Q&A with Tony Wirt

From my Q&A with Tony Wirt, author of Pike Island: A Thriller:

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

Most of the excitement in Pike Island takes place on Pike Island, so I think the title puts readers right in the middle of the action. I always thought the name of the island would be a great title for the book, unfortunately, the real place I set this book is called Mystery Island, and that sounds way too much like something out of an episode of Scooby Doo. So my agent, my editor, and I put our heads together to think up a new name that sounded both realistic and...[read on]

Visit Tony Wirt's website.

The Page 69 Test: Pike Island.

Q&A with Tony Wirt.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Timothy Jay Smith reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Timothy Jay Smith, author of Istanbul Crossing.

His entry begins:

Rabih Alameddine is no stranger to the LGBTQ literary community. In 2017, his novel, The Angel of History, won the Lammy Award for Best Gay Novel, and he’s a frequent essayist-cum- philosopher on subjects ranging from HIV/AIDS to the emerging status of gay writers and the role we play in world literature.

Somewhat belatedly, I learned about his book, The Wrong End of the Telescope, published in 2021. In it, a trans Lebanese doctor (living in Chicago with her wife) travels to the Greek island of Lesbos for a short stay to help refugees – primarily Syrian – who arrive by crossing a narrow but treacherous channel from Turkey.

The setting intrigued me for more than the obvious reason that it’s set in Greece. For over twenty years, I’ve gone every year to Lesbos and know exactly where Alameddine has set his novel. At the height the refugee crisis (2015-2017), I assisted the relief efforts in many capacities, so I was especially curious how he would describe and characterize the situation.

Alameddine’s portrayal of the place, people, and situation is perfect. For anyone who wants to know how the refugee crisis played out in terms of the interactions between volunteers, international aid agencies, and local villagers, Telescope captures it – including cringe-worthy moments when...[read on]

Visit Timothy Jay Smith's website.

Writers Read: Timothy Jay Smith (May 2019).

My Book, The Movie: The Fourth Courier.

The Page 69 Test: The Fourth Courier.

Q&A with Timothy Jay Smith.

The Page 69 Test: Fire on the Island.

The Page 69 Test: Istanbul Crossing.

Writers Read: Timothy Jay Smith (October 2024).

Writers Read: Timothy Jay Smith.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven books channeling the mythic horror of girlhood

Tyler Wetherall is a journalist and author. Her first book, No Way Home: A Memoir of Life on the Run, came out in 2018, following her childhood spent on the run with her fugitive father. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, British Vogue, The Guardian, National Geographic, LitHub, Vice, and Condé Nast Traveler, amongst others.

Wetherall's new novel, her debut, is Amphibian.

At Electric Lit she tagged seven books that "borrow from the toolbox of magic realism and horror to convey the experience of girlhood in all its delight and barbarity." One title on the list:

The Curators by Maggie Nye

Another polyvocal entry, this historical fantasy is told mostly by a group of five teenage Jewish girls obsessed—as was the rest of Atlanta in 1915—with the real life lynching of Jewish factory superintendent Leo Frank for the murder of Mary Phagan. This public trauma is experienced through their adolescent lens, and Frank is mythologized as an object of the girls’ hungry desires. Urgent and lyrical, the novel is as much about this crime—with all its relevance today—as it is about girlhood and the power of devotion. Determined to keep his memory alive, they use dirt from the garden to create a golem in his image, but then––brilliantly––their golem starts to speak.

Read about another entry on the list.

My Book, The Movie: The Curators.

Q&A with Maggie Nye.

The Page 69 Test: The Curators.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Serene J. Khader's "Faux Feminism"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Faux Feminism: Why We Fall for White Feminism and How We Can Stop by Serene Khader.

About the book, from the publisher:

For readers of Hood Feminism and Against White Feminism

An incisive examination of why the pillars of feminism have eroded—and how all women, not just the #girlbosses, can rebuild them

After over 175 years, the feminist movement, now in its fourth wave, is at risk of collapsing on its eroding foundation. In Faux Feminism, political philosopher Serene Khader advocates for another feminism—one that doesn’t overwhelmingly serve white, affluent #girlbosses. With empathy, passion, and wit, Khader invites the reader to join her as she excavates the movement’s history and draws a blueprint for a more inclusive and resilient future.

