Five top epistolary works of historical fiction

Rachel Brittain is a writer, Day Dreamer, and Amateur Aerialist. Her short fiction has appeared in Luna Station Quarterly, Andromeda Spaceways, and others. She is a contributing editor for Book Riot, where she screams into the void about her love of books. Brittain lives in Northwest Arkansas with a rambunctious rescue pup, a snake, and a houseful of plants (most of which aren’t carnivorous).

At Book Riot she tagged five epistolary historical fiction novels, including:

Vanessa and Her Sister by Priya Parmar

Author Priya Parmar imagines a world where Virginia Woolf’s sister, the gifted painter Vanessa, keeps a diary of their lives. When the Stephen siblings, Vanessa, Virginia, Thoby, and Adrian, leave London behind for a home in Bloomsbury, they bring together a group of gifted friends that will eventually become known as the legendary Bloomsbury Group. Sisters Virginia and Vanessa are the beating heart of the talented group of artists. But when Vanessa falls in love, her brilliant sister, accustomed to Vanessa’s constant attention, begins to unravel. Soon, with the family on the brink of destruction, Vanessa will have to decide whether to finally live her life for herself, even if it means leaving her beloved sister behind.

Read about another entry on the list.

Vanessa and Her Sister is among Jen Harper's ten books celebrating influential women in history.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top cli-fi novels and eco-thrillers

Nicole Brooks has a bachelor of environmental science and a lifelong love of reading, which has enabled her to blend two of her passions - nature and writing - into stories that put people into the thick of environmental disasters. She lives just outside Calgary with her husband and two daughters and can be found curled up with a book during long, cold Canadian winters, searching the skies for bald eagles, or hurting herself while playing pickleball.

No Higher Ground is her thriller debut.

At CrimeReads Brooks tagged "favorite books which tell deeply human stories in a world where Mother Nature is more than a supporting character." One title on the list:

Cormac McCarthy, The Road

An unnamed father and son walk through a decimated, charred postapocalyptic America. They move toward the ocean in the hopes that something better awaits them there, but along the way, it is as treacherous as you can imagine.

The word gray is used about fifty times in this book and that should give you a full picture of the world they precariously inhabit. This profoundly moving story of two people who have little more than each other to keep them going has been seared into my mind. An epic, desolate, ultimately beautiful human journey.

Read about other novel on the list.

The Road appears on Barnaby Martin's list of seven titles featuring parents & children at the end of the world, Nick Newman's list of five novels that feature the uncanny suspense of a third character's arrival, Linda Rodriguez McRobbie's list of thirty of literature's best parents, Robert Lee Brewer's list of the ten best dystopian novels ever written, Pedro Hoffmeister's list of five titles with lessons to turn a post-apocalyptic novel into a thriller, Malcolm Devlin’s list of eight zombie stories without any zombies, Michael Christie's list of ten novels to reconfigure our conception of nature for the better, Emily Temple's list of the ten books that defined the 2000s, Ceridwen Christensen's list of ten novels that end their apocalypses on a beach, Steph Post's top ten list of classic (and perhaps not so classic) road trip books, a list of five of the best climate change novels, Claire Fuller's top five list of extreme survival stories, Justin Cronin's top ten list of world-ending novels, Rose Tremain's six best books list, Ian McGuire's ten top list of adventure novels, Alastair Bruce's top ten list of books about forgetting, Jeff Somers's lists of five science fiction novels that really should be considered literary classics and eight good, bad, and weird dad/child pairs in science fiction and fantasy, Amelia Gray's ten best dark books list, Weston Williams's top fifteen list of books with memorable dads, ShortList's roundup of the twenty greatest dystopian novels, Mary Miller's top ten list of the best road books, Joel Cunningham's list of eleven "literary" novels that include elements of science fiction, fantasy or horror, Claire Cameron's list of five favorite stories about unlikely survivors, Isabel Allende's six favorite books list, the Telegraph's list of the 15 most depressing books, Joseph D’Lacey's top ten list of horror books, the Barnes & Noble Review's list of five unforgettable fathers from fiction, Ken Jennings's list of eight top books about parents and kids, Anthony Horowitz's top ten list of apocalypse books, Karen Thompson Walker's list of five notable "What If?" books, John Mullan's list of ten of the top long walks in literature, Tony Bradman's top ten list of father and son stories, Ramin Karimloo's six favorite books list, Jon Krakauer's five best list of books about mortality and existential angst, William Skidelsky's list of the top ten most vivid accounts of being marooned in literature, Liz Jensen's top 10 list of environmental disaster stories, the Guardian's list of books to change the climate, David Nicholls' top ten list of literary tear jerkers, and the Times (of London) list of the 100 best books of the decade. In 2009 Sam Anderson of New York magazine claimed "that we'll still be talking about [The Road] in ten years."

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Eranda Jayawickreme's "Is There Always Value to Adversity?"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Is There Always Value to Adversity?: Looking Beyond "What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stronger" by Eranda Jayawickreme.

About the book, from the publisher:

Clear and compelling, Is There Always Value to Adversity? presents an interdisciplinary exploration of the age-old idea that adversity can lead to personal growth.

Can adversity have an upside? Is there a purpose to suffering? Can difficult experiences involving trauma and hardship make us stronger? These age-old questions, both intuitively compelling yet scientifically problematic, have fascinated philosophers and researchers for centuries.

In Is There Always Value to Adversity?, Eranda Jayawickreme examines whether post-traumatic growth--the positive changes people report after adversity--reflects real transformation or is simply a coping mechanism. As Jayawickreme explains, the idea that struggle, trauma, and adversity can be a catalyst for positive outcomes has a long intellectual history. He outlines the history of this thinking, tracking its development in different cultural, religious, and philosophical traditions. He then discusses its recent emergence as a popular topic and evaluates the current research, highlighting guidelines for how we should think about this phenomenon.

Throughout the course of the book, Jayawickreme interrogates the quality of the research on post-traumatic growth. In the current age of worries about replication and the credibility revolution in science, can we trust this research at all? Is it possible to do good science on a topic with such intuitive appeal? Ultimately, Jayawickreme asks: is growth through suffering real, or just a comforting story we tell ourselves?

Learn more about Is There Always Value to Adversity? at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Is There Always Value to Adversity?.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eleven books about women who rewrote life & art

Anne E. Fernald is a professor of English at Fordham University. She is a scholar of British and global modernism with a specialty in twentieth-century women artists and is one of the world’s best-known experts on Virginia Woolf. She lives in New York City with her family.

Her new book is Her Own Voice: Eight Women Who Rewrote Life and Art.

At Lit Hub Fernald tagged eleven books that "expand our ideas of what a woman’s life can be and narratives can do." One title on the list:

Asali Solomon, Days of Afrekete

Asali Solomon’s novel spends much of its narrative looking back to the protagonist Liselle’s long-ago relationship with her ex-girlfriend. It’s a surprising and defensive act as Liselle, who is Black, is giving a dinner party on the eve of her white husband’s political downfall. The tension, the uncertainty, the hovering between bravery and cowardice captures some of what fascinated me in Muriel Rukeyser’s novel Savage Coast. Usually, Rukeyser is utterly fearless, but I find it so heartening to read about the moments of hesitation right before being brave, something both Solomon and Rukeyser beautifully convey. Days of Afrekete is also a riff on Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway—another single day novel about a rich woman throwing a dinner party. Rukeyser admired Woolf and mentored young Black writers, including Alice Walker, so the connections between Rukeyser, Woolf, and Solomon are rich.

Read about another book on Fernald's list.

Days of Afrekete is among Annie Liontas's seven top books about sex, love, and intimacy.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Barbara O'Neal

From my Q&A with Barbara O'Neal, author of A Thousand Painted Hours: A Novel:

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

It's certainly not direct, as some of my titles have been. This one is more lyrical, speaking to time and hope and place.

