Third reading: D.W. Buffa on Lampedusa's "The Leopard"

D.W. Buffa's newest novel to be released is Evangeline, a courtroom drama about the murder trial of captain who is one of the few to survive the sinking of his ship.

Buffa is also the author of ten legal thrillers involving the defense attorney Joseph Antonelli. He has also published a series that attempts to trace the movement of western thought from ancient Athens, in Helen; the end of the Roman Empire, in Julian's Laughter; the Renaissance, in The Autobiography of Niccolo Machiavelli; and America in the twentieth century, in Neumann's Last Concert.

Buffa's latest take in his "Third Reading" series is on Lampedusa's The Leopard. It begins:

Don Fabrizio, the Prince of Salina, the dominant force in the Sicilian aristocracy of Palermo in 1860, made the floor shake by the “sudden movement of his huge frame,” and “a glint of pride flashed in his light blue eyes at this fleeting confirmation of his lordship over both human beings and their works.” There is a reason the Prince is known everywhere as The Leopard. Or so we would believe if we read in translation the marvelous novel by Giuseppi Tomasi di Lampedusa and did not know that the Italian title, ‘Gattopardo,’ is not ‘Leopard’ but the African ‘Serval,’ a wildcat hunted to extinction in Italy in the middle of the nineteenth century, the same fate that was to meet the Sicilian aristocracy at nearly the same time.

Lampedusa, the 11th Prince of Lampedusa, Duke of Palma, was born in 1896 and died in l957. The Leopard, the only novel he wrote, was published the year after his death. It had been rejected by the two publishers to whom he submitted it during his life, and, such is the occasional idiocy of publishers, one of them continued to defend its decision even after the novel had gone through fifty-two editions in less than six months, which, if it is not a record, must be close to it. Lampedusa spent several years writing The Leopard, but, it could be argued, spent most of his life in preparation. A voracious reader who owned eleven hundred books on French history alone, he read — and more than read, studied and made notes on — everything of importance in English literature, notes which were later published as a thousand page critical analysis beginning with the religious reflections of the Venerable Bede to the secular mysteries of Graham Greene. The original plan for The Leopard was to follow what James Joyce had done in Ulysses and tell the story as the events of a single day. He told it instead over eight days, or rather eight months, each a subject of a separate chapter, the first four in l860, the fifth and sixth in the following two years, the seventh a quarter century later in July of l898, and the final chapter twenty-three years after that, in May of 1910, nearly half a century after the central episode.

The Leopard is a novel about a place, Sicily, the “secret island” where “a known evil” is always preferred to “an untried good,” and where the memory of the past has destroyed any hope for the future. Fabrizio, considered an “eccentric” because of an interest in mathematics that was considered “almost a sinful perversion,” was still respected because he was Prince of Salina, “an excellent horseman, indefatigable shot, and tireless skirt chaser.” He watches with something close to indifference when Garibaldi lands with his red-shirted army to unite Sicily to Italy as part of the bourgeois revolution. Nothing will change. His nephew, Tancredi, an “aristocratic liberal,” wounded at the battle of Palermo, will marry his daughter, Concetta, who is madly in love with him. Tancredi will continue the line. There will always be Salinas, and the Salinas, whatever the form of government, will always rule.

The great novelty of the year 1860, as much as what Garibaldi was doing, is the rapid rise to fortune and importance of...[read on]

Visit D.W. Buffa's website.

Third reading: The Great Gatsby. 

Third reading: Brave New World.

Third reading: Lord Jim.

Third reading: Death in the Afternoon.

Third Reading: Parade's End.

Third Reading: The Idiot.

Third Reading: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

Third Reading: The Scarlet Letter.

Third Reading: Justine.

Third Reading: Patriotic Gore.

Third reading: Anna Karenina.

Third reading: The Charterhouse of Parma.

Third Reading: Emile.

Third Reading: War and Peace.

Third Reading: The Sorrows of Young Werther.

Third Reading: Bread and Wine.

Third Reading: “The Crisis of the Mind” and A Man Without Qualities.

