Five top historical horror novels

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

At Book Riot she tagged five favorite historical horror novels. One entry on the list:

Beloved by Toni Morrison

The most horrifying tales of all are those that draw on the darkest parts of humanity’s past, just as Toni Morrison does in this American classic. Sethe may have escaped from the plantation where she was once enslaved, but the unthinkable cruelties she experienced haunt her still. Her memories aren’t the only thing haunting her and her family, though. The ghost of the unnamed baby she lost has a grip on them, too—and it won’t let Seethe, or her daughter Denver, go without a fight.

Read about other novel on the list.

Beloved also appears on Chandler Morrison's list of five top lightly surreal novels, Hester Musson's top five list of Gothic heroines, Mary Kuryla's list of six works about deeply flawed literary mother figures, Daryl Gregory's list of ten Southern gothic novels that changed the game, Anne Enright's list of six amazing books, Candice Carty-Williams's list of six heroic women in literature, Kate Racculia's list of ten gothic fiction titles that meant something to her, Emily Temple's list of the ten books that defined the 1980s, Megan Abbott's list of six of the best books based on true crimes, Melba Pattillo Beals's 6 favorite books list, Sarah Porter's list of five favorite books featuring psychological hauntings, Matthew Fellion and Katherine Inglis' list of ten books that were subject to silencing or censorship, Jeff Somers's list of ten fictional characters based on real people, Christopher Barzak's top five list of books about magical families, Ayelet Gundar-Goshen's ten top list of wartime love stories, Judith Claire Mitchell's list of ten of the best (unconventional) ghosts in literature, Kelly Link's list of four books that changed her, a list of four books that changed Libby Gleeson, The Telegraph's list of the 15 most depressing books, Elif Shafak's top five list of fictional mothers, Charlie Jane Anders's list of ten great books you didn't know were science fiction or fantasy, Peter Dimock's top ten list of books that challenge what we think we know as "history", Stuart Evers's top ten list of homes in literature, David W. Blight's list of five outstanding novels on the Civil War era, John Mullan's list of ten of the best births in literature, Kit Whitfield's top ten list of genre-defying novels, and at the top of one list of contenders for the title of the single best work of American fiction published in the last twenty-five years.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Eric Caplan's "When Healing Harms"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: When Healing Harms: The Doctor Who Put a Hospital on Trial―and the Case That Shook Psychiatry by Eric Caplan.

About the book, from the publisher:

The legal case that changed psychiatry and forced a reckoning within the profession.

In 1979, Dr. Raphael Osheroff admitted himself to Chestnut Lodge, a prestigious psychiatric hospital, expecting world-class care for his severe depression. Instead, he was confined to a locked ward, denied medication, and subjected to seven months of talk therapy. The experience rendered him physically frail and emotionally devastated before his parents secured his transfer to a hospital willing to prescribe the antidepressants he desperately needed. But the damage was done: his marriage, his practice, and his reputation all lay in tatters.

Then he did something unprecedented. He sued Chestnut Lodge.

When Healing Harms excavates the long-buried story behind one of the most consequential―and most misunderstood―malpractice cases in modern psychiatry and surfaces its impact that persists to this day. Drawing on thousands of pages of court transcripts, medical files, legal archives, hundreds of letters, video testimony, and interviews, Eric Caplan provides the definitive account of how a world-renowned psychiatric hospital failed a patient in crisis, and how the story of that failure has been obscured and misrepresented for more than four decades. The result is a revelatory examination of how psychiatry confronted its limitations―and unwittingly gave rise to a system that has failed seriously ill patients even more than the one Osheroff fought to change.

Visit Eric Caplan's website.

The Page 99 Test: When Healing Harms.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top books on heroes

Don Mullan is the author of Eyewitness Bloody Sunday, a book critical in reopening the British government's inquiry (over 25 years later) into what became known as Bloody Sunday. Bloody Sunday was January 30, 1972, a day when thirteen civilians were killed by British soldiers during a civil rights march in North Ireland.