How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your novel?

I love this question!!! My teenage self would be thrilled by this novel--it's the kind of big, sweeping book that qualified as The Real Thing when I was that age. Teenage me was already writing novels, so to find out we actually did it, and did it for an entire career, would be major. I think she'd cry tears of joy.

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?

Oh, beginnings are much, much harder. Beginnings are like...[read on]

Visit Barbara O'Neal's website.

My Book, The Movie: A Thousand Painted Hours.

The Page 69 Test: A Thousand Painted Hours.

Writers Read: Barbara O'Neal.

Q&A with Barbara O'Neal.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five great SFF books with unusual narrators

At Book Riot Liberty Hardy tagged five top SFF novels centering older characters. One entry on the list:

Hollow Kingdom by Kira Jane Buxton

If you like hilarious novels that will also make you cry, this one is perfect for you! It’s about a virus that makes all the humans sick (like zombies), leaving the animals to fend for themselves. It’s narrated by S.T., a domesticated talking crow with a potty mouth (S.T. stands for “Shit Talker”), who sets out into the big world to find a cure. Because if he can find a cure for the humans, he can save his owner, Big Jim, who will then resume feeding S.T. the snack foods he loves. But the world turns out to be a lot more scary and complicated than he expected.

Read about the other titles on the list.

Hollow Kingdom is among E.B. Bartels's rhirteen books about the joy in a life filled with non-human creatures.

My Book, The Movie: Hollow Kingdom.

The Page 69 Test: Hollow Kingdom.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Yuri Pines's "China’s Aristocratic Age"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: China's Aristocratic Age: Politics and Power in the Springs-and-Autumns Period by Yuri Pines.

About the book, from the publisher:

A new perspective on the Springs-and-Autumns period, China’s longest experiment with polycentrism

The Springs-and-Autumns period (770–453 BCE)—the longest aristocratic age in Chinese history—marks a break from what is often associated with the normative orientations of Chinese political life. During this era, political fragmentation was regarded as acceptable, many states transitioned to oligarchic forms of rule, political participation by lower strata was allowed, pedigree mattered more than ability in determining an individual’s career, and the concept of the Mandate of Heaven had little to do with the notion of universal rule. Indeed, in many respects, the politics of this period inverted traditional Chinese political values. In China’s Aristocratic Age, Yuri Pines offers a new history of the Springs-and-Autumns period, arguing that it should be considered on its own terms rather than simply as a precursor for the centralized and bureaucratized Warring States era that followed.

Pines draws on textual, archaeological, and paleographic sources, many of them newly discovered, to examine the political dynamics of the era, which he terms China’s longest experiment with a polycentric world and society. Efforts during this period to establish a viable multistate order, overcome the weaknesses of monarchial rule, and moderate coercive methods of governance have been largely regarded as unsuccessful. Pines explores the consequences of these perceived failures and analyzes the ways negative views of China’s polycentrism contributed to its later quest for political unity and centralization. Pines’s account sheds new light on the Springs-and-Autumns period both within its own contemporaneous context and within the long durée of Chinese history.

Visit Yuri Pines's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Everlasting Empire.

The Page 99 Test: China's Aristocratic Age.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is J.T. Ellison reading?

Featured at Writers Read: J.T. Ellison, author of You Know Why.

Her entry begins:

In my many years as a thriller author, there has been nothing quite as fun as seeing other authors in my genre level up their craft and become deeper, stronger, more intense writers. One who I think is truly at the top of her game is Alice Feeney. I’ve read two of her books recently that absolutely bamboozled me. The first was My Husband’s Wife, and the second was Rock, Paper, Scissors .

We’re talking first-class sleight of hand, which is an incredibly difficult move to pull off. It’s so much fun to set aside my own knowledge of the craft and get taken in by the story and the characters.

