Katherine Hill's "The Violet Hour," the movie

Today's feature at My Book, The Movie: The Violet Hour by Katherine Hill.

The entry begins:

My husband and I recently spent the better part of a drive home from the airport dreaming up a new movie adaptation of As You Like It. We got as far as Channing Tatum for Charles the Wrestler and stopped—because it was too perfect a choice and no other decision could top it. I have a similar problem with my novel. I watch a lot of movies and I like to think about their approaches to storytelling, so I can certainly see parts of The Violet Hour cinematically—Cassandra and Abe’s explosive fight on their sailboat, for instance, or Cassandra’s first corpse, or Elizabeth’s adventure at an outdoor movie. But other aspects of my American family in disarray are perhaps too interior, more rooted in the words and thought of fiction than in the sights and sounds of the screen.

Which is not to say I’m opposed to The Violet Hour movie. Not at all. Not in the slightest. Do not get me wrong. I’d love to talk with you further. Because let’s be honest: having your book made into a movie is right up there with the double rainbow as one of the all-time coolest things that can happen to a person.

The common complaint is that movie adaptations ruin books by getting them wrong or changing too much (for instance, Martin Scorsese’s casting of blonde Michelle Pfeiffer as Madame Olenska and brunette Winona Ryder as May Welland in the otherwise masterful The Age of Innocence, when it should’ve been the other way around). I’m of the opposite school: I’d actually love to see a director riff on the book a little, create something new that only cinema can make. Forget literal adaptations. After all, most of my favorite recent movies, from...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Katherine Hill's website and blog.

Writers Read: Katherine Hill.

My Book, The Movie: The Violet Hour.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Lisa Stampnitzky's "Disciplining Terror"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Disciplining Terror: How Experts Invented "Terrorism" by Lisa Stampnitzky.

About Disciplining Terror, from the publisher:

Since 9/11 we have been told that terrorists are pathological evildoers, beyond our comprehension. Before the 1970s, however, hijackings, assassinations, and other acts we now call 'terrorism' were considered the work of rational strategic actors. 'Disciplining Terror' examines how political violence became 'terrorism,' and how this transformation ultimately led to the current 'war on terror.' Drawing upon archival research and interviews with terrorism experts, Lisa Stampnitzky traces the political and academic struggles through which experts made terrorism, and terrorism made experts. She argues that the expert discourse on terrorism operates at the boundary - itself increasingly contested - between science and politics, and between academic expertise and the state. Despite terrorism now being central to contemporary political discourse, there have been few empirical studies of terrorism experts. This book investigates how the concept of terrorism has been developed and used over recent decades.

Learn more about Disciplining Terror at the Cambridge University Press website.

Writers Read: Lisa Stampnitzky.

The Page 99 Test: Disciplining Terror.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Chelsea Quinn Yarbro reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, author of Night Pilgrims.

Her entry begins:

David Crystal's The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language in trade paperback, looking for shifts in English in the early 17th century; yesterday, Dr. Ben Green's The Color of Horses, just because I love horses and I miss riding...[read on]

About Night Pilgrims, from the publisher:

Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's first Saint-Germain novel, Hotel Transylvania, was recently nominated as Vampire Novel of the Century. Her Saint-Germain cycle, now comprised of more than twenty-five books, is a masterwork of historical horror fiction. The vampire Count Saint-Germain has crisscrossed the world many times, seeking love and the blood of life and seeing humanity at its best and worst.

In Night Pilgrims, Saint-Germain is living in a monastery in Egypt when he is hired to guide a group of pilgrims to underground churches in southern Egypt. The vampire finds a companion in a lovely widow who later fears that her dalliance with the Count will prevent her from reaching Heaven.

The pilgrims begin to fall prey to the trials of travel in the Holy Lands; some see visions and hear the word of God; others are seduced by desires for riches and power. A visit to the Chapel of the Holy Grail brings many quarrels to a head; Saint-Germain must use all his diplomacy and a good deal of his strength to keep the pilgrims from slaughtering one another.

Learn more about the book and author at Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's website.

My Book, The Movie: Saint-Germain Chronicles.

Writers Read: Chelsea Quinn Yarbro.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Andrew Sean Greer's "The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells by Andrew Sean Greer.

About The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells, from the publisher:

1985. After the death of her beloved twin brother, Felix, and the breakup with her longtime lover, Nathan, Greta Wells embarks on a radical psychiatric treatment to alleviate her suffocating depression. But the treatment has unexpected effects, and Greta finds herself transported to the lives she might have had if she'd been born in different eras.

During the course of her treatment, Greta cycles between her own time and alternate lives in 1918, where she is a bohemian adulteress, and 1941, which transforms her into a devoted mother and wife. Separated by time and social mores, Greta's three lives are remarkably similar, fraught with familiar tensions and difficult choices. Each reality has its own losses, its own rewards, and each extracts a different price. And the modern Greta learns that her alternate selves are unpredictable, driven by their own desires and needs.

As her final treatment looms, questions arise: What will happen once each Greta learns how to remain in one of the other worlds? Who will choose to stay in which life?

Magically atmospheric, achingly romantic, The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells beautifully imagines "what if" and wondrously wrestles with the impossibility of what could be.

Learn more about the book and author at Andrew Sean Greer's website and follow him on Facebook.

Writers Read: Andrew Sean Greer.

The Page 69 Test: The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells.

--Marshal Zeringue

Coffee with a canine: Kate Kelly & Lucy

Today's featured duo at Coffee with a Canine: Kate Kelly & Lucy.

