Q&A with Madeleine Dunnigan

From my Q&A with Madeleine Dunnigan, author of Jean: A Novel:

What's in a name?

I knew Jean’s name early on. Jean’s mother is a German Jewish refugee and a francophile. I knew Jean’s name needed to be French because of this; I also knew it needed to complicate his identity as an English teenage boy.

In French, ‘Jean’ is a boy’s name; in English, we would use ‘Gene’ for a boy and ‘Jean’ for a girl. This subtle difference, although not pressed upon in the novel, was essential to the crafting of his character. From birth, he feels like an outsider. To others, there is something mysterious and...[read on]

Visit Madeleine Dunnigan's website.

My Book, The Movie: Jean.

The Page 69 Test: Jean.

Writers Read: Madeleine Dunnigan.

Q&A with Madeleine Dunnigan.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Mara Williams reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Mara Williams, author of The Epicenter of Forever: A Novel.

Her entry begins:

Most Eligible by Isabelle Engel.

The Bachelor meets Miss Congeniality in this hilarious romcom about a reporter who goes undercover as a contestant on a dating show and finds out the host is her one-night-stand from a year ago, and whoops…she might be falling for the wrong person. The hijinks and shenanigans in this one are unmatched. I caught myself laughing out loud and swooning in equal measure. It’s perfect for fans of reality television and classic romcoms, and for anyone looking for an infusion of...[read on]

About The Epicenter of Forever, from the publisher:

A moving story about family, forgiveness, and unexpected love―where the fault lines of a fractured past become the foundation for building something new.

Eden Hawthorne spent idyllic childhood summers in Grand Trees, a mountain town perched along a restless earthquake fault in the heart of California’s fire country. But her family and future were shattered there, and she vowed never to return―until news of her estranged mother’s illness forces her back twenty years later.

Still reeling from her recent divorce, Eden has to confront her mom’s found family, including single father Caleb Connell, who blames Eden for the seismic rift that drove her away. But as they move beyond a battle of wills, Eden and Caleb discover shared wounds and intertwined histories―and succumb to an attraction that feels fated.

When her mother’s condition worsens, Eden faces an impossible choice between the man she’s falling for and the mother she’s just beginning to forgive. And with time running out, Eden fears her decision will doom her to relive the aftershocks of past heartbreak.

Visit Mara Williams's website.

Q&A with Mara Williams.

The Page 69 Test: The Truth Is in the Detours.

My Book, The Movie: The Truth Is in the Detours.

Writers Read: Mara Williams (August 2025).

My Book, The Movie: The Epicenter of Forever.

Writers Read: Mara Williams.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Daniel K. Williams's "The Search for a Rational Faith"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Search for a Rational Faith: Reason and Belief in the History of American Christianity by Daniel K. Williams.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Enlightenment and Darwinism posed threats to traditional Christianity. So why have so many highly educated Americans remained committed believers?

The Search for a Rational Faith challenges popular theories of secularization with a sweeping 400-year history of Anglo-American Protestant defenses of the Christian faith. Through a detailed study of the arguments of those who found Christian faith compatible with Enlightenment reason, Daniel K. Williams explains why Christian faith has continued to remain a viable intellectual option in the United States even for educated people who accept modern science.

From the seventeenth-century New England Puritans who founded Harvard College to the twentieth-century university professors who believed that Christian theism was the only viable grounding for morality in the atomic age, faith and reason have been an integral part of the Anglo-American experience. This book chronicles that story.

It is a story that intersects with the spiritual lives of well-known figures such as Isaac Newton, John Locke, John Adams, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Martin Luther King Jr., all of whom wrestled with the question of the reason to believe. It is the story of Christian apologists who crafted intellectually sophisticated defenses of the faith. And above all, it is the story of the development of an idea-the idea that there is a rational basis for Christian belief.

This book shows how that idea was transmitted from England to America in the seventeenth century and how it continued to develop and transform over the next four centuries in response to the Enlightenment, Darwinian evolution, historical criticism of the Bible, new theories of religious epistemology, and the ethical challenge of the civil rights movement. The Search for a Rational Faith is the story of what that idea meant in the past and what it still means today, in a new era of secularization.

