What is Jamie Blaine reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Jamie Blaine, author of Midnight Jesus: Where Struggle, Faith, and Grace Collide....

His entry begins:

One of the great blessings of working in the publishing industry is getting advance copies of all the great books out there. I have shelves overflowing with books and a kitchen table stacked with more galley copies than I have time in the day to read. What a wonderful problem to have.

Greg Renoff’s Van Halen Rising is everything I’m looking for in a rock biography. Rock books are hot right now and what works for me is something that captures the mood of the music. I don’t like rock books that take an academic approach. Be fun, be light, be well written. Greg’s book does all of those things. Best music book of the year, for me. Also with that is the AC/DC FAQ by Susan Masino, The Eagles FAQ by Andrew Vaughn and Sinister Urge, a new Rob Zombie bio by my friend (and boss) Joel McIver. When I was eleven, I wanted...[read on]

About Midnight Jesus, from the publisher:

The heart of God can be found in the unlikeliest places, in the unlikeliest people.

It’s three a.m. in the side yard of a shack in the worst part of town. I’ve got a dirty-faced baby on my hip and there’s a pit bull standing on the septic tank in the next yard over barking his head off. My patient sits on the hood of her ex-husband’s low rider smoking a cigarette and dumping her pills into a mud hole by the right front tire. Airbrushed across the hood of the car is a cross-eyed Jesus with open arms. She lays her hand on top of his as the still-hot engine ticks. Through tears she pleads, “Help me Jesus, please.”

The dog is silent. Sirens approach. “Just breathe,” I tell her. “Everything’s gonna be all right.”

The baby fidgets, resting her head against me, staring up into my eyes. I raise one finger and she holds it tight.

I fumble for the words again. “Just breathe.”

Midnight Jesus shares fascinating, bizarre, and sometimes humorous true-life stories of everyday people looking for hope in their darkest hours. Poignant and unpretentious, Jamie paints beauty where at times it seems none exists—from skating rinks and bars, late-night highways and lonely apartments, broken churches and rundown trailer parks, jail cells, bridge rails, ERs, psych wards, and that place over the levee where God laughs and walks through the cool dark night.

Visit the Midnight Jesus website.

The Page 99 Test: Midnight Jesus.

My Book, The Movie: Midnight Jesus.

Writers Read: Jamie Blaine.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top books containing traces of witches

At Tor.com Angela Slatter, author of dark fantasy and horror, tagged five books containing well-crafted witches, including:

Dreamer’s Pool: Blackthorn and Grim 1 by Juliet Marillier (2014, Macmillan)

Set against the backdrop of Ancient Ireland, Dreamer’s Pool is the first book in the always excellent Juliet Marillier’s Blackthorn and Grim series. The tragic healer, Blackthorn, and her silent companion, Grim, have recently escaped from certain death at the hands of the Chieftain Mathuin, due to the intercession of a Fae benefactor. They’ve settled in the Dreamer’s Wood on the outskirts of Winterfalls, where Prince Oran of Dalriada is awaiting his bride-to-be. The price of Blackthorn’s freedom is this: in true fairy tale tradition, for the next seven years she must help and heal anyone who comes to her − and she must also set aside all thoughts of revenge against Mathuin, though he destroyed everything dear to her.

What she wasn’t expecting was for Prince Oran to come seeking her help, and certainly not the problem he presents. He’s exchanged letter with his betrothed for some time and she seemed to be perfect for him: learned and kind. But though the woman who arrives for the marriage is as beautiful as promised, she’d also both less and more than he bargained for. As the wedding approaches, Blackthorn and Grim are obliged to look into the mystery of the young woman’s strange and brutal behaviour. To complicate matters, their own mingled and messy pasts influence their actions not always for the best; there’s a war on the way, and danger darkening the horizon.

Marillier provides, as ever, superb prose that crackles with energy and magic and style. The characters are complex and tragic, wretched and compelling, with their own histories always bubbling terribly close to the surface and colouring how they see matters − especially the heartsore and bitter Blackthorn.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Ben McPherson's "A Line of Blood"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: A Line of Blood by Ben McPherson.

About the book, from the publisher:

Whose secrets cut deeper?
Your family's.

Whose secrets do you fear?
Your neighbor's.

Whose secrets can kill?
Your own.

For Alex Mercer, his wife, Millicent, and their precocious eleven-year-old son, Max, are everything—his little tribe that makes him feel all's right with the world. But when he and Max find their enigmatic next-door neighbor dead in his apartment, their lives are suddenly and irrevocably changed. The police begin an extremely methodical investigation, and Alex becomes increasingly impatient for them to finish. After all, it was so clearly a suicide.

As new information is uncovered, troubling questions arise—questions that begin to throw suspicion on Alex, Millicent, and even Max. Each of them has secrets it seems. And each has something to hide.

With the walls of their perfect little world closing in on them day after day, husband, wife, and son must decide how far they'll go to protect themselves—and their family—from investigators carefully watching their every move ... waiting for one of them to make a mistake.

A Line of Blood explores what it means to be a family—the ties that bind us, and the lies that can destroy us if we're not careful. Highly provocative, intensely twisty and suspenseful, this novel will have you wondering if one of them is guilty—or if all of them are—and will keep you on edge until its shocking final pages.

You will never look at your loved ones the same way again....

Visit Ben McPherson's Facebook page and Twitter perch.

The Page 69 Test: A Line of Blood.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top haunted houses in fiction

Claire Barker is the author of Knitbone Pepper: Ghost Dog. One of her top ten haunted houses in fiction, as shared at the Guardian:

The graveyard in The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

The graveyard is not strictly a haunted house but it’s definitely a haunted home. In the lexicon of horror, graveyards are usually no-go areas for the living, but the one in Gaiman’s book is an exception. Here baby Bod finds sanctuary beneath the wings of ghostly Mr and Mrs Owens after his family are brutally murdered. He grows up surrounded by its resident ghosts and ghouls within the protection of its boundaries. Darkly beguiling, this graveyard is a haunted home like no other.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Graveyard Book is among Jon Walter's ten top first lines in children's and teen books, Helen Grant's ten "best books with settings that are strikingly brought to life" and Nevada Barr's 6 favorite books.

Also see: The seven best haunted house books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Craig Packer's "Lions in the Balance"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Lions in the Balance: Man-Eaters, Manes, and Men with Guns by Craig Packer.

About the book, from the publisher:

If you are a morani (warrior), you have your spear at the ready—you could be the hero, but you will have to wait until the morning light before you can go out and prove yourself. If it is a lion, you want to be the first to spear it—and if the lion turns on you, make sure it mauls you on your chest or stomach, on your face, shins, or throat. Any place where you can show your scars with pride, show the incontrovertible evidence of courage. A scar on your back would be a permanent reminder of cowardice, an ineradicable trace of shame.

Monsters take many forms: from man-eating lions to the people who hunt them, from armed robbers to that midnight knock at the door of a cheap hotel room in Dar es Salaam. And celebrated biologist Craig Packer has faced them all. Head on.

With Lions in the Balance, Packer takes us back into the complex, tooth-and-claw world of the African lion, offering revealing insights into both the lives of one of the most iconic and dangerous animals on earth and the very real risks of protecting them. A sequel to his prize-winning Into Africa—which gave many readers their first experience of fieldwork in Africa, of cooperative lions on dusty savannas, and political kidnappings on the shores of Lake Tanganyika—this new diary-based chronicle of cutting-edge research and heartbreaking corruption will both alarm and entertain. Packer’s story offers a look into the future of the lion, one in which the politics of conservation will require survival strategies far more creative and powerful than those practiced anywhere in the world today.

Packer is sure to infuriate millionaires, politicians, aid agencies, and conservationists alike as he minces no words about the problems he encounters. But with a narrative stretching from far flung parts of Africa to the corridors of power in Washington, DC, and marked by Packer’s signature humor and incredible candor, Lions in the Balance is a tale of courage against impossible odds, a masterly blend of science, adventure, and storytelling, and an urgent call to action that will captivate a new generation of readers.

Learn more about Lions in the Balance at the University of Chicago website.

My Book, The Movie: Lions in the Balance.

Writers Read: Craig Packer.

The Page 99 Test: Lions in the Balance.

--Marshal Zeringue

Margaret Randall's "Haydée Santamaría, Cuban Revolutionary," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Haydée Santamaría, Cuban Revolutionary: She Led by Transgression by Margaret Randall.

The entry begins:

As Haydée Santamaría, Cuban Revolutionary is about a real person, and I knew her in life, I had only her--powerfully her--in mind when I wrote it. My aim was to bring her to life in its pages. Because Haydée's life was spectacularly imaginative and daring, though, I think it would make a terrific film. For several reasons, I think of Nicole Kidman in the lead role: she could play the young and aging Haydée equally convincingly, her emotional range is broad and deep, and I think her brilliance would find some interesting challenges.

To direct the film? I'm...[read on]

Visit Margaret Randall's website.

My Book, The Movie: Haydée Santamaría, Cuban Revolutionary.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the scariest gothic romances

At LitReactor Meredith Borders tagged ten of the scariest gothic romances. One title on the list:

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (1847)

That’s right – two of the greatest gothic novels of all time were written, mere months apart, by sisters. Wuthering Heights offers the most Byronic of Byronic heroes in moody, mysterious Heathcliff, whose love for the beautiful Catherine Earnshaw is tempestuous and beset by mental illness and cruelty. Catherine also feels a connection with the polished Edgar Linton, but it’s her attachment to Heathcliff that will prove ruinous to both of them, and to everyone who gets close to them.

What’s so scary about it?

It’s an unblinking examination of mental illness and the calamitous power of passion. Also there are moors.

The most gothic line:

‘Oh, if I were but in my own bed in the old house!’ she went on bitterly, wringing her hands. ‘And that wind sounding in the firs by the lattice. Do let me feel it—it comes straight down the moor—do let me have one breath!’ To pacify her I held the casement ajar a few seconds. A cold blast rushed through; I closed it, and returned to my post. She lay still now, her face bathed in tears. Exhaustion of body had entirely subdued her spirit: our fiery Catherine was no better than a wailing child.

Read about another entry on the list.

Wuthering Heights appears on Ed Sikov's list of eight top books that got slammed by critics, Amelia Schonbek's top five list of approachable must-read classics, Molly Schoemann-McCann's top five list of the lamest girlfriends in fiction, Becky Ferreira's list of seven of the worst wingmen in literature, Na'ima B. Robert's top ten list of Romeo and Juliet stories, Jimmy So's list of fifteen notable film adaptations of literary classics, John Mullan's lists of ten of the best thunderstorms in literature, ten of the worst nightmares in literature and ten of the best foundlings in literature, Valerie Martin's list of novels about doomed marriages, Susan Cheever's list of the five best books about obsession, and Melissa Katsoulis' top 25 list of book to film adaptations. It is one of John Inverdale's six best books and Sheila Hancock's six best books.

The Page 99 Test: Wuthering Heights.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Shane White reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Shane White, author of Prince of Darkness: The Untold Story of Jeremiah G. Hamilton, Wall Street's First Black Millionaire.

His entry begins:

To tell the truth, leaving aside reading specifically related to my work, much of my “reading” is actually “listening.” Most days of the week, I spent 80-90 minutes walking around the shore of Sydney Harbor. Initially, as I walked, I used to write in my head, but I found that I’d write, or work, for 15 minutes and then drift off into dreams of how the New York Times would review my next book or what I would do if I won the lottery (a particularly futile exercise as I don’t buy tickets). Audible books transformed this part of my day. The first book I listened to, three or four years ago now, was Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. I’d never read it, but listening to it being read spoken was wonderful. Even though it bucketed down with rain for several days, I was...[read on]

About Prince of Darkness, from the publisher:

In the middle decades of the nineteenth century Jeremiah G. Hamilton was a well-known figure on Wall Street. Cornelius Vanderbilt, America's first tycoon, came to respect, grudgingly, his one-time opponent. The day after Vanderbilt's death on January 4, 1877, an almost full-page obituary on the front of the National Republican acknowledged that, in the context of his Wall Street share transactions, "There was only one man who ever fought the Commodore to the end, and that was Jeremiah Hamilton."

What Vanderbilt's obituary failed to mention, perhaps as contemporaries already knew it well, was that Hamilton was African American. Hamilton, although his origins were lowly, possibly slave, was reportedly the richest colored man in the United States, possessing a fortune of $2 million, or in excess of two hundred and $50 million in today's currency.

In Prince of Darkness, a groundbreaking and vivid account, eminent historian Shane White reveals the larger than life story of a man who defied every convention of his time. He wheeled and dealed in the lily white business world, he married a white woman, he bought a mansion in rural New Jersey, he owned railroad stock on trains he was not legally allowed to ride, and generally set his white contemporaries teeth on edge when he wasn't just plain outsmarting them. An important contribution to American history, Hamilton's life offers a way into considering, from the unusual perspective of a black man, subjects that are usually seen as being quintessentially white, totally segregated from the African American past.

Learn more about Prince of Darkness at the St. Martin's Press website.

My Book, The Movie: Prince of Darkness.

Writers Read: Shane White.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Taylor Kitchings's "Yard War"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Yard War by Taylor Kitchings.

About the book, from the publisher:

It’s 1964 in Jackson, Mississippi, deep in the civil rights movement, and the one black person twelve-year-old Trip Westbrook knows well is Willie Jane, the family maid, who has been a second mother to him. When Trip invites her son, Dee, to play football in the yard, Trip discovers the ugly side of his smiling neighbors. Even his loving grandparents don’t approve. But getting to know Dee and playing football, being part of a team, changes Trip. He begins to see all the unspoken rules he lives by but doesn’t agree with, such as respect your elders. What if he thinks their views are wrong? This engaging, honest, and hopeful novel is full of memorable characters, and brings the civil rights–era South alive for young readers.

Follow Taylor Kitchings on Facebook.

The Page 69 Test: Yard War.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top memorable meals in literature

Diana Secker Tesdell is the editor of the Everyman’s Pocket Classic anthology Stories from the Kitchen. One of her ten most memorable meals in literature, as shared at the Guardian:

The Flounder by Günter Grass

When you are feeling cold inside – try the walls of the cow’s second stomach. When you are sad, cast out by all nature, sad unto death, try tripe, which cheers us and gives meaning to life.

Nobel prize-winner Grass’s inventive novel ranges across centuries and features a vast array of characters, including a mystical talking fish and a great many cooks. In one scene, a 16th-century abbess finagles the right to cook a last meal for her father before his execution for heresy. She invites the officials responsible for his death sentence; they eagerly accept. The abbess prepares her father’s favourite dish – peppery stewed tripe – but takes care to spice it liberally with vengeance.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg, 99: Keith Heyer Meldahl's "Surf, Sand, and Stone"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Surf, Sand, and Stone: How Waves, Earthquakes, and Other Forces Shape the Southern California Coast by Keith Heyer Meldahl.

About the book, from the publisher:

Southern California is sandwiched between two tectonic plates with an ever-shifting boundary. Over the last several million years, movements of these plates have dramatically reshuffled the Earth’s crust to create rugged landscapes and seascapes riven with active faults. Movement along these faults triggers earthquakes and tsunamis, pushes up mountains, and lifts sections of coastline. Over geologic time, beaches come and go, coastal bluffs retreat, and the sea rises and falls. Nothing about Southern California’s coast is stable.

Surf, Sand, and Stone tells the scientific story of the Southern California coast: its mountains, islands, beaches, bluffs, surfing waves, earthquakes, and related phenomena. It takes readers from San Diego to Santa Barbara, revealing the evidence for how the coast's features came to be and how they are continually changing. With a compelling narrative and clear illustrations, Surf, Sand, and Stone outlines how the coast will be altered in the future and how we can best prepare for it.

Learn more about Surf, Sand, and Stone at the University of California Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Surf, Sand, and Stone.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Molly MacRae reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Molly MacRae, author of Knot the Usual Suspects: A Haunted Yarn Shop Mystery.

Her entry begins:

I usually gravitate toward funny books. A is for Arsenic: The Poisons of Agatha Christie by Kathryn Harkup doesn’t fit that pattern, unless you count the funny looks it gets from people who see it on the shelf next to my thermos of tea at work. Harkup is a former research chemist who discusses fourteen of Christie’s novels and the poisons used in them. Christie had extensive knowledge of poisons and chemistry. She’s one of...[read on]

About Knot the Usual Suspects, from the publisher:

In the latest from the bestselling author of Plagued by Quilt, Kath Rutledge yarn bombs Blue Plum, Tennessee-and gets tangled up in the mystery of a bumped-off bagpiper.

It’s time for Handmade Blue Plum, an annual arts and crafts fair, and Kath and her knitting group TGIF (Thank Goodness It’s Fiber) plan to kick off the festivities with a yarn bombing. But they’re not the only ones needling Blue Plum. Bagpiper and former resident Hugh McPhee had just returned after a long absence, yet his reception is anything but cozy. The morning after his arrival, he’s found dead in full piper’s regalia.

Although shaken, Kath and her knitting group go forward with their yarn installation-only to hit a deadly snag. Now, with the help of Geneva, the ghost who haunts her shop, Kath and TGIF need to unravel the mystery before someone else gets kilt!

Visit Molly MacRae's website.

My Book, The Movie: Knot the Usual Suspects.

The Page 69 Test: Knot the Usual Suspects.

Writers Read: Molly MacRae.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten great books about witches

One title on Entertainment Weekly's list of ten wickedly great books about witches:

The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, Katherine Howe

For all their publicity, the Salem witch trials didn’t involve any actual magic – just sexism and paranoia. At least that’s how it went in our world. When Howe’s protagonist starts investigating Salem’s past thanks to an enigmatic book, she finds more darkness and magic there than she imagined.

Read about another book on the list.

Also see: nine of the best witches in literature and seven of the best bad witches in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Gareth P. Jones's "No True Echo"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: No True Echo by Gareth P. Jones.

About the book, from the publisher:

Eddie thinks nothing ever happens in his small, boring town. Every day is exactly the same, down to what the bus driver will say when he picks each kid up in the morning. But then, one day, someone new, and very pretty, walks onto the bus. At least, Eddie thinks she’s new, but there is something oddly familiar about Scarlett. Intrigued (and smitten), Eddie starts to follow Scarlett—and what he discovers is odder still. Scarlett is a Senior Echo Time Agent from the future, come to his town to investigate the origin of time travel, which, unbeknownst to Eddie, was invented right in his hometown, by someone he knew. Soon Eddie is swept up in the investigation and in time. But time travel is a dangerous business, and Eddie will learn more than he wants to know about his long-dead mother.

This psychologically rich thriller redefines the time travel novel for a teen audience.

Visit Gareth P. Jones's website.

The Page 69 Test: No True Echo.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jamie Blaine's "Midnight Jesus," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Midnight Jesus: Where Struggle, Faith, and Grace Collide... by Jamie Blaine.

The entry begins:

My influences are not that common for Christian writers. I didn’t read Buechner or C.S. Lewis or Merton. Not much, at least. I read screenplays and scripts like Raising Arizona and Escape from New York and Mean Girls and Freaks and Geeks and The Gilmore Girls. If you want to learn how to write great dialogue, read The Gilmore Girls. If you want insight into poignant without sentimentality, get both volumes of Freaks and Geeks, The Complete Scripts.

Midnight Jesus was written with adaptation in mind. It’s a screenplay turned into memoir. That hopefully will get turned back into script again. But my vision would be more Orange is the New Black than feature film. I like television. You can take your time telling the story and mine are episodic anyway.

Inspirational writers would do well to study scripts. Show, don’t tell. Cut needless words. Everything must move the action forward. Dialogue is king.

As for directors – I love the Freaks and Geeks / Undeclared era of Apatow and Feig. Love some of the Coen Brothers work. I mean, we’re just dreaming, right? Anton Corbijn’s ability to capture dark elegance. Certainly, David...[read on]

Visit the Midnight Jesus website.

The Page 99 Test: Midnight Jesus.

My Book, The Movie: Midnight Jesus.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Marc Van De Mieroop's "Philosophy before the Greeks"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Philosophy before the Greeks: The Pursuit of Truth in Ancient Babylonia by Marc Van De Mieroop.

About the book, from the publisher:

There is a growing recognition that philosophy isn’t unique to the West, that it didn’t begin only with the classical Greeks, and that Greek philosophy was influenced by Near Eastern traditions. Yet even today there is a widespread assumption that what came before the Greeks was “before philosophy.” In Philosophy before the Greeks, Marc Van De Mieroop, an acclaimed historian of the ancient Near East, presents a groundbreaking argument that, for three millennia before the Greeks, one Near Eastern people had a rich and sophisticated tradition of philosophy fully worthy of the name.

In the first century BC, the Greek historian Diodorus of Sicily praised the Babylonians for their devotion to philosophy. Showing the justice of Diodorus’s comment, this is the first book to argue that there were Babylonian philosophers and that they studied knowledge systematically using a coherent system of logic rooted in the practices of cuneiform script. Van De Mieroop uncovers Babylonian approaches to knowledge in three areas: the study of language, which in its analysis of the written word formed the basis of all logic; the art of divination, which interpreted communications between gods and humans; and the rules of law, which confirmed that royal justice was founded on truth.

The result is an innovative intellectual history of the ancient Near Eastern world during the many centuries in which Babylonian philosophers inspired scholars throughout the region—until the first millennium BC, when the breakdown of this cosmopolitan system enabled others, including the Greeks, to develop alternative methods of philosophical reasoning.

Learn more about Philosophy before the Greeks at the Princeton University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Philosophy before the Greeks.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top novels with fascinating protagonists who would never be called “good guys”

Richard Kadrey is the author of many stories and novels, including the Sandman Slim series. At Tor.com he tagged five books about awful, awful people, including:

The Narrator in Fight Club

While Fight Club isn’t specifically a fantasy novel, its off-kilter worldview, created by the narrator’s inability to sleep, places it in a realm that’s not entirely our own world. Fight Club tells the story of an unnamed insomniac who, after a three sleepless weeks, begins attending disease support groups because other people’s suffering helps ease own. When the support groups lose their effectiveness, he runs into a mysterious, charismatic man named Tyler Durden. They create a secret underground fighting society together which is also a recruiting center for Tyler’s anarchist master plan to, basically, destroy all modern consumer-oriented society. The core of the book is the often strained relationship between the narrator and Tyler. It’s a tricky one because as the story proceeds, we discover that our innocent narrator isn’t nearly as innocent as he first appeared. Author Chuck Palahniuk uses dark satire to test our ability to empathize with a set of interesting, but truly screwed up characters.

Read about another book on the list.

Fight Club is among Chris Moss's top 19 books on how to be a man, E. Lockhart's seven favorite suspense novels, Joel Cunningham's top five books short enough to polish off in an afternoon, but deep enough to keep you thinking long into the night, Kathryn Williams's eight craziest unreliable narrators in fiction, Jessica Soffer's ten best book endings, Sebastian Beaumont's top ten books about psychological journeys, and Pauline Melville's top ten revolutionary tales.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Craig Packer reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Craig Packer, author of Lions in the Balance: Man-Eaters, Manes, and Men with Guns.

His entry begins:

I had the good fortune of getting to know Cormac McCarthy during my stay at the Santa Fe Institute this past winter. By the time of our initial meeting, I had only read No Country for Old Men, The Road and All the Pretty Horses, but I confessed to him that I had finished The Road the very day that I drafted the concluding passage to Lions in the Balance and that his writing had inspired the spirit and rhythm of my final sentences. He asked why, and I replied that I had fought a largely losing battle against corruption and chaos in Africa, and his ending for the downward spiral in The Road was perfect: no matter how horrible and hopeless...[read on]

About Lions in the Balance, from the publisher:

If you are a morani (warrior), you have your spear at the ready—you could be the hero, but you will have to wait until the morning light before you can go out and prove yourself. If it is a lion, you want to be the first to spear it—and if the lion turns on you, make sure it mauls you on your chest or stomach, on your face, shins, or throat. Any place where you can show your scars with pride, show the incontrovertible evidence of courage. A scar on your back would be a permanent reminder of cowardice, an ineradicable trace of shame.

Monsters take many forms: from man-eating lions to the people who hunt them, from armed robbers to that midnight knock at the door of a cheap hotel room in Dar es Salaam. And celebrated biologist Craig Packer has faced them all. Head on.

With Lions in the Balance, Packer takes us back into the complex, tooth-and-claw world of the African lion, offering revealing insights into both the lives of one of the most iconic and dangerous animals on earth and the very real risks of protecting them. A sequel to his prize-winning Into Africa—which gave many readers their first experience of fieldwork in Africa, of cooperative lions on dusty savannas, and political kidnappings on the shores of Lake Tanganyika—this new diary-based chronicle of cutting-edge research and heartbreaking corruption will both alarm and entertain. Packer’s story offers a look into the future of the lion, one in which the politics of conservation will require survival strategies far more creative and powerful than those practiced anywhere in the world today.

Packer is sure to infuriate millionaires, politicians, aid agencies, and conservationists alike as he minces no words about the problems he encounters. But with a narrative stretching from far flung parts of Africa to the corridors of power in Washington, DC, and marked by Packer’s signature humor and incredible candor, Lions in the Balance is a tale of courage against impossible odds, a masterly blend of science, adventure, and storytelling, and an urgent call to action that will captivate a new generation of readers.

Learn more about Lions in the Balance at the University of Chicago website.

My Book, The Movie: Lions in the Balance.

Writers Read: Craig Packer.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Molly MacRae's "Knot the Usual Suspects"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Knot the Usual Suspects: A Haunted Yarn Shop Mystery by Molly MacRae.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the latest from the bestselling author of Plagued by Quilt, Kath Rutledge yarn bombs Blue Plum, Tennessee-and gets tangled up in the mystery of a bumped-off bagpiper.

It’s time for Handmade Blue Plum, an annual arts and crafts fair, and Kath and her knitting group TGIF (Thank Goodness It’s Fiber) plan to kick off the festivities with a yarn bombing. But they’re not the only ones needling Blue Plum. Bagpiper and former resident Hugh McPhee had just returned after a long absence, yet his reception is anything but cozy. The morning after his arrival, he’s found dead in full piper’s regalia.

Although shaken, Kath and her knitting group go forward with their yarn installation-only to hit a deadly snag. Now, with the help of Geneva, the ghost who haunts her shop, Kath and TGIF need to unravel the mystery before someone else gets kilt!

Visit Molly MacRae's website.

My Book, The Movie: Knot the Usual Suspects.

The Page 69 Test: Knot the Usual Suspects.

--Marshal Zeringue

Adrian Tomine's 6 favorite graphic short story collections

Cartoonist Adrian Tomine has just published Killing and Dying, a new collection of graphic short stories. One of his six favorite graphic short story collections, as shared at The Week magazine:

My New York Diary by Julie Doucet

This is a collection of bracingly honest and unsentimental stories about the artist's teen years and brief residence in New York City. As with all the best comics, the drawing and writing are completely inextricable, and even the most mundane moments are transformed by Doucet's style.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Robert DuPlessis's "The Material Atlantic"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Material Atlantic: Clothing, Commerce, and Colonization in the Atlantic World, 1650-1800 by Robert DuPlessis.

About the book, from the publisher:

In this wide-ranging account, Robert DuPlessis examines globally sourced textiles that by dramatically altering consumer behaviour, helped create new economies and societies in the early modern world. This deeply researched history of cloth and clothing offers new insights into trade patterns, consumer demand and sartorial cultures that emerged across the Atlantic world between the mid-seventeenth and late-eighteenth centuries. As a result of European settlement and the construction of commercial networks stretching across much of the planet, men and women across a wide spectrum of ethnicities, social standings and occupations fashioned their garments from materials old and new, familiar and strange, and novel meanings came to be attached to different fabrics and modes of dress. The Material Atlantic illuminates crucial developments that characterised early modernity, from colonialism and slavery to economic innovation and new forms of social identity.

Robert S. DuPlessis is Isaac H. Clothier Professor of History and International Relations Emeritus at the Department of History, Swarthmore College.

Learn more about The Material Atlantic at the Cambridge University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: The Material Atlantic.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top heart-pounding hostage stories

Rachel Paxton-Gillilan is a freelance writer and semi-professional nerd.

At the B & N Teen Blog she tagged six "of the most suspenseful and chilling young adult hostage books around," including:

The Masked Truth, by Kelley Armstrong

This action-packed thriller will haunt you long after the last page, as it plays with themes of trust, forgiveness, and strength in the most terrifying and violent way. Riley suffers from PTSD, a result of witnessing the brutal murder of her neighbors, and Max has received a medical diagnosis that changed his life. The two teens wind up at the same intensive weekend therapy camp, but things go awry when three masked men break in and take the teens hostage. From start to finish, the book is nonstop action and twists, so it’s best to clear some time before you start. You won’t be able to put it down.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Shane White's "Prince of Darkness," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Prince of Darkness: The Untold Story of Jeremiah G. Hamilton, Wall Street's First Black Millionaire by Shane White.

The entry begins:

I would hardly be the first historian to think that my just published book, to which I have devoted several years’ work, should have a larger audience and be made into a Broadway musical or a film. Or both.

Although Prince of Darkness is about a Wall Street broker named Jeremiah Hamilton, his was a life of cinematic vividness. There were feats of derring-do, including a foiled foray running counterfeit coin into Port-au-Prince harbor, vigorous disputes about business ethics (or Hamilton’s lack of them) including one spectacular incident in which a slanging match in a New York courtroom broke out into a brawl on the steps of the Tombs building, and the violent eruption into the New York Draft Riots, arguably the worst week in the city’s history, where an Irish mob stormed into Hamilton’s house with the intention of lynching him on the lamppost outside. What is most appealing about him, though, is his large style. He may have been a pioneer but he was anything but polite and deferential. Hamilton never turned away or turned the other cheek.

Making a film about African Americans always seems to depend on signing up a big well-known bankable star. And depending on what part of the story the film concentrates, and thus how old he is (from say 20 to 67 when he dies), any of the usual suspects would surely do a great job—Denzel Washington, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Will Smith etc. Hamilton’s white wife, Eliza, was 14 to his 28 or 29 when he married her—so...[read on]

Learn more about Prince of Darkness at the St. Martin's Press website.

My Book, The Movie: Prince of Darkness.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Sofie Kelly's "Faux Pas"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Faux Pas by Sofie Kelly.

About Faux Pas, from the publisher:

Magical cats Owen and Hercules are back and ready to help librarian Kathleen Paulson pounce on a killer art thief. Normally, the arrival of an art exhibition at the Mayville Heights library would be cause for celebration. But thanks to the overbearing curator and high-tech security system that comes with it, Kathleen’s life has been completely disrupted. Even Owen and Hercules have been affected, since their favorite human doesn’t seem to have a spare moment to make their favorite sardine crackers, take them for a ride in her truck, or listen to Barry Manilow.

But when Kathleen stops by the library late one night and finds the curator sprawled on the floor—and the exhibition’s most valuable sketch missing—it’s suddenly time to canvass a crime scene. Now Kathleen, her boyfriend Detective Marcus Gordon, and her clever cats have to sniff out a murderous thief, before anyone else has a brush with death.

Visit Sofie Kelly's website.

My Book, The Movie: Curiosity Thrilled the Cat.

Writers Read: Sofie Kelly.

The Page 69 Test: Faux Pas.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five of the best Southern gothic titles

At B & N Reads Jenny Shank tagged five of the best Southern gothic books, including:

Welding with Children, By Tim Gautreaux

I first came across Louisiana writer Tim Gautreaux in the Best American Short Stories anthology, which has featured his work several times, including “The Piano Turner,” which is hysterical, moving, and Southern Gothic as all get-out. In it a “strange lady,” the wealthy heiress of a Creole plantation family, summons Claude, the town’s piano tuner, to her mansion. “He knew that all she did was sit in a 150-year-old house and practice pop tunes on a moth-eaten George Steck upright.” As in many great Southern Gothic tales, there’s a fire involved in the denouement.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Gil Troy reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Gil Troy, author of The Age of Clinton: America in the 1990s.

His entry begins:

I just finished a wild, creative, self-proclaimed “philosophical rampage” by Ze’ev Maghen called Imagine: John Lennon and the Jews. More than a book about John Lennon or Jews, the book is really about the existential crisis facing modern America – and the West. The book dissects Lennon’s classic song “Imagine,” using that to symbolize much of what ails us.

Maghen is a charming, cranky particularist, who fears “Imagine”’s universalism, its faux cosmopolitanism. Maghen doesn’t want to live in a world with no countries and no loyalties and no tribes and no boundaries, which makes you just live for “today-ay-ay.” He believes that human beings need tribes, commitments, communities, stories, as frameworks that make them work together – and build a better world together, which is what Judaism seeks. The universalist all too often loves humanity abstractly, in theory not in practice. The particularist, the nationalist, the loyalist, has to learn to love his or her allies in real life. While, of course, that love can turn into xenophobia and bigotry, it is also the only real way to love truly.

In Maghen’s best riff, he talks about proposing to a young lady, starting with “I love you” but making that love Lennonist (not Leninist), saying...[read on]

About The Age of Clinton, from the publisher:

The 1990s was a decade of extreme change. Seismic shifts in culture, politics, and technology radically altered the way Americans did business, expressed themselves, and thought about their role in the world. At the center of it all was Bill Clinton, the talented, charismatic, and flawed Baby Boomer president and his controversial, polarizing, but increasingly popular wife Hillary.

Although it was in many ways a Democratic Gilded Age, the final decade of the twentieth century was also a time of great anxiety. The Cold War was over, America was safe, stable, free, and prosperous, and yet Americans felt more unmoored, anxious, and isolated than ever. Having lost the script telling us our place in the world, we were forced to seek new anchors. This was the era of glitz and grunge, when we simultaneously relished living in the Republic of Everything even as we feared it might degenerate into the Republic of Nothing. Bill Clinton dominated this era, a man of passion and of contradictions both revered and reviled, whose complex legacy has yet to be clearly defined.

In this unique analysis, historian Gil Troy examines Clinton's presidency alongside the cultural changes that dominated the decade. By taking the '90s year-by-year, Troy shows how the culture of the day shaped the Clintons even as the Clintons shaped it. In so doing, he offers answers to two of the enduring questions about Clinton's legacy: how did such a talented politician leave Americans thinking he accomplished so little when he actually accomplished so much? And, to what extent was Clinton responsible for the catastrophes of the decade that followed his departure from office, specifically 9/11 and the collapse of the housing market?

Even more relevant as we head toward the 2016 election, The Age of Clinton will appeal to readers on both sides of the aisle.

Learn more about the book and author at Gil Troy's website and blog.

The Page 99 Test: Moynihan's Moment.

My Book, The Movie: Moynihan's Moment.

My Book, The Movie: The Age of Clinton.

The Page 99 Test: The Age of Clinton.

Writers Read: Gil Troy.

--Marshal Zeringue

Three of the best books on Somalia

At the Guardian, Pushpinder Khaneka named three of the best books on Somalia. One title on the list:

Crossbones by Nuruddin Farah

Set in Somalia around the 2006 US-backed Ethiopian invasion, the final volume in Farah's Past Imperfect trilogy can be read as a standalone novel. This absorbing story puts a human face to the tragedy of a failed state.

Three members of a Somali-American family return to find their homeland imploding under an Islamist regime in control of the capital, Mogadishu, as war nears and piracy proliferates off the coast of breakaway Puntland. Foreign correspondent Malik has come to write about political conflict and piracy; his father-in-law, Jeebleh, is re-establishing contact with old friends who he hopes will protect Malik and ease his path; and Malik's elder brother, Ahl, is searching for a stepson thought to have joined the Islamist militia on advice from an imam in his Minnesota hometown.

Farah skilfully evokes the paranoia and desperation that stalks the fragmented country, where trust is in short supply and good people find themselves unable to steer it away from self-destruction.

This is an impassioned insider's portrayal of present-day Somalia, and of lives blighted by relentless violence and civil war.

Somalia's most famous novelist went into exile in the 1970s, during the rule of the dictator Siad Barre. He now lives in the US and South Africa, but has vowed "to keep my country alive by writing about it".

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Jamie Blaine's "Midnight Jesus"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Midnight Jesus: Where Struggle, Faith, and Grace Collide... by Jamie Blaine.

About the book, from the publisher:

The heart of God can be found in the unlikeliest places, in the unlikeliest people.

It’s three a.m. in the side yard of a shack in the worst part of town. I’ve got a dirty-faced baby on my hip and there’s a pit bull standing on the septic tank in the next yard over barking his head off. My patient sits on the hood of her ex-husband’s low rider smoking a cigarette and dumping her pills into a mud hole by the right front tire. Airbrushed across the hood of the car is a cross-eyed Jesus with open arms. She lays her hand on top of his as the still-hot engine ticks. Through tears she pleads, “Help me Jesus, please.”

The dog is silent. Sirens approach. “Just breathe,” I tell her. “Everything’s gonna be all right.”

The baby fidgets, resting her head against me, staring up into my eyes. I raise one finger and she holds it tight.

I fumble for the words again. “Just breathe.”

Midnight Jesus shares fascinating, bizarre, and sometimes humorous true-life stories of everyday people looking for hope in their darkest hours. Poignant and unpretentious, Jamie paints beauty where at times it seems none exists—from skating rinks and bars, late-night highways and lonely apartments, broken churches and rundown trailer parks, jail cells, bridge rails, ERs, psych wards, and that place over the levee where God laughs and walks through the cool dark night.

Visit the Midnight Jesus website.

The Page 99 Test: Midnight Jesus.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top transgender books

Juliet Jacques is a freelance writer who covers gender, sexuality, literature, film and football. One of her top ten transgender books, as shared at the Guardian:

Gender Outlaw by Kate Bornstein (1994)

Sold as “an account of Bornstein’s transformation from heterosexual male to lesbian woman, from IBM salesperson to playwright and performance artist,” Gender Outlaw made a demand for a new writing style that would help outsiders understand transgender experiences. It politicised the memoir in a bold new way, hooking autobiography into discussions of gender identity and sexuality, transphobia and transgender artists and writers past and present.

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Simon Toyne's "The Searcher"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Searcher by Simon Toyne.

About the book, from the publisher:

The author of the acclaimed Sanctus trilogy conjures an eerie epic of good and evil, retribution and redemption—the first novel in the mesmerizing Solomon Creed series in which a man with no memory of his past must save a lost soul in a small Arizona town.

On a hilltop in the town of Redemption, Arizona, the townspeople gather at an old cemetery for the first time in decades to bury a local man. The somber occasion is suddenly disrupted by a thunderous explosion in the distant desert. A plane has crashed, and it’s pouring a pillar of black smoke into the air.

As Sheriff Garth Morgan speeds toward the crash, he nearly hits a tall, pale man running down the road, with no shoes on his feet and no memory of who he is or how he got there. The only clues to his identity are a label in his handmade suit jacket and a book that’s been inscribed to him: both giving the name Solomon Creed. When Morgan tells Solomon that he is in Redemption, Arizona, Solomon begins to believe he’s here for a reason—to save a man he has never met ... the man who was buried that morning.

Miles away, three men scan the skies for an overdue plane carrying an important package. Spotting a black cloud in the distance, they suspect something has gone badly wrong, and that the man who has sent them will demand a heavy price if the package has been lost.

To uncover the secret of his identity, Solomon Creed must uncover Redemption’s secrets too and learn the truth behind the death of the man he is there to save. But there are those who will do anything to stop him, men prepared to call on the darkest forces to prevent Solomon from seeing the light.

Learn more about the book and author at Simon Toyne's website, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.

My Book, The Movie: Sanctus.

The Page 69 Test: Sanctus.

The Page 69 Test: The Tower.

My Book, The Movie: The Tower.

My Book, The Movie: The Searcher.

Writers Read: Simon Toyne.

The Page 69 Test: The Searcher.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top books about adoption

The UK-based Coram children’s charity collected ten top books about adoption, all suggested and reviewed by adopted children and teens, including:

Nutmeg Gets Adopted by Judith Foxon

The story of a small red squirrel, Nutmeg, and his younger sister and brother who go through the process of separation, foster care and then going to live with a new, adopted family when their mother is unable to look after them and keep them safe.

“I read this when I was over 5. I liked this book because I could relate to it in a number of ways and that I felt somebody else understood me even if it was just a squirrel in a book. I liked the owl in the forest best when I was younger as he symbolised being a judge which allowed Nutmeg to be adopted by his new parents. And for me that was important. I identified with Nutmeg the most as I felt he knew just what I had been through when I was younger and that he ended up being in a happy family like I did.

All the issues they talked about in the book I pretty much experienced too such as not having a safe home to live in and not enough food etc.” - Kelsey, 17

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Sofie Kelly reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Sofie Kelly, author of Faux Pas.

Her entry begins:

I almost always have more than one book on the go—usually one I’m reading on my Kindle and one that’s a paper copy. The “physical” book I’m reading right now is Women Who Love Psychopaths by Sandra L. Brown. Recently I watched The Psychopath Next Door, a documentary about non-criminal psychopaths. (Experts estimate between one and two per cent of the general adult male population fits the definition of psychopath--a lack of empathy and remorse among other traits. Most psychopaths aren’t...[read on]

About Faux Pas, from the publisher:

Magical cats Owen and Hercules are back and ready to help librarian Kathleen Paulson pounce on a killer art thief. Normally, the arrival of an art exhibition at the Mayville Heights library would be cause for celebration. But thanks to the overbearing curator and high-tech security system that comes with it, Kathleen’s life has been completely disrupted. Even Owen and Hercules have been affected, since their favorite human doesn’t seem to have a spare moment to make their favorite sardine crackers, take them for a ride in her truck, or listen to Barry Manilow.

But when Kathleen stops by the library late one night and finds the curator sprawled on the floor—and the exhibition’s most valuable sketch missing—it’s suddenly time to canvass a crime scene. Now Kathleen, her boyfriend Detective Marcus Gordon, and her clever cats have to sniff out a murderous thief, before anyone else has a brush with death.

Visit Sofie Kelly's website.

My Book, The Movie: Curiosity Thrilled the Cat.

Writers Read: Sofie Kelly.

--Marshal Zeringue

Craig Packer's "Lions in the Balance," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Lions in the Balance: Man-Eaters, Manes, and Men with Guns by Craig Packer.

The entry begins:

Craig Packer, lion researcher and naïve optimist – either Daniel Day-Lewis or Clive Owen

Susan James, Packer’s wife and collaborator – either Allison Janney or Charlize Theron

Ingela Jansson, Swedish researcher who works with Maasai and lions – Noomi Rapace

Daniel Rosengren, Swedish researcher who was hacked by a machete - Alexander...[read on]

Learn more about Lions in the Balance at the University of Chicago website.

My Book, The Movie: Lions in the Balance.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Gil Troy's "The Age of Clinton"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Age of Clinton: America in the 1990s by Gil Troy.

About the book, from the publisher:

The 1990s was a decade of extreme change. Seismic shifts in culture, politics, and technology radically altered the way Americans did business, expressed themselves, and thought about their role in the world. At the center of it all was Bill Clinton, the talented, charismatic, and flawed Baby Boomer president and his controversial, polarizing, but increasingly popular wife Hillary.

Although it was in many ways a Democratic Gilded Age, the final decade of the twentieth century was also a time of great anxiety. The Cold War was over, America was safe, stable, free, and prosperous, and yet Americans felt more unmoored, anxious, and isolated than ever. Having lost the script telling us our place in the world, we were forced to seek new anchors. This was the era of glitz and grunge, when we simultaneously relished living in the Republic of Everything even as we feared it might degenerate into the Republic of Nothing. Bill Clinton dominated this era, a man of passion and of contradictions both revered and reviled, whose complex legacy has yet to be clearly defined.

In this unique analysis, historian Gil Troy examines Clinton's presidency alongside the cultural changes that dominated the decade. By taking the '90s year-by-year, Troy shows how the culture of the day shaped the Clintons even as the Clintons shaped it. In so doing, he offers answers to two of the enduring questions about Clinton's legacy: how did such a talented politician leave Americans thinking he accomplished so little when he actually accomplished so much? And, to what extent was Clinton responsible for the catastrophes of the decade that followed his departure from office, specifically 9/11 and the collapse of the housing market?

Even more relevant as we head toward the 2016 election, The Age of Clinton will appeal to readers on both sides of the aisle.

Learn more about the book and author at Gil Troy's website and blog.

The Page 99 Test: Moynihan's Moment.

My Book, The Movie: Moynihan's Moment.

My Book, The Movie: The Age of Clinton.

The Page 99 Test: The Age of Clinton.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Michelle Sassa reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Michelle Sassa, author (with Anna Mitchael) of Copygirl.

Her entry begins:

As a working mom of three busy school children, my reading time is beyond limited. Usually I manage five minutes a night in my bed before passing out cold, book still in hand, light on. Lately, my reading pile has consisted of a ridiculous number of school notices, sports forms, and my kids’ homework. In between this, I manage to slip in an occasional People magazine article, usually while waiting to pick up one of the children or, ahem, whilst hiding behind a locked bathroom door. But the last week of summer, we vacationed down the shore and I got to spend hours at a time with my head in a book. My selection? The Knockoff by Lucy Sykes and Jo Piazza. It had been voted best beach read by countless magazines, and I got it in right before Labor Day, in the nick of time (whew!) I didn't just read The Knockoff, I devoured it. I like my fiction fast and fun, with strong characters and observations that resonate, and...[read on]

About Copygirl, from the publisher:

Mad Men meets The Devil Wears Prada in this lively debut about a young woman working at the hippest ad agency in New York…

So. You want to work in advertising. The glitz, the glamour, the cocktail-fueled brainstorming sessions and Xbox breaks. Sounds like a dream job, right?

Wrong. The reality can be a nightmare. There are five simple rules for succeeding in the ad world—and I think I’ve already broken every single one…

1) Never let them see you cry. Even if your best friend breaks your heart. And posts it all over social media.

2) Be one of the boys. And, if you were born with the wrong equipment, flaunt what you’ve got to distract them while you get ahead.

3) Come up with the perfect pitch in an instant—or have your resumé ready to go at all times.

4) Trust no one. Seriously. If you don’t watch your back, they’ll steal your ideas, your pride, even your stapler.

5) Most importantly, don’t ever, under any circumstances, be a CopyGirl.

Trust me. I know…

Visit Michelle Sassa's website.

Writers Read: Michelle Sassa.

--Marshal Zeringue