Pg. 69: Stephanie Booth's "Libby Lost and Found"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Libby Lost and Found: A Novel by Stephanie Booth.

About the book, from the publisher:

Libby Lost and Found is a book for people who don't know who they are without the books they love. It's about the stories we tell ourselves and the chapters of our lives we regret. Most importantly, it's about the endings we write for ourselves.

Meet Libby Weeks, author of the mega-best-selling fantasy series, The Falling Children—written as "F.T. Goldhero" to maintain her privacy. When the last manuscript is already months overdue to her publisher and rabid fans around the world are growing impatient, Libby is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's. Already suffering from crippling anxiety, Libby's symptoms quickly accelerate. After she forgets her dog at the park one day—then almost discloses her identity to the journalist who finds him—Libby has to admit it: she needs help finishing the last book.

Desperately, she turns to eleven-year-old superfan Peanut Bixton, who knows the books even better than she does but harbors her own dark secrets. Tensions mount as Libby's dementia deepens—until both Peanut and Libby swirl into an inevitable but bone-shocking conclusion.

Visit Stephanie Booth's website.

Q&A with Stephanie Booth.

My Book, The Movie: Libby Lost and Found.

The Page 69 Test: Libby Lost and Found.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten novels featuring women finding their power

J.T. Ellison is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of more than thirty novels and the Emmy Award–winning cohost of the literary TV show A Word on Words. She also writes urban fantasy under the pen name Joss Walker.

With millions of books in print, her work has won critical acclaim and prestigious awards. Her titles have been optioned for television and published in twenty-eight countries.

[The Page 69 Test: Edge of Black; The Page 69 Test: When Shadows Fall; My Book, The Movie: When Shadows Fall; My Book, The Movie: What Lies Behind; The Page 69 Test: What Lies Behind; The Page 69 Test: No One Knows; My Book, The Movie: No One Knows; The Page 69 Test: Lie to Me; My Book, The Movie: Good Girls Lie; The Page 69 Test: Good Girls Lie; Writers Read: J. T. Ellison (January 2020); Q&A with J.T. Ellison; The Page 69 Test: A Very Bad Thing]

Ellison's new novel is A Very Bad Thing.

At CrimeReads the author tagged ten novels that "celebrate women embracing their inner fires, mastering mystical abilities, and claiming power through acts of heroic leadership against daunting odds." One title on the list:

What Fire Brings by Rachel Howzell Hall

When Bailey Meadows goes undercover at a writing retreat to find a woman who’s gone missing from her own private investigation firm, it initially looks like she’s completely in control of the situation. Quickly, the tables are turned. When she is chosen to co-write with the legendary Jack Beckam, Jr, Bailey is thrust into a multi-layered mystery and must find herself to stay alive. Set against the backdrop of Topanga Canyon and the very real threat of an unseasonable wildfire, Bailey must journey deep into the past—and her own psyche—to survive.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Page 69 Test: What Fire Brings.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Jean-Philippe Belleau's "Killing the Elites"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Killing the Elites: Haiti, 1964 by Jean-Philippe Belleau.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the summer and fall of 1964, a massacre took place in the small town of Jérémie, Haiti. After an ill-fated uprising, the brutal regime of François “Papa Doc” Duvalier ordered reprisals against the town that some of the insurgents were allegedly from. Entire families—all from the town’s upper class—were slaughtered. Through a rich historical ethnography of the massacre, Jean-Philippe Belleau offers a new account of the workings of the Duvalier regime and an innovative analysis of anti-elite violence.

Killing the Elites meticulously reconstructs the various phases of the massacre, identifying the victims and perpetrators, tracing the social ties that linked them, and examining the varying degrees of culpability from the state to bystanders. Although Duvalier and the military were responsible, the killings were attributed to popular social grievances. Examining how the Haitian state has brutalized the upper classes, Belleau develops a new theory of anti-elite violence. He challenges views that ideology or social difference can readily drive people to kill their neighbors and that the upper classes fall victim to popular rough justice, showing that social bonds within the town prevented organized violence from spreading. The state, Belleau underscores, is the primary perpetrator of violence against elites. Drawing on interviews with eyewitnesses and former regime members as well as a wide range of unexplored primary sources, this book provides a new lens on Haiti under Duvalier and reveals why the victimization of the elite is essential to mass violence.