Third reading: Eugene Onegin.

Third Reading: The Collected Works of Thomas Babington Macaulay.

Third Reading: The Europeans.

Third Reading: The House of Mirth and The Writing of Fiction.

Third Reading: Doctor Faustus.

Third Reading: the reading list of John F. Kennedy.

Third Reading: Jorge Luis Borges.

Third Reading: History of the Peloponnesian War.

Third Reading: Mansfield Park.

Third Reading: To Each His Own.

Third Reading: A Passage To India.

Third Reading: Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

Third Reading: The Letters of T.E. Lawrence.

Third Reading: All The King’s Men.

Third Reading: The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus.

Third Reading: Naguib Mahfouz’s novels of ancient Egypt.

Third Reading: Main Street.

Third Reading: Theodore H. White's The Making of the President series, part I.

Third Reading: Theodore H. White's The Making of the President series, part II.

Third Reading: Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

Third Reading: Fiction's Failure.

Third Reading: Hermann Hesse's Demian.

Third Reading: Frederick Douglass, Slavery, and The Fourth of July.

Third Reading: Caesar’s Ghost.

Third reading: The American Constitution.

Third Reading: A Tale of Two Cities.

Third Reading: The Leopard.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Noelle Salazar

From my Q&A with Noelle Salazar, author of The Lies We Leave Behind: A Novel:

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

Titles are a difficult thing for me. After the title for my first book was changed, I became unsure of my ability to correctly title my books. Most of the time now, I just give them a placeholder and then I go through a title creating back-and-forth with my editor, our team, and my agent. For this title in particular, we had our work cut out for us. But I kept getting drawn back to a style of title I'd seen on some other books previously and so we started throwing words around. My team came up with The Lies We Leave Behind and I have to say, I love it. It's intriguing. What lies? Whose lies? How many lies? Why were the lies necessary? So many questions beg for answers just because...[read on]

Visit Noelle Salazar's website.

Writers Read: Noelle Salazar (August 2019).

My Book, The Movie: The Flight Girls.

The Page 69 Test: The Flight Girls.

Q&A with Noelle Salazar.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top dark academia novels

At Mental Floss Chris Wheatley tagged six of the best dark academia novels, including:

Bunny by Mona Awad

Mona Awad possesses an undeniable knack for taking her readers inside the minds of young women, particularly those who find themselves pushed to the fringes of society. Awad’s heroine in this story is Samantha, a lonely and insecure figure with a brooding imagination, who enrolls in a select graduate program at the fictional Warren University.

In Awad’s hands, what could easily have been a standard “outsider struggles to fit in” narrative becomes a gruesome—and unforgettable—folk horror tale of compelling stature. The title refers to the Bunnies, a clique of unbearably mawkish rich girls; when Samantha receives an unexpected invitation to the Bunnies’ secret Smut Salon, the stage is set for an increasingly disturbing story, as the protagonist finds herself gradually drawn into a world where reality becomes malleable, shocking, and dangerous. Plans to bring Awad’s bestseller to the big screen are currently underway, too.

Read about another entry on the list.

Bunny is among Gnesis Villar's seven books about the struggle of being a writer.

--Marsal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Elizabeth Rodriguez Fielder's "The Revolution Will Be Improvised"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Revolution Will Be Improvised: The Intimacy of Cultural Activism by Elizabeth Rodriguez Fielder.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Revolution Will Be Improvised: The Intimacy of Cultural Activism traces intimate encounters between activists and local people of the civil rights movement through an archive of Black and Brown avant-gardism. In the 1960s, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) activists engaged with people of color working in poor communities to experiment with creative approaches to liberation through theater, media, storytelling, and craft making. With a dearth of resources and an abundance of urgency, SNCC activists improvised new methods of engaging with communities that created possibilities for unexpected encounters through programs such as The Free Southern Theater, El Teatro Campesino, and the Poor People’s Corporation.