Visit Daniel K. Williams's website.

The Page 99 Test: God's Own Party.

The Page 99 Test: Defenders of the Unborn.

The Page 99 Test: The Search for a Rational Faith.

--Marshal Zeringue

Twelve top memoirs of widowhood

Marion Winik is the author of nine books, including The Big Book of the Dead (2019) and First Comes Love (1996; reissued with a new introduction in 2026). Her essays have been published in The New York Times Magazine, The Sun, and elsewhere; her column at BaltimoreFishbowl.com has been running since 2011.

[Coffee with a Canine: Marion Winik and Beau (December 2009); Coffee with a Canine: Marion Winik and Beau (June 2013); Writers Read: Marion Winik (June 2013)]

A professor at the University of Baltimore, she reviews books for The Washington Post, Oprah Daily, and People, among others, and hosts the NPR podcast The Weekly Reader. She was a commentator on All Things Considered for fifteen years. She is the recipient of the 2023 National Book Critics Circle Service Award.

At Publishers Weekly Winik tagged twelve top widow memoirs, including:

Black Widow: A Sad-Funny Journey Through Grief for People Who Normally Avoid Books with Words Like “Journey” in the Title
Leslie Gray Streeter

Streeter was working for a Florida newspaper as “the black Carrie Bradshaw” when she reconnected with Scott Jervitz, a white high school classmate, on a Facebook reunion page. They had only five and a half years before she found herself planning a funeral instead of a 45th birthday party. Opening her memoir with a riff on casket selection before flashing back to the night of Scott’s death, Streeter’s ability to ferret out the funny in almost anything is rare among books of this kind.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Michael Idov

From my Q&A with Michael Idov, author of The Cormorant Hunt: A Novel:

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

None. I should be completely honest about this. The editing notes I receive on the Cormorant Trilogy are mercifully light; in return, I pretty much let the publisher title the books for me. It's probably wise, too, because I'm terrible at it. I had originally designed a whole convention where all three titles would be these ambiguously German/Russian K-words. The first novel would be called Kosmopolit, the second Konservator, etc. Then I was gently reminded that the people buying the book at a store should, as a rule, be able to pronounce its title.

That said, I did mount a brief campaign to call this one Gray Actors: a political term for people or institutions with unclear or complicated intentions, which describes its plot pretty well. But The Cormorant Hunt is snappier, and retains some of the same ambiguity because it's the character named Cormorant who's...[read on]

Visit Michael Idov's website.

Writers Read: Michael Idov (October 2009).

Q&A with Michael Idov.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six of the most surprising thrillers ever written

Jamie Canavés is the Tailored Book Recommendations coordinator and Unusual Suspects mystery newsletter writer — in case you’re wondering what you do with a Liberal Arts degree.

At Book Riot she tagged the six most surprising thrillers ever written, including:

Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinborough

This has a shocking surprise twist, of course, but Pinborough’s novel also has an element of WTF that adds to the fun of reading this psychological thriller about a single mom who discovers that her one-night stand is her new boss and that his wife wants to befriend her. In my first review of this book, I wrote, “You might want a reading partner for this one so you can share your guesses and discuss the ending,” which I feel is always a bonus to a book.

You can watch the six-episode series adaptation on Netflix, which stars Eve Hewson, Simona Brown, and Tom Bateman.

Read about another thriller on the list.

Behind Her Eyes is among Maia Chance's six best uncanny domestic thrillers, L.K. Bowen's ten best marriage-gone-bad thrillers, Clare Whitfield's seven literary murderers hiding in plain sight, Alice Feeney's eight top novels featuring odd couples and unexpected partnerships, Leah Konen's seven dark thrillers about friendships gone wrong, and Camilla Bruce's eight novels to make you question reality.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Kent Lehnhof's "Voice and Ethics in Shakespeare's Late Plays"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Voice and Ethics in Shakespeare's Late Plays by Kent Lehnhof.