Learn more about Killing the Elites at the Columbia University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Killing the Elites.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Nikki May reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Nikki May, author of This Motherless Land: A Novel.

Her entry begins:

I’ve just finished Good Dirt by Charmaine Wilkerson. One of the best things about being a published author is you get to read books before they come out. So you’ll have to wait until January 2025 to enjoy this multi-generational epic tale that examines how the past informs our present. Charmaine is a master at the stories we inherit and in this one, she explores grief and...[read on]

About This Motherless Land, from the publisher:

From the acclaimed author of Wahala, a “vibrant” (Charmaine Wilkerson) decolonial retelling of Mansfield Park, exploring identity, culture, race, and love.

Quiet Funke is happy in Nigeria. She loves her art teacher mother, her professor father, and even her annoying little brother (most of the time). But when tragedy strikes, she’s sent to England, a place she knows only from her mother’s stories. To her dismay, she finds the much-lauded estate dilapidated, the food tasteless, the weather grey. Worse still, her mother’s family are cold and distant. With one exception: her cousin Liv.

Free-spirited Liv has always wanted to break free of her joyless family. She becomes fiercely protective of her little cousin, and her warmth and kindness give Funke a place to heal. The two girls grow into adulthood the closest of friends.

But the choices their mothers made haunt Funke and Liv and when a second tragedy occurs their friendship is torn apart. Against the long shadow of their shared family history, each woman will struggle to chart a path forward, separated by country, misunderstanding, and ambition.

Moving between Somerset and Lagos over the course of two decades, This Motherless Land is a sweeping examination of identity, culture, race, and love that asks how we find belonging and whether a family’s generational wrongs can be righted.

Visit Nikki May's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Nikki May & Fela and Lola.

The Page 69 Test: This Motherless Land.

Writers Read: Nikki May.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten titles on maritime disasters and ecological collapse

Eiren Caffall is a writer and musician based in Chicago. Her writing on loss and nature, oceans and extinction has appeared in Guernica, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Literary Hub, Al Jazeera, The Rumpus, and the anthology Elementals: Volume IV. Fire forthcoming in 2024 from The Center for Humans and Nature. She received a 2023 Whiting Award in Creative Nonfiction, a Social Justice News Nexus fellowship, and residencies at the Banff Centre, Millay Colony, MacDowell Colony (waitlisted), Hedgebrook, and Ragdale. Her memoir The Mourner’s Bestiary is out now from Row House Publishing in 2024 and her novel All the Water in the World is forthcoming from St. Martin’s Press in early 2025.

At Lit Hub Caffall tagged ten books on maritime disasters and ecocollapse, including:

Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; Or, The Whale

This book found me, child of a hydrogeologist and a fisherman, a willing reader. I grew up in view of Monument Mountain, where Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne hiked to the top and perhaps fell in love and for sure came up with the shape of this book. It picked up where my childhood obsessions with Greenpeace, animals, the ocean, and whales specifically, left off.

Making fictional the actual events of the whaleship Essex, it is about what leads nature to enact understandable vengeance on human overreach. Full of commentary on environmental, racial, and class issues in America, it feels prescient and modern at the same moment. It is one giant shipwreck story, even if the actual shipwreck holds off until the very last moments.

And for more eloquence about why this is essential reading, pick up Nathaniel Philbrick’s book Why Read Moby-Dick? Because he says everything that I believe about why you must read this book right now.

Read about another entry on the list.

