Q&A with James Cahill

From my Q&A with James Cahill, author of The Violet Hour: A Novel:

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

The title threads into the story in all kinds of ways. Colour plays an important role – the main character, Thomas Haller, is a famous painter who is celebrated for his abstract canvases. At the beginning of the novel, he has just created a new series of pictures in violet. The phrase itself comes from T.S. Eliot’s poem ‘The Waste Land’ (“At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives / Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea …”). That timeless image of an evening sky is ironic, because what follows in Eliot’s poem is a bleakly realist episode: a young female typist comes home from work, bored and tired, before her boyfriend forces himself on her.

Like ‘The Waste Land’, this novel is about the fragmentary, cacophonous nature of experience. It is set in the high-end world of contemporary art, but its themes are universal – loss, longing, beauty and desire. Thomas, the painter, is caught between romantic ideals and the inescapable, haunting facts of his experience. More generally, the phrase captures the novel’s interest in endings. Another character, Leo Goffman, is a real-estate tycoon in his eighties – the twilight of his existence. He spends his days surrounded by his art treasures, looking back at his life with a mixture of regret and defiance. Lorna, the third main character, is a British art dealer in her forties who has arrived at a personal impasse. Her girlfriend is about to leave her, and she’s wondering what her life will now be like. Many scenes in the story take place at...[read on]

Follow James Cahill on Instagram.

Q&A with James Cahill.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Eric C. Smith's "Between Worlds"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Between Worlds: John A. Broadus, the Southern Baptist Seminary, and the Prospects of the New South by Eric C. Smith.

About the book, from the publisher:

John A. Broadus (1827–95) was a highly influential Southern Baptist leader, preacher, scholar, and educator during the latter half of the nineteenth century. He cofounded the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, which today is among the largest seminaries in the world. Broadus’s enduring impact on American preaching stems in part from his 1870 homiletics manual, a widely adopted textbook that ministers continue to use today. A prominent southerner before and after the Civil War, Broadus actively shaped his region during the shift from the Old South to the New. Eric C. Smith’s Between Worlds―the first scholarly biography of Broadus―joins recent historical scholarship in reevaluating Broadus’s legacy.

Learn more about Between Worlds at the LSU Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Between Worlds.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven top Hamptons novels

Nicole Sellew is a writer and English teacher based in Connecticut and New York City. In 2022, she received an MLitt in fiction from the University of St Andrews, where she is currently studying for her PhD.

Sellew's new novel is Lover Girl. The publisher calls it a "picaresque debut of forbidden desire, in which a young woman escapes NYC to work on her novel in the Hamptons, falling into a downward spiral of lovers and other destructive behaviors."

At Lit Hub the author tagged seven Hamptons novels to read this winter. One title on the list:

Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead

A coming-of-age story set in Sag Harbor in the eighties, told through the perspective of a prep-school teen boy spending his summer at the beach and navigating the racial politics of the East End. Read it if you like cocaine or The Smiths.

Read about another novel on Sellew's list.

Sag Harbor is among Brittany K. Allen's five novels to read if you’re fascinated by the Black bourgeoisie, Benjamin Markovits's top ten stories of male friendship, Amanda Brainerd's eight books to take you back to the Eighties, and Jeff Somers's top ten books to take you someplace you’ve likely never been.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ahmad Saber's "Ramin Abbas Has MAJOR Questions," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Ramin Abbas Has MAJOR Questions by Ahmad Saber.

The entry begins:

This is an incredibly fun exercise! I haven’t thought about my book as a movie before this, so I didn’t have any particular actors and actresses in mind when writing the story. Secondly, my book’s character cast is mostly male and basically all South Asian/Desi, so this exercise is a bit tougher due to the relative paucity of brown people of color in Hollywood. Add to that the challenge of casting teenagers, and you have a mammoth task ahead.

That being said, I do have a few names in mind as below.

But first, a quick synopsis of the book for context: Ramin Abbas Has MAJOR Questions tells the story of Ramin Abbas, a closeted gay senior at Hikma High, an all-Muslim school in Toronto. All he wants to do is be a devout Muslim and delay the “gay problem” until he makes it to college in New York City. But when it’s discovered that his grad portfolio is missing mandatory physical activity hours, the principal decides there’s only one solution: Ramin must join the soccer team. Except there’s a problem. Fahad, the captain of the soccer team, is way too hot and Ramin’s crush on him refuses to die. Which is just about the worst thing that could’ve happened because Ramin really does not want to enter a love triangle with Allah and a boy. Leaving Ramin with one of many major questions that may be impossible to answer: stay loyal to Allah, or take a shot at first love?

Okay, now to the dream cast!

Director: Kabir Akhtar. As the key director on Never Have I Ever, and as a person of color himself, Kabir would likely capture the heart and the humor of the story the best.

Production Studio: Without a doubt, See-Saw films (with the wisdom of Euros Lyn shared with Kabir!) I loved what they did with Season 1 of Heartstopper.

Ramin Abbas (titular protagonist):...[read on]

Visit Ahmad Saber's website.

The Page 69 Test: Ramin Abbas Has MAJOR Questions.

My Book, The Movie: Ramin Abbas Has MAJOR Questions.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Verlin Darrow's "The Brighter the Light, the Darker the Shadow"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Brighter the Light, the Darker the Shadow by Verlin Darrow.

About the book, from the publisher:

Kade Tobin needs every bit of his wisdom as the leader of a rural spiritual community to remain true to his core values as murders pile up around him. Drawn into helping to solve the mystery by a sheriff's detective, Kade sorts through the array of quirky seekers on the community's land, only to end up as the defendant in a suspense-filled trial. He struggles to maintain a stance of kindness while he endures bullies in the jail, a vengeful DA, and the pending judgment of twelve strangers. As the prosecution parades witness after witness, the mounting evidence against Kade becomes alarmingly damning. If he were a juror, Kade believes he might vote to convict himself at this stage of his trial. But he also trusts the universe. Kade remains confident that a force greater than himself--and the justice system--has other plans for him. Or does it?

Visit Verlin Darrow's website.

Writers Read: Verlin Darrow (May 2023).

My Book, The Movie: Murder for Liar.

The Page 69 Test: Murder for Liar.

The Page 69 Test: The Not Quite Enlightened Sleuth.

Writers Read: Verlin Darrow (April 2024).

My Book, The Movie: The Not Quite Enlightened Sleuth.

My Book, The Movie: The Brighter the Light, the Darker the Shadow.

Q&A with Verlin Darrow.

Writers Read: Verlin Darrow.

The Page 69 Test: The Brighter the Light, the Darker the Shadow.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Kenneth W. Noe's "Abraham Lincoln and the Heroic Legend"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Abraham Lincoln and the Heroic Legend: Reconsidering Lincoln as Commander in Chief by Kenneth W. Noe.

About the book, from the publisher:

Kenneth W. Noe’s Abraham Lincoln and the Heroic Legend boldly questions the long-accepted notion that the sixteenth president was an almost-perfect commander in chief, more intelligent than his generals. The legend originated with Lincoln himself, who early in the war concluded that he possessed a keen strategic and tactical mind. Noe explores the genesis of this powerful idea and asks why so many have tenaciously defended it.

George McClellan, Lincoln’s top general, emerged in Lincoln’s mind and the American psyche as his chief adversary, and to this day, the Lincoln-McClellan relationship remains central to the enduring legend. Lincoln came to view himself as a wiser warrior than McClellan, and as the war proceeded, a few members of Lincoln’s inner circle began to echo the president’s thoughts on his military prowess. Convinced of his own tactical brilliance, Lincoln demanded that Ulysses Grant, McClellan’s replacement, turn to the “hard, tough fighting” of the Overland and Petersburg campaigns, when Grant’s first instinct was to copy McClellan and swing into the Confederate rear.

Noe suggests that the growth and solidification of the heroic legend began with Lincoln’s assassination; it debuted in print only months afterward and was so cloaked in religious piety that for decades it could not withstand the counternarratives offered by secular contemporaries. Although the legend was debated and neglected at times, it reemerged in interwar Great Britain and gained canonical status in the 1950s Cold War era and during the Civil War Centennial of the 1960s. Historians became torchbearers of the heroic legend and much else that we know about Lincoln, reorienting his biography forever. Based on lessons and language from the world wars, their arguments were so timely and powerful that they seized the field. Since then, biographers and historians have reevaluated many aspects of Lincoln’s life, but have rarely revisited his performance as commander in chief. Noe’s reappraisal is long overdue.

Visit Kenneth W. Noe's website.

The Page 99 Test: Abraham Lincoln and the Heroic Legend.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven novels about women becoming beasts

Caitlin Breeze lives in London in a tiny house full of books. She has a BA from the University of Cambridge, a Creative MA from Falmouth University, and a love of all things eldritch.

The Fox Hunt is her first novel.

At Electric Lit Breeze tagged seven novels in which women turn monstrous to reclaim their humanity. One title on the list:

Paladin’s Strength by T. Kingfisher

Clara is a nun, warrior, and unapologetic werebear. Yes, werebear. But her bear-self isn’t a shameful secret: It’s simply a part of her, and one she carries with matter-of-fact pride. Kingfisher’s world treats female strength with affectionate irreverence. Clara is powerful enough to break a man in half and tender enough to worry about rude table manners in between battles. Her transformation doesn’t make her less human, it makes her more wholly herself, refusing every attempt to shrink her. Sometimes the only way to carve out space in a world built to contain you is to become something too large to hold.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Caitlin Rother

From my Q&A with Caitlin Rother, author of Hooked: A Thriller:

What's in a name?

When I pick names for my protagonists, I don't do it randomly. Take the ones from my newest thriller, Hooked, which features investigative reporter Katrina Chopin and surfing homicide detective Ken Goode. I came up with these names many years ago, when I first started writing the book (which took 19 years to get published). It was shortly after Hurricane Katrina, which some people thought should make me throw it out, but I used that association to add context to the character's personality. She was like a storm. Katrina was also the name I was going to give to my daughter if I ever had a child, which I never did, so there was no way I was going to give that up. In the end, no one has said anything about the hurricane association being a distraction. So I think I made the right choice. I am a pianist, and Chopin is one of my favorite composers, so that's where her last name came from. I named her fraternal twin brother Franny, short for Francis, a distant relative of the composer, Frederic Francois Chopin. So, even more personal meaning for me. Ken Goode is a handsome surfer, so I kind of named him after Ken as in Ken and Barbie, and Goode because...[read on]

Visit Caitlin Rother's website.

My Book, The Movie: Hooked.

Q&A with Caitlin Rother.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine top thriller-y, crime-y speculative novels

Michelle Maryk graduated from Cornell University with a degree in English and attended the Yale Writer’s Workshop. For the better part of twenty-five years, she’s been a successful voiceover, on-camera commercial, and comedic actor, and she is a dual Swedish and US citizen.

The Found Object Society is her debut novel.

At CrimeReads Maryk tagged nine of her "recent (and one of my oldest) speculative favorites that thrillingly delve into crime and murder in its many forms." One entry on the list:

Good Neighbors, Sarah Langan

No one skewers the sweet candy-coating of suburbia and lets spill the gooey gore inside better than Langan. Set in the very near (and increasingly hot) future, an unconventional family has moved to picture-perfect Maple Street, sending ripples of disapproval throughout the well-manicured McMansions. Soon after, a giant sinkhole opens up in the park, swallowing the daughter of the neighborhood’s self-appointed Queen Bee. Rumors and accusations fly, directed squarely at the outcast new family. Laced with ruthless humor and tension, this novel lays bare the noxious underbelly of the American Dream.

Read about another novel on Maryk's list.

Good Neighbors is among Kate Broad's eight novels about class & racial tensions in the suburbs, Katrina Monroe's nine terrible mothers in horror, Chris Cander's eight novels about dealing with difficult neighbors, and Amelia Kahaney's six top coming-of-age mysteries & thrillers.

The Page 69 Test: Good Neighbors.

My Book, The Movie: Good Neighbors.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Carl F. Cranor's "Vital Lives"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Vital Lives: Social Responsibility and the Battle Against Chronic Disease by Carl F. Cranor.

About the book, from the publisher:

Chronic diseases are a major menace to the goal of living healthier, longer, and more vital lives. In the 20th century a sustained, and comprehensive scientific effort by public health officials, physicians, researchers, and legislators, was made to reduce the threat of infectious diseases. Chronic afflictions subsequently became the dominant health burden. All of us are vulnerable to various dysfunctions-cardiovascular disease, cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), diabetes and cirrhosis- that decrease the vitality of life and longevity, accelerate aging, and increase pain and misery. Sixty percent of Americans are afflicted by at least one of them. This rises to 78% when cohorts reach 55, and as high as 85% after 65. These illnesses cost more than three trillion dollars annually and constitute 6 of the 10 leading causes of US deaths from disease.

Numerous factors complicate our understanding of, and efforts to reduce, these dysfunctions: lifestyle and personal habits, involuntary and environmental toxic exposures, and inferior social circumstances and institutions-poor and marginal neighborhoods, limited and inadequate healthcare, poorly protected and dangerous workplaces. To fully understand these maladies Carl F. Cranor casts a wide interdisciplinary net, drawing from the research of physicians, epidemiologists, sociologists and philosophers to identify their nature, development, extent, and causal contributions- ultimately recommending a division of responsibilities between individual and broader socially responsible efforts to justly support vital lives. Individuals can influence chronic afflictions, but these actions alone are insufficient. Cranor argues that, while individuals can influence chronic afflictions, they must be comprehensively and responsibly supported by improved social conditions, healthcare and health-protection institutions, all of which require enhanced social responsibility by public officials and legislators.

Learn more about Vital Lives at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Legally Poisoned.

The Page 99 Test: Vital Lives.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Sherry Rankin reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Sherry Rankin, author of The Dark Below.

Her entry begins:

I tend to read less for information than for the emotions books evoke—which makes me a devoted re-reader. For every new book I read, I probably reread ten.

I’ve just finished rereading Jane Harper’s The Lost Man. I’m always struck by her ability to make landscape feel like a living presence, as well as by her spare, clean, understated style and her seamless weaving of past and present.

At the moment, I’m also rereading...[read on]

About The Dark Below, from the publisher:

Not all secrets stay buried. Not all deaths are what they seem.

When Chase Loudermilk, a troubled veteran, is found dead, everyone assumes it’s suicide.

Everyone except his criminology professor, Teddy Drummond. A former cop haunted by painful memories, Teddy suspects Chase has been murdered, and that the answers lie hidden in his shadowy past.

Drawn reluctantly into the case, Teddy teams up with Detective Raina Bragg―a woman with every reason to hate her. As the two dig into the town’s buried secrets, what they uncover is more than a motive. It’s a chain reaction of choices, each darker than the last.

Then another body turns up.

Now, in a place where everyone’s lives are tangled and few are truly innocent, Teddy and Raina find themselves in a race against time to stop a killer and expose the truth: that some consequences take years to surface―and the most dangerous secrets are the ones nobody sees coming…

Visit Sherry Rankin's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Killing Plains.

The Page 69 Test: The Killing Plains.

Q&A with Sherry Rankin.

My Book, The Movie: The Dark Below.

The Page 69 Test: The Dark Below.

Writers Read: Sherry Rankin.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Ahmad Saber's "Ramin Abbas Has MAJOR Questions"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Ramin Abbas Has MAJOR Questions by Ahmad Saber.

About the book, from the publisher:

An intensely brave, beautifully honest, and wryly funny story about a gay Muslim teen who has to choose between being true to himself or his faith—and his realization that maybe they aren’t as separate as he thought.

Ramin Abbas has spent his whole life obeying his parents, his Imam, and, of course, Allah—no questions asked. But when he starts crushing on the ridiculously handsome captain of the soccer team, so many things he’d always been so sure about are becoming questions:

1. Music is haram. But what if the Wicked soundtrack is the only thing keeping you sane because you’re being forced to play on the soccer team? With Captain Handsome?!

2. A boy crush is double haram, and Ramin’s parents will never accept it. But can he really be the only Muslim on Earth who feels this way?

3. Allah is merciful and makes no mistakes. Then isn’t Ramin just the way Allah intended him to be?

And so why should living your truth but losing everything—or living a lie and losing yourself—have to be a choice?!

Visit Ahmad Saber's website.

The Page 69 Test: Ramin Abbas Has MAJOR Questions.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Christophe Wall-Romana's "Black Light"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Black Light: Revealing the Hidden History of Photography and Cinema by Christophe Wall-Romana.

About the book, from the publisher:

A radical assessment of the racial motives underlying the conception of photography and cinema

Conventional histories have long traced the origins of photography and cinema to the goal of reproducing the visible world. Black Light offers a radical counter to this understanding. Investigating the optical, cosmological, and racial thought that surrounded their conception, Christophe Wall-Romana argues that these media developed out of a desire to visualize what cannot be seen.

Taking as its starting point the concurrent invention of the telescope and industrialization of the transatlantic slave trade, Black Light shows how photography and cinema are entangled with two key preoccupations of the Enlightenment: visualizing the mysteries of the cosmos and managing Blackness. Wall-Romana uses literary and technological sources to demonstrate how racial and astronomical thinking interwove throughout the long development of our modern visual media. Retracing the impulses behind nonmimetic photoimaging and dynamic modeling, he exposes the racial underpinnings of research on photosensitive compounds such as silver nitrate and the racist lenses applied in post-Copernican cosmology.

Black Light charts the pivotal period from the seventeenth through the nineteenth century when Europeans were reckoning with “multiple worlds” and natural philosophy was giving way to “mechanical objectivity.” Wall-Romana shows how engagement with the nature of light was always entangled with racist discourses on Blackness―especially after the 1801 discovery of the invisible spectrum and its paradox of “black light.” Deprovincializing media archaeology, this book presents a groundbreaking historical framework with which to reenvision our dominant modes of seeing and understanding the world.

Learn more about Black Light at the University of Minnesota Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Black Light.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight books inspired by lucky Chinese New Year rituals

Lauren Kung Jessen is a mixed-race Chinese American writer with a fondness for witty, flirtatious dialogue and making meals with too many steps but lots of flavor. She is fascinated by myths and superstitions and how ideas, beliefs, traditions, and stories evolve over time. From attending culinary school to working in the world of Big Tech to writing love stories, Kung Jessen cares about creating experiences that make people feel something. When she’s not writing novels, she works as a content strategist and user experience writer. She also has a food and film blog, A Dash of Cinema, where she makes food inspired by movies and TV shows. She lives in Nashville with her husband (who she met thanks to fate—read: the algorithms of online dating), two cats, and dog.

Kung Jessen's new novel is The Fortune Flip.

At The Nerd Daily the author tagged eight titles inspired by lucky Chinese New Year rituals, including:

If you’re counting your lucky numbers: 888 Love and the Divine Burden of Numbers by Abraham Chang

Everyone gets seven great loves in their life, according to Young Wang’s uncle. But when Young meets Erena—his sixth love—is she just the penultimate relationship for him, or is she his one true love? Layered with Western pop culture, Chinese numerology and superstition, and the experience of being a first-generation Chinese American.

Read about another entry on the list.

Q&A with Abraham Chang.

--Marshal Zeringue

Caitlin Rother's "Hooked," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Hooked: A Thriller by Caitlin Rother.

The entry begins:

I started writing Hooked almost 20 years ago, when I was younger, and so were the actors and actresses that could be cast to play my two lead characters--investigative reporter Katrina Chopin and surfing homicide detective Ken Goode.

The book opens with the two characters meeting at a bar in La Jolla, being immediately drawn to each other not just because they are both attractive, but because they start talking about trauma and tragedy they both share from their past. Goode gets called away to respond to a death scene before Katrina gets a chance to tell him she's a reporter, so when he sees her again the next morning after the news conference, he is disappointed to find out that she is a reporter covering his suspicious death case, because now it means they can't date. It also means that they will be competing professionally to solve the case from either side of a very bright line that separates reporters and their sources. So when I write my first drafts of this book, I would have cast Ryan Gosling as Ken Goode, because he's good at playing smart and sarcastic, and he's tall and athletic, and he was even cast as Ken in Barbie many years after I thought about him for this part in my movie. So apparently others saw him that way too. However, I think he's a bit too old now to play this character, who is 37, so the closest I could come is Glen Powell, for all the same reasons. Although he usually...[read on]

Visit Caitlin Rother's website.

My Book, The Movie: Hooked.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Marina Evans

From my Q&A with Marina Evans, author of The Cheerleader: A Novel:

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

I believe the title of my book pulls readers directly into the story. The simplicity of it cuts to the chase, and frankly, my publisher anticipated that it would do well with keyword and internet searches. Originally, I named the book Final Score, but apparently there are many books with that same title. The Cheerleader is simple, effective, and I hope…intriguing!

What's in a name?

I always give a great deal of thought to my characters’ names before selecting them. As an author, names have to feel right, capture a character’s essence, and embody a story’s theme. The Cheerleader is set in Texas, so while I was world-building that bold, football-obsessed culture...[read on]

Visit Marina Evans's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Cheerleader.

Q&A with Marina Evans.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Misty L. Heggeness's "Swiftynomics"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Swiftynomics: How Women Mastermind and Redefine Our Economy by Misty L. Heggeness.

About the book, from the publisher:

A feminist romp through pop culture that illuminates how women impact and shape the economy.

Taylor Swift and Beyoncé aren’t just pop megastars. They are working women, whose astounding accomplishments defy patriarchal norms. And while not all women can be Rihanna or Dolly Parton or Reese Witherspoon, their successes help us understand the central role of everyday women in today’s economy.

Swiftynomics assesses the complex economic lives of American women. Drawing insights from pathbreakers like Taylor Swift, Misty Heggeness digs into the data revealing women’s hidden contributions and aspirations—the unexamined value they create by following their own ambitions. She confronts misconceptions about the roles women play in today’s economy by highlighting the abundance of productive activity occurring in their daily lives and acknowledging the barriers they still face.

Lighthearted but substantive, Swiftynomics explores critical reforms like paying caregivers for work on behalf of their families and collecting statistical documentation of gendered labor that currently goes unrecognized. Heggeness also offers advice for women so they can thrive in an economy that was not built for them.

Visit Misty L. Heggeness's website.

The Page 99 Test: Swiftynomics.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine top depictions of AI in fiction

Justin C. Key is a practicing psychiatrist and a speculative fiction writer. He is the author of the debut novel The Hospital at the End of the World and the story collection The World Wasn’t Ready for You. His stories have appeared in the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, Escape Pod, Lightspeed, and on Tor.com. He received a BA in biology from Stanford University and completed his residency in psychiatry at UCLA. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and three children.

At Lit Hub Key tagged nine favorite depictions of AI in fiction, including:

Murderbot (Martha Wells, All Systems Red)

What happens when a machine designed to protect humans by any-means-necessary hacks itself to independence? Many tales and movies explore this nightmare scenario (SkyNet, anyone?), but the self-named ‘Murderbot’ would rather binge TV shows than conquer humanity. I love speculative fiction because of its ability to give insights about our world from the outside looking in. Murderbot is a prime example of that, making what’s supposed to be alien into something endearing and relatable.

Read about another entry on the list.

All Systems Red also appears among Debbie Urbanski's nine books that center asexuality, Lorna Wallace's ten best novels about Artificial Intelligence, Deana Whitney's five amusing AI characters who should all definitely hang out, Andrew Skinner's five top stories about the lives of artificial objects, Annalee Newitz's list of seven books about remaking the world, Tansy Rayner Roberts and Rivqa Rafael's five top books that give voice to artificial intelligence, T.W. O'Brien's five recent books that explore the secret lives of robots, Sam Reader's top six science fiction novels for fans of Westworld, and Nicole Hill's six robots too smart for their own good.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Verlin Darrow reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Verlin Darrow, author of The Brighter the Light, the Darker the Shadow.

His entry begins:

At the moment, I’m oscillating between several genres. (Can you oscillate between more than two things? I’m too lazy to look this up). I like humor mixed into what I read, so I seek out comic crime, quirky science fiction, and offbeat mystery novels. (I did manage to look up synonyms for humor).

Here are the three I’m currently (and concurrently) reading:

Fortunate Son by Caimh McDonell

This is the ninth and latest book in The Dublin Trilogy (Go figure.) I’m not a laugh out loud kind of guy, but in this case…. All the books in the series feature Bunny McGarry, an Irish policeman with a distinctly alternative perspective from any cop you’ve ever read about. The plots are wonderfully convoluted—more like mysteries than most crime novels. I...[read on]

About The Brighter the Light, the Darker the Shadow, from the publisher:

Kade Tobin needs every bit of his wisdom as the leader of a rural spiritual community to remain true to his core values as murders pile up around him. Drawn into helping to solve the mystery by a sheriff's detective, Kade sorts through the array of quirky seekers on the community's land, only to end up as the defendant in a suspense-filled trial. He struggles to maintain a stance of kindness while he endures bullies in the jail, a vengeful DA, and the pending judgment of twelve strangers. As the prosecution parades witness after witness, the mounting evidence against Kade becomes alarmingly damning. If he were a juror, Kade believes he might vote to convict himself at this stage of his trial. But he also trusts the universe. Kade remains confident that a force greater than himself--and the justice system--has other plans for him. Or does it?

Visit Verlin Darrow's website.

Writers Read: Verlin Darrow (May 2023).

My Book, The Movie: Murder for Liar.

The Page 69 Test: Murder for Liar.

The Page 69 Test: The Not Quite Enlightened Sleuth.

Writers Read: Verlin Darrow (April 2024).

My Book, The Movie: The Not Quite Enlightened Sleuth.

My Book, The Movie: The Brighter the Light, the Darker the Shadow.

Q&A with Verlin Darrow.

Writers Read: Verlin Darrow.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Sherry Rankin's "The Dark Below"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Dark Below by Sherry Rankin.

About the novel, from the publisher:

Not all secrets stay buried. Not all deaths are what they seem.

When Chase Loudermilk, a troubled veteran, is found dead, everyone assumes it’s suicide.

Everyone except his criminology professor, Teddy Drummond. A former cop haunted by painful memories, Teddy suspects Chase has been murdered, and that the answers lie hidden in his shadowy past.

Drawn reluctantly into the case, Teddy teams up with Detective Raina Bragg―a woman with every reason to hate her. As the two dig into the town’s buried secrets, what they uncover is more than a motive. It’s a chain reaction of choices, each darker than the last.

Then another body turns up.

Now, in a place where everyone’s lives are tangled and few are truly innocent, Teddy and Raina find themselves in a race against time to stop a killer and expose the truth: that some consequences take years to surface―and the most dangerous secrets are the ones nobody sees coming…

Visit Sherry Rankin's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Killing Plains.

The Page 69 Test: The Killing Plains.

Q&A with Sherry Rankin.

My Book, The Movie: The Dark Below.

The Page 69 Test: The Dark Below.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Peter D. McDonald's "The Impossible Reversal"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Impossible Reversal: A History of How We Play by Peter D. McDonald.

About the book, from the publisher:

Tracing the cultural history of play―from Fluxus to SimCity

Games and gamified activities have become ubiquitous in many adults’ lives, and play is widely valued for fostering creativity, community, growth, and empathy. But how did we come to our current understanding of what it means to play? The Impossible Reversal charts the transformation of notions of playfulness beginning in the second half of the twentieth century, when a legion of artists, academics, and engineers developed new ways of theorizing, structuring, and designing ludic activity.

Through examples ranging from experimental Fluxus games to corporate role-playing exercises and from the Easy Bake Oven to Tetris, The Impossible Reversal presents four styles of playfulness characteristic of the “era of designed play”: the impossible reversal, which puts a player in a seemingly hopeless scenario they must upend with a tiny gesture; expending the secret, which involves silly rules that gain an obscure power and require players to embrace failure; simulated freedom, a satiric criticism of the ordinary world; and oblique repetition, a way of playing that stumbles toward unimaginable outcomes through simple, meaningless, and endlessly iterated acts.

A unique genealogical account of play as both concept and practice, The Impossible Reversal illuminates how playfulness became essential for understanding cultural, technical, and economic production in the United States.

Learn more about The Impossible Reversal at the University of Minnesota Press website.

The Page 99 Test: The Impossible Reversal.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight titles featuring cathartic bathhouse scenes

McKenzie Watson-Fore is a writer, artist, and neighbor currently based in her hometown of Boulder, Colorado. She holds an MFA in Nonfiction from Pacific University. She writes about evangelicalism, relationships to people and place, and self-discovery. Watson-Fore serves as the executive editor for sneaker wave magazine and is the founder and host of the Thunderdome Conference. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and Best American Essays.

At Electric Lit Watson-Fore tagged eight works featuring cathartic bathhouse scenes, including:

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

Set in Korea and Japan between 1910 and 1989, Pachinko chronicles the daily lives of four generations of Koreans in exile. Forty years apart, two different characters—first, Sunja; later, Ayame—visit the public bathhouse, or sento. In each case, the bathhouse is a utilitarian space used for hygiene and relaxation, and each mention underscores the tensions the characters endure in the midst of their quotidian responsibilities. For Sunja—the woman at the center of the novel’s tessellating history—the sento she visits on her first night in Osaka is a reminder of her alienation from her home country, as well as an adumbration of the nationalist prejudice that will intensify over the years to come. This is the work of a skilled novelist: to take a generic personal obligation—something as simple and routine as bathing—and leverage it to convey both context and interiority. For Ayame, her bathhouse visit precedes her discovery of a clandestine sex grove. Her return visits to the sento are infused with a growing curiosity about the secluded thicket and what happens there. In this way, Lee reflects that a bathhouse is not necessarily a sexual space, but neither does it preclude the erotic dimensions of an embodied life.

Read about another entry on the list.

Pachinko is among Adrienne Westenfeld and Sirena He's twenty-five essential books about the Asian American experience, Daphne Fama's seven top novels set during times of great political upheaval, Mia Barzilay Freund's eighteen best historical fiction books of the last several decades, Courtney Rodgers's best historical fiction of the 21st century so far, Bethanne Patrick's twenty-five best historical fiction books of all time, Asha Thanki seven books about families surviving political unrest, the Amazon Book Review editors' twelve favorite long books, Gina Chen's twelve books for fans of HBO’s Succession, Cindy Fazzi's eight books about the impact of Japanese imperialism during WWII, Eman Quotah's eight books about mothers separated from their daughters, Karolina Waclawiak's six favorite books on loss and longing, Allison Patkai's top six books with strong female voices, Tara Sonin's twenty-one books for fans of HBO’s Succession, and six books Jia Tolentino recommends.

--Marshal Zeringue

Third reading: D.W. Buffa on Otto Friedrich’s "Before The Deluge"

The Dark Backward is among D.W. Buffa's more recent novels to be released. The story revolves around not just the strangest case William Darnell had ever tried;

it was the strangest case ever tried by any lawyer anywhere. It was impossible to explain; or rather, impossible to believe. The defendant, who did not speak English or any other language anyone could identify, had been found on an island no one knew existed, and charged with murder, rape and incest. He was given the name Adam, and Adam, as Darnell comes to learn, is more intelligent, quicker to learn, than anyone he has ever met. Adam, he learns to his astonishment, is a member of an ancient civilization that has remained undiscovered for more than three thousand years.

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 covers Otto Friedrich’s Before The Deluge: A Portrait of Berlin in the 1920s. It begins:

Otto Friedrich distinguishes himself from the typical historians who specialize, compartmentalize and would “mistrust any journalistic attempt to include movie stars and generals and bankers and poets in the same chronicle.” The story he wants to tell, “the story of Berlin in the 1920s permits no other approach.” What Friedrich calls his “journalistic attempt,” however, is precisely what a truly great historian tries to achieve. And that is what Otto Friedrich really was, a great historian, perhaps the greatest American writer of European history in the twentieth century. Like Jacob Burckhardt in his classic The Civilization of the Renaissance In Italy, Friedrich gives more than a chronology of interesting events and biographies of important people; he paints a portrait of a place and time, a work of art that, in a way nothing else can, shows what it was like to live in Berlin, a city that before we have read the first page we know is doomed to destruction, and something more than that in the memory of those who remember what the Third Reich did to the world.

Otto Friedrich was not a professional historian, but he majored in history at Harvard, where his father, Carl Friedrich taught government, and became one of the best read men of his generation, a generation that still took reading seriously. In one of his other works, City of Nets, which tells the story of Hollywood in the 1940s, he read five hundred books before he started to write; he read more than three hundred in preparation for Before The Deluge. This gave him the kind of familiarity with things - the different colors, and the different shades of colors - with which to paint the most vivid picture of Berlin in the 1920s we will ever have. It begins with...[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.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven great books about bad moms

M.K. Oliver is a former English teacher and headteacher originally from Liverpool. He long dreamed of becoming a writer and after many years of working in schools, he took the exciting decision to put down the whiteboard marker, take up the keyboard, and give it a go.

Oliver's new novel is A Sociopath's Guide to a Successful Marriage.

At People magazine the author tagged "a few great books in which mothers range from a little bit selfish to completely, dreadfully awful!" One title on the list:

Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple

This one concerns a soul-searching mother whose self-interest (or loss of self) sometimes gets the better of her maternal instinct. This is a wise, thought-provoking read while also being a wonderful delight. Bernadette isn’t so much a bad mother as a mother who has lost herself after the birth of her daughter to such an extent that she seems to want to erase herself completely.

This is about the conflict between the maternal instincts and the creative urge to be a unique individual who wants to find their voice again. What is great about the "bad mother" here is she’s not really bad at all, she’s just honest about the emotionally demanding and difficult aspects of motherhood.

Read about another entry on the list.

Where’d You Go, Bernadette is among Tom Ryan's six adult novels featuring young sleuths, Kate McIntyre's seven top novels about only children, Francesca Segal's seven best books to prepare for motherhood, Kelly Simmons's six books to read with your teen or twentyish daughter, Jeff Somers's top five novels whose main characters are shut-ins and five books that use cultural anthropology to brilliant effect and top five novels featuring runaway parents, Heidi Fiedler's thirty-three books to read with your mother, the Star-Tribune's eight top funny books for dire times, Chrissie Gruebel's seven great books for people who love Modern Family, Charlotte Runcie's ten best bad mothers in literature, Joel Cunningham's seven notable epistolary novels and Chrissie Gruebel's five top books for readers inspired by Nora Ephron.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Angela Simms's "Fighting for a Foothold"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Fighting for a Foothold: How Government and Markets Undermine Black Middle-Class Suburbia by Angela Simms.

About the book, from the publisher:

Prince George’s County, Maryland, is a suburban jurisdiction in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area and is home to the highest concentration of Black middle-class residents in the United States. As such, it is well positioned to overcome White domination and anti-Black racism and their social and economic consequences. Yet Prince George’s does not raise tax revenue sufficient to provide consistent high-quality public goods and services. In Fighting for a Foothold, sociologist Angela Simms examines the factors contributing to Prince George’s financial troubles.

Simms draws on two years of observations of Prince George’s County’s budget and policy development processes, interviews with nearly 60 Prince George’s leaders and residents, and budget and policy analysis for Prince George’s County and its two Whiter, wealthier neighbors, Montgomery County, Maryland, and Fairfax County, Virginia. She argues legacy and ongoing government policies and business practices—such as federal mortgage insurance policy prior to 1968, local government reliance on property taxes, and private investment patterns—have resulted in disparities in wealth accumulation between Black and White Americans, not only for individuals and families but local jurisdictions as well. Prince George’s County has a lower cost of living than its Whiter, wealthier neighbors. As the most affordable county bordering D.C., it attracts a disproportionate share of the region’s core middle-class, lower middle-class, working class, and low-income residents, resulting in greater budget pressure.

Prince George’s uses the same strategies as majority-White jurisdictions to increase revenue, such as taxing at similar rates and vying for development opportunities but does not attain the same financial returns. Ultimately, Simms contends Prince George’s endures “relative regional burden” and that the county effectively subsidizes Whiter counties’ wealth accumulation. She offers policy recommendations for removing the constraints Prince George’s County and other majority-Black jurisdictions navigate, including increased federal and state taxes on wealthy Americans and corporations, which will enhance the capacity for government to distribute and redistribute resources equitably; increased state-level funding of public goods and services, which would decrease local jurisdictions’ reliance on locally-generated tax revenue; and the creation of equity funds to remediate harms inflicted upon Black Americans.

Fighting for a Foothold is an in-depth analysis of the fiscal challenges experienced by Prince George’s County and by the suburban Black middle-class and majority-Black jurisdictions, more broadly. The book reveals how race, class, and local jurisdiction boundaries in metropolitan areas interact to create different material living conditions for Americans.

Visit Angela Simms's website.

The Page 99 Test: Fighting for a Foothold.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Verlin Darrow

From my Q&A with Verlin Darrow, author of The Brighter the Light, the Darker the Shadow:

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

First of all, I need to confess that I stole my title—The Brighter the Light, the Darker the Shadow—from Carl Jung. I paraphrased the actual quote (not on purpose) because I remembered it incorrectly. Then I realized my version was more appropriate for the book.

In psychological terms, it means that the more rational we are in our conscious minds, the stronger the activity of our subconscious. In literary terms, I hope it implies the two sides of a character that might pertain to a murder mystery. Which part of us drives criminal behavior? I’m guessing that the title will only fully make sense to the reader at the resolution stage of the twisty plot.

Also, I just thought my title...[read on]

Visit Verlin Darrow's website.

Writers Read: Verlin Darrow (May 2023).

My Book, The Movie: Murder for Liar.

The Page 69 Test: Murder for Liar.

The Page 69 Test: The Not Quite Enlightened Sleuth.

Writers Read: Verlin Darrow (April 2024).

My Book, The Movie: The Not Quite Enlightened Sleuth.

My Book, The Movie: The Brighter the Light, the Darker the Shadow.

Q&A with Verlin Darrow.

--Marshal Zeringue