Reading the output of these programs, Elizabeth Rodriguez Fielder argues that intimacy-making became an extension of participatory democracy. In doing so, Rodriguez Fielder supplants the success-failure binary for understanding social movements, focusing instead on how care work aligns with creative production. The Revolution Will Be Improvised returns to improvisation’s roots in economic and social necessity and locates it as a core tenet of the aesthetics of obligation, where a commitment to others drives the production and result of creative work. Thus, this book puts forward a methodology to explore the improvised, often ephemeral, works of art activism.

Learn more about The Revolution Will Be Improvised at the University of Michigan Press website.

The Page 99 Test: The Revolution Will Be Improvised.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Alex Kenna's "Burn this Night"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Burn this Night: A Mystery by Alex Kenna.

About the book, from the publisher:

Told in alternating timelines, this gripping mystery about a PI and her quest for answers is full of twists and turns, perfect for fans of Allison Brennan and Gytha Lodge.

Struggling private investigator Kate Myles is shattered to learn her late father isn’t her biological dad. She’s still reeling when she discovers that an unknown distant relative is the prime suspect in a decades-old murder investigation. Trying to convince her to take on the case for free, an old colleague recommends her as an investigator for a recent arson murder in the same small town.

After giving up on a failed acting career, Abby Coburn is starting over as a promising social work student. With her life on the right track, she’s determined to help her brother, Jacob, whose meth addiction triggered a psychotic break and descent into crime. But when Abby dies in a fire that kills two other people and destroys part of the town, the police immediately suspect Jacob.

As the Coburn family grapples with the tragedy, Kate begins unraveling the cold case but finds herself caught in the middle of an emotional minefield. Pretty soon, she discovers that this town is full of dark secrets, and as she comes closer and closer to figuring out the truth, Kate must solve both murders before she becomes the next victim.

Visit Alex Kenna's website.

Q&A with Alex Kenna.

My Book, The Movie: What Meets the Eye.

Writers Read: Alex Kenna.

The Page 69 Test: Burn this Night.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven historical mysteries where political intrigue fuels the plot

Celeste Connally is an Agatha Award nominee and a former freelance writer and editor whose novels include historical mysteries set in Regency-era England and genealogy-themed cozy mysteries set in modern-day Austin, Texas. Whether the mystery is set in past or present, she delights in giving her books a good dose of romance and a few research facts she hopes you’ll find as interesting as she does. Passionate about history and slightly obsessed with period dramas, what Connally loves most is reading and writing about women who don’t always do as they are told.

[The Page 69 Test: Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Lord]

Connally's new novel is All's Fair in Love and Treachery.

At CrimeReads the author tagged "seven historical mysteries... wherein each uses political upheaval or intrigue to add extra suspense to their plots." One title on the list:

James R. Benn – When Hell Struck Twelve (Billy Boyle, book 14)

The war is still raging in Europe in August of 1944, and Boston-born U.S. Army detective Billy Boyle is tasked with hunting a French traitor. Going by the code name Atlantik, the turncoat is charged with giving secret Allied information to the Germans in occupied Paris. Though when it turns out the Allied plans were deliberately leaked to thwart the German advance, Billy and his Polish cohort Kaz then must work with the French Resistance to prevent Atlantik’s capture. With the game proving ever more deadly, Billy and Kaz are forced to walk a fine line of truth and lies in order to keep the Allies from losing both ground, and the war itself.

Read about another title on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Anthony J. Stanonis's "New Orleans Pralines"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: New Orleans Pralines: Plantation Sugar, Louisiana Pecans, and the Marketing of Southern Nostalgia by Anthony J. Stanonis.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Creole praline arrived in New Orleans with the migration of formerly enslaved people fleeing Louisiana plantations after the Civil War. Black women street vendors made a livelihood by selling a range of homemade foods, including pralines, to Black dockworkers and passersby. The praline offered a path to financial independence, and even its ingredients spoke of a history of Black ingenuity: an enslaved horticulturist played a key role in domesticating the pecan and creating the grafted tree that would form the basis of Louisiana’s pecan orchards.