Moby-Dick appears among Emily Temple's ten notorious literary slogs that are worth the effort, Aidan Cottrell-Boyce's top ten novels & stories about prophets, James Stavridis's five best books to know the sea, Robert McCrum's top ten Shakespearean books, Bridget Collins's top ten Quakers in fiction, John Boyne's six best books, Kate Christensen's best food scenes in fiction, Emily Temple's ten literary classics we're supposed to like...but don't, Sara Flannery Murphy ten top stories of obsession, Harold Bloom's six favorite books that helped shape "the American Sublime,"  Charlotte Seager's five well-known literary monomaniacs who take things too far, Ann Leary's top ten books set in New England, Martin Seay's ten best long books, Ian McGuire's ten best adventure novels, Jeff Somers's five top books that will expand your vocabulary and entertain, Four books that changed Mary Norris, Tim Dee's ten best nature books, the Telegraph's fifteen best North American novels of all time, Nicole Hill's top ten best names in literature to give your dog, Horatio Clare's five favorite maritime novels, the Telegraph's ten great meals in literature, Brenda Wineapple's six favorite books, Scott Greenstone's top seven allegorical novels, Paul Wilson's top ten books about disability, Lynn Shepherd's ten top fictional drownings, Peter Murphy's top ten literary preachers, Penn Jillette's six favorite books, Peter F. Stevens's top ten nautical books, Katharine Quarmby's top ten disability stories, Jonathan Evison's six favorite books, Bella Bathurst's top 10 books on the sea, John Mullan's lists of ten of the best nightmares in literature and ten of the best tattoos in literature, Susan Cheever's five best books about obsession, Christopher Buckley's best books, Jane Yolen's five most important books, Chris Dodd's best books, Augusten Burroughs' five most important books, Norman Mailer's top ten works of literature, David Wroblewski's five most important books, Russell Banks' five most important books, and Philip Hoare's top ten books about whales.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Elia Powers's "Performing the News"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Performing the News: Identity, Authority, and the Myth of Neutrality by Elia Powers.

About the book, from the publisher:

Performing the News: Identity, Authority, and the Myth of Neutrality explores how journalists from historically marginalized groups have long felt pressure to conform when performing for audiences. Many speak with a flat, “neutral” accent, modify their delivery to hide distinctive vocal attributes, dress conventionally to appeal to the “average” viewer, and maintain a consistent appearance to avoid unwanted attention. Their aim is what author Elia Powers refers to as performance neutrality—presentation that is deemed unobjectionable, reveals little about journalists’ social identity, and supposedly does not detract from their message. Increasingly, journalists are challenging restrictive, purportedly neutral forms of self-presentation. This book argues that performance neutrality is a myth that reinforces the status quo, limits on-air diversity, and hinders efforts to make newsrooms more inclusive. Through in-depth interviews with journalists in broadcasting and podcasting, and those who shape their performance, the author suggests ways to make journalism more inclusive and representative of diverse audiences.

Visit Elia Powers's website.

The Page 99 Test: Performing the News.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven books about the history of voting in America

Tommy Jenkins is the humanities division chair at Louisburg College in Louisburg, North Carolina, and an associate professor of English. He received his BA from the University of North Carolina, studied film at Columbia University, and received an MFA in fiction writing from North Carolina State University.

Jenkins is thea author of Drawing the Vote: A Graphic Novel History for Future Voters, illustrated by Kati Lacker.

At Electric Lit Jenkins tagged "a list of books that cover various significant aspects of the history of voting in the United States." One title on the list:

Vanguard by Martha Jones

Too often the history of women’s suffrage in the United State is a history of white women’s suffrage. The great historian Martha Jones rectifies this injustice in Vanguard. African American women not only had to overcome sexism, they also dealt bravely with racism, often relying on only themselves to claw for their rights. This is an important and much-needed work that greatly expands our understanding of American history. Jones is a skilled and moving writer.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Nikki May's "This Motherless Land"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: This Motherless Land: A Novel by Nikki May.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the acclaimed author of Wahala, a “vibrant” (Charmaine Wilkerson) decolonial retelling of Mansfield Park, exploring identity, culture, race, and love.

Quiet Funke is happy in Nigeria. She loves her art teacher mother, her professor father, and even her annoying little brother (most of the time). But when tragedy strikes, she’s sent to England, a place she knows only from her mother’s stories. To her dismay, she finds the much-lauded estate dilapidated, the food tasteless, the weather grey. Worse still, her mother’s family are cold and distant. With one exception: her cousin Liv.

