of the South Sea bubble.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Stephanie Wrobel's "The Hitchcock Hotel"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Hitchcock Hotel by Stephanie Wrobel.

About the book, from the publisher:

A Hitchcock fanatic with an agenda invites old friends for a weekend stay at his secluded themed hotel in this fiendishly clever, suspenseful new novel from the international bestselling author of Darling Rose Gold.

Alfred Smettle is not your average Hitchcock fan. He is the founder, owner, and manager of The Hitchcock Hotel, a sprawling Victorian house in the White Mountains dedicated to the Master of Suspense. There, Alfred offers his guests round-the-clock film screenings, movie props and memorabilia in every room, plus an aviary with fifty crows.

To celebrate the hotel’s first anniversary, he invites his former best friends from his college Film Club for a reunion. He hasn’t spoken to any of them in sixteen years, not after what happened.

But who better than them to appreciate Alfred’s creation? And to help him finish it.

After all, no Hitchcock set is complete without a body.

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