By the 1880s, however, white New Orleans writers such as Grace King and Henry Castellanos had begun to recast the history of the praline in a nostalgic mode that harkened back to the prewar South. In their telling, the praline was brought to New Orleans by an aristocratic refugee of the French Revolution. Black street vendors were depicted not as innovative entrepreneurs but as loyal servants still faithful to their former enslavers. The rise of cultivated, shelled, and cheaply bought pecans―as opposed to the foraged pecans that early praline sellers had depended on―allowed better-resourced white women to move into the praline-selling market, especially as tourism emerged as a key New Orleans industry after the 1910s.

Indeed, the praline became central to the marketing of New Orleans. Conventions often hired Black women to play the “praline mammy” role for out-of-towners, while stores sold pralines with mammy imagery, in boxes designed to look like cotton bales. After World War II, pralines went national with items like praline-flavored ice cream (1950s) and praline liqueur (1980s). Yet as the civil rights struggle persisted, the imagery of the praline mammy was recognized as an offensive caricature.

As it uncovers the history of a sweet dessert made of sugar and pecans, New Orleans Pralines tells a fascinating story of Black entrepreneurship, toxic white nostalgia, and the rise of tourism in the Crescent City.

Visit Anthony J. Stanonis's website.

The Page 99 Test: New Orleans Pralines.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Sariah Wilson

From my Q&A with Sariah Wilson, author of A Tribute of Fire:

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

The title ended up surprising me. I had chosen it because my female main character’s battle master tells her that in the past, an enemy nation demanded a tribute of earth and water (as it signified total surrender) and he tells her to give them a tribute of fire and steel instead. (The book was originally called A Tribute of Fire and Steel but the “and steel” was cut because it was deemed to be too similar to another book my publisher had put out.) After I had submitted the book to my editor I realized that the FMC is the tribute of fire herself since she bribes her way into a death trial in order to save her nation. It works on a couple of different levels, totally unintentionally!

What's in a name?

The names of all the characters in this book were very, very...[read on]

Visit Sariah Wilson's website.

The Page 69 Test: A Tribute of Fire.

My Book, The Movie: A Tribute of Fire.

Q&A with Sariah Wilson.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top nonfiction books about history’s greatest mysteries

At Mental Floss Jennifer Byrne tagged ten gripping nonfiction books about history’s greatest mysteries. One title on the list:

Ghost Ship: The Mysterious True Story of the Mary Celeste, by Brian Hicks

Here’s more good news for True Detective fans who aren’t quite ready to commence their cold turkey withdrawal from season four: Lopez has also cited the Mary Celeste as one of the inspirations for “Night Country.”

For those not yet totally obsessed with ghost ships, the Mary Celeste was a 100-foot brigantine found in December of 1872 floating aimlessly through the North Atlantic. The undamaged, two-masted vessel was fully stocked (with 1700 barrels of raw alcohol, no less) and completely abandoned, with no trace of the captain, his wife, their 2-year old daughter, or the ship’s crew.

In Ghost Ship, award-winning journalist Brian Hicks digs into the spooky tale and offers his theory as to the baffling disappearance. In an interesting side note, the ghost ship was so intriguing to a young ship’s physician named Arthur Conan Doyle that he reportedly quit his profession and committed himself to creating a fictional detective who solved just about every mind-boggling mystery that ever came his way. We’re pretty sure if the Mary Celeste could talk, she’d say “you’re welcome.”

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Ashley Lawson's "On Edge"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: On Edge: Gender and Genre in the Work of Shirley Jackson, Patricia Highsmith, and Leigh Brackett by Ashley Lawson.

About the book, from the publisher:

Ashley Lawson’s On Edge presents a new picture of postwar American literature, arguing that biases against genre fiction have unfairly disadvantaged the legacies of authors like Shirley Jackson, Patricia Highsmith, and Leigh Brackett. Each of these authors deftly navigated a male-dominated postwar publishing world without compromising their values. Their category-defying treatment of both gender roles and genre classifications created a thematic suspense in their work that spoke to the tension of an age saturated with nervousness stemming from quotidian fears and from the prospect of nuclear annihilation. Lawson engages with foundational voices in American literature, genre theory, and feminism to argue that, by merging the dominant mode of literary realism with fantastical or heightened elements, Brackett, Jackson, and Highsmith were able to respond to the big questions of their era with startling and unnerving answers that perfectly illustrate the feelings of suspense that defined the “Age of Anxiety.” By elevating genre play to a marker of literary skill, Lawson contends, we can secure for these writers a more prominent place within the canon of midcentury American literature, as well as open the door for the recovery of their similarly innovative peers.