Paul Greengrass, perhaps better known to Americans as the director of The Bourne Supremacy (2004) and United 93 (2006), made a film (co-produced by Mullan) titled Bloody Sunday (2002) about those events.

In 2006 Mullan named his top ten books on heroes for The Guardian, including:

Rabble-rouser for Peace: The Authorised Biography of Desmond Tutu by John Allen

In 1982 I helped to organise an international conference on world peace and poverty, to mark the 800th anniversary of the birth of St Francis of Assisi. Desmond Tutu, then secretary general of the South African Council of Churches, was one of the first to accept an invitation, subject to the return of his passport, recently confiscated by the apartheid government. I first met him in 1984, the year he won the Nobel peace prize, and we have been friends since. John Allen's biography, due out in October, will undoubtedly be a definitive work for decades to come. Interviewees include former South African presidents FW de Klerk and Nelson Mandela, and US president Bill Clinton. In 1984 I drove Tutu from Dublin to Belfast and was overwhelmed by his gentleness and generosity. Unquestionably, his compassionate handling of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission checked a potential bloodbath of revenge. A wonderful human being.

Read about another title on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Elba Luz

From my Q&A with Elba Luz, author of Legally Yours, Violet Lopez:

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

I hope Legally Yours, Violet Lopez gives readers a good look at what they’re in for! Right away, you know you're getting a story about a girl named Violet, and the word "legally" gives you a little hint about the world you're stepping into. Since it’s YA, I thought weaving that into the title would be interesting, because when you think of legal matters, you tend to think of more adult themes. I wanted that to be a clue into the world of the book. And of course, it’s a play on Legally Blonde, which was a major inspiration for the story. I wanted it to feel like a young adult version of Legally Blonde, but with teenagers holding the reins and the stakes centered around what matters to teens. And of course, "yours" implies a romance, so you're getting a glimpse of almost...[read on]

Visit Elba Luz's website.

Q&A with Elba Luz.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven top stories of suspense in a seaside house

Peter Swanson is the New York Times bestselling author of The Kind Worth Killing, winner of the New England Society Book Award and finalist for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger; Her Every Fear, an NPR book of the year; and Eight Perfect Murders, a New York Times bestseller, among others.

[My Book, The Movie: The Kind Worth Killing; The Page 69 Test: The Kind Worth Killing; Writers Read: Peter Swanson (February 2015)]

Swanson's new book is Do You See What I See?: A Chilling Holiday Mystery Novella of a Celebrity Writer's Christmas Party Gone Wrong.

At CrimeReads the author tagged seven great stories of suspense featuring seaside houses. One title on the list:

The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith

I don’t think this book is commonly thought of as a classic house-by-the-sea novel. But the whole first half of this timeless novel has Tom Ripley insinuating himself into the life of Dickie Greenleaf, who is currently idling away at his summer home in the imagined village of Mongibello on the Italian coast. I love the details of the small villa, the martini lunches, the steep walk down to the beach. And from all that sunlight and bliss Highsmith moves the story into her typically dark, murderous territory.

Read about another title on the list.

The Talented Mr Ripley is on Elizabeth Arnott's list of six top atmospheric thrillers set during heatwaves, Adam Hamdy's list of ten of the most popular literary antiheroes, Nadia Khomami's list of five of the best psychological thrillers by women, the UK-based Crime Writers' Association's list of ten page-turning reads, Nathan Oates's list of eight of the best bad seed novels, Lizzy Barber's list of seven titles about wealthy people behaving badly, Charlotte Northedge's top ten list of novels about toxic friendships, Elizabeth Macneal's list of five books that explore the dark side of fitting in, Saul A. Lelchuk's nine great thrillers featuring alter egos, Emma Stonex's list of seven top mystery novels set by the sea, Russ Thomas's top ten list of queer protagonists in crime fiction, Paul Vidich's list of five of the most enduring imposters in crime fiction & espionage, Lisa Levy's list of eight of the most toxic friendships in crime fiction, Elizabeth Macneal's list of five sympathetic fictional psychopaths, Laurence Scott's list of seven top books about doppelgangers, J.S. Monroe's list of seven suspenseful literary thrillers, Simon Lelic's top ten list of false identities in fiction, Jeff Somers's list of fifty novels that changed novels, Olivia Sudjic's list of eight favorite books about love and obsession, Roz Chast's six favorite books list, Nicholas Searle's top five list of favorite deceivers in fiction, Chris Ewan's list of the ten top chases in literature, Meave Gallagher's top twenty list of gripping page-turners every twentysomething woman should read, Sophia Bennett's top ten list of books set in the Mediterranean, Emma Straub's top ten list of holidays in fiction, E. Lockhart's list of favorite suspense novels, Sally O'Reilly's top ten list of novels inspired by Shakespeare, Walter Kirn's top six list of books on deception, Stephen May's top ten list of impostors in fiction, Simon Mason's top ten list of chilling fictional crimes, Melissa Albert's list of eight books to change a villain, Koren Zailckas's list of eleven of literature's more evil characters, Alex Berenson's five best list of books about Americans abroad John Mullan's list of ten of the best examples of rowing in literature, Tana French's top ten maverick mysteries list, the Guardian's list of the 50 best summer reads ever, the Telegraph's ultimate reading list, and Francesca Simon's top ten list of antiheroes.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Barbara Young Welke's "Writing with Fire"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Writing with Fire: The Cowboy Suit Tragedy and the Course of a Life by Barbara Young Welke.

About the book, from the publisher:

A cultural and legal history intertwined with a deeply emotional meditation on the course of life, memory, and the documents that define us.

During the 1940s and 1950s, an untold number of American children suffered devastating injuries when the fur-like fabric on the chaps of their Gene Autry–branded cowboy playsuits exploded into flame. Barbara Young Welke was researching this history when her teenage daughter unexpectedly died.

The shock of Welke’s loss transformed her understanding of the children and their families. Her experience also led her to question the norms of scholarship and of writing. Historians are trained to separate the personal from the intellectual, to be suspicious of emotion. These and other norms are embedded in and reinforced by the calling card of academics, the curriculum vitae. Welke wondered how that cold document―with its literal meaning, “the course of life”―had become a form that excludes so much of what gives life meaning. What impact did that have on what we know, how we know it, and how we understand ourselves? Similarly, Welke wondered, what might we see if we looked at the history of the cowboy suit tragedy as more than a matter of lawsuits brought by grieving families? Here, Welke traces the making, marketing, and selling of the cowboy suits; the lengths the defendants went to avoid and limit liability; and the meaning of the injuries, deaths, and legal settlements in the course of these children’s and families’ lives.

Writing with Fire interweaves the histories of the cowboy suit tragedy and the curriculum vitae. Grounded in archival and legal research, oral histories, and letters Welke wrote her daughter following her death, Welke offers an inimitable examination of trauma, law, autobiography, and identity. The result is revelatory and unforgettable: a provocative historical reflection on life and death, depression and war, markets and families, law, power, and precarity in modern America.

Learn more about Writing with Fire at the University of Chicago Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Writing with Fire.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: David McGlynn's "Liberal Arts"

Featured at the Page 59 Test: Liberal Arts: A Novel by David McGlynn.

About the book, from the publisher:

A kaleidoscopic novel-in-stories set at a fictional Midwest college

Two centuries old and covered in ivy, Wisconsin’s Buchanan College is populated by an eclectic mix of students, staff, and professors hailing from the nearby suburbs to the far corners of the globe. From the outside, Buchanan seems an idyllic world of higher learning. Yet behind its bucolic exterior, a series of interconnected dramas play out: a slew of first-year students mysteriously disappear within days of moving in; an injured hockey star discovers an unlikely fountain of youth; an alumna returns to campus after fifty years in the hope of reconnecting with a former love. And throughout the novel we follow the story of Jenny Ramirez, a social worker and the wife of a popular professor, who commits an act that alters how the college sees her, and how she sees herself. Over a span of four years, from orientation to graduation, the characters in Liberal Arts are forced to weigh their ideals and aspirations against the harsh and often ridiculous realities of the world, and are left asking what, if anything, a liberal arts education has left to teach them.

