Six great uplifting books

Jeffrey Davies is a professional introvert and writer with imposter syndrome whose work spans the worlds of pop culture, books, music, feminism, and mental health. His work has appeared on HuffPost, CBC Arts, Collider, Slant Magazine, PopMatters, and other places.

At Book Riot Davis tagged six great uplifting books. One title on the list:

Libby Lost and Found by Stephanie Booth

The publisher describes this book as “for people who don’t know who they are without the books they love,” which to me is just the definition of an uplifting read.

Libby Weeks is the high-earning author of The Falling Children, a bestselling fantasy series. Only the world doesn’t actually know her as Libby; they know her as F.T. Goldhero, a pseudonym made up to protect her privacy. The world is also impatient to know how the beloved series will end.

When the last manuscript is already months overdue, Libby is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. The author’s symptoms advance quickly, as does her already-crippling anxiety. After an incident in which she leaves her dog at the dog park and almost reveals her true identity to the journalist who returns him home, Libby realizes she’ll need help to bring her incredibly famous book series to a close.

That doesn’t seem like much of a problem once she turns to Peanut Bixton, a precarious 11-year-old who eats, sleeps, and breathes The Falling Children books, which provide her a sense of stability and validation in a world committed to misunderstanding her. As Libby’s memory worsens, Peanut might have to venture outside the pages of her books and learn what it really means to be a hero.

Read about another book on the list.

My Book, The Movie: Libby Lost and Found.

The Page 69 Test: Libby Lost and Found.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: James R. Benn's "The Ninth Circle"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Ninth Circle (A Billy Boyle WWII Mystery) by James R. Benn.

About the book, from the publisher:

To solve a double murder in Cuba, US Army Captain Billy Boyle will need to build unlikely alliances with Havana’s underworld and British intelligence, including Lieutenant Commander Ian Fleming, whose naval wartime service would later inspire the James Bond novels.

This installment of James R. Benn’s fan-favorite, critically-acclaimed WWII mystery series marks 20 years of Billy Boyle, an Irish American cop from Boston thrust onto the staff of his “uncle” Ike Eisenhower for sensitive overseas military investigations.

January, 1945: If US Army Captain Billy Boyle thinks a summons to Havana will give him a chance to sip a cold Hatuey under the Caribbean sun, the fantasy is dead on arrival. Within hours of landing, Billy and his partner-in-crime-solving, Lieutenant Piotr Kazimierz, are assigned to investigate the murder of a Navy intelligence officer. But as the men wait for an informant at a beachside bar, a bomb goes off, and they narrowly escape with their lives. Then the informant—a Cuban taxi driver named Hector Díaz—is found dead outside his apartment. What did Hector know? And who was so desperate to silence him?

Thrust into a double-murder investigation, Billy and Kaz team up with the brass at the British Legation in Havana, including none other than Lieutenant Commander Ian Fleming, to gather intel from sources inside Havana’s criminal underworld. Their search takes them from Havana’s Chinatown to the Gran Casino Nacional, where notorious gangster Meyer Lansky offers his services if it means defeating the suspected common enemy—the Sicherheitsdienst, the intelligence wing of the Nazi military—and finding out what sort of intelligence they are so hell-bent on keeping top-secret at this late stage in the war.

Learn more about the Billy Boyle WWII Mystery Series at James R. Benn's website.

The Page 99 Test: The First Wave.

The Page 69 Test: Evil for Evil.

The Page 69 Test: Rag and Bone.

My Book, The Movie: Death's Door.

The Page 69 Test: The White Ghost.

The Page 69 Test: Blue Madonna.

Writers Read: James R. Benn (September 2016).

Q&A with James R. Benn.

The Page 69 Test: Proud Sorrows.

The Page 69 Test: The Phantom Patrol.

Writers Read: James R. Benn (September 2024).

The Page 69 Test: A Bitter Wind.

Writers Read: James R. Benn (September 2025).

The Page 69 Test: The Ninth Circle.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Cathryn J. Prince's "For the Love of Labor"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: For the Love of Labor: The Life of Pauline Newman by Cathryn J. Prince.

About the book, from the publisher:

From her start as one of the youngest activists in US history, Pauline Newman helped shape the International Ladies' Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) into a dominant force in industrial America. Cathryn J. Prince tells the story of a self-educated Jewish immigrant who dedicated herself to a legion of causes and lifelong battles against sexism and classism.

Prince follows Newman’s life from a youth split between Lithuania and New York City sweatshops to her work as an advisor to New Deal–era labor secretary Frances Perkins. Newman’s long hours at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory informed her entrée into labor activism. In the following years, she tirelessly advocated for workers, ran for New York Secretary of State as a socialist, and became the first woman to serve as the ILGWU general organizer. Her interest in the health of workers led to service on the Joint Board of Sanitary Control and a decades-long term as education director of the ILGWU health center. Membership in Eleanor Roosevelt’s circle opened doors to government positions and advisory roles that continued into the postwar era. Prince also weaves in the details of Newman’s fifty-year relationship with a woman, her struggles with her sexual identity, and her final years.

Engaging and panoramic, For the Love of Labor is the first major biography of an important figure in labor and women’s history.

Visit Cathryn J. Prince's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Cathryn J. Prince & Hershey and Juno.

The Page 99 Test: Death in the Baltic.

The Page 99 Test: American Daredevil.

The Page 99 Test: Queen of the Mountaineers.

The Page 99 Test: For the Love of Labor.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six books that try to keep up with Elizabeth Taylor

Stephen Greco is a novelist, journalist, media executive, editor, dramatist and Executive Director of the Ferro-Grumley Literary Awards, which he co-founded in 1988. He is a regular contributor to the magazine Upstate Diary and has contributed as a feature writer and editor to numerous publications including Interview magazine, New York magazine, Air Mail, The Advocate, American Way, Art News, Dance Magazine, Elle, Harper's Bazaar, Latina, the London Observer, Stagebill, and The New York Times online.

His new novel is The Woman Who Had Everything.

At Lit Hub Greco tagged six books that approach the question: "Was [Elizabeth Taylor] a great actress, a great beauty, the ultimate movie star, a creature of vulgar excess, or some magnificent combination of all four?" One title on the list:

Kitty Kelley, Elizabeth Taylor: The Last Star

Kitty Kelley’s unauthorized biography is the louche pleasure of the group. Kirkus memorably called it a “tacky stroll” through Taylor’s life, and that is not entirely unfair. Kelley is much more interested in Taylor’s appetites—for food, for men, for feuds—than in the nuances of her acting. She assembles gossip with a prosecutorial enthusiasm, often relying on people who seem only too happy to settle an old score.

And yet the book has become fascinating as a period object. Published in 1981, it captures the way Taylor was discussed before her AIDS activism, before the perfume empire, and before the culture reconsidered the courage and generosity of her later life. Here she is still the scandalous, overindulged bad girl of the tabloids, forever arriving late, spending too much, falling ill, falling in love, and making everyone furious.

The best way to encounter this book, by the way, is in a battered vintage paperback like mine, found in a secondhand bookstore. An as-new hard cover or pristine digital edition might violate its spirit.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Sara Cooper reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Sara Cooper, author of Ravenous: A Novel.

Her entry begins:

I'm currently reading Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi. It's about the horrors of war made literal. I am absolutely loving it so far. I had just finished Mrs. Caliban by Rachel Ingalls, which was also excellent, and I was actually planning to take a little reading break, because I was working on rewrites for my new novel and I didn't want to muddy the voice. But I was scrolling through the Horror and Weird Girl Lit corners of Bookstagram (basically the only parts of social media I actually enjoy) and someone mentioned...[read on]

About Ravenous, from the publisher:

Breigh is a hot elder millennial who is obsessed with the brands she is ambassading for. Her policy is YES, and her livestreams are viral.But she’s pregnant now, and her body’s changing. It's not that she's hungry. She's definitely not depressed. She just sometimes eats boxes of makeup before passing out.

Daddy’s bought a brand-new home for Breigh and Baby, complete with a Greenguard Gold-certified, twice-imported velvet infant chaise — but is he cheating on her with a hotter, younger coworker? Breigh has to get Baby out before it ruins her. She has to create more and better content than the other Momfluencers. She has to unbox something new. She has to unbox … Baby! Baby approves of her seven-step marketing plan. Welcome to #LiveBirth.

Breigh’s increasingly unhinged life reflects her generation’s anxieties around psychological manipulation through social media platforms. Multi-award-winning author Sara Cooper presents a wild debut novel in this incisive satire of consumerism, performative femininity, and social media.

Visit Sara Cooper's website.

My Book, The Movie: Ravenous.

The Page 69 Test: Ravenous.

Writers Read: Sara Cooper.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Alexander Mikaberidze's "The Louisiana Purchase"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Louisiana Purchase: The Grand Bargain and the Making of America by Alexander Mikaberidze.

About the book, from the publisher:

A true pivotal moment in American history, the Louisiana Purchase redefined the boundaries of the United States and recharted the course of its history. The story behind it transcends borders

The United States bought the Louisiana Territory from Napoleonic France in 1803, paying--so the story goes--a mere 15 million dollars, or "four cents an acre." The young nation more than doubled its size, absorbing the greater part of an entire continent in a single real estate transaction. This overlooks a critical feature of the purchase, however: the agreement signed by Thomas Jefferson did not grant the American republic the land; it merely allowed it to assume the authority to negotiate the acquisition of the land, which was still owned by Native Americans. The Louisiana Purchase was a founding event of what ultimately became the U.S.-Indian Treaty System, one that produced over two hundred Native American cessions between 1804 and 1970 and cost the United States billions of dollars.

Alexander Mikaberidze's provocative and engrossing book examines what lay behind what eventually became one of the costliest undertakings in American history--not only in dollars but in lives displaced and cultures erased. To do that, he looks beyond the period's diplomatic wranglings and delves into a broader story of European colonialism to illuminate why Louisiana was passed around--from France to Spain, then back to France--before the U.S. purchase. How did it go from being a burden to a prize?

Understanding the full significance of the Louisiana Purchase means expanding the narrative. The country's destiny was determined by men who had never walked the streets of New Orleans or gazed upon the majestic panoramas of the Rockies but who instead managed the finances of the world's empires. Territorial ambition remains a persistent feature in American politics. This book compels us to appreciate the larger story of the purchase and its place in both national and global history.

Learn more about The Louisiana Purchase at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Kutuzov: A Life in War and Peace.

The Page 99 Test: The Louisiana Purchase.

--Marshal Zeringue

The ten most ambitious books of all time

At Collider Jeremy Urquhart tagged ten of the most ambitious (and longest) books of all time, including:

War and Peace (1869) by Leo Tolstoy

War and Peace feels a little in line, ambition-wise, with Les Misérables, and they were both published in the same decade, too. War and Peace involves Russian history, though, even if France does factor into the plot and some of the conflict, seeing as War and Peace takes place during the Napoleonic Wars, and there’s a similar amount of time covered in Les Misérables, going from about 1805 to 1820, rather than that previously mentioned novel’s span of 1815 to 1832.

There are stretches of War and Peace that aren’t too narrative-focused, with Leo Tolstoy using some of his 1200+ pages to unpack history and philosophical ideas, too. Like with Les Misérables, it’s all compelling and well-written, so he more than gets away with it. War and Peace is famously huge, and beyond iconic, as an epic… maybe even the ultimate epic, so here it is, trumping all the other books, and standing, arguably, as the most ambitious piece of literature of all time.

Read about another title on the list.

War and Peace appears among Boris Kachka's twenty-six best very long books, Kirsty Gunn's ten top books about unrequited love, Terry Waite's six best books, Adrian Edmondson's six best books, Robert Newman's six best books, John Cleese's six favorite books, Kate Kellaway's ten best Christmases in literature, the Telegraph's ten best historical novels, Simon Sebag Montefiore's five top books about Moscow, Oliver Ford Davies's six best books, Stella Tillyard's four favorite historical novels, Ann Shevchenko's top ten novels set in Moscow, Karl Marlantes' top ten war stories, Niall Ferguson's five most important books, Norman Mailer's top ten works of literature, and John Mullan's lists of ten of the best battles in literature, ten of the best floggings in fiction, and ten of the best literary explosions.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Kate Westbury

From my Q&A with Kate Westbury, author of The Oxford Guide to Scandal and Lies:

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

The original title for this story was A Tutorial in Murder. I loved that it was a play on words (i.e. the Oxford tutorial system), but it also sounds more like an actual midcentury mystery…which probably wouldn’t draw in as many contemporary readers. My agent suggested thinking of a new title, and my critique group helped me brainstorm The Oxford Guide to Scandal and Lies, which my publisher loved and kept. As much as I was fond of Tutorial, the new title also better conveys the humor and hijinks and hint of romance, and I’m glad for the switch.

What's in a name?

I can either name a character immediately or after tedious research. It’s important to me that...[read on]

Visit Kate Westbury's website.

Q&A with Kate Westbury.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Jonathan Earle's "He Has the People"

New from the Page 99 Test: He Has the People: Abraham Lincoln and the Election of 1860 by Jonathan Earle.

About the book, from the publisher:

A gripping and granular look at how Abraham Lincoln got elected the 16th president of the United States.

James McPherson calls the election of 1860 "undeniably the most important--and pivotal--in all of American history." The nation was not merely divided over the issue of slavery; the opposing camps were at each other's throats. The moment John Brown and his men attacked the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry in the fall of 1859 the compromises that had stitched the country together for decades unraveled. The presidential election was therefore about more than who the next president would be. It was about how soon war would follow his inauguration.

Using the writings and story of Murat Halstead, the nation's first campaign journalist, as well as previously unused documents from Lincoln's campaign manager, Jonathan Earle captures the full drama of the 1860 election. He shows how Lincoln, a one-time Congressman from Illinois, and a dark horse against the more established Stephen Douglas, the Democratic frontrunner, and William Henry Seward, the presumptive Republican nominee, got the people and votes he needed to win in a protracted yet furiously disputed election cycle.

Earle focuses on the chaotic campaigns themselves, as political bosses, candidates, and their self-appointed partisans took politicking in directions that at times resembled paramilitary exercises more than campaign events. In the end, Lincoln and his associates ran a brilliant campaign, leveraging Northern anger, growing antislavery sentiment, and divisions within both the Democratic Party and the nation as a whole. His platform was built on his speeches, which projected a vision for how the nation would persevere in the coming crisis. Behind the commanding rhetoric, however, was sophisticated and very modern political machinery. He Has the People provides an engaging historical narrative and a fresh appraisal of the most consequential of all presidential elections.

Learn more about He Has the People at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: He Has the People.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five excellent sci-fi & fantasy mystery novels

At Book Riot Liberty Hardy tagged five "exciting sci-fi and fantasy books that dip into the mystery genre." One entry on the list:

The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal

This is an excellent sci-fi noir that hasn’t received nearly enough attention. It’s like a 1940s mystery set aboard a cruise ship in space! Tesla Crane is a famous inventor and heiress who is traveling on a space liner when her honeymoon is rudely interrupted by a murder. And to make matters worse, her husband is arrested as the lead suspect by the ship’s security. Tesla will have to figure things out herself if she wants her husband to be freed before they arrive at their destination.

Read about another title on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Sara Cooper's "Ravenous"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Ravenous: A Novel by Sara Cooper.

About the novel, from the publisher:

Breigh is a hot elder millennial who is obsessed with the brands she is ambassading for. Her policy is YES, and her livestreams are viral. But she’s pregnant now, and her body’s changing. It's not that she's hungry. She's definitely not depressed. She just sometimes eats boxes of makeup before passing out.

Daddy’s bought a brand-new home for Breigh and Baby, complete with a Greenguard Gold-certified, twice-imported velvet infant chaise — but is he cheating on her with a hotter, younger coworker? Breigh has to get Baby out before it ruins her. She has to create more and better content than the other Momfluencers. She has to unbox something new. She has to unbox … Baby! Baby approves of her seven-step marketing plan. Welcome to #LiveBirth.

Breigh’s increasingly unhinged life reflects her generation’s anxieties around psychological manipulation through social media platforms. Multi-award-winning author Sara Cooper presents a wild debut novel in this incisive satire of consumerism, performative femininity, and social media.

Visit Sara Cooper's website.

My Book, The Movie: Ravenous.

The Page 69 Test: Ravenous.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Elizabeth Gregory's "The Real Domestic Product"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Real Domestic Product: How Birth Control Built Equality (and Why the Future of the Economy and the Planet Depends on It) by Elizabeth Gregory.

About the book, from the publisher:

An urgent and clear-eyed look at the battle over reproductive control in our tipping-point moment—and how to forge a path forward.

Birth control, which includes contraception, abortion access and more, has not only enabled women to enter civic life in significant numbers for the first time, but it has also expanded our democracy and grown our economy. While many embrace these changes, which aim to share the nation’s economic bounty among all Americans, those who see themselves as benefiting from the old hierarchies do not. They resist this progress with divisive rhetoric condemning “woke”-ness in anything they find threatening.

In The Real Domestic Product, fertility researcher Elizabeth Gregory argues that our battles over abortion and LGBTQ bans and pronatalism are economic at base—that conservatives seek to push women out of civic life through forced childbearing. Their goal? To maintain their discount on domestic labor and a steady supply of low-wage workers. But, she contends, this shortsighted approach overlooks the huge benefits that a caring democracy can engender for our economy and for our fragile planet.

By connecting the dots among fertility patterns, economics, climate change, equitable work, expanding longevity, and the rising status of formerly excluded groups, the author counters reactionary narratives, adding depth and perspective to the incomplete national conversations we’ve had to date. Never more urgently needed, The Real Domestic Product envisions the way forward to an economy of care for our planet and our people.

Learn more about The Real Domestic Product at The MIT Press website.

The Page 99 Test: The Real Domestic Product.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight top femgore novels

S. M. Hallow’s short story “How to Stay Married to Baba Yaga” was included in the Locus 2023 Recommended Reading List and anthologized in The Year’s Best Fantasy Volume 3, edited by Paula Guran. Other short work can be found in Baffling Magazine, Seize the Press, Taco Bell Quarterly, and We’re Here: The Best Queer Speculative Fiction 2023. Her novella, How to Survive This Fairytale, was published in January 2025 and received a special edition in Rainbow Crate, a book box exclusively for queer books. The Halls of the Dead is Hallow’s debut novel.

At People magazine the author tagged eight "femgore novels that reveal the women of horror can be just as Monstrous as the patriarchy." One title on the list:

The Starving Saints by Caitlin Starling

A miracle happens during the siege of Aymar Castle: with only 15 days until food runs out, a “goddess” arrives to save the people living there from starvation. Suddenly there’s food aplenty, but hallucinogenic magic prevents the people of the castle from realizing their own cannibalism. Told in alternating POVs between a sorceress, a woman knight and a serving girl, this is a fever dream of a fantasy novel with plenty of room for readers to make their own inferences about what’s really going on. I read this book almost a year ago, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.

Read about another title on the list.

The Starving Saints is among Lyndsie Manusos’s six best SFF books about gods and demons, Lyndsie Manusos's top six medieval horror books, and Saratoga Schaefer's five novels that use isolation to create horror.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ann Patchett's five top family saga books

Ann Patchett is the author of novels, works of nonfiction, and children's books. She has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the PEN/Faulkner, the Women's Prize for Fiction in the UK, and the Book Sense Book of the Year. Her novel The Dutch House was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her work has been translated into more than thirty languages, and Time magazine named her one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World. President Biden awarded her the National Humanities Medal in recognition of her contributions to American culture. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee, where she is the owner of Parnassus Books.

At Woman's World Patchett tagged five favorite family saga books, including:

Mothers and Sons by Adam Haslett

Readers who love stories filled with drama and second chances will devour this book. Asylum lawyer Peter spends his days isolated and alone with only his work to comfort him. But when his newest case forces him to remember difficult parts of his past, things change. Elsewhere, his estranged mother, Ann, runs a women’s retreat center and often thinks about her son. As time goes on, the two are forced to confront the secrets they’ve kept from themselves and each other, all in the hopes of seeing each other again.

What Ann says: “Both moving and deeply compelling, a story about the search for your own humanity, and the lengths we will go to maintain it. Adam Haslett is one of our very best writers.”

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Jehanne Dubrow's "Frivolity: A Defense"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Frivolity: A Defense by Jehanne Dubrow.

About the book, from the publisher:

Why must everything be so important―so dour and solemn, so grim and austere? How about a feather boa, some frilly lace, and a bright splash of pink? In Frivolity, Jehanne Dubrow stands up for the seemingly shallow and trifling, calling for a reconsideration of what we find worthy and what we dismiss.

This book is a provocation. It offers a defense of the pursuits, objects, and people denigrated as frivolous, asking why we so readily scorn them and why, in particular, the label is so often tied to femininity and queerness. Its 101 sections move lightly across literature, art, and popular culture, from Susan Sontag, Sei Shōnagon, Jane Austen, and Mozart to Barbie, Nora Ephron rom-coms, exclamation points, and Dubrow’s own “Year of Perfect Skin.” Written in a lyrical style, this book takes both an intimate and a rigorous approach to thinking about the frivolous, blending personal essay with scholarship.

For Dubrow, frivolity is a way of affirming the importance of joy and silliness. And don’t we need a little more of both these things in an era made all too serious by autocracy and terror?

Learn more about the book and author at Jehanne Dubrow's website.

Writers Read: Jehanne Dubrow (April 2010).

Writers Read: Jehanne Dubrow (November 2012).

Coffee with a Canine: Jehanne Dubrow and Argos.

Coffee with a Canine: Jehanne Dubrow & Lola and Bandit.

Writers Read: Jehanne Dubrow (August 2022).

The Page 99 Test: Taste: A Book of Small Bites.

The Page 99 Test: Frivolity: A Defense.

--Marshal Zeringue

Sara Cooper's "Ravenous," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Ravenous: A Novel by Sara Cooper.

The entry begins:

Okay, so, as a playwright, I love dreamcasting. I hadn't actually thought about who would play Breigh in a movie, but I got super excited when I saw this prompt.

Quick summary of the book: Ravenous is about a pregnant influencer who specializes in unboxing and takes things way, way too far. It's very stream-of-consciousness and is kind of a super intense feminist horror anticapitalist fever dream.

First of all, if I was casting for a theatre piece (which I feel I must include here, because, like I said, I'm also a playwright!), I'd cast Sherz Aletaha. She's...[read on]

Visit Sara Cooper's website.

My Book, The Movie: Ravenous.

--Marshal Zeringue

Simon Schama's top ten history books

Simon Schama is University Professor of Art History and History at Columbia University in New York. His award-winning books include Scribble, Scribble, Scribble; The American Future: A History; National Book Critics Circle Award winner Rough Crossings; The Power of Art; The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age; Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution; Dead Certainties (Unwarranted Speculations); Landscape and Memory; Rembrandt's Eyes; and the History of Britain trilogy. He has written and presented forty television documentary films for the BBC, PBS, and The History Channel, including the Emmy-winning Power of Art, on subjects that range from John Donne to Tolstoy.

Back in 1999 Schama tagged his top ten history books for the Guardian. One title on the list:

The Face of Battle by John Keegan

A stunning, extraordinary, fantastic book. It has a wonderful opening. He attempts a different kind of military history and concentrates on three battles: Agincourt, Waterloo and the Somme. No book until this one had put you right in the middle of the action and asked questions like "Why didn't everybody run away?" It stopped old-style military history, with shaded triangles facing each other, in its tracks.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Face of Battle is one of Stanley McChrystal's six favorite books. John Keegan is one of Max Hastings's five of the best historians of war.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Jack Dudley's "The New Believers"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The New Believers: Religion and the Contemporary Novel by Jack Dudley.

About the book, from the publisher:

The New Believers identifies a group of today's most important novelists, Margaret Atwood, J. M. Coetzee, Junot Díaz, and George Saunders, who have challenged the trend of depressing and defeatist novelistic endings by turning to spiritual beliefs, powers, and presences. Through spiritual belief, these writers use the novel to imagine more hopeful and caring ways of being in the world, ones that can challenge Christian Nationalism and neoliberal capitalism and empower leftist and liberal causes, such as women's rights, migrant rights, animal rights, and care for the environment. Through a survey of the current state of novel studies, close readings of key works by each writer, and new archival research on Margaret Atwood and J. M. Coetzee, The New Believers shows how these writers transform novelistic realism through spiritual realism and reshape the current debate about religion, secularization, and literature.

Visit Jack Dudley's website.

The Page 99 Test: The New Believers.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five of the most WTF thrillers and crime novels

Jamie Canaves is a contributing editor at Book Riot. She tagged five great thrillers and crime novels with WTF premises, including:

My Lovely Wife by Samantha Downing

Here’s a domestic thriller debut that ensured I read every book that followed.

It’s not rare that a couple married for 15 years, with teenage children, might look for something to, say, spice up their lives. It is however — hopefully! — rare that the new hobby they settle on is murdering young women. Yup. And the story is only told from the unnamed husband’s POV…

Read about the other titles on the list.

My Lovely Wife is among Amy K. Green's five top novels about living near serial killers, Courtney Rodgers's nine chilling thrillers about marriage, Darby Kane's seven top thrillers with couples who don’t get (or deserve) a happy ending, Misha Popp's eight titles featuring truly fatal femmes fatales, Sarah Bonner's thirteen psychological thrillers with gobsmacking twists, Kaira Rouda's thirteen books highlighting the wives in domestic suspense, Alice Feeney's eight top novels featuring odd couples & unexpected partnerships, Pip Drysdale's seven top revenge thrillers featuring women who have had enough, Christina McDonald's seven top thrillers with flawed characters, C.J. Tudor's seven crime novels where murder is a group activity, Lisa Levy's top seven psychological thrillers with manipulative male narrators, Kaira Rouda's top seven literary couples whose relationships are deeply disturbing in the most fascinating ways possible, and Margot Hunt's top five villains who have had about enough of domestic life.

The Page 69 Test: My Lovely Wife.

--Marshal Zeringue