Learn more about On Edge at the Ohio State University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: On Edge.

--Marshal Zeringue

Marshall Fine’s "The Autumn of Ruth Winters," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Autumn of Ruth Winters: A Novel by Marshall Fine.

The entry begins:

The Autumn of Ruth Winters focuses on three central characters. Ruth is 68-year-old widow who has lived an unfulfilling life, punctuated by her fractious relationship with her younger sister Veronica. But Ruth is forced to re-engage with her sister when Veronica suffers a health crisis—at the same time that Ruth is corresponding with a high-school classmate and crush, Martin, who is coming to town for their fiftieth high school reunion.

Ruth is someone who deals with her constant social anxiety by being stand-offish and even snappish, while Veronica is someone who has always been able to ask for just what she wants in life, and usually got it. Martin is a bit of a dark horse, someone remembered fondly in flashback who turns out to be even better in person, even after fifty years.

If you’re casting any movie about a woman of a certain age like Ruth, the first choice is always going to be Meryl Streep, who I believe would be lovely as this lonely, repressed character. But I could just as easily see Mary Steenburgen, Alison Janney, Jean Smart, Sigourney Weaver or...[read on]

Follow Marshall Fine on Facebook.

My Book, The Movie: The Autumn of Ruth Winters.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine books about the Spanish Civil War

Julian Zabalbeascoa's fiction has appeared in American Short Fiction, The Gettysburg Review, Glimmer Train, One Story, and Ploughshares, among other journals. He divides his time between Boston and the Basque Country in Spain.

What We Tried to Bury Grows Here is Zabalbeascoa's first novel.

At Electric Lit the author tagged nine books -- memoirs and novels that can be found in English -- about Spain’s bloody civil war that served as a dress rehearsal for World War II. One title on the list:

Savage Coast by Muriel Rukeyser

In Rodoreda’s novel, the Spanish Civil War creeps toward the page. That is not the case in the poet Muriel Rukeyser’s novel Savage Coast. It manifests as an explosion in time that does not literally derail the train that Helen, the novel’s protagonist, is on but stalls it on its tracks. Helen is traveling to Barcelona to cover as a reporter what would have been the People’s Olympiad, an alternative to the 1936 Summer Olympics that was to take place in Nazi Germany the following month. Those countries and athletes boycotting the Nazis were to participate in the People’s Olympiad in Barcelona. German exiles were among those who set to compete in the games, and at the start of the novel Helen has just had sex with one of them, Hans, who will soon join the International Brigades, as so many of the athletes would, to fight against the fascist-backed coup attempt. Helen is witness to the first days of the war, from the perspective of revolutionary Barcelona, the epicenter of Catalonia, a distinct area of Spain that would be unmatched in its concentration of revolutionary zealots. The novel, which plays with genres and was unpublished during Rukeyser’s lifetime, is one of awakenings – sexual, political – to a greater sense of a woman’s personhood in a teetering world desperate for change.

Read about another entry on the list.

Savage Coast is among Sarah Watling's ten top neglected books about the Spanish Civil War.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Lindsay Weinberg's "Smart University"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Smart University: Student Surveillance in the Digital Age by Lindsay Weinberg.

About the book, from the publisher:

How surveillance perpetuates long-standing injustices woven into the fabric of higher education.

Higher education increasingly relies on digital surveillance in the United States. Administrators, consulting firms, and education technology vendors are celebrating digital tools as a means of ushering in the age of "smart universities." By digitally monitoring and managing campus life, institutions can supposedly run their services more efficiently, strengthen the quality of higher education, and better prepare students for future roles in the digital economy. Yet in practice, these initiatives often perpetuate austerity, structural racism, and privatization at public universities under the guise of solving higher education's most intractable problems.

In Smart University, Lindsay Weinberg evaluates how this latest era of tech solutions and systems in our schools impacts students' abilities to access opportunities and exercise autonomy on their campuses. Using historical and textual analysis of administrative discourses, university policies, conference proceedings, grant solicitations, news reports, tech industry marketing materials, and product demonstrations, Weinberg argues that these more recent transformations are best understood as part of a longer history of universities supporting the development of technologies that reproduce racial and economic injustice on their campuses and in their communities.

Aimed at anyone concerned with the future of surveillance on higher education, Smart University empowers readers with the knowledge, tools, and frameworks for contesting and reimagining the role of digital technology on university campuses.

Learn more about Smart University at the Johns Hopkins University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Smart University.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Elizabeth Hobbs

From my Q&A with Elizabeth Hobbs, author of Misery Hates Company: A Novel:

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

A great deal! Misery Hates Company is set on a small—and very real—island just off the north shore of Massachusetts, Great Misery Island. My heroine finds herself unwillingly drawn into family intrigue and murder on the island, so it is a lovely little shorthand for the plot of the novel!

What’s in a name?

I love naming characters. There is something lovely and powerful and delightful about finding just the right name to enhance a story and aid in the reader’s understanding of the character. Since Misery Hates Company is set in New England, I plucked my names...[read on]

Visit Elizabeth Hobbs's website.

Q&A with Elizabeth Hobbs.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Elise Hart Kipness's "Dangerous Play"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Dangerous Play (Kate Green, book 2) by Elise Hart Kipness.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the author of Lights Out comes sports reporter Kate Green’s next harrowing story, where a famous former teammate is found murdered, and the only way to close the case is to open up old wounds.

After a tumultuous murder case that almost cost more than her job, sports reporter Kate Green is back on assignment covering women’s Olympic soccer. Between her experience with athletic stardom and days playing with Savannah Baker, head coach of the USA team, Kate is sure to get the story that will reestablish her career.

She just didn’t expect that story to involve murder.

When famous jewelry designer Alexa Kane is found dead in the locker room, Kate’s promising future screeches to a halt as her past resurfaces. Alexa played with Kate and Savannah on the U.S. Youth National Team, but there was no reason for her to be at the stadium now.

Kate’s investigation puts her in close contact with her estranged father, an NYPD detective who has his own past to answer for. As their secrets collide, Kate will have to decide which ones to keep―and which ones to reveal to stop the killer.

Visit Elise Hart Kipness's website.

The Page 69 Test: Lights Out.

Q&A with Elise Hart Kipness.

The Page 69 Test: Dangerous Play.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven chilling novels featuring young people taking charge of their lives

Marie Tierney was a finalist in the Daily Mail First Novel competition. When she isn’t researching criminal history, she writes plays and poetry. Born and raised in Birmingham, England, Tierney dedicated almost twenty years to working in education before becoming a full-time writer. She lives in East Anglia with her husband and son.

Tierney's new novel is Deadly Animals.

At CrimeReads the author tagged seven books that "feature young people who have taken responsibility for their own lives when the adults around them have abandoned or betrayed them." One title on the list:

Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller

In the summer of 1976, eight-year-old Peggy Hilcott is torn away from her peaceful life in London, kidnapped by her survivalist father James who believes that the end of the world is nigh. He takes them to a cabin in the middle of a German forest which is off-grid and miles from civilisation. For nine years, Peggy grows up learning how to survive in the wilderness while becoming increasingly lonely and her father becomes slowly insane. This is a bleak and beautifully written novel with a shocking revelation conclusion but hope is always present in the pragmatic yet imaginative Peggy.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Page 69 Test: Our Endless Numbered Days.

--MarshaL Zeringue

Sariah Wilson's "A Tribute of Fire," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: A Tribute of Fire by Sariah Wilson.

The entry begins:

This question is a bit difficult for me because these characters become so real to me that I can’t imagine any actor in Hollywood ever doing them justice. I definitely drew inspiration from Reylo (the Star Wars pairing of Kylo Ren/Ben Solo and Rey), so I can easily envision Adam Driver and Daisy Ridley playing these parts—the problem is that they’re too old for these characters (although I still think they’d both do an amazing job playing Jason and Lia). I am not as familiar with younger actors , but I think Xolo Maridueña and Ariana Greenblatt would do an excellent job.

Choosing a director would be incredibly easy. I would pick...[read on]

Visit Sariah Wilson's website.

The Page 69 Test: A Tribute of Fire.

My Book, The Movie: A Tribute of Fire.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top nonfiction books on history’s greatest medical mysteries

At Mental Floss Marla Mackoul tagged ten books that "delve into some of the wildest moments in medical history." One title on the list:

Mr. Humble & Dr. Butcher: A Monkey’s Head, the Pope’s Neuroscientist, and the Quest to Transplant the Soul by Brandy Schillace

Those interested in a bit of real-life horror need look no further than the work of neurosurgeon Dr. Robert White. As a two-time Nobel Prize nominee, Dr. White was famous for his groundbreaking research into treating head trauma and spinal cord injuries. His brain research was considered cutting-edge, life-saving work.

But Dr. White was researching during the early days of the Cold War, when nearly every scientific advance was considered a race against time. Surgeons across the globe were competing to be the first to transplant vital organs like kidneys and hearts in a rivalry reminiscent of the Space Race. On the other hand, Dr. White dreamed bigger: he wanted to transplant the human brain.

In 1970, he conducted his most infamous experiment: a nine-day, monkey-to-monkey head transplant in a Cleveland hospital lab. Mr. Humble and Dr. Butcher reveals the eerie story of Dr. White’s Frankenstein-like research, all the while grappling with the same question that tormented him: where in the body is the human soul?

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Margarette Lincoln's "Perfection"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Perfection: 400 Years of Women's Quest for Beauty by Margarette Lincoln.

About the book, from the publisher:

A colourful account of women’s health, beauty, and cosmetic aids, from stays and corsets to today’s viral trends

Victorian women ate arsenic to achieve an ideal, pale complexion, while in the 1790s balloon corsets were all the rage, designed to make the wearer appear pregnant. Women of the eighteenth century applied blood from a black cat’s tail to problem skin, while doctors in the 1880s promoted woollen underwear to keep colds at bay. Beautification and the pursuit of health may seem all-consuming today, but their history is long and fantastically varied.

Ranging across the last four hundred years, Margarette Lincoln examines women’s health and beauty in fascinating detail. Through first-hand accounts and reports of physicians, quacks, and advertising, Lincoln captures women’s lived experience of consuming beauty products, and the excitement—and trauma—of adopting the latest fashion trends.

Considering everything from body sculpture, diet, and exercise to skin, teeth, and hair, Perfection is a vibrant account of women’s body-fashioning—and shows how intimately these practices are related to community and identity throughout history.

Visit Margarette Lincoln's website.

The Page 99 Test: London and the Seventeenth Century: The Making of the World's Greatest City.

The Page 99 Test: Perfection.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with James Tucker

From my Q&A with James Tucker, author of The Paris Escape: A Novel:

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

Various titles work for novels, but in the case of The Paris Escape I wanted a title that included the word 'Paris', as that is the setting of the story and one that fascinates readers all over the world. And I chose 'Escape' because it has a double meaning that becomes clear during the course of the story: Henry and Laura are escaping from the rules and restrictions of the American Midwest in the 1930s, and later, they must escape from Paris when their lives are at stake.

What's in a name?

Finding the right name for a character...[read on]

Visit James Tucker's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Holdouts.

The Page 69 Test: The Holdouts.

Q&A with James Tucker.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Tessa Wegert's "The Coldest Case"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Coldest Case (A Shana Merchant Novel, 6) by Tessa Wegert.

