Seven thrillers that mine the depths of confession & revenge

Christine Carbo is a recipient of the Women’s National Book Association Pinckley Prize, the Silver Falchion Award, the High Plains Book Award, and has been a finalist for the Barry Award. She has an MA in English/Linguistics and taught college-level courses for over a decade. She still teaches, in a vastly different realm, as a Pilates instructor. She lives in Montana where she finds inspiration from the wild beauty surrounding her.

Carbo's new novel is The Confession Artist.

At CrimeReads the author tagged seven thrillers that let "us imagine someone taking matters into their own hands and then asks what it cost them to do so." One title on the list:

Peter Swanson, The Kind Worth Killing

It’s particularly interesting when confession and revenge collide in a story. The Kind Worth Killing (2015) by Peter Swanson involves a stranger on a plane, à la Patricia Highsmith, who casually agrees that the narrator’s cheating wife probably does deserve to die and offers to help.

What unfolds is part confession booth, part contract negotiation, and entirely about people who treat their darkest urges as logistical problems. Swanson’s gift is making wicked plotting feel like polite conversation.

Read about another thriller on Carbo's list.

The Kind Worth Killing is among Mary Kubica's ten top mysteries set in Maine.

My Book, The Movie: The Kind Worth Killing.

The Page 69 Test: The Kind Worth Killing.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Sally Shuttleworth's "In Quest of a Cure"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: In Quest of a Cure: Literary and Medical Cultures of the Health Resort by Sally Shuttleworth.

About the book, from the publisher:

People have always travelled for health, but as industrial pollution increased in nineteenth-century Britain, doctors started ordering their patients abroad in ever-growing numbers. Self-styled 'English Colonies' sprung up, not in the far-reaches of the Empire, but in health resorts in the heart of Europe. This work explores the intensity and sheer strangeness of life in these colonies, governed by illness, but where patients (before the rise of the sanatorium) could move around freely, and even indulge in winter sports. Focusing on Menton on the Riviera and Davos in the Swiss Alps, from the 1860s to the 1920s, In Quest of a Cure explores the literary and medical cultures of these resorts: the lives, conflicting emotions, and writings of the patients and their carers, and the changing patterns of medical treatment. Many of the patients ordered to winter abroad had tuberculosis, but others were cases of nervous disorders, or sufferers from 'overwork', what we would now call burnout, all hoping to be cured once placed in the right climatic environment.

Blending medical and literary history and analysis, Sally Shuttleworth looks in depth at the lives and writings of literary invalids, including John Addington Symonds, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Katherine Mansfield, leading up to an extended study of Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, placed in the medical and literary context of Davos life. Other literary lives and fiction explored include Henry James, Arthur Conan Doyle, Olive Schreiner, Vernon Lee, 'new woman' novelist Beatrice Harraden, and Llewelyn Powys. In Quest of a Cure considers the pleasures as well as the pains of medical exile, and the close bonds which often developed between doctor and patient. Medical climatology, as it was called, is a discarded science, but its prescription of fresh air, exercise, and sunshine brought about a revolution in medical practices at the time. In its understanding of the relationship between individual health and surrounding environment, it offers new perspectives for us to think about the challenges of current times.

Learn more about In Quest of a Cure at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: In Quest of a Cure.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Samantha Silva's "Sometime This Century"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Sometime This Century: A Regency Rom-Com by Samantha Silva.

About the novel, from the publisher:

A riotous rom-com meets a swoon-worthy Regency comedy of manners in this heartfelt time-travel story about sisters, love, identity—and how Jane Austen just might change your life.

Annabel Blake was born in the wrong century. An Austen-loving book nerd, she dreams of being a writer herself, with a just-penned Regency novel to prove it. Her hopes sink when her hot author crush rejects her: The novel reads like she’s never been in love. Ouch.

Annabel sees a chance to rewrite it when her ex-pat boss sends her to England to sort out her family’s “crumbling old pile” of a country house. Tempted by an invitation tucked in an antique writing desk and a “period” coachman at her door, Annabel’s whisked away to a local Regency Society ball—cue candlelight, costumes, dancing—that might be just the inspiration she needs. There’s even the achingly perfect—and wildly out of her league—Henry Leighton D’Evercy.

When Annabel’s audacious influencer sister crashes the party with her super-chill ex-boyfriend, the unlikely trio wake to find themselves trapped in the actual Regency era. No Wi-Fi, lattes, cellphones—just a world where manners, money, and marriage rule.

As Annabel falls deeply for D’Evercy, she must decide: write her perfect love story…or live it.

Visit Samantha Silva's website.

Q&A with Samantha Silva.

The Page 69 Test: Sometime This Century.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six books about the thrilling dynamics of girls’ friendship

Sonia Feldman lives in Cleveland, Ohio. She won the PEN America PEN/Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers, and her poetry and fiction have appeared in The Missouri Review, The Southern Review, and Waxwing. She also runs Sonia’s Poem of the Week, a popular email newsletter.

Girl’s Girl is her first novel.

At Lit Hub Feldman tagged six "excellent books about girl friendship, all of which invite you into a dynamic, the feeling of being among—a thrilling place to be." One title on the list:

Toni Morrison, Sula

Sula is an epic friendship novel set in the small town of Medallion, Ohio. It follows the relationship between Nel and Sula—bound to each other in fast friendship as children and bound still as adults, even as their choices divide their lives and a true betrayal upends them. As a reading experience, it’s riveting. Perfect sentence after perfect sentence that pull a tide of emotion up in your chest.

Of all the books on this list, I think Sula is the one in which the girls’ mothers play the most meaningful role. They’re characters in the novel as well, so you get to see Nel and Sula, and their friendship, in the context of their daughterhood. This contributes to the sense of understanding between the friends. They are uniquely witness to each other’s lives. The characters have a profound, private channel of communication between them that I recognize from friendships in life and have been told about in fiction, but has rarely ever felt so real to me in a book.

Read about another title on the list.

Sula is among Jessie Rosen's six books featuring superstitions, Nikita Lalwani's top ten platonic friendships in fiction, Lucy Jago's five best female friendships, and John Green's six favorite coming-of-age books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Benjamin Bryce's "Grounds for Exclusion"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Grounds for Exclusion: Race, Health, and Disability in Argentine Immigration Policy, 1876–1932 by Benjamin Bryce.

About the book, from the publisher:

Argentina has been one the most important destinations for international labor migrants in the modern world. But while it was long imagined as a nation of immigrants, a closer look at its history and policies reveals that the country’s doors were only open to certain people. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, officials developed a long list of grounds for exclusion that deterred many people from ever boarding a ship to the country. Travelers who did go to Argentina were frequently barred at ports of entry on account of race, health, or disability.

Tracing the attempts of European, Asian, and Middle Eastern migrants to enter Argentina, Benjamin Bryce shows how the modern state worked to privilege white supremacy and expansion over diversity and magnanimity. As Argentine officials, politicians, and influential thinkers envisioned their country’s future, they tried to define the ideal citizens who would live, work, vote, and reproduce in Argentina—and the characteristics of those who would not. Anyone deemed unhealthy or disabled was labeled unproductive or a potential burden on the state. Race often shaped notions of health and productivity and therefore determined who was welcome. Bryce’s thorough analysis of immigration exclusions reconceptualizes Argentina’s long-accepted reputation as a haven for newcomers.

Visit Benjamin Bryce's website.

The Page 99 Test: Grounds for Exclusion.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Samantha Silva

From my Q&A with Samantha Silva, author of Sometime This Century: A Regency Rom-Com:

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

Sometime This Century began life as a screenplay (sold to Universal 25 years ago) called What You Wish For about a young woman transported to Regency England who gets everything she’s ever dreamed of, or does she? It’s hard to give up a title you’ve lived with that long, but my editor thought it didn’t do enough to suggest the time-travel in the book. We brainstormed for weeks to come up with a title that nodded to that or the Regency era or Jane Austen (since my book riffs on hers). Then I stumbled onto a line for my heroine, Annabel Blake, that she utters in an early scene when she’s roundly rejected by her hot literary crush. “Well, it would be nice to be kissed sometime this century!” And there it was...[read on]

Visit Samantha Silva's website.

Q&A with Samantha Silva.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eighteen books that explore the complexity of motherhood

The editors at Oprah Daily featured a list of eighteen books to help explore the complexity of motherhood. One title on the list:

How to Lose Your Mother, by Molly Jong-Fast

When her famous feminist mother, Fear of Flying author Erica Jong, is diagnosed with dementia, Jong-Fast (a superstar podcaster and writer in her own right) must come to terms with both the reality of watching her parent disappear in fragments and the realization that her mother was never truly hers, to begin with. By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, this is a story of a singular mother-daughter relationship that will resonate with anyone who grew up playing second fiddle to a parent’s passions.

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Paul Quigley's "The Man Behind the Cane"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Man Behind the Cane: Preston Brooks, Political Violence, and the Road to the Civil War by Paul Quigley.

About the book, from the publisher:

A new perspective on the life of the US politician best known for the infamous assault that paved the bloody road to the Civil War.

In 1856, South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks assaulted Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner with a cane in the US Capitol, defending his family's honor and the rights of slaveholders. In beating Sumner unconscious, Brooks fueled a nationwide clash over slavery that ended in civil war.

Southern historian Paul Quigley brings Brooks to life more vividly than ever before, revealing how his personal struggles shaped the fateful decision to attack Sumner. Raised in the slaveholding culture of honor and scarred by missed opportunities for glory in the Mexican-American War, Brooks came to believe in the redemptive power of violence. Blending intimate personal history with wide-ranging analysis of political debates, Quigley uses Brooks's life to examine the deeper currents propelling the United States to the brink of destruction. Brooks's story reveals the increasingly fraught relationship between words and violence: When did words such as "liar" or "coward" justify duels? Did abolitionists' verbal attacks on slaveholders warrant physical retaliation? How did the way Americans talked about violence affect the likelihood that it would occur? With the caning, Brooks sparked an ominous national debate over the righteousness of bloodshed in a polarized nation.

Examining enduring issues of masculinity, honor, and free speech, The Man Behind the Cane shows how words and violent behavior became perilously entangled in the fight over slavery and casts new light on the origins of the Civil War-and the ongoing dangers of political violence in our own time.

Learn more about The Man Behind the Cane at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: The Man Behind the Cane.

--Marshal Zeringue

Katie Holt's "The Last Page," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Last Page: A Novel by Katie Holt.

The entry begins:

I never dreamcast before I write. I know lots of writers love to make boards on Pinterest for what their characters look like, but they come fully formed in my head. I have to get to learn their personalities, but I see what their hair or nose or eyes look like in my mind and I feel as if I were to be inspired by actors, I’d be too literal with it.

Whenever I try to think about it, though, I have difficulty naming someone for my heroines—probably because I’m so protective of them. If any of my books were to be turned into movies, though, I’d insist that a Peruvian woman be cast. I’d love to find someone who’s not already famous just to bring more Peruvian women to the forefront.

A reader recently tagged me in a fancast that had Leo Woodall as Henry and I totally see the vision. He’s got the kind of broadness that I envision with Henry and...[read on]

Visit Katie Holt's website.

Writers Read: Katie Holt.

Q&A with Katie Holt.

My Book, The Movie: The Last Page.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Alan Smale's "Mad Dogs & Englishmen"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Mad Dogs & Englishmen by Alan Smale.

About the novel, from the publisher:

There are creatures lurking in our world. Obscure creatures long relegated to myth and legend. They have been sighted by a lucky-or unlucky-few, some have even been photographed, but their existence remains unproven and unrecognized by the scientific community.

These creatures, long thought gone, have somehow survived; creatures from our nightmares haunting the dark places. They swim in our lakes and bays, they soar the night skies, they hunt in the woods. Some are from our past, some from other worlds, and others have always been with us-watching us, fearing us, hunting us.

These are the cryptids, and Systema Paradoxa tells their tales.

***

When Lindsey Ambler takes a sabbatical to figure out her life, a quiet town in Yorkshire seems the ideal place to step back and regroup.

That is, until a chance meeting at a local pub becomes a calculated engagement as a petty thug uses Lindsey as a cover to hide from those he's cheated.

Little does she know the mob is the least of her troubles as something infinitely more deadly stalks the moors and it has her scent...

Visit Alan Smale's website.

The Page 69 Test: Clash of Eagles.

The Page 69 Test: Eagle in Exile.

The Page 69 Test: Eagle and Empire.

Writers Read: Alan Smale (May 2017).

The Page 69 Test: Mad Dogs & Englishmen.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top thrillers about marriage

At Book Riot Addison Rizer tagged six thrillers about marriage, including:

Things We Do in the Dark by Jennifer Hillier

Paris Peralta, wife to a famous comedian named Jimmy Peralta, wakes up one morning with a razor in her hand and her husband dead in the bathtub. When the police find her, they don’t think twice before arresting Paris for the murder. But as a podcaster reveals a connection between Paris and another murder from over two decades ago with similar circumstances, Paris’s case might not be so clear-cut after all.

Read about another entry on the list.

Also see Courtney Rodgers's nine chilling thrillers about marriage and L.K. Bowen's top ten marriage-gone-bad thrillers.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Mitch Ploskonka's "The Bad Poor"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Bad Poor: Race, Class, and the Rise of Grit Lit by Mitch Ploskonka.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Bad Poor examines the rise of Grit Lit, a movement in contemporary southern literature written by and about poor southern whites. Examining issues of genre, race, and culture, Mitch Ploskonka traces the emergence of this iconoclastic mode through its major authors to reveal a literary-cultural identity rooted in difference, marked by resistance to respectability and class performance, and shaped by reckoning with the legacies of whiteness and regional memory.

For those long dismissed as “white trash” and denied an active voice in their own representation, Grit Lit confronts the parallel concerns of finding a way to describe themselves and the means to communicate it appropriately. Beginning with Harry Crews and progressing chronologically to the present—including discussions of key works by Larry Brown, Dorothy Allison, Rick Bragg, and Tom Franklin, among others—Ploskonka examines how Grit Lit authors forge self-representations by experimenting with genres and engaging with identity politics. Through the ongoing search for a usable, unshameful identity, Grit Lit enacts a painful but heartening narrative of grappling with the realities of people and place by acknowledging difference.

As stories about the gritty or rough South proliferate across media, The Bad Poor relates an important story of literary self-fashioning by analyzing a body of literature that speaks to larger cultural discourses regarding racial identity, social justice, disability, and class divisions.

Learn more about The Bad Poor at the LSU Press website.

The Page 99 Test: The Bad Poor.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Kerri Hakoda reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Kerri Hakoda, author of Too Deep to Cross: A Thriller.

Her entry begins:

I recently finished reading An Immense World by Ed Yong, as part of my resolution to read more non-fiction. Informative and fascinating, dense but so fluidly written and easy to read. Ditto The Library Book by Susan Orlean. I just cracked open The Demon of Unrest by Erik Larson – I very much admire his brand of narrative non-fiction. I loved The Peacock and the Sparrow by I.S. Berry and think she might be the new John le Carré. Midnight in Soap Lake by Matthew Sullivan was...[read on]

About Too Deep to Cross, from the publisher:

Homicide Detective DeHavilland Beans is back in his hometown with a case much more dangerous—and personal—than it seems.

Told through multiple points of view, this thrilling sequel to Cold to the Touch is perfect for fans of Alice Henderson and Dana Stabenow.

A shocking discovery on a remote beach brings Detective DeHavilland Beans back to his Yukon River hometown—and a missing person's case turns into a murder investigation. On administrative leave after an unsettling officer-involved shooting, Beans comes to the aid of his childhood friend and sole police officer in the village, Felicia Gunnerson, who is leading the case.

The new evidence suggests the missing man, Lloyd Paul, the overindulged scion of a prominent family, was murdered. Lloyd had a contentious relationship with many of the locals, especially with Beans and his mother, Mari.

As Beans and Felicia dig deeper, events that neither of them could have predicted are set in motion. Meanwhile, in the San Francisco Bay Area, Mari uncovers secrets that threaten to rewrite the Beans family’s history.

Spanning a sprawling time frame ranging from World War II to the present day, the danger has never felt closer to home.

Visit Kerri Hakoda's website.

Writers Read: Kerri Hakoda.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten brilliant thrillers set in the near future

A former white water kayaker who competed on the World Cup circuit, Perrin Pring is now a park ranger. She has worked and lived across the U.S., riding horses in the Rocky Mountains, driving Jeeps in the wilds of the desert, greeting the sunrise in Hawaii, and running chainsaws in the Sierra Mountains. She holds an MFA in creative writing and screenwriting from UC Riverside Palm Desert and a BA from Tufts University. Her writing has appeared in Backcountry Journal, the Coachella Review, and Kelp Literary. She lives in the Rocky Mountain West.

Pring's new novel is Cash and Gravity.

At CrimeReads the author tagged ten "page-turning, edge of your seat, near-ish future thrillers that span the gambit of tastes." One title on the list:

Blake Crouch, The Wayward Pines Trilogy

Near-future. Thriller. Trilogy. If you want to get lost one propulsive book after another, watch Secret Service Agent Ethan Burke wake up in bucolic Idaho town only to discover that nothing is what it seems.

Read about another title on Pring's list.

Pines, the first volume in the trilogy, is among Jon Bassoff's eight top novels set in strange, unsettling towns.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Melissa Marr's "A Treason of Magic:

Featured at the Page 69 Test: A Treason of Magic by Melissa Marr.

About the book, from the publisher:

In a world where magic, desire, and duty collide, it is beauty who is fated to kill the beast in a lush historical fantasy of secrets and star-crossed love by New York Times bestselling author Melissa Marr.

Two young women. Heirs to altogether different hereditary burdens. Yet bound by a monstrous threat to their village.

Gabrielle is the first woman in Alveus to carry the mantle of Hunter, which comes with an obligation to kill the faery beasts murdering travelers in Brimmond Wood. Wary of the power she wields as guardian of her people, Gabrielle is summoned by her first love, a seductress who shattered her heart into pieces a decade ago.

Isabeau is the rarest of nobility―a lady duke. She is also afflicted by a curse that leaves her in a deep sleep between the gloaming and daylight. How can she begin her tenure as protector when she can’t keep her village safe from whatever stalks its darkest hours? For that, she needs the help of the Hunter.

Against her will, Gabrielle is falling in love all over again. But what new threats will arise when Gabrielle and Isabeau’s star-crossed destinies collide with the beast of Brimmond Wood?

Visit Melissa Marr's website.

The Page 69 Test: A Treason of Magic.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: John Parker's "Drama and the Death of God"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Drama and the Death of God: Secularity on Stage from Antiquity to Shakespeare by John Parker.

About the book, from the publisher:

In Drama and the Death of God, John Parker argues that the secularity often associated with Shakespeare inspired a variety of performances going back to antiquity. Scripture presupposes, even needs, the existence of a worldly sphere inimical to faith: known as the saeculum, this finite domain of appetite and unbelief invited both condemnation and celebration throughout medieval Christendom, as exemplified by the songs and plays of the Carmina Burana. After the tenth century, Christians routinely impersonated unbelievers in music dramas connected to the high holidays so that they might question biblical truths, especially the authenticity of miracles. The church generated by this means a vision of the godless world that modernity stepped into. After the English Reformation, when Europe's first commercial theaters arose on ruined monastic estates, players continued to showcase how divine intervention could be staged by humans in the absence of God. King Lear in particular explores the ancient proposition that the saeculum holds no inherent meaning and is capable of generating only pseudomiraculous spectacles to salve the ache of existence.

Learn more about Drama and the Death of God at the Cornell University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Drama and the Death of God.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six books centered around art that doesn’t actually exist

Melissa Albert is the New York Times and indie bestselling author of The Bad Ones, Our Crooked Hearts, and the Hazel Wood series.

Her work has been translated into more than twenty languages and included in the New York Times list of Notable Children’s Books.

The Children is her first adult novel.

At Lit Hub Albert tagged "six books I’ve loved that have made-up art inside them." One title on the list:

Paul Tremblay, Horror Movie

Tremblay combines the cursed film mini-genre, internet arcana, and low-budget guerrilla art to fantastically eerie effect, all leading up to a final gut punch I wouldn’t dare spoil. Back in the early 90s a group of young filmmakers make a movie whose notoriety among horror buffs, thirty years later, is undiminished by the fact that only three scenes (and a screenplay) were ever released. As part of a Hollywood reboot, its single surviving cast member—who played the upsettingly named Thin Kid—is called upon to return to the role. Filming goes smoothly and the movie is a hit. Just kidding.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with J.P. Lacrampe

From my Q&A with J.P. Lacrampe, author of Valet: A Novel:

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

A lot, I hope. Valet is an acronym within the story, the occupation of the main character (a robot butler), and a homage to Wodehouse's Jeeves. My aim was that the title would set up the dynamic between the narrator and his human ward.

What's in a name?

I love this question! And my answer is: it depends. Sometimes you just need a name. You don't need to overthink or over complicate it. George. Emily. Jake. Other times, you want to play against type (i.e., give a character a name that seems ironic or unique in light of the characteristics you've established). Other times you want a name that helps establish those characteristics. I usually decide on this by...[read on]

Visit J.P. Lacrampe's website.

The Page 69 Test: Valet.

Q&A with J.P. Lacrampe.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top romance reads for book lovers

At Book Riot Nikki DeMarco tagged six "romance reads for book lovers, featuring librarians, booksellers, and writers." One title on the list:

The Lamplighter’s Bookshop by Sophie Austin

When Evelyn Seaton’s father gambles away the family fortune and the bailiffs come knocking, she finds herself suddenly penniless and humiliated, taking refuge with an aunt in York while the insufferable Lady Violet delights in her downfall. Determined to save herself and her mother, Evelyn secretly answers an ad for a bookshop assistant at the dusty, ramshackle Lamplighter’s Bookshop—only to find she’s not the only one who wants the job. William is a charming, enigmatic writer with secrets he’s not ready to share, and the competition between them slowly becomes something neither of them planned for. This historical romance is for anyone who has ever believed that a good bookshop is the best place to find exactly what you didn’t know you were looking for—including love.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Michael North's "Making Common Sense"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Making Common Sense: On the Construction of the Obvious from Antiquity to AI by Michael North.

About the book, from the publisher:

Common sense is supposed to be so obvious it can go without saying. And yet, it has been hard to pin down, partly because its contents are vague and inconsistent, and partly because it has always been difficult to say what kind of sense common sense is. Making Common Sense is an historical account of attempts, from antiquity to the present, to solve this puzzle. The ambiguity began centuries ago with the merger of the common sense, the sensorium commune, a kind of sixth sense responsible for coordinating the other five, with the sensus communis, a collection of implicit social habits and beliefs. Ever since, common sense, as a power both practical and thoughtful, has promised to split the difference between sensation and reason, the body and the mind, and between individuals and their society. As challenges from medical science and skeptical philosophy accumulated, though, common sense assumed a number of different forms in response. It has been a physical organ, a mental faculty, a body of knowledge, a system of axioms, an ethical principle, and a synonym for culture, until finally, with game theory and artificial intelligence, it becomes a number. Michael North tracks the obvious through these changes, showing why it remains, even now in the age of AI, as dark and mysterious as it was in the beginning.

Learn more about Making Common Sense at the Stanford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Novelty: A History of the New.

The Page 99 Test: What Is the Present?.

The Page 99 Test: Making Common Sense.

--Marshal Zeringue