The author, on Lucy's background:

Lucy is a female of indeterminate breed and an age we don’t know. She was found in Mexico where our vet had gone to run a spaying clinic. Lucy (then named Pancha) had been hit by a car and someone saved her but couldn’t afford for her to have medical care. As a result, she has a very odd gait from the accident but it doesn’t seem to bother her at all. She’s...[read on]

About Kate Kelly's You Lucky Dog!, from the publisher:

You Lucky Dog! is an uplifting compilation of true stories about homeless dogs that somehow survived and thrived to become local or national celebrities. One such story features Bum, a steamship stowaway, who hops off a ship in San Diego in 1886 and makes the town his home. There's also Terry, the dog who played Toto in The Wizard of Oz, who was given away by his first owners who found him disobedient. Don't forget that famous Benji was a shelter dog before he became a star.

The book also contains unforgettable stories about America's First Dogs (and a First Fish and a First Raccoon) to give a rounded view of our dogs' place in American history. Kate captures their very souls in moving descriptions of the devotion, loyalty and trust that not only changed the fortune of these very special dogs, but also the lives of their human caregivers.

Visit the America Comes Alive website, and learn more about You Lucky Dog! From Homeless to Famous.

Read--Coffee with a Canine: Kate Kelly and Lucy.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten must-read books set in the Midwest

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog, Lauren Passell tagged ten must-read books that take place in the Midwest, including:

Winter’s Bone, by Daniel Woodrell

The Midwest brought us Laura Ingalls Wilder, but it also brought us Ree Dolly, who lives in the modern-day, impoverished Ozarks. And while I wouldn’t mess with either of these characters, Ree’s toughness instills a different level of fear in me. Her grit is tested when she finds out that her dad has skipped bail on charges he ran a crystal meth lab and her family might lose its home if he doesn’t show for his court date. To get to the bottom of things, Ree has to face the complicated and dangerous infrastructure that is her own family to bring her father home, dead or alive. How many sixteen-year-olds do you know can do that?

Read about another entry on the list.

Also see: Thirteen great books out of the Midwest.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jincy Willett's "Winner of the National Book Award," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: Winner of the National Book Award by Jincy Willett.

The entry begins:

I'd love to see Winner of the National Book Award as a movie.

Abigail and Dorcas Mather are fraternal twins living in Rhode Island. Dorcas is virginal, slender, acerbic; she's the head librarian at Squanto. Her sister is plump, sexually voracious, amoral; she kills her husband and becomes a feminist icon. Dorcas narrates the novel as she waits for an imminent hurricane and reads a bestseller her sister has written, a largely false memoir about...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Jincy Willett's website.

My Book, The Movie: Winner of the National Book Award.

--Marshal Zeringue

The 10 best modernist books (in English)

Laura Frost, an associate professor of literary studies and chair of liberal studies at The New School, is the author of the new book, The Problem with Pleasure: Modernism and Its Discontents.

For Publishers Weekly she named the ten best modernist books (in English)--and offered a few tips for reading them:

1. Take your time: you’re not just reading for plot here; you’re reading for the play of the words on the page, the structure, the overall effect. 2. Be curious: if something is daunting or disorienting, ask yourself what makes it so. 3. Play the game: each book has different principles. The more you figure them out, the more you’ll enjoy reading. 4. Don’t get bogged down: when you come across something like the notoriously difficult “Oxen of the Sun” episode of Ulysses, do your best but keep going until something clicks for you. 5. Finally, re-read. Joyce once claimed, “The demand that I make of my reader is that he [sic] should devote his whole life to reading my works.” That kind of commitment is not required, but it helps.

One title on Frost's list:

Virginia Woolf, To The Lighthouse (1927) - A novel about time, perception, aesthetics, gender roles, and death, but grounded in compelling, idiosyncratic characters like the patriarchal yet helpless Mr. Ramsay and his quietly powerful wife. Lyrical, puzzling, and shocking by turns (note how Woolf puts the violence of war and major deaths in brackets), few novels rival this one for formal invention and sheer beauty.

Read about another book on the list.

To the Lighthouse appears among the Barnes & Noble Review's list of five unforgettable fathers from fiction, Margaret Drabble's top ten literary landscapes, the American Book Review's 100 best last lines from novels, Amity Gaige's best books, and Adam Langer's best books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Clare Mulley's "The Spy Who Loved"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: The Spy Who Loved: The Secrets and Lives of Christine Granville by Clare Mulley.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Untold Story of Britain’s First Female Special Agent of World War II

In June 1952, a woman was murdered by an obsessed colleague in a hotel in the South Kensington district of London. Her name was Christine Granville. That she died young was perhaps unsurprising; that she had survived the Second World War was remarkable.

The daughter of a feckless Polish aristocrat and his wealthy Jewish wife, Granville would become one of Britain’s most daring and highly decorated special agents. Having fled to Britain on the outbreak of war, she was recruited by the intelligence services and took on mission after mission. She skied over the hazardous High Tatras into occupied Poland, served in Egypt and North Africa, and was later parachuted behind enemy lines into France, where an agent’s life expectancy was only six weeks. Her courage, quick wit, and determination won her release from arrest more than once, and saved the lives of several fellow officers—including one of her many lovers—just hours before their execution by the Gestapo. More importantly, the intelligence she gathered in her espionage was a significant contribution to the Allied war effort, and she was awarded the George Medal, the OBE, and the Croix de Guerre.

Granville exercised a mesmeric power on those who knew her. In The Spy Who Loved, acclaimed biographer Clare Mulley tells the extraordinary history of this charismatic, difficult, fearless, and altogether extraordinary woman.

Learn more about the book and author at Clare Mulley's website, and view a short video of the author talking about the book.

My Book, The Movie: The Spy Who Loved.

The Page 99 Test: The Spy Who Loved.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Dale M. Kushner reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Dale M. Kushner, author of The Conditions of Love.

Her entry begins:

Here’s my idea of heaven: a cabin in the woods, pine-scented wind, a lake full of sky. Time dissolved and I can read uninterrupted!

For now, I’ve just finished Alexander Chee’s Edinburgh. Chee is a writer who knows about the sacred, about moments of love and beauty that save us from being swallowed by a dark cosmos. In prose both muscular and hauntingly lyrical, Chee reveals the story of Fee, a sensitive Korean-American boy growing up in small town Maine. Early on, Fee is told a family legend by his Korean grandfather: they are descended from The Lady Tammamo, a demon fox spirit who assumed the form of a beautiful woman to marry a human—a shape-shifter. Fee embraces the legend, and Chee astutely weaves the image of the fox into his narrative to underscore the mythic quality of Fee’s life. The fox represents...[read on]

About The Conditions of Love, from the publisher:

Dale M. Kushner's novel The Conditions of Love traces the journey of a girl from childhood to adulthood as she reckons with her parents' abandonment, her need to break from society's limitations, and her overwhelming desire for spiritual and erotic love. In 1953, ten-year-old Eunice lives in the backwaters of Wisconsin with her outrageously narcissistic mother, a manicureeste and movie star worshipper. Abandoned by her father as an infant, Eunice worries that she will become a misfit like her mother. When her mother's lover, the devoted Sam, moves in, Eunice imagines her life will finally become normal. But her hope dissolves when Sam gets kicked out, and she is again alone with her mother. A freak storm sends Eunice away from all things familiar. Rescued by the shaman-like Rose, Eunice's odyssey continues with a stay in a hermit's shack and ends with a passionate love affair with an older man. Through her capacity to redefine herself, reject bitterness and keep her heart open, she survives and flourishes. In this, she is both ordinary and heroic. At once fable and realistic story, The Conditions of Love is a book about emotional and physical survival. Through sheer force of will, Eunice saves herself from a doomed life.

This engaging examination of a mother and daughter's relationship will appeal to the same audience that embraced Mona Simpson's acclaimed classic Anywhere But Here and Elizabeth Strout's bestselling Amy and Isabelle.

Learn more about the book and author at Dale Kushner's website and blog.

Writers Read: Dale M. Kushner.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six notable books about marriage

J. Courtney Sullivan is the author of the novels Commencement, Maine, and the recently released The Engagements.

One of her six favorite books about marriage, as told to The Week magazine:

Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner

This exquisite novel details a friendship between two married couples over several decades, as life's changing circumstances test the strength of their bonds. It's a wise and wonderful read.

Read about another novel on the list.

Visit J. Courtney Sullivan's website. 

Crossing to Safety is among Simon Winchester's five top novels on U.S. frontier social history and Lan Samantha Chang's five best list of novels on friendship.

The Page 69 Test: J. Courtney Sullivan's Commencement.

Also see: Top ten marriage tales and Five best works that explore marriage.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Holly Robinson's "The Wishing Hill"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: The Wishing Hill by Holly Robinson.

About the book, from the publisher:

What if everything you knew about your life was wrong?

Years ago, Juliet Clark gave up her life in California to follow the man she loved to Mexico and pursue her dream of being an artist. Now her marriage is over, and she’s alone, selling watercolors to tourists on the Puerto Vallarta boardwalk.

When her brother asks her to come home to wintery New England and care for their ailing mother, a flamboyant actress with a storied past, Juliet goes reluctantly. She and her self-absorbed mother have always clashed. Plus, nobody back home knows about her divorce—or the fact that she’s pregnant and her ex-husband is not the father.

Juliet intends to get her mother back on her feet and return to Mexico fast, but nothing goes as planned. Instead she meets a man who makes her question every choice and reawakens her spirit, even as she is being drawn into a long-running feud between her mother and a reclusive neighbor. Little does she know that these relationships hold the key to shocking secrets about her family and herself that have been hiding in plain sight.…

Learn more about the book and author at Holly Robinson's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Wishing Hill.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten pairs of books made better when read together

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog, Lauren Passell tagged 20 peanut butter & jelly reads (books made better when read together), including:

To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, and In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote

By now it’s pretty much been proven that Truman Capote did not write To Kill A Mockingbird, okay? But we can still pretend there is a slight possibility that Capote penned both—so read both carefully. If you discover nothing suspicious, you’ll still have read two of the best books ever written—both detailing violent crime trials.

Read about another entry on the list.

In Cold Blood also appears on Kit Whitfield's top ten list of genre-defying novels, Sarah Weinman's list of best true crime books, Catherine Crier's five top crime books list, Ann Rule's five best list of true-crime books, and Bryan Burrough's six best books list. Kansas' first poet laureate Jonathan Holden's chose In Cold Blood for The Great Kansas novel.

To Kill a Mockingbird made Charlie Fletcher's top ten list of adventure classics, Sheila Bair's 6 favorite books list, Kathryn Erskine's top ten list of first person narratives, Julia Donaldson's six best books list, TIME magazine's top 10 list of books you were forced to read in school, John Mullan's list of ten of the best lawyers in literature, John Cusack's list of books that made a difference to him, Lisa Scottoline's top ten list of books about justice, and Luke Leitch's list of ten literary one-hit wonders. It is one of Sanjeev Bhaskar's six best books and one of Alexandra Styron's five best stories of fathers and daughters.

--Marshal Zeringue

Andrea Lochen's "The Repeat Year," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: The Repeat Year by Andrea Lochen.

The entry begins:

Casting actors for The Repeat Year is actually a lot more challenging than I thought it would be, but what a fun challenge and a great excuse to pore over the Internet Movie Database for a few hours!

My protagonist, Olive Watson, the young ICU nurse who finds herself reliving the previous year, was the hardest one for me to cast because she’s so dear to me, and I feel like I would need to entrust her to someone really beautiful and talented. I think she’d be in good hands portrayed by the lovely Kate Mara because of the depth, intelligence, and sensitivity she brings to every role she plays.

Her best friend, Kerrigan Morland, would have to be played by...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Andrea Lochen's website and Facebook page.

Writers Read: Andrea Lochen.

The Page 69 Test: The Repeat Year.

My Book, The Movie: The Repeat Year.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Michael Parfit & Suzanne Chisholm's "The Lost Whale"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: The Lost Whale: The True Story of an Orca Named Luna by Michael Parfit and Suzanne Chisholm.

About the book, from the publisher:

The heartbreaking and true story of a lonely orca named Luna who befriended humans in Nootka Sound, off the coast of Vancouver Island by Michael Parfit and Suzanne Chisholm.

One summer in Nootka Sound on the west coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, a young killer whale called Luna got separated from his pod. Like humans, orcas are highly social and depend on their families, but Luna found himself desperately alone. So he tried to make contact with people. He begged for attention at boats and docks. He looked soulfully into people's eyes. He wanted to have his tongue rubbed. When someone whistled at him, he squeaked and whistled back. People fell in love with him, but the government decided that being friendly with Luna was bad for him, and tried to keep him away from humans. Policemen arrested people for rubbing Luna’s nose. Fines were levied. Undaunted, Luna refused to give up his search for connection and people went out to meet him, like smugglers carrying friendship through the dark. But does friendship work between species? People who loved Luna couldn't agree on how to help him. Conflict came to Nootka Sound. The government built a huge net. The First Nations’ members brought out their canoes. Nothing went as planned, and the ensuing events caught everyone by surprise and challenged the very nature of that special and mysterious bond we humans call friendship. The Lost Whale celebrates the life of a smart, friendly, determined, transcendent being from the sea who appeared among us like a promise out of the blue: that the greatest secrets in life are still to be discovered.

Learn more about Michael Parfit and Suzanne Chisholm, and read more about The Lost Whale at the St. Martin's Press website.

The Page 99 Test: The Lost Whale.

--Marshal Zeringue

Science fiction's 5 best guides to the present

"It's 2013 and there are no bases on Mars or even Luna. We aren't exploring the galaxy at warp speed and, given the impossibility of faster-than-light travel, we never will be," notes Damien Walter in the Guardian. Yet, he adds, science fiction is "the only reliable guide I've found to the weird present we're now all living in."

One of five SF themes that Walter suggests helps us understand the world today--quantum reality:

It's been a full century since quantum mechanics and relativity theory changed our basic understanding of the universe, but most of us are still live our daily lives as though they operated with the clockwork certainty of Newtonian physics. The emerging literary genre of Quantum Fiction tries to shift our scientific understanding into the human realm, and includes novels by Audrey Niffeneger, Douglas Adams and Scarlett Thomas. A list to which I would add M John Harrison's Kefahuchi Tract trilogy, that takes us on a journey across space and time, only to return us to the point where our dreams and flights of imagination impact with the quantum foam at the root of reality.

Read about what Walter has to say about psychic powers in SF and our world today.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Andrew Sean Greer reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Andrew Sean Greer, author of The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells.

His entry begins:

I am reading a book of Japanese Poetry translated by Kenneth Rexroth. While not particularly a fan of his school of poetry, I have found that his translations are eye-popping, perhaps precisely because he has no interest in antiquity, or in much literal meaning, only in sound and sense. Thus, his ancient Greek poetry collection knocked my socks off. Similarly this collection took me out of a very bad mood last week in Seattle. A poem I have known for a long time...[read on]

About The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells, from the publisher:

1985. After the death of her beloved twin brother, Felix, and the breakup with her longtime lover, Nathan, Greta Wells embarks on a radical psychiatric treatment to alleviate her suffocating depression. But the treatment has unexpected effects, and Greta finds herself transported to the lives she might have had if she'd been born in different eras.

During the course of her treatment, Greta cycles between her own time and alternate lives in 1918, where she is a bohemian adulteress, and 1941, which transforms her into a devoted mother and wife. Separated by time and social mores, Greta's three lives are remarkably similar, fraught with familiar tensions and difficult choices. Each reality has its own losses, its own rewards, and each extracts a different price. And the modern Greta learns that her alternate selves are unpredictable, driven by their own desires and needs.

As her final treatment looms, questions arise: What will happen once each Greta learns how to remain in one of the other worlds? Who will choose to stay in which life?

Magically atmospheric, achingly romantic, The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells beautifully imagines "what if" and wondrously wrestles with the impossibility of what could be.

Learn more about the book and author at Andrew Sean Greer's website and follow him on Facebook.

Writers Read: Andrew Sean Greer.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Joy Castro's "Nearer Home"

Today's feature at the Page 69 Test: Nearer Home by Joy Castro.

About the book, from the publisher:

The irresistible, razor-sharp second book in the post-Katrina New Orleans-set crime series featuring unforgettable and gutsy reporter Nola Céspedes

Early one morning, Times-Picayune crime reporter Nola Céspedes goes for her regular run in Audubon Park. More than the heat of the dawning New Orleans day, she’s trying to outrun her growing unease with the man she's seeing, who is pushing her to get more serious. Instead, Nola finds herself at the scene of a crime when she discovers a dead body. Worse, Nola recognizes the victim: Judith Taffner, her former journalism professor at Tulane.

Not convinced Dr. Taffner’s murder was the random work of a psychopath, and not one to put much trust in the good ol’ boys of the NOPD, Nola takes it upon herself to investigate. She discovers that Dr. Taffner was working on two explosive stories, both of which would shock even this notoriously corrupt city. And when an apparently related murder occurs in the middle of New Orleans’ packed Jazz Fest, Nola realizes it’s only a matter of time before she becomes a ruthless killer's next target.

Rich with details of New Orleans and featuring an original, tough heroine as fascinating as the city itself, Nearer Home is the perfect follow-up to Joy Castro’s Hell or High Water, confirming her status as a talented new crime writer to watch.

Learn more about the book and author at Joy Castro’s website and Twitter perch.

The Page 69 Test: Hell or High Water.

Writers Read: Joy Castro (July 2012).

Writers Read: Joy Castro.

The Page 69 Test: Nearer Home.

--Marshal Zeringue

Anthony Bourdain's ten favorite books

Anthony Bourdain is a world traveler who has had successful careers as a chef, TV host, and author.

He named his ten favorite books for Business Insider. One title on the list:

The Friends Of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins

"The best, most realistic crime novel ever. Best dialogue in a crime novel ever," Bourdain said.

This classic crime novel by George V. Higgins tells the tale of bank heists, mobsters, and cops in Boston during the 1960s. Higgins uses sharp dialogue and suspense techniques to keep readers on edge.

Read about another book on Bourdain's list.

The Friends of Eddie Coyle is among Don Winslow's top five crime novels and Elmore Leonard's five most important books.

Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential is among the Guardian's top ten food books of the last decade, David Kamp's six books notable for their food prose, Trevor White's ten notable books about dining, and Laura Lippman's top ten memorable memoirs.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Toby Tyrrell's "On Gaia"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: On Gaia: A Critical Investigation of the Relationship between Life and Earth by Toby Tyrrell.

About the book, from the publisher:

One of the enduring questions about our planet is how it has remained continuously habitable over vast stretches of geological time despite the fact that its atmosphere and climate are potentially unstable. James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis posits that life itself has intervened in the regulation of the planetary environment in order to keep it stable and favorable for life. First proposed in the 1970s, Lovelock's hypothesis remains highly controversial and continues to provoke fierce debate. On Gaia undertakes the first in-depth investigation of the arguments put forward by Lovelock and others--and concludes that the evidence doesn't stack up in support of Gaia.

Toby Tyrrell draws on the latest findings in fields as diverse as climate science, oceanography, atmospheric science, geology, ecology, and evolutionary biology. He takes readers to obscure corners of the natural world, from southern Africa where ancient rocks reveal that icebergs were once present near the equator, to mimics of cleaner fish on Indonesian reefs, to blind fish deep in Mexican caves. Tyrrell weaves these and many other intriguing observations into a comprehensive analysis of the major assertions and lines of argument underpinning Gaia, and finds that it is not a credible picture of how life and Earth interact.

On Gaia reflects on the scientific evidence indicating that life and environment mutually affect each other, and proposes that feedbacks on Earth do not provide robust protection against the environment becoming uninhabitable--or against poor stewardship by us.

Learn more about On Gaia at the Princeton University Press website.

Tyrrell is professor of Earth system science at the National Oceanography Centre Southampton (University of Southampton).

The Page 99 Test: On Gaia.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five notable fictional gold diggers

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog, Allegra Frazier tagged five of her favorite fictional gold diggers, including:

Becky Sharp (Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray).

A clever orphan and the founding foremother of shameless gold digging, Sharp engineers her own marriage for money, launching herself into an elite universe of parties, social intrigue, sex, and, of course, wild consumption.

Happiness factor: Negligible. “Her success excited, elated, and then bored her.” But even though war, debt, and that pesky impoverished background are always nipping at her heels, it’s hard not be impressed by how much Becky manages to accumulate before her empire starts to crumble.

Read about another entry on the list. 

Vanity Fair also appears on John Mullan's list of ten of the most memorable governesses in literature, Stella Tillyard's list of favorite historical novels, John Mullan's lists of ten of the best fat men in literature and ten of the best pianos in literature, and Thomas Mallon's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Aric Davis's "The Fort," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: The Fort by Aric Davis.

His entry begins:

I have to admit, though I frequently have fantasies of one of my novels being made into a movie, rarely do I go through with actually casting my imaginary production. That said, making this list might just have turned this task into a new hobby. My new novel, The Fort, with its youthful heroes and absolutely deplorable antagonist, seems to me like it would work as a feature film. As fun as writing about this stuff is, imagining actors fleshing out these roles is a freaking riot. Now then, onto the casting call.

Matt Hooper: Who best to play the damaged and insane Vietnam Veteran? As The Fort is set firmly in the year 1987, someone younger than you might immediately think is in order. To me, Michael Fassbender seems a good fit. I think he could do crazy well, and his growing resume in films like Prometheus and Inglourious Basterds more than speaks for itself.

Detective Dick Van Endel: This is a toughie, mostly because I normally picture the grizzled, older version of Van Endel that has graced some of my books set in a more modern setting. Casting The Fort, I need someone who looks like they could grow up to be grizzled, but also has the sort of wet-behind-the-ears jerkiness that helps to define this younger detective. I think...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at the official Aric Davis website.

The Page 69 Test: The Fort.

My Book, The Movie: The Fort.

--Marshal Zeringue

Mickey Sumner's 6 best books

Mickey Sumner is the daughter of musician/actor Sting and producer Trudie Styler. She is best-known for playing Francesca in the TV drama The Borgias. Her latest film is Frances Ha.

One of Sumner's six best books, as told to The Daily Express:

LET THE GREAT WORLD SPIN by Colum McCann

This is beautiful and poetic. It's also set in New York where I live. He's just a really great writer.

Read about another book on Sumner's list.

"[McCann] is a weaver in the way that epic story tellers are," writes the novelist Christine Wade. "And he connects the many threads that comprise a day in the not so distant, but distant enough past, to the cloth wrapped around our post 9/11 present. We have been here before and know the place, and are delighted to be here again. Though I barreled through [Let the Great World Spin] to the finish, days later the voices of his cast of characters are still whispering to me as I walk the streets of New York, looking up between the tall buildings to the sky."

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Sarah Butler reading?

This weekend's featured contributor at Writers Read: Sarah Butler, author of Ten Things I've Learnt About Love.

Her entry begins:

As a child I used to always have more than one book on the go and would pick and choose which to read depending on my mood. It’s a habit I lost after University, probably because I was so busy working and writing and studying that I didn’t have enough head space to hold all those storylines in my head at the same time. However, in the last year I’ve fallen back into the habit – and it feels good!

I’m currently half way through Love by Toni Morrison. It’s a signed copy that I bought ten years ago, whilst doing an MA in Creative Writing at UEA in Norwich, England, and it’s sat on my shelf waiting for me all this time! I often do that – buy a book but don’t read it for years. And then a time comes when I want to sit down with it. I picked up Love because...[read on]

About the book, from the publisher:

About to turn thirty, Alice is the youngest of three daughters, and the black sheep of her family. Drawn to traveling in far-flung and often dangerous countries, she has never enjoyed the closeness with her father that her two older sisters have and has eschewed their more conventional career paths. She has left behind a failed relationship in London with the man she thought she might marry and is late to hear the news that her father is dying. She returns to the family home only just in time to say good-bye.

Daniel is called many things—"tramp", "bum", "lost." He hasn't had a roof over his head for almost thirty years, but he once had a steady job and a passionate love affair with a woman he’s never forgotten. To him, the city of London has come to be like home in a way that no bricks and mortar dwelling ever was. He makes sculptures out of the objects he finds on his walks throughout the city—bits of string and scraps of paper, a child’s hair tie, and a lost earring—and experiences synesthesia, a neurological condition which causes him to see words and individual letters of the alphabet as colors. But as he approaches his sixties his health is faltering, and he is kept alive by the knowledge of one thing—that he has a daughter somewhere in the world whom he has never been able to find.

A searching and inventive debut, Ten Things I’ve Learnt About Love is a story about finding love in unexpected places, about rootlessness and homecoming, and the power of the ties that bind. It announces Sarah Butler as a major new talent for telling stories that are heart-wrenching, page-turning, and unforgettable.

Learn more about the book and author at Sarah Butler's website.

Writers Read: Sarah Butler.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: David Gordon's "Mystery Girl"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Mystery Girl by David Gordon.

About Mystery Girl, from the publisher:

When Sam Kornberg’s wife, Lala, walks out on him, he’s an unemployed used bookstore clerk and failed experimental novelist with a broken heart. Desperate to win her back, he takes a job as assistant detective to the enigmatic Solar Lonsky, a private eye who might be an eccentric and morbid genius or just a morbidly obese madman.

It’s a simple tail job, following a beautiful and mysterious lady around L.A., but Sam soon finds himself helplessly falling for his quarry and hopelessly entangled in a murder case involving Satanists, succubi, underground filmmakers, Hollywood bigshots, Mexican shootouts, video-store geekery, and sexy dopplegangers from beyond the grave. A case that heralds the risks of hardcore reading and the mournful death of the novel…or perhaps just the decline of Western Civilization.

Mystery Girl is a thriller about the dangers of marriage and a detective story about the unsolvable mysteries of love, art, and other people.

Learn more about the book and author at David Gordon's blog.

Gordon's first novel, The Serialist, won the VCU/Cabell First Novel Award and was a finalist for an Edgar Award.

The Page 69 Test: The Serialist.

Writers Read: David Gordon.

The Page 69 Test: Mystery Girl.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top international thrillers

One of ten excellent international thrillers according to the editors of The Barnes & Noble Review and presented at the Christian Science Monitor:

"Pale Horses," by Jassy Mackenzie

Base jumper Sonet van Renburg mysteriously falls to her death off a skyscraper in Johannesburg, and her adrenalin junkie partner is certain it’s no accident in this taut South African thriller featuring the astute Detective Jade de Jong.

Read about another novel on the list.

Visit Jassy Mackenzie's website. Her three previous Jade de Jong novels are Random Violence, Stolen Lives, and The Fallen.

The Page 69 Test: Random Violence.

The Page 69 Test: Stolen Lives.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight fictional women who stood by their men

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog, Rebecca Jane Stokes tagged eight fictional women who stood by their men, including:

Sylvia (Parade’s End, Ford Madox Ford).

To call Sylvia a wronged woman is absolutely a stretch. If anything, it’s her husband, Christopher, who is wronged by the flighty, unfaithful woman he’s married. That said, she stays with him for a time after rumors of his emotional affair with a young suffragette named Valentine start to swirl.

Read about another woman on the list.

Parade’s End also appears on Raymond Sokolov's list of five of the best books for the Anglomaniac.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Emma Jinhua Teng's "Eurasian"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Eurasian: Mixed Identities in the United States, China, and Hong Kong, 1842-1943 by Emma Jinhua Teng.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the second half of the nineteenth century, global labor migration, trade, and overseas study brought China and the United States into close contact, leading to new cross-cultural encounters that brought mixed-race families into being. Yet the stories of these families remain largely unknown. How did interracial families negotiate their identities within these societies when mixed-race marriage was taboo and “Eurasian” often a derisive term?

In Eurasian, Emma Jinhua Teng compares Chinese-Western mixed-race families in the United States, China, and Hong Kong, examining both the range of ideas that shaped the formation of Eurasian identities in these diverse contexts and the claims set forth by individual Eurasians concerning their own identities. Teng argues that Eurasians were not universally marginalized during this era, as is often asserted. Rather, Eurasians often found themselves facing contradictions between exclusionary and inclusive ideologies of race and nationality, and between overt racism and more subtle forms of prejudice that were counterbalanced by partial acceptance and privilege.

By tracing the stories of mixed and transnational families during an earlier era of globalization, Eurasian also demonstrates to students, faculty, scholars, and researchers how changes in interracial ideology have allowed the descendants of some of these families to reclaim their dual heritage with pride.

Learn more about Eurasian: Mixed Identities in the United States, China, and Hong Kong, 1842-1943 at the University of California Press.

The Page 99 Test: Eurasian.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Katherine Hill reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Katherine Hill, author of The Violet Hour.

Her entry begins:

As a writer, reading is both a hobby and a job for me, and I’m sort of obsessive about both. I keep an endless and motley list of books I need to read because the writer does something interesting with language or plot or setting, or because the subject matter relates to something I’m writing, or because enough people have mentioned the book to me this week that I just absolutely have to read it right this minute. I’m also constantly trying to fill holes—the books I really should have read already, sometime before I was born.

My current read, Zadie Smith’s NW, satisfies just about every one of those higgledy piggledy categories. (It even uses the phrase “higgledy piggledy,” and gets away with it.) I’ve been a Smith fan since White Teeth. She’s like this great young athlete whose moves are so recklessly controlled that I’m always rooting for her even when she makes an error. Except she’s not exactly...[read on]

About The Violet Hour, from the publisher:

A pitch-perfect, emotionally riveting debut novel about the fracturing of a marriage and a family – from an award-winning young writer with superb storytelling instincts.

Life hasn’t always been perfect for Abe and Cassandra Green, but an afternoon on the San Francisco Bay might be as good as it gets. Abe is a rheumatologist, piloting his coveted new boat. Cassandra is a sculptor, finally gaining modest attention for her art. Their beautiful daughter, Elizabeth, is heading to Harvard in the fall. Somehow, they’ve made things work. But then, out of nowhere, they plunge into a terrible fight. Cassandra has been unfaithful. In a fit of fury, Abe throws himself off the boat.

A love story that begins with the end of a marriage, The Violet Hour follows a modern family through past and present, from the funeral home in the Washington suburbs where Cassandra and her siblings grow up to the San Francisco public health clinic where Abe and Cassandra first meet. As the Greens navigate the passage of time—the expectations of youth, the concessions of middle age, the headiness of desire, the bitterness of loss—they must come to terms with the fragility of their intimacy, the strange legacies they inherit from their parents, and the kind of people they want to be. Exquisitely written, The Violet Hour is the deeply moving story of a family suddenly ripped apart, but then just possibly reborn.

Learn more about the book and author at Katherine Hill's website and blog.

Writers Read: Katherine Hill.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Kelly Harms's "The Good Luck Girls of Shipwreck Lane"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: The Good Luck Girls of Shipwreck Lane by Kelly Harms.

About the book, from the publisher:

A debut novel about luck and love, and winning a sweepstakes, with a cast of characters who will charm readers from the very first page

The HomeSweetHome Network has just announced this year's lucky winner of a brand-new, fully loaded dream home: Janine Brown of Cedar Falls, Iowa.

For Janine "Janey" Brown, hearing her name called on the TV has the hallmarks of one of her aunt Midge's harebrained plans designed to bring Janey into a world outside the one she once shared with her fiancé. Janey, however, is reluctant to give up the safety and sanctity she finds in her tiny kitchen, submerging her anxiety and grief in the pursuit of the perfect pot-au-feu.

Meanwhile, across town, Janine "Nean" Brown just knows that this house is her destiny. Good fortune took its sweet time showing up in her life, but better late than never. And now that it's here, the house promises an escape from the latest in her revolving door of crappy jobs and drunk boyfriends. This house will turn her into someone the world sees, instead of the bedraggled girl who others look past without a thought.

Both Janine Browns head for Christmas Cove, Maine, to claim the prize they both rightfully think is theirs. When their lives and personalities intersect, however, they discover that more than just a million-dollar dream home awaits them at the water’s edge. These three women (oh yes, Aunt Midge comes along for the ride!) arrive at their newfound mansion only to uncover what exactly it means to truly be "home."

Filled with wit and charm, The Good Luck Girls of Shipwreck Lane is Kelly Harms's enchanting and heartfelt debut--a testament to the many, many ways love finds us, the power of a home-cooked meal, and just what it means to be lucky.

Learn more about the book and author at the official Kelly Harms website, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.

The Page 69 Test: The Good Luck Girls of Shipwreck Lane.

--Marshal Zeringue

Clare Mulley's "The Spy Who Loved," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: The Spy Who Loved: The Secrets and Lives of Christine Granville by Clare Mulley.

Her entry begins:

The eponymous Spy Who Loved was Krystyna Skarbek, aka Christine Granville, Britain’s first female special agent of WWII. This Polish, part-Jewish, Countess and pre-war beauty queen would become one of the most successful and highly decorated agents of the war. The book title is not only an oblique reference to James Bond – Christine was an inspiration for Bond’s creator Ian Fleming – but also a reference to Christine’s huge appetite for life, which she loved in its widest sense. She loved danger, adventure and adrenalin. She loved men – she had two husbands and numerous lovers. But most of all she loved freedom; freedom for her country, Poland, and the Allies, and freedom for herself. Who on earth could play such a woman and bring to life not only her magnetism, but her great patriotism, courage, determination, occasional cruelty and deep generosity?

The tempting answer is Rachel Weisz, not just a dark-haired beauty and action actress, but in real life Mrs James Bond, in that she is married to Daniel Craig. Or what about the stunning Eva Green who played Vesper Lynd, the Bond beauty reputedly inspired by Christine, in the 2006 film of Casino Royale? I would have to resist both, great actresses though both may be. The link to Bond is just too close for comfort. Christine’s life and achievements, even her looks, may have inspired Fleming, but she herself was much more Bond that Bond-girl. She demands an actress who will...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Clare Mulley's website, and view a short video of the author talking about the book.

My Book, The Movie: The Spy Who Loved.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five of the best books on Britain's royal inheritors

One title on the Barnes & Noble Review's list of books on baby-watching in Great Britain, past and present:

Wolf Hall
by Hilary Mantel

Henry VIII is brilliantly reimagined by Hilary Mantel in her fictionalized account of the Tudor king and his unfortunate wives -- specifically, their lifelong struggle to produce a male heir. Chronicling Henry's passionate and doomed relationship with Anne Boleyn, as well as his complicated rapport with the ambitious Thomas Cromwell, Mantel creates a rich dramatization of the most notorious English king in history. Winner of the 2009 Man Booker Prize.

Read about another book on the list.

Wolf Hall made Julie Buntin's top ten list of literary kids with deadbeat and/or absent dads, Hermione Norris's 6 best books list, John Mullan's list of ten of the best cardinals in literature, the Barnes & Noble Review's list of five books on dangerous minds and Lev Grossman's list of the top ten fiction books of 2009, and is one of Geraldine Brooks's favorite works of historical fiction; Matt Beynon Rees called it "[s]imply the best historical novel for many, many years."

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Robin Beck's "Chiefdoms, Collapse and Coalescence in the Early American South"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Chiefdoms, Collapse and Coalescence in the Early American South by Robin Beck.

About the book, from the publisher:

This book provides a new conceptual framework for understanding how the Indian nations of the early American South emerged from the ruins of a precolonial, Mississippian world. A broad regional synthesis that ranges over much of the Eastern Woodlands, its focus is on the Indians of the Carolina Piedmont – the Catawbas and their neighbors – from 1400 to 1725. Using an “eventful” approach to social change, Robin Beck argues that the collapse of the Mississippian world was fundamentally a transformation of political economy, from one built on maize to one of guns, slaves, and hides. The story takes us from first encounters through the rise of the Indian slave trade and the scourge of disease to the wars that shook the American South in the early 1700s. Yet the book's focus remains on the Catawbas, drawing on their experiences in a violent, unstable landscape to develop a comparative perspective on structural continuity and change.

Learn more about Chiefdoms, Collapse and Coalescence in the Early American South at the Cambridge University Press website.

See the July 2013 New York Times article, "Fort Tells of Spain's Early Ambitions," which reports the recent location by Robin Beck and colleagues of a 1567 Spanish fort during excavations at the Berry site, a fort and a site that play significant roles in Chiefdoms, Collapse and Coalescence in the Early American South.

The Page 99 Test: Chiefdoms, Collapse and Coalescence in the Early American South.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Lisa Stampnitzky reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Lisa Stampnitzky, author of Disciplining Terror: How Experts Invented "Terrorism".

Her entry begins:

Right now, I'm reading a number of books on human rights and the laws of war, as I dive into a new research project on the politics of human rights and the 'legalization' of torture in the U.S. after 9/11.

Political scientist Kathryn Sikkink's The Justice Cascade: How Human Rights Prosecutions Are Changing World Politics (W.W. Norton, 2011), describes the rise of a new mechanism for enforcing human rights: the prosecution of individual officials for state crimes, perhaps most famously illustrated by the 1998 extradition of former Chilean dictator Pinochet. Most intriguingly, Sikkink suggests that this development can help us to understand one of the most puzzling shifts in the recent history of human rights: why the U.S. government not only engaged in torture and other violations of human rights after 9/11, but documented and defended these practices in a series of official legal documents. While state officials in earlier periods might have relied upon secrecy and denial to cover up human rights violations, the "justice cascade" has...[read on]

About Disciplining Terror, from the publisher:

Since 9/11 we have been told that terrorists are pathological evildoers, beyond our comprehension. Before the 1970s, however, hijackings, assassinations, and other acts we now call 'terrorism' were considered the work of rational strategic actors. 'Disciplining Terror' examines how political violence became 'terrorism,' and how this transformation ultimately led to the current 'war on terror.' Drawing upon archival research and interviews with terrorism experts, Lisa Stampnitzky traces the political and academic struggles through which experts made terrorism, and terrorism made experts. She argues that the expert discourse on terrorism operates at the boundary - itself increasingly contested - between science and politics, and between academic expertise and the state. Despite terrorism now being central to contemporary political discourse, there have been few empirical studies of terrorism experts. This book investigates how the concept of terrorism has been developed and used over recent decades.

Learn more about Disciplining Terror at the Cambridge University Press website.

Writers Read: Lisa Stampnitzky.

--Marshal Zeringue