Q&A with Emma Garman

From my Q&A with Emma Garman, author of The Kindness of Strangers. A Novel:

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

One reader called the title ironic—meaning, I guess, that some very unkind acts are committed in the story, which is true! But I see the title as having a double meaning. Strangers can be dangerous, but so can those we know most intimately. And in The Kindness of Strangers, both possibilities play out. Ultimately, the title gestures to the idea of found family. In the novel, a disparate group—individuals of different ages, class backgrounds, nationalities, sexes and sexualities—end up living together and forming lifelong bonds.

What's in a name?

I love over-the-top Dickensian names that broadcast exactly what we, the readers, are meant to think. But...[read on]

Visit Emma Garman's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Kindness of Strangers.

Writers Read: Emma Garman.

Q&A with Emma Garman.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top love stories for the romance reluctant

Andrew Forrester is a writer and former English teacher whose work has appeared in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and Parents magazine. He holds a PhD in nineteenth-century British literature and lives in Austin, Texas with his family.

How The Story Goes is his first novel.

At The Nerd Daily Forrester tagged "ten love stories that may or may not be capital-R romances, but which have a little something extra going on, too." One title on the list:

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

A book that boldly asks the question: what if Kate & Leopold (2001), starring Hugh Jackman and national treasure Meg Ryan, were good? The narrator works for a secretive faction of the British government, where she is tasked with looking after Graham Gore, a British naval officer who (in real life) died on an arctic expedition but who, in this story, has been time-traveled to present-day London. While helping Graham understand the modern world, sparks fly… but so do bullets. In fact, it gets very spy thriller towards the end. I loved it, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since I finished it.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: David Hirshberg's "Crossing the Bronx"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Crossing the Bronx by David Hirshberg.

About the novel, from the publisher:

Crossing the Bronx is an historical literary novel set primarily in the 1950s in The Bronx. It is a modern retelling of the Jacob and Esau story from Genesis. The narrative that propels the story forward concerns the destruction of a neighborhood in the guise of progress. Jay and Eric, the sons of Ike (an Italian Jew), and Rebekeh, (a Mountain Jew), are estranged-as are their parents-and find themselves on opposite sides of a bitter struggle that pits those in power against the defenseless people of a local community.

Eric has aligned himself with his father Ike, who by day is a cop-and at other times works surreptitiously for a mobbed-up construction company engaged in major projects transforming New York City-while his younger brother Jay is allied with his mother and with a neighborhood group fighting to preserve its very soul. Their fractious relationship speaks to the issues of how families split apart, and whether or not the pieces can ever be put back together.

In addition to sustained tension-filled action, Crossing the Bronx is a story of romance, commitments, beliefs, and triumphs over adversities (lies, theft, murder, concealment, prejudice). Through vivid descriptions, perceptive insights, humor and sensitivity, the reader identifies with the characters who come to life in a realistic fashion to illustrate who we are, how we behave, and what causes us to change.

The novel is fast-paced, with uncompromising realism, reflecting the unrelenting tension between antagonists and the anxieties that overwhelm those without power. The underbelly of the criminal and political world is evidenced by brutality, rapaciousness, and a never-ending desire to seek retribution. A love story between Jay and his girlfriend Francesca counter-balances the grimness to show how some people can overcome the odds stacked against them by their birth and places of origin. Smart, savvy women (Francesca, Rebekah, Francesca's grandmother "Nonna Ebrea"-who thinks she is descended from Conversos-and Jay's therapist Dr. Leah Silverman) provide a strong counterbalance to the lies, thefts, beatings, concealments, murders, and prejudice evidenced by the men.

It is populated by colorful Italian, Irish, Black, Puerto Rican, and Jewish characters from a variety of different backgrounds; the novel sparkles with dialogue that is representative of their respective cultures.

The book can be read on three levels: (1) The story of what it was like to have lived through the Depression and World War II era, and into the one that emerged after 1945-a society that was being altered almost unknowingly into something that would turn out to be significantly different in terms of social activism and ethnic politics; (2) A metaphor for what is going on in cities today, in terms of the conflicts between 'ordinary people' and powerful politicians and business interests; and (3) How a Jewish family emerges from dysfunction to find its way despite daunting implacable obstacles in its way.

Visit David Hirshberg's website.

The Page 69 Test: Crossing the Bronx.

--Marshal Zeringue

Susan McGuirk's "Dear Missing Friend," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Dear Missing Friend by Susan McGuirk.

The entry begins:

I spent years working in film programming. I read a lot of scripts and felt comfortable with dramatic writing. I’m also a big theater fan, so dialogue and images are how I thought about stories. I’m also a visual person, so being able to see the characters faces in my mind’s eye was important to me. I found images on antique photo sites to use as mental illustrations of each character. I did the same with the settings to better imagine the characters’ dwelling places.

So, picking a dream director and cast for a movie adaption of Dear Missing Friend is my idea of fun!

To start here is a short version of the story:

Catherine McGuirk leaves Ireland and a shipboard suitor behind for a new life in Sag Harbor, New York. At the height of the 1840s whaling era, Cath marries a handsome sailor who promises to forsake the sea. Instead, he leaves for the gold rush, spurring her quest to become a governess in Manhattan. Cath continues to be torn between her ambition, her missing husband, and her former beau, now a wealthy speculator.

My dream director: Joe Wright. He directed one of the all-time great historical fiction films, the 2005 version of Pride and Prejudice. His 2017 Darkest Hour is one of the great Winston Churchill movies of all.

Here’s my dream team cast (culled from past and present).

Catherine McGuirk, protagonist who goes from teenager to bride to governess: Jesse Buckley

Michael Heffernan, husband who goes off whaling and then to the gold rush: Paul...[read on]

Visit Susan McGuirk's website.

My Book, The Movie: Dear Missing Friend.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven top books about actually-old women

Laurie Frankel is the New York Times bestselling, award-winning author of six novels. Her writing has also appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, Poets & Writers, Publishers Weekly, People Magazine, Lit Hub, The Sydney Morning Herald, and other publications. She is the recipient of the Washington State Book Award and the Endeavor Award. Her novels have been translated into more than twenty-five languages and been optioned for film and TV. A former college professor, she now writes full-time in Seattle, Washington where she lives with her family and makes good soup.

[Coffee with a Canine: Laurie Frankel and Calli; The Page 69 Test: The Atlas of Love; My Book, The Movie: Goodbye for Now; The Page 69 Test: Goodbye for Now; My Book, The Movie: This Is How It Always Is; The Page 69 Test: This Is How It Always Is; Writers Read: Laurie Frankel (February 2017); The Page 69 Test: One Two Three; Q&A with Laurie Frankel; The Page 69 Test: Enormous Wings]

Frankel's new novel is Enormous Wings.

At Lit Hub the author tagged seven great books about "actually-old women behaving as actually old." One title on Frankel's list:

Loved and Missed by Susie Boyt

To begin at a beginning—the cover—this might be the most perfectly titled book I’ve ever read. (I wouldn’t dare spoil the eponymous moment, but it moved me to tears.) Its protagonist, Ruth, takes over caring for her granddaughter Lily as it becomes clear—gradually and then all at once—that her drug-addicted daughter Eleanor cannot. Ruth is an extraordinary heroine, rock-solid strong in a completely unshowy, sincere, vulnerable way. Her relationship with Lily is central—and it’s striking, smart, and unusual—but her relationship with Eleanor is also astute, heartbreaking, and beautifully explored. This novel is simultaneously quiet, stripped down, hyper focused AND can’t-stop-turning-pages tense, and that’s owing to how deeply you feel for Ruth and this family. Boyt gives us much needed, different-than-usual takes on grandmothering, family, and addiction. Moving, harrowing, and mind-blowing.

Read about another title on Frankel's list.

Loved and Missed is among Karleigh Frisbie Brogan's seven books that reckon with larger-than-life mothers.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Lawrence Douglas's "The Criminal State"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Criminal State: War, Atrocity, and the Dream of International Justice by Lawrence Douglas.

About the book, from the publisher:

A sweeping history of the struggle to hold states to account for their gravest crimes

The Criminal State offers a gripping account of how law has confronted the most radical forms of state violence. Beautifully written, broad in scope, and bracingly original, it weaves history with political thought to trace the shifting legal response to state aggression and atrocities, from Leopold’s rule over the Congo to Putin’s war in Ukraine.

At its heart is Lawrence Douglas’s fresh interpretation of the law’s reckoning with Nazi aggression and atrocity. He shows how the Nuremberg trials challenged centuries of thought—rooted in Hobbes and other canonical thinkers—that shielded sovereigns from legal scrutiny. Yet Nuremberg’s bid to frame aggression as the cornerstone of a new order of international criminal law largely failed, giving way to a system now centrally concerned with crimes against humanity and genocide—while leaving unresolved the legality and effectiveness of using force to stop the worst violations of human rights.

Providing rare historical perspective on the dilemmas facing international courts, The Criminal State is a sweeping, provocative history of the struggle to bring perpetrators of state violence to justice.

Learn more about The Criminal State at the Princeton University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: The Criminal State.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Christina Baker Kline's "The Foursome"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Foursome: A Novel by Christina Baker Kline.

About the novel, from the publisher:

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Christina Baker Kline comes a boldly original reimagining of the astonishing true story of two sisters in nineteenth-century North Carolina — Kline’s own distant relatives — who married world-famous conjoined twins from Siam.

When Eng and Chang Bunker arrive in Wilkes County in 1839, they’re not just a curiosity—they’re a sensation. Everyone is eager to learn whether the salacious rumors about them are true. Within months, the twins have opened a general store, bought land, and begun building a plantation. Now, word has it, they’re looking for wives—and in a place that thrives on gossip and legacy, their ambitions set the community on edge.

Sarah and Adelaide Yates, daughters of a once-prominent local family brought low by scandal, are drawn into their orbit. Bold, beautiful Adelaide sees in the twins’ fame a chance to reclaim her future. Sarah, quiet and observant, isn’t so sure. When the twins’ lives become entangled with theirs, they must navigate loyalty, longing, and identity in a world where everything—including race, class, and gender—is rigidly defined.

Spanning five decades and unfolding against the backdrop of a fractured nation hurtling toward war, The Foursome is both intimate and epic: a story of love and constraint, identity and reinvention. With piercing insight and emotional precision, Kline brings to life a forgotten chapter of American history and the complex, boundary-defying marriages at its center.

Visit Christina Baker Kline's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Christina Baker Kline & Lucy.

The Page 69 Test: Bird in Hand.

Writers Read: Christina Baker Kline (March 2017).

The Page 69 Test: The Foursome.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Emma Garman reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Emma Garman, author of The Kindness of Strangers. A Novel.

Her entry begins:

Although I mostly read novels, at the moment I happen to be reading and immensely enjoying two nonfiction books.

Like a Cat Loves a Bird is a new biographical study of Muriel Spark by the literary scholar James Bailey. Spark, in my opinion, is one of the greatest novelists of all time (I’d say she influenced me, but such is her genius it sounds presumptuous!), and Bailey is such a perceptive, witty, and clever writer. If you think you don’t need to read another book on Spark, I promise that you do. Here’s Bailey on her habit of...[read on]

About The Kindness of Strangers, from the publisher:

A wildly entertaining debut and homage to the classic murder mystery set in post—WWII London where a stranger’s arrival at a boarding house sets a deadly chain of events in motion—perfect for fans of Kate Atkinson, Agatha Christie, and Richard Osman.

London, 1953. Jimmy Sullivan lies dying on the drawing room floor while his housemates look on, their lives about to change forever.

One foggy night in the dead of February, a young man arrives unannounced at 42 Tregunter Road in Chelsea. Self—styled Bohemian Mrs. Honor Wilson—who runs a minor literary journal and lodgings from this timeworn Victorian house—introduces him to her “dear house guests”: Robbie, the writer; Mina, the teenage sleuth; George, the debutante; and Saul, the haunted refugee. Jimmy Sullivan is a family friend, Honor says—yet clearly, something is not right. Despite everyone’s misgivings, she lets the stranger move into the attic.

As they each try to disprove Jimmy’s dubious account of himself, secrets, jealousies, and disturbing schemes come to light, fracturing the household’s delicate allegiances and setting in motion, unstoppably, a tale of perilous self—invention, complicated love, and murderous revenge.

In a house built on lies, the truth will get you killed.

Visit Emma Garman's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Kindness of Strangers.

Writers Read: Emma Garman.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top novels set in the 1970s

At Book Riot Julia Rittenberg tagged six novels set in the 1970s, including:

Jasmine Zumideh Needs a Win by Susan Azim Boyer

Eager to get out of high school and start her real life as the coolest musical journalist in New York City, Jasmine is a funny, deeply relatable teenage protagonist. To make her college application iron-clad, she runs for class president (after saying on her application that she already was). But because of the Iranian Revolution in 1978, she and her Iranian family are seen as enemies by their neighbors. Jasmine wants to move on with her life, but her competing priorities aren’t so easy to reconcile.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Marc Stein's "Bicentennial"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Bicentennial: A Revolutionary History of the 1970s by Marc Stein.

About the book, from the publisher:

As the United States marks its semiquincentennial in 2026, renowned historian Marc Stein looks back at the politics of another landmark celebration during a time of striking similarities and surprising differences: the US bicentennial in 1976.

In the aftermath of Vietnam and Watergate, the bicentennial sparked an extraordinary national conversation about the country’s past, present, and future. As patriots, planners, profiteers, and protesters argued about how to commemorate the national birthday, they collectively reimagined the promises and perils of democracy during a transformational decade.

From award-winning historian Marc Stein, Bicentennial: A Revolutionary History of the 1970s is an original, illuminating, and insightful study of that era. While focusing on festivities and fights in Philadelphia, the nation’s birthplace, the book also explores the many proposed and abandoned celebrations that percolated up around the country. It tells a broadly democratic story of both the “official” bicentennial and counter-bicentennial activism, offering revolutionary perspectives on national politics, social movements, and popular culture. From the queer courtship of President Richard Nixon and Philadelphia Mayor Frank Rizzo to parades and protests with millions of participants, and from a deadly outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease at Philadelphia’s most prestigious hotel to the establishment of groundbreaking African American, ethnic, and Jewish museums, the bicentennial reveals a kaleidoscope of American peculiarities, problems, and possibilities.

The lasting influence of 1976 on one of the nation’s great urban centers and the United States as a whole is undeniable. As the nation—once again enmeshed in political and social upheaval—marks its two-hundred-fiftieth birthday in 2026, there is no better time to look back at its two-hundredth and marvel at what has changed, and what has not.

Learn more about Bicentennial at the University of Chicago Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Bicentennial.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight quintessentially Québécois novels set in Montreal

Jake Pitre is a writer and scholar based in Montreal. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Globe and Mail, JSTOR Daily, Fast Company, and elsewhere.

At Electric Lit he tagged eight novels that "capture the diversity and cultural wealth of Québec’s storied metropolis." One title on the list:

Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O’Neill

O’Neill, one of Montreal’s most-beloved working writers in English, is an excellent place to start for any reader eager to immerse themselves in the life of the city. You could go with The Lonely Hearts Hotel, about two Montreal orphans in the early 20th-century, or When We Lost Our Heads, about the clash of the classes in 19th century Montreal; but your best bet would be her debut, Lullabies for Little Criminals, a rough and often dark story of a young girl with a junkie father, growing up in squalor and, ultimately, being forced to raise herself. What stands out in each novel is O’Neill’s careful attention to Montreal itself, from the dangerous to the stunningly beautiful and how the two uncomfortably overlap.

Read about another novel on the list.

Q&A with Heather O'Neill.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Emma Garman's "The Kindness of Strangers"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Kindness of Strangers: A Novel by Emma Garman.

About the novel, from the publisher:

A wildly entertaining debut and homage to the classic murder mystery set in post—WWII London where a stranger’s arrival at a boarding house sets a deadly chain of events in motion—perfect for fans of Kate Atkinson, Agatha Christie, and Richard Osman.

London, 1953. Jimmy Sullivan lies dying on the drawing room floor while his housemates look on, their lives about to change forever.

One foggy night in the dead of February, a young man arrives unannounced at 42 Tregunter Road in Chelsea. Self—styled Bohemian Mrs. Honor Wilson—who runs a minor literary journal and lodgings from this timeworn Victorian house—introduces him to her “dear house guests”: Robbie, the writer; Mina, the teenage sleuth; George, the debutante; and Saul, the haunted refugee. Jimmy Sullivan is a family friend, Honor says—yet clearly, something is not right. Despite everyone’s misgivings, she lets the stranger move into the attic.

As they each try to disprove Jimmy’s dubious account of himself, secrets, jealousies, and disturbing schemes come to light, fracturing the household’s delicate allegiances and setting in motion, unstoppably, a tale of perilous self—invention, complicated love, and murderous revenge.

In a house built on lies, the truth will get you killed.

Visit Emma Garman's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Kindness of Strangers.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Lisa Lee

From my Q&A with Lisa Lee, author of American Han: A Novel:

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

The title is doing a lot of work in that American han is what the book is about. But many readers won’t know what han is or what I mean by “American” han, and since I don’t define or use the word anywhere in the book other than in the title and epigraph, for some readers it might take reading the whole book and maybe a little research to understand the meaning.

What's in a name?

I chose the name Jane Kim for my narrator because ...[read on]

Visit Lisa Lee's website.

Q&A with Lisa Lee.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top thrillers set in the suburbs

Nicole Blades is a novelist and journalist with nearly two decades of experience in the media industry. Her cover stories and features have been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Runner’s World, Women's Health, and more. An active member of the International Thriller Writers organization, her novels often focus on the facade and filters people put on to face the world. Her latest novel is Would I Lie to You?. The domestic thriller joins Blade’s previous novels, Have You Met Nora?, The Thunder Beneath Us, and Earth's Waters. A proud Caribbean Canadian, Blades currently lives in New England with her husband and their son.

At CrimeReads the author tagged five "must-read thrillers set in seemingly idyllic environs crowded with the sinful secrets and base behaviors of the wealthy that tickle the nosiest parts of our brains." One title on the list:

Janelle Brown, Pretty Things

Two women, one a grifter, the other a socialite and heiress, have their wildly different worlds collide in a twisty, complicated story about wealth, entitlement, secrets, revenge, and how sometimes the line between rich and poor, between aspiration and desperation, can become a live wire.

Read about another novel on the list.

Pretty Things is among Trisha Sakhlecha's eleven thrillers featuring the mega-rich, Julie Clark's four top books featuring female con artists, and Lindsay Cameron's five thrillers to warn you away from social media.

The Page 69 Test: Pretty Things.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Thomas Doherty's "How Film Became History"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: How Film Became History: The Rise of the Archival Documentary in 1930s America by Thomas Doherty.

About the book, from the publisher:

By the 1930s, filmmakers had access to a backlog of footage from nearly forty years of motion pictures, allowing them to create a new kind of film stitched together from the raw material of older films. At around the same time, the transition to synchronous sound added a transformative new element to the grammar of cinema: the voiceover narration. Together, the film inventory and offscreen commentary gave rise to the archival documentary, the motion picture genre that preserves and rewinds history.

Thomas Doherty tells the story of the archival documentary, spotlighting the first films that set out deliberately to preserve history on screen. He shows how newsreels and documentaries challenged the era’s restrictive censorship and how film began to engage with the great political issues of the day. Doherty considers a range of films―some well-known, others obscure―including J. Stuart Blackton’s The Film Parade (1933), Laurence Stallings and Truman Talley’s The First World War (1934), Cornelius Vanderbilt Jr.’s Hitler’s Reign of Terror (1934), Max Eastman and Herbert Axelbank’s Tsar to Lenin (1937), and the March of Time screen magazine. Tracing the creation of the archival documentary, How Film Became History illuminates how motion pictures have come to shape our vision of the past.

Learn more about How Film Became History at the Columbia University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Hollywood and Hitler, 1933-1939.

The Page 99 Test: Show Trial.

The Page 99 Test: How Film Became History.

--Marshal Zeringue

Cynthia Swanson's "This Isn’t New," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: This Isn't New: Women's Historical Stories by Cynthia Swanson.

The entry begins:

Because This Isn’t New: Women’s Historical Stories is a short story collection, I’m focusing on a singular story as I think about the book as a movie. This is something we’ve seen Hollywood do: the movies Brokeback Mountain, based on Annie Proulx’s story of the same title, and Hitchcock’s Rear Window, based on Cornell Woolrich’s story “It Had to Be Murder,” are but two examples.

There’s potential for quite a few of the stories in This Isn’t New to be expanded into movies, but one story that stands out to me as a possibility is, ironically, titled “A Possibility Nonetheless.” It’s 1965, and the main character, Caro, is an aspiring musician who has just spent several weeks cold turkey detoxing from heroin as she and her boyfriend, Gene, drive cross-country to relocate from New York City to San Diego. In this place of hippies on the beach and surfers in the waves, Caro feels like her soul has come home. Gene is less enamored, especially when, as an unemployed college dropout, he’s confronted with the sight of transport ships filled with draftees headed to Vietnam. When Gene flees San Diego, Caro must grapple head-on with a potential slide back into addiction.

So who would play Caro? I...[read on]

Visit Cynthia Swanson's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Bookseller.

The Page 69 Test: The Glass Forest.

Writers Read: Cynthia Swanson (February 2018).

Q&A with Cynthia Swanson.

The Page 69 Test: Anyone But Her.

My Book, The Movie: This Isn't New.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Andrew Welsh-Huggins reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Andrew Welsh-Huggins, author of The Delivery (Mercury Carter Thrillers).

His entry begins:

Though I read widely, including the genres of memoir, horror, literary fiction, true crime, short fiction, and narrative nonfiction (among others), as a mystery writer, I definitely consume a lot of crime fiction. Several recent titles in that genre reflect my intercests and also informed my own writing.

A Grave Deception, by c. The sixth book in Berry’s traditional mystery Kate Hamilton series, featuring an American antiquities expert transplanted to England, where she feeds her professional passion while solving mysteries. The latest includes a several centuries-old murder that may be connected to a present-day killing. Berry masterfully layers fair play clues throughout, as well as creating original and...[read on]

About The Delivery, from the publisher:

Freelance courier Mercury Carter races against time and across New England to rescue a trafficking victim in this new thriller from the author of The Mailman.

Merc Carter is not your typical deliveryman. A former postal inspector, he specializes in moving sensitive or dangerous packages—of all sorts—from point A to B. And sometimes he needs his gun to do so. Carter’s current mission leads him to Providence, Rhode Island, but his delivery is interrupted when he comes across a woman badly injured in a car wreck in the pouring rain. Then a man with a gun appears warning Carter away from the scene and Carter leaps into action, disarming the attacker and rescuing the crash victim.

Just as Carter thinks the danger has passed, he discovers a deeper mystery stemming from the crash, a deadly puzzle involving a memorable pair of grifters, a crooked ex-cop, stolen identities, human trafficking, and murder. And it appears that Carter’s next assignment will put him right in this conspiracy’s perilous center . . .

The follow-up to last year’s acclaimed hit, The Mailman, which launched the Mercury Carter series, The Delivery is a fast-paced, unpredictable thriller following a memorable protagonist whose resourcefulness is matched only by his quick wit and determination to never miss a delivery.

Visit Andrew Welsh-Huggins's website.

My Book, The Movie: An Empty Grave.

Q&A with Andrew Welsh-Huggins.

The Page 69 Test: An Empty Grave.

Writers Read: Andrew Welsh-Huggins (April 2023).

My Book, The Movie: The End of the Road.

The Page 69 Test: The End of the Road.

Writers Read: Andrew Welsh-Huggins (November 2024).

My Book, The Movie: Sick to Death.

The Page 69 Test: Sick to Death.

The Page 69 Test: The Mailman.

Writers Read: Andrew Welsh-Huggins (March 2025).

The Page 69 Test: The Delivery.

Writers Read: Andrew Welsh-Huggins.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven books about the messy politics of Indian meals

Asfiyah Qadri is a writer based in Mumbai, India. Her work has appeared in Tweak India, Vogue India, and Brown History, and explores themes of memory, identity, and nostalgia.

At Electric Lit Qadri tagged seven titles about the messy politics of Indian meals. One entry on the list:

Fasting, Feasting by Anita Desai

In the initial segment of this book, we meet Uma, a spinster who spends her days at the beck and call of her parents, only to be met with vitriolic remarks in return. Despite feeding those around her, Uma’s life in India is one of fasting—starved of freedom, education, new experiences. The latter half follows Uma’s brother, Arun, who moves in with an American family, the Pattons, after he enrolls in a college in the United States. The Pattons lead a life of excess—they buy an obscene amount of groceries, have a freezer crammed with meat, and their daughter Melanie obsessively snacks on candy bars only to vomit everything back up.

While their circumstances are unalike, Uma and Melanie are similar in that they’re both unhappy with their lives, which has the effect of thwarting their appetite, both literal and symbolic. There is, after all, a sense of aliveness to hunger—a reaching outwards, a wish for nourishment, the sign of a body functioning as it should. What can be understood of a hunger that is quashed, diminished like theirs? Does it point to a barren inner world? A belief that one’s needs will forever remain unmet? A quashing of desire itself?

Read about another book on the list.

Fasting, Feasting is among Leila Aboulela's recommended books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Benjamin R. Siegel's "Markets of Pain"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Markets of Pain: Opium, Capitalism, and the Global History of Painkillers by Benjamin Robert Siegel.

About the book, from the publisher:

Markets of Pain offers a sweeping history of the business of licit opium--following cultivators, merchants, scientists, and policymakers--and shows how this potent crop reshaped global trade, medicine, and geopolitics.

For centuries, opium has been a source of both profit and peril, its legacy entangled with addiction, imperialism, and the complex interplay of global trade and national development. While the illicit opium trade is infamous, the history of licit opium--how it was farmed, refined, and used to build modern medicine and shape state power--has remained largely untold.

Drawing on archival sources from Asia, Europe, and the United States, Markets of Pain traces the global arc of licit opium from poppy fields and processing plants in India, Turkey, and Australia to the clinics and laboratories of modern medicine. It shows how both the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic treated the opium poppy as a national resource and a means of securing global stature. In postcolonial India, by contrast, nationalist leaders initially rejected opium's imperial legacy before embracing its strategic value amid the shifting currents of the Cold War. At the heart of this story are the cultivators, scientists, bureaucrats, and policymakers who shaped the licit opium trade and grappled with its far-reaching consequences. Their work and visions demonstrate how colonial empires and postcolonial states helped forge the global pharmaceutical industry as it struggled to govern a drug it could not abandon.

Markets of Pain reveals how a seemingly marginal crop became an unlikely engine of modernization, a tool of Cold War geopolitics, and a harbinger of today's global opioid crisis. Blending vivid scenes from opium's fields and factories with incisive analysis of scientific and diplomatic archives, Benjamin Robert Siegel recovers a buried history with urgent relevance for global supply chains, international power, and public health.

Visit Benjamin R. Siegel's website.

The Page 99 Test: Markets of Pain.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven historical fiction books set in Appalachia

Melissa D’Agnese is a senior editor at FIRST for Women, Woman’s World, and various a360media special interest publications.

At Woman’s World she tagged seven of the best historical fiction books set in Appalachia, including:

Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier

In 1997, Charles Frazier published his sweeping Civil War epic, Cold Mountain, and the novel became a literary sensation. After topping bestseller lists and winning the National Book Award, it was adapted into a blockbuster movie starring Jude Law and Nicole Kidman. The novel follows wounded Confederate soldier Inman as he deserts the front lines and embarks on a difficult journey back to the Blue Ridge Mountains—and to Ada, the woman he loves. Along the way, he encounters a fractured world filled with dangers and unexpected humanity. Meanwhile, Ada struggles to rebuild her life at home. It’s a moving and tumultuous story of love, survival and homecoming.

Read about another entry on the list.

Cold Mountain is among Thomas Maloney's top ten deaths in fiction, Geraldine Brooks's six favorite works of historical fiction, Charles Palliser's top ten neo-Victorian novels, Henry Winkler's best books, and Tunku Varadarajan's five most delectable combinations of fiction and food.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Laurie Frankel's "Enormous Wings"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Enormous Wings: A Novel by Laurie Frankel.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the beloved New York Times bestselling author Laurie Frankel, an exuberant and timely new novel

At seventy-seven, Pepper Mills is too old to be a stranger in a strange land. She didn’t choose the Vista View Retirement Community of Austin, Texas—that would be her three grown children—but when she grudgingly moves in, she not only makes new friends, she falls in love. Then the exhaustion, vomiting, and confusion start. She fears it’s cancer, dementia, a stroke. But a raft of tests later, the news is even more shocking: She’s pregnant.

As word gets out, everyone wants a piece of her: the press and paparazzi, activists and medical researchers, belly-rubbers and rubber-neckers all descending on Vista View while Pepper struggles to determine her next move. Soon she has some hard decisions to make—and some she’s not allowed to make.

Enormous Wings is an urgent novel about female agency and bodily autonomy, morality and mortality. It’s about what happens when you don’t get to choose anymore. It’s about motherhood and family, sex and love and friendship, and how those bedrocks—even so late in the day—can still change, and then change everything.

Visit Laurie Frankel's website.

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The Page 69 Test: Enormous Wings.

--Marshal Zeringue