Campaign for the American Reader

Tuesday, September 15, 2026

Nine top near-future novels by women

After graduating from Wellesley College and the Columbia Publishing Course, Leslie Stephens worked on the Editorial team at Food52 in New York before heading west to Los Angeles,

where she served as the Vice President of Content for the brand, cupcakes and cashmere. Her writing has also appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Eater, Apartment Therapy, and Tasting Table. Her weekly newsletter, Morning Person is among Substack’s most popular paid newsletters and her debut novel You’re Safe Here was released in 2024.

Stephens recently earned her Master's in Professional Mental Health Counseling with a Specialization in Addictions from Lewis and Clark College. With her degree, she hopes to treat adults struggling with technology addiction, through nature-based therapy. She currently lives in Portland, Oregon with her hyperactive pit-mix Toast.

At Tertulia Stephens tagged nine favorite speculative fiction near-future titles by women, including:

Station Eleven: A Novel
Emily St John Mandel

Among my favorite books of all-time, this post-apocalyptic novel centered the role of art, as a traveling Shakespeare troop navigates a post-pandemic America.

Read about another title on the list.

Station Eleven is among Matt Harry's eight top dystopian and post-apocalyptic novels, Alice Martin's six thrillers that feature contagions & pandemics, Rebecca Fallon's five top Shakespeare-inspired novels, Lauren Wilson's eight top books featuring cults, Barnaby Martin's seven titles featuring parents & children at the end of the world, Brittany K. Allen's ten books that get the theatre world right, Jeanette Horn's nine twisted novels about theatrical performers, Isabelle McConville's fifteen books for fans of the post-apocalyptic TV-drama Fallout, Joanna Quinn's six best books set in & around the theatrical world, Carolyn Quimby's 38 best dystopian novels, Tara Sonin's seven books for fans of Margaret Atwood's The Testaments, Maggie Stiefvater's five fantasy books about artists & the magic of creativity, Mark Skinner's five top literary dystopias, Claudia Gray's five essential books about plagues and pandemics, K Chess's five top fictional books inside of real books, Rebecca Kauffman's ten top musical novels, Nathan Englander’s ten favorite books, M.L. Rio’s five top novels inspired by Shakespeare, Anne Corlett's five top books with different takes on the apocalypse, Christopher Priest’s five top sci-fi books that make use of music, and Anne Charnock's five favorite books with fictitious works of art.

--Marshal Zeringue

Monday, September 14, 2026

Pg. 69: Laura Creedle's "The Girl in Green"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Girl in Green by Laura Creedle.

About the book, from the publisher:

A school’s storied legacy cannot stop student's whispers of mysterious disappearances and a legendary monster, in this terrifying new novel that will entrance fans of Madeline Roux and Claire Legrand.

Jess has always been a runner—always looking for an escape, no matter how many detention centers or “special schools” she’s been sent to. So when she receives a scholarship to the illustrious Danvers-Cutteridge in the mountains of West Virginia, her first plan of action is to find the fastest exit.

But Jess soon learns that this new school has secrets hidden beyond the grand staircases and storied past. A student has gone missing, and Jess’s new friends suspect that they haven’t been told the truth about the disappearance.

As Jess helps search for answers (and a way out), she discovers more of Danvers-Cutteridge’s unsettling history. The abuses and mutilations inflicted on past residents. The strange authority in the headmaster’s celebrated family tree. And the fearsome legend that has haunted the valley for decades—a mysterious girl, dressed in green.

Soon, Jess’s search will take her down into the heart of the school, through the closed-off parts of its history left forgotten in the dark. But walls and iron aren’t enough to keep the hungry darkness at bay…

Visit Laura Creedle's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Love Letters of Abelard and Lily.

My Book, The Movie: The Love Letters of Abelard and Lily.

Writers Read: Laura Creedle (January 2018).

Writers Read: Laura Creedle.

Q&A with Laura Creedle.

The Page 69 Test: The Girl in Green.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Helene Wecker

From my Q&A with Helene Wecker, author of The Gates of Midnight: A Novel of the Golem and the Jinni:

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

It took me so long to come up with The Gates of Midnight! It's both a vibes-based title (dark, foreboding, a point of no return) and a direct reference to two different elements of the book. “Gate” comes from the wrought-iron gate to Chava the golem's house in Brooklyn, which is the threshold (both real and symbolic) between her own personal realm and the rest of the human world. And “Midnight” refers to Ahmad's regularly scheduled phone call to Chava, which he places every night at midnight. A long-distance call was an expensive proposition back in 1930, and it was never guaranteed to go through properly -- but since they live thousands of miles apart now, it's the only way to keep their relationship alive. I always second guess myself when it comes to titles, but The Gates of Midnight has...[read on]

Visit Helene Wecker's website.

Writers Read: Helene Wecker (June 2013).

The Page 69 Test: The Golem and the Jinni.

Writers Read: Helene Wecker.

Q&A with Helene Wecker.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: William I. Hitchcock's "A Shadow Over the World"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: A Shadow Over the World: Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Rise of Fascism, and the Making of America's World War II by William I. Hitchcock.

About the book, from the publisher:

From New York Times bestselling author William I. Hitchcock, a riveting, revelatory portrait of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the lead-up to World War II, tracing his—and America’s—awakening to the threat of fascism.

How did FDR and the American public respond to the rise of dictators across Europe and Asia on the eve of World War II? The familiar narrative is that they reacted with indifference and embraced isolationism. Only with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor were Americans reluctantly drawn into the global conflict. But distinguished historian William I. Hitchcock reveals a far more complex and surprising story.

From the time Mussolini came to power in 1922 to America’s entry into the war in 1941, Americans engaged in a fraught national debate over the rising threat—and for some, the lure—of fascism. At the center of this debate was Roosevelt himself. When he took office in 1933, Roosevelt was determined to avoid foreign entanglements that would harm his ambitious domestic agenda of the New Deal. But over the course of his first two terms, a network of journalists, activists, advisers, and diplomats gradually awakened him to the global dangers of fascism.

Roosevelt’s transformation was part of a larger national reckoning with authoritarianism around the world. A Shadow Over the World shines a light on a time when a coalition of courageous humanists gathered around a visionary leader to forge a new purpose for America: to protect democracy, oppose imperialism, support human rights, and lead a global fight for freedom. Their successful struggle against the dark forces of fascism holds powerful lessons for our own perilous times.

Learn more about A Shadow Over the World at the Simon & Schuster website.

The Page 99 Test: The Age of Eisenhower.

The Page 99 Test: A Shadow Over the World.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven crime novels that feature outsiders who challenge the status quo

Tanya Grant writes twisty thrillers full of secrets, murder, and gossipy group dynamics. When not conducting highly suspicious web searches (for research!), she also writes romances.

Grant's new psychological thriller is A Beautiful Lie.

At CrimeReads the author tagged "seven novels about characters whose outsider status disrupts the status quo and leads to dangerous places." One title on the list:

Andrea Bartz, The Spare Room

To escape spending a pandemic lockdown with the man who’s called off her wedding, Kelly accepts an invitation to stay with her childhood friend and her husband. Though Sabrina and Nathan welcome Kelly into their home—and eventually their bed—Kelly is the outsider in their relationship. And when she discovers the last woman they invited into their marriage is missing, Kelly begins to fear she might be next.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Sunday, September 13, 2026

What is Robert Dugoni reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Robert Dugoni, author of One Split Second.

His entry begins:

I’m reading several novels. I usually have a wide variety. I’m reading The Shadow Friends by Tess Gerritsen, the third book in her series involving slightly older, but highly capable members of The Martini Club who solve mysteries and crimes. You can’t go wrong with Tess Gerritsen.

I’m also reading...[read on]

About One Split Second, from the publisher:

A girl’s unsolved disappearance. A tragic shooting. Two crimes, forty-five years apart, with a blood-chilling connection in a gripping new Tracy Crosswhite novel by New York Times bestselling author Robert Dugoni.

Detective Tracy Crosswhite is assigned to defend an old friend. Sheriff Jenny Almond has been charged with first-degree murder for shooting an unarmed veteran on a stormy night of confusion, paranoia, and split-second choices. Tracy is certain there’s more to the story of Anthony Alvarez’s killing―and her investigation draws her back to a cold case that still haunts the community.

More than forty years ago, Alvarez was the prime suspect in the unsolved disappearance of a teenage babysitter. The lead investigator, Jenny’s late father Buzz Almond, always believed Alvarez had been framed. Decades later, his suspicions of a conspiracy are driving Tracy to find answers. Digging deeper into both the past and the present, she discovers a complex web of sinister motives and long-buried secrets, unearthing them one by one.

As a decades-old mystery casts its dark shadow on a small town, only the truth will finally set the innocent free.

Pg. 69: Suzanne Redfearn's "The Wonder of One"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Wonder of One: A Novel by Suzanne Redfearn.

About the novel, from the publisher:

From the #1 Amazon bestselling author of In an Instant comes an inspirational coming-of-age story about one extraordinary girl’s determination to chase a dream.

Vivien Kendall has always been different. Born with a birthmark covering much of her face, she’s bullied, ridiculed, and mistreated as a child. But at the age of six, Vivien learns that in each of us there burns a spirit flame―a deep belief in oneself that must be nurtured and never allowed to go out.

Living by that wisdom and through the enduring friendships of her nanny, her mentor, and the legend who eventually becomes her coach, she chases her dream to someday become the greatest figure skater in the world.

Along the way, she faces a rapidly evolving world full of modern prejudice and injustice. She falls in love, has her heart broken, learns what it means to win or lose, and discovers the wonder of one, the power within each of us to change things.

Pg. 99: Duncan Pritchard's "Tempting Fate"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Tempting Fate: A Philosophical Guide to Risk, Luck, and a Meaningful Life by Duncan Pritchard.

About the book, from the publisher:

A leading philosopher explains how risk-taking can help us live authentic and flourishing lives

We take risks every day—perhaps not the extreme, dangling-off-the-side-of-a-mountain kind of risks, but risks nonetheless, in decisions about careers, marriage, children, moving house, and other matters. Tempting fate is simply what we have to do from time to time in life. But how we should go about tempting fate in a reasonable way? In this illuminating book, philosopher Duncan Pritchard explains why risk-taking, even extreme risk-taking, can sometimes be both reasonable and admirable, and how it can play a crucial role in living an authentic life.

Using Alex Honnold’s famous free solo climb of El Capitan as a paradigm example of admirable risk-taking, Pritchard offers a completely new theory of risk, one that explains it in terms of fragility rather than probability. He shows how fragility can explain why skill and preparation are crucial to sensible risk-taking, even when the activity is unavoidably high risk. Fragility also makes clear that taking risks means riding one’s luck and why both risk and luck are vital to living an authentic and meaningful existence. Pritchard shows that his fragility theory of risk has practical implications for making sense of risk in law, arts, sports, and other domains. Tempting fate, in other words, is not merely thrill-seeking but essential for human flourishing.

Visit Duncan Pritchard's website.

The Page 99 Test: Tempting Fate.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten books to impress a prospective lover

Mariella Frostrup has enjoyed a four-decade career as one of the UK’s most respected broadcasters and journalists. Her ground-breaking BBC documentary The Truth About Menopause (2018) helped to ignite a national conversation. In 2022, she was named one of Vogue’s 25 most influential women in the UK. She is co-founder and Chair of the campaign group Menopause Mandate, and in 2024 was appointed the UK Government’s Menopause Employment Ambassador.

In 2025, Frostrup became a Trustee of both the V&A and the British Council, following six years on the executive board of the Royal Academy of Arts.

Her books include Menolicious (a menopause-focused cookbook co-authored with Belles Berry), Cracking the Menopause (with Alice Smellie), and three anthologies.

Back in 2000 for the Guardian, Frostrup tagged ten books to impress a prospective lover, including:

Cloudstreet by Tim Winton

A beautiful tragicomic tale of two dysfunctional families sharing a dilapidated house in a Melbourne suburb. Winton writes with a highly individual voice and the story is laced with love and hope and all the things that make life worth living.

Read about another title on the list.

Cloudstreet is among Maureen Lindley's nine immortal sibling duels in fiction, Rose Byrne’s ten favorite books, five books that changed Evie Wyld, and Mariella Frostrup's six best books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Saturday, September 12, 2026

Q&A with Laura Creedle

From my Q&A with Laura Creedle, author of The Girl in Green:

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

I love a Victorian ghost story names like The Lady in White, or The Woman in Black. I chose the title of The Girl in Green as an reference to those classic ghost stories, but it’s a bit of a bait and switch. The legacy is much darker. I don’t want to give any spoilers, so I’ll leave it at that.

What's in a name?

I consciously gave my main character Jess...[read on]

Nine novels that make an art of earnestness

Stef Ferrari is an Emmy Award-winning producer, New York Times bestselling co-author, illustrator, and reformed ice cream entrepreneur. She’s also a recipe

developer and has published several cookbooks.

Now Ferrari writes queer fiction and is a freelance journalist covering her obsession: women’s sports, her work on which has been featured in the New York Times. She resides in Brooklyn with her soon-to-be wife, their puppets, Pete-Za, Scraggles and Killer, and their beloved Christmas tree, Stewart (#30).

Her new novel is Pining for You.

At Lit Hub Ferrari tagged nine books that "represent a rich range of literary earnestness." One title on the list:

Tayari Jones, Kin

Earnestness as grace.

Annie exudes earnestness in the face of repeated, profound personal devastation. Abandoned by her mother as a child, she spends her life possessed by the hope of finding her again. She doesn’t naively believe her mother is perfect; she’s driven instead by her determination to understand. And because she doesn’t have the means to avoid reality or live in some dream world, Annie’s decisions—to hold a place for the benefit of the doubt, to choose openness and curiosity, to seek the capacity for love in others along the way—is even more powerful. The grace she has adopted in her hopefulness regarding her mother is extended to others in her life as well: when Lulabelle is prickly and puts Annie off, Annie refuses to give up on her, too—and in the safety of her earnest grace, they loosen and lighten in subtle, heartrending ways.

Read about another entry on the list.

Kin is among Elizabeth Wellington Rollins's thirteen titles that celebrate female friendship.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Steven Casey's "The Sceptic Isle"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Sceptic Isle: How the British Government Sold the Second World War by Steven Casey.

About the book, from the publisher:

Based on a massive array of overlooked primary sources, The Sceptic Isle presents a fast-paced narrative of the British attempt to sell World War II to its citizens. It weaves together government public relations, media reporting, political manoeuvering, and the public's response to reinterpret some of the most famous moments of British history, from Chamberlain and appeasement to Churchill's great speeches, from the Battle of Britain to the military campaigns in the Mediterranean and Western Europe, from food rationing to the Beveridge Report.

Learn more about The Sceptic Isle at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: When Soldiers Fall.

The Page 99 Test: The War Beat, Europe.

The Page 99 Test: The War Beat, Pacific.

The Page 99 Test: The Sceptic Isle.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Helene Wecker reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Helene Wecker, author of The Gates of Midnight: A Novel of the Golem and the Jinni.

Her entry begins:

I've been in a weird reading space for the past month or so, the kind where I have a hard time settling. I'll pick up a book and then give it up as not quite right, when the truth is that it's perfectly fine and I'm the problem. I'm glad that I managed to read Charlotte Wood's Stone Yard Devotional before the malaise set in. Wood's protagonist is an unnamed Australian woman who, in the throes of burnout, decides to visit a shabby quasi-convent near the village where she grew up. The next thing the reader knows, she's left her husband and her job and moved in permanently. She's not a nun, or at all religious. She doesn't even...[read on]

About The Gates of Midnight, from the publisher:

The long-awaited final installment in the award-winning, bestselling Golem and the Jinni trilogy.

At the beginning of The Hidden Palace, the second book in Helene Wecker’s Golem and Jinni trilogy, Ahmad the jinni travels to Syria with the copper flask that holds the captured wizard Yehudah Schaalman. There in the desert he buries the flask for all time… or so he thinks.

In The Gates of Midnight, the riveting conclusion to the saga of the Golem and the Jinni, it’s 1930 and three decades have passed since Schaalman’s defeat. Chava the golem quietly tends to her house and garden in Brooklyn, hoping to create a refuge for other magical beings. Meanwhile, Ahmad has found employment as an architect in Chicago, helping to build its towering skyline above the prairie.

But all is not well in the desert. Schaalman has managed to trick an unsuspecting passerby into digging up the flask, and now it passes from hand to hand as the wizard possesses his victims -- first a French soldier traveling to New York, then a small-time mobster -- all in an effort to get to Chava, the only one who can release him from his prison.

Meanwhile others are gravitating to New York as well: Ahmad, who has lost his job following the 1929 stock market crash; the mysterious Thomas Beshara, a riveter on the rising Empire State Building, who also has hidden ties to Chava and Ahmad; and Kreindel Altschul, who still grieves her own destroyed golem Yossele. Does the reluctant Kreindel hold the key to saving Chava from Schaalman’s revenge? Will Schaalman succeed in escaping the flask, binding Chava to his will, and re-enslaving Ahmad? Or can they find a way to finally defeat him and free themselves from his power? An earth-shaking finale to the brilliant trilogy.

Visit Helene Wecker's website.

Writers Read: Helene Wecker (June 2013).

The Page 69 Test: The Golem and the Jinni.

Writers Read: Helene Wecker.

--Marshal Zeringue

Friday, September 11, 2026

Suzanne Redfearn's "The Wonder of One," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Wonder of One: A Novel by Suzanne Redfearn.

The entry begins:

If they make The Wonder of One into a movie, here’s who I imagine playing the roles:

For Vivien, the main protagonist of the story, when she's little (the story begins when she is six), I think an actress like Abigail Breslin when she acted in Signs would work well. She’s small, cute, and wise beyond her years. Adult Vivien (the story spans twenty-two years, ending when Vivien is twenty-eight) should be played by someone like Emilia Clarke (Daenerys in Game of Thrones), a diminutive spark plug, who is...[read on]

Seven books for Dolly Parton fans

Tertulia's list of "a few essential reads by and about Dolly with some of the grown-up books she loved herself" includes:

The Dolly biography we'd recommend

She Come by It Natural: Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs
Sarah Smarsh

A smart, spirited look at Dolly as a feminist icon—and what her songs reveal about class, gender, and working women in America.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Verena Hanna Meyer's "Theologies of Remembering"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Theologies of Remembering: Modernity, Ambiguity, and Transcendence in Islamic Indonesia by Verena Hanna Meyer.

About the book, from the publisher:

Theologies of Remembering reveals how Indonesia's two largest Muslim groups, Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah―self-identifying as respectively traditionalist and modernist―actively engage memory as a framework for theological thought and practice. By reimagining their pasts to respond to new contexts, they articulate what it means to be a traditionalist or a modernist in the present and imagine possibilities for the future. Verena Meyer draws on interviews with group members, Islamic intellectual and narrative traditions, and critical theory to show that processes of remembering facilitate manifestations of the divine that destabilize binaries between the historical and transhistorical as well as linear understandings of temporality. Observing how constructions of the past are called into the service of sometimes conflicting demands, she argues against the pervasive idea that Islamic modernities have lost their tolerance for ambiguity and paradox. Tensions among incommensurable memories are generative for articulating elusive theological insights and complex positionalities among both traditionalists and modernists, prompting us to rethink these familiar distinctions in modern identity politics.

Learn more about Theologies of Remembering at the University of California Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Theologies of Remembering.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Susan Coll’s "Word Salad"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Word Salad: A Novel by Susan Coll.

About the book, from the publisher:

Matilda loves logic and order, and now her structured world is falling apart—in a bookstore.

Former economics major Matilda is moving back to her hometown of Washington D.C. to care for her ailing mother, and she’s desperate for money. She takes a job at her neighborhood bookstore and tries, in vain, to make sense of illogical business of books. To make things worse, she’s forced to team up with a new hire—the enigmatic, flaky, larger-than-life, Sage—who shows up on her first day of work with zero administrative skills and her tiny, puffy, incessantly urinating dog that resembles an underfed rat.

Something in the chaos begins to remind Matilda of her long-neglected creative side, and she starts to rediscover the person she once was before so much got in the way. But things get even more unmanageable when Matilda and Sage are tasked with putting together an event for the reclusive and controversial Dr. Jordan Rutabaga, a windbag of a public intellectual with a cult following that includes a number of people who would like to literally and figuratively see him dead. Rutabaga has a long list of alleged misdeeds, from plagiarism to failure to pay child support to stiffing the nanny.

As the event date approaches, Matilda and Sage discover that Sage and Rutabaga have their own not uncomplicated past, adding yet another person to list of people who do not wish him well. Add in a lawsuit and an impending snowstorm along with the potentially sinister presence of Rutabaga himself, and Matilda is about to come undone.

Bestselling author Susan Coll’s gastric, bookish, laugh-out-loud comedy of manners reminds us that sometimes things have to completely fall apart for them to perfectly come together.

Visit Susan Coll's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Susan Coll & Zoe.

The Page 69 Test: Acceptance.

The Page 69 Test: Beach Week.

The Page 69 Test: The Stager.

The Page 69 Test: Real Life and Other Fictions.

The Page 69 Test: The Literati.

The Page 69 Test: Word Salad.

--Marshal Zeringue

Thursday, September 10, 2026

What is Laura Creedle reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Laura Creedle, author of The Girl in Green.

Their entry begins:

I’m reading a lot of indie horror right now. Last time I was in Louisville Ky, I went to Butcher Cabin Books. The co-owner of the store, Jenny Kiefer, wrote a book called This Wretched Valley, about a lost climbing expedition in the wilds of Kentucky. I’m a sucker for the idea of a lost expedition, Dyatlov Pass style, so it instantly piqued my interest. The author is a rock climber and it shows and all the details. There are paranormal aspects to the book but since I’m afraid of...[read on]

About The Girl in Green, from the publisher:

A school’s storied legacy cannot stop student's whispers of mysterious disappearances and a legendary monster, in this terrifying new novel that will entrance fans of Madeline Roux and Claire Legrand.

Jess has always been a runner—always looking for an escape, no matter how many detention centers or “special schools” she’s been sent to. So when she receives a scholarship to the illustrious Danvers-Cutteridge in the mountains of West Virginia, her first plan of action is to find the fastest exit.

But Jess soon learns that this new school has secrets hidden beyond the grand staircases and storied past. A student has gone missing, and Jess’s new friends suspect that they haven’t been told the truth about the disappearance.

As Jess helps search for answers (and a way out), she discovers more of Danvers-Cutteridge’s unsettling history. The abuses and mutilations inflicted on past residents. The strange authority in the headmaster’s celebrated family tree. And the fearsome legend that has haunted the valley for decades—a mysterious girl, dressed in green.

Soon, Jess’s search will take her down into the heart of the school, through the closed-off parts of its history left forgotten in the dark. But walls and iron aren’t enough to keep the hungry darkness at bay…

Pg. 99: Colin Farrelly's "Aging and the Ethics of Longevity Science"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Aging and the Ethics of Longevity Science by Colin Farrelly.

About the book, from the publisher:

A century of advances in experimental science have revealed new insights into the biology of aging, thus making the aspiration of healthy longevity a feasible goal for public health and medicine in the twenty-first century. However, significant obstacles must be overcome to reap the societal benefits of the science of healthy aging. These include the prevalence of ageism, the dominance of the intellectual presuppositions of public health's "War Against Disease" paradigm, and the politicalization of science. This book advances a pragmatic ethical analysis designed to enhance the public understanding of the importance of healthy longevity and the scientific study of aging.

Visit Colin Farrelly's website.

The Page 99 Test: Aging and the Ethics of Longevity Science.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five scrappy sci-fi books for everyone who loves an underdog

At Book Riot Liberty Hardy tagged "five fun sci-fi novels about the protagonists using their wits and whatever else is available to fight the good fight." One entry on the list:

Boltguns and Duct Tape by Jamie McFarlane

Rix Banner is a WWII veteran who thought he had seen it all. But his quiet life as a mechanic changes when a spacecraft crashes in a cornfield. It belongs to the Galactic Empire, and they want the ship and the pilot who stole it: they don’t care how many Earthlings they have to destroy to get their way. So Rix decides to put together his own ship and take on the Empire himself.

Read about another title on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Wednesday, September 09, 2026

Q&A with Randy Boyagoda

From my Q&A with Randy Boyagoda, author of Lords of Serendipity: A Novel – A Moving Campus Satire of Strivers, Gatekeepers, and University Dreams:

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

I hope the title Lords of Serendipity takes readers into this story by asking themselves two questions. First, who are the Lords? Second, what’s Serendipity? As readers will discover, in a novel about a Sri Lankan village girl who dreams of going to Harvard and then does whatever it takes to get in, people who teach and study at the world’s great universities are like lords, while getting in, as a student, is a source of unexpected joy and beauty, or serendipity. By the way, the word serendipity comes from the earliest European name for Sri Lanka — Serendib — based on their sense of a happy and unexpected discovery of...[read on]

Visit Randy Boyagoda's website.

The Page 69 Test: Governor of the Northern Province.

Q&A with Randy Boyagoda.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Nat Cutter's "Britain and the Ottoman Maghreb, 1662–1712"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Britain and the Ottoman Maghreb, 1662–1712: Merchants, Consuls, and Cultural Exchange by Nat Cutter.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the mid-seventeenth to early eighteenth century, a wide network of English-speaking men, women, and children took up residence in the Ottoman Maghrebi regencies of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli. There they formed expatriate communities, engaged with the societies around them, and undertook their businesses, from trading to captivity redemption to international politics.

Moving beyond official diplomatic records and printed texts, this book delves into thousands of personal letters and financial records, where we find friendship, conflict, adoration, derision, manipulation, and scandal across cultures and countries. In so doing, it offers new ways of thinking about British-Maghrebi relations in a transitional age for global trade and military-naval power, moving beyond plaintive consular complaints, gunboat diplomacy, and brutal captivity to accommodate positive cooperation and mutual benefit.

These expatriates became embedded mediators, hybridised European and Ottoman cultural forms, and experienced distanciation from both homeland and hostland to enjoy and manipulate both. For them, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli were not solely sites for danger or exploitation but, as peace was progressively established with each regency, increasingly places for pragmatic cooperation, personal and professional advancement, commercial success, and enjoyment.

Expansive networks of correspondence and cooperation around the Maghreb, Mediterranean, and Britain embedded the expatriates in a cross-cultural trade in material goods and information and allowed them to manipulate the course of trade and diplomacy between Britain and the Maghreb. The expatriates were less marginal, miserable, and misbehaving Britons and more embedded, canny, Mediterranean actors.

Visit Nat Cutter's website.

The Page 99 Test: Britain and the Ottoman Maghreb, 1662–1712.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five books that make you root for con artists, grifters, and tricksters

Lana Harper is the New York Times bestselling author of Payback's a Witch and the rest of the Witches of Thistle Grove series. Writing

as Lana Popovic, she is also the author of YA novels Wicked Like a Wildfire, Fierce Like a Firestorm, Blood Countess, and Poison Priestess. Harper was born in Serbia and lived in Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania before moving to the United States, where she now lives in Naperville, Illinois, with her family. Jilly Gagnon is the author of eight novels, most recently What if it's You? Her humor writing, personal essays, and op-eds have appeared in Newsweek, Elle, Vanity Fair, Boston Magazine, and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, among others. She lives in Salem, Massachusetts, with her family and two black cats.

Harper and Gagnon's new mystery is Cards on the Table.

At CrimeReads the authors tagged five "delightful stories of grifters, tricksters, and cons," including:

Finley Turner, The Tarot Reader

There’s no way we could not include this book on our list. It features two tarot-reading con artist sisters, Jade and Stevie, who have been forced to fend for themselves for as long as they can remember. But when Jade sends a fabricated “psychic vision” to the police tip line and it winds up eerily correct, the girls find themselves at the center of a media whirlwind…and possibly caught in the sights of a serial killer.

It’s impossible not to root for the scrappy sisters at the heart of this tense, fast-paced novel (and we’d let them read our tarot any day).

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Page 69 Test: The Tarot Reader.

--Marshal Zeringue

Campaign for the American Reader

Tuesday, September 15, 2026

Nine top near-future novels by women

Monday, September 14, 2026

Pg. 69: Laura Creedle's "The Girl in Green"

Q&A with Helene Wecker

Pg. 99: William I. Hitchcock's "A Shadow Over the World"

Seven crime novels that feature outsiders who challenge the status quo

Sunday, September 13, 2026

What is Robert Dugoni reading?

Pg. 69: Suzanne Redfearn's "The Wonder of One"

Pg. 99: Duncan Pritchard's "Tempting Fate"

Top ten books to impress a prospective lover

Saturday, September 12, 2026

Q&A with Laura Creedle

Nine novels that make an art of earnestness

Pg. 99: Steven Casey's "The Sceptic Isle"

What is Helene Wecker reading?

Friday, September 11, 2026

Suzanne Redfearn's "The Wonder of One," the movie

Seven books for Dolly Parton fans

Pg. 99: Verena Hanna Meyer's "Theologies of Remembering"

Pg. 69: Susan Coll’s "Word Salad"

Thursday, September 10, 2026

What is Laura Creedle reading?

Pg. 99: Colin Farrelly's "Aging and the Ethics of Longevity Science"

Five scrappy sci-fi books for everyone who loves an underdog

Wednesday, September 09, 2026

Q&A with Randy Boyagoda

Pg. 99: Nat Cutter's "Britain and the Ottoman Maghreb, 1662–1712"

Five books that make you root for con artists, grifters, and tricksters

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Tuesday, September 15, 2026

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Thursday, September 10, 2026

Wednesday, September 09, 2026

THE CftAR NETWORK

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