About the book, from the publisher:

Breaking new ground in Shakespearean sound studies, Kent Lehnhof draws scholarly attention to the rich ethical significance of the voice and vocality. Less concerned with semantics, stylistics, and rhetoric than with the sensuous, sonorous, and somatic dimensions of human speech, Lehnhof performs close readings of five plays – Coriolanus, King Lear, Pericles, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest – to demonstrate how Shakespeare's later works present the act of speaking and the sound of the voice as capable of constructing, deconstructing, and reconstructing interpersonal relationships and obligations. By thinking widely and innovatively about the voice and vocality, Lehnhof models a fresh form of philosophically-minded criticism that resists logocentrism and elevates the voices of marginalized groups and individuals including women, members of societal “underclasses”, racialized persons and non-humans.

Learn more about Voice and Ethics in Shakespeare's Late Plays at the Cambridge University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Voice and Ethics in Shakespeare's Late Plays.

--Marshal Zeringue

Mara Williams's "The Epicenter of Forever," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Epicenter of Forever: A Novel by Mara Williams.

From the entry:

The Epicenter of Forever is about a woman who returns to the scene of her greatest loss to convince her ailing, estranged mother to come home and seek treatment—but instead falls for a man whose identity is anchored to the place that broke her. It’s about romantic and familial love and about healing all the wounds that hold us back.

Scene: Springtime in Grand Trees, California, a fictional town nestled in the Sierra Nevadas with a mountain lake, a summer camp property, and several groves of Giant Sequoias.

Eden Hawthorne (thirty-something former ballerina turned nonprofit fundraiser): It would be a dream to see Rachel Brosnahan in this role. Her comedic timing is incredible, and she has pitch-perfect chemistry with her co-stars and could really sell a love story.

Caleb Connell (thirty-something single dad and jack of all trades): I see...[read on]

Visit Mara Williams's website.

Q&A with Mara Williams.

The Page 69 Test: The Truth Is in the Detours.

My Book, The Movie: The Truth Is in the Detours.

Writers Read: Mara Williams (August 2025).

My Book, The Movie: The Epicenter of Forever.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Laura Carney reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Laura Carney, author of My Father's List: How Living My Dad's Dreams Set Me Free.

Her entry begins:

I hoard books, and it doesn't help that I picked up books for free when I worked full-time at a women's magazine (I also now own enough anti-aging cream to look 47 forever). But since publishing My Father's List: How Living My Dad's Dreams Set Me Free, in June 2023, I've discovered yet another reason to own too many books—publishing a successful one makes lots of people want you to blurb theirs. Or pass theirs along to your agent. I'm happy to do so, and I'm also happy to pre-order every new book a new author friend publishes. The result: I currently have about 60 books in my to-be-read pile, next to my nightstand, which probably scared my in-laws when they house-sat. Or at least tripped them.

Of the 60 or so I'm currently reading, here are the ones I'm most excited about (and keep in mind I bought about 15 more when I was on vacation after my One City, One Book award in Greensboro, NC):

Gratitude and Trust: Six Affirmations That Will Change Your Life: I bought this book before I interviewed one of my heroes, the composer Paul Williams, and I highly recommend it. Oprah liked it too. I've learned a lot from my conversations with Paul, but mainly to "view every no as a gift," one of his mottos, and to view every turn in my life as a direction from "the big amigo." The insights in this book...[read on]

About My Father's List, from the publisher:

On the cusp of middle age, a newlywed journalist discovers and finishes the bucket list of her late free-spirited father.

Fifty-four adventures in six years. That’s what thirty-eight-year-old journalist Laura Carney embarked on when she discovered her late father Mick’s bucket list.

Killed in a car crash when Laura was twenty-five, Mick seemed lost forever. My Father’s List is the story of how one woman—with the help of family, friends, and even strangers—found the courage to go after her own dreams after realizing those of a beloved yet mysterious man. This is a story about secrets—and the freedom we feel when we learn to trust again: in life, in love, and in a father’s lessons on how to fully live.

Visit Laura Carney's website.

The Page 99 Test: My Father's List.

My Book, The Movie: My Father's List.

Writers Read: Laura Carney.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Janet Burroway's "Simone in Pieces"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Simone in Pieces by Janet Burroway.

About the book, from the publisher:

Readers first meet Simone Lerrante, a Belgian war orphan, as a child refugee in Sussex, England, her memory damaged by trauma. This novel offers a kaleidoscopic vision of her fractured life and piecemeal understanding of self across multiple points of view. Following her from Cambridge to New York City and across the United States—through a disastrous marriage, thwarted desire, and the purgatory of academic backwaters—the novel charts Simone’s unexpected reconnection with her past, which provides both autonomy and inspiration for her future. Janet Burroway slowly reveals a multifaceted, fascinating protagonist, who observes her own life without always allowing herself to be immersed in it. Spanning seven decades, this story is both epic and contained, rewarding readers at every turn.

Visit Janet Burroway's website.

The Page 69 Test: Bridge of Sand.

The Page 69 Test: Simone in Pieces.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Michelle Pace's "Un-welcome to Denmark"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Un-welcome to Denmark: The paradigm shift and refugee integration by Michelle Pace.

About the book, from the publisher:

Un—welcome to Denmark, by Michelle Pace with Sarah El—Abd, critically assesses Denmark’s migration regime by directly engaging the voices of multiple stakeholders impacted by its harshness. It puts forward the theory of the 'unwelcome migrant' by undertaking an extensive analysis of the programmatic and legal foundations for the 'undeserving migrant' as well as of the lived experiences of Syrian refugees, welfare professionals and private businesses tasked with supporting them. It thereby documents the ways in which the Danish migration gaze produces and perpetuates the hyper precarity of the everyday lives of Syrians and the anxiety that overshadows the manner in which Syrians and those who support them navigate its maze. By so doing, it traces how a once admired, liberal, tolerant and open society with a strong reverence for human rights has turned into one of the harshest migration regimes in Europe, if not internationally.

Learn more about Un-welcome to Denmark at the Manchester University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Un-welcome to Denmark.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven novels that bear witness to Latin America’s Dirty Wars

Jahia de Rose is an antillana-deutsch artist, landworker, writer, and scholar. Her bylines appear in Electric Literature, midnight + indigo (forthcoming), PetitMort, Business Insider, and several indie publications. She is at work on a novel and her first memoir. She blogs on Substack as @autumnwildroses, and her Substack publication ‘Roadworthy’ chronicles her off-grid life on the road in Europe.

At Electric Lit the writer tagged seven "works of historical fiction about events in [Latin America and the Caribbean] which touch on the Dirty Wars." One title on the list:

The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende

Isabel Allende, cousin of the overthrown, democratically elected Chilean president, Salvador Allende, is the author of the surrealist, at times humorous, often sorrowful epic that is The House of the Spirits. This novel tells the socio-political story of Chile in the early and mid-20th century by following three generations of the Trueba family and their lovers, associates, and enemies. All the book’s events radiate out from the central foci of husband and wife, Esteban and Clara Trueba. Clara, around whom the novel’s events begin, speaks to spirits, predicts the future, and levitates objects. Esteban, symbolic of the conservative influences behind Chile’s anti-socialist opposition of the time period, imagines himself to be a man of traditional values and good character, yet he exploits, cheats, and beats his way through life. The book is a noteworthy reflection upon the ways in which conservative politicians are often revealed to be hypocritical of their espoused values.

Read about another novel on the list.

The House of the Spirits is among Vanessa Saunders's seven speculative feminism books written by women, Lois Parkinson Zamora's five top books to capture the magic of magical realism, Christopher Barzak's five books about magical families, and Elif Shafak's five favorite literary mothers.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Carrie Classon

From my Q&A with Carrie Classon, author of Loon Point: A Novel:

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

Loon Point is my first novel, so other than my weekly syndicated column, I have no name recognition as a writer, and I wanted something both memorable and not overly used. Neither my agent nor my publisher had any issues with it or other suggestions.

“Loon” conjures up wilderness for most people, and that is a good image to begin with. “Point” implies a small place, and that is also accurate. Loon Point deals with the lives of a middle-aged woman, an older man, and a young girl all living in the Northwoods and their various brands of loneliness, so I think beginning with their shared location makes sense.

What’s in a name?

I seem to have two types of character names: the ones that show up with...[read on]

Visit Carrie Classon's website.

The Page 69 Test: Loon Point.

Writers Read: Carrie Classon.

Q&A with Carrie Classon.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top memoirs that make grief feel less lonely

Charley Burlock is the Books Editor at Oprah Daily where she writes, edits, and assigns stories on all things literary. She holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from NYU, where she also taught undergraduate creative writing. Her work has been featured in the Atlantic, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Hyperallergic, the Apple News Today podcast, and elsewhere.

At Oprah Daily Burlock tagged "six memoirs that make grief feel a tiny bit less lonely," including:

Memorial Days, by Geraldine Brooks

On Memorial Day 2019, while Brooks was in the throes of writing her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Horse, her vibrant, healthy sixty-year-old husband collapsed on a D.C. sidewalk and died. Flashing between the chaotic immediate wake of Tony’s heart attack and the meditative “memorial days” she gave herself four years later to “do the unfinished work of grieving” on Australia’s Flinders Island, Brooks unspools a pulse-quickening love story woven within a sharp-toothed indictment of “the brutal bureaucracy of death.” While there is no shortage of moving grief memoirs, there are vanishingly few that offer bereaved readers more than a mirror to their own experience. In addition to gorgeously evoking the man she lost and the pain he left, Brooks gives practical guidance for tending to that pain and preparing in advance for a legal and logistical obstacle course that few know to train for.

Read about another memoir on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Emily Lieb's "Road to Nowhere"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Road to Nowhere: How a Highway Map Wrecked Baltimore by Emily Lieb.

About the book, from the publisher:

Traces the birth, plunder, and scavenging of Rosemont, a Black middle-class neighborhood in Baltimore.

In the mid-1950s Baltimore’s Rosemont neighborhood was alive and vibrant with smart rowhouses, a sprawling park, corner grocery stores, and doctor’s offices. By 1957, a proposed expressway threatened to gut this Black, middle-class community from stem to stern.

That highway was never built, but it didn’t matter—even the failure to build it destroyed Rosemont economically, if not physically. In telling the history of the neighborhood and the notional East–West Expressway, Emily Lieb shows the interwoven tragedies caused by racism in education, housing, and transportation policy. Black families had been attracted to the neighborhood after Baltimore’s Board of School Commissioners converted several white schools into “colored” ones, which had also laid the groundwork for predatory real-estate agents who bought low from white sellers and sold high to determined Black buyers. Despite financial discrimination, Black homeowners built a thriving community before the city council formally voted to condemn some nine hundred homes in Rosemont for the expressway, leading to deflated home values and even more predatory real estate deals.

Drawing on land records, oral history, media coverage, and policy documents, Lieb demystifies blockbusting, redlining, and prejudicial lending, highlighting the national patterns at work in a single neighborhood. The result is an absorbing story about the deliberate decisions that produced racial inequalities in housing, jobs, health, and wealth—as well as a testament to the ingenuity of the residents who fought to stay in their homes, down to today.

Visit Emily Lieb's website.

The Page 99 Test: Road to Nowhere.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: S. J. Rozan's "First Do No Harm"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: First Do No Harm: A Lydia Chin/Bill Smith Mystery by S. J. Rozan.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the latest novel in S. J. Rozan’s groundbreaking mystery series, Lydia Chin and Bill Smith face a dangerous task: they must unlock a hospital's many secrets in order to save an innocent man.

With River Valley Hospital in the midst of negotiations to avert a nurses' strike, a wealthy benefactor is set to give a large donation to honor of the Chief of Emergency Medicine: Dr. Elliott Chin, the brother of private investigator Lydia Chin.

Before the donation can be finalized, a member of the nurses' negotiating committee is found murdered. A morgue assistant is arrested and although he denies even knowing the victim his father and brother, both doctors at the hospital, are quick to urge him to take a plea. Another negotiating committee member abruptly resigns and a senior biomedical technician disappears. An officially off-limits section of the hospital basement turns out to be a hotbed of unauthorized—and in some cases criminal—activity.

Hired by the arrested man's lawyer, Lydia Chin and her partner Bill Smith start to dig into the events and personnel at the hospital. Among the union disputes, blackmail, thefts, lies, and a detective who really, really doesn't like them, one thing becomes clear: the dictum to "First Do No Harm” is not in effect at River Valley. As time runs short, Lydia and Bill face a complicated and dangerous task: they must unlock the hospital's secrets to save an innocent man.

Visit S.J. Rozan's website.

The Page 69 Test: Paper Son.

The Page 69 Test: The Art of Violence.

Q&A with S. J. Rozan.

Writers Read: S.J. Rozan (February 2022).

The Page 69 Test: Family Business.

Writers Read: S. J. Rozan (November 2023).

The Page 69 Test: The Mayors of New York.

The Page 69 Test: First Do No Harm.

--Marshal Zeringue

Robert Dugoni's "Her Cold Justice," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Her Cold Justice (Keera Duggan) by Robert Dugoni.

The entry begins:

I actually had two actresses in mind to play Keera Duggan when I wrote the first book. Caitriona Balfe, who is Irish-born and is great at playing actors torn between family loyalty and personal demons, both of which are in this series in spades. The other is Claire Foy who often plays smart characters with complicated lives. She also looks like how I imagined Keera Duggan.

I would love to see Idris Elba play JP. His English accent would be perfect, he is the right age and he is brilliant.

And for Patsy Duggan I thought of...[read on]

Visit Robert Dugoni's website and Facebook page.

The Page 69 Test: Wrongful Death.

The Page 69 Test: Bodily Harm.

My Book, The Movie: Bodily Harm.

The Page 69 Test: Murder One.

My Book, The Movie: Murder One.

My Book, The Movie: The Eighth Sister.

The Page 69 Test: The Eighth Sister.

My Book, The Movie: A Cold Trail.

The Page 69 Test: A Cold Trail.

The Page 69 Test: The Last Agent.

My Book, The Movie: The Last Agent.

Q&A with Robert Dugoni.

The Page 69 Test: In Her Tracks.

Writers Read: Robert Dugoni (March 2024).

The Page 69 Test: A Killing on the Hill.

My Book, The Movie: A Killing on the Hill.

The Page 69 Test: Beyond Reasonable Doubt.

My Book, The Movie: Beyond Reasonable Doubt.

Writers Read: Robert Dugoni (October 2024).

My Book, The Movie: Her Cold Justice.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six thrillers that explore the dark sides of fame

Jessie Garcia is an award-winning sports journalist who has risen the ranks in television news, first as an anchor/reporter, then to newsroom management. She is the News Director at the CBS affiliate in Milwaukee. She also taught journalism at four universities. A native of Madison, WI, Garcia has two adult sons and resides in Milwaukee with her husband, dog and cat.

Garcia's new novel is The Fair Weather Friend.

At CrimeReads the author tagged six favorite thrillers that explore the dark sides of fame. One title on the list:

Hank Phillipi Ryan, All This Could Be Yours

Tessa is a bestselling author on a whirlwind book tour. Fans come out in droves. But Tessa soon realizes she’s being stalked by someone hellbent on sabotaging her career and ruining her family life back home. The book tour becomes a terrifying experience as each new hotel and city bring fresh and unwanted surprises.

I listened to this on audio and it was one of those where I wished my commute were longer! I really enjoyed the behind-the-scenes aspects of the book tour, as well as the balancing of fame and real life, and the unnerving details of what was happening to her.

Read about another title on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Carrie Classon reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Carrie Classon, author of Loon Point: A Novel.

Her entry begins:

At this moment, I don’t dare start to read another thing because I am smack dab in the middle of Abraham Verghese’s latest astonishing yarn, The Covenant of Water. I will have the privilege of hearing him speak at the writers’ conference in San Miguel de Allende in February, and I’ve had this book sitting on the shelf for a while because I’ve read all his previous books and he is one of my favorite writers. So why, you may well wonder, has it taken me until 2026 to read this book that came out in 2023?

The answer is simple:...[read on]

About Loon Point, from the publisher:

Set against the rugged beauty of the northern woods, the heartwarming first novel by columnist Carrie Classon explores how chosen family can sweeten bitterness into surprising joy.

Alone in the Northwoods, Norry Last settles in for another springtime lull at the remote resort she inherited from her father. She’s content with the solitude, maybe resigned. But when a blizzard hits, those little cabins by the lake start to fill up fast.

First to arrive is Lizzie, an eight-year-old with resilience and wisdom beyond her years, neglected by a mother struggling with addiction. Next comes Wendell, a cantankerous old fellow whose house collapses in the storm, the same way hope collapsed inside him long before. And then there’s Bud, the helpful handyman who’s always buzzing around, his kindness thawing something Norry thought she’d buried deep in the Minnesota snow.

As white melts to green, the Last Resort’s unlikely companions learn to share space, stories, and quiet comforts―an unexpected family that makes perfect sense. After all, Lizzie needs to be cared for. Wendell needs to care. Norry needs to open up. And Bud? Bud just might fix everything.

Visit Carrie Classon's website.

The Page 69 Test: Loon Point.

Writers Read: Carrie Classon.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Andromeda Romano-Lax

From my Q&A with Andromeda Romano-Lax, author of What Boys Learn:

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

This thriller asks what boys learn from the world around them in terms of what manhood means, what counts as acceptable behavior, and what a man can expect to get away with (possibly even rape or murder)—so I think What Boys Learn is spot on!

What's in a name?

My main character, a struggling single mom living on Chicago’s affluent North Shore, is named Abby Rosso. I wanted a common first name and an Italian last name that says “Chicago,” as my own maiden name does. You might also note...[read on]

Visit Andromeda Romano-Lax's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Spanish Bow.

The Page 69 Test: The Detour.

Writers Read: Andromeda Romano-Lax (February 2012).

The Page 69 Test: What Boys Learn.

Writers Read: Andromeda Romano-Lax.

My Book, The Movie: What Boys Learn.

Q&A with Andromeda Romano-Lax.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Lydia Murdoch's "What We Mourn"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: What We Mourn: Child Death and the Politics of Grief in Nineteenth-Century Britain by Lydia Murdoch.

About the book, from the publisher:

How a new culture of bereavement changed the relationship of the Victorian state to its most vulnerable subjects

When the Tory Member of Parliament Michael Sadler argued in 1832 for state intervention on behalf of Britain’s dying child factory workers, he elicited smirks and ridicule from his Liberal adversaries—a response that would have been unimaginable by the century’s end. What We Mourn traces the changing understandings of child death within British, imperial, and transatlantic contexts and reveals the importance of youth and emotion to constructions of the modern state.

As childhood took on new meanings over the course of the long nineteenth century, public mourning for the premature deaths of children emerged as a way of asserting and even redefining British rights and citizenship. Factory hands and abolitionists, sanitation reformers and suffragists democratized and politicized their grief as they called upon the state to recognize their lives as part of a new, reimagined political order. As Lydia Murdoch shows, carrying their own and others’ private grief into the public sphere—with petitions and marches, public lectures and poetry—allowed marginalized members of society to assert their claim to rights. What We Mourn explores both the power and the limitations of a new politics founded on grief and the protection of child life.

Learn more about What We Mourn at the the University of Virginia Press website.

The Page 99 Test: What We Mourn.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten perfect books to gift this Valentine’s Day

One title on Tertulia's list of books that make a perfect Valentine’s Day gift:

Tartufo
Kira Jane Buxton

In this buzzworthy new release an Italian village is on the brink of collapse, and the mayor is convinced the end is near. With a disgraced postman, a shuttered ristorante, and grim prospects, things look bleak—until a truffle is discovered that could either save or doom the town. “Kira Jane Buxton’s story about truffle mania whisks us away to Italy and serves up one buttery page of comedy after another,” raves The Washington Post.

Read about another book on the list.

My Book, The Movie: Tartufo.

The Page 69 Test: Tartufo.

--Marshal Zeringue