Q&A with Alexia Nader

From my Q&A with Alexia Nader, author of The Meaning of Daughter:

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

The Meaning of Daughter comes from a line in the first section of the novel which reads in full, “The Meaning of Daughter is a girl who helps her family, especially her mother.” The line is an expression of a minor character’s point-of-view but the title I hope does the opposite of imposing a point-of-view. The Meaning of Daughter is a multigenerational novel, narrated in three first-person sections by three different generations of women in a family. The structure of the book encourages the reader to contemplate how each character defines and redefines herself in relation to her mother and I think the title frames this experience nicely. The openness of the title is meant to emphasize that there is no one meaning of daughter in this novel and instead what you will get when you read is...[read on]

Visit Alexia Nader's website.

See Alexia Nader's seven books that weigh the choice of motherhood.

Q&A with Alexia Nader.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven juicy books for fans of "Secret Lives Of Mormon Wives"

At Bustle Grace Wehniainen tagged seven books that are "perfect for fans of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives." One title on the list:

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke

Natalie is an immensely popular tradwife influencer whose perfect existence is upended when she wakes up on a farm in 1855. Of course — as is true of influencing itself — not all is as it seems in one of this year’s buzziest titles.

Read about another entry on the list.

Also see: Elisa Shoenberger's eight compelling thrillers about influencers and the world of influencing.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Jennifer A. Jordan's "Beer Ghosts"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Beer Ghosts: In Search of Lost Hops and the Women Who Grew Them by Jennifer A. Jordan.

About the book, from the publisher:

The little-known story of the young women who played a vital role in the rise of America’s great breweries.

Water, malt, yeast, and hops: these are essential ingredients of beer. Hops, specifically, play an outsized role in determining its flavor and aroma. In Beer Ghosts, Jennifer Jordan takes us back to a brief but pivotal moment in the nineteenth century when Wisconsin produced much of the hops grown in the United States. Yet those long-ago hops are not the only ghosts in Jordan’s story. Haunting the pages of this book are the young women whose work at harvest time was key to the rise of the American beer industry.

Until the early twentieth century, the work of picking hops was a time-consuming process that could only be done by hand, one cone at a time. In nineteenth-century Wisconsin, that work was performed almost exclusively by women and girls, who traveled to hop farms in droves as summer came to a close and the harvest began. At the height of the hop boom in the 1860s, farmers and their families laid out beds and prepared food for tens of thousands of seasonal laborers, and hosted parties and dances well into the night. Despite the scale of Wisconsin’s hop boom (and subsequent crash), the industry left behind little trace aside from local records and archives. And it is that barely discernible trace that lures Jordan to dig deeper.

Jordan’s vivid prose takes us back to this era by drawing on a rich trove of archival sources, from the thousands of hop farmers in the agricultural census to the extraordinary diary of a single hop picker, a young woman named Ella. The history of beer is incomplete without the history of Ella and the others who labored in the hop fields and in the houses that hosted them. In this book, Jordan gives life and voice to these beer ghosts who call to us from the past, showing the rich connections between a nation’s beer and the lives that made it possible.

Learn more about Beer Ghosts at the University of Chicago Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Beer Ghosts.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top nonfiction books for true crime lovers

Katie McLain Horner has an MLIS from the University of Illinois and works full time as a Circulation & Reference Manager in Illinois.

At Book Riot she tagged five nonfiction books that are sure to fascinate true crime lovers. One title on the list:

Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History by Bill Schutt

Zoologist Bill Schutt takes readers on a deep biological, historical, and sociological dive into the taboo practice of cannibalism — both in the human world and in the animal world. (Did you know some amphibians consume their mothers’ skin??) Cannibalism, Schutt argues, is both normal and essential to evolution, and deserves much more scientific attention.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best funerals in literature

At the Guardian, John Mullan named ten of the best funerals in literature.

One title on the list:

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

Being buried alive is an anxiety here, too. In the first chapter , Roy's protagonist, Rahel, attends the funeral of her cousin Sophie Mol, drowned aged nine. Rahel, a child herself, imagines that Sophie is still alive in her coffin, screaming as she is buried. Life against death.

Read about another title on the list.

The God of Small Things is among Sadi Muktadir's seven novels that give you hope, then devastate you, Etaf Rum's eight top books revolving around a historical collective trauma, Fatin Abbas's eight top books on borders concrete & intangible, Rebecca Wait's top ten books about twins, Alex Hyde's top ten mirrored lives in fiction, Saumya Roy's seven unlikely love stories in literature, and Miranda Doyle's top ten books about lies.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Ty Landers reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Ty Landers, author of Baby Queen: A Novel.

His entry begins:

I’m reading a few things right now and I’m very excited about my TBR pile as well. I usually read at least two books at a time, then something else on audiobook in the car. So, three things really. I try to read something for fun, something to study, and then a piece of nonfiction that can go either way.

I’m reading Crone by Keith Rosson. This is a horror-noir novel about a grieving ex-detective struggling with addiction in the Pacific Northwest. He is hooked on an experimental drug and working as hired muscle for a biker gang. It’s this awesome mash-up of crime-thriller and folklore horror and it’s amazing. Rosson’s been on a heater for years and he might have the best...[read on]

About Baby Queen, from the publisher:

For lovers of Ozark or Breaking Bad, a page-turning debut involving an Alabama family business, a dead body, a dogged investigator, and three generations of women who are forced to confront the secrets, betrayals, and buried crimes that haunt their family.

When a queen bee can no longer do her job, the worker bees will kill her, producing a new baby queen.

A perfectly preserved but very dead body is found in a barrel of honey, and the town of Noccalula, Alabama, will never be the same.

Natalie Link has inherited the family honey farm from her beloved grandmother Lana, who raised Nat after her mother ran off to Los Angeles chasing stardom. But it turns out Nat has no idea what Lana has been hiding in the hives. Is Nat up to running what turns out to be a business enterprise of questionable repute? Suddenly she is caught between her grandmother’s very frightening partners and the ex-cop with a grudge who’s been looking into her family since she was a kid.

Bob Sauk torpedoed his once promising law enforcement career chasing a lead he couldn’t prove. He has always believed that Lana Link was a murderer. Will he finally get the chance to prove he was right all along? And what happens when Nat’s Hollywood star mom returns to town after twenty-five years?

Full of secrets, murder, and Alabama fried frog legs, Baby Queen is a sharp-as-a-blade tale of family crime.

Visit Ty Landers's website.

Writers Read: Ty Landers.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top mysteries set on generation ships

Molly Odintz is the managing editor for CrimeReads and the editor of Austin Noir. She grew up in Austin and worked as a bookseller before becoming a Very Professional Internet Person. She lives in central Texas with her cat, Fritz Lang.

At CrimeReads Odintz tagged six mysteries set on generation ships. One title on the list:

Mahmud El Sayed, The Republic of Memory

It is a universal truth that any functionary on a spaceship ship sufficiently well-placed will be susceptible to bribery, especially in a ship indulgently outfitted and gloriously inspired by the Ottoman Empire. In The Republic of Memory, gleefully corrupt officials, clever bootleggers, piratical smugglers, and nascent revolutionaries populate a generation ship (the second on this list) just over halfway to its destination, and beginning to crack at the seams. When a seemingly preventable disaster sends the ship’s factions into disarray, a former fighter gets assigned to investigate the accident as sabotage, recruiting plenty of unlikely allies on the way to the even more unlikely truth.

Read about another mystery on the list.

The Page 69 Test: The Republic of Memory.

Q&A with Mahmud El Sayed.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six of the best queer fiction books of the century

Danika Ellis spends most of their time talking about sapphic books at the Lesbrary.

At Book Riot Ellis and their colleagues tagged six of the best queer fiction titles of the century (so far), including:

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo

Girl, Woman, Other is a rich and vivid portrait of 12 people, most of them women and Black. From a lesbian playwright to a nonbinary influencer and a white-passing schoolteacher, the characters’ stories are connected by their shared identities and experiences across decades of life in the United Kingdom. The fast-paced novel is written entirely in lowercase, allowing the prose to flow almost lyrically as it examines Britain’s complicated colonial history. It won Evaristo the Booker Prize in 2019, making her the first Black woman to win that prize. —Vanessa Diaz

Read about another title on the list.

Girl, Woman, Other is among Jessika Bouvier's seven novels about dysfunctional (but charming) families, Erin O. White's five novels that showcase queer domesticity, Emma Specter's thirteen notable feminist books, Sarah Davis-Goff's six top books about women working together, Ore Agbaje-Williams's seven books featuring very, very complicated friendships, Cecile Pin's seven novels featuring displacement in multicultural London, and Kasim Ali's nine top books about interracial relationships.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Ray E. Boomhower's "Wallace Terry"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Wallace Terry: A Reporter's Journey from Selma to Saigon to Bloods by Ray E. Boomhower.

About the book, from the publisher:

Award-winning biographer Ray Boomhower tells the story of a journalist who spent his life smashing barriers, from his childhood in Indiana and his Ivy League education at Brown to his reporting on the Civil Rights Movement in the Deep South in the 1960s and, finally, covering what he described as “the biggest story in the world” of his time, the Vietnam War.

Pioneering Black journalist Wallace Terry risked his life on the battlefield writing for Time magazine during the Vietnam War. While in Vietnam, he captured the voices and experiences of Black soldiers and used the insights he gained to produce Bloods: An Oral History of the Vietnam War by Black Veterans. The book remains a classic reflection of a war that fractured US society and cost the lives of nearly fifty-eight thousand Americans.

Before risking his life on the front lines, Terry became deeply involved in reporting about the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s in the United States. “It was a story that I passionately cared for because it was going to affect me, my family, my children, and generations of Black people to come,” said Terry. Working for the Washington Post, he wrote the first newspaper series about the Nation of Islam, during which he interacted with Malcolm X, who sheltered him from harm when his stories upset some members of the movement. He also grew close to those who sacrificed their lives in the struggle for equality, including Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King Jr., who became godfather to Terry’s eldest son. Making civil rights his focus gave him the opportunity to report on such seminal events as the Birmingham campaign, the March on Washington, and the Selma to Montgomery marches.

During his two years covering the Vietnam War, Terry traveled overseas to conduct numerous interviews with Black fighting men—soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines—that he later used as the basis for Bloods. He sought with his work to topple the conviction that “white soldiers are invincible and black soldiers are invisible.” Terry faced numerous challenges, including rejections from publishers who believed the public did not want to read about Black veterans from the conflict. Finally published in 1984, Bloods became a bestseller and remains a landmark work of military and oral history.

Boomhower has written the first-ever biography of one of the first Black national correspondents to be hired in the overwhelmingly white mainstream media, a reporter whose name belongs with the greats in American journalism. Wallace Terry lived a life filled with danger and betrayal, scoops and cover-ups, while immersing himself in events that changed the course of US history.

Follow Ray E. Boomhower on Instagram and Threads.

The Page 99 Test: Richard Tregaskis.

The Page 99 Test: The Ultimate Protest.

The Page 99 Test: Wallace Terry.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight zombie novels to feast on

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 of the best zombie novels, including:

Warm Bodies (2010) // Isaac Marion

Warm Bodies is often billed as a zombie romance, but there’s still plenty of feasting on brains to be found throughout the book. The story is told from the perspective of a zombie—known only as R (he can’t remember his name)—who isn’t as brain-dead as the rest of the infected. While hunting humans one day, he becomes enamored with a young woman called Julie and impulsively decides to save her from his hungry friends.

Although Warm Bodies eventually became so popular that it was turned into a movie in 2013—starring Nicholas Hoult as R and Teresa Palmer as Julie—it was originally self-published. “I printed out a couple hundred copies and I just sold them on my website,” Isaac Marion told Wired. The novel was then picked up by Atria Books, but the version they published was “dramatically different” from Marion’s first printing, being about 80 pages longer in order to fully flesh out the story.

Read about another entry on the list.

Warm Bodies is among Michael J. Seidlinger's six novels that invert horror tropes, Lois Leveen's five notable novels that riff on—and rip off—Shakespeare, Rachel Aukes's five top books that take zombies in a new direction, Ceridwen Christensen's seven top books with thinking zombies, Jeff Somers's eight best speculative works with dead narrators, Sarah Skilton's six most unusual YA narrators, Rachel Paxton-Gillilan's five funniest YA zombie novels, Nick Harkaway's six favorite holiday books, and Nicole Hill's seven favorite literary oddballs.

The Page 69 Test: Warm Bodies.

My Book, The Movie: Warm Bodies.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top chilling thrillers for the holidays

Carter Wilson is the USA Today and Publishers Weekly bestselling author of eleven standalone psychological thrillers. His stories focus on ordinary people pushed into situations where survival and morality collide, and every decision has consequences. His 2025 novel Tell Me What You Did was a national monthly pick by Barnes & Noble, and his work has been optioned for film and television.

Wilson's new novel is When They Find Me.

At People magazine the author tagged ten "books featuring people who would very much like to leave. But can’t." One title on the list:

Shiver by Allie Reynolds

Five friends reunite at a remote resort in the French Alps, where they once trained for an elite snowboarding competition. Their shared past includes the disappearance of a sixth member of their group, and someone has arranged this gathering to uncover the truth. The resort is deserted, the cable cars have stopped working and their phones are missing. Being trapped with old friends is unsettling enough. Discovering that someone planned it raises a whole new set of questions.

Read about another entry on the list.

Shiver is among Alexa Donne's six top thrillers inspired by Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, Isabelle McConville's nine books with deadly invitations, C.J. Tudor's five notable winter thrillers, and B.P. Walter's five top winter mysteries.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Stephanie Wrobel's "Revenge Plot"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Revenge Plot by Stephanie Wrobel.

About the book, from the publisher:

A desperate writer’s pursuit of a powerful literary agent takes a dark turn in this new novel from the internationally bestselling author of The Hitchcock Hotel and Darling Rose Gold.

All Arnie Tenderton wants this Christmas—all he’s ever wanted—is to be a published author. For decades he has toiled over one novel after another. Each was missing something. Until now.

He’s finally written his perfect book.

What he needs next is a literary agent, someone who can get his book into publishers’ hands. Not just any agent will do, of course. Arnie wants the best. Arnie wants Claudia Conley.

She already rejected him once, and Arnie has never forgiven her. He could move on. Instead, he finds out where Claudia is spending the holidays: alone in a remote house in the Catskill Mountains. He decides to show up there to make his pitch.

Claudia may try to turn him down again, but this time Arnie won’t take no for an answer.

Because his book is about her.

And he’s not leaving until the story ends the way he wants.

Visit Stephanie Wrobel's website.

The Page 69 Test: Darling Rose Gold.

My Book, The Movie: Darling Rose Gold.

Q&A with Stephanie Wrobel.

The Page 69 Test: The Hitchcock Hotel.

The Page 69 Test: Revenge Plot.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seventeen top books about Native American culture

David Congdon is senior editor at the University Press of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas, and an adjunct instructor at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary. He is the author of several books, including The Mission of Demythologizing: Rudolf Bultmann's Dialectical Theology, Rudolf Bultmann: A Companion to His Theology, The God Who Saves: A Dogmatic Sketch, and Who Is a True Christian? Contesting Religious Identity in American Culture.

[The Page 99 Test: Who Is a True Christian?]

At Lit Hub Congdon tagged seventeen "outstanding Native American and Indigenous Studies books published by university presses." One title on the list:

Sharon V. Salinger, Perceived in Print: Indigenous American and French Ideas of the Other

Perceived in Print uses the published writings of adventurers and churchmen in the 16th and early 17th centuries to unlock what people from a diverse range of Indigenous cultures thought about the French and how the French perceived the inhabitants of these New Lands.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Four top witchy, weird girl YA books

Gloria Muñoz is the author of They Called Us Wicked and of the poetry collection Danzirly, which won the Ambroggio Prize. She is an Academy of American Poets Poet Laureate Fellow, a Hedgebrook Fellow, an Esperimento Sul Respiro Fellow, a Macondista, a Highlights Foundation Diverse Verse Fellow, and a part of Las Musas. Her debut novel, This Is the Year, a YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults title and winner of the International Literacy Association’s Young Adult Book Award, was hailed as “brilliantly layered” by Booklist in a starred review.

Muñoz's new novel is They Called Us Wicked.

At Book Riot the author tagged four "favorite recent books with witchy, weird-girl YA characters," including:

(S)Kin by Ibi Zoboi

This stunning novel in verse alternates between Marisol, the daughter of a soucouyant in Brooklyn, and Genevieve, a teen whose life is overshadowed by newborn twins and a painful struggle with cystic acne. Both characters are trying to navigate teenagehood and living as girls who have never felt at home in their own skin. Rooted in Caribbean folklore, a family secret comes to light. And they discover a racial trauma and history that binds them and makes them want to fight for answers to questions they’ve held onto for a long time.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Martin Williams's "The Nile Revealed"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Nile Revealed: A Deep History of Earth’s Longest River by Martin Williams.

About the book, from the publisher:

The untold story of an iconic river, from its origins to its possible futures on a rapidly warming planet

The Nile River has captivated explorers and scientists for centuries, and its age and origins have been the subject of intense speculation since at least the days of Herodotus. The Nile Revealed is an authoritative account of how Earth’s longest river came into being, how its flow has changed dramatically and at times almost ceased altogether, and how these changes affected human societies in the Nile valley down through the centuries.

An internationally renowned expert on the Nile and its extraordinarily rich geological history, Martin Williams has traveled the length and breadth of the river during his career. In this book, he draws on his own experiences to explain how scientists reconstruct and date past environments in the Nile basin and offers vivid descriptions of the river and its three major tributaries—the White Nile, the Blue Nile, and the Atbara. He guides readers from the Ethiopian Highlands and downstream to the Nile delta and deep-sea fan, where soils and sediments preserve the record of the Nile’s eventful life. Williams visits prehistoric sites in the Nile valley and considers how its inhabitants adapted to floods, droughts, and other climatic changes—and how the river itself might respond to climate change in the future.

Blending evocative storytelling with the latest science, The Nile Revealed provides an incomparable look at a majestic river whose course has fluctuated widely over time, and whose waters have sustained diverse ecosystems and humankind for millions of years.

Visit Martin Williams's website.

The Page 99 Test: When the Sahara Was Green.

The Page 99 Test: The Nile Revealed.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven top horror novels set in the American South

Del Sandeen lives in northeast Florida, where she works as a copy editor and writes speculative fiction. Her work has appeared in FIYAH: Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction and Gay Mag and on the Nightlight podcast.

She is the author of This Cursed House and These Walls Remember.

At CrimeReads Sandeen tagged seven "favorite horror books which just so happen to take place in the hot and sticky South, where the gators aren’t even the scariest things you’ll find." One title on the list:

Daryl Gregory, Revelator

In 1940s Tennessee, Stella has been leading an unconventional life as a bootlegger. When she has to come home, she’s forced to confront her past when she meets young Sunny. Both Stella and Sunny have to face their family history and more importantly, the god they’ve served for generations. This dual-timeline novel is a mix of folk horror and very twisted religion.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best identical twins in fiction

At the Guardian, John Mullan named ten of the best identical twins in fiction.

One title on Mullan's list:

Sam and Eric

The identical twins in Lord of the Flies are so conjoined that they become "Samneric". Together they desert nice Ralph and betray him to nasty Jack. People acting together are even worse than people on their own.

Read about another entry on the list.

Lord of the Flies is on Carole Johnstone's list of five of the best books about eerie islands, Rektok Ross's list of six top survival thrillers, Julia Phillips's top eight list of books set in isolated locations, Kerri Jarema's list of fifteen classic novels with a page count mercifully below 200 pages, Brian Conaghan's list of ten favorite teen books about male friendship, Gillian Philip’s top ten list of islands in children's fiction, Janet Davey’s top ten list of schoolchildren in fiction, Frank Rich's ten top books list, Non Pratt's top ten list of toxic friendships in literature, Francesca Haig's top ten list of the greatest twins in children’s books, Shaun Byron Fitzpatrick list of thirteen favorite, occasionally-banned, YA novels, Matt Kraus's list of six famous books with extremely faithful film adaptations, Michael Hogan's list of the ten best fictional evil children, Danny Wallace's six best books list, Gemma Malley's top ten list of dystopian novels for teenagers, AbeBooks' list of 20 books of shattered childhoods and is one of the top ten works of literature according to Stephen King. It appears on John Mullan's lists of ten of the best pigs in literature, ten of the best pairs of glasses in literature, and ten of the best horrid children in literature, Katharine Quarmby's top ten list of disability stories, and William Skidelsky's list of ten of the best accounts of being marooned in literature. It is a book that made a difference to Isla Fisher and is one of Suzi Quatro's six best books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Jack Turner's "Die Your Own Death"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Die Your Own Death: Walt Whitman’s Existential Democracy by Jack Turner.

About the book, from the publisher:

Humans fantasize about immortality. Billionaires dabble in cryonics, politicians build monuments to themselves, and writers donate their papers to libraries. In Die Your Own Death, Jack Turner argues that the quest for immortality—literal or symbolic—is politically destructive. He does so through a meditation on the work of Walt Whitman. Whitman held that democracy prepares individuals to “die their own deaths”—free of fear, resentment, and illusion. In Whitman’s “existential democracy,” accepting death strengthens freedom and equality. And yet, Turner finds, Whitman only half succeeded in forging a democratic philosophy of death. As Whitman’s thought evolved in response to changing ideas about nation, race, and empire, he encouraged citizens to seek immortality through racial imperialism—the expansion of white empire from North America to the Pacific Islands—as a monument to American greatness.

Turner explores the poetics of death in Leaves of Grass and its relationship to Whitman’s democratic theory (“I exist as I am, that is enough”). Through a close analysis of Drum-Taps and Memoranda During the War, Turner shows that Whitman sought to redeem the mass slaughter of the Civil War by cloaking it in poetic and national glory. And in Whitman’s greatest prose work, Democratic Vistas, Turner argues, Whitman envisioned an antidemocratic national immortalism that ignored Native sovereignty and Black equality. Turner exposes the dark side of Whitman’s philosophy of death, but he also reveals how that philosophy can still be a resource in the ongoing struggle for freedom and equality.

Learn more about Die Your Own Death at the Princeton University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Die Your Own Death.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven of the best books about Iran

One title on Tertulia's list of seven books that offer essential insight into Iran’s history, politics, and culture:

Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar

One of the most talked-about literary debuts in recent years, this novel follows the orphaned son of Iranian immigrants on a searching journey that leads him to a terminally ill painter spending her final days in the Brooklyn Museum. Blending history, art, and dark humor, the story probes life between cultures and the lingering legacy of the Iranian Revolution. NPR called it “an unflinching tour-de-force bursting with wit and insight into the complications of diaspora.”

Read about another entry on the list.

Also see Nazanine Hozar's top ten books about Iran.

--Marshal Zeringue