What is Anica Mrose Rissi reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Anica Mrose Rissi, author of Girl Reflected in Knife:

Her entry begins:

Back in my editor days, I acquired and edited an unforgettable debut YA novel, OCD Love Story by Corey Ann Haydu. From the start, Corey has been a writer who is unafraid of letting her characters get messy—of allowing them to be fully, deeply, imperfectly human and fully, deeply, imperfectly themselves. Of letting them make big mistakes, feel big emotions, and step right into complicated situations with no easy solutions. And she does it all with gorgeous sentences, an insightful eye, and a generous heart. I went on to edit three more of Corey’s novels before I switched to the author side of the desk, and I’ve remained a huge fan of the many books she has published in the years since, from picture books to YA. This week, Little, Brown published Corey Ann Haydu’s adult debut, Mothers and Other Strangers. It’s a book about...[read on]

About Girl Reflected in Knife, from the publisher:

"A haunting, bold portrait of a young woman whose world has reached fever pitch, whose grief has taken on a life of its own. Unputdownable and exquisitely written, Girl Reflected in Knife is chilling yet beautiful, fantastical yet all too real, as we follow one girl through the looking glass. I will be thinking about this book for a very long time to come.” —Amber Smith, New York Times bestselling author of The Way I Used to Be and The Way I Am Now

Destiny can’t count on anyone but herself. Her mother has struggled with addiction for all of Destiny’s life, moving them from town to town, bad boyfriend to bad boyfriend—including a particularly dark period in Texas, where Destiny ended up in a psychiatric hospital. But Destiny’s mother is newly sober and stable. And Destiny is falling in love.

Destiny never believed in happily ever after, but that doesn’t stop her confidence from fraying when the first guy she ever trusted casually shatters her heart. Spiraling hard, she tells a tiny, desperate lie to buy herself a moment of hope. But as the lie grows and the pressures tangle, she gets lost in her own deception, and the line between truth and fantasy starts to blur.

With time untethered and her perception in knots, Destiny must find a way to reclaim her story and weave a new ending—before its beginnings unravel.

"Be careful of the story you tell yourself. It might become the one you believe."

Visit Anica Mrose Rissi's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Anica Mrose Rissi & Arugula.

The Page 69 Test: Anna, Banana, and the Monkey in the Middle.

Q&A with Anica Mrose Rissi.

Writers Read: Anica Mrose Rissi.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Cisco Bradley's "I Hear Freedom"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: I Hear Freedom: The Great Migration, Free Jazz, and Black Power by Cisco Bradley.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the 1960s, a musical revolution took place in the industrial landscapes of Cleveland and Detroit. Disenchanted with the strictures of bebop, musicians forged a new style―free jazz―that took inspiration from a vast range of sources, including figures such as Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, and John Coltrane; African and Middle Eastern music; avant-garde modernism; and the politics and aesthetics of Black Power. How did this radical movement come about, and what explains its creativity and vitality?

Based on interviews with dozens of musicians, I Hear Freedom tells the story of free jazz and its connection to the broader Black experience. Cisco Bradley demonstrates that although this part of the free jazz movement arose in the Midwest, it is deeply rooted in the musical traditions and aesthetics that the Great Migration brought from the South. As postwar urban renewal projects fractured Black communities, musicians drew on this heritage to create new forms of expression. Figures such as Albert Ayler, Donald Ayler, Charles Tyler, Frank Wright, Bobby Few, Charles Moore, and Faruq Z. Bey developed distinct artistic visions, often influenced by their involvement in Black liberation movements. I Hear Freedom chronicles the Cleveland and Detroit free jazz scenes, and it follows musicians to New York, Los Angeles, Paris, and beyond. A revelatory oral history, this book shows that free jazz is a uniquely Black style shaped by mobility, community, and the struggle for freedom.

Visit Cisco Bradley's website.

The Page 99 Test: I Hear Freedom.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight books of immersive dark gothic fantasy for fans of horror

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 titles of immersive dark gothic fantasy for horror fans. One title on the list:

Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman

In 1348, a young girl and an orphan of the Black Death tells Thomas, a disgraced knight, that Lucifer is leading the fallen angels in a war on heaven. As he takes her to Avignon, the conflict unfolds around him, and Thomas finds himself in the middle of a war between angels and demons.

Read about another title on the list.

Between Two Fires is among Lyndsie Manusos’s six medieval horror books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Alex Ritany's "Maybe Tomorrow I'll Know"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Maybe Tomorrow I'll Know: A Novel by Alex Ritany.

About the book, from the publisher:

A boy is trapped in a time loop―and in a girl’s body―in this heartfelt and wryly humorous love story.

Laurie wakes up in a girl’s body with no memories, driving down an unknown highway, and promptly crashes the car. Thankfully, a handsome stranger named Gideon comes to his rescue. It’s awkward for Laurie to pretend that he’s a girl, but at least this is the scariest thing he’ll ever have to deal with.

Except the next morning―and every morning after―Laurie wakes up barreling down that same highway. He re-meets Gideon every day, with no idea who this girl whose body he’s inhabiting even is. Only one thing is clear: he’s on a countdown. Laurie has been given only one hundred days to get back in the right body, break the time loop, and not fall for Gideon while he does it.

Maybe Tomorrow I’ll Know is a funny, deeply felt exploration of love, identity, and what it means to move through the world in a body that is truly yours.

Visit Alex Ritany's website.

Q&A with Alex Ritany.

The Page 69 Test: Maybe Tomorrow I'll Know.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine books with short but rich interior journeys

Irena Smith is the author of the award-winning memoir, The Golden Ticket: A Life in College Admissions Essays and Troika: Three Generations, Three Days, and a Very American Road Trip. Her obsession with how words work began early (as a child growing up in Soviet Russia, she was known to occasionally stand on furniture and recite Pushkin poems), and her writing focuses on migration, memory, motherhood, generational expectations, the petty indignities of middle age, and the importance of embracing a broader, more generous vision of what it means to succeed.

At Electric Lit Smith tagged nine books that take "circumscribed journeys: across a parlor, through a single unruly sentence, back into a childhood bedroom.... But even when hemmed in by economic exigency, physical disability, or cultural constraints, these protagonists show us that nothing is more heroic than a consciousness finding a way forward on its own terms." One title on the list:

The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood

Odysseus’s loyal wife, Penelope, spends most of The Odyssey weaving, waiting, and weeping. Now that she’s dead, she’s ready to drop some truth bombs from the underworld. She is no longer willing to bite her tongue, to keep the right doors closed and go to sleep during the rampages. She’s sardonic and angry. She regrets not standing up for the maids Odysseus and Telemachus slaughtered when Odysseus returned to Ithaca, but it’s too late; their voices haunt her story, for the maids understand better than anyone the steep cost of keeping the home fires burning.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Penelopiad among Paula Munier's eight top works informed by The Odyssey.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Scott Kurashige's "American Peril"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: American Peril: The Violent History of Anti-Asian Racism by Scott Kurashige.

About the book, from the publisher:

This probing account shines a new light on the problem of anti-Asian violence and inspires us to build lasting solidarity.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, racist demagoguery fomented a campaign of terror against Asian Americans. But these attacks were part of a much longer pattern that made anti-Asian racism integral to the outbreak of white supremacist, misogynist, and colonial violence across 175 years of U.S. history. Written in the radical spirit of Howard Zinn, American Peril represents the culmination of thirty-five years of study and activism by award-winning scholar Scott Kurashige.

From the lynching of Asian immigrants during the exclusion era to the U.S. military's slaughter of Asian civilians, the book connects domestic and global events that have been erased from the official record. Going beyond victimhood, it traces the rise of Asian American community protest and activism in response to the 1982 murder of Vincent Chin and other overlooked tragedies. While many have worked to legislate and prosecute hate crimes, Kurashige argues that hope lies in grassroots activism for multiracial solidarity.

Visit Scott Kurashige's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Shifting Grounds of Race.

The Page 99 Test: American Peril.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Chris Nickson reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Chris Nickson, author of The Faces of the Dead (A Cathy Marsden Thriller).

His entry begins:

It seems I'm never reading just one book. There's my entertainment reading downstairs, currently November Road by Lou Berney, a crime novel set in the aftermath of the JFK assassination in 1963, around New Orleans and Texas. Too early to tell where it's going, but he's a good enough writer to keep my interested. Also going through several book on Todmorden, a small town on the border of Yorkshire and Lancashire, as research for a novel I've just begun to write. It's set in 1862, and...[read on]

About The Faces of the Dead, from the publisher:

Sergeant Cathy Marsden investigates the death of a local gangster in WWII Leeds.

Leeds, 1944. Cathy Marsden’s happiness at her boyfriend Tom’s brief leave from the army and marriage proposal is short-lived as she embarks on a new case in the Special Investigation Branch.

Eric Carr, a local gangster, is dead after crashing his car on the outskirts of Leeds. Not only that, but an alarming discovery is made in the boot: weapons, including guns, stolen from a US military base, to be sold on the black market.

Was the crash simply an accident, or something more sinister? One thing’s for sure – Eric’s death has set a chain of murder and gangland chaos in motion. As the number of people disappearing increases, and men start dying, Cathy must work out who is pulling the strings, and why.

This fast-paced and twisty World War II thriller is perfect for fans of Kate Quinn, Rhys Bowen and Kelly Rimmer.

Visit Chris Nickson's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Constant Lovers.

The Page 69 Test: The Constant Lovers.

The Page 69 Test: The Iron Water.

The Page 69 Test: The Hanging Psalm.

Q&A with Chris Nickson.

The Page 69 Test: The Molten City.

My Book, The Movie: Molten City.

Writers Read: Chris Nickson (August 2021).

The Page 69 Test: Brass Lives.

The Page 69 Test: The Blood Covenant.

The Page 69 Test: The Dead Will Rise.

Writers Read: Chris Nickson (March 2023).

The Page 69 Test: Rusted Souls.

Writers Read: Chris Nickson (September 2023).

The Page 69 Test: The Scream of Sins.

Writers Read: Chris Nickson (March 2024).

The Page 69 Test: Them Without Pain.

Writers Read: Chris Nickson (September 2024).

Writers Read: Chris Nickson (March 2025).

The Page 69 Test: No Precious Truth.

Writers Read: Chris Nickson.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five expansive horror tales set in New York City

Vincent Tirado is a nonbinary Dominican born and raised in the Bronx. They are a Pura Belpré Award winner, Bram Stoker and Lambda Literary award finalist known for their books Burn Down, Rise Up (2022), We Don't Swim Here (2023), and We Came to Welcome You (2024). You Should Have Been Nicer to My Mom (2026) is their sophomore adult novel. When they’re not writing new spine-chilling horrors, they can be found making another pot of coffee and harassing their cat, Bugsy.

At CrimeReads Tirado tagged "five Big Apple horror novels to get a taste of what expansive terrors you can find in just one city." One title on the list:

Zakiya Dalila Harris, The Other Black Girl

There are a number of high-end industries that New York City is so well-known for, there are endless stories about trying to “make it” in any particular one. The Devil Wears Prada deals with fashion, the Wolf of Wall Street is about finance. One specific industry that doesn’t quite get a lot of attention (in my opinion) is the publishing industry. Maybe that’s because it’s not quite as flashy as fashion or finance, but that doesn’t give it any less of a potential for drama.

Or horror.

In The Other Black Girl, we follow Nella, the only Black employee–and editorial assistant at Wagner Books, a publishing company in New York City. This is no small feat, as any publishing professional can tell you, and yet Nella is consistently overlooked and under-appreciated at her job.

She fields microaggressions daily and walks on eggshells so as not to rock the boat among her less-melanated coworkers. When white authors create racially-offensive archetypes within their stories, she tries to gently steer them away, only to be accosted for offending them.

So imagine how overjoyed Nella becomes when the company finally hires Hazel, another Black woman. It’s a chance for her to feel less alone in a homogenous office, a chance to find some camaraderie. At the very least, it’s a chance to have backup when it comes to white authors who take offense at the slightest criticism.

And yet…there’s something very off about Hazel. The stories she tells Nella doesn’t add up, her relationship with the founder of Wagner books is suspect at best and worst of all, Hazel begins to sabotage Nella professionally.

This horror satire paints a startling picture of what it means when not all skinfolk are kinfolk.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Other Black Girl is among L.S. Stratton's five mysteries and thrillers set in the workplace, Christina Dotson's five top books that feature toxic friendships, Mary Keliikoa's eight top workplace thrillers, Tania Malik's five unconventional office novels, Stephanie Feldman's seven novels featuring ambitious women, Caitlin Barasch’s seven novels set in the literary world, and Ashley Winstead's seven titles that explore collective guilt & individual complicity.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Ed Lin's "The Dead Can't Make a Living"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Dead Can't Make a Living by Ed Lin.

About the novel, from the publisher:

Ed Lin’s big-hearted, eye-opening fifth installment in the fan-favorite Taipei Night Market series

Jing-nan, the owner of the most popular food stand in Taipei’s world-famous Shilin night market, is hauling trash after a successful evening of hawking Taiwanese delicacies to tourists when he finds a corpse propped up against the dumpsters. The dead man turns out to be Juan Ramos, a Philippine national who came to Taiwan for a job at a massive ZHD food processing plant.

Jing-nan is haunted by Ramos’s story, and by the heartbreak of his family, who arrive in Taipei looking for answers. ZHD has a history of safety violations, and activists have a hunch Ramos’s death might be part of a cover-up. Meanwhile, Jingnan’s gangster uncle, Big Eye, has his own mysterious, probably illegal, reasons for being concerned about what’s going on in ZHD. He pressures Jing-nan into a daring and risky mission: going undercover as a migrant laborer to get a job at the food processing plant and reporting back about the conditions inside. Jing-nan hopes to find out the truth for the Ramos family, and to save other immigrant lives—but first he has to survive the spy operation.

This rollicking crime novel is a scorching, timely examination of our global dependence on undocumented immigrants.

Visit Ed Lin's website.

The Page 69 Test: Snakes Can't Run.

The Page 69 Test: One Red Bastard.

My Book, The Movie: Ghost Month.

Writers Read: Ed Lin (October 2016).

Q&A with Ed Lin.

The Page 69 Test: The Dead Can't Make a Living.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Anica Mrose Rissi

From my Q&A with Anica Mrose Rissi, author of Girl Reflected in Knife:

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

I think it pulls its weight! Girl Reflected in Knife is a short, sharp, unsettling title for a short, sharp, unsettling novel. I hope readers will feel intrigued by the title and the tone it sets, even if they’re not quite sure what to expect. Likewise, I hope they’ll be intrigued by the book’s unstable narrator and her story, even as they’re not entirely sure where it might lead them.

What's in a name?

This is a question the novel poses as well, in the fragments of a dark fairy tale version of Destiny’s story that runs parallel to the main narrative, woven in throughout. ...[read on]

Visit Anica Mrose Rissi's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Anica Mrose Rissi & Arugula.

The Page 69 Test: Anna, Banana, and the Monkey in the Middle.

Q&A with Anica Mrose Rissi.

--Marshal Zeringue

The best historical fiction books of the century so far

The lit pros at Book Riot tagged the best historical fiction books of the century so far. One of Elisa Shoenbergers picks:

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

The Song of Achilles deserves every accolade it earns and every bump in the bestseller charts. It won the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2012 and it is one of the first books that BookTok sent into the stratosphere.

We all needed a book that emphasizes the love story between hero Achilles and exiled prince Patroclus from The Iliad. It will break your heart that Achilles chooses glory and destiny to fight in the Trojan War over peace and Patroclus. The book will break your heart over and over, and you’ll be glad for it. It also feels like it may have helped raise the profile of feminist and queer reframings of mythological stories.

Read about the other books on the list.

The Song of Achilles is among Charley Burlock and Bethanne Patrick's 25 best historical fiction books of all time, Tobias Madden's seven top books that take you places, Costa B. Pappas's eleven books that are contemporary retellings of classic titles, Bethanne Patrick's twenty-five best historical fiction books of all time, Mark Skinner's nineteen top Greek myth retellings, Alexia Casale's top eight titles sparked by the authors' work life, Allison Epstein's eight queer historical fiction books set around the world, Phong Nguyen's seven titles that live halfway between history & myth, The Center for Fiction's 200 books that shaped two centuries of literature, Sara Stewart's six best books and Nicole Hill's fourteen characters who should have lived.

My Book, The Movie: The Song of Achilles.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Molly Fee's "Believing in Light after Darkness"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Believing in Light after Darkness: Displacement and Refugee Resettlement by Molly Fee.

About the book, from the publisher:

War, persecution, and climate change too often force people from their homes and across borders. Most remain in difficult conditions in neighboring countries. The less than one percent of refugees offered resettlement to a different country gain an alternative path forward, with access to specialized supports and services that are traditionally understood as a solution to displacement and a program of integration. Examining the complexities of refugees' lived experiences, Molly Fee's deeply humanistic ethnography reframes resettlement as a period of disruption and disorientation, when newly arrived refugees must navigate the rules and expectations of a new country. For those who have already rebuilt their lives numerous times, resettlement becomes yet another uprooting. Believing in Light after Darkness reveals how humanitarian solutions, though well intentioned, do not immediately resolve the conditions of displacement.

Visit Molly Fee's website.

The Page 99 Test: Believing in Light after Darkness.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Robert Gwaltney's "Sing Down the Moon"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Sing Down the Moon by Robert Gwaltney.

About the novel, from the publisher:

Sixteen-year-old Leontyne Skye yearns to escape Good Hope, the remote Georgia coastal barrier island where she resides. Leontyne's heritage is bleak. Tasked with tending Damascus, an ancient fig tree beguiling haints across the river with its wind chime song, Leontyne's mother, Eulalee, disintegrates into tufts of hair, teeth, and memory. This affliction befalls all Skye women, a fatal consequence of distilling Redemption, an addictive drug made from the figs of Damascus imbued with the essence of haints. Leontyne also tumbles apart, her memories and hand lost in a life-altering accident suffered two years back during an event known as Tribulation Day. Through unreliable recollections of her trusted friends the Longwood twins, Leontyne stitches a dubious understanding of who she was before she fell "the long-long ways." In the aftermath of Eulalee's death, Leontyne is pressured by the Longwoods to render Redemption, continuing the legacy upon which Good Hope depends.

Visit Robert Gwaltney's website.

The Page 69 Test: Sing Down the Moon.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Diana Awad reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Diana Awad, author of As Far as She Knew.

Her entry begins:

I just finished The Correspondent, an epistolary novel that unfolds completely through letters and emails. Normally, I’m not a huge fan of this format but decided to give The Correspondent, written by Virginia Evans, a try after it was highly recommended by a friend and named to a few best book of the year lists. The novel focuses on Sybil, a retired law clerk in her seventies, who documents her life through letters and texts. In these missives, she explores loss, coming to terms with grief, human connection and finding love late in life. The Correspondent is a...[read on]

About As Far as She Knew, from the publisher:

“A masterful exploration of marriage, secrets, and identity that will leave you questioning how well you really know those closest to you. Diana Awad crafts a thriller that is both heart-stopping and heartbreaking.” ―Mindy Kaling

A devoted wife and mother unravels her late husband’s secret life in an emotional and suspenseful novel about betrayal, lies, love, and loss.

