Five of the best Middle East political science books of 2014

Marc Lynch is a professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, where he is the director of the Institute for Middle East Studies and the Project on Middle East Political Science. At the Washington Post's Monkey Cage blog he tagged his five best Middle East political science books of 2014, including:

Toby Matthiesen, “The Other Saudis: Shiism, Dissent and Sectarianism” (Cambridge University Press). This sweeping history of the Shiites of Saudi Arabia immediately becomes a definitive account of their politics and social organization. Drawing on wide-ranging interviews inside and outside of Saudi Arabia, along with a wealth of novel documentary sources and political publications, Matthiesen presents a compelling account of the evolving relations between the Shiite community and the Saudi state, and of the Shiite networks that cross the Gulf and the region.

Read about another book Lynch tagged.

Learn more about The Other Saudis.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Phil Rickman's "Night After Night"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Night After Night by Phil Rickman.

About the book, from the publisher:

Liam Defford doesn't believe in ghosts. As the head of a production company, however, he does believe in high-impact TV. On the lookout for his next idea, he hires journalist Grayle Underhill to research the history of Knap Hall—a Tudor farmhouse turned luxury hotel, abandoned by its owners at the height of its success. The staff has been paid to keep quiet about what happened there, but the stories seep through. They're not conducive to a quick sale, but Defford isn't interested in keeping Knap Hall for more than a few months. Just long enough to make a reality TV show that will run nightly. A house isolated by its rural situation and its dark reputation; six people—known to the nation but strangers to one another—locked inside; but this time Big Brother is not in control.

Learn more about the book and author at Phil Rickman's website.

Rickman is the author of the Merrily Watkins mysteries, the John Dee series, and several novels of the paranormal (including two for children under the name Thom Madley).

My Book, The Movie: The Bones of Avalon.

The Page 69 Test: The Bones of Avalon.

Writers Read: Phil Rickman (July 2011).

The Page 69 Test: Night After Night.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top under-the-radar reads of 2014

Jeff Somers is the author of Lifers, the Avery Cates series from Orbit Books, Chum from Tyrus Books, and We Are Not Good People from Pocket/Gallery. He has published over thirty short stories as well.

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog Somers tagged five great under-the-radar reads of 2014, including:

The Son, by Jo Nesbø

Jo Nesbø is one of the most consistent and interesting crime writers in the world, but he’s often lumped in with Stieg Larsson and others as one of a many-headed creature known as Nordic Noir. While his Harry Hole novels are excellent mysteries and thrillers, his standalone novels (including the phenomenal Headhunters) are usually more interesting and unexpected. So it is with The Son, a story about a young man voluntarily serving time in prison for crimes he didn’t commit; a very corrupt system of cops, lawyers, and officials; and a central mystery that threatens to bring it all tumbling down. It’s an ambitious book that seeks to break out of some of the conventions of crime fiction, while reveling in others, and is well worth your time.

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Veena Das' "Affliction: Health, Disease, Poverty"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Affliction: Health, Disease, Poverty by Veena Das.

About the book, from the publisher:

Affliction inaugurates a novel way of understanding the trajectories of health and disease in the context of poverty. Focusing on low-income neighborhoods in Delhi, it stitches together three different sets of issues.

First, it examines the different trajectories of illness: What are the circumstances under which illness is absorbed within the normal and when does it exceed the normal putting resources, relationships, and even one's world into jeopardy?

A second set of issues involves how different healers understand their own practices. The astonishing range of practitioners found in the local markets in the poor neighborhoods of Delhi shows how the magical and the technical are knotted together in the therapeutic experience of healers and patients. The book asks: What is expert knowledge? What is it that the practitioner knows and what does the patient know? How are these different forms of knowledge brought together in the clinical encounter, broadly defined? How does this event of everyday life bear the traces of larger policies at the national and global levels?

Finally, the book interrogates the models of disease prevalence and global programming that emphasize surveillance over care and deflect attention away from the specificities of local worlds. Yet the analysis offered retains an openness to different ways of conceptualizing "what is happening" and stimulates a conversation between different disciplinary orientations to health, disease, and poverty.

Most studies of health and disease focus on the encounter between patient and practitioner within the space of the clinic. This book instead privileges the networks of relations, institutions, and knowledge over which the experience of illness is dispersed. Instead of thinking of illness as an event set apart from everyday life, it shows the texture of everyday life, the political economy of neighborhoods, as well as the dark side of care. It helps us see how illness is bound by the contexts in which it occurs, while also showing how illness transcends these contexts to say something about the nature of everyday life and the making of subjects.

Learn more about Affliction at the Fordham University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Affliction: Health, Disease, Poverty.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five of the most important books of 2014

Esquire writers and editors selected "the five books published this year that, if you were to read them all, would give you a much fuller picture of what humans were dealing with in 2014." One title on the list:

We Are Not Ourselves by Matthew Thomas

Many writers have taken aim at the uneasy intersection of self and stuff in America, at the way a nation's promise can feel like a judgment when you don't live up to it, the way it can distract you from the life you're actually living. Few, if any, have done it as well as We Are Not Ourselves, Matthew Thomas's exceptional first novel. It doesn't pile on, doesn't hector; rather, with profound compassion and understanding and at times majesty it painstakingly lays out the three seemingly unexceptional lives as they're lived, in the end summoning the only truly universal verity governing life in America: You can be anything you want, but in the end you'll always be yourself. —Joe Keohane

Read about another book on the list.

Writers Read: Matthew Thomas (October 2014).

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Karen Harper's "Broken Bonds"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Broken Bonds by Karen Harper.

About the book, from the publisher:

Haunted by the past…

Cold Creek is a place with a dark history, especially for the Lockwoods. Now adults, the three Lockwood sisters are still recovering from the events that led to the destruction of their family when they were children. Determined to move forward, Tess and Kate are making fresh starts, ready to put bad—even deadly—memories to rest and settle happily in the small but booming town. And they're hoping their older sister, Charlene, can do the same.

Char is back in town seeking comfort as she figures out her next move. A social worker used to difficult situations, she soon runs afoul of some locals who think she's sticking her nose where it doesn't belong. She's certain something sinister is being covered up, and when she witnesses Matt Rowan being run off the road, she knows she's right.

Working together, Matt and Char figure uncovering the truth will be dangerous, but living in Cold Creek won't be safe for any of them until its secrets are revealed.

Visit Karen Harper's website and Facebook page.

The Page 69 Test: Broken Bonds.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is David Krugler reading?

Featured at Writers Read: David F. Krugler, author of 1919, The Year of Racial Violence: How African Americans Fought Back.

His entry begins:

I’m just finishing reading two books, a novel and a work of nonfiction. The novel is a World War II spy thriller by the British author David Downing. Stettin Station (Soho Press, 2009) is part of a series featuring John Russell, a jaded but morally centered journalist. An American by birth, Russell considers himself British—he grew up in Great Britain—but he now lives in Berlin. The novel is set in November and December 1941. The Soviet Army has halted the German advance in the east, the Japanese are preparing for an attack on U.S. naval forces at Pearl Harbor. A combat veteran of the First World War, Russell abhors war, yet he cheers for U.S. entry into this global conflict so that the Nazis can be defeated all the sooner. Russell must tread a dangerous path. He loathes the Nazis, but he must report Joseph Goebbels’ ceaseless hokum in order to keep his credentials as a journalist. As a U.S. citizen, he can leave Germany, but what about his lover Effi, a German film star who shares his anti-Nazism, and his German-born teenage son Paul? Russell increases the risks by meeting secretly with German communists to find out what is happening to Germany’s Jews. What I really like about Stettin Station, and Downing’s other John Russell novels, is that his characters traverse...[read on]

About 1919, The Year of Racial Violence, from the publisher:

1919, The Year of Racial Violence recounts African Americans' brave stand against a cascade of mob attacks in the United States after World War I. The emerging New Negro identity, which prized unflinching resistance to second-class citizenship, further inspired veterans and their fellow black citizens. In city after city – Washington, DC; Chicago; Charleston; and elsewhere – black men and women took up arms to repel mobs that used lynching, assaults, and other forms of violence to protect white supremacy; yet, authorities blamed blacks for the violence, leading to mass arrests and misleading news coverage. Refusing to yield, African Americans sought accuracy and fairness in the courts of public opinion and the law. This is the first account of this three-front fight – in the streets, in the press, and in the courts – against mob violence during one of the worst years of racial conflict in U.S. history.

David F. Krugler is Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin, Platteville.

Learn more about 1919, The Year of Racial Violence at the Cambridge University Press website.

Writers Read: David F. Krugler.

--Marshal Zeringue

Phillip Margolin's "Woman with a Gun," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Woman with a Gun: A Novel by Phillip Margolin.

The entry begins:

Woman with a Gun takes place in three time periods. In the present (2015) Stacey Kim, a young woman who has just gotten her MFA, goes to New York City to write the great American novel and develops writer’s block. While on a lunch break from her job as a receptionist she goes to the Museum of Modern Art and sees Kathy Moran’s Pulitzer Prize winning photograph, “Woman with a Gun.” She is mesmerized by the photograph and researches its origin with the idea of writing a novel inspired by the photo. Stacey discovers that the woman standing on the beach in her wedding dress staring out to sea while holding an antique, western six shooter is Megan Cahill. In 2005, Moran found her in shock on the beach in the early morning in the seaside town of Palisades Heights. Moran took the famous photo before leading Megan up to the million dollar beach front home she shared with multi-millionaire Raymond Cahill to whom she was wed only hours earlier. Moran finds Raymond in his den where he has been shot to death. Ten years later the crime has still not been solved.

The novel moves back to 2005 and we meet Jack Booth, a heavy drinking, womanizing Special Prosecutor who has been sent by the Justice Department to help the local DA who is way over his head with this headline making case. It turns out that...[read on]

Visit Phillip Margolin's website and Facebook page.

My Book, The Movie: Woman with a Gun.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best debut Young Adult novels of 2014

Caitlin White rounded up her top ten debut young adult novels of 2014 for Bustle. One title on the list:

Sekret by Lindsay Smith (Roaring Brook)

Even if you’re not into historical fiction, you need to get your hands on Sekret. And once you get your hands on it, you won’t be able to put it down. It’s a gripping story set during the early 1960s Soviet Union, where 17-year-old Yulia Andreevna Chernina learns that she is psychic. She is forced by the KGB to use her gift to support their cause, one she doesn’t believe in, and undermine the U.S. space program. Smith’s love of Russian history is so clear in the story; the setting envelops you, and even with its abuses and horrors, her description of Soviet-era Moscow and Berlin is brilliant. And reminder: Pick it up when you have some time, because its twists and turns, suspense, and high-risk situations will have you reading and reading.

Read about another book on the list.

Writers Read: Lindsay Smith (April 2014).

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Andrea R. Jain's "Selling Yoga"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Selling Yoga: From Counterculture to Pop Culture by Andrea Jain.

About the book, from the publisher:

Premodern and early modern yoga comprise techniques with a wide range of aims, from turning inward in quest of the true self, to turning outward for divine union, to channeling bodily energy in pursuit of sexual pleasure. Early modern yoga also encompassed countercultural beliefs and practices. In contrast, today, modern yoga aims at the enhancement of the mind-body complex but does so according to contemporary dominant metaphysical, health, and fitness paradigms. Consequently, yoga is now a part of popular culture. In Selling Yoga, Andrea R. Jain explores the popularization of yoga in the context of late-twentieth-century consumer culture. She departs from conventional approaches by undermining essentialist definitions of yoga as well as assumptions that yoga underwent a linear trajectory of increasing popularization. While some studies trivialize popularized yoga systems by reducing them to the mere commodification or corruption of what is perceived as an otherwise fixed, authentic system, Jain suggests that this dichotomy oversimplifies the history of yoga as well as its meanings for contemporary practitioners.

By discussing a wide array of modern yoga types, from Iyengar Yoga to Bikram Yoga, Jain argues that popularized yoga cannot be dismissed--that it has a variety of religious meanings and functions. Yoga brands destabilize the basic utility of yoga commodities and assign to them new meanings that represent the fulfillment of self-developmental needs often deemed sacred in contemporary consumer culture.

Learn more about Selling Yoga at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Selling Yoga.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five best Texas authors of 2014

MysteryPeople tagged its top five Texas authors of 2014, including:

Vengeance Is Mine by Reavis Wortham

Wortham’s Central Springs lawmen and their families deal with violent actions and their consequences when a mob hitman moves into their town. Works as an engaging shoot up as well as a meditation on retribution.

Read about another author on the list.

Coffee with a Canine: Reavis Z. Wortham and Willie.

The Page 69 Test: Vengeance is Mine.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Krista Davis's "The Ghost and Mrs. Mewer"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Ghost and Mrs. Mewer by Krista Davis.

About the book, from the publisher:

Wagtail, Virginia, the top pet-friendly getaway in the United States, is gearing up for a howling good Halloween—until a spooky murder shakes the town to its core...

Holly Miller doesn’t believe in spirits, but the Sugar Maple Inn is filled with guests who do. The TV series in development, Apparition Apprehenders, has descended on Wagtail’s annual Halloween festivities to investigate supernatural local legends, and Holly has her hands full showing the ghost hunters a scary-fun time.

But the frights turn real when Holly’s Jack Russell, Trixie, and kitten, Twinkletoes, find a young woman drowned in the Wagtail Springs Hotel’s bathhouse—the spot of the town’s most infamous haunting. The crime scene is eerily similar to the creepy legend, convincing Holly that the death wasn’t just accidental. Now she’ll have to race to catch a flesh-and-blood killer—before someone else in town gives up the ghost...

Visit Krista Davis's website.

Coffee with a canine: Krista Davis & Han, Buttercup, and Queenie.

The Page 69 Test: The Ghost and Mrs. Mewer.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best overlooked memoirs of 2014

At Biographile Joanna Scutts tagged ten top overlooked memoirs of 2014, including:

Sandeep Jauhar’s memoir Doctored is the sequel to Intern, the first part of his story of long disillusionment with the career he’s dreamed of. Now an attending cardiologist, Jauhar is in a position to see the medical profession from the position of career success -- the point toward which he struggled for so many years. It’s not a pretty picture: Doctored is a blunt indictment of the bureaucracy and obsession with money that are undermining the morale of American doctors and their ability to deliver high standards of care.

Learn about another book on the list.

The Page 69 Test: Intern: A Doctor’s Initiation.

The Page 99 Test: Doctored.

--Marshal Zeringue

John Oller's "American Queen," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: American Queen: The Rise and Fall of Kate Chase Sprague--Civil War "Belle of the North" and Gilded Age Woman of Scandal by John Oller.

The entry begins:

Kate Chase, the beautiful, charismatic daughter of Abraham Lincoln’s treasury secretary, Salmon P. Chase, was the undisputed “Belle of Washington” during the Civil War. A brilliant conversationalist, shrewd political strategist, and “People Magazine” personality a century before People was first published, her goal was to make her widowed father president of the United States and herself his first lady. To that end she set up a rival salon “court” against Mary Lincoln and married one of the richest men in America, the “boy governor” of Rhode Island, in the social event of the Civil War. A fashion plate eagerly followed by readers of the society pages, she adorned herself in the most regal Parisian gowns. But when William Sprague turned out to be less of a prince as a husband, and an economic depression ended his fortune, she found comfort in the arms of a powerful married senator, New York’s Roscoe Conkling. The ensuing sex scandal ended her virtual royalty; she became a social outcast and died in poverty, yet in her final years found both greater authenticity and an inner peace that had always eluded her.

My biography, American Queen: The Rise and Fall of Kate Chase Sprague—Civil War ‘Belle of the North’ and Gilded Age Woman of Scandal, may be riper for a television mini-series (shades of Downton Abbey) than a feature length film. Either way, here are my casting choices for the four main, real-life characters, and some other ideas:

Kate Chase -- The most obvious candidates here would be Anne Hathaway, Kate Beckinsale or Keira Knightley. And I would be thrilled with any of them. But for the “Scarlett O’Hara of the North,” I would do what David O. Selznick did in casting the lead in Gone with the Wind:--go for someone relatively unknown. And so my vote here goes to...[read on]

Visit John Oller's website.

My Book, The Movie: American Queen.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Andrew Hadfield reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Andrew Hadfield, author of Edmund Spenser: A Life.

His entry begins:

I like to make a clear distinction between books that I read for work – where I try to be as systematic as possible – and pleasure, where I read as wide and random a mixture as I can manage. I’ve been working on English perceptions of Rome and I found David Karmon’s The Ruin of the Eternal City: Antiquity and Preservation in Renaissance Rome (2011) a fascinating and extremely useful account of Renaissance Rome’s dilemma about what to do with its recent past. Charles Nicholl’s Traces Remain (2013) collects the writer’s essays and reviews over the last twenty-five years. Not only does it contain a lively and diverse range of reflections on how the past is preserved, from the last sad journey of the seventeenth-century travel writer, Thomas Coryat to a new candidate for Jack the Ripper, but it...[read on]

About Edmund Spenser: A Life, from the publisher:

Edmund Spenser's innovative poetic works have a central place in the canon of English literature. Yet he is remembered as a morally flawed, self-interested sycophant; complicit in England's ruthless colonisation of Ireland; in Karl Marx's words, 'Elizabeth's arse-kissing poet'-- a man on the make who aspired to be at court and who was prepared to exploit the Irish to get what he wanted.

In his vibrant and vivid book, the first biography of the poet for 60 years, Andrew Hadfield finds a more complex and subtle Spenser. How did a man who seemed destined to become a priest or a don become embroiled in politics? If he was intent on social climbing, why was he so astonishingly rude to the good and the great Lord Burghley, the earl of Leicester, Sir Walter Ralegh, Elizabeth I and James VI? Why was he more at home with 'the middling sort' -- writers, publishers and printers, bureaucrats, soldiers, academics, secretaries, and clergymen -- than with the mighty and the powerful? How did the appalling slaughter he witnessed in Ireland impact on his imaginative powers? How did his marriage and family life shape his work?

Spenser's brilliant writing has always challenged our preconceptions. So too, Hadfield shows, does the contradictory relationship between his between life and his art.

Learn more about Edmund Spenser: A Life at the Oxford University Press website.

My Book, The Movie: Edmund Spenser: A Life.

Writers Read: Andrew Hadfield.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top five New Orleans authors of 2014

Chris Waddington tagged five top New Orleans authors of 2014 for The Times-Picayune, including:

Zachary Lazar

Zachary Lazar got a nice bump in December when his third novel, "I Pity the Poor Immigrant," landed on the New York Times list of "100 Notable Books of 2014." Reviews of the book, which debuted in April, have been glowing.

Lazar, a Tulane professor, channels the voice of a female journalist to weave this gripping collage of a novel, which bounces between past and present, Israel and the United States and features a real life, Jewish–American mobster as a central character.

Lazar discussed his book in an April interview with NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune. "I don't want to judge. I want to understand people," Lazar said. "That's essential for a fiction writer. The process of writing has to lead me past the black-and-white versions of character."

Read about another author on the list.

The Page 69 Test: I Pity the Poor Immigrant.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Greg Garrett's "Entertaining Judgment"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Entertaining Judgment: The Afterlife in Popular Imagination by Greg Garrett.

About the book, from the publisher:

Nowadays references to the afterlife-angels strumming harps, demons brandishing pitchforks, God enthroned on heavenly clouds-are more often encountered in New Yorker cartoons than in serious Christian theological reflection. Speculation about death and its sequel seems to embarrass many theologians; however, as Greg Garrett shows in Entertaining Judgment, popular culture in the U.S. has found rich ground for creative expression in the search for answers to the question: What lies in store for us after we die?

The lyrics of Madonna, Los Lonely Boys, and Sean Combs; the plotlines of TV's Lost, South Park, and The Walking Dead; the implied theology in films such as The Dark Knight, Ghost, and Field of Dreams; the heavenly half-light of Thomas Kinkade's popular paintings; the ghosts, shades, and after-life way-stations in Harry Potter; and the characters, situations, and locations in the Hunger Games saga all speak to our hopes and fears about what comes next. In a rich survey of literature and popular media, Garrett compares cultural accounts of death and the afterlife with those found in scripture. Denizens of the imagined afterlife, whether in heaven, hell, on earth, or in purgatory, speak to what awaits us, at once shaping and reflecting our deeply held-if often somewhat nebulous-beliefs. They show us what rewards and punishments we might expect, offer us divine assistance, and even diabolically attack us.

Ultimately, we are drawn to these stories of heaven, hell, and purgatory--and to stories about death and the undead--not only because they entertain us, but because they help us to create meaning and to learn about ourselves, our world, and, perhaps, the next world. Garrett's deft analysis sheds new light on what popular culture can tell us about the startlingly sharp divide between what modern people profess to believe and what they truly hope and expect to find after death--and how they use those stories to help them understand this life.

Learn more about Entertaining Judgment at the Oxford University Press website.

Writers Read: Greg Garrett.

The Page 99 Test: Entertaining Judgment.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top books about Cuba

Julia Cooke is the author of The Other Side of Paradise: Life in the New Cuba. One of her six favorite books about Cuba, as shared at The Daily Beast:

Cuba Confidential
Ann Louise Bardach

A deeply reported account of the family ties between powerful political dynasties on both sides of the Florida Straits that exacerbate the contentious relationships between Cuba and the U.S. Until now!

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Shelly King's "The Moment of Everything"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Moment of Everything by Shelly King.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the tradition of The Cookbook Collector comes a funny, romantic novel about a young woman finding her calling while saving a used bookstore.

Maggie Duprès, recently "involuntarily separated from payroll" at a Silicon Valley startup, is whiling away her days in The Dragonfly's Used Books, a Mountain View institution, waiting for the Next Big Thing to come along.

When the opportunity arises for her to network at a Bay Area book club, she jumps at the chance-even if it means having to read Lady Chatterley's Lover, a book she hasn't encountered since college, in an evening. But the edition she finds at the bookstore is no Penguin Classics Chatterley-it's an ancient hardcover with notes in the margins between two besotted lovers of long ago. What Maggie finds in her search for the lovers and their fate, and what she learns about herself in the process, will surprise and move readers.

Witty and sharp-eyed in its treatment of tech world excesses, but with real warmth at its core, The Moment of Everything is a wonderful read.

Visit Shelly King's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Moment of Everything.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top boxing books

Markus Zusak's books include I Am the Messenger, a Printz Honor Book and Los Angeles Times Book Award Finalist, and the international bestseller, The Book Thief. In 2010 he tagged his ten top boxing books for the Guardian. One title to make the list:

The Fight by Norman Mailer

Some people say that this is a world championship between Muhammad Ali and Norman Mailer as to who had the biggest ego. Still, if you're interested in boxing, how can you not take a look at what Mailer does with the Rumble in the Jungle?

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Casey Walker reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Casey Walker, author of Last Days in Shanghai.

His entry begins:

The most recent book I read with total purposelessness—that is, not Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping, which I re-read for the course I’m teaching; not Assembling California, by John McPhee, which I started as research for a new novel; and not Goodnight, Moon or The Very Hungry Caterpillar, which I read daily to my wide-eyed daughter—is Jenny Offill’s fractured and beautifully broken novel Dept. of Speculation. Offill assembles the novel from riveting moments of attention, often no more than a paragraph or a few lines long. Her style reminds me a little bit of...[read on]

About Last Days in Shanghai, from the publisher:

Luke Slade, a young Congressional aide, begins this business trip to China like all other international travel he’s endured with “Lyin’ Leo”: buried under a slew of diplomatic runarounds, non-functioning cell phones, and humiliation from the Congressman at every turn. But on day two, a new challenge rears its ugly head: Leo goes on a drunken bender and disappears into the night. Unsure what dubious business his corrupt and buffoonish boss had planned, Luke must piece together the Congressman’s lies while maintaining appearances with their Chinese contacts.

Amidst the confusion, a little bleary from jet-lag and alcohol, Luke receives a briefcase full of money from the mayor of a rural Chinese province. Luke accepts the “gift” in his daze, but when he later realizes his mistake and tries to return the cash, he discovers even more anxiety-inducing news. The mayor is dead.

As Luke tries to unravel the complex minefield of corruption he’s tumbled into, he must also confront his own role in the events. Unwitting marionette? Fall guy? Or perhaps someone more capable of moral compromise than he would have liked to believe. Last Days in Shanghai is an unforgettable debut by a writer to watch. It’s both a hold-on-to-your-seat thriller and a pitch-perfect exploration of present day China—the country’s rapacious capitalism, the shocking boom of its cities and the wholesale eradication of its traditions.

Follow Casey Walker on Twitter.

Learn more about Last Days in Shanghai at the Counterpoint Press website.

The Page 69 Test: Last Days in Shanghai.

Writers Read: Casey Walker.

--Marshal Zeringue

Craig Nelson's "The Age of Radiance," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Age of Radiance: The Epic Rise and Dramatic Fall of the Atomic Era by Craig Nelson.

The entry begins:

If The Age of Radiance, a history of the Atomic Age from the birth of X-rays to the meltdown of Fukushima, were made into a movie, a great through line would be to focus on the women. Greer Garson did the American version of Marie Curie, relentlessly saintly and revered, but the reality is a Polish immigrant who arrived in Paris with 2 cents and turned herself into Madame Curie. No one does drive, ambition, and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps like Joan Crawford.

Marie's daughter Irene was no slouch in the drive department - her mom was the first woman to win a Nobel, and she was the second - so Reese Witherspoon.

The completely forgotten woman who discovered fission, Lise Meitner, deserves a big star who can glow while motionless...[read on]

Learn more about The Age of Radiance at the Scribner website.

My Book, The Movie: The Age of Radiance.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Kitty Calavita & Valerie Jenness' "Appealing to Justice"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Appealing to Justice: Prisoner Grievances, Rights, and Carceral Logic by Kitty Calavita and Valerie Jenness.

About the book, from the publisher:

Having gained unique access to California prisoners and corrections officials and to thousands of prisoners’ written grievances and institutional responses, Kitty Calavita and Valerie Jenness take us inside one of the most significant, yet largely invisible, institutions in the United States. Drawing on sometimes startlingly candid interviews with prisoners and prison staff, as well as on official records, the authors walk us through the byzantine grievance process, which begins with prisoners filing claims and ends after four levels of review, with corrections officials usually denying requests for remedies. Appealing to Justice is both an unprecedented study of disputing in an extremely asymmetrical setting and a rare glimpse of daily life inside this most closed of institutions. Quoting extensively from their interviews with prisoners and officials, the authors give voice to those who are almost never heard from. These voices unsettle conventional wisdoms within the sociological literature—for example, about the reluctance of vulnerable and/or stigmatized populations to name injuries and file claims, and about the relentlessly adversarial subjectivities of prisoners and correctional officials—and they do so with striking poignancy. Ultimately, Appealing to Justice reveals a system fraught with impediments and dilemmas, which delivers neither justice, nor efficiency, nor constitutional conditions of confinement.

Learn more about Appealing to Justice at the University of California Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Appealing to Justice.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten books & stories set on Christmas Day

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog, Shaun Byron Fitzpatrick tagged ten of the best books and stories set on Christmas Day, including:

The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror, by Christopher Moore

Christmas is great, but Christmas with zombies is better. When an angel tries to bring a dead man dressed as Santa back to life, all hell breaks loose as flesh eaters begin attacking the town. I just love the smell of brains roasting on an open fire, don’t you?

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Krista Davis's "The Diva Wraps It Up"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Diva Wraps It Up by Krista Davis.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the latest novel in the national bestselling Domestic Diva Mystery series, it’s beginning to look a lot like murder…

The holidays are domestic diva Sophie Winston’s favorite time of year. But this season, there seem to be more mishaps than mistletoe. First, Horace Scroggins tumbles from a balcony during his office Christmas party. Then, Sophie’s neighbor takes a fall from his ladder while decorating his roof with lights. But it’s the cookie swap that really starts her wondering who’s naughty or nice….

Sophie arrives at the annual event with high spirits and thirteen dozen chocolate-drizzled gingersnaps. But when an argument erupts and a murder ensues, it becomes clear that the recent string of events is anything but accidental. Now Sophie has to make a list of suspects…and check it twice!

Visit Krista Davis's website.

Coffee with a canine: Krista Davis & Han, Buttercup, and Queenie.

The Page 69 Test: The Diva Wraps It Up.

--Marshal Zeringue

Coffee with a canine: Catherine Lloyd Burns & Shirley

Featured at Coffee with a Canine: Catherine Lloyd Burns & Shirley.

The author, on how Shirley is like Cadbury, the dog in The Good, the Bad & the Beagle:

Funnily enough, I wrote the first draft before owning a dog. I was inspired by a ten year old girl I saw a long time ago. She seemed like she had the weight of the world on her shoulders as she said, "come on Cadbury" to her gorgeous beagle. When I got Shirley I was able to rewrite all the parts where the main character, Veronica, falls in love with her dog Cadbury. Now I had the vocabulary and the emotions to describe it much more accurately and personally. Everything Cadbury does in the book that is...[read on]

About The Good, the Bad & the Beagle, from the publisher:

Set in a Manhattan, this is the story of feisty eleven-year-old Veronica Morgan, who believes that a furry lemon beagle from the neighborhood pet store will be the solution to the endless worries she has about life in general and friendship in particular. This is a problem, since her bumbling psychiatrist parents won’t buy her the puppy she wants or stop meddling in her life at her challenging new school. But things never turn out the way you plan, particularly if you never stop expecting the worst to happen, and haven’t taken a chance on being a true friend yourself.

Visit Catherine Lloyd Burns's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Catherine Lloyd Burns & Shirley.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best books for kids who can’t sleep on Christmas Eve

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog Dell Villa tagged ten top books for kids who can’t sleep on Christmas Eve, including:

Star Bright: A Christmas Story, by Alison McGhee

Everyone in Heaven is thrilled that a baby’s about to be born, and they all plan to bring gifts to celebrate. But the littlest angel, with her red hair and aviator goggles, stands apart from her more elegantly dressed and well-mannered peers. What can she possibly offer to this glorious baby? She finally alights on an innovative idea, and it might just be the best offering, for it’s those gifts of absolute wonder that truly embody the magic and sparkle of the season.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Greg Garrett reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Greg Garrett, author of Entertaining Judgment: The Afterlife in Popular Imagination.

From his entry:

Phil Klay’s Deployment deservedly won the National Book Award for Fiction this year. I taught it in my fiction class early in the fall, and we all felt, smugly, as if we were prophets at the announcement. Like the World War One poets, like [Tim] O’Brien, he’s telling us about the experience of battle and about trying to reconcile it with the experience of the home front—two things that are not meant to be meshed. The title story is a masterpiece of the “soldiers’ return” story written by other great American writers including Hemingway and Fitzgerald. The narrator’s family can’t hope to understand what the narrator has gone through. Words cannot convey the experience. And yet...[read on]

About Entertaining Judgment, from the publisher:

Nowadays references to the afterlife-angels strumming harps, demons brandishing pitchforks, God enthroned on heavenly clouds-are more often encountered in New Yorker cartoons than in serious Christian theological reflection. Speculation about death and its sequel seems to embarrass many theologians; however, as Greg Garrett shows in Entertaining Judgment, popular culture in the U.S. has found rich ground for creative expression in the search for answers to the question: What lies in store for us after we die?

The lyrics of Madonna, Los Lonely Boys, and Sean Combs; the plotlines of TV's Lost, South Park, and The Walking Dead; the implied theology in films such as The Dark Knight, Ghost, and Field of Dreams; the heavenly half-light of Thomas Kinkade's popular paintings; the ghosts, shades, and after-life way-stations in Harry Potter; and the characters, situations, and locations in the Hunger Games saga all speak to our hopes and fears about what comes next. In a rich survey of literature and popular media, Garrett compares cultural accounts of death and the afterlife with those found in scripture. Denizens of the imagined afterlife, whether in heaven, hell, on earth, or in purgatory, speak to what awaits us, at once shaping and reflecting our deeply held-if often somewhat nebulous-beliefs. They show us what rewards and punishments we might expect, offer us divine assistance, and even diabolically attack us.

Ultimately, we are drawn to these stories of heaven, hell, and purgatory--and to stories about death and the undead--not only because they entertain us, but because they help us to create meaning and to learn about ourselves, our world, and, perhaps, the next world. Garrett's deft analysis sheds new light on what popular culture can tell us about the startlingly sharp divide between what modern people profess to believe and what they truly hope and expect to find after death--and how they use those stories to help them understand this life.

Learn more about Entertaining Judgment at the Oxford University Press website.

Writers Read: Greg Garrett.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best Christmases in literature

At the Guardian Kate Kellaway tagged the ten best Christmases in literature, including:

Little Women
Louisa May Alcott, 1868-69

The most sentimentally frugal Christmas in American literature. In the absence of stockings, Jo slips her hand under her pillow and draws out a crimson-covered book. “She knew it very well, for it was that beautiful old story of the best life ever lived, and Jo felt that it was a true guidebook for any pilgrim going on a long journey.” (It may or may not be a bible, it is not spelt out.) Each girl has a differently coloured volume. Meg: green, Beth: dove, Amy: blue. As a child, I coveted these books as anyone with a taste for nice stationery would.

Read about another entry on the list.

Little Women also appears among Bea Davenport's top ten books about hair, nine notable unsung literary heroines, Sophie McKenzie's top ten mothers in children's books, John Dugdale's ten notable fictional works on winter sports, Melissa Albert's five favorite YA books that might make one cry, Anjelica Huston's seven favorite coming-of-age books, Bidisha's ten top books about women, Katherine Rundell's top ten descriptions of food in fiction, Gwyneth Rees's ten top books about siblings, Maya Angelou's 6 favorite books, Tim Lewis's ten best Christmas lunches in literature, and on the Observer's list of the ten best fictional mothers, Eleanor Birne's top ten list of books on motherhood, Erin Blakemore's list of five gutsy heroines to channel on an off day, Kate Saunders' critic's chart of mothers and daughters in literature, and Zoë Heller's list of five memorable portraits of sisters. It is a book that disappointed Geraldine Brooks on re-reading.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: John Edward Terrell's "A Talent for Friendship"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: A Talent for Friendship: Rediscovery of a Remarkable Trait by John Edward Terrell.

About the book, from the publisher:

This lively, provocative text presents a new way to understand friendship. Professor John Terrell argues that the ability to make friends is an evolved human trait not unlike our ability to walk upright on two legs or our capacity for speech and complex abstract reasoning. Terrell charts how this trait has evolved by investigating two unique functions of the human brain: the ability to remake the outside world to suit our collective needs, and our capacity to escape into our own inner thoughts and imagine how things might and ought to be. The text is richly illustrated and written in an engaging style, and will appeal to students, scholars, and general readers interested in anthropology, evolutionary and cognitive science, and psychology more broadly.

Learn more about A Talent for Friendship: Rediscovery of a Remarkable Trait at the Oxford University Press website.

Cover story: A Talent for Friendship.

The Page 99 Test: A Talent for Friendship.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight top fresh fictional female detectives

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog Ellen Wehle tagged eight fictional female detectives featured in new releases, including:

The Handsome Man’s Deluxe Café, by Alexander McCall Smith

“Mrs.” has no memory of how she came to be in Botswana, or even her own name. Can Precious Ramotswe, expert at finding lost things, track down the woman’s missing identity? Meanwhile, Mma Makutsi has opened a restaurant for Gabarone’s well-heeled clientele. Dealing with temperamental chefs and crabby customers may be more than she bargained for, but, as always, friendship will see her through.

Read about another entry on the list.

Precious Ramotswe appears among Ian Holding's top ten books that teach us something about southern Africa and Adrian McKinty's ten best lady detectives.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Nina Darnton's "The Perfect Mother"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Perfect Mother: A Novel by Nina Darnton.

About the book, from the publisher:

When an American exchange student is accused of murder, her mother will stop at nothing to save her.

A midnight phone call shatters Jennifer Lewis’s carefully orchestrated life. Her daughter, Emma, who’s studying abroad in Spain, has been arrested after the brutal murder of another student. Jennifer rushes to her side, certain the arrest is a terrible mistake and determined to do whatever is necessary to bring Emma home. But as she begins to investigate the crime, she starts to wonder whether she ever really knew her daughter. The police charge Emma, and the press leaps on the story, exaggerating every sordid detail. One by one, Emma’s defense team, her father, and finally even Jennifer begin to have doubts.

A novel of harrowing emotional suspense, The Perfect Mother probes the dark side of parenthood and the complicated bond between mothers and daughters.

Visit Nina Darnton's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Perfect Mother.

Writers Read: Nina Darnton.

The Page 69 Test: The Perfect Mother.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top 23 amazing--and short--classic books

One title on the Huffington Post's list of classic works that are all under 200 pages:

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler (144 pages)

This crime novel features Chandler's famous character PI Philip Marlowe. An old man is being blackmailed and he wants Marlowe to make it stop.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Big Sleep also appears on Lucy Worsley's ten best list of fictional detectives, Becky Ferreira's list of seven of the best books set in Los Angeles, Ian Rankin's list of five perfect mysteries, Kathryn Williams's reading list on greed, Gigi Levangie Grazer's list of six favorite books that became movies, Megan Wasson's list of five top books on Los Angeles, Greil Marcus's six recommended books list, Barry Forshaw's critic's chart of six American noir masters, David Nicholls' list of favorite film adaptations, and the Guardian's list of ten of the best smokes in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nicholas Wapshott's "The Sphinx," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Sphinx: Franklin Roosevelt, the Isolationists, and the Road to World War II by Nicholas Wapshott.

From the entry:

The characters in my book were so strong I did not need to imagine who would play them. The trick for a film maker (I would ask Michael “Red Shoes” Powell, or Carol “Third Man” Reed) is to find actors who would be forceful enough to play such powerful characters.

Plainly the person playing FDR is key and while I greatly admired the recent portrayal of him by Bill Murray in Hyde Park on the Hudson to be credible and rich, I feel that...[read on]

Learn more about The Sphinx at the publisher's website and follow Nicholas Wapshott on Twitter.

My Book, The Movie: The Sphinx.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Holger Nehring's "Politics of Security"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Politics of Security: British and West German Protest Movements and the Early Cold War, 1945-1970 by Holger Nehring.

About the book, from the publisher:

How did European societies experience the Cold War? Politics of Security focuses on a number of peace movements in Britain and West Germany from the end of Second World War in 1945 to the early 1970s to answer this question. Britons and West Germans had been fierce enemies in the Second World War. After 1945, however, many activists in both countries imagined themselves to be part of a common movement against nuclear armaments.

Combining comparative and transnational histories, Politics of Security stresses how these movements were deeply embedded in their own societies, but also transcended them. In particular, it highlights the centrality of the memories of the Second World War as a prism through which people made sense of the threat of nuclear war. By placing British and West German experiences side by side, Holger Nehring illuminates the general patterns and specific features of these debates, arguing that the key characteristic of these discussions was the countries' concerns with different notions of security. The volume highlights how these ideas changed over time, how they reflected more general political, social, and cultural trends, and how they challenged mainstream assumptions of politics and government.

This volume is the first to capture in a transnational fashion what activists did on marches against nuclear warfare, and what it meant to them and to others. It highlights the ways in which people became activists, and how they were transformed by these experiences. Nehring examines how these two societies with very different experiences and memories of the cruelties and atrocities of the Second World War drew on very similar arguments when they came to understand the Cold War through the prism of the previous world war.

Learn more about Politics of Security at the Oxford University Press website.

Holger Nehring is Professor of Contemporary European History at the University of Stirling in Scotland.

The Page 99 Test: Politics of Security.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top 10 fictional feasts in children's books

Christopher William’s Hill’s latest book is The Lily-Livered Prince, book three in his Tales From Schwartzgarten series. At the Guardian he tagged ten top fictional feasts in children's books, including:

The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by CS Lewis

“It is dull, Son of Adam, to drink without eating,” said the Queen presently. “What would you like best to eat?”

“Turkish Delight, please, your Majesty,” said Edmund.

The Queen let another drop fall from her bottle on to the snow, and instantly there appeared a round box, tied with green silk ribbon, which, when opened, turned out to contain several pounds of the best Turkish Delight. Each piece was sweet and light to the very centre and Edmund had never tasted anything more delicious. He was quite warm now, and very comfortable.

While he was eating, the Queen kept asking him questions. At first Edmund tried to remember that it is rude to speak with one’s mouth full, but soon he forgot about this and thought only of trying to shovel down as much Turkish Delight as he could, and the more he ate the more he wanted to eat, and he never asked himself why the Queen should be so inquisitive.

In The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe Turkish Delight is forbidden fruit, and therefore all the more delicious. We know for a fact that Edmund is crossing over to the Dark Side as he wolfs down each morsel of this delectable sweetmeat. Several pounds of Turkish Delight would be more than enough for most children – but not Edmund. As soon as he’s consumed the contents of the box he’s desperate for more. I was such a child and have unfortunately grown up to become such an adult. Gluttony is a sin, no doubt – but a truly delicious way of sinning, don’t you think?

Read about another entry on the list.

The Narnia Chronicles pop up on Paul Goat Allen's list of the ten most badass women in fantasy literature. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is on Melissa Albert's list of a few of the most memorable holiday gifts in fiction and Lev Grossman's list of the six greatest fantasy books of all time.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Nina Darnton reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Nina Darnton, author of The Perfect Mother.

Her entry begins:

I often have two books going at the same time. But when I started reading Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, I knew that strategy wouldn’t work. I simply couldn’t put it down and, when life intervened and I was forced to, I returned to it in any spare moment I had. It is a rare combination of a page turner that is also brilliantly written and conceived with believable characters about whom...[read on]

About The Perfect Mother, from the publisher:

When an American exchange student is accused of murder, her mother will stop at nothing to save her.

A midnight phone call shatters Jennifer Lewis’s carefully orchestrated life. Her daughter, Emma, who’s studying abroad in Spain, has been arrested after the brutal murder of another student. Jennifer rushes to her side, certain the arrest is a terrible mistake and determined to do whatever is necessary to bring Emma home. But as she begins to investigate the crime, she starts to wonder whether she ever really knew her daughter. The police charge Emma, and the press leaps on the story, exaggerating every sordid detail. One by one, Emma’s defense team, her father, and finally even Jennifer begin to have doubts.

A novel of harrowing emotional suspense, The Perfect Mother probes the dark side of parenthood and the complicated bond between mothers and daughters.

Visit Nina Darnton's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Perfect Mother.

Writers Read: Nina Darnton.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Casey Walker's "Last Days in Shanghai"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Last Days in Shanghai by Casey Walker.

About the book, from the publisher:

Luke Slade, a young Congressional aide, begins this business trip to China like all other international travel he’s endured with “Lyin’ Leo”: buried under a slew of diplomatic runarounds, non-functioning cell phones, and humiliation from the Congressman at every turn. But on day two, a new challenge rears its ugly head: Leo goes on a drunken bender and disappears into the night. Unsure what dubious business his corrupt and buffoonish boss had planned, Luke must piece together the Congressman’s lies while maintaining appearances with their Chinese contacts.

Amidst the confusion, a little bleary from jet-lag and alcohol, Luke receives a briefcase full of money from the mayor of a rural Chinese province. Luke accepts the “gift” in his daze, but when he later realizes his mistake and tries to return the cash, he discovers even more anxiety-inducing news. The mayor is dead.

As Luke tries to unravel the complex minefield of corruption he’s tumbled into, he must also confront his own role in the events. Unwitting marionette? Fall guy? Or perhaps someone more capable of moral compromise than he would have liked to believe. Last Days in Shanghai is an unforgettable debut by a writer to watch. It’s both a hold-on-to-your-seat thriller and a pitch-perfect exploration of present day China—the country’s rapacious capitalism, the shocking boom of its cities and the wholesale eradication of its traditions.

Follow Casey Walker on Twitter.

Learn more about Last Days in Shanghai at the Counterpoint Press website.

The Page 69 Test: Last Days in Shanghai.

--Marshal Zeringue