Feeney’s casts lie. They lie to one another; they lie to the reader. They are the most...[read on]

About You Know Why, from the publisher:

From New York Times bestselling author J.T. Ellison comes a suspenseful domestic thriller about identity, revenge, and the dangerous secrets kept hidden from the ones we love most.

It’s the holidays, and photographer Brooklyn Locke is bound for Italy with her husband, Trey, and their two children. But when Trey vanishes from the airport, missing their connecting flight, their impromptu vacation—and life as she knows it—begins to unravel.

Desperate to find her husband, Brooklyn accepts help from a stranger on the same flight, Eden Barrow. But Eden soon makes a shocking claim. She is the sister of Trey’s first wife, and ten years ago he was the main suspect in her murder.

Struggling to comprehend these accusations, fate delivers one more blow: a violent accident that leaves Brooklyn fighting for her life. With nowhere else to turn, Brooklyn leans on Eden for support. But each kindness feels too rehearsed, feeding her doubts about Eden’s motives and Trey’s true past.

Brooklyn has her own dark history she’d rather forget and confronts an unsettling possibility. Her life is not what it seems, and the truth is a trap—laid by someone waiting for the perfect time to strike.

Visit J.T. Ellison's website.

The Page 69 Test: Edge of Black.

The Page 69 Test: When Shadows Fall.

My Book, The Movie: When Shadows Fall.

My Book, The Movie: What Lies Behind.

The Page 69 Test: What Lies Behind.

The Page 69 Test: No One Knows.

My Book, The Movie: No One Knows.

The Page 69 Test: Lie to Me.

My Book, The Movie: Good Girls Lie.

The Page 69 Test: Good Girls Lie.

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

Q&A with J.T. Ellison.

The Page 69 Test: A Very Bad Thing.

The Page 69 Test: Last Seen.

Writers Read: J.T. Ellison.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eleven of the best horrormance novels

Clay McLeod Chapman is the author of novels What Kind of Mother, Ghost Eaters, Whisper Down the Lane, The Remaking, and miss corpus, story collections nothing untoward, commencement, and rest area, as well as The Tribe middlegrade series: Homeroom Headhunters, Camp Cannibal, and Academic Assassins.

[My Book, The Movie: The Remaking; The Page 69 Test: The Remaking; My Book, The Movie: Whisper Down the Lane; Q&A with Clay McLeod Chapman; The Page 69 Test: Whisper Down the Lane; Writers Read: Clay McLeod Chapman (September 2022); The Page 69 Test: What Kind of Mother; Writers Read: Clay McLeod Chapman (September 2023); Writers Read: Clay McLeod Chapman (January 2025)]

Chapman's new novel is Devil Inside.

At People magazine the author tagged eleven top steamy, sultry, scary horror romance novels. One novel on the list:

The Haunting Of Lavender House by Natalie Kikic

Kikic’s dual timeline gothic taps into Croatian folklore to offer up a sumptuous story that spans centuries, yoking two souls together. Perfect for fans of Isabel Cañas. The romance is excellent and there are some haunting dream sequences that will surely linger.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Elliott Logan's "Over and Over"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Over and Over: Performance, Time, and Resonance in Serial Television Drama by Elliott Logan.

About the book, from the publisher:

How does serial drama earn, keep, and reward our attention for so long―over episodes, seasons, months, and years? While we know that characters are the focus of story and viewer interest in television fiction, scholars have for decades overlooked the way those characters are performed on-screen and the lure of performance as a key formal and thematic aspect of long-form television storytelling. In Over and Over, Elliott Logan offers close readings of performance in some of the most celebrated television dramas of the century, casting new light on the attractions and significance of the medium’s seriality. The book shows how the patterning and expressive resonance of performers on-screen binds together otherwise unconnected episodes of shows like The Sopranos and Mad Men. In doing so, it highlights the provisionality of identity and meaning as crucial to their interest in the sustenance of human relationships over long periods of time. In accounting for the resonance of performance over time in serial drama, this book shows, we find the terms of our own attachment to its compelling depictions of human life.

Learn more about Over and Over at the Rutgers University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Over and Over.

--Marshal Zeringue

Third reading: D.W. Buffa on Tacitus and the dangers of history

D.W. Buffa was born in San Francisco and raised in the Bay Area. After graduation from Michigan State University, he studied under Leo Strauss, Joseph Cropsey and Hans J. Morgenthau at the University of Chicago where he earned both an M.A. and a Ph. D. in political science. He received his J.D. degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Buffa was a criminal defense attorney for 10 years and his seven Joseph Antonelli novels strive to reflect, from his own experience, what a courtroom lawyer does, the way he (or she) thinks, and the way he feels about what he does.

In Buffa's new novel, Immunity, the President of the United States has ordered the murder of his political opponents—and the Constitution seems powerless to stop him.

Buffa's latest take in his "Third Reading" series covers Tacitus and the dangers of history. It begins:

When Thucydides wrote his history of the Peloponnesian War, he insisted it was a “possession for all time.” This did not mean simply that it was a book that would always be available to anyone who might have an interest in what happened in the war between the Spartans and the Athenians. It meant that future generations would be able to learn what always happens in political life, that what happened in his time and place is the very essence of what happens in every time and place. Thucydides was what was once called a political historian. As one of his most perceptive readers explained, a political historian “must be more than a citizen or even a statesman: he must be a wise man.” Thucydides, a wise man, wrote about what happened when Athens became an empire. Cornelius Tacitus, another wise man, wrote about what happened when the Roman republic became the Roman empire; when the ambition for power lost all restraint, when the power to dominate everyone and everything became the only power worth having.

Born in the middle of the first century A.D., Tacitus witnessed the reign of terror during the last three years of the emperor Domitian, and the judicial murders of many of Rome’s best citizens. He learned early the virtues of discretion, and when he decided to write history chose his subjects with care, and was even more careful in the way he wrote. His two principal histories, The Annals and The Histories, were probably written together in A.D.115 or 116, when he was in his early sixties, The Annals provides a history of the Roman emperors of the Julian line from Tiberius to Nero, during the years A.D.14-68. The Histories continues the story, but only for the year, A.D.69, a year in which, incredible as it may sound, there were three civil wars and four murdered emperors. Tacitus writes nothing about Julius Caesar, and nothing about the half century in which Augustus completed the destruction of the republic and made Rome, for all intents and purposes, a monarchy. Tacitus is a great historian, and a great writer, a writer, who understood that the truth, to be written, has often to be disguised.

With a marvelous capacity for misdirection, Tacitus gives the reason, or hints at the reason, why...[read on]

Visit D.W. Buffa's website.

Buffa's previous third reading essays: The Great Gatsby; Brave New World; Lord Jim; Death in the Afternoon; Parade's End; The Idiot; The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; The Scarlet Letter; Justine; Patriotic Gore; Anna Karenina; The Charterhouse of Parma; Emile; War and Peace; The Sorrows of Young Werther; Bread and Wine; “The Crisis of the Mind” and A Man Without Qualities; Eugene Onegin; The Collected Works of Thomas Babington Macaulay; The Europeans; The House of Mirth and The Writing of Fiction; Doctor Faustus; the reading list of John F. Kennedy; Jorge Luis Borges; History of the Peloponnesian War; Mansfield Park; To Each His Own; A Passage To India; Seven Pillars of Wisdom; The Letters of T.E. Lawrence; All The King’s Men; The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus; Naguib Mahfouz’s novels of ancient Egypt; Main Street; Theodore H. White's The Making of the President series, part I; Theodore H. White's The Making of the President series, part II; Thus Spoke Zarathustra; Fiction's Failure; Hermann Hesse's Demian; Frederick Douglass, Slavery, and The Fourth of July; Caesar’s Ghost; The American Constitution; A Tale of Two Cities; The Leopard; Madame Bovary; The Sheltering Sky; Tocqueville’s America and Ours; American Statesmen; Ancient and Modern Writers Reconsidered; Père Goriot; The Remarkable Edmund Burke; The Novels of W.H. Hudson; America Revised; The City And Man; "The Use And Abuse Of History"; I, Claudius; The Closing of The American Mind; History of Rome; Before The Deluge; Herodotus's Histories; The Education of Henry Adams; Duff Cooper’s Talleyrand; The Golden Bowl; The Life of George Washington; Tacitus and the dangers of history.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight titles about the messy world of ancient Rome

Michelle Berenfeld is the John A. McCarthy Professor of Classics at Pitzer College, one of the Claremont Colleges. An archaeologist and fellow of the American Academy in Rome, she has done research in Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, Greece, and Italy. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic and numerous scholarly publications. She lives in Los Angeles.

Berenfeld's new book is Lessons from a Lost Republic: What Ancient Rome Can Teach Us About This American Moment.

At Lit Hub the author tagged eight books to read if you’re interested in the Roman Empire. One title on the list:

Robert Graves, I, Claudius

A saga of the first dynasty of Roman emperors in all of their back-biting and conniving glory, this 1930s novel inspired a soapy 1970s mini-series that set Derek Jacobi up for a lifetime of wearing togas on the silver screen (I once asked AI to generate a picture of a bust of a Roman senator and it made one with his face). Extrapolating from salacious and rumor-filled ancient sources, the novel offers an inside scoop into the machinations of the first Roman imperial family. It paints a picture of Livia, the wife of Augustus, as someone not to be trifled with, unless you like your figs with a dash of poison. A huge bestseller over the decades, it remains in print. Graves wrote another novel about a different famous family of the first century CE—it’s called King Jesus (good, but not as good as I, Claudius, imho).

Read about another entry on the list.

I, Claudius also appears on Fiona Forsyth's list of five top historical novels about political shenanigans in ancient Rome, A. K. Blakemore's top ten list of matriarchs in fiction, Isaac Mizrahi's ten favorite books list, Tessa Arlen’s top five list of historical novels, Christopher Wilson's top ten list of books about tyrants, Sarah Dunant's six favorite books list, Daniel Godfrey's top five list of books about ancient Rome, Jeff Somers's lists of eight books that make great party themes and six historical fiction novels that are almost fantasy, Tracy-Ann Oberman's six best books list, the Telegraph's lists of the 21 greatest television adaptations of novels and the twenty best British and Irish novels of all time, Daisy Goodwin's list of six favorite historical fiction books, a list of the eleven best political books of all time, David Chase's six favorite books list, Andrew Miller's top ten list of historical novels, Mark Malloch-Brown's list of his six favorite novels of empire, Annabel Lyon's top ten list of books on the ancient world, Lindsey Davis' top ten list of Roman books, and John Mullan's lists of ten of the best emperors in literature and ten of the best poisonings in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Sunneva Gilmore's "Redressing Rape in War"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Redressing Rape in War: A Medico-Legal Approach to Sexual Violence by Sunneva Gilmore.

About the book, from the publisher:

Sexual violence remains a pervasive reality of war. Redressing Rape in War presents an innovative medico-legal framework for redressing conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV), integrating insights from transitional justice, restorative justice, and medical scholarship. Drawing on empirical research across three diverse settings-including interviews with victims and professionals in transitional justice and healthcare-this book critically examines the evolution of existing reparative measures and advances an interdisciplinary approach to justice and redress.

Through a health-centred perspective, this book explores the forensic, psychological, physical, and social consequences of CRSV, emphasising the cascading effects of embodied trauma and its impact on victims' long-term well-being. Recognising that traditional forms of reparations struggle to address the breadth of harm inflicted, this book forwards a vulnerability-based framework that enhances their effectiveness by acknowledging the relational dimensions of harm, and the role of informal and self-repair mechanisms. By reimagining rehabilitation through a medico-legal lens, it demonstrates how forensic medicine can strengthen accountability, improve reparative outcomes, and offer tangible paths to recovery centred on quality of life.

Confronting the structural, cultural, and political conditions that sustain CRSV, Redressing Rape in War calls for reparations that not only address individual harm but also catalyse broader social and institutional transformation to ensure sustainable justice for victims and survivors of CRSV and beyond.

Learn more about Redressing Rape in War at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Redressing Rape in War.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Gloria Chao's "The Mortal Enemy Murder Club"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Mortal Enemy Murder Club: A Novel (A Hu Done It Mystery, 2) by Gloria Chao.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Ex-Girlfriend Murder Club is back with a twist in this smart, hilarious mystery by USA TODAY bestselling author Gloria Chao.

Kathryn Hu is not getting into the business of solving murders. Yes, she and her friends Olivia and Elle figured out who killed their cheating ex-boyfriend. But now Kat can get back to her usual, murder-free existence.

Then she gets an unexpected plea for help. Mandy Thorne has ruined countless lives through her revenge podcast. She also did her best to frame the girls. Now, she claims, someone is trying to kill her. And the girls are the only ones who can save her.

But can the trio and Mandy put aside their mutual contempt long enough to prevent a murder and solve this case? Can they become…the Mortal Enemy Murder Club?

Filled with humor and shenanigans, The Mortal Enemy Murder Club is a romp of an adventure by USA TODAY bestselling author Gloria Chao, perfect for fans of Dial A for Aunties and Finlay Donovan Is Killing It.

Visit Gloria Chao's website.

The Page 69 Test: American Panda.

The Page 69 Test: When You Wish Upon a Lantern.

The Page 69 Test: The Mortal Enemy Murder Club.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top romance novels with teacher leads

Alison Doherty is a writing teacher and part time assistant professor living in Brooklyn, New York. She has an MFA from The New School in writing for children and teenagers. She loves
writing about books on the Internet, listening to audiobooks on the subway, and reading anything with a twisty plot or a happily ever after.

At Book Riot she tagged five "favorite teacher romance novels featuring flirty banter over the school copy machine, longing glances over finger painting, happily ever afters for the people who deserve them most…and absolutely NO romances with students." One title on the list:

Vision in White by Nora Roberts

I couldn’t resist putting one of my favorite Nora Roberts novels on the list. Mackenzie is a photographer who works with her three best friends to make brides’ dream weddings become a reality. Ironically, Mac is also a commitment-phobe who doesn’t believe in a happily ever after for herself. Carter is a nerdy, earnest English teacher who had a desperate crush on Mac when they were both in high school. She agrees to a fling, nothing more. But Carter is determined to break down the walls she’s had up since her parents’ divorce in childhood and develop a real, head-over-heels in love, forever kind of relationship with her. Swoon!

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Margaret K. Nelson's "Peddlers, Merchants, and Junk Dealers"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Peddlers, Merchants, and Junk Dealers: Jewish Life in Small-Town Vermont by Margaret K. Nelson.

About the book, from the publisher:

Provides a rare study of Jews in small town America

For many years, histories of Jews in the United States focused on Jewish migrants who settled in large cities. Peddlers, Merchants, and Junk Dealers offers a rare study of Jews in small town America, illuminating the experiences of Jewish families in towns where they constituted one of, at most, a few Jewish families. In particular, the volume explores the occupational niches of Jews in rural Vermont, from peddling to the ownership of junk yards and dry goods stores that were disparagingly known as “the Jew Store.”

The book also looks specifically at the experiences of Jewish women and children in families headed by men in these occupations. These families lived in communities where they were often isolated from relatives and friends, and without a Jewish congregation. Margaret K. Nelson carefully investigates various aspects of this small-town experience, including how generations of immigrants were regarded by others, how they held onto the practice of their religion, and how they were able to socially integrate into their communities.

By narrating the trajectory of Jewish immigrant experiences through men’s occupations, the volume places the experiences of Jews in Vermont alongside those of other marginalized groups, particularly the families of Chinese restaurant owners and South Asian motel managers, as they established and sustained their own distinctive economic activities in small towns.

Showcasing the largely unexplored history of Jews in very small towns, Peddlers, Merchants, and Junk Dealers provides a novel account of Jewish community and belonging as minorities in rural communities.

Learn more about Peddlers, Merchants, and Junk Dealers at the NYU Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Parenting Out of Control.

The Page 99 Test: Like Family.

The Page 99 Test: Keeping Family Secrets.

The Page 99 Test: Peddlers, Merchants, and Junk Dealers.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Meg Elison

From my Q&A with Meg Elison, author of Foundling Fathers:

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

The phrase "founding fathers" is so ingrained in our culture that a play on it seemed inevitable. I love the word "foundling" meaning orphan, meaning a child found on a doorstep or in a basket of woven rushes. Combining the familiar, powerful idea of the founders with a term that indicates some kids on their own was irresistible. It shapes expectations of the book by telling you right off that these characters aren't the legendary men you're expecting; they're vulnerable. And it's a set of words you think you know, but it makes you do a double take.

What's in a name?

I love giving a character a name that carries specific meaning that's so obvious that it's right under your nose and you might still miss it. Not must leeway on the names of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and Ben Franklin, so I thought hard about what to name their mother. First off: what do you name a virginal, utterly ideal mother besides...[read on]

Visit Meg Elison's website.

Q&A with Meg Elison.

--Marshal Zeringue

Twelve top historical mysteries that make the past feel dangerously alive

Oprah Daily tagged historical fiction titles that "use mystery not merely to decorate history, but to interrogate it, asking whose secrets were protected, whose stories were suppressed, and what the past can reveal when someone finally starts asking the right questions." One novel on the list:

Down a Dark River, by Karen Odden

One finely dressed dead girl found bound and surrounded by flowers, in a small boat on the Thames, strikes a curious tableau. A second and third could spark panic that our cross-pressured Scotland Yard detective Michael Corravan is determined to avoid. Unfolding in 1878, 10 years before Jack the Ripper terrorized the working women of London and written by an authority in Victorian literature, this story probes similar territory as Hallie Rubenfeld’s Ripper-inspired social history The Five. Period and place are exceptionally well-drawn, from the sights and smells of the city’s most famous natural landmark to the jewelry on the elegant necks of its Mayfair residents to the secrets and boundaries that rule their lives—and provide the key to the killings.
—Carole V. Bell

Read about another historical mystery on the list.

My Book, The Movie: Down a Dark River.

The Page 69 Test: Down a Dark River.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Andrew B. Kennedy's "Rebellious Follower"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Rebellious Follower: China's Search for Science, Technology, and Innovation by Andrew B. Kennedy.

About the book, from the publisher:

How does China pursue science, technology, and innovation? China has emerged as a leading technology power in recent years, and its policies shape issues ranging from geopolitical rivalry to climate change to artificial intelligence. Yet if China's pursuit of science, technology, and innovation (STI) is important, its path is also puzzling. Since 1949, China's party-state has adopted a bewildering array of policymaking approaches in an effort to transform the country into a world science and technology leader. How can we understand the remarkably winding road China has travelled?

Rebellious Follower: China's Search for Science, Technology, and Innovation illuminates major shifts in Chinese STI policymaking since the communist revolution, leveraging concepts from political science and public policy. Focusing on the "policy paradigms" that have driven Chinese policymaking in the STI domain, the book highlights two globally influential paradigms from the past century. The book explores how Chinese policymakers have resisted these belief systems at times while adapting them at others. In that way, they have made their country a rebellious follower of foreign ideas.

This new theoretical framework offers fresh insights into critical episodes in Chinese history, ranging from the formation of China's scientific establishment in the 1950s to the rise of "innovation-driven development" in the 21st century. Combining cutting-edge theoretical analysis with broad historical scope, the book offers a unique perspective on China's rise as a world leader in science, technology, and innovation.

Learn more about Rebellious Follower at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Rebellious Follower.

--Marshal Zeringue