Q&A with Beck Kubrick

From my Q&A with Beck Kubrick, author and illustrator of Dead Girls:

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

I like weirdly blunt, long titles like Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory or The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires but then I have this short title. I like my title, my editors did too, they called it ‘punchy’. It’s a little tongue-in-cheek and funny because…they’re not dead. I think it captures the dichotomy of the comedy/ horror well. ‘Dead’ is so blunt and it’s juxtaposed with ‘girl’, who traditionally we think of as innocent or sweet. My characters are girls, literal children, dealing with life and death (in the form of murderous furry- head wearing killers). Girlhood is a beautiful thing but it’s also a box others can try to trap you in.

It’s also worth saying that to be a dead girl, you don’t literally have to be a girl; Ernie, a thirty- something, adult man who is Ash’s surrogate uncle is totally a dead girl, it’s a state of mind.

I wanted to play with the traditional horror conventions of a ‘final girl’, so they’re not ‘final girls’, they’re something else. Ash is essentially a dead girl walking. It’s also...[read on]

Follow Beck Kubrick on Instagram.

My Book, The Movie: Dead Girls.

The Page 69 Test: Dead Girls.

Writers Read: Beck Kubrick.

Q&A with Beck Kubrick.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: David B. Williams's "In the Range of Fire and Ice"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: In the Range of Fire and Ice: A Human and Natural History of Washington’s Cascades by David B. Williams.

About the book, from the publisher:

A breathtaking journey through Washington’s Cascades--where fire, ice, wildlife, and human stories collide

• Views the Cascade Range through the lenses of wildlife, flora, geology, Indigenous history, glaciers, and more
• Celebrates inspiring conservation successes
• Illustrated with a blend of historical and modern photographs

Blending human and natural history into a vivid portrait of one of North America’s most dynamic landscapes, In the Range of Fire and Ice is a lively, groundbreaking exploration of Washington’s Cascade Range. Drawing on conversations with anthropologists, park rangers, ecologists, and climate scientists, as well as firsthand experience, award-winning author David B. Williams brings readers into the mountains to uncover stories etched in the landscape over millennia.

From traditional Indigenous huckleberry harvesting grounds and ancient footpaths to erupting volcanoes, shifting glaciers, and forgotten mining camps, In the Range of Fire and Ice reveals the Cascades as a place of both deep time and constant change. While past logging, mining, and fires left lasting scars, the Cascades also tell powerful stories of recovery and resilience--returning wolverines and wolves, the remarkable rebirth of Mount St. Helens, and growing stewardship in the face of climate change. Through rich storytelling and careful research, Williams invites readers to see the Cascades not only as mountains, but as a living, evolving realm of fire, ice, and hope.

Visit David B. Williams's website.

The Page 99 Test: Stories in Stone.

The Page 99 Test: Homewaters: A Human and Natural History of Puget Sound.

The Page 99 Test: In the Range of Fire and Ice.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top mythology- and folklore-inspired horror books

Lyndsie Manusos’s fiction has appeared in PANK, SmokeLong Quarterly, and other publications. She holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has worked in web production and content management. When she’s not nesting among her books and rough drafts, she’s chasing the baby while the dog watches in confused amusement. She lives with her family in a suburb of Indianapolis.

At Book Riot she tagged six of the best mythology- and folklore-inspired horror books, including:

The Winter Folk by Jen Julian

I loved Jen Julian’s eerie novel Red Rabbit Ghost, so I was eager to dive into her latest. The Winter Folk taps into gothic horror and Appalachian folklore, following Moth, who earned her name working for the Winter Folk at a mysterious lodge in the woods. As a young girl, Moth was enraptured by the lodge, named Deerhaven, but she was banished. Years later, Moth returns to the same area in which the lodge exists, seeking to find it again. Despite her haunting past and the horrors and curiosities she experienced there, she cannot shake her need to return. For those looking for horror that vibes with Alix E. Harrow’s work or T. Kingfisher, this is the book for you.

Read about another title on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Beck Kubrick reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Beck Kubrick, author and illustrator of Dead Girls.

Their entry begins:

My reading this year has been very reactionary to a reading slump at the tail end of last year, I can sometimes find it difficult to ‘switch off’ and read for fun rather than critically. Audiobooks have helped; I still pause to take notes sometimes. This is a useful skill when beta reading, I most recently beta read for author friend, Wren James, on a book they have out on submission. I’ve been a fan of theirs since I was a teenager and even drew them fanart once. I love post- apocalyptic stories and the soft apocalypse of The Quiet At The End Of The World is so good.

Speaking of soft-apocalypses...[read on]

About Dead Girls, from the publisher:

The teen daughter of an infamous serial killer must prove she isn’t the one behind recent copycat murders in this witty and laugh-out-loud funny graphic novel that’s a campy, feminist send-up of slashers that both celebrates and subverts classic tropes.

In the cozy town of Clossdale, a serial killer rampages! Five girls missing in as many weeks! Bodies turning up on the forest floor! And all fingers point to one vile fiend: Ash Hargreeves.

Except Ash didn’t do it. She may be the daughter of the infamous Clossdale Killer, and these copycat killings aren’t exactly convincing proof of her innocence—and okay, she’s kind of a weirdo who has two friends total, but when the murders strike a little too close to home, Ash decides to take a stand.

With the help of her besties, Ash is going to hunt down the killer, clear her mother’s name, and stop there from being any more dead girls—now and forever. After all, WWJLD: what would Jamie Lee do?

Follow Beck Kubrick on Instagram.

My Book, The Movie: Dead Girls.

The Page 69 Test: Dead Girls.

Writers Read: Beck Kubrick.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Joe Zagets's "#AuthorLife"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: #AuthorLife by Joe Zagets.

About the book, from the publisher:

Writing novels wasn't supposed to be a blood sport. After selling his first thriller novel for six figures, Mackenzie "Mack" Lane quit his job as a journalist to become a full-time author. But now, a few years later, his career is spiraling downward. With each book doing worse than the last, he fears his status as a Boring White Dude is partly to blame. With his bank accounts dwindling, Mack has to find a way to make more money: his ex-wife wants to send their son to a private high school, and his current wife wants to have a baby. Mack begs his agent and editor to sing the praises of his new novel and do everything in their power to encourage his publisher's marketing team to make the book a bestseller. But as Pub Day for his fourth novel approaches—without the interviews and publicity he'd so hoped for—Mack knows his book is in trouble. And with it, his career and personal life. Growing more desperate, Mack concocts a risky and more-or-less unethical idea for a publicity stunt. His agent, Wallis Wallace, reluctantly goes along with it—after all, if it works, she stands to gain 15% of his windfall. And if it doesn't work, Mack is the one who will suffer the consequences of being ridiculed and cancelled. #AuthorLife is a satire about an author who gets the wrong sort of inspiration from his dying career—because publishing is a bloody hard business.

Visit Joe Zaget's Instagram page and Zoje Stage's website.

The Page 69 Test: #AuthorLife.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: David Sorkin's "The Emancipationists"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Emancipationists: Nineteenth-Century Jews' Campaign for Citizenship by David Sorkin.

About the book, from the publisher:

A thought-provoking exploration of the roots of modern Jewish politics

This is the first book to explore the nineteenth-century political movement led by Jewish leaders seeking equality―a movement that historian David Sorkin calls emancipation politics. The emancipationists, most of whom had received a formal secular education, pioneered the key practices of modern Jewish politics: law, philanthropy, the press, and diplomacy. In so doing, Sorkin argues, the emancipationists renovated the venerable “vertical alliance,” the diaspora Jewish practice of aligning with the highest political authority, now the modern administrative and constitutional state. They also forged “horizontal alliances” with social and political groups, first to gain rights and then to defend them in the face of the new political antisemitism.

Sorkin studies this history in five European regions (England, France, Germany, Habsburg lands/Dual Monarchy, and Russia) and the United States over the course of the long nineteenth century (1789–1914), when emancipation politics developed and took root. These political forms and practices would be characteristic of virtually all Jewish politics to follow―namely, the nationalism, socialism, and religious orthodoxy that organized at the turn of century to compete with the emancipationists and each other.

Learn more about The Emancipationists at the Yale University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Jewish Emancipation.

The Page 99 Test: The Emancipationists.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six great thrillers about mothers and daughters and sisters

USA Today bestselling author Hank Phillippi Ryan is the author of more than seventeen thrillers including All This Could Be Yours, One Wrong Word, and The House Guest which have won every major mystery award in the industry and have been translated into multiple languages throughout the world. Her fiction is inspired by a lifetime of groundbreaking true-crime cases from a storied career as an on-air investigative journalist for Boston’s WHDH-TV for which she was awarded multiple journalism honors, including thirty-seven Emmy Awards. A TedX speaker and in-demand literary moderator, she has been called a “master of suspense” (Publishers Weekly). A native of Chicago with roots in Indianapolis, Ryan lives in Boston.

Her latest novel is Mother Daughter Sister Stranger.

At CrimeReads Ryan tagged six favorite thrillers about mothers and daughters and sisters, including:

Gone Tonight by Sarah Pekkanen.

Mother and daughter are oh-so-close. Inseparable. Completely suffocatingly inseparable. When the daughter wants to leave, the mother has other ideas. With gripping and gaslighting twists, and revelations of the secrets each of them was keeping, this is a riveting high wire act about the shattering of trust and family history.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Third reading: D.W. Buffa on the Lost History of the American Constitution

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 the Lost History of the American Constitution. It begins:

In February of 1941, J.P. Lippincott Co. published a limited edition of the five volumes of Elliot’s Debates, originally published under the sanction of Congress in 1830. This limited edition of 750 sets, entitled “The Debates of the several State Conventions on the adoption of the Federal Constitution, as recommended by the General Convention at Philadelphia, in 1787,” has never been republished. It is out of print, unavailable; the ratification debates have vanished from memory, no longer part of our history. Had they been available, had they been there for lawyers and judges, congressmen and senators, and every day citizens to read and study, we would have known, among other things, that the future Chief Justice, John Marshall, thought it a matter almost too obvious for comment that, unlike a British King, an American President could never have immunity for crimes or misconduct while he was in office, and that James Madison, who, more than anyone else, designed the American Constitution, insisted that a President could be removed from office, not after conviction in an impeachment trial, but the moment he was suspected of an impeachable offense.

The Constitutional Convention finished its work in September of 1787. Ratification, it was agreed, required the approval of nine of the thirteen states. When the Virginia Ratifying Convention met on June 2, 1788, eight states had already ratified. If Virginia ratified, America had a Constitution; if Virginia failed to ratify, the Union was almost certain to dissolve. There were 168 delegates to the convention, and, while each of them had a vote, most were content to listen. That, as it turned out, took some effort of its own. Patrick Henry’s first speech, given in opposition to ratification, was close to nine thousand words. The “public mind,” he insisted, “as well as my own, is extremely uneasy at the proposed change of government.” Governor John Randolph replied in a speech nearly as long. Unlike Henry, Randolph had been a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, but, like Henry, he had opposed it.

“I refused to sign, and if the same were to return, I would still refuse; but as I think that those eight states which have adopted the Constitution will not recede, I am a friend of the Union.” If Virginia were now to reject the Constitution, it would produce disunion, and union, lost now, was lost forever. Without a union of the states, there would instead of peace be “licentiousness, insecurity, and oppression.”

Henry rejected this out of hand. The danger was not from the failure of union; the danger was from...[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; the Lost History of the American Constitution.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top books about the body

Lydia Mathis has an MFA in fiction from New York University. She earned her BA in English Literature with a minor in Classical Civilizations from Agnes Scott College. She has worked as a teacher for Teach for America in Memphis and as a teaching fellow at Coler-Goldwater Hospital in New York City. She is the recipient of A Public Space’s 2023 Editorial Fellowship and is currently an assistant editor at A Public Space. She has stories published in North American Review, Southeast Review, Torch Magazine, Stanchion, Five on the Fifth, and oranges journal.

Mathis's debut story collection is Desperate Bodies.

At Lit Hub she tagged five "books that have an entrancing focus on the body." One title on the list:

Ahmed Saadawi, Frankenstein in Baghdad

Frankenstein in Baghdad takes the classic, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, to the U.S. occupied city of Baghdad, and presents us with Hadi, a scavenger, a liar, and the man who creates the Whatitsname, the stitched together body of people who died in bomb attacks. Hadi’s reasoning for his creation of the Whatitsname is for the victims to get a proper burial. By combining the pieces of bodies he finds, and turning them into a complete body, he concludes that the government will have to recognize the parts as people. Maybe even more than Shelley’s Frankenstein, Frankenstein in Baghdad, truly makes one consider what makes a person a person. If my arm is by itself, the rest of my body lost to it, is it still me? Does some essential element of myself reside in it when it’s left alone? Each body part that makes up the Whatitsname seem to have some element of the person it was once apart of still in it. The Whatitsname becomes a sort of vigilante, getting revenge on those that harmed the parts of itself. But the Whatitsname takes on goals of its own, as it needs more flesh in order to survive. And all of this is wrapped in a story that feels like an epic, with epithets for the wide cast of characters, and a fluid and spiraling movement through time and in and out of points of views.

Read about another entry on the list.

Frankenstein in Baghdad is among Leah Rachel von Essen's seven horror novels inspired by Frankenstein.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Carly Thomsen's "Reproductive Justice, Queerly"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Reproductive Justice, Queerly by Carly Thomsen.

About the book, from the publisher:

An invitation into doing reproductive justice queerly.

Queer theory and reproductive justice need each other―now more than ever. As liberals and leftists increasingly frame reproductive justice in terms of LGBTQ+ rights, often adopting the language of “queerness,” it has become difficult to see that their political demands and strategies are often quite conservative. In Reproductive Justice, Queerly, Carly Thomsen examines typical reproductive justice issues―including abortion, surrogacy, crisis pregnancy centers, paid parental leave, and parenting―in queer ways. She shows what can happen when we bring queer theory and reproductive justice together: a queerer, more powerful articulation of what we are fighting for.

Visit Carly Thomsen's website.

The Page 99 Test: Reproductive Justice, Queerly.

--Marshal Zeringue

Four top novels for fans of "Slow Horses"

At Book Riot Megan Mabee tagged four entertaining espionage books for fans of Slow Horses. One title on the list:

Red Widow by Alma Katsu

This suspenseful spy story by Alma Katsu stars another operative with a career on shaky ground. While Lyndsey Duncan was once known as “the human lie detector” at the CIA’s Moscow Field Station, she finds herself getting placed on administrative leave after her last assignment. Things take a turn, though, when she gets called back in by the Chief of the Russia Division to conduct an internal investigation. As she teams up with an agent named Theresa Warner, the widow of a former director, the pair begin to uncover a web of lies ensnaring their department.

Read about another entry on the list.

Red Widow is among Ellen Crosby's seven top Russian spy novels.

The Page 69 Test: Red Widow.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Beck Kubrick's "Dead Girls"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Dead Girls by Beck Kubrick, illustrated by Beck Kubrick.

About the book, from the publisher:

The teen daughter of an infamous serial killer must prove she isn’t the one behind recent copycat murders in this witty and laugh-out-loud funny graphic novel that’s a campy, feminist send-up of slashers that both celebrates and subverts classic tropes.

In the cozy town of Clossdale, a serial killer rampages! Five girls missing in as many weeks! Bodies turning up on the forest floor! And all fingers point to one vile fiend: Ash Hargreeves.

Except Ash didn’t do it. She may be the daughter of the infamous Clossdale Killer, and these copycat killings aren’t exactly convincing proof of her innocence—and okay, she’s kind of a weirdo who has two friends total, but when the murders strike a little too close to home, Ash decides to take a stand.

With the help of her besties, Ash is going to hunt down the killer, clear her mother’s name, and stop there from being any more dead girls—now and forever. After all, WWJLD: what would Jamie Lee do?

Follow Beck Kubrick on Instagram.

My Book, The Movie: Dead Girls.

The Page 69 Test: Dead Girls.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Lara Stokes

From my Q&A with Lara Stokes, author of Midsummer Nights:

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

Midsummer Nights was originally called Community Theatre. In the editorial process, we wanted something more immediate that would place readers in the world of the novel more easily. As it is set in a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, is set in summer and has romantic elements, the shortened Midsummer Nights does more to establish the tone and subject. It’s a change I’m very happy to have made.

What's in a name?

A lot! My protagonist’s name is Miranda. I wanted her to have...[read on]

Visit Lara Stokes's website.

Writers Read: Lara Stokes.

The Page 69 Test: Midsummer Nights.

Q&A with Lara Stokes.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Shelly Lundberg's "How Economics Discovered Women"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: How Economics Discovered Women: Bringing Gender Economics into the Twenty-First Century by Shelly Lundberg.

About the book, from the publisher:

Rethinking the economics of gender.

In the 1970s, as women started to enter the labor force in unprecedented numbers, economists began to examine their roles as economic actors. The result was the rise of gender economics, now a major subfield with powerful data and new methods comparing the economic lives of men and women. Yet despite decades of progress, many of the most consequential questions about gender inequality remain unresolved.

In this bold and reflective book, renowned economist and demographer Shelly Lundberg argues that the problem is not a lack of evidence but a failure to challenge entrenched economic models and outmoded assumptions about markets and gender that have limited what the field can explain.

Why does occupational segregation persist? Why do "women's jobs" pay less? Why are men falling behind in education? And why do policies like paternity leave fail to change behavior? Drawing on more than five decades in the field and integrating insights from other social sciences, Lundberg explains signs of recent progress and charts a path toward a more realistic, socially grounded economics capable of meeting the challenges of gender inequality today.

Visit Shelly Lundberg's website.

The Page 99 Test: How Economics Discovered Women.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five great campus novels

Merve Emre is the Shapiro-Silverberg Professor of Creative Writing and Criticism at Wesleyan University and the Director of the Shapiro Center for Creative Writing and Criticism. She earned a BA from Harvard and a PhD from Yale. She is the author of Paraliterary: The Making of Bad Readers in Postwar America (2017), The Ferrante Letters (2019), and The Personality Brokers (2018), which was selected as one of the best books of 2018 by the New York Times, the Economist, NPR, CBC, and the Spectator, and informs the CNN/HBO Max documentary feature film Persona. She is the editor of Once and Future Feminist (2018), The Annotated Mrs. Dalloway (2021), and The Norton Modern Library Mrs. Dalloway (2021). She is finishing a book titled Post-Discipline: Two Futures for Literary Study and writing a book called Love and Other Useless Pursuits.

At The New Yorker, where she is a contributing writer, Emre tagged five great campus novels, including:

Moo, by Jane Smiley (1995)

A pastoral satire about a Midwestern land-grant university, for readers who find John Williams’s “Stoner” too nostalgic and sentimental. The campus novel with the funniest building name (“Old Meats”), and the only one I have read that features the workers of the university: cafeteria servers, horse trainers.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Susan Coll reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Susan Coll, author of Word Salad: A Novel.

Her entry begins:

My book club has been reading novels that have either won or been short-listed for The Women’s Prize for Fiction, which has been a great way to engage – or sometimes reengage—with books that I intended to read but that in many cases slipped off my radar. Our most recent selection was Anne Enright’s The Forgotten Waltz. I’m embarrassed to say that I had not previously read Enright’s fiction and was very glad to have picked this up. It's a slim, elegant novel, written from the point of view of an unreliable and unlikeable narrator. Set in Dublin in 2009, the novel centers on an adulterous affair, which might sound reductive, but Enright manages to avoid the sorts of tropes one might expect with such a pat storyline. The writing is gorgeous and...[read on]

About Word Salad, from the publisher:

Matilda loves logic and order, and now her structured world is falling apart—in a bookstore.

Former economics major Matilda is moving back to her hometown of Washington D.C. to care for her ailing mother, and she’s desperate for money. She takes a job at her neighborhood bookstore and tries, in vain, to make sense of illogical business of books. To make things worse, she’s forced to team up with a new hire—the enigmatic, flaky, larger-than-life, Sage—who shows up on her first day of work with zero administrative skills and her tiny, puffy, incessantly urinating dog that resembles an underfed rat.

Something in the chaos begins to remind Matilda of her long-neglected creative side, and she starts to rediscover the person she once was before so much got in the way. But things get even more unmanageable when Matilda and Sage are tasked with putting together an event for the reclusive and controversial Dr. Jordan Rutabaga, a windbag of a public intellectual with a cult following that includes a number of people who would like to literally and figuratively see him dead. Rutabaga has a long list of alleged misdeeds, from plagiarism to failure to pay child support to stiffing the nanny.

As the event date approaches, Matilda and Sage discover that Sage and Rutabaga have their own not uncomplicated past, adding yet another person to list of people who do not wish him well. Add in a lawsuit and an impending snowstorm along with the potentially sinister presence of Rutabaga himself, and Matilda is about to come undone.

Bestselling author Susan Coll’s gastric, bookish, laugh-out-loud comedy of manners reminds us that sometimes things have to completely fall apart for them to perfectly come together.

Visit Susan Coll's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Susan Coll & Zoe.

The Page 69 Test: Acceptance.

The Page 69 Test: Beach Week.

The Page 69 Test: The Stager.

The Page 69 Test: Real Life and Other Fictions.

The Page 69 Test: The Literati.

The Page 69 Test: Word Salad.

Writers Read: Susan Coll.

--Marshal Zeringue

Beck Kubrick's "Dead Girls," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Dead Girls by Beck Kubrick, illustrated by Beck Kubrick.

The entry begins:

Dead Girls is a comedy-horror that plays with tropes and conventions and is obviously, very inspired by teen screams, slashers and the rise of good-for-her and coming of rage films. There are so many directors and filmmakers who inspire my work; I love any story that plays with the mundane, hyperreality and genre.

In anything and everything I make, I just want to put David Lynch, Bong Joon Ho, Katie Dippold, John Carpenter and Diablo Cody in a blender. Add a dash of Sofia Coppola, just for the scene in The Virgin Suicides (1999) in which Hanna Hall’s character says ‘Obviously, Doctor, you've never been a thirteen-year-old girl.’. Add a healthy dose of The Simpsons (1989), too. Also I want a Wilhelm scream, that’s non-negotiable.

There’s so many more filmmakers off the top of my head who I love and was inspired by when creating the book: The Kates, The Daniels, Jonathan Entwistle, Greg Jardin, Bill Watterson (not that one), Bronwen Hughes, Jane Schoenbrun and so many more.

Since I use lots of mediums for the art: ink, pencil, oil paint etc. so I think there’d have to be some animation. Pendleton Ward and Joe Bennet make great, animated shows. I’d also love for the fursuits to be done by the team behind Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared (2014) as they’d be perfectly unsettling.

For actors...[read on]

Follow Beck Kubrick on Instagram.

My Book, The Movie: Dead Girls.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven cozy, "Gilmore Girls"-coded fall novels

Kristy Woodson Harvey is the New York Times, USA TODAY, and Publishers Weekly bestselling author of fourteen novels, including Summer State of Mind, Beach House Rules, and the Peachtree Bluff series.

Her new book is Falling for Peachtree Bluff.

[My Book, The Movie: Dear Carolina; The Page 69 Test: Dear Carolina; The Page 69 Test: The Southern Side of Paradise; Writers Read: Kristy Woodson Harvey]

At People magazine Harvey tagged seven of her favorite autumnal reads, including:

Eliza Starts a Rumor by Jane L. Rosen

If your guilty pleasure is scrolling the local mom group on social media, meet your next obsession. Eliza Starts a Rumor drops four Hudson Valley women into a fall whirlwind of secrets and suspicion when one fake post sets their picture-perfect community buzzing. As the leaves turn, alliances unravel before the women discover they may have more in common than they thought.

Read about another book on the list.

The Page 69 Test: Eliza Starts a Rumor.

My Book, The Movie: Eliza Starts a Rumor.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Chandra Shekhar's "The Logic of Corruption"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Logic of Corruption: Why it Persists and Why Reforms Fail by Chandra Shekhar.

About the book, from the publisher:

Corruption continues despite abundant government legislation, public protests, and an overwhelming consensus that it threatens modern liberal institutions, hard-earned global prosperity, human rights, and justice. While we understand corruption better than the ancients, the puzzle of why it remains a timeless societal vice remains unsolved. This book addresses that puzzle by challenging assumptions about individual behavior and bureaucratic design. It analyzes corruption in three of India's major state bureaucracies. The book argues that corruption is organized into grand and petty forms, rather than being uniform. Several markets for grand and petty corruption exist within bureaucracies, linked to and driven by the market for grand corruption in bureaucratic transfers controlled by politicians. The nature, strength, and stability of these linkages explain the persistence of corruption and why top-down approaches fail. The book offers an original account of corruption's 'sticky' nature and proposes an agenda for reform.

Learn more about The Logic of Corruption at the Cambridge University Press website. Visit Chandra Shekhar's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Logic of Corruption.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Claire Booth's "Hidden Currents"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Hidden Currents (A Sheriff Hank Worth Mystery, 8) by Claire Booth.

About the novel, from the publisher:

Another outstanding book in an ever-evolving police procedural series perfect for fans of Terry Shames and Steven F. Havill.

When the new owner of a local fishing store is found murdered, Sheriff Hank Worth has plenty of suspects. The owner was in the middle of a highly acrimonious divorce, had fallen out with his stepson, and was being threatened by the abusive ex-boyfriend of one of his employees.

As Hank delves deeper into the increasingly complicated crime, his professional life is also taking a toll. His deputy sheriff Sheila is in court testifying against the men who had left her for dead in a brutal attack, and the defense will do whatever it takes to win their case.

As tensions grow, it becomes clear there are hidden currents just under the surface everywhere Hank turns.

A skillful blend of character, plot, and mystery laced with a streak of dry humor.

Visit Claire Booth's website.

My Book, The Movie: Another Man's Ground.

The Page 69 Test: Another Man's Ground.

My Book, The Movie: A Deadly Turn.

The Page 69 Test: A Deadly Turn. 

Writers Read: Claire Booth (March 2019).

My Book, The Movie: Fatal Divisions.

The Page 69 Test: Fatal Divisions.

Q&A with Claire Booth.

The Page 69 Test: Hidden Currents.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Tracy Maton

From my Q&A with Tracy Maton, author of The Artful Anna Harris: A Novel:

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

My book was inspired by Patricia Highsmith’s classic, The Talented Mr Ripley. Being upfront about her influence felt important, hence the similarity between our two titles. To a Ripley-fan, the title offers a plethora of hints. For those without any awareness of Ripley, the title still works to a degree, awarding ownership of the story to Anna Harris and implying trickery or cunning, of which there is plenty.

The draft title was The Affable Anna Harris, chosen because the syllables match the original more closely (and Anna is undoubtedly affable, at least on the outside) but the editorial team suggested Artful to avoid...[read on]

Follow Tracy Maton on Instagram and Threads.

Q&A with Tracy Maton.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Suzanne Redfearn reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Suzanne Redfearn, author The Wonder of One: A Novel.

Her entry begins:

Lately, I've gotten in the habit of having several books going at once. I usually have one on audible and several on Kindle.

Currently, on my Kindle, I’m reading:

Jojo Moyes, We All Live Here. Moyes is an auto read for me. I love her quirky characters and how genuinely she paints domestic life and everyday drama. This story is no exception. I’m about halfway through.

Another auto read is Elizabeth...[read on]

About The Wonder of One, from the publisher:

From the #1 Amazon bestselling author of In an Instant comes an inspirational coming-of-age story about one extraordinary girl’s determination to chase a dream.

Vivien Kendall has always been different. Born with a birthmark covering much of her face, she’s bullied, ridiculed, and mistreated as a child. But at the age of six, Vivien learns that in each of us there burns a spirit flame―a deep belief in oneself that must be nurtured and never allowed to go out.

Living by that wisdom and through the enduring friendships of her nanny, her mentor, and the legend who eventually becomes her coach, she chases her dream to someday become the greatest figure skater in the world.

Along the way, she faces a rapidly evolving world full of modern prejudice and injustice. She falls in love, has her heart broken, learns what it means to win or lose, and discovers the wonder of one, the power within each of us to change things.

Visit Suzanne Redfearn's website, and follow her on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.

Coffee with a Canine: Suzanne Redfearn and Cooper.

My Book, The Movie: Hush Little Baby.

The Page 69 Test: Hush Little Baby.

The Page 69 Test: No Ordinary Life.

Writers Read: Suzanne Redfearn (February 2016).

My Book, The Movie: No Ordinary Life.

My Book, The Movie: In an Instant.

The Page 69 Test: In an Instant.

Q&A with Suzanne Redfearn.

My Book, The Movie: Hadley and Grace.

The Page 69 Test: Hadley & Grace.

Writers Read: Suzanne Redfearn (March 2022).

The Page 69 Test: Moment in Time.

My Book, The Movie: Moment in Time.

Writers Read: Suzanne Redfearn (February 2024).

Writers Read: S. E. Redfearn (October 2024).

The Page 69 Test: Two Good Men.

Writers Read: Suzanne Redfearn (October 2025).

My Book, The Movie: Call of the Camino.

The Page 69 Test: Call of the Camino.

My Book, The Movie: The Wonder of One.

The Page 69 Test: The Wonder of One.

Writers Read: Suzanne Redfearn.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine top near-future novels by women

After graduating from Wellesley College and the Columbia Publishing Course, Leslie Stephens worked on the Editorial team at Food52 in New York before heading west to Los Angeles, where she served as the Vice President of Content for the brand, cupcakes and cashmere. Her writing has also appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Eater, Apartment Therapy, and Tasting Table. Her weekly newsletter, Morning Person is among Substack’s most popular paid newsletters and her debut novel You’re Safe Here was released in 2024.

Stephens recently earned her Master's in Professional Mental Health Counseling with a Specialization in Addictions from Lewis and Clark College. With her degree, she hopes to treat adults struggling with technology addiction, through nature-based therapy. She currently lives in Portland, Oregon with her hyperactive pit-mix Toast.

At Tertulia Stephens tagged nine favorite speculative fiction near-future titles by women, including:

Station Eleven: A Novel
Emily St John Mandel

Among my favorite books of all-time, this post-apocalyptic novel centered the role of art, as a traveling Shakespeare troop navigates a post-pandemic America.

Read about another title on the list.

Station Eleven is among Matt Harry's eight top dystopian and post-apocalyptic novels, Alice Martin's six thrillers that feature contagions & pandemics, Rebecca Fallon's five top Shakespeare-inspired novels, Lauren Wilson's eight top books featuring cults, Barnaby Martin's seven titles featuring parents & children at the end of the world, Brittany K. Allen's ten books that get the theatre world right, Jeanette Horn's nine twisted novels about theatrical performers, Isabelle McConville's fifteen books for fans of the post-apocalyptic TV-drama Fallout, Joanna Quinn's six best books set in & around the theatrical world, Carolyn Quimby's 38 best dystopian novels, Tara Sonin's seven books for fans of Margaret Atwood's The Testaments, Maggie Stiefvater's five fantasy books about artists & the magic of creativity, Mark Skinner's five top literary dystopias, Claudia Gray's five essential books about plagues and pandemics, K Chess's five top fictional books inside of real books, Rebecca Kauffman's ten top musical novels, Nathan Englander’s ten favorite books, M.L. Rio’s five top novels inspired by Shakespeare, Anne Corlett's five top books with different takes on the apocalypse, Christopher Priest’s five top sci-fi books that make use of music, and Anne Charnock's five favorite books with fictitious works of art.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Laura Creedle's "The Girl in Green"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Girl in Green by Laura Creedle.

About the book, from the publisher:

A school’s storied legacy cannot stop student's whispers of mysterious disappearances and a legendary monster, in this terrifying new novel that will entrance fans of Madeline Roux and Claire Legrand.

Jess has always been a runner—always looking for an escape, no matter how many detention centers or “special schools” she’s been sent to. So when she receives a scholarship to the illustrious Danvers-Cutteridge in the mountains of West Virginia, her first plan of action is to find the fastest exit.

But Jess soon learns that this new school has secrets hidden beyond the grand staircases and storied past. A student has gone missing, and Jess’s new friends suspect that they haven’t been told the truth about the disappearance.

As Jess helps search for answers (and a way out), she discovers more of Danvers-Cutteridge’s unsettling history. The abuses and mutilations inflicted on past residents. The strange authority in the headmaster’s celebrated family tree. And the fearsome legend that has haunted the valley for decades—a mysterious girl, dressed in green.

Soon, Jess’s search will take her down into the heart of the school, through the closed-off parts of its history left forgotten in the dark. But walls and iron aren’t enough to keep the hungry darkness at bay…

Visit Laura Creedle's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Love Letters of Abelard and Lily.

My Book, The Movie: The Love Letters of Abelard and Lily.

Writers Read: Laura Creedle (January 2018).

Writers Read: Laura Creedle.

Q&A with Laura Creedle.

The Page 69 Test: The Girl in Green.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Helene Wecker

From my Q&A with Helene Wecker, author of The Gates of Midnight: A Novel of the Golem and the Jinni:

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

It took me so long to come up with The Gates of Midnight! It's both a vibes-based title (dark, foreboding, a point of no return) and a direct reference to two different elements of the book. “Gate” comes from the wrought-iron gate to Chava the golem's house in Brooklyn, which is the threshold (both real and symbolic) between her own personal realm and the rest of the human world. And “Midnight” refers to Ahmad's regularly scheduled phone call to Chava, which he places every night at midnight. A long-distance call was an expensive proposition back in 1930, and it was never guaranteed to go through properly -- but since they live thousands of miles apart now, it's the only way to keep their relationship alive. I always second guess myself when it comes to titles, but The Gates of Midnight has...[read on]

Visit Helene Wecker's website.

Writers Read: Helene Wecker (June 2013).

The Page 69 Test: The Golem and the Jinni.

Writers Read: Helene Wecker.

Q&A with Helene Wecker.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: William I. Hitchcock's "A Shadow Over the World"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: A Shadow Over the World: Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Rise of Fascism, and the Making of America's World War II by William I. Hitchcock.

About the book, from the publisher:

From New York Times bestselling author William I. Hitchcock, a riveting, revelatory portrait of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the lead-up to World War II, tracing his—and America’s—awakening to the threat of fascism.

How did FDR and the American public respond to the rise of dictators across Europe and Asia on the eve of World War II? The familiar narrative is that they reacted with indifference and embraced isolationism. Only with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor were Americans reluctantly drawn into the global conflict. But distinguished historian William I. Hitchcock reveals a far more complex and surprising story.

From the time Mussolini came to power in 1922 to America’s entry into the war in 1941, Americans engaged in a fraught national debate over the rising threat—and for some, the lure—of fascism. At the center of this debate was Roosevelt himself. When he took office in 1933, Roosevelt was determined to avoid foreign entanglements that would harm his ambitious domestic agenda of the New Deal. But over the course of his first two terms, a network of journalists, activists, advisers, and diplomats gradually awakened him to the global dangers of fascism.

Roosevelt’s transformation was part of a larger national reckoning with authoritarianism around the world. A Shadow Over the World shines a light on a time when a coalition of courageous humanists gathered around a visionary leader to forge a new purpose for America: to protect democracy, oppose imperialism, support human rights, and lead a global fight for freedom. Their successful struggle against the dark forces of fascism holds powerful lessons for our own perilous times.

Learn more about A Shadow Over the World at the Simon & Schuster website.

The Page 99 Test: The Age of Eisenhower.

The Page 99 Test: A Shadow Over the World.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven crime novels that feature outsiders who challenge the status quo

Tanya Grant writes twisty thrillers full of secrets, murder, and gossipy group dynamics. When not conducting highly suspicious web searches (for research!), she also writes romances.

Grant's new psychological thriller is A Beautiful Lie.

At CrimeReads the author tagged "seven novels about characters whose outsider status disrupts the status quo and leads to dangerous places." One title on the list:

Andrea Bartz, The Spare Room

To escape spending a pandemic lockdown with the man who’s called off her wedding, Kelly accepts an invitation to stay with her childhood friend and her husband. Though Sabrina and Nathan welcome Kelly into their home—and eventually their bed—Kelly is the outsider in their relationship. And when she discovers the last woman they invited into their marriage is missing, Kelly begins to fear she might be next.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue