What is DeAndra Davis reading?

Featured at Writers Read: DeAndra Davis, author of The Lovers, the Liars, and Me.

Her entry begins:

I always tackle a few books at a time because I’m a mood reader. Currently, I’m vacillating between books for pleasure and research (though the books for research are still pleasurable).

Immortal Dark by Tigest Girma is, for me, such a well-done work of mystery, dark academia, and fantasy. I really wanted to tap into this vampire story, especially pulling from the brevity of the chapters, the timing of reveals, and the tension between the main character and her antagonist because of how well written I believe it is. That tension especially. I...[read on]

About The Lovers, the Liars, and Me, from the publisher:

A teen travels to Jamaica hoping to answer questions about her absent mother, only to discover more about her identity than she could have ever expected—and find herself caught up in an unexpected love triangle—in this dazzling young adult coming-of-age novel by award-winning author DeAndra Davis.

Jaliya Powell has never had a real adventure, a real boyfriend, or spoken up for herself. She’s never even been kissed. Despite being valedictorian of her high school class, Jaliya is used to fading into the background.

But this summer will be different.

This summer, Jaliya is visiting her uncle and his family in Jamaica. Under the guise of one last vacation before college, she plans to find out more about her estranged mother, whose absence has remained an unspoken mystery. But things have changed in the seven years since Jaliya last visited. Her cousin has his own life and is reluctant to let Jaliya in, her childhood crush has only gotten hotter and more unavailable, and her aunt and uncle aren’t everything she remembered, either. Then she meets India, who’s vibrant, gorgeous, and free-spirited. And who makes Jaliya feel something she’s never felt before.

While searching for traces of her mother across the island, Jaliya finds herself entangled in complicated relationships, tricky secrets, and a passionate new love. As she navigates this perfectly complicated summer, Jaliya must choose between who she has always been or who she hopes to become.

Visit DeAndra Davis's website. She can be found on most socials @DeAndraWrites.

My Book, The Movie: The Lovers, the Liars, and Me.

Writers Read: DeAndra Davis.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Hilary Davidson's "Every Lie I Told"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Every Lie I Told by Hilary Davidson.

About the novel, from the publisher:

From bestselling and award-winning author Hilary Davidson, Every Lie I Told is a propulsive, twisty thriller about the devastating consequences of the lies we tell to protect others--and ourselves.

How far would you go to protect a killer?

Jackie Swift does whatever it takes to succeed. At work, she spins lies to protect questionable clients at a shady public-relations firm. At home, she helps her younger sister, Madi, evade consequences for dangerous choices she's made about friends and drugs. But Jackie's professional and personal worlds collide one night when she gets a call from Madi telling her she overdosed. Rushing to the rescue, Jackie stumbles on an awful scene at an Upper East Side mansion. Madi is nowhere to be found, but she's left behind a dead body.

Worse for Jackie, she knows the dead man all too well: He's her former boss and mentor, and she's been paid to cover up his crimes in the past.

Jackie is willing to do anything to protect her missing sister, even as the NYPD builds a case against Madi, who may be involved in the deaths of other sexually abusive men. As Jackie searches for her sister--and sets up plausible suspects to take Madi's place in the eyes of the police--she's haunted by the terrible things she's done in service of her career. And she soon discovers there are people who've been waiting in the shadows for a chance to take her down.

Visit the official Hilary Davidson site.

The Page 69 Test: The Damage Done.

The Page 69 Test: Blood Always Tells.

The Page 69 Test: One Small Sacrifice.

Writers Read: Hilary Davidson (July 2019).

The Page 69 Test: Don't Look Down.

The Page 69 Test: Her Last Breath.

Q&A with Hilary Davidson.

The Page 69 Test: Every Lie I Told.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top Gothic novels about cults

Catriona Silvey was born in Glasgow and grew up in Scotland and England. After collecting an unreasonable number of degrees from various universities in the UK and the US, she moved to Edinburgh where she lives with her husband and children. She is the author of Meet Me in Another Life (2021), Love and Other Paradoxes (2025), and the newly released Vervain Hollow.

At The Nerd Daily she tagged five "Gothic novels about cults, where the aesthetic and thematic tropes of the Gothic marry perfectly with the authors’ explorations of brainwashing, groupthink, and coercive control." One title on the list:

Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez

Part horror, part magic realism, Enriquez’s epic novel takes on the legacy of the Argentinian dictatorship through the story of a family entangled in a darkness-worshipping cult. Weaving back and forth through forty years, the story follows Juan and Rosario as they attempt to protect their son Gaspar from the machinations of the cult they are both deeply enmeshed in: Juan as the medium who can call the darkness into the human world, and Rosario as a privileged scion of the cult’s founding family.

What makes this novel Gothic is not just the surface elements – ghosts, family secrets, legacies of trauma – but the darkness within the characters: Juan and Rosario are trapped in the cult partly by their inability to let go of the power and prestige it offers. Meanwhile, the cult itself, and the colonial compound that serves as its stronghold, function as a clear allegory for the callousness of the rich and their complicity in the country’s suffering. Often deeply painful, the novel is also drenched in wonder and love of beauty, bringing an aching tenderness especially to the complicated father-son relationship between Juan and Gaspar.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Amelia Frank-Vitale's "Leave If You Can"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Leave If You Can: Migration and Violence in Bordered Worlds by Amelia Frank-Vitale.

About the book, from the publisher:

The consequences of U.S. border policies through the experiences of Honduran migrants.

Hondurans have been at the heart of some of the most visible migration phenomena in the last few years, as well as the direct target of anti-immigrant rhetoric and policy. In Leave If You Can, Amelia Frank-Vitale offers a detailed portrait of the Honduran exodus and what it reveals about the broader consequences of changing US border enforcement policies. She highlights the stories of those who are often presented as unsympathetic: deported young men implicitly associated with the very violence they are trying to flee. In the process, she challenges underlying assumptions frequently held by policy makers and humanitarian agencies.

Connecting overlapping regimes of mobility control, from the invisible gangland borders within San Pedro Sula to the growing expansiveness of the U.S. border's reach, this book shows how deportation does not deter migration but, in fact, keeps people moving, and how U.S. policies fuel the migration "crisis" they claim to address. Drawing from her own experiences accompanying migrant caravans over many years, Frank-Vitale also explores how caravans emerge as both protest movement and migration tactic in response to this expanding border regime.

Visit Amelia Frank-Vitale's website.

The Page 99 Test: Leave If You Can.

--Marshal Zeringue

DeAndra Davis's "The Lovers, the Liars, and Me," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Lovers, the Liars, and Me by DeAndra Davis.

The entry begins:

If it’s one thing I love, it’s a good face cast, and with this book, it was no different. I feel like The Lovers, the Liars, and Me is inherently visual with the descriptions of the island and locations. I tried to be lush and descriptive, and that also applies to characters in this love triangle romance meets contemporary drama. I definitely have a primary person in mind with my main character and her supporting cast of friends that I believe would bring the story to life.

Marsai Martin is my immediate choice for Jaliya. Marsai is a brilliant and gorgeous actress, and I know she could bring both the character to life aesthetically, and tap into that growth from hesitant, unsure teen to self-assured and confident. Marsai is also so funny, and I think she could get into the quippy banter the friend group has going in The Lovers, the Liars, and Me.

Jahi Winston would be my pick for...[read on]

Visit DeAndra Davis's website. She can be found on most socials @DeAndraWrites.

My Book, The Movie: The Lovers, the Liars, and Me.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven books about deep human-animal connections

Lauren Acampora is the author of The Animal Room, The Hundred Waters, The Paper Wasp, and The Wonder Garden. Her work has won or been nominated for the GLCA New Writers Award, the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, the Story Prize, and the New England Book Award, and she’s been named an Artist Fellow in Fiction by The New York Foundation for the Arts. Her writing has appeared in publications such as The Paris Review, One Story, and The New York Times Book Review and has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories.

At Lit Hub the author tagged "seven standout works of fiction that illuminate the inextricable links we share with our animal compatriots." One title on the list:

Sigrid Nunez, The Friend

Although this novel is already widely celebrated with its own movie adaptation, I can’t offer a list of books about humans and animals without it. Nunez offers a beautifully insightful and moving account of a solitary writer in Manhattan who inherits a massive Great Dane from her friend who has died by suicide. After she reluctantly agrees to steward him in her tiny studio apartment that does not allow pets, woman and dog find a bond in their shared mourning for their lost friend. Echoing the disorientation of grief, the novel doesn’t take the form of a straightforward story, but rather a mosaic of flashbacks, anecdotes, and reflections. The narrator’s thoughts about literature and the purpose of art are interlaced with historical vignettes and moments of absurdity familiar to any writer or teacher, while she simultaneously navigates the unlikely and sometimes comical situation of sharing a tiny space and public life with a giant animal. An unforgettable, silent friendship arises between woman and dog as they lean on each other, literally and figuratively. The novel includes what is, in my opinion, one of the best lines ever written about human-animal companionship, and one of my favorite literary quotes ever: “What are we…if not two solitudes that protect and border and greet each other?”

Read about another book on the list.

The Friend is among Eliza Smith's twenty books to help you navigate grief.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Gautham Rao's "White Power"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: White Power: Policing American Slavery by Gautham Rao.

About the book, from the publisher:

Beginning in the colonial era and growing through the American Revolution and the Southern plantation system, slaveholders’ violent police regime continued after Emancipation, through Reconstruction, to today. Moving across time, space, and place, White Power uncovers how slaveholders created their own white supremacist police and government to deny Black people rights, power, and humanity.

Legal historian Gautham Rao introduces us to laws that empowered white people to forcibly exercise their desired racial superiority over Black people, shows how they spread from the South throughout the nation, and traces the rebellions, fugitivity, activism, and legal systems that challenged them. Rao’s narrative includes slaveholders, lawmakers, and the Ku Klux Klan, dramatic escapes by runaway enslaved people, abolitionist activism in courtroom showdowns, and pitched battles between white paramilitaries and enslaved rebels. He offers a new interpretation of the history of policing in the US, centering the institution and legacy of slavery and speaking to the origins of today’s persistence of white vigilance, white supremacist militia groups, and white racist cops determined to maintain power over Black people by force. Equally determined, however, was Black Americans’ refusal to accept it.

Visit Gautham Rao's website.

The Page 99 Test: White Power.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Tessa Yang

From my Q&A with Tessa Yang, author of The Jellyfish Problem:

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

“Jellyfish problems” was the thoughtless title I gave the Microsoft Word file where I was writing. It evolved into the title of the book because, as it turned out, it was doing quite a bit to take readers into the story. What problem is being caused by a jellyfish? How will the characters solve it? The book actually sold as Clementine; or, The Jellyfish Problem, à la Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, and was shortened during edits to just The Jellyfish Problem. I appreciate that it’s a mysterious title with a touch of whimsy, like...[read on]

Visit Tessa Yang's website.

Q&A with Tessa Yang.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five dual-timeline historical fiction novels

Rachel Brittain is a writer, Day Dreamer, and Amateur Aerialist. Her short fiction has appeared in Luna Station Quarterly, Andromeda Spaceways, and others. She is a contributing editor for Book Riot, where she screams into the void about her love of books. Brittain lives in Northwest Arkansas with a rambunctious rescue pup, a snake, and a houseful of plants (most of which aren’t carnivorous).

At Book Riot she tagged "five dual-timeline historical fiction novels that bring past and present together." One entry on the list:

The Lost Book of Elizabeth Barton by Jennifer N. Brown

Tudor Era England and Present Day England

A scholar delving into the life of Reformation Era prophetess Elizabeth Barton jumps at the chance to join an elite consortium in England among a handful of fellow researchers—including her ex. Even better, the consortium takes place in an aging manor right next to the ruins of the priory where Barton once lived. But as the timeline jumps between Alison in the present day and Elizabeth in the 16th century, it becomes clear that the secret agendas taking place around these women could very well lead to their doom.

Read about another entry on the list.

Q&A with Jennifer N. Brown.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Kira Ganga Kieffer's "Unvaccinated Under God"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Unvaccinated Under God: Religion and Vaccine Hesitancy in Modern America by Kira Ganga Kieffer.

About the book, from the publisher:

How vaccine hesitancy can be understood as religious expression

Vaccine hesitancy in America didn’t begin with the uproar over the mRNA vaccines for Covid-19. The late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries saw resistance to a wide variety of vaccines. In Unvaccinated Under God, Kira Ganga Kieffer shows that debates over vaccine safety and mandatory vaccination were about more than diseases or injections. They have been proxies for existential concerns about justice and morality. Kieffer argues that vaccine hesitancy in the U.S. should be understood as religious expression—not as the product of scientific misinformation.

Through a series of historical case studies, which range from the “mother warriors” who claimed a link between the MMR vaccine and autism during the 1990s to opposition to masking and vaccines during the Covid-19 pandemic, Kieffer frames vaccination controversies as contests over religious freedom and moral authority. These debates concerned bodily, spiritual, and sexual purity; the morality of state-mandated medical risk; the importance of children; and the authority of parents and doctors. Kieffer explains that diverse groups of Americans utilized religious ideals and practices to question or resist vaccination. With this new, illuminating perspective on vaccine hesitancy, Kieffer offers a novel and even-handed way to understand Americans’ changing and increasingly divided attitudes toward biomedical knowledge and technology. Her account offers readers an accessible set of tools for how to “think with religion” when it comes to contemporary contests over medical authority.

Visit Kira Ganga Kieffer's website.

The Page 99 Test: Unvaccinated Under God.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Kerri Hakoda's "Too Deep to Cross"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Too Deep to Cross: A Thriller by Kerri Hakoda.

About the novel, 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.

Q&A with Kerri Hakoda.

The Page 69 Test: Too Deep to Cross.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five great mysteries set in the Boston area

Hannah Selinger is a James Beard Award-nominated lifestyle writer and mother of two based in Boxford, MA, and the author of the memoir Cellar Rat: My Life in the Restaurant Underbelly. Her print and digital work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, Eater, Travel + Leisure, Food & Wine, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and elsewhere. Her 2021 Bon Appétit essay, “In My Childhood Kitchen, I Learned Both Fear and Love,” is anthologized in the 2022 Best American Food Writing collection.

Selinger's new novel is Valley of the Moms.

At CrimeReads the author tagged "five titles, set in Massachusetts towns, [that] bring together people, plot, and place." One novel on the list:

Peter Swanson, Kill Your Darlings

Set in a fictional town on my own North Shore, Swanson’s 2025 book chronicles a murder and its underpinnings in reverse; the book begins with a deed that readers must travel backwards in time to understand. Thom and Wendy Graves, spouses for over two decades, have a secret, and that secret has ultimately eroded their relationship in the present tense.

Working backwards, Swanson carefully unveils a series of acts, executed at the start of their marriage, that has set in motion the inevitable end of their union. Brooding and thoughtful, the book’s nuance hinges on its sense of place, a small Massachusetts town where just about anything can happen.

Read about another novel on the list.

Kill Your Darlings is among Addison Rizer's top six thrillers about marriage.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Molly Hales's "Vital Ties"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Vital Ties: Digitally Mediated Intimacies with the Dead by Molly Hales.

About the book, from the publisher:

Vital Ties depicts an emergent form of intimacy with the dead mediated by digital technologies. In southern Australia, a game developer crafts a virtual reality experience, reuniting his best friend with an avatar of his late father. In Northern California, a woman creates a smartphone app to log moments in which her deceased mother appears. In Chicago, a high school teacher visits her late brother's Facebook page, hypnotized by the shifting content that animates and reanimates him. As digital media offer ways to bring the dead to presence, the living and the dead are haunted in new ways, affecting relationships to both media and death. Lyrical and moving, Vital Ties offers a powerful rethinking of death, memory, and mediation in the digital age.

Learn more about Vital Ties at the Cornell University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Vital Ties.

--Marshal Zeringue

Samantha Silva's "Sometime This Century," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Sometime This Century: A Regency Rom-Com by Samantha Silva.

The entry begins:

Sometime This Century is a swoon-worthy love story wrapped in a time-travel rom-com that finds my bookish, Jane-Austen loving, wannabe writer heroine, Annabel Blake, transported to the Regency era where she might just have everything she’s ever wished for, including the attentions of the dashing Henry Leighton D’Evercy. But when she and her companions—her party-girl-slash-influencer sister Cassie and ex-boyfriend Billy—find themselves trapped in the year 1815 and have to figure out how to make a life there, the stakes couldn't be higher.

Funnily, the novel began life as a screenplay 25 years ago, so I’ve had lots of time to think about who might play these roles. Having cut my teeth as a screenwriter, I tend to cast as I go, usually with someone in mind, at least as a type. That said, most of the actors on my dream list have aged out of the roles! The conversations with my twenty-something daughter (resident casting director) start with, “Who’s the young Rachel McAdams. The next Elle Fanning? Is there a Colin Firth I should know about?”

The heroine of Sometime This Century is Annabel Blake, a 22-year-old lit-nerd who’s always felt she was born in the wrong century. Her skin is untouched by sun or ink and she might just be wearing vintage Laura Ashley with a pair of ballet flats. Fina Strazza, the Tony-nominated star of John Proctor is the Villain, would be right at home in the Regency world of Annabel's beloved Jane Austen. And she looks like...[read on]

Visit Samantha Silva's website.

Q&A with Samantha Silva.

The Page 69 Test: Sometime This Century.

Writers Read: Samantha Silva.

My Book, The Movie: Sometime This Century.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six books with actually realistic sex

Brodie Crellin lives in London and is an editor at Granta Magazine.

A Sense of Occasion is their first novel.

At Lit Hub the author tagged six books by "writers whose depictions of sex had most closely held my attention." One title on the list:

Vox by Nicholson Baker

Abby and Jim meet on the phone. They’ve both signed up to an erotic hotline, and the novel follows the shape of their conversation. This couple is horny, open minded, and capable of locating the weird and crooked details that give a sexual encounter its charge. I read Vox on the train, in the space of a few hours, submitting completely to the back and forth between two unruly, associative minds. But the images that linger aren’t explicitly sexual. Baker notices everything—objects, textures and packaging matter in this novel. When I think about this book, what I remember most is the description of the blanket tossed across Jim and his coworker as they masturbate together, I think about the plaid pattern and the way it tents and collapses on top of them. People on Reddit have described Vox as prose porn, which feels unfair. Porn favors universality, simple stories that allow for projection, but in this book, it is the detail, how closely Baker pays attention, that makes the climaxes and connections sexy.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Roy A. Meals's "Ligaments"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Ligaments: Appreciating the Bands That Bind Us by Roy A. Meals.

About the book, from the publisher:

A lively tour through the biology, health, human performance, and popular culture of our bodies' essential connective tissue.

Ligaments are the quiet workhorses of the human body. They anchor our bones, guide our movements, and protect our joints—yet they remain largely unseen and misunderstood. In Ligaments: Appreciating the Bands that Bind Us, orthopedic surgeon and acclaimed science writer Roy A. Meals explores anatomy, biology, history, health, human performance, and popular culture to unlock the mysteries of ligaments. Completing a trilogy that began with Bones and Muscle, this richly illustrated volume offers a wide-ranging exploration of the anatomy, history, injuries, and cultural relevance of ligaments.

These bone-to-bone connectors are the critical linking mechanisms that allow our muscles to produce purposeful movement. Dr. Meals explains how ligaments stabilize the skeleton like hinge pins on a door, resist the forces of gravity in the face and breasts, and contribute to feats of athleticism, contortion, and childbirth. Readers will learn how ligaments are stronger than steel, how they recover from injury (or fail to), and how they can be stretched, stiffened, or surgically replaced. He also clarifies the differences among ligaments, tendons, and fascia, and why some people are "double-jointed" and others are not. Covering current and emerging treatments for ligament injuries, including artificial and engineered ligaments, the book provides practical insights into maintaining joint stability and flexibility across the lifetime.

Whether examining career-ending sports injuries, congenital laxity, or the elasticity of the vocal cords, Dr. Meals builds a case for why ligaments deserve center stage in our understanding of movement and health.

Visit Roy A. Meals's website.

The Page 99 Test: Ligaments.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Ilona Bannister reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Ilona Bannister, author of Five: A Novel.

Her entry begins:

I love learning from other writers. Reading a wide range of authors and genres while I’m writing is part research, part search for inspiration, and part coaching session in craft. To write Five, I drew from fiction and non-fiction to inform my characters’ lives and to keep suspense-building at the forefront of my mind. I have learned that the stories and facts I take from books to fill up my subconscious may seem unrelated at the time that I read them, but they always work themselves into my fiction in unexpected ways. One of the best non-fiction books I have ever read for research was Unnatural Causes by Dr. Richard Shepherd. He is the UK’s most distinguished forensic pathologist, and this book is as much a memoir of an extraordinary career as it is a fascinating, factual examination of the social importance of this little understood but absolutely vital work. I have no medical background and I’m not a scientifically oriented person, which made this book doubly intriguing and unputdownable because it taught me about a profession I knew nothing about, but which we should all be very...[read on]

About Five, from the publisher:

Five lives. Five stories. Four will live—one will die. Who it will be? In this slow-burn masterpiece of psychological fiction, the choice is all yours.

Have you ever tried to pass the time by imagining the lives of the strangers standing next to you? Ilona Bannister’s Five introduces readers to five seemingly random people waiting for a train. But these are not just any five people. From the beginning we know that one of them is going to die soon. Very soon. In five minutes the next train to London will arrive, killing one of them. But before this happens you will learn their stories.

None of these people are saints. Readers might fall in love with the beautiful young man who is on the verge of gambling his life away. They may pity the cantankerous old woman who has fallen to the ground yet is refusing help. Perhaps readers will look away from the child throwing a tantrum. Or judge his mother, who must surely be to blame. And some will be curiously compelled by the successful and damaged businessman orbiting them all.

These are the candidates for this morning’s misfortune. But they don’t know it. Only you know. And you, our complicit reader, will not be able to resist deciding who deserves to walk away, and who deserves only five more minutes to live.

An incredibly original novel that breaks the fourth wall and asks the reader to be judge, jury, and executioner, Five looks at some of the most complicated issues of contemporary life: motherhood, disability, addiction. Every stranger has a story. And in Ilona Bannister’s skillful hands, five people’s stories come together to create an unforgettable novel.

Visit Ilona Bannister's website.

Q&A with Ilona Bannister.

The Page 69 Test: When I Ran Away.

Writers Read: Ilona Bannister.

--Marshal Zeringue

Four books where the dog doesn't die

Camille Perri is the author of The Assistants and When Katie Met Cassidy. She has worked as a books editor for Cosmopolitan and Esquire. She has also been a ghostwriter of young adult novels and a reference librarian. She holds a bachelor of arts degree from New York University, where she majored in English and gender and sexuality studies, and a masters of library science degree from Queens College. She splits her time between New York City and the Hudson Valley with her wife and their Brussels Griffon named Pip.

Perri's new novel is Social Animals.

At People magazine the author tagged twelve books, shows, and movies where the dog survives. One book on the list:

The Stray Dog from Dogs of Venice by Steven Rowley

Unlike Rowley’s earlier novel, Lily and the Octopus, which will likely make you cry, this short, gentle novella is a safe bet for dog lovers who can’t bear to see an animal suffer.

Human heartbreak is the subject here as Paul is blindsided by his husband, Darren, who asks for a divorce on the eve of their planned Venice vacation. However, even this is treated in an ultimately uplifting way, and the unnamed dog remains a source of inspiration.

Read about another book on the list.

Coffee with a Canine: Steven Rowley & Tilda Swinton.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Tom French's "The Gap Years"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Gap Years: Climbing, Skiing, and the Journey Back by Tom French.

About the book, from the publisher:

An inspiring story of adventure and endurance in a quest to rediscover the passions of youth.

At the end of 2019, Tom French retired from a four-decade career in business, determined to return to interests that had defined his youth and see what meaning they still held. One of these interests was mountaineering. Another was adventure travel, with a particular focus on Nepal. A third was cross-country ski racing. Having taken “gap years” between school and university, and again before he started work, he decided to take a gap year before settling into the expectations of retirement. One year turned into three as he rebuilt his athletic strength, competed in cross-country ski marathons, and climbed some of the world’s highest mountains, including two expeditions to Mount Everest. On the first Everest climb, a cyclone forced him to turn around high on the mountain and descend the treacherous Lhotse Face in a blizzard. On the second, he approached the mountain through the remote Makalu Barun region, the first climber ever to do so, and climbed to the summit on a moonlit night.

But this is a book about much more than Everest. It is about beauty and joy found in wild places, about cross-country ski racing and mountaineering more broadly, and—most of all—about a journey to find meaning in life and reconnect with the passions of youth.

Visit Tom French's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Gap Years.

--Marshal Zeringue