For twenty-three years, Amira Abadi believed she had a strong, loving marriage. But when her husband, Ali, dies suddenly, that certainty shatters with the discovery of a house she never knew existed. As whispers of betrayal spread through their tight-knit Arab American community, Amira refuses to let others define her husband’s legacy―or her path forward.

Diving into an investigation of Ali’s final days, Amira uncovers decades-old secrets that challenge everything she thought she knew. With her children struggling to process their father’s death, Amira must balance protecting her family with pursuing the truth, even as each revelation brings her closer to danger.

As Amira peels back layers of lies, she discovers that the greatest mystery isn’t what her husband was hiding―it’s how far she’ll go to uncover the truth.

Visit Diana Awad's website.

My Book, The Movie: As Far as She Knew.

The Page 69 Test: As Far as She Knew.

Writers Read: Diana Awad.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven top slow-burn romances

Laura Vogt is a historian, storyteller, and poet.

She loves all things wild and beautiful.

Vogt lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma, with her husband and three children.

Her new novel is In the Great Quiet.

At Lit Hub Vogt tagged seven favorite slow-burn romances, including:

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera (1985)

Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera confronts the limits of patience. Florentino Ariza falls passionately in love with Fermina Daza—but she marries another. Over the next five decades, Florentino waits for Fermina, sustaining his devotion by writing her hundreds of letters. His longing swells beyond love into obsession.

Marquez’s saga joins Dickens’ Great Expectations and Calvino’s The Baron in the Trees, books in which unrequited love stretches the width of the narrative. The boundaries blur between obsession, romantic delusion, and love. Love in the Time of Cholera questions the virtue of patience. It’s a story about waiting. Marquez grapples with what remains after decades: does steadfast longing make a god of love or hollow it out.

Read about another entry on the list.

Love in the Time of Cholera also made Kerry Wolfe's list of ten of the greatest love stories in novels, Kate Kellaway's list of the best books about love, Jojo Moyes's list of five happy literary novels, Isabella Hammad's list of six top books of correspondence, Sameer Rahim's list of five essential works by Gabriel García Márquez, Jill Boyd's top six list of memorable marriage proposals in literature, the Christian Science Monitor's list of six novels about grand passions, Ann Brashares' six favorite books list, and Marie Arana's list of the best books about love; it is one of Hugh Thomson’s top ten books on South American journeys.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Kristina Jonutytė's "Between the Buddha and the New Tsar"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Between the Buddha and the New Tsar: Urban Religion and Minority Politics at the Asian Borderlands of Russia by Kristina Jonutytė.

About the book, from the publisher:

Between the Buddha and the New Tsar is an ethnography of contemporary urban Buddhism in Buryatia, a republic within the Russian Federation. Kristina Jonutytė shows how—in this ethnically and religiously diverse borderland region—Buryat Buddhists are caught between an oppressive, militant Russian regime and the tenacity of local religious and cultural forms. As Jonutytė narrates, historically Buryat Buddhism has been tightly linked with the Russian state ever since the imperial period, a relationship with mutual interest and benefits. Yet everyday Buddhist practices point to a more complex picture, shedding light on precarity, minoritization, struggles for cultural sovereignty, and infrapolitical religious forms. Between the Buddha and the New Tsar reveals the important ways in which the urban setting is not just a backdrop to Buddhism, but that religion and the city are intertwined and mutually impactful.

Learn more about Between the Buddha and the New Tsar at the Cornell University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Between the Buddha and the New Tsar.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Susan Furlong's "Amish Country Homicide"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Amish Country Homicide by Susan Furlong.

About the book, from the publisher:

Investigating family secrets may cost them their lives.

Returning home after years away, Alena Walsh is devastated to find her grandfather shot by a disguised gunman—and now someone wants her silenced next. Sheriff Caleb Mast, her former Amish childhood friend, is tasked with keeping her safe. Soon Alena and Caleb uncover key evidence that reveals a link between her grandfather’s cryptic final words, her mother’s decades—old murder and the recent death of a young woman in town. With family secrets unraveling and attacks against Alena escalating, they’ll need to expose the killer’s deadly scheme…or risk getting caught in the crosshairs.

From Love Inspired Suspense: Courage. Danger. Faith.

Visit Susan Furlong's website.

My Book, The Movie: Splintered Silence.

The Page 69 Test: Splintered Silence.

Writers Read: Susan Furlong (December 2018).

Q&A with Susan Furlong.

Writers Read: Susan Furlong (July 2023).

The Page 69 Test: Lethal Wilderness Trap.

The Page 69 Test: Amish Country Homicide.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven novels about sibling rivalries

Lisa Lee is the recipient of the Marianne Russo Emerging Writer Award from the Key West Literary Seminar, an Emerging Writer Fellowship from the Center for Fiction, and a Pushcart Prize. She has received other fellowships and awards from Kundiman, Millay Arts, Hedgebrook, the Rona Jaffe Foundation, Tin House, Jentel Artist Residency, and the Korea Foundation. Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, VIDA, North American Review, Sycamore Review, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere. Lee holds an MFA from the University of Houston and a PhD in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Southern California. She lives in Los Angeles.

Lee's new novel is American Han.

At Electric Lit she tagged seven books in which we see "characters who look to their brothers and sisters with uncertainty, envy, and love, looking for clues as to who and how they should be."

One title on the list:

The Dutch House by Ann Patchett

Danny Conroy and his older sister Maeve are kicked out of their childhood home—a sprawling mansion on the outskirts of Philadelphia—by their stepmother after their father’s death. From the age of 10 until her death, Maeve is a mother figure to Danny, assuming all responsibility for raising him. Hellbent on getting revenge on their stepmother, who inherited everything except an educational trust set aside for the children, Maeve encourages Danny to attend an expensive boarding school, then Columbia, and eventually medical school. Danny does as Maeve wishes even though his interests lie elsewhere. Like nothing else I’ve read, this novel conveys the slow accretion of choices by which one sibling’s life, almost imperceptibly, can be subsumed by the other’s obsessions.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Pamela Steele reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Pamela Steele, author of In The Fields of Fatherless Children: A Novel.

Her entry begins:

I haven't been finding a great deal of time to read for pleasure due to my novel release. My days are filled with last minute emails from my publisher or prospective hosts for festivals, readings, and signings. That said, I've just listened to an amazing audiobook and am glad to have a chance to recommend it, just as it was recommended to me by a writer friend: A Place Called Winter, by Patrick Gale (2016).

The novel, set in Edwardian England and Canada, is a lovely, bittersweet period piece. Harry Cane, the main character, is a quiet, routine-centered man who is self-conscious of his anxiety-induced stutter. He conscientiously follows the expectations of his family and proper society. It is only after he marries and fathers a child that he finds himself attracted to another man and is able to precariously acknowledge his sexuality. The men enter into a passionate, disastrous affair. When a family member discovers what society considers and illicit relationship, Harry is forced to...[read on]

About In The Fields of Fatherless Children, from the publisher:

For readers of Jeannette Walls and Barbara Kingsolver, in this love story set in rural Appalachia during the Vietnam War, a young couple is torn apart by both global conflict and their families’ ancient feud

In late 1960s Appalachia, many things loom darkly over June Branham: the Vietnam War is dividing the country, and a strip mine is eating away the mountain at the head of the holler where she lives, threatening the natural landscape and the only way of life she has ever known. While still in high school, June has fallen in love. She is pregnant, and the father may be Ellis Akers. Ellis is the son of Solomon, a mortal enemy of June’s stepfather, Isom. The feud is so old it fuels two vengeful men with the power of long animosity between rival families.

June’s brother, Tom, leaves to enlist in the war, and so does Ellis. Suddenly, June is on her own, at sixteen with a newborn, and is a mother unable to protect her daughter from the wrath of Isom. Without warning, her baby is kidnapped. Guided by her love for the generations of women before her, but now desperately alone, June must carefully navigate the search for her child alongside family and strangers in a wild and disappearing landscape.

In the Fields of the Fatherless Children is a powerful story of love and perseverance, masterfully told by a writer of exquisite care who knows intimately the rural people of this time and place.

Follow Pamela Steele on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.

My Book, The Movie: In The Fields of Fatherless Children.

Q&A with Pamela Steele.

Writers Read: Pamela Steele.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Steven Nadler's "Spinoza, Atheist"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Spinoza, Atheist by Steven Nadler.

About the book, from the publisher:

From Pulitzer Prize finalist Steven Nadler, a fascinating historical and philosophical narrative that unravels the mystery of whether Spinoza was an atheist

In 1656, a young Amsterdam merchant was excommunicated by his Portuguese-Jewish community in the harshest terms it had ever used. Baruch Spinoza was accused of unspecified “horrifying heresies,” but the precise reasons for his expulsion remain a mystery. When he published his Theological-Political Treatise in 1670, which was condemned as “the most atheistic book ever written,” he began to reveal to the world what his heresies may have been. Yet ever since the eighteenth century, most readers and scholars have assumed that Spinoza was a pantheist—even a “God-intoxicated man,” as the poet Novalis put it. After all, how could a person whose books are suffused with talk of God be an atheist? In Spinoza, Atheist, Steven Nadler, one of the world’s leading authorities on the philosopher, aims to settle the question and show that that’s exactly what he was.

Nadler makes a powerful case that there is no real divinity for Spinoza. God is Nature, and isn’t an object of worshipful awe or religious reverence but can only be understood through philosophy and science. There is nothing supernatural—no mystery, ineffability, or sublimity. Spinoza does speak of “blessedness” and “salvation,” but these, too, are to be understood in natural and rational terms, as the peace of mind and happiness that come from understanding ourselves and the world.

Whether Spinoza believed in God is a fascinating and enduring controversy. Spinoza, Atheist promises to transform our understanding of his views and to make clear just how radical a thinker he was and remains.

Learn more about Spinoza, Atheist from the Princeton University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: The Best of All Possible Worlds.

The Page 99 Test: A Book Forged in Hell.

Writers Read: Steven Nadler (April 2013).

The Page 99 Test: The Philosopher, the Priest, and the Painter.

The Page 99 Test: The Portraitist.

The Page 99 Test: Spinoza, Atheist.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top books that changed a librarian's life

New Jersey librarian Martha Hickson is a central figure in Kim A. Snyder’s film, The Librarians, a new documentary executive produced by Sarah Jessica Parker about librarians fighting back against the rising tide of book bans.

For Vogue Hickson tagged ten "books that have indelibly shaped her life," including:

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

As a librarian, I’m often asked, “What’s your favorite book?” For years I struggled to answer. There were just too many. Then came Anthony Doerr’s 2015 Pulitzer Prize–winning historical fiction about a French girl and a German boy caught in the violence of World War II Europe. As the novel unfolds, their separate stories converge in a dramatic struggle for survival. Compelling characters drive an intricate plot across war-torn settings to deliver a powerful message: “Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever.” All the Light We Cannot See reminds us that, in a world where information is controlled, accessing ideas becomes an act of courage. I envy everyone who gets to read this book for the first time.

Read about another entry on the list.

All the Light We Cannot See is among Leah Rachel von Essen's ten top modern classics of historical fiction, Melanie Maure's five top novels about women discovering unimaginable strength through tragedy, Audrey Gale's five top novels about war, Jyoti Patel's top ten books about family secrets, Kimi Cunningham Grant's top six books featuring father-daughter relationships, Liz Boulter's top ten novels about France, Emily Temple's fifty best contemporary novels over 500 pages, Jason Allen's seven top books with family secrets, Whitney Scharer's top ten books about Paris, David Baldacci's six favorite books with an element of mystery, Jason Flemyng's six best books, Sandra Howard's six best books, Caitlin Kleinschmidt's twelve moving novels of the Second World War and Maureen Corrigan's 12 favorite books of 2014.

--Marshal Zeringue