A feminist myth buster, Khader begins by deconstructing “faux feminisms.” Thought to be the pillars of good feminism, they may appeal to many but, in truth, leave most women behind. Khader identifies these traps that white feminism lays for us all, asking readers to think critically about

–The Freedom Myth: The overarching misconception that feminism is about personal freedom rather than collective equality
–The Individualism Myth: The pervasive idea that feminism aims to free individual women from social expectations
–The Culture Myth: The harmful misconception that “other” cultures restrict women’s liberation
–The Restriction Myth: The flawed belief that feminism is a fight against social restrictions
–The Judgment Myth: The fallacy of celebrating women’s choices without first interrogating the privileges afforded or denied to the women

In later chapters, Khader draws on global and intersectional feminist lessons of the past and present to imagine feminism’s future. She pays particular attention to women of color, especially those in the Global South. Khader recounts their cultural and political stories of building a more inclusive framework in their societies. These are the women, she argues, from whom today’s feminists can learn.

Khader’s critical inquiry begets a new vision of feminism: one that tackles inequality at the societal, not individual, level and is ultimately rooted in community.

Visit Serene Khader's website.

The Page 99 Test: Faux Feminism.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Tony Wirt's "Pike Island"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Pike Island: A Thriller by Tony Wirt.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the bestselling author of Just Stay Away comes a haunting thriller about a rising politician whose shadowy past threatens to end his career―and his future shot at the presidency.

What happens at the cabin stays at the cabin. Right?

Andrew Harrison “Harry” Leonard is destined for politics. Getting his start on the Rochester City Council, he quickly rose to become the youngest representative in Congress. Now the up-and-comer from Minnesota is on the brink of something big. If all goes well, he’ll be in perfect position to aim for the presidency.

Then a postcard arrives, blank except for the name on the address: Andy Leonard. Harry hasn’t used that name since high school. Krista Walsh, Harry’s chief of staff, recognizes his old moniker, and when he dodges questions about it, she wonders what he’s trying to hide. She soon discovers the lake pictured on the postcard holds secrets too.

Krista’s investigation into Harry’s past uncovers the truth of what happened one fateful teenage summer. But as disturbing details come to light, how far will Krista go to keep Harry’s career―and her own―headed to the top?

Visit Tony Wirt's website.

The Page 69 Test: Pike Island.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top suspense novels featuring mysterious mansions

Tom Ryan is an award winning author, screenwriter and producer. His YA mystery Keep This to Yourself was the winner of the 2020 ITW Thriller Award for Best YA Thriller, the 2020 Arthur Ellis Award for Best YA Crime Book, and the 2021 Ann Connor Brimer Award, and is currently being adapted for television. His followup YA mystery I Hope You're Listening was the winner of the 2021 Lambda “Lammy” Award for Best LGBTQ Mystery. He was a 2017 Lambda Literary Fellow in Young Adult Fiction.

Ryan's new novel, his adult mystery debut, is The Treasure Hunters Club.

At CrimeReads the author tagged six "fantastic novels featuring creepy houses that will keep you on the edge of your seat." One title on the list:

Home Before Dark by Riley Sager

Riley Sager’s Home Before Dark follows Maggie Holt, who returns to Baneberry Hall, the Victorian mansion her family fled when she was a child. Her father went on to write a bestselling book about their time in the house, claiming it was haunted, but Maggie has always been skeptical of his account. When she moves back to renovate the estate, she begins to experience strange occurrences that mirror the events in her father’s book, leading her to question whether the house is truly haunted or if something else is going on. As Maggie delves deeper into the truth about what’s going on in Baneberry Hall, Sager expertly balances psychological suspense with supernatural elements, creating a narrative that constantly keeps the reader guessing. The atmosphere in Baneberry Hall is thick with mystery, making it one of the most unsettling modern creepy houses in fiction.

Read about another title on the list.

Home Before Dark is among Chanel Cleeton's nine novels about grand homes that are filled with secrets, Philip Fracassi's ten best thrillers with supernatural elements, Ana Reyes's six top books with embedded narratives, James S. Murray's five top books about women fighting their way out and Karen Dionne's eight top thrillers that turn home into a place of mortal danger.

The Page 69 Test: Home Before Dark.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Travis Vogan's "LeRoy Neiman"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: LeRoy Neiman: The Life of America’s Most Beloved and Belittled Artist by Travis Vogan.

About the book, from the publisher:

The untold story of an American hustler who upset the art world and became a pop culture icon, cutting a swath across twentieth-century history and culture.