Visit David McGlynn's website.

Writers Read: David McGlynn (September 2025).

Q&A with David McGlynn.

The Page 69 Test: Everything We Could Do.

The Page 59 Test: Liberal Arts.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight of the best books about haunted houses

Lorna Wallace has a PhD in English Literature and is a lover of all things science fiction and horror. She lives in Scotland with her rescue greyhound, Misty.

At Mental Floss Wallace tagged eight top books about haunted houses, including:

A House with Good Bones (2023) // T. Kingfisher

Sam Montgomery is on a break from work and is looking forward to an extended stay with her mom, but her brother has warned her that something seems off. When she arrives, she finally understands what he means: vultures are circling the property, the whole house has been redecorated, and her mom is being unusually jumpy and sensitive. Sam decides to get to the bottom of what’s going on and soon discovers that a mean-spirited specter is involved—but don’t expect this to be a classic haunting, because things get very weird.

T. Kingfisher—which is a pseudonym used by Ursula Vernon—won two awards for best horror novel for A House with Good Bones: the 2023 Dragon Award and the 2024 Locus Award.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Natalie Kikić

From my Q&A with Natalie Kikić, author of The Haunting of Lavender House: A Haunting, Gothic Story of Croatian Folklore:

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

The title of my book, The Haunting of Lavender House, does an excellent job introducing readers to my story, but it’s actually not my original title. For years, while I was writing the novel, I called it House of Lavender. While I like the simplicity of it, it doesn’t really communicate the gothic elements of my story—the house in my novel is haunted, you see. And so, my publishing team introduced the new and current title, which I love. It evokes other gothic horror tales, such as The Haunting of Hill House. And it still keeps the lavender element, which is common flower along the coastal region of Croatia, where my story is set. So in the end, my title is...[read on]

Visit Natalie Kikić's website.

Q&A with Natalie Kikić.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight top witchy mysteries and thrillers

Carolina Ciucci is a teacher, writer and reviewer based in the south of Argentina. She hoards books like they’re going out of style. In case of emergency, you can summon her by talking about Ireland, fictional witches, and the Brontë family. At Book Riot she tagged eight books that "are either intriguing mysteries or absorbing thrillers, and they’re all brimming with magic." One title on the list:

River Woman, River Demon by Jennifer Givhan

When her husband is arrested for the murder of a friend, Eva’s life is thrown off kilter. Soon, she’s questioning everyone she knows, including herself. Now, Eva must use her magick as a bruja to protect the ones she loves.

Read about another entry on the list.

River Woman, River Demon is among Rey Rowland's top six top speculative thrillers.

The Page 69 Test: River Woman, River Demon.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Livia K. Stone's "Without Masters"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Without Masters: Autogestión, Anarchist Ethics, and Mexico City Punk by Livia K. Stone.

About the book, from the publisher:

Without Masters is an anthropological history of the radical ethical and political principle of autogestión as it traveled around the world in the twentieth century and came to be popularized in Mexico City in the early 2000s. A political term that first arose in 1962 Algeria traveled across continents until it landed in Mexico City’s anarcho-punk scene in the 1980s, where it eventually came to be associated more with zines, music, art, and Zapatismo than with its origins in anarchism or syndicalism. Without Masters brings the true history of autogestión and the quiet radicalism of Mexico City’s autogestive collectives to an English-speaking audience for the first time. Along the way, Stone brings together diverse materials, from punk zines and political fliers to Beat novels and Zapatista parables, that tell an alternate history of radical politics throughout the world in the second half of the twentieth century which serves as a reminder of Mexico’s formative role in the creation of modern social theory.

Learn more about Without Masters at the Duke University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Without Masters.

--Marshal Zeringue

Elizabeth Noel's "Beneath the Edelweiss," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Beneath the Edelweiss by Elizabeth Noel.

The entry begins:

If Beneath the Edelweiss became a movie, new ground in disability representation would be broken. Hurray! The main protagonist, Mitzi Hausler, is an alpine herbalist in training. She is short-statured and this is viewed by her superstitious community as an impediment to her ability to heal the sick with herbs. Oma says, Mitzi is beautiful, but no one will marry her. She gives Mitzi the herbs because she believes Mitzi will have nothing else. As Oma ages and war creeps closer she seems to realize she is wrong when she tells Mitzi, “We’re all made in the image of God. Jesus bled. His body leaked just like mine and yours. You must rise above flesh like everyone else. Do you understand?”

Mitzi does rise above other people’s attitudes, becoming an herbalist in her own right. However, she comes of age during Austria’s annexation to Nazi Germany, and as the veil of Nazism is pulled back, Mitzi must make life changing choices about herself and the people under her care.

My first casting would be Hollis Jane Andrews, an L.A. actress who I came across...[read on]

Visit Elizabeth Noel's website.

Q&A with Elizabeth Noel.

Writers Read: Elizabeth Noel.

The Page 69 Test: Beneath the Edelweiss.

My Book, The Movie: Beneath the Edelweiss.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Justine Pucella Winans's "Your Boyfriend Needs an Exorcist"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Your Boyfriend Needs an Exorcist by Justine Pucella Winans.

About the book, from the publisher:

Jennifer's Body meets The Weight of Blood in this horror-comedy about an evil spirit looking for a second chance at love and life.

Just because Schuyler is a bloodthirsty evil spirit doesn't mean she can't fall in love. Ever since Wren Castillo moved into the house Schuyler haunts, Schuyler has been crushing hard. But Wren has a boyfriend, Enzo, and he's the worst. Schuyler has no choice but to watch as Enzo treats Wren terribly-until she accidentally possesses him.

With Enzo's spirit nowhere to be found, Schuyler must pretend to be him until she can set things right. But Schuyler feels more at home in Enzo's body than she ever did in her own, and as she grows closer to his family and friends-including Wren-she starts to wonder if this could all be for keeps.

Maintaining a possession is harder than Schuyler expected, though, and it might just take some spilled blood to keep her new body going strong. Worse, it turns out she's not the only one interested in stealing Enzo's body. When another evil spirit threatens everyone Schuyler now holds dear, she must decide just how far she's willing to go to secure her second chance at love-and life.

Visit Justine Pucella Winans's website.

Q&A with Justine Pucella Winans.

The Page 69 Test: Your Boyfriend Needs an Exorcist.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five essential books on Chinese American history

Beth Lew-Williams is Professor of History and Director of the Program in Asian American Studies at Princeton University. She is the author of The Chinese Must Go: Violence, Exclusion, and the Making of the Alien in America.

Her latest book is John Doe Chinaman: A Forgotten History of Chinese Life under American Racial Law.

At Lit Hub Lew-Williams suggest five books if "you want to know more about the history of Chinese Americans, Asian Americans, and the discriminatory laws their presence inspired." One title on the list:

Erika Lee, The Making of Asian America: A History

For a primer on Asian American history, I’d start with Erika Lee’s The Making of Asian America. It is a difficult task to trace each strand of America’s diverse Asian community and braid them together into a single volume. But Lee has done it. She recounts generations of immigrants—from Filipino sailors to Chinese gold miners, Japanese farmers, and Vietnamese refugees—and the prejudice they encountered in the United States. For the younger reader, Lee has published Made in Asian America, which offers an introduction appropriate for the middle grades. Young readers will find stories of survival and resistance, as well as hard truths about America’s history of discrimination.

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Laura Jensen Walker reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Laura Jensen Walker, author of The Pilgrimage of Primrose Honeychurch: A Novel.

From her entry:

I recently finished An Artful Dodge, by the brilliant Karen Odden. If you’re looking for impeccably researched historical fiction, mesmerizing characters you’ll fall in love with, and a compelling story you can’t put down, look no further. This was a fascinating dive into Victorian London and a ring of women thieves, Kit Jimeson is my favorite new heroine. Fingers crossed her...[read on]

About The Pilgrimage of Primrose Honeychurch, from the publisher:

From the author of Death of a Flying Nightingale comes the moving story of a solitary seventy-year-old curmudgeon embracing the connection of family and daring to follow her dreams.

Primrose Honeychurch doesn’t really “get” people. Books, though, make perfect sense.

At seventy, the sharp-tongued recluse prefers to keep company with her own routines. But when a life-altering diagnosis leaves her worried she’ll never be missed, she decides it’s finally time to do something to leave her mark: something no one will ever forget.

Clutching her mother’s ashes and the book of her heart, Primrose hops on a plane, bound for Hay-on-Wye, the legendary Welsh “Town of Books.” Unfortunately, her literary pilgrimage just won’t follow the plot. After an accident derails her trip, she finds herself staying awhile with estranged family. But she senses a kindred spirit in the niece she’s getting to know, who uncannily understands the world much the same as Primrose herself does.

As rolling green hills and book-lined streets frame an unexpected season of discovery, what began as an unwelcome detour becomes something more profound. For the first time in her life, Primrose begins to glimpse the beauty―and courage―of true human connection.

Visit Laura Jensen Walker's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Alphabet Sleuths.

Q&A with Laura Jensen Walker.

The Page 69 Test: The Alphabet Sleuths.

Writers Read: Laura Jensen Walker (February 2026).

My Book, The Movie: The Postmistress of Puddlington.

The Page 69 Test: The Postmistress of Puddlington.

My Book, The Movie: The Pilgrimage of Primrose Honeychurch.

Writers Read: Laura Jensen Walker.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top revenge and eat-the-rich thrillers

L.M. Chilton is a journalist with fifteen years of experience working on TV shows for the BBC, ITV, and Channel 4 in the UK, as well as writing columns for magazines such as Cosmopolitan and Glamour, and reporting for national newspapers across the world, everywhere from Doncaster to Delhi. He lives in London, procrastinating.

Chliton's new novel is I Think We Should Kill Other People.

At CrimeReads he tagged five revenge and eat-the-rich thrillers about the 1 Percent, including:

Liv Constantine, The Last Mrs. Parrish

Marrying rich seems like a fast track to wealth, but what if the guy you have your eye on is already taken?

In this fast-paced beach-read, Amber Patterson is tired of being poor. She wants everything Daphne Parrish has, the money, the handsome property-mogul husband and the golden-couple status in exclusive Bishops Harbor, Connecticut. After worming her way into Daphne’s life, she becomes her BFF, and gets closer and closer to her man. But Amber is hiding secrets of her own, and nothing in Daphne’s marriage is quite what it seems.

This one is twisty, wicked and very hard to put down.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Last Mrs. Parrish is among Nicole Blades's six thrillers set in the suburbs, Susan Moore's seven top domestic psychological thrillers, Trisha Sakhlecha's eleven thrillers that feature the mega-rich, Jaime Lynn Hendricks's seven best unlikeable characters in thrillers, Eliza Jane Brazier's nine books that pit the Have against the Have-Nots, Seraphina Nova Glass's seven top obsession thrillers, Allison Dickson's top ten thrillers featuring a dance of girlfriends and deception, Kristyn Kusek Lewis's eight shocking thrillers featuring scandals, Margot Hunt's top nine thrillers featuring duplicitous spouses, and Jennifer Hillier's eight crime novels of women starting over.

The Page 69 Test: The Last Mrs. Parrish.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Kevin Waite's "The Boundless Biddy Mason"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Boundless Biddy Mason: An Odyssey from Slavery to Freedom Across the American West by Kevin Waite.

About the book, from the publisher:

How Biddy Mason crossed the continent, broke free from slavery, and built Black Los Angeles.

Born in bondage, Biddy Mason endured one of the longest forced migrations in American history—three thousand miles on foot from Georgia to California. She and her daughters labored in slavery in the “free” state of California for five years before launching a landmark emancipation suit in 1856. Free at last, she defied barriers of race and gender, rising to prominence as a healer, philanthropist, church builder, and real estate entrepreneur whose commercial properties stood at what became known as the “Wall Street of the West.” By the time of her death in 1891, she had laid the foundations of Black Los Angeles and ranked among the richest women of color in the United States.

In this first book-length biography of Mason, prizewinning historian Kevin Waite uncovers an extraordinary story of survival that carries readers from the cotton South to metropolitan California, and through the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the dawn of Jim Crow. By retracing Mason’s odyssey, he illuminates both the continental sweep of American slavery and the fragile, hard-won possibilities of freedom in the West.

Learn more about The Boundless Biddy Mason at the University of California Press website.

The Page 99 Test: The Boundless Biddy Mason.

--Marshal Zeringue

Monona Wali's “Sutra Americana,” the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Sutra Americana by Monona Wali.

The entry begins:

If Sutra Americana were to be made into a movie, or preferably a television series, I would love to have the very talented Shuchi Talati write and direct it. She directed Girls Will Be Girls (2023) a moving film about a mother-daughter relationship set in modern-day India. She is able to capture intimate relationships between characters with real subtlety and power. Because my novel is so much about the dynamics of family members, moments of conflict as well as of love, I think Talati would be the perfect director for this material. The novel also has the social backdrop of America as it goes through the upheavals of the civil rights movement, the Vietnam war, and...[read on]

Visit Monona Wali's website.

Q&A with Monona Wali.

The Page 69 Test: Sutra Americana.

Writers Read: Monona Wali.

My Book, The Movie: Sutra Americana.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Elizabeth Noel's "Beneath the Edelweiss"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Beneath the Edelweiss by Elizabeth Noel.

About Beneath the Edelweiss, from the publisher:

From a poetic new voice in historical fiction comes a story of resistance, community, and survival set against the breathtaking backdrop of the Austrian Alps and the heartbreaking onset of World War II.

Growing up on a farm, high among the flowering slopes of Carinthia, Mitzi Hausler has never fit in―not even with her own family. At thirteen, she’s no taller than a six-year-old, and her peers’ taunts of “Witchy Mitzi” follow her everywhere. Thankfully, she has her loyal pup for comfort. And Oma, the grandmother who raised her.

But Oma, a gifted herbalist, won’t be around forever. She vows to pass on her knowledge before it’s too late, sharing her mysterious alpine remedies with Mitzi. With no marriage prospects, herbs may be Mitzi's only path forward. Indeed, when resources grow tight, her resentful older sister sends Mitzi away to Talend to care for a grieving widower and his sickly young child.

In the town, against all odds, Mitzi’s life gradually blooms into something unexpected and she discovers she belongs. But when political violence and Nazi eugenic policies come to town, she’s forced to make a life-altering choice.

Visit Elizabeth Noel's website.

Q&A with Elizabeth Noel.

Writers Read: Elizabeth Noel.

The Page 69 Test: Beneath the Edelweiss.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight top literary science fiction books

Susie Dumond is a queer writer originally from Little Rock, Arkansas. She is the author of Queerly Beloved, Looking for a Sign, and Bed and Breakup, and she also talks about books as a senior contributor at Book Riot and a bookseller at her local indie bookstore. Dumond lives in Washington, D.C., with her spouse, Mickey, and her cat, Maple. When she’s not writing or reading, you can find her baking cupcakes or belting karaoke at the nearest gay bar.

At Book Riot Dumond tagged eight "literary science fiction books [that] tell engaging stories set in futuristic worlds, but they’ll also make you think about humanity and your own life from new perspectives." One title on the list:

The Light Pirate by Lily Brooks-Dalton

Lily Brooks-Dalton’s The Light Pirate dabbles in sci-fi, cli-fi, dystopia, and fantasy. But no matter what you call it, it’s an undeniably brilliant book that will spin you up in a web of gorgeous prose and have you obsessed by the end of the first chapter. In a near-future Florida eroded by climate change, a baby is born in the middle of a hurricane and given the storm’s name: Wanda. Wanda witnesses horrific natural disasters due to climate change, but the circumstances of her birth also left her with an inexplicable gift for survival. Brooks-Dalton is an enormously gifted writer, and her characters from this book have continued to stick with me for years since reading it.

Read about another title on the list.

The Light Pirate is among Scott Guild's eight dystopian novels that explore hope in the climate crisis.

--Marshal Zeringue