Free-spirited Liv has always wanted to break free of her joyless family. She becomes fiercely protective of her little cousin, and her warmth and kindness give Funke a place to heal. The two girls grow into adulthood the closest of friends.

But the choices their mothers made haunt Funke and Liv and when a second tragedy occurs their friendship is torn apart. Against the long shadow of their shared family history, each woman will struggle to chart a path forward, separated by country, misunderstanding, and ambition.

Moving between Somerset and Lagos over the course of two decades, This Motherless Land is a sweeping examination of identity, culture, race, and love that asks how we find belonging and whether a family’s generational wrongs can be righted.

Visit Nikki May's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Nikki May & Fela and Lola.

The Page 69 Test: This Motherless Land.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Lee Alan Dugatkin's "Dr. Calhoun's Mousery"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Dr. Calhoun's Mousery: The Strange Tale of a Celebrated Scientist, a Rodent Dystopia, and the Future of Humanity by Lee Alan Dugatkin.

About the book, from the publisher:

A bizarre and compelling biography of a scientist and his work, using rodent cities to question the potential catastrophes of human overpopulation.

It was the strangest of experiments. What began as a utopian environment, where mice had sumptuous accommodations, had all the food and water they could want, and were free from disease and predators, turned into a mouse hell. Science writer and animal behaviorist Lee Alan Dugatkin introduces readers to the peculiar work of rodent researcher John Bumpass Calhoun. In this enthralling tale, Dugatkin shows how an ecologist-turned-psychologist-turned-futurist became a science rock star embedded in the culture of the 1960s and 1970s. As interest grew in his rodent cities, Calhoun was courted by city planners and his work was reflected in everything from Tom Wolfe’s hard-hitting writing to the children’s book Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. He was invited to meetings with the Royal Society and the pope and taken seriously when he proposed a worldwide cybernetic brain—a decade before others made the internet a reality.

Readers see how Calhoun’s experiments—rodent apartment complexes like “Mouse Universe 25”—led to his concept of “behavioral sinks” with real effects on public policy discussions. Overpopulation in Calhoun’s mouse (and rat) complexes led to the loss of sex drive, the absence of maternal care, and a class of automatons that included “the beautiful ones,” who spent their time grooming themselves while shunning socialization. Calhoun—and those who followed his work—saw the collapse of this mouse population as a harbinger of the ill effects of an overpopulated human world.

Drawing on previously unpublished archival research and interviews with Calhoun’s family and former colleagues, Dugatkin offers a riveting account of an intriguing scientific figure. Considering Dr. Calhoun’s experiments, he explores the changing nature of scientific research and delves into what the study of animal behavior can teach us about ourselves.

Visit Lee Alan Dugatkin's website.

The Page 99 Test: Power in the Wild.

The Page 99 Test: Dr. Calhoun's Mousery.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top Christmas crime novels

Denzil Meyrick was educated in Argyll, then after studying politics, joined Strathclyde Police, serving in Glasgow. After being injured and developing back problems, he enterred the business world, and has operated in many diverse roles, including director of a large engineering company and distillery manager, as well as owning a number of his own companies, such as a public bar and sales and marketing company. "D. A. Meyrick has also worked as a freelance journalist in both print and on radio. Well-known for his gritty series of police procedurals centred on the maverick DCI Daley," writes Mark Skinner at the Waterstones blog. "Meyrick has displayed his versatility in the past couple of years with his festive cosy crime mysteries - Murder at Holly House and The Christmas Stocking Murders."

One of Meyrick's favorite Christmas crime reads:

Snow by John Banville

Banville is a hugely respected Irish screenwriter and novelist, a Booker Prize winner, no less. His writing is a joy, both poetic and beautiful.