LeRoy Neiman—the cigar-smoking and mustachioed artist famous for his Playboy illustrations, sports paintings, and brash interviews—stood among the twentieth century’s most famous, wealthy, and polarizing artists. His stylish renderings of musicians, athletes, and sporting events captivated fans but baffled critics, who accused Neiman of debasing art with popular culture. Neiman cashed in on the controversy, and his extraordinary popularity challenged the norms of what art should be, where it belongs, and who should have access to it.

The story of a Depression-era ragamuffin–turned–army chef–turned–celebrity artist, Neiman’s biography is a rollicking ride through twentieth-century American history, punctuated by encounters with the likes of Muhammad Ali, Frank Sinatra, Joe Namath, and Andy Warhol. In the whirlwind of his life, Neiman himself once remarked that even he didn’t know who he really was—but, he said, the fame and money that came his way made it all worth it. In this first biography of the captivating and infamous man, Travis Vogan hunts for the real Neiman amid the America that made him.

Learn more about LeRoy Neiman at the University of Chicago Press website.

The Page 99 Test: LeRoy Neiman.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with J. T. Ellison

From my Q&A with J.T. Ellison, author of A Very Bad Thing:

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

I think it’s a rather straightforward title, quite literal and easy to understand, as it sets the stakes for the whole story from the jump. It was not the first title I entertained—mine rarely are—but it was one of the first lines I wrote for the book. It starts with a letter. My darling daughter. Many years ago, I did a very bad thing. Even I wanted to know what that very bad thing was, and what I thought wasn’t what it ended up being. So I tricked myself! Columbia Jones is an author, and she’s killed in the opening pages of the book. The letter gives us a peek into her mind, one of the few we get, as the story revolves around the people closest to her, the ones with...[read on]

Visit J.T. Ellison's website and follow her on Twitter or 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.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Robert Dugoni reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Robert Dugoni, author of Beyond Reasonable Doubt.

His entry begins:

At present I’m reading Barbed Wire Heart by Martha Salinas, a writing student of The Novel Writing Intensive. It’s a coming of age story of a poor girl who is a piano prodigy in the oil fields of Texas. Her father is abusive to his wife and his four kids and her mother takes off to get help with drug and alcohol addiction leaving Starlene to care for her and her three younger siblings. The voice in this story is so authentic and real, it just breaks my heart. It is a tremendous story by a soon to be published author.

I’m also reading Bad Liar by Tami Hoag. It's a masterful mystery of a murder victim found at the end of a country road in the Bayou, hands and face...[read on]

About Beyond Reasonable Doubt, from the publisher:

A master manipulator accused of murder. An attorney sworn to defend her. Keera Duggan returns in a riveting novel of suspense by New York Times bestselling author Robert Dugoni.

When Jenna Bernstein, disgraced wunderkind CEO of a controversial biotech company, is accused of murdering her former partner and lover, she turns to Seattle attorney Keera Duggan to defend her. Keera is more than a master chess player who brings her intuitive moves into court―she’s Jenna’s childhood friend. But considering their history, Keera knows that where Jenna goes, trouble follows.

Five years earlier, Keera’s father successfully defended Jenna when she was tried for the killing of her company’s chief scientist who threatened to go public with allegations of corporate fraud. Keera knows Jenna too well. When she was a kid, Keera saw Jenna for what she was: a manipulative and frighteningly controlling sociopath. Now, with only circumstantial evidence against Jenna, Keera is willing to bury any trepidation she might have to defend a woman she believes, this time, to be innocent.

As the investigation gets underway and disturbing questions arise, Keera puts her trust in a client who swears that this time she's telling nothing but the truth. If this is all just another devious game, Keera might be working to set a murderer free.

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.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine top thrillers featuring women on the run

At Likewise Turner Gray & Likewise Pix tagged nine "tantalizing thrillers that delve deep into the intense journeys of women who find themselves fleeing from danger, unraveling mysteries, and discovering unexpected secrets along the way." One title on the list:

In Thomas Perry's "The Left-Handed Twin", Jane Whitefield is a master of making people vanish. Her latest mission involves protecting a woman from her vengeful ex-boyfriend and the Russian mob. As Jane navigates the urban jungle of the Northeast, she employs her skills to outsmart relentless pursuers in a suspenseful tale that tests her abilities and convictions. With high tension and an engaging plot, this thriller captivates from start to finish.

Read about another thriller on the list.