About the book, from the publisher:

News of a missing Instagram celebrity brings Senior Investigator Shana Merchant to a frozen island community of just eight people. When the visit turns deadly, her hunt for a killer collides with a cold case she'll never forget . . .

It's February in the Thousand Islands and, cut off from civilization by endless ice, eight people are overwintering on tiny, remote Running Pine. Six year-rounders, used to the hard work, isolation and freezing temperatures . . . and two newcomers: social media stars Cary and Sylvie, whose account documenting their year on the island is garnering thousands of followers, and thousands of dollars' worth of luxury gifts.

The long-term islanders will tell you Running Pine can be perilous - especially for city slickers who'll do anything to get the perfect shot. So when Cary doesn't return from ice fishing one morning, his neighbors fear the worst.

With the clock ticking to find the missing influencer, a police team is dispatched to take the dangerous journey to the island . . . but Sylvie, his frantic partner, will only talk to one person: newlywed Senior Investigator Shana Merchant.

Where is Cary - and what is it that Sylvie's not sharing? With aspects of the case reminding Shana of an unsolved homicide from her past that haunts her still, she risks her ownelp. But little does she know that a storm is coming - and if she doesn't solve both crimes soon, she may become the island's next victim . . .

The latest taut, thrilling small-town mystery featuring New York State senior investigator Shana Merchant, and set against the beautiful backdrop of the Thousand Islands, is perfect for fans of Agatha Christie and Ruth Ware.

Visit Tessa Wegert's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Dead Season.

The Page 69 Test: The Dead Season.

Q&A with Tessa Wegert.

The Page 69 Test: Dead Wind.

Writers Read: Tessa Wegert (April 2022).

Writers Read: Tessa Wegert (December 2022).

The Page 69 Test: Devils at the Door.

The Page 69 Test: The Coldest Case.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven speculative feminism books written by women

Vanessa Saunders is a writer from the San Francisco Bay Area. Her experimental novel, The Flat Woman, won the Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize and was published by Fiction Collective Two and University of Alabama Press. Her writing has appeared in magazines such as Seneca Review, Los Angeles Review, Passages North, and other journals. Saunders currently works as a Professor of Practice at Loyola University in New Orleans.

At Electric Lit she tagged seven works of speculative feminism written by women. One title on the list:

House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende

House of the Spirits is a feminist, socialist work of magical realism. Modeled after Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, Isabel Allende’s novel follows four generations of the Trueba family in post-colonial Chile. Some of the book’s characters are thought to be based on real-life figures, such as Salvador Allende, a prominent Chilean socialist, and former president, as well as Pablo Neruda, poet and senator of the Chilean communist party.

This book blends a story of a country’s history with the story of a family, focusing on the magical and the fantastic like One Hundred Years of Solitude. But, unlike its predecessor, House of the Spirits focuses on the relationships between women: mother and daughter, sisters-in-law, and grandmother and granddaughter. Using a roving, omniscient point-of-review, the book highlights the impact of toxic masculinity on the women of the Trueba family.

Read about another entry on the list.

The House of the Spirits is among 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

Pg. 99: Erik Kenyon's "Philosophy at the Gymnasium"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Philosophy at the Gymnasium by Erik Kenyon.

About the book, from the publisher:

Philosophy at the Gymnasium returns Greek moral philosophy to its original context—the gyms of Athens—to understand how training for the body sparked training for the mind. The result is an engaging inroad to Greek thought that wrestles with big questions about life, happiness, and education, while providing fresh perspectives on standing scholarly debates.

In Philosophy at the Gymnasium, Erik Kenyon reveals the egalitarian spirit of the ancient gym, in which clothes—and with them, social markers—are shed at the door, leaving individuals to compete based on their physical and intellectual merits alone. The work opens with Socratic dialogues set in gyms that call for reform in character education. It explores Plato's moral and political philosophy through the lens of mental and civic health. And it holds up Olympic victors as Aristotle's model for the life of happiness through training.

Visit Erik Kenyon's website.

The Page 99 Test: Philosophy at the Gymnasium.

--Marshal Zeringue