Banville dishes up a sometimes-gritty novel, set in the fifties in an Ireland dominated by the Roman Catholic Church. When the local priest dies in a small, tight-knit community in County Wexford, Inspector St. John Strafford is called in to investigate. He is from the Protestant tradition, and the juxtaposition between him and the locals creates a haunting, occasionally disturbing read.

Banville’s compelling, meandering prose and dry wit draws you into a story with its fair share of red herrings. It’s a real modern classic, which richly deserves the praise and success that has come its way. One to curl up with beside the fire.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Michael Wendroff

From my Q&A with Michael Wendroff, author of What Goes Around:

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

I think my title, What Goes Around, does quite a lot. First, I believe potential readers complete the thought (Comes Around), and immediately involving your readers in a "conversation" puts you ahead of the game. It also piques interest, as the immediate questions raised are what occurred that requires retribution, and what will occur for the "comes around." Lastly, it sounds like a thriller, and indeed the reader will be taken through very thrilling twists and turns.

Note, this wasn't the original name of the book. Its draft name was The Perennial Plan, which ties into the surprising ending. But my publisher, who is great, thought we could do better, and the team there came up with What Goes Around, which is much much better.

What's in a name?

All of the character names in my novel are purposeful.

Jack Ludlum is an amalgam of...[read on]

Visit Michael Wendroff's website.

The Page 69 Test: What Goes Around.

Q&A with Michael Wendroff.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Audrey Wu Clark's "Against Exclusion"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Against Exclusion: Disrupting Anti-Chinese Violence in the Nineteenth Century by Audrey Wu Clark.

About the book, from the publisher:

In Against Exclusion, Audrey Wu Clark dramatically reframes Asian American resistance via the lives of five early Chinese American public figures. In contrast to later activists who sought to defy stereotypes, Ah Toy, Mary Tape, Wong Chin Foo, Yan Phou Lee, and Yung Wing deployed the model minority and yellow peril tropes to make themselves visible during a period of rampant anti-Chinese violence and legal exclusion. In making themselves visible, they sought to expose and dismantle the contradictory exceptionalism of nineteenth-century US liberalism that both required and “disavowed” the deaths of Chinese Americans. In examining these figures and the ways in which they fought their exclusion as Chinese Americans—via court cases, autobiographical writings, journalism, and other forms of activism—Clark contributes to prevailing scholarly conversations about stereotypes of Asian Americans but contextualizes them in the nineteenth century. She traces the twinned emergences of the model minority and the yellow peril, excavating the exceptionalism with which Chinese Americans were racialized and subject to death—whether by lynching, other forms of driving out, or loss of citizenship or rights—and mapping its reverberations into the present day.

Visit Audrey Wu Clark's website.

The Page 99 Test: Against Exclusion.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six cold coastal reads for brisk autumn days

Hailey Piper is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Queen of Teeth, All the Hearts You Eat, A Light Most Hateful, The Worm and His Kings series, and other books of dark fiction.

"I have a soft spot for the beach outside the thrills of summertime," she writes at CrimeReads. It's an atmosphere shared by her modern coastal gothic, All the Hearts You Eat. One title on her list of "books that will coil you in that delicious dismal atmosphere and never let go:"

Yellow Jessamine by Caitlin Starling

I’m realizing now that setting as character can’t help being a defining quality when you’re looking at atmosphere—Yellow Jessamine fits the bill, too, both with the port city of Delphinium and the soon-to-be-overgrown manor of Evelyn Perdanu, filled with secrets, science, and the pall of death. Decay rules this world, a unifying factor of land, sea, and people, and no amount of loyalty from Evelyn’s attendant Violetta or betrayal from other merchants and nobles can deter what’s to come. This is a brisk, engrossing novella by the sea, and for me, Starling at her gothic best.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Gemma Liviero's "An Age of Winters"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: An Age of Winters: A Novel by Gemma Liviero.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the seventeenth century, witchfinders rule and paranoia thrives in a chilling novel about unrequited love, persecution, and betrayal by the bestselling author of The Road Beyond Ruin and Broken Angels.