The Page 69 Test: The Left-Handed Twin.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Greg Barnhisel's "Code Name Puritan"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Code Name Puritan: Norman Holmes Pearson at the Nexus of Poetry, Espionage, and American Power by Greg Barnhisel.

About the book, from the publisher:

An insightful biography of an unassuming literary scholar—and spy—who transformed postwar American culture.

Although his impact on twentieth-century American cultural life was profound, few people know the story of Norman Holmes Pearson. Pearson’s life embodied the Cold War alliances among US artists, scholars, and the national-security state that coalesced after World War II. As a Yale professor and editor, he helped legitimize the study of American culture and shaped the public’s understanding of literary modernism—significantly, the work of women poets such as Hilda Doolittle and Gertrude Stein. At the same time, as a spy, recruiter, and cultural diplomat, he connected the academy, the State Department, and even the CIA.

In Code Name Puritan, Greg Barnhisel maps Pearson’s life, from his childhood injury that led to a visible, permanent disability to his wartime counterespionage work neutralizing the Nazis’ spy network to his powerful role in the cultural and political heyday sometimes called the American Century. Written with clarity and informed by meticulous research, Barnhisel’s revelatory portrait of Pearson details how his unique experiences shaped his beliefs about the American character, from the Puritans onward.

Learn more about Code Name Puritan at the University of Chicago Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Code Name Puritan.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five essential books for understanding Native American history

Kathleen DuVal is a Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her field of expertise is early American history, particularly interactions among Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans on the borderlands of North America.

Her books include Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution and Native Nations: A Millennium in North America.

At Lit Hub DuVal tagged five books that "go deeply into Native American history, and all are written by Native authors." One title on the list:

Brenda J. Child, Holding Our World Together: Ojibwe Women and the Survival of Community

Women rarely get their deserved place in history books, but sometimes a book, by focusing on women, can change how we see the whole history. Child, a University of Minnesota professor and a citizen of the Red Lake Ojibwe, tells how Ojibwe women shaped Native American life through the ages. As we learn their stories, we understand that women “held their world together” even as the forces of colonialism tried to destroy Native families and nations.

Read about another title on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Sung J. Woo's "Lines," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Lines by Sung J. Woo.

The entry begins:

I imagine my fifth novel, Lines, would be a welcome challenge to actors, because the four main characters would each get to play two very different versions of themselves. The stars are Joshua the writer and Abby the painter, who in one "line" are married and miserable (which I call Together), while in the other line, they meet for the first time five years later and maybe-sort-of fall in love (which I call Apart). In both lines, they interact with the same two people, Marlene for Joshua and Ted for Abby. In Together, Marlene is Joshua's "work wife"; Ted and Abby share an office and are friendly. In Apart, Josh and Marlene are married; Abby and Ted are about to be.

In Together, Joshua is bitter about everything -- his lack of money, his hatred of his job, his disappointment at his fledgling writing career. Here, Abby unhappily paints large canvases to make money, and she very unhappily lives with her angry tyrant of a husband.

In Apart, Josh and Marlene share a comfortable life, and even though Josh's writing is no more successful than in Together, his financial situation smooths out any and all wrinkles. Here, Abby and Ted are also well off so she has the freedom to paint her true passion, miniature paintings.

In both lines, Abby becomes pregnant. The novel spans nine months. That's not a coincidence!

Okay -- so, whom to cast...

Joshua Kozlov - Jonah Hill. I was actually thinking of him when writing this book. A few years back he starred in a limited TV show called Maniac with Emma Stone, and he showed some impressive dramatic chops.

Abby Kim...[read on]

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.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Marilyn Simon Rothstein's "Who Loves You Best"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Who Loves You Best: A Novel by Marilyn Simon Rothstein.

About the book, from the publisher:

A woman drops everything to spend more time with her grandchild, only to discover new truths about herself. A humorous, heartfelt, feel-good novel from the author of Crazy to Leave You.

For Jodi Wexler, a Florida doctor with a flourishing practice, only one thing’s missing: the chance to spend more time getting to know her eight-year-old granddaughter, Macallan.

When Jodi’s restauranteur daughter asks her to watch Macallan in the Berkshires while she takes care of some business out of town, Jodi can’t say yes fast enough. Neither Jodi’s podiatric patients nor her just-fired, suddenly retired husband can keep her away. But when Jodi arrives, she discovers she’s not the only grandma at Lisa’s house. Lisa’s mother-in-law, Di―a hard-nosed real estate agent―has moved into the house. What’s more, there’s Grannie Annie, the twenty-seven-year-old girlfriend of Lisa’s oddball father-in-law. They’re not the only surprises. Lisa’s marriage is faltering even as her new restaurant is taking off.

As the competition for Macallan’s attention among the three “grandmas” increases, Lisa drops a bomb about her life that changes everything. Under pressure, and determined to help her daughter, Jodi must choose her next step. Her decision surprises everyone―Jodi, most of all.

Visit Marilyn Simon Rothstein's website.

The Page 69 Test: Who Loves You Best.

--Marshal Zeringue

Third reading: D.W. Buffa on "A Tale of Two Cities"

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 Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities. It begins:

Two of the most famous lines Charles Dickens wrote, two of the most famous lines in the English language, are the first and the last sentences of A Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” And, “It is a far, far better thing I do than I have ever done.” Both lines are connected to the the events of the French Revolution, which, along with the American Revolution, changed the world forever, a revolution which is now celebrated as a new birth of freedom, but which, at the time, and for a great many years after, was seen as the end of civilized life. Charles Dickens saw it as both.

The opening line, that remarkable first sentence, is not the kind of sentence taught today in writing classes; the first sentence is a whole paragraph:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epic of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present, that some of the noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

In this, the “year of Our Lord 1775,” while Louis XVI was safely on the throne of France, a young boy was sentenced to have his hands cut off, his tongue torn out with pincers and his body burned alive, “because he had not kneeled down in the rain to do honor to a dirty procession of monks which passed within his view, at a distance of some fifty or sixty yards.” Death was a remedy for crime, or rather for criminals; “not that it did the least good in the way of prevention…but, it cleared off (as to this world) the trouble of each particular case….” It was also a popular form of entertainment, and not just in France. In England, Dickens explains, people paid to see “the play at the Old Bailey.” Someone is asked what...[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: Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Michael Soffer's "Our Nazi"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Our Nazi: An American Suburb’s Encounter with Evil by Michael Soffer.

About the book, from the publisher:

The first book to lay bare the life of a Nazi camp guard who settled in a Chicago suburb and to explore how his community and others responded to discoveries of Nazis in their midst.

Reinhold Kulle seemed like the perfect school employee. But in 1982, as his retirement neared, his long-concealed secret came to light. The chief custodian at Oak Park and River Forest High School outside Chicago had been a Nazi, a member of the SS, and a guard at a brutal slave labor camp during World War II.

Similar revelations stunned communities across the country. Hundreds of Reinhold Kulles were gradually discovered: men who had patrolled concentration camps, selected Jews for execution, and participated in mass shootings—and who were now living ordinary suburban lives. As the Office of Special Investigations raced to uncover Hitler’s men in the United States, neighbors had to reconcile horrific accusations with the helpful, kind, and soft-spoken neighbors they thought they knew. Though Nazis loomed in the American consciousness as evil epitomized, in Oak Park—a Chicago suburb renowned for its liberalism—people rose to defend Reinhold Kulle, a war criminal.

Drawing on archival research and insider interviews, Oak Park and River Forest High School teacher Michael Soffer digs into his community’s tumultuous response to the Kulle affair. He explores the uncomfortable truths of how and why onetime Nazis found allies in American communities after their gruesome pasts were uncovered.

Learn more about Our Nazi at the University of Chicago Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Our Nazi.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five of the best books about badass madwomen

Jennifer Cody Epstein is the author of four novels that have been published in a total of twenty-one countries around the world: The Madwomen of Paris (2023), Wunderland (2019), The Gods of Heavenly Punishment (2012), and The Painter from Shanghai (2007).

[The Page 69 Test: The Painter from Shanghai; The Page 69 Test: The Gods of Heavenly Punishment; Writers Read: Jennifer Cody Epstein (May 2019); The Page 69 Test: Wunderland; Q&A with Jennifer Cody Epstein; The Page 69 Test: The Madwomen of Paris; My Book, The Movie: The Madwomen of Paris]

She is the recipient of the 2014 Asia Pacific American Librarians Association Honor Award for fiction, and was longlisted for the 2020 Simpson/Joyce Carol Oates Literary Prize.

At Shepherd Epstein tagged five of her favorite books about badass madwomen. One title on the list:

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

For me, this is another masterful interweaving of historical fact and wildly creative imagination. It’s a prime example of in-depth research wielded to tangibly ground the reader in the book’s world; you learn about everything from 19th-century psychological theory and forensics to quilt-making and housecleaning techniques.

Part of what I really love about the novel, though, is that unlike in The Handmaid’s Tale, here Atwood deliberately blurs the lines between “good” and “evil” and “victim” and “villain.” Grace isn’t entirely likable, and she’s pretty much entirely unreliable. So, embodying her perspective as a reader is a continual guessing game of whether or not she’s telling the truth about her role in the murders at the book’s center. At the same time, it’s also a kind of ethical guessing game, for even if Grace is guilty, Atwood makes the role society and class play in her downfall so painfully clear that you can’t help wondering if you’d do the same in her situation.

Read about another entry on the list.

Alias Grace is among Shelley Blanton-Stroud's five difficult women in historical fiction, Paraic O'Donnell's seven top contemporary novels about the Victorian era, L.S. Hilton's top ten female-fronted thrillers, Rebecca Jane Stokes's top seven books for fans of Orange Is The New Black and Tracy Chevalier's six best books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Galina Vromen

From my Q&A with Galina Vromen, author of Hill of Secrets: A Novel:

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

Hill of Secrets is very much about secrets — personal and national ones. And it takes place in Los Alamos, New Mexico, a mesa (flat-topped hill) which was where the world's first atomic bombs were built, and arguably the most secret place in the United States in the 20th century. So, yes, I think the title takes the reader right into the heart of the story. In the book, all the main characters have their own personal secrets, except for one — a teenager — who very much wants to know everyone else's secrets, or at least thinks she does.

My original title was Nuclear Families, since the book is about family life for those living at Los Alamos during the war, but the publisher didn't like it. There was a lot of back and forth and it was my husband who came up with a title we could all agree on.

What's in a name?

The last name of the German Jewish refugee family in the book is...[read on]

Visit Galina Vromen's website.

The Page 69 Test: Hill of Secrets.

My Book, The Movie: Hill of Secrets.

Q&A with Galina Vromen.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight stories that are filled with suspense & dread

Megan Staffel splits her time between Brooklyn, New York and a farm in western New York State. Her new novel, The Causative Factor, is her sixth book of fiction. Her previous work includes two collections of short fiction, The Exit Coach and Lessons in Another Language, and the novels, The Notebook of Lost Things and She Wanted Something Else.

At Electric Lit Staffel tagged eight ominous short stories and novels that will leave you on the edge of your seat. One title on the list:

Take What You Need by Idra Novey

In this novel about caretaking relationships and the making of art, the source of unease is the fledgling friendship between Jean, a retired office worker who spends her time welding metal sculptures in her living room, and Elliot, the 19-year-old unemployed kid next door who helps her with the physically demanding tasks her art requires. Elliot is always on the verge of sliding back into his old life with a shiftless crowd of users and trouble-makers while Jean negotiates her own risky desires, sometimes managing to alienate her new friend and sometimes managing to give him exactly what he needs, but always walking a tightrope through his unpredictable moods.

Read about another entry on the list.

Take What You Need is among Amy Key's nine top novels about women living alone.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Natalie A. Zacek's "Thoroughbred Nation"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Thoroughbred Nation: Making America at the Racetrack, 1791-1900 by Natalie A. Zacek.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the colonial era to the beginning of the twentieth century, horse racing was by far the most popular sport in America. Great numbers of Americans and overseas visitors flocked to the nation’s tracks, and others avidly followed the sport in both general-interest newspapers and specialized periodicals.

Thoroughbred Nation offers a detailed yet panoramic view of thoroughbred racing in the United States, following the sport from its origins in colonial Virginia and South Carolina to its boom in the Lower Mississippi Valley, and then from its post–Civil War rebirth in New York City and Saratoga Springs to its opulent mythologization of the “Old South” at Louisville’s Churchill Downs, home of the Kentucky Derby. Natalie A. Zacek introduces readers to an unforgettable cast of characters, from “plungers” such as Virginia plantation owner William Ransom Johnson (known as the “Napoleon of the Turf”) and Wall Street financier James R. Keene (who would wager a fortune on the outcome of a single competition) to the jockeys, trainers, and grooms, most of whom were African American. While their names are no longer known, their work was essential to the sport. Zacek also details the careers of remarkable, though scarcely remembered, horses, whose achievements made them as famous in their day as more recent equine celebrities such as Seabiscuit or Secretariat.

Based upon exhaustive research in print and visual sources from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States, Thoroughbred Nation will be of interest both to those who love the sport of horse racing for its own sake and to those who are fascinated by how this pastime reflects and influences American identities.

Learn more about Thoroughbred Nation at the LSU Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Thoroughbred Nation.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Sung J. Woo's "Lines"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Lines by Sung J. Woo.

About the book, 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.

--Marshal Zeringue

Robert Dugoni's "Beyond Reasonable Doubt," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Beyond Reasonable Doubt (Keera Duggan) by Robert Dugoni.

The entry begins:

One of the problems with getting older is I just don’t know actors and actresses as I once did. However, if they make my book into a film I can think of some great actors to play the lead roles. Here’s my dream team.

Emma Stone comes to mind to play the lead, Keera Duggan.

Brie Larson or Caitriona Balfe as Ella, Keera’s oldest sisters.

I actually 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.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven of the best literary horror novels

Alena Bruzas grew up in Seattle and currently lives in Lincoln, Nebraska, with her family. She is the author of the acclaimed novel Ever Since, and she hopes her writing will find the people who need it most. When she's not writing, Bruzas serves on the board for Ten Thousand Villages, Lincoln. She also occasionally cooks dinner, worries about commas, and wanders the prairie.

Bruzas's new novel is To the Bone.

At CrimeReads the author tagged seven favorite literary horror novels, including:

Stephen Graham Jones, The Only Good Indians

The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones deserves top billing on this list. As a reader it enthralled me. As a writer it gave me the kind of despair an artist feels when they behold a true master and know they will never measure up. Jones is well known enough that he needs no introduction, so let me just tell you why I love this book. First, the writing; so good, weird yet gorgeous, realistic but reflective and deep. The book follows four friends, men of the Blackfeet nation, who ten years prior killed an elk, unaware that it was pregnant. Lewis is my favorite narrator, although it switches point of view often and with intention. Lewis’s descent into madness is *chef’s kiss* as he is consumed by guilt and grief for the mother elk and her fetus, and is convinced a woman with the head of an elk is hunting him. The story grapples with what it is to be an indigenous person in America today, and the contradictions inherent to individual identity and tradition. Jones also gives space to the point of view of the elk woman who actually is hunting the four friends and manages, despite the violence and visceral anger of her perspective, to have me rooting for her until it comes to a showdown between the elk woman and Denorah, the teenage daughter of one of the four, and an exceptional final girl.

Read about another title on the list.

The Only Good Indians is among Samsun Knight's seven top horror novels about mysticism, B.R. Myers's ten quietly effective suspense novels, and Gus Moreno's top ten groundbreaking horror novels.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Grace Kessler Overbeke's "First Lady of Laughs"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: First Lady of Laughs: The Forgotten Story of Jean Carroll, America's First Jewish Woman Stand-Up Comedian by Grace Kessler Overbeke.

About the book, from the publisher:

Before Hacks and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, there was the comedienne who started it all

First Lady of Laughs tells the story of Jean Carroll, the first Jewish woman to become a star in the field we now call stand-up comedy. Though rarely mentioned among the pantheon of early stand-up comics such as Henny Youngman and Lenny Bruce, Jean Carroll rivaled or even outshone the male counterparts of her heyday, playing more major theaters than any other comedian of her period. In addition to releasing a hit comedy album, Girl in a Hot Steam Bath, and briefly starring in her own sitcom on ABC, she also made twenty-nine appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show.

Carroll made enduring changes to the genre of stand-up comedy, carving space for women and modeling a new form of Jewish femininity with her glamorous, acculturated, but still recognizably Jewish persona. She innovated a newly conversational, intimate style of stand-up, which is now recognized in comics like Joan Rivers, Sarah Silverman, and Tiffany Haddish. When Carroll was ninety-five she was honored at the Friars Club in New York City, where celebrities like Joy Behar and Lily Tomlin praised her influence on their craft. But her celebrated career began as an impoverished immigrant child, scrounging for talent show prize money to support her family.

Drawing on archival footage, press clippings, and Jean Carroll’s personal scrapbook, First Lady of Laughs restores Jean Carroll’s remarkable story to its rightful place in the lineage of comedy history and Jewish American performance.

Learn more about First Lady of Laughs at the NYU Press website.

The Page 99 Test: First Lady of Laughs.

--Marshal Zeringue