Six novels that invert horror tropes

Michael J. Seidlinger is the Filipino-American author of On Submission, Anybody Home?, and other books. He has written for, among others, Wired, Buzzfeed, The Believer, and Publishers Weekly. He teaches at Portland State University and has led workshops at Catapult, Kettle Pond Writers’ Conference, and Sarah Lawrence.

Seidlinger's new novel is Brokeula.

At CrimeReads the author tagged six novels that spin horror tropes in interesting ways. One title on the list:

Isaac Marion, Warm Bodies

We all know the zombie trope well, and more so the whole zombie apocalypse that so often goes hand-in-hand with our favorite, shuffling post-human creatures. Isaac Marion took the trope and spun it into an empathic tale where the zombie may still be dead but now, they have the capacity of experiencing human feeling and memory.

Protagonist R is shuffling around like a zombie does until he bites into the brains of someone who has memories of a first love, Julie. Soon R is falling for Julie too, and in continuing his interest in all-things human, he manages to regain some of the humanity thought long gone.

Warm Bodies is at once a tale of love and loss, but also a great use of the zombie trope to explore the philosophical plight of the living dead.

Read about another novel on Seidlinger's list.

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

The Page 69 Test: Warm Bodies.

My Book, The Movie: Warm Bodies.

--Marshal Zeringue

My Book, The Movie: "Sisterhood Above All" by Kathleen Barber with Amayah Shaienne

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Sisterhood Above All by Kathleen Barber with Amayah Shaienne.

The entry begins:

Like many authors, I love to imagine my work translated for the screen—but I always struggle with dreamcasting because I have such specific ideas of what my characters look like and how they behave. I’ve done my best, though, to dreamcast the three point-of-view characters in Sisterhood Above All:

Ava Nichols is a potential new member going through sorority rush who is desperate to join the Gammas. She’s blonde and conventionally pretty, but she’s anxious and unsure of herself. I’d cast Grace Van Patten as Ava based on appearance, but there’s a longing to fit in that reminds me of Maude Apatow’s performance as Lexi in Euphoria.

Madison Archer is the president of the Gammas. She’s intimidatingly beautiful—and intimidating, full stop. She’s cruel and calculating but knows how to put on a smile to get what she wants. If...[read on]

Visit Kathleen Barber's website.

The Page 69 Test: Follow Me.

Writers Read: Kathleen Barber (March 2020).

12 Yoga Questions with Kathleen Barber.

The Page 69 Test: Both Things Are True.

My Book, The Movie: Both Things Are True.

Q&A with Kathleen Barber.

Writers Read: Kathleen Barber (September 2025).

My Book, The Movie: Sisterhood Above All.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Rachel León reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Rachel León, author of How We See the Gray: A Novel.

Her entry begins:

I’m always reading multiple books, often in different genres. Right now, my fiction pick is Yasmin Zaher’s novel, The Coin, about a young Palestinian woman living in New York who gets involved in a scheme selling Birkin bags. Everyone in my writing group is working on novels, and we realized a while back that it would be more helpful to read each other’s entire manuscripts rather than just a chapter or two here and there. But novel writing takes a long time, so we began the practice of reading published novels together and discussing them. We don't exactly have a set reason for picking the books, though typically it’s something one of us has wanted to read. The Coin was my suggestion, as it had...[read on]

About How We See the Gray, from the publisher:

A riveting story about parenthood, substance abuse, and the strength it takes to come back from our mistakes

Foster care is a disaster in Rockford, Illinois. Meredith, a social worker and single mom, is stretched beyond thin but determined to protect her kids: not only her son, but those on her caseload too. When the stress of the job has her breaking her sobriety, the foundations of her life begin to tremble. After drinking too much, she makes a mistake that puts her preschooler in jeopardy, and Meredith finds herself in a situation that mirrors her clients’ as she loses custody of her son. In her fight to get him back, Meredith experiences the system from the outside―while still working for the kids inside of it. Set over the course of a year, this riveting documentary-esque novel is told from multiple perspectives, including those of case workers, birth parents, foster parents, and foster children. Written with the working-class humor and heart that defines the Midwest, How We See the Gray is a story about mistakes, second chances, and trying to do better in a system that seems doomed to fail.

Visit Rachel León's website.

Q&A with Rachel León.

Writers Read: Rachel León.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Adam Y. Liu's "Authoritarian Markets"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Authoritarian Markets: The Politics of China's Banking Explosion by Adam Y. Liu.

About the book, from the publisher:

Authoritarian Markets explores the political foundations of China's banking boom and its far-reaching impact on the Chinese economy.

In 1978 China had no commercial banks. Today it commands the world's largest banking system, with assets equal to 40 percent of global GDP. Adam Y. Liu argues that this rise was not the product of market reforms but of political bargains and bureaucratic mobilization.

In the 1990s, Beijing issued bank licenses as bargaining chips―securing cooperation from local governments as it pushed through painful reforms. The result was a sprawling, competitive banking market built not in spite of authoritarian rule but because of it.

Drawing on interviews, spatial data, census records, surveys, and experiments, Liu reveals how local state banks became both engines of China's growth and incubators of its current economic risks. Eye-opening and persuasive, Authoritarian Markets offers fresh insight into the political logic of market development in China and authoritarian states worldwide.

Learn more about Authoritarian Markets at the Cornell University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Authoritarian Markets.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven top books about fresh starts

Alex Luppens-Dale won the “Enthusiastic Reader Award” all four years of high school. She is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and received her MFA in Creative Writing from The New School. Her favorite genres are memoir, witches, and anything with cults. She lives in New Jersey.

At Book Riot Luppens-Dale tagged seven "books in various genres that celebrate fresh starts and new lives in all of their forms." One title on the list:

The Wedding People by Alison Espach

This buzzy novel follows Phoebe Stone, a young woman who crashes a Newport, Rhode Island, wedding. She is looking for a weekend getaway, a sort of last hurrah as she’s hit rock bottom. The bride has planned for every part of her wedding weekend, except for Phoebe, who becomes a bigger part of the event than either of them could have anticipated.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Third reading: D.W. Buffa on "The Life of George Washington"

The Dark Backward is among D.W. Buffa's more recent novels to be released. The story revolves around not just the strangest case William Darnell had ever tried;

it was the strangest case ever tried by any lawyer anywhere. It was impossible to explain; or rather, impossible to believe. The defendant, who did not speak English or any other language anyone could identify, had been found on an island no one knew existed, and charged with murder, rape and incest. He was given the name Adam, and Adam, as Darnell comes to learn, is more intelligent, quicker to learn, than anyone he has ever met. Adam, he learns to his astonishment, is a member of an ancient civilization that has remained undiscovered for more than three thousand years.

Buffa is also the author of ten legal thrillers involving the defense attorney Joseph Antonelli. He has also published a series that attempts to trace the movement of western thought from ancient Athens, in Helen; the end of the Roman Empire, in Julian's Laughter; the Renaissance, in The Autobiography of Niccolo Machiavelli; and America in the twentieth century, in Neumann's Last Concert.

Buffa's latest take in his "Third Reading" series covers The Life of George Washington by Washington Irving. It begins:

When George Washington died, just weeks before the end of the l8th century, an eminent British statesman, Lord Brougham, wrote: “The fame of Washington stands apart from every other in history.” He then added: “It will be the duty of the historian and the sage of all nations, to let no occasion pass of commemorating this illustrious man, and until time shall be no more, will a test of the progress which our race has made in wisdom and virtue, be derived from the veneration paid to the immortal name of Washington.”

This is the last sentence written in Washington Irving’s biography of George Washington, the first volume of which was published in l855. The fifth, and last volume, was published four years later in l859, sixty years after Washington’s death, and a year before the American Civil War. It was then still possible to entertain the hope that veneration for Washington would remain the measure for the progress made in the wisdom and virtue of Americans. The example of Abraham Lincoln, with his invocation of “our fathers,” seemed to prove the possibility.

For a long time Washington and Lincoln were seen as the models of what American greatness and nobility meant. More than what they had done, the kind of men they had been, was thought to be the standard by which to judge our own best efforts. Washington’s birthday and Lincoln’s birthday were both made national holidays, the only American statesmen to be so honored. Then, when our own early history became ancient, when the American Founding and the American Civil War began to recede further back in time and became part of a largely unremembered past...[read on]

Visit D.W. Buffa's website.

Buffa's previous third reading essays: The Great Gatsby; Brave New World; Lord Jim; Death in the Afternoon; Parade's End; The Idiot; The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; The Scarlet Letter; Justine; Patriotic Gore; Anna Karenina; The Charterhouse of Parma; Emile; War and Peace; The Sorrows of Young Werther; Bread and Wine; “The Crisis of the Mind” and A Man Without Qualities; Eugene Onegin; The Collected Works of Thomas Babington Macaulay; The Europeans; The House of Mirth and The Writing of Fiction; Doctor Faustus; the reading list of John F. Kennedy; Jorge Luis Borges; History of the Peloponnesian War; Mansfield Park; To Each His Own; A Passage To India; Seven Pillars of Wisdom; The Letters of T.E. Lawrence; All The King’s Men; The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus; Naguib Mahfouz’s novels of ancient Egypt; Main Street; Theodore H. White's The Making of the President series, part I; Theodore H. White's The Making of the President series, part II; Thus Spoke Zarathustra; Fiction's Failure; Hermann Hesse's Demian; Frederick Douglass, Slavery, and The Fourth of July; Caesar’s Ghost; The American Constitution; A Tale of Two Cities; The Leopard; Madame Bovary; The Sheltering Sky; Tocqueville’s America and Ours; American Statesmen; Ancient and Modern Writers Reconsidered; Père Goriot; The Remarkable Edmund Burke; The Novels of W.H. Hudson; America Revised; The City And Man; "The Use And Abuse Of History"; I, Claudius; The Closing of The American Mind; History of Rome; Before The Deluge; Herodotus's Histories; The Education of Henry Adams; Duff Cooper’s Talleyrand; The Golden Bowl; The Life of George Washington.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine great titles about survival at sea

Kathleen Rooney is the nationally bestselling author of Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk, as well as Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey and From Dust to Stardust. She has won the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize from Poetry magazine and the Adam Morgan Literary Citizen Award from the Chicago Review of Books. Rooney’s criticism can be found in The New York Times, The Minnesota Star Tribune, The Brooklyn Rail, Chicago magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and beyond. She lives in Chicago with her spouse, the writer Martin Seay, and teaches English and creative writing at DePaul University.

Rooney's new novel is Man Overboard!.

[The Page 99 Test: Live Nude Girl; The Page 99 Test: For You, for You I Am Trilling These Songs; My Book, The Movie: For You, for You I Am Trilling These Songs; My Book, The Movie: Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk; The Page 69 Test: Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey; My Book, The Movie: Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey; Writers Read: Kathleen Rooney (July 2022); The Page 69 Test: Where Are the Snows; Writers Read: Kathleen Rooney (September 2022); The Page 69 Test: From Dust to Stardust; My Book, The Movie: From Dust to Stardust; Q&A with Kathleen Rooney; Writers Read: Kathleen Rooney (September 2023); The Page 69 Test: Man Overboard!]

At Lit Hub the author tagged nine great "accounts of people lost at sea, struggling to be found." One title on the list:

Moby-Dick; or, The Whale by Herman Melville

Okay, okay, everybody knows this one is great, yet it still manages to be misunderstood and underrated. It took me three tries over a span of many years before I was able to lock in with this novel, but it was worth the repeated effort. In high school, I started it and could tell it was amazing, but didn’t connect; same in grad school. In 2019 on the occasion of Melville’s 200th birthday, the Newberry Library here in Chicago hosted a 25-hour marathon live reading of the book—a Dick-a-Thon, if you will—and invited local authors to participate. Moby-Dick is my spouse’s, the writer Martin Seay’s, favorite novel of all time, so naturally he wanted to join. So did I, but it felt wrong to do so if I hadn’t read the whole behemoth. That January I devoured the story over the course of 10 days and it remains a peak reading experience of my existence. Like Moby himself rising from the deep, the book crushed me:

“Suddenly the waters around them slowly swelled in broad circles then quickly upheaved, as if sideways sliding from a submerged berg of ice, swiftly rising to the surface. A low rumbling sound was heard; a subterrous hum; and then all held their breaths; as bedraggled with trailing ropes, and harpoons, and lances, a vast form shot length-wise, but obliquely from the sea. Shrouded in a thin drooping veil of mist, it hovered for a moment in the rainbowed air; and then fell swamping back into the deep. Crushed thirty feet upwards, the waters flashed for an instant like heaps of fountains, then brokenly sank in a shower of flakes, leaving the circling surface creamed like new milk round the marble trunk of the whale.”

Read about another book on Rooney's list.

Moby-Dick appears among Joseph Osmundson's nine queer books in which animals take on a mythical importance, Daniel Poppick's seven books about work, GQ's green flag books, Eiren Caffall's ten titles on maritime disasters and ecological collapse, Emily Temple's ten notorious literary slogs that are worth the effort, Aidan Cottrell-Boyce's top ten novels & stories about prophets, James Stavridis's five best books to know the sea, Robert McCrum's top ten Shakespearean books, Bridget Collins's top ten Quakers in fiction, John Boyne's six best books, Kate Christensen's best food scenes in fiction, Emily Temple's ten literary classics we're supposed to like...but don't, Sara Flannery Murphy ten top stories of obsession, Harold Bloom's six favorite books that helped shape "the American Sublime,"  Charlotte Seager's five well-known literary monomaniacs who take things too far, Ann Leary's top ten books set in New England, Martin Seay's ten best long books, Ian McGuire's ten best adventure novels, Jeff Somers's five top books that will expand your vocabulary and entertain, Four books that changed Mary Norris, Tim Dee's ten best nature books, the Telegraph's fifteen best North American novels of all time, Nicole Hill's top ten best names in literature to give your dog, Horatio Clare's five favorite maritime novels, the Telegraph's ten great meals in literature, Brenda Wineapple's six favorite books, Scott Greenstone's top seven allegorical novels, Paul Wilson's top ten books about disability, Lynn Shepherd's ten top fictional drownings, Peter Murphy's top ten literary preachers, Penn Jillette's six favorite books, Peter F. Stevens's top ten nautical books, Katharine Quarmby's top ten disability stories, Jonathan Evison's six favorite books, Bella Bathurst's top 10 books on the sea, John Mullan's lists of ten of the best nightmares in literature and ten of the best tattoos in literature, Susan Cheever's five best books about obsession, Christopher Buckley's best books, Jane Yolen's five most important books, Chris Dodd's best books, Augusten Burroughs' five most important books, Norman Mailer's top ten works of literature, David Wroblewski's five most important books, Russell Banks' five most important books, and Philip Hoare's top ten books about whales.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Laura Kalpakian's "Undesirable"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Undesirable: The Vietnam War and a Father's Battle for Justice by Laura Kalpakian.

About the book, from the publisher:

The powerful true story of a parent’s unflagging battle on behalf of a beloved son struggling with PTSD, mental illness, and addiction and a family who bore the burdens of war for decades.

In January 1969, angry after a fight with his father, nineteen-year-old Doug Johnson—in what will be a fateful choice—decides to enlist in the Army. Once in Vietnam as a point man, Doug becomes addicted to speed and heroin, goes AWOL multiple times, and is court martialed and imprisoned. In order to avoid a second court martial, he agrees to accept an “undesirable” discharge that denies him veterans’ benefits and any recognition of his wartime service. In late August 1970, drugged, malnourished, and clutching the sandal of a dead Viet Cong, Doug staggers off a plane into the arms of his father.

But Doug’s return home is only the beginning of this story. The core of Undesirable recounts another war: Doug’s father against the US Army. For three years, he fights to have his son’s “undesirable” discharge changed to “honorable.” Half a century later Laura Kalpakian—devoted daughter and sister—exhumes the evidence her father collected. From this trove of documents she assembles a heartbreaking story of a father’s love for his son and a son’s experience at war. Undesirable: The Vietnam War and a Father’s Battle for Justice demands that we ask what we—and our government—owe to our veterans for the physical, psychological, and emotional sacrifices they and their families make.

Visit Laura Kalpakian's website.

The Page 99 Test: Undesirable.

--Marshal Zeringue

Sixteen historical fiction titles to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary

At People magazine Shyla Watson and Lizz Schumer tagged sixteen "historical novels transport readers to pivotal moments in the nation’s past ... and illuminate the many stories woven into America’s history." One title on the list:

The Whisper Sister by Jennifer S. Brown

In Prohibition-era New York City, Jewish immigrant Minnie Soffer takes over her family’s speakeasy on a quest for the American Dream.

Read about another book on the list.

The Page 69 Test: The Whisper Sister.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Kathleen Rooney's "Man Overboard!"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Man Overboard!: A Novel by Kathleen Rooney.

About the book, from the publisher:

Patrick “Kick” Kilpatrick hates the ocean. Has always been terrified of it. And now he’s in a real pickle.

Drifting alone in the sea after falling (or jumping? He can’t remember as the all-inclusive drinks on the cruise he was taking with his extended family were, well, inclusive) Kick must survive. Breath by breath, hour by hour in the lonely sea.

As the waves crash over him, so too do the thoughts and memories of just how he got there. A Thanksgiving cruise with an obnoxious brother-in-law he has to bite his tongue to keep from screaming at. A father who gives the Great Santini a run for his money. And a mother who already left the family boat, so to speak, a long time ago. His family may be complicated, and the pains of life may seem unbearable—infuriating enough to leap from the deck—but maybe the will to survive is stronger.

Man Overboard! is an inventive, slyly hilarious, and inspiring novel about what it means to be alive and stay alive, and what keeps us going no matter how choppy the waves of our journey become. Hold on for dear life!

Visit Kathleen Rooney's website.

The Page 99 Test: Live Nude Girl.

The Page 99 Test: For You, for You I Am Trilling These Songs.

My Book, The Movie: For You, for You I Am Trilling These Songs.

My Book, The Movie: Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk.

The Page 69 Test: Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey.

My Book, The Movie: Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey.

Writers Read: Kathleen Rooney (July 2022).

The Page 69 Test: Where Are the Snows.

Writers Read: Kathleen Rooney (September 2022).

The Page 69 Test: From Dust to Stardust.

My Book, The Movie: From Dust to Stardust.

Q&A with Kathleen Rooney.

Writers Read: Kathleen Rooney (September 2023).

The Page 69 Test: Man Overboard!.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven books that blur the boundary between fact and fiction

Meg Charlton is a writer based in New York City. Her debut novel Voyagers is now out from Harper. Other work has appeared in The Yale Review, Slate, Lux, Atlas Obscura, and Vice, and the anthology Letter to a Stranger: Essays to the Ones Who Haunt Us. Her writing has been supported by the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and covered in Indiewire, Above the Law, and Australian National Radio's Future Tense. She holds an MFA in fiction from Brooklyn College and teaches at Sackett Street Writers.

At Electric Lit Charleton tagged seven books that "live in that borderland of uncertainty, peering over the edge of consensus reality into the irresolvable." One title on the list:

Beings by Ilana Masad

A nesting doll of a book, concerned with the stories we tell about aliens and the moral responsibilities of storytelling itself. The three plotlines in Beings all circle questions of fact and fiction: The first follows Betty and Barney Hill, real American abductees, but speculates on their inner lives; the second concerns a fictional sci-fi writer, but presents her through the authority of letters and archival documentation; and the third takes us to the archivist themself, who is being hounded by an overeager documentary producer about a childhood UFO sighting. These three worlds overlap in ways I did not see coming, calling attention to the constructed nature of all stories. We try to document our lives, to fact check our own memories, to keep careful records we (or others) can come back to later. But there will always be a gap, some terra incognita, whether we are trying to remember our lives or imagine our way into the lives of others.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Bryan Gruley reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Bryan Gruley, author of River Deep.

His entry begins:

I’m a judge for the Edgar Awards this year and my favorite book so far is—sorry, if I told you I’d have to kill you.

Best book I’ve read in the past few years: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon, a book published many years ago that resonates even now. Moving, funny, suspenseful, heartbreaking, with a perfect first-person voice inhabited by an autistic boy. (Almost as effective voice-wise is the autistic boy in Ken Jaworowski’s What About the Bodies).

Another book I love is my fellow Michiganian Sara Maurer’s debut novel, A Good Animal. A gorgeous rendering of a romance on a sheep farm in the Upper Peninsula. I haven’t...[read on]

About River Deep, from the publisher:

Attorney Devyn Payne is left navigating thin ice as her small-town community fractures in the wake of a shocking crime in River Deep, the second in the Bitterfrost thriller series from Edgar nominee and Pulitzer Prize–winning author Bryan Gruley.

Fighting for the cold, hard truth

Attorney Devyn Payne expects a quieter life when she returns to her hometown of Bitterfrost. Until the bodies of two eight-month-old boys are pulled from the icy depths of the local river. Was it a tragic accident or something more disturbing?

The twins’ distraught parents survived the car crash, but their mother, Catriona Dulaney, was driving. Now she’s charged with killing her babies, and her admission of guilt has leaked online. It should be the most straightforward case Devyn prosecutes all year. And yet, to her, it doesn’t add up.

With time dwindling ahead of the trial, Detective Garth Klimmek questioning Cat’s role in the tragedy, and a suspicious outsider loitering around town, this crime might just be the tip of an iceberg. Devyn’s put two Dulaneys behind bars before. This time, whose side will she take—and what will it cost?

This suspense-drenched drama is perfect for fans of Dennis Lehane, the TV show Mayor of Kingstown, and small-town thrillers by Tim Johnston and John Sandford.

Learn more about the book and author at Bryan Gruley's website.

The Page 69 Test: Starvation Lake.

The Page 69 Test: The Hanging Tree.

The Page 69 Test: Bleak Harbor.

The Page 69 Test: Purgatory Bay.

The Page 69 Test: Bitterfrost.

Q&A with Bryan Gruley.

My Book, The Movie: Bitterfrost.

My Book, The Movie: River Deep.

The Page 69 Test: River Deep.

Writers Read: Bryan Gruley.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top epic fantasy romances

At Book Riot Megan Mabee tagged six "swoon-worthy stories [that] take place in different worlds, include immersive fantasy world-building and epic plots, while also promising a strong romance." One title on the list:

Kushiel’s Dart by Jacqueline Carey

This classic fantasy romance by Jacqueline Carey takes place in the land of Terre d’Ange, where angels and humans created a race that lives by the rule Love as thou wilt. The protagonist of the story, Phèdre nó Delaunay, has a scarlet mote in one of her eyes. When a nobleman buys her indentured servitude, he realizes she has the rare gift of being pricked by Kushiel’s Dart. As she gets trained as both a spy and a courtesan, Phèdre uncovers a plot that could jeopardize everything she holds dear.

Read about another epic fantasy romance on the list.

Kushiel’s Dart is among Emily Temple's six epic fantasy series for fans of Game of Thrones and Katharine Trendacosta and Charlie Jane Anders's ten great stories of epic power struggles.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Marc A. VanOverbeke "Playing the Game"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Playing the Game: How State Colleges Used Athletics to Expand Educational Opportunity by Marc A. VanOverbeke.

About the book, from the publisher:

Playing the Game uncovers the history of state and regional colleges as engines of opportunity in postwar America. By 1970, these institutions enrolled more students than elite private or flagship public universities did, and yet they remained on the margins of public attention and scholarly research. Marc A. VanOverbeke shows how these colleges fought for recognition by turning to an unlikely ally: college sports.

Drawing on extensive archival research, VanOverbeke reveals how athletics boosted institutional legitimacy and public support, while students harnessed sports to push for greater inclusion and racial justice. Black and Mexican American students, in particular, challenged segregation and discrimination on and off the field, making athletics a powerful site of protest and change.

Playing the Game reframes the role of college sports, showing how athletics helped shape not only school identity but also the national struggle for equality and educational opportunity.

Learn more about Playing the Game at the Cornell University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Playing the Game.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Bryan Gruley's "River Deep"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: River Deep by Bryan Gruley.

About the book, from the publisher:

Attorney Devyn Payne is left navigating thin ice as her small-town community fractures in the wake of a shocking crime in River Deep, the second in the Bitterfrost thriller series from Edgar nominee and Pulitzer Prize–winning author Bryan Gruley.

Fighting for the cold, hard truth

Attorney Devyn Payne expects a quieter life when she returns to her hometown of Bitterfrost. Until the bodies of two eight-month-old boys are pulled from the icy depths of the local river. Was it a tragic accident or something more disturbing?

The twins’ distraught parents survived the car crash, but their mother, Catriona Dulaney, was driving. Now she’s charged with killing her babies, and her admission of guilt has leaked online. It should be the most straightforward case Devyn prosecutes all year. And yet, to her, it doesn’t add up.

With time dwindling ahead of the trial, Detective Garth Klimmek questioning Cat’s role in the tragedy, and a suspicious outsider loitering around town, this crime might just be the tip of an iceberg. Devyn’s put two Dulaneys behind bars before. This time, whose side will she take—and what will it cost?

This suspense-drenched drama is perfect for fans of Dennis Lehane, the TV show Mayor of Kingstown, and small-town thrillers by Tim Johnston and John Sandford.

Learn more about the book and author at Bryan Gruley's website.

The Page 69 Test: Starvation Lake.

The Page 69 Test: The Hanging Tree.

The Page 69 Test: Bleak Harbor.

The Page 69 Test: Purgatory Bay.

The Page 69 Test: Bitterfrost.

Q&A with Bryan Gruley.

My Book, The Movie: Bitterfrost.

My Book, The Movie: River Deep.

The Page 69 Test: River Deep.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six books that make us question those closest to us

Lucy Ashe trained at The Royal Ballet School for eight years, first as a Junior Associate and then at White Lodge. She has a Diploma in Dance Teaching with the British Ballet Organisation. Her first two novels, The Dance of the Dolls and The Sleeping Beauties, were inspired by her years immersed in the world of classical dance.

Ashe's new novel is The Model Patient.

At CrimeReads the author tagged "six novels that reveal how terrifying it is to have one’s sense of reality systematically dismantled by the person we are supposed to love and trust." One title on the list:

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn

Reporter Camille Preaker returns to the place where she grew up to investigate the unsolved murder of a teenage girl and the disappearance of another. Her own trauma and self-harm are triggered through this homecoming, particularly by facing her mother, Adora, who disguises control as care. It is in Adora’s treatment of her daughters, keeping them physically and emotionally sick, isolating them from the outside world, and feigning ignorance as a defense mechanism, that the horror resides. Gillian Flynn does not shy away from the darkest of human behaviors, and Sharp Objects is one of those books where you simply cannot look away.

Read about another entry on Ashe's list.

Sharp Objects is among Claire Douglas's ten top psychological thrillers with explosive family secrets, Allison Gunn's seven top horror novels set in small towns, Lucy Foley's six top stories of folk horror, Katherine Higgs-Coulthard's top six crime-in-the-family thrillers, Zach Vasquez's seven dark novels about motherhood, Christina Dalcher's seven crime books that challenge the idea of inherent female goodness, Nicole Trope's six domestic suspense novels where nothing is really ever what it seems, Heather Gudenkauf's ten great thrillers centered on psychology, and Peter Swanson's ten top thrillers that explore mental health.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Julie-Ann Scott-Pollock's "Stories of Raising Boys"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Stories of Raising Boys: Masculinity, Disability, Gender Expansiveness, and Anxiety by Julie-Ann Scott-Pollock.

About the book, from the publisher:

In her poignant, affecting autoethnography, Stories of Raising Boys, Julie-Ann Scott-Pollock investigates the meaning of disability, gender, race, and privilege in contemporary culture. Scott-Pollock is a white mother living with a physical disability raising four boys—Theo, a three-year-old risktaker; Tony, ten, who lives with seizures; Vinny, eight, who is gender expansive; and five-year-old Nico, who is also gender expansive and experiences anxiety. They live on the southeastern U.S. coast with their father, Evan, and their baby sister, Rosalie.

Through narrative analysis, Scott-Pollock compares and contrasts her circumstances to the ways in which adult interviewees manage the same lived experiences as her sons. She also includes their opinions about masculinity and identity, as well as parenting boys. In doing so, Stories of Raising Boys deepens the cultural complexity of parent–child relationships and expands our collective understanding of how they form and emerge. In addition, Scott-Pollock uses a metaphor of swimming through the ocean near her family’s home to illustrate resisting marginalization while also promoting strong cultural identities, especially in turbulent waters.

Stories of Raising Boys offers an absorbing cultural reflection on the intersectionality of identity, power, and privilege.

Learn more about Stories of Raising Boys at the Temple University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Stories of Raising Boys.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six titles that take you behind the scenes of Black Hollywood

Rasheed Newson is the author of the national bestseller My Government Means to Kill Me, which was selected as a Lambda Literary finalist for Gay Fiction and was named one of the “100 Notable Books of 2022” by The New York Times. He is also a television drama writer, producer, and showrunner. He codeveloped Bel-Air and worked on The Chi, Animal Kingdom, and Narcos, among other drama series. Newson is a 2025–26 American Library in Paris Visiting Fellow. He currently lives with his husband and their two children in Pasadena.

Newson's new novel is There’s Only One Sin in Hollywood.

At Oprah Daily he tagged six books "that brilliantly capture the balancing act required of Black stars in Hollywood and give non–Hollywood insiders a peek behind the velvet curtain at a world that creates alluring idols for the masses." One title on the list:

Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams by Donald Bogle

With admirable range and poignant details, this nonfiction book tracks the collective journey of Black creatives in Hollywood from the dawn of silent film into the 1950s. The Black stars in this constellation include ones who still shine in our collective memory—Hattie McDaniel, Lena Horne—and others who have faded, like Ernest “Sunshine Sammy” Morrison and James Edwards.

Donald Bogle interweaves interviews he conducted with people who were close to the stars of that bygone era (his conversation with Dorothy Dandridge’s sister, Vivian Dandridge, is a standout) with commentary from archival research. The result feels like a vivid oral history. Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams captures an aspect of Black Hollywood that is often overlooked: Black stars are the result of a collective effort, not individual talent or ambition. From their family members to their professional entourages to their millions of fans, they are bound to represent ideals bigger than themselves. Bogle honors all sides of that inheritance.

Read about another title on Newson's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Peter Colt reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Peter Colt, author of The Driftwood Bones (Detective Tommy Kelly).

His entry begins:

The last several months have been a race against time with a deadline for my publisher. That really cut into my reading time. I don't read much fiction but have always liked military history, not odd given I was a commissioned Army Officer. I recently finished Christopher Goscha's outstanding, The Road to Dien Bien Phu . The book is an excellent look at the French Indochina war that spans from the end of the Japanese Occupation to the eponymous battle. What makes Goscha's book stand out is...[read on]

About The Driftwood Bones, from the publisher:

A compromised homicide detective must confront his professional and personal risks when a woman is murdered on Nantucket Island in a gripping novel by the author of Cold Island.

Detective Tommy Kelly has been exiled to Nantucket as the island’s lone state trooper―punishment for professional misconduct that left him isolated, bitter, and relegated to traffic violations. For a homicide detective, there isn’t much to do in a place others call paradise. Until a young woman is found floating in the harbor in Pocomo.

The case forces Tommy to partner again with NPD detective Jo Harris, reopening wounds from their shared past and reminding him of everything he destroyed. Keeping things professional and by the book, they quickly identify the victim―a house cleaner―and close in on their prime suspect. But the investigation takes an unexpected turn. So does Tommy’s judgment when he reignites an affair with a married college acquaintance.

As Tommy and Jo follow an unexpected twist in the case, they discover that beneath Nantucket’s pristine beaches and old-money elegance, something dark is festering. And it’s about to surface.

Visit Peter Colt's website.

My Book, The Movie: Back Bay Blues.

The Page 69 Test: Back Bay Blues.

Q&A with Peter Colt.

The Page 69 Test: Death at Fort Devens.

My Book, The Movie: Death at Fort Devens.

Writers Read: Peter Colt (June 2022).

My Book, The Movie: The Ambassador.

The Page 69 Test: The Ambassador.

The Page 69 Test: The Judge.

My Book, The Movie: The Judge.

Writers Read: Peter Colt (May 2024).

Writers Read: Peter Colt (March 2025).

My Book, The Movie: The Banker.

The Page 69 Test: The Banker.

The Page 69 Test: Cold Island.

Writers Read: Peter Colt (September 2025).

My Book, The Movie: Cold Island.

My Book, The Movie: The Driftwood Bones.

The Page 69 Test: The Driftwood Bones.

Writers Read: Peter Colt.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five great books on the American Revolution

Thomas S. Kidd serves as Research Professor of Church History at Midwestern and the John and Sharon Yeats Endowed Chair of Baptist Studies. Kidd completed a Ph.D. in history at the University of Notre Dame, where he worked with historian of religion George Marsden. He also earned Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees at Clemson University in South Carolina.

His books include Thomas Jefferson: A Biography of Spirit and Flesh, Benjamin Franklin: The Religious Life of a Founding Father, American Christians and Islam: Evangelical Culture and Muslims from the Colonial Period to the Age of Terrorism, and Who Is an Evangelical? The History of a Movement in Crisis.

[The Page 99 Test: American Christians and Islam]

He tagged "five excellent books that would be a great start on learning about the Revolution and American independence." One title on the list:

Gordon Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (1991).

This is arguably the finest book on the Revolution and its consequences, and more readable than his equally brilliant Creation of the American Republic.

Read about another entry on Kidd's list.

--Marshal Zeringue