In 1625, the Franconian village of Eisbach has been plagued by disease, famine, heinous crimes, and a merciless winter. Katarin Jaspers is the maidservant to the enigmatic Reverend Zacharias Engel, appointed by Rome to cure the village of suspected diabolism and save every God-fearing soul.

Zacharias soon finds his first witch, and the public burning of a local man could spell the end of misfortune. As a sense of peace settles over the village, Katarin finds herself increasingly infatuated with Zacharias, who is a disruption to her predictable existence and a balm for her cruel past. But peace for Katarin is short-lived. Margaretha Katz―the new midwife―is seen as a rival for the reverend’s attention. Fear and recrimination reach a fever pitch when a great tragedy sets the town fully on edge.

With the walls of winter closing in around Eisbach once again, rumours flourish and villagers turn on each other. Now, no one is safe from the pyre.

Visit Gemma Liviero's website.

The Page 69 Test: An Age of Winters.

--Marshal Zeringue

Tony Wirt's "Pike Island," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Pike Island: A Thriller by Tony Wirt.

The entry begins:

Pike Island is a dual POV book split into two timelines, the current day and twenty years ago. Since the past timeline revolves mostly around teenagers, I’ll stick to the current timeline with my casting.

Krista Walsh – Krysten Ritter

Krista is a take-no-crap woman who is often underestimated because of her age and gender, but never lets that stand in the way of getting what she wants. Who better to play her Krysten Ritter, than the woman who brought Jessica Jones to life?

Andrew Harrison “Harry” Leonard – Glen Powell

I know he’s everywhere now, but Glen Powell is about perfect for the adult version of Harry Leonard. Tall, blonde, with an aura that makes you trust him even if...[read on]

Visit Tony Wirt's website.

The Page 69 Test: Pike Island.

Q&A with Tony Wirt.

My Book, The Movie: Pike Island.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Polly Zavadivker's "A Nation of Refugees"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: A Nation of Refugees: Russia's Jews in World War I by Polly Zavadivker.

About the book, from the publisher:

When the Great War began, the Russian Empire was home to more than five million Jews, the most densely settled Jewish population anywhere in the world. Thirty years later, only remnants of this civilization remained. The years of war from 1914 to 1918 launched the forces that scattered and destroyed Eastern European Jewry and transformed it in ways that were second only to the Holocaust in their magnitude. Yet little has been written about the experience of Russia's Jews during this time. A Nation of Refugees uncovers this untold history by revealing the stories of how Jewish civilians experienced the war and its violent epicenter on the Eastern Front. It presents a history of rupture and dispersion at a human level, with accounts of individuals who struggled to survive and the activists who worked to aid them.

The stories in this book are drawn from hundreds of documents held in previously inaccessible archives, the Russian and Yiddish press, and the personal accounts of refugees, relief workers, writers, artists, and political leaders. This is a history of the first state violence and military aggression directed at Jewish civilians anywhere in modern Europe. It is a history of refugees, so numerous and scattered across Russia that they represented the fate of the Jewish nation itself. And it is a history of how Russia's Jews formed the largest and most influential humanitarian campaign in their history, and of their leaders and institutions that endured long past the years of war and revolution.

Learn more about A Nation of Refugees at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: A Nation of Refugees.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Sung J. Woo reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Sung J. Woo, author of Lines.

The entry begins:

Right now I'm more than halfway through the writing of my sixth novel, and it's been a bit of a bear. More than the usual bear, that is -- the creation of fiction has never been easy for me, but this one has had additional unexpected difficulty. I knew going in that I would be writing about a pair of unpleasant men (one is way worse than the other, but neither are boy scouts), but I did not expect to feel so unpleasant myself while doing so! Naive, I suppose -- it should've been obvious that stepping into the shoes of unsavory characters would bring me down, but it's too late now. I'm in it and that's all there's to it.

So what am I reading now to make myself feel better? Don't laugh, but I'm very much into two novels related to Bret Easton Ellis. One is his most infamous, American Psycho, starring Patrick Bateman -- the most well-dressed serial murderer in literary history. Contrary to what you might believe, I'm not a glutton for punishment. I'm genuinely curious how Ellis writes his evil protagonist. The other novel...[read on]

About Lines, from the publisher:

On a foggy morning in New York City, a man and a woman are about to run into each other, literally. Upon impact, they fall to the ground in an instinctively protective hug. The fog dissipates, and they stare into each other's eyes in disbelief, at the sheer magnitude of their bodily collision and their subsequent, spontaneous coupling. They laugh. The man, a writer, invites the woman, an artist, for coffee and they talk until lunch. They date. They fall in love, hard. They marry just two months later. And four years later, their marriage is on the precipice of disaster.

On a foggy morning in New York City, the same man and woman pass through the fog, oblivious of each other's existence. Until five years later, when the writer finds an oval-shaped locket no bigger than his thumbnail, a tiny white dress painted within the boundary of its golden border.

Lines is about possibilities, about the choices we make - or fail to make. It's a star-crossed love story; it's a bitter tragedy. It's about Josh and Abby and their intertwined lives, together and apart, through births and deaths and the beautiful mess in between.

Visit Sung J. Woo's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Sung J. Woo & Koda.

The Page 69 Test: Everything Asian.

My Book, The Movie: Skin Deep.

Q&A with Sung J. Woo.

The Page 69 Test: Skin Deep.

My Book, The Movie: Deep Roots.

The Page 69 Test: Deep Roots.

Writers Read: Sung J. Woo (September 2023).

The Page 69 Test: Lines.

My Book, The Movie: Lines.

Writers Read: Sung J. Woo.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven top novels featuring protagonists over 70

Anna Montague is a writer and editor living in Brooklyn.

How Does That Make You Feel, Magda Eklund? is her first novel.

At Electric Lit the author tagged seven favorite novels "with senior protagonists on great adventures." One title on the list:

The Life Impossible by Matt Haig

Grace is a retired math teacher, whose life is rocked by a long-lost friend’s death, after which she is bequeathed their old house on a Mediterranean island. Puzzling over her friend’s death requires her to examine her own life, delving into the past and reimagining what her future could look like.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Aidan McGarry's "Political Voice"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Political Voice: Protest, Democracy, and Marginalised Groups by Aidan McGarry.

About the book, from the publisher:

The inclusion of marginalised groups is a problem of modern democratic societies as representative democracy is built on principles which favour the majority. Around the world, some sections of society are silenced and actively excluded--including women, migrants, refugees, LGBTIQ, indigenous communities, and ethnic minorities, among others. The voice of the majority is used to contain, diminish, and oppress minorities through institutional racism, violence, erasure from public life, socio-economic exclusion, and gender inequality. As marginalised people around the globe rise up to challenge political regimes, there is a pressing need to understand what political voice is, why is it vital to marginalised and excluded people, and examine its transformative potential.

In Political Voice, Aidan McGarry examines the agency of marginalised people, emphasizing the processes and strategies through which different communities around the world articulate their political voices. McGarry develops an innovative concept of political voice around three elements: autonomy, representation, and constitution. This conceptualization is illustrated through contemporary case studies of two persecuted and silenced groups: LGBTIQ activists in India and Roma mobilization in Europe. The cases show how excluded people articulate their ideas, demands, hopes, and experiences, and what impact these interventions have on democratic institutions. By focusing on the political voices of marginalised groups, McGarry considers democratic expression beyond the ballot box, examining how the articulation of political voice constitutes marginalised groups and democracy itself.

Visit Aidan McGarry's website.

The Page 99 Test: Political Voice.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: J.T. Ellison's "A Very Bad Thing"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: A Very Bad Thing by J.T. Ellison.

About the book, from the publisher:

From New York Times bestselling author J.T. Ellison comes a taut thriller about one author at the pinnacle of her career, whose past threatens to destroy everything she has―and everyone she knows.

A great writer knows when to deliver a juicy plot twist. But for one author, the biggest twist of all is her own murder.

With a number of hit titles and a highly anticipated movie tie-in, celebrated novelist Columbia Jones is at the top of her game. Fans around the world adore her. But on the final night of her latest book tour, one face in the crowd makes the author collapse. And by the next morning, she’s lying dead in a pool of blood.

Columbia’s death shocks the world and leaves Darian, her daughter and publicist, reeling. The police have nothing to go on―at first. But then details emerge, pointing to the author’s illicit past. Turns out many people had motive to kill Columbia. And with a hungry reporter and frustrated cop on the trail, her secrets won’t stay buried long. But how many lives will they shatter as the truth comes out?

Visit J.T. Ellison's website and follow her on Instagram, Threads, and Facebook.

The Page 69 Test: Edge of Black.

The Page 69 Test: When Shadows Fall.

My Book, The Movie: When Shadows Fall.

My Book, The Movie: What Lies Behind.

The Page 69 Test: What Lies Behind.

The Page 69 Test: No One Knows.

My Book, The Movie: No One Knows.

The Page 69 Test: Lie to Me.

My Book, The Movie: Good Girls Lie.

The Page 69 Test: Good Girls Lie.

Writers Read: J. T. Ellison (January 2020).

Q&A with J.T. Ellison.

The Page 69 Test: A Very Bad Thing.

--Marshal Zeringue

Fifteen bone-chilling new horror books

Michael J. Seidlinger is the Filipino-American author of The Body Harvest, Anybody Home?, Tekken 5, and other books.

He teaches at Portland State University.

At Publishers Weekly Seidlinger tagged fifteen "recent titles ... guaranteed not only to scare but to expand your definition of what horror can be." One book on the list:

How to Make a Horror Movie and Survive by Craig DiLouie

DiLouie (Episode Thirteen) remixes classic horror tropes into a harrowing thriller set in 1988. Middle-aged Max Maurey, known for his series of low-budget Jack the Knife slasher films, is appalled that audiences are cheering and laughing at the violence in his latest sequel. He feels like a hack, but his seedy producer, Jordan Lyman, won’t let Max explore his true artistic ambitions. He’s inspired, however, when he encounters Sally Priest, an aspiring actor who believes, like Max, that “horror is only horror if it’s real.” At an estate sale for a reclusive director, Max buys the camera that recorded the infamous film Mary’s Birthday, which ended in tragedy when the actors were sliced to bits by a disabled helicopter. Despite the message scrawled on the case (“Never use this camera”), Max decides to try it out—and discovers that people he points the camera at die gruesomely. It’s just the kind of truth he’s been searching for in his work, so he sets out to make a movie that will upend cliché, casting Sally as his final girl. The cursed object set up feels familiar, but readers will be pulled in by the morally twisted characters and serpentine plot. Film buffs will especially enjoy this paean to ’80s slasher films and the people who love them.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Rachel Louise Moran's "Blue"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Blue: A History of Postpartum Depression in America by Rachel Louise Moran.

About the book, from the publisher:

A powerful look at the changing cultural understanding of postpartum depression in America.

New motherhood is often seen as a joyful moment in a woman’s life; for some women, it is also their lowest moment. For much of the twentieth century, popular and medical voices blamed women who had emotional and mental distress after childbirth for their own suffering. By the end of the century, though, women with postpartum mental illnesses sought to take charge of this narrative. In Blue: A History of Postpartum Depression in America, Rachel Louise Moran explores the history of the naming and mainstreaming of postpartum depression. Coalitions of maverick psychiatrists, psychologists, and women who themselves had survived substantial postpartum distress fought to legitimize and normalize women’s experiences. They argued that postpartum depression is an objective and real illness and fought to avoid it being politicized alongside other fraught medical and political battles over women’s health.

Based on insightful oral histories and in-depth archival research, Blue reveals a secret history of American motherhood, women’s political activism, and the rise of postpartum depression advocacy amid an often-censorious conservative culture. By breaking new ground with the first book-length history of postpartum mental illness in the twentieth century, Moran brings mothers’ battles with postpartum depression out of the shadows and into the light.

Visit Rachel Louise Moran's website.

The Page 99 Test: Blue.

--Marshal Zeringue