Pg. 99: J. Michelle Coghlan's "Sensational Internationalism"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Sensational Internationalism: The Paris Commune and the Remapping of American Memory in the Long Nineteenth Century by J. Michelle Coghlan.

About the book,from the publisher:

"Skillfully researched and beautifully written, Sensational Internationalism broadens the contours of American cultural and political memory by bringing to life the profound reverberations produced in the States by what was on one level just a very brief moment in someone else's history: the Paris Commune. Michelle Coghlan's stunning archive lends her account breadth and authority missing in those that would minimize those effects or limit them to a solely labor phenomenon." - Kristin Ross, New York University

In refocusing attention on the Paris Commune as a key event in American political and cultural memory, Sensational Internationalism radically changes our understanding of the relationship between France and the United States in the long nineteenth century. It offers fascinating, remarkably accessible readings of a range of literary works, from periodical poetry and boys' adventure fiction to radical pulp and the writings of Henry James, as well as a rich analysis of visual, print, and performance culture, from post-bellum illustrated weeklies and panoramas to agit-prop pamphlets and Coney Island pyrotechnic shows. Throughout, it uncovers how a foreign revolution came back to life as a domestic commodity, and why for decades another nation's memory came to feel so much our own. This book will speak to readers looking to understand the affective, cultural, and aesthetic afterlives of revolt and revolution pre-and-post Occupy Wall Street, as well as those interested in space, gender, performance, and transatlantic print culture.

Learn more about Sensational Internationalism at the publisher's website.

My Book, The Movie: Sensational Internationalism.

The Page 99 Test: Sensational Internationalism.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top books about postwar Britain

Orange Prize winning and Booker Prize shortlisted author Linda Grant's new novel is The Dark Circle. One of Grant's top ten books about postwar Britain, as shared at the Guardian:

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

Orwell’s 1949 novel...has never been out of print. Government surveillance, perpetual war and historical revisionism make only the technology seem dated. He anticipated the new forms totalitarianism would take. It is a novel for every decade, a permanent warning of the dystopian future ahead. (The internet meme of the CCTV camera next to the blue plaque on his house is a Photoshopped fake, by the way.)

Read about another entry on the list.

Nineteen Eighty-four is on Ella Cosmo's list of five fictional books-within-a-book too dangerous to read, the list of four books that changed Peter Twohig, the Guardian's list of the five worst book covers ever, the Independent's list of the fifteen best opening lines in literature, W.B. Gooderham's top ten list of books given in books, Katharine Trendacosta and Amanda Yesilbas's list of ten paranoid science fiction stories that could help you survive, Na'ima B. Robert's top ten list of Romeo and Juliet stories, Gabe Habash's list of ten songs inspired by books and a list of the 100 best last lines from novels. The book made Charlie Jane Anders's list of ten science fiction novels we pretend to have read, Juan E. Méndez's list of five books on torture, P. J. O’Rourke's list of the five best political satires, Daniel Johnson's five best list of books about Cold War culture, Robert Collins' top ten list of dystopian novels, Gemma Malley's top 10 list of dystopian novels for teenagers, is one of Norman Tebbit's six best books and one of the top ten works of literature according to Stephen King. It made a difference to Isla Fisher, and appears on John Mullan's lists of ten of the best Aprils in literature, ten of the best rats in literature, and ten of the best horrid children in fiction.

--Marshal Zeringue

Larrie D. Ferreiro's "Brothers at Arms," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Brothers at Arms: American Independence and the Men of France and Spain Who Saved It by Larrie D. Ferreiro.

The entry begins:

Brothers at Arms: American Independence and the Men of France and Spain Who Saved It tells the stories of the French and Spanish merchants, ministers, soldiers and sailors who all came to the assistance of the fledgling United States during the Revolutionary War, even before the first shots were fired at Lexington and Concord, and were crucial to carrying the American Cause through to victory.

So vast a canvas is hard to portray on screen and still keep the audience riveted, so it needs a central character whose story arc allows the audience to follow the events, while still retaining a singular focus. This character should be based on a real-life model, just as in The Patriot, Mel Gibson’s Benjamin Martin was based on the real-life “Swamp Fox” Francis Marion.

Fortunately, such a character appears throughout Brothers at Arms and should be the inspiration for the movie’s main character, a person who saw many different battles throughout the war. Antoine Félix Wuibert was among the very first French volunteers to the American cause when he came to Philadelphia in 1776, and was commissioned by John Hancock as an American officer even before the Declaration of Independence was signed. He fought under George Washington when the British overran New York City, where he was captured and imprisoned back in England.

After Wuibert was paroled, he signed on to serve with John Paul Jones aboard the frigate Bonhomme Richard, and during the famous battle with Serapis he led the marines who ultimately defeated and captured the much larger British ship. Even though he was seriously wounded in the battle, he begged to return to America to rejoin the fight. On his way back he was again captured, imprisoned and released before returning to the serve again as an officer under George Washington. After the war he became an American citizen and a staunch abolitionist.

So if Wuibert was the Forrest Gump of the American Revolution, who should play him? Of course...[read on]

Learn more about Brothers at Arms at the Knopf website.

My Book, The Movie: Brothers at Arms.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Andrew Harding reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Andrew Harding, author of The Mayor of Mogadishu: A Story of Chaos and Redemption in the Ruins of Somalia.

His entry begins:

I’m gearing up to write my second book – a non-fiction tale about a brutal double murder here in South Africa and the way the subsequent investigation and trial have been stirring up all sorts of political tensions in a small farming town. And so yes, I’ve been re-reading In Cold Blood, looking for tips, and have been left, once again, in awe of Truman Capote’s skill at hiding the seams and stitches that allowed him to transform years of interviews and transcripts into such a...[read on]

About The Mayor of Mogadishu, from the publisher:

In The Mayor of Mogadishu, one of the BBC’s most experienced foreign correspondents, Andrew Harding, reveals the tumultuous life of Mohamoud “Tarzan” Nur - an impoverished nomad who was abandoned in a state orphanage in newly independent Somalia, and became a street brawler and activist. When the country collapsed into civil war and anarchy, Tarzan and his young family became part of an exodus, eventually spending twenty years in north London.

But in 2010 Tarzan returned, as Mayor, to the unrecognizable ruins of a city now almost entirely controlled by the Islamist militants of Al Shabab. For many in Mogadishu, and in the diaspora, Tarzan became a galvanizing symbol of courage and hope for Somalia. But for others, he was a divisive thug, who sank beneath the corruption and clan rivalries that continue, today, to threaten the country’s revival.

The Mayor of Mogadishu is a rare an insider’s account of Somalia’s unraveling, and an intimate portrayal of one family’s extraordinary journey.

Visit Andrew Harding's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Mayor of Mogadishu.

Writers Read: Andrew Harding.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Robert L. Kelly's "The Fifth Beginning"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Fifth Beginning: What Six Million Years of Human History Can Tell Us about Our Future by Robert L. Kelly.

About the book, from the publisher:

“I have seen yesterday. I know tomorrow.” This inscription in Tutankhamun’s tomb summarizes The Fifth Beginning. Here, archaeologist Robert L. Kelly explains how the study of our cultural past can predict the future of humanity.

In an eminently readable style, Kelly identifies four key pivot points in the six-million-year history of human development: the emergence of technology, culture, agriculture, and the state. In each example, the author examines the long-term processes that resulted in a definitive, no-turning-back change for the organization of society. Kelly then looks ahead, giving us evidence for what he calls a fifth beginning, one that started about AD 1500. Some might call it “globalization,” but the author places it in its larger context: a five-thousand-year arms race, capitalism’s global reach, and the cultural effects of a worldwide communication network.

Kelly predicts that the emergent phenomena of this fifth beginning will include the end of war as a viable way to resolve disputes, the end of capitalism as we know it, the widespread shift toward world citizenship, and the rise of forms of cooperation that will end the near-sacred status of nation-states. It’s the end of life as we have known it. However, the author is cautiously optimistic: he dwells not on the coming chaos, but on humanity’s great potential.

Learn more about The Fifth Beginning at the University of California Press website.

The Page 99 Test: The Fifth Beginning.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five SFF books that treat mental illness with compassion

At the B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog Ardi Alspach tagged five works of speculative fiction that address mental illness with compassion, including:

Borderline, Mishell Baker

This recent debut novel redefines urban fantasy as we know it. The genre often relies on sexy protagonists and their equally sexy supernatural counterparts to move the plot along—werewolves, witches, and all sorts of otherworldly beings. In Borderline, a group of deeply flawed human characters takes center stage. Millie, the novel’s protagonist, is recovering from a suicide attempt that left her a double-amputee—and dealing with a new diagnosis of borderline personality disorder—when she’s approached by a mysterious woman with an offer to join a secret government initiative called The Arcadia Project. It turns out her mental illness makes her a prime candidate to deal with policing traffic between Earth and a parallel reality inhabited by fairies. When a fairy nobleman, working undercover in Hollywood as a high-profile movie star, goes missing, Millie struggles to solve the mystery and juggle the personality quirks of a host os prickly allies and potential enemies, even as she comes to terms with her own mental health struggles and her new place in the world. This might be the only fantasy novel I’ve come across that puts mental illness at the forefront and gives people who face similar issues a protagonist they can root for.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Zana Fraillon's "The Bone Sparrow"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Bone Sparrow by Zana Fraillon.

About the book, from the publisher:

Subhi is a refugee. He was born in an Australian permanent detention center after his mother and sister fled the violence of a distant homeland, and the center is the only world he knows. But every night, the faraway whales sing to him, the birds tell him their stories, and the magical Night Sea from his mother's stories brings him gifts. As Subhi grows, his imagination threatens to burst beyond the limits of the fences that contain him. Until one night, it seems to do just that.

Subhi sees a scruffy girl on the other side of the wire mesh, a girl named Jimmie, who appears with a notebook written by the mother she lost. Unable to read it herself, Jimmie asks Subhi to unravel her family's love songs and tragedies that are penned there.

Subhi and Jimmie might both find comfort-and maybe even freedom-as their tales unfold. But not until each has been braver than ever before and made choices that could change everything.

Follow Zana Fraillon on Twitter.

My Book, The Movie: The Bone Sparrow.

Writers Read: Zana Fraillon.

The Page 69 Test: The Bone Sparrow.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eleven top underappreciated literary masterpieces

Kim Church's short stories and poetry have appeared in Shenandoah, Mississippi Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Prime Number Magazine, the Norton anthology Flash Fiction Forward, and elsewhere. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she has received fiction fellowships from the North Carolina Arts Council, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Millay Colony for the Arts, and Vermont Studio Center.

Born and raised in Lexington, North Carolina, Church earned her B.A. in English from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and her J.D. degree from UNC School of Law. She has taught writing workshops in a variety of settings, from college classrooms to death row. She lives with her husband, artist Anthony Ulinski, in Raleigh, where she divides her time between writing and law.

Church's first novel, Byrd, won the Crook’s Corner Book Prize and the Independent Publisher Book Award Bronze Medal for Literary Fiction; was a finalist for the Chautauqua Prize and the Balcones Fiction Prize; and was longlisted for the SIBA Book Award and the Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize from the Center for Fiction.

One title on the author's list of eleven underappreciated literary masterpieces, as shared at the Huffington Post:

The Call by Yannick Murphy (2011)

There are books for which my love is too deep and abiding to put into words. This is one. The narrator of The Call is a large-animal veterinarian in rural New England whose routine is upended when his son is injured in a hunting accident. As he searches for the person responsible, he begins to experience visits from UFOs. He delivers his account as if it were a series of veterinary reports. The first paragraph, for example, is organized under the headings Call, Action, Result, Thoughts on Drive Home While Passing Red and Gold Leaves on Maple Trees, What Children Said to Me When I Got Home, What the Wife Cooked for Dinner. This is an original and profoundly moving story of family, animals, community, grief, forgiveness, and spaceships.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Stephen L. Moore's "As Good As Dead"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: As Good As Dead: The Daring Escape of American POWs From a Japanese Death Camp by Stephen L. Moore.

About the book, from the publisher:

The heroic story of eleven American POWs who defied certain death in World War II—As Good as Dead is an unforgettable account of the Palawan Massacre survivors and their daring escape.

In late 1944, the Allies invaded the Japanese-held Philippines, and soon the end of the Pacific War was within reach. But for the last 150 American prisoners of war still held on the island of Palawan, there would be no salvation. After years of slave labor, starvation, disease, and torture, their worst fears were about to be realized. On December 14, with machine guns trained on them, they were herded underground into shallow air raid shelters—death pits dug with their own hands.

Japanese soldiers doused the shelters with gasoline and set them on fire. Some thirty prisoners managed to bolt from the fiery carnage, running a lethal gauntlet of machine gun fire and bayonets to jump from the cliffs to the rocky Palawan coast. By the next morning, only eleven men were left alive—but their desperate journey to freedom had just begun.

As Good as Dead is one of the greatest escape stories of World War II, and one that few Americans know. The eleven survivors of the Palawan Massacre—some badly wounded and burned—spent weeks evading Japanese patrols. They scrounged for food and water, swam shark-infested bays, and wandered through treacherous jungle terrain, hoping to find friendly Filipino guerrillas. Their endurance, determination, and courage in the face of death make this a gripping and inspiring saga of survival.

Visit Stephen L. Moore's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Battle for Hell’s Island.

Writers Read: Stephen L. Moore.

The Page 99 Test: As Good As Dead.

--Marshal Zeringue

Marina Abramovic's 6 favorite books

Marina Abramovic's new memoir is Walk Through Walls. One of her six favorite books, as shared at The Week magazine:

The Black Count by Tom Reiss

Brilliantly researched, this book transports you vividly into the world of Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, a mixed-race nobleman and soldier during the French Revolution who inspired his son, Alexandre Dumas, to write The Count of Monte Cristo. It is a must-read.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is David Welky reading?

Featured at Writers Read: David Welky, author of A Wretched and Precarious Situation: In Search of the Last Arctic Frontier.

His entry begins:

Having a family and a full-time teaching job – both of which I’m grateful for – leaves me with precious little time for discretionary reading. Most books I read are related to my current writing project. When I do reach beyond my field, my choices tend to be eclectic. I not only enjoy history and biography, but also books about biology, geology, and astrophysics written for general readers.

But a trend is evident in my recent reading. Events over the past several months have left me thinking deeply about race in America, and much of my “outside reading” has focused on that fascinating and thorny subject.

By now, most readers have heard of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s National Book Award-winning Between the World and Me, the author’s spellbinding message to his son. There’s not much point in adding another handclap to the thunderous applause Coates has already received, but I will say that I found his writing utterly devastating, and was particularly struck by the way in which he made the fragility of the black body central to the African-American experience. Between the World and Me is the kind of book you...[read on]

About A Wretched and Precarious Situation, from the publisher:

A remarkable true story of adventure, betrayal, and survival set in one of the world’s most inhospitable places.

In 1906, from atop a snow-swept hill in the ice fields northwest of Greenland, hundreds of miles from another human being, Commander Robert E. Peary spotted a line of mysterious peaks looming in the distance. He called this unexplored realm “Crocker Land.” Scientists and explorers agreed that the world-famous explorer had discovered a new continent rising from the frozen Arctic Ocean.

Several years later, two of Peary’s disciples, George Borup and Donald MacMillan, assembled a team of amateur adventurers to investigate Crocker Land. Before them lay a chance at the kind of lasting fame enjoyed by Magellan, Columbus, and Captain Cook. While filling in the last blank space on the globe, they might find new species of plants or animals, or even men; in the era of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, anything seemed possible. Renowned scientific institutions, and even former president Theodore Roosevelt, rushed to endorse the expedition.

What followed was a sequence of events that none of the explorers could have imagined. Trapped in a true-life adventure story, the men endured howling blizzards, unearthly cold, food shortages, isolation, a fatal boating accident, a drunken sea captain, disease, dissension, and a horrific crime. But the team pushed on through every obstacle, driven forward by the mystery of Crocker Land and faint hopes that they someday would make it home.

Populated with a cast of memorable characters, and based on years of research in previously untapped sources, A Wretched and Precarious Situation is a harrowing Arctic narrative unlike any other.

The Page 99 Test: The Thousand-Year Flood.

My Book, The Movie: A Wretched and Precarious Situation.

Writers Read: David Welky.

--Marshal Zeringue

Andrew Harding's "The Mayor of Mogadishu," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Mayor of Mogadishu: A Story of Chaos and Redemption in the Ruins of Somalia by Andrew Harding.

The entry begins:

When I first asked the Mayor of Mogadishu, Mohamud “Tarzan” Nur, if he would allow me to write a book about him – a book, I stressed, that would not be an “authorized” biography and would contain plenty of criticism about him – he hardly gave it a thought. The answer was yes. “Write what you like,” he said with a shrug. But almost immediately, he started talking about Hollywood. A film of his life - now that was what he really wanted.

And you could see his point. Mogadishu – the city of Black Hawk Down, in the country of Captain Phillips. And the Mayor himself - often profiled by the international media as “the man with the world’s most dangerous job.” Which was true enough. I’d seen it up close, driving round the rubble of Mogadishu with Tarzan, pistol tucked in his trousers, two dozen armed guards in pickup trucks to guard him, and a succession of unsuccessful assassination attempts in his wake.

How could Hollywood resist?

Well, we shall see.

But in the meantime I can’t deny having given it some thought during the six years that I’ve got to know Tarzan and his family. With his white, aristocratic beard, and his scarred, brawlers face, I’ve imagined Omar Sharif – back from the grave – to play the lead. And perhaps Sophia Lauren to play his elegant young wife, Shamis. After all, she used to stroll along Mogadishu’s Italianate beach front in her mini-skirt in the 1970s.

But I can feel myself getting in trouble. Surely African actors should play these roles. Absolutely. But which Africans? Somalis are a particularly...[read on]

Visit Andrew Harding's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Mayor of Mogadishu.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Hermione Giffard's "Making Jet Engines in World War II"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Making Jet Engines in World War II: Britain, Germany, and the United States by Hermione Giffard.

About the book, from the publisher:

Our stories of industrial innovation tend to focus on individual initiative and breakthroughs. With Making Jet Engines in World War II, Hermione Giffard uses the case of the development of jet engines to offer a different way of understanding technological innovation, revealing the complicated mix of factors that go into any decision to pursue an innovative, and therefore risky technology.

Giffard compares the approaches of Britain, Germany, and the United States. Each approached jet engines in different ways because of its own war aims and industrial expertise. Germany, which produced more jet engines than the others, did so largely as replacements for more expensive piston engines. Britain, on the other hand, produced relatively few engines—but, by shifting emphasis to design rather than production, found itself at war's end holding an unrivaled range of designs. The US emphasis on development, meanwhile, built an institutional basis for postwar production. Taken together, Giffard's work makes a powerful case for a more nuanced understanding of technological innovation, one that takes into account the influence of the many organizational factors that play a part in the journey from idea to finished product.

Learn more about Making Jet Engines in World War II at the University of Chicago Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Making Jet Engines in World War II.

--Marshal Zeringue

Coffee with a canine: Ann Vanderlaan & her dogs

Featured at Coffee with a Canine: M. Ann Vanderlaan & her dogs.

The author, on whether her dogs help or hinder her writing:

Always help. Play breaks, walks, and vet visits are very little to pay for what they teach me about behavior and how they manipulate humans. They are quite entertaining and great snugglers if you don’t mind being stepped on by seventy pounds...[read on]

About Lone Wolf: An FBI K-9 Novel by Sara Driscoll (the pen name of Jen J. Danna and Ann Vanderlaan), from the publisher:

In the first book in a thrilling new series, FBI Special Agent Meg Jennings and Hawk, her loyal search-and-rescue Labrador, must race against time as they zero in on one of the deadliest killers in the country...

Meg and Hawk are part of the FBI’s elite K-9 unit. Hawk can sniff out bodies anywhere—living or dead—whether it’s tracking a criminal or finding a missing person. When a bomb rips apart a government building on the National Mall in Washington D.C., it takes all of the team’s extensive search-and-rescue training to locate and save the workers and visitors buried beneath the rubble.

But even as the duo are hailed as heroes, a mad bomber remains at large, striking terror across the Eastern seaboard in a ruthless pursuit of retribution. As more bombs are detonated and the body count escalates, Meg and Hawk are brought in to a task force dedicated to stopping the unseen killer. But when the attacks spiral wide and any number of locations could be the next target, it will come down to a battle of wits and survival skills between Meg, Hawk, and the bomber they’re tracking to rescue a nation from the brink of chaos.

Visit Ann Vanderlaan's Facebook page, and read more about Lone Wolf: An FBI K-9 Novel by Sara Driscoll.

Coffee with a Canine: M. Ann Vanderlaan & her dogs.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five alternate histories featuring real natural disasters

Sam Reader is a writer and conventions editor for The Geek Initiative. He also writes literary criticism and reviews at strangelibrary.com. One of five alternate histories featuring actual natural disasters that he tagged at the B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog:

The San Francisco Earthquake, Breath of Earth by Beth Cato

Breath of Earth is another alt-history novel that takes place on the west coast and involves a city-leveling disaster. Cato’s San Francisco is under the influence of a partnership known as the Unified Pacific, a union between the United States and Japan that has set its sights on gaining a foothold in China. But when the geomancers who draw energy from San Francisco’s faultline are all assassinated, the city is thrown into chaos, raising the possibility of a massive earthquake could devastate the landscape. Its inclusion on this list makes what happens here pretty obvious, though Cato’s magic system, and the idea that the geomancers are the only ones keeping the roiling world in check, are more than enough to create an intriguing and well-realized world.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Page 69 Test: Breath of Earth.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Sandra Balzo's "To The Last Drop"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: To The Last Drop by Sandra Balzo.

About the book, from the publisher:

Maggy Thorsen returns in this brand-new coffeehouse mystery, where the death of her ex-husband's colleague leads to events that hit Maggy close to home - in more ways than one...

Maggy Thorsen discovers a dead body outside Thorsen Dental's office block and is soon uncovering disturbing family secrets, lies and betrayal. And when her beau, Jake Pavlik, hits her with another bombshell, can she keep her emotions in check to uncover the truth?

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

My Book, The Movie: Triple Shot.

The Page 69 Test: Murder on the Orient Espresso.

The Page 69 Test: To The Last Drop.

--Marshal Zeringue

Twelve top books that get female friