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

Pg. 69: Aliya Whiteley's "The Misheard World"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Misheard World by Aliya Whiteley.

About the novel, from the publisher:

An interrogation of a famed spy by a military agent reveals deeper secrets about the beginnings of the war—and about the world itself—in the latest groundbreaking novel from the Arthur C. Clarke Award-nominated Aliya Whiteley.

Before wars are won, they must be witnessed.

Elize Janview is a soldier, one of the few survivors of an unimaginably terrible weapon, which ended the long détente between the North and the South and plunged them back into all-out war. She enlisted with a dream of finding those responsible, of somehow getting revenge for the deaths of everyone she knew, but was posted to guard the prison at Crag, the fortress of the South, which has never fallen to the enemy.

Janview’s life is transformed when a rough wooden box is delivered to Crag, holding the performer and spy Marius Mondegreen, agent of the North: the Misheard Word, who can read minds, breathe fire, and make objects appear and disappear. Janview is to witness Mondegreen’s interrogation by his captor, the beautiful and cruel Allynx Syld, who promises the end of the war. As recorder – and by degrees participant – in the interrogation, Janview comes to question everything she knew about the war, and the very world she lives in…

Visit Aliya Whiteley's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Arrival of Missives.

The Page 69 Test: Skyward Inn.

The Page 69 Test: Three Eight One.

The Page 69 Test: The Misheard World.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Roger Kreuz's "Strikingly Similar"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Strikingly Similar: Plagiarism and Appropriation from Chaucer to Chatbots by Roger Kreuz.

About the book, from the publisher:

Plagiarism and appropriation are hot topics when they appear in the news. A politician copies a section of a speech, a section of music sounds familiar, the plot of a novel follows the same pattern as an older story, a piece of scientific research is attributed to the wrong researcher… The list is endless. Allegations and convictions of such incidents can easily ruin a career and inspire gossip. People report worrying about unconsciously appropriating someone else's work. But why do people plagiarise? How many claims of unconscious plagiarism are truthful? How is plagiarism detected, and what are the outcomes for the perpetrators and victims? Strikingly Similar uncovers the deeper psychology behind this controversial human behavior, as well as a cultural history that is far wider and more interesting than sensationalised news stories.

Visit Roger Kreuz's website.

The Page 99 Test: Strikingly Similar.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight creepy post-apocalyptic novels

At Book Riot Liberty Hardy tagged eight creepy post-apocalyptic novels. One entry on the list:

The Reapers are the Angels by Alden Bell

This is probably my favorite zombie novel. It’s about a young woman named Temple who is searching a monster-infested America in hopes of finding her brother, while a killer is hot on her heels. Temple is also looking for redemption, but mostly she just finds zombies.

Read about another novel on the list.

The Reapers Are the Angels is among Emily Hughes's five deliciously creepy Southern Gothic horror novels, Ceridwen Christensen's six top zombie novels, and Kimberly Turner's ten books every zombie fan must read.

The Page 69 Test: The Reapers Are the Angels.

My Book, the Movie: The Reapers Are the Angels.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Megan Chance reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Megan Chance, author of The Vermilion Sea: A Novel.

Her entry begins:

I just finished The Everlasting by Alix Harrow. My bookseller daughter urged me to read it, and since she usually has my reading taste on speed dial, I did. I used to read a lot of fantasy when I was younger, and I still do on occasion, though it’s not really my go-to genre. Why, I don’t know. Truly the best writers work in fantasy, and the themes they explore are often mind-bending and challenging.

This book was no exception. I absolutely loved it. As a writer, I was awed by...[read on]

About The Vermilion Sea, from the publisher:

From the author of Glamorous Notions comes a harrowing tale set aboard a yacht in the 1920s, where luxury borders on lunacy and mysteries of the deep blur the lines between science and the occult.

The Great War may be over, but brilliant scientist Billie McKennan continues the fight to be taken seriously. When a deliberate omission wins her a marine biologist position aboard an expedition funded by a wealthy eccentric, she quickly discovers she’s not the only one keeping secrets.

The opulent Eurybia sets sail for the Gulf of California with a handful of well-to-do passengers and talented scientists on board. To Billie’s surprise, her ex-husband counts among them. The true mission of the voyage comes into question when a mysterious specimen is captured. And then science unexpectedly gives way to wild rumors and superstition.

Soon, a sinister force takes hold of the vessel―and everyone on it. Billie must reconcile her beliefs with the reality of what she encounters in the vermilion sea. But how much is she willing to sacrifice in order to survive?

Visit Megan Chance's website.

My Book, The Movie: A Splendid Ruin.

The Page 69 Test: A Splendid Ruin.

Q&A with Megan Chance.

The Page 69 Test: A Dangerous Education.

My Book, The Movie: A Dangerous Education.

Writers Read: Megan Chance (February 2023).

Writers Read: Megan Chance (January 2025).

My Book, The Movie: Glamorous Notions.

The Page 69 Test: Glamorous Notions.

My Book, The Movie: The Vermilion Sea.

The Page 69 Test: The Vermilion Sea.

Writers Read: Megan Chance.

--Marshal Zeringue

Marina Evans's "The Cheerleader," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Cheerleader: A Novel by Marina Evans.

The entry begins:

Every author dreams of what a “movie” cast for her book would look like, so this is so much fun! First off, The Cheerleader is a campy, splashy whodunit about fame, ambition, and a gameday murder. We meet Jentry Rae Randall in the prologue—the cheer captain of the Dallas Lonestars who is brutally killed in the locker room moments after she dances on the field. She is blonde, gorgeous, spunky, and positive, and I’m picturing Michelle Randolph of Landman fame for the part.

Then, in the book we have Royce Holt, the upcoming quarterback for the Lonestars. He’s fit, charming, and driven, so I think Austin Butler would be amazing. Then there is Nikki Keegan, an ambitious documentarian who conducts her own under-the-radar investigation of the murder. However, on the side, she is also collecting footage for an unauthorized true crime series. She’s no nonsense, natural, and smart, and I believe...[read on]

Visit Marina Evans's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Cheerleader.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Timothy D. Grundmeier's "Lutheranism and American Culture"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Lutheranism and American Culture: The Making of a Distinctive Faith in the Civil War Era by Timothy D. Grundmeier.

About the book, from the publisher:

Timothy D. Grundmeier’s Lutheranism and American Culture examines the transformation of the nation’s third-largest Protestant denomination over the course of the nineteenth century. In the antebellum era, leading voices within the church believed that the best way to become American was by modifying certain historic doctrines deemed too Catholic and cooperating with Anglo-evangelicals in revivalism and social reform. However, by the mid-1870s, most Lutherans had rejected this view. Though they remained proudly American, most embraced a religious identity characterized by a commitment to their church’s confessions, isolation from other Christians, and a conservative outlook on political and social issues.

Grundmeier shows that this transformation did not happen in a vacuum. Throughout the Civil War and early years of Reconstruction, disputes over slavery and politics led to quarrels about theology and church affairs. During the war and immediately after, the Lutheran church in the United States experienced two major schisms, both driven by clashing views on the national conflict. In the postbellum years, Lutherans adopted increasingly conservative positions in theology and politics, mainly in reaction to the perceived “radicalism” of the era. By the final decades of the nineteenth century, Lutherans had established a rigorously conservative and definitively American form of the faith, distinct from their coreligionists in Europe and other Protestants in the United States.

Although Grundmeier focuses on a single religious tradition, his study has implications for several areas of Civil War scholarship. First, it demonstrates how the Lutheran experience diverged from that of other Protestant groups, thereby expanding our understanding of how American Christians responded to the era’s crises, including slavery, sectionalism, and national identity. In addition, his work reinforces and extends many of the findings in other historical fields: the political culture of the Mid-Atlantic and Midwest, the views of German and Scandinavian immigrants, and the various forms of conservatism among white northerners. Grundmeier’s most significant contribution, however, is examining a previously unexplored subject. In the vast corpus of works on the Civil War era and American religious history, scholars have almost entirely overlooked the views and experiences of Lutherans. Lutheranism and American Culture seeks to remedy that neglect and serve as the starting point for understanding the formative decades of this distinctive faith.

Learn more about Lutheranism and American Culture at the LSU Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Lutheranism and American Culture.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight thrillers about jealousy and obsession between friends

Jennifer van der Kleut is an award-winning former journalist of both print and digital publications, including the DC affiliate of ABC7 News. A graduate of San Jose State University, she spent most of her life in the San Francisco Bay Area before moving to the Northern Virginia suburbs of DC, where she currently lives with her husband and two sons. For nearly a decade, she was the lead singer of the Bay Area-based band SweetDuration, and performed with artists like Jason Mraz, Big Country, Chantal Kreviazuk, and Stabbing Westward. When she’s not writing, she loves going to the beach with her family, going to concerts with her girlfriends, and getting lost in the pages of a book.

Her debut novel is The Better Mother.

At Electric Lit van der Kleut tagged eight thrillers in which "friendships are questioned and pushed to their limits." One title on the list:

The Other Mother by Carol Goodman

New motherhood, and all the insecurities that come with it, can make for gripping thriller fodder. In this novel, Daphne and Laurel—two mothers who meet by chance at a parenting class and both have daughters named Chloe—seem fated to become best friends and support each other through the emotional minefield that is postpartum life. But their friendship soon moves into dysfunctional territory. Laurel starts dressing like Daphne, telling others Daphne’s stories as if they’re her own. Meanwhile, Daphne starts to think that masquerading as Laurel could be her answer to escaping her husband, whom she is afraid thinks she’s an unfit mother and might try to take her daughter away. Posing as Laurel, Daphne takes a job in an eerie, atmospheric mansion archiving materials for an aging author—and she starts to learn that nothing is as it seems.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Other Mother is among Sarah Zettel's ten books about parents with secrets.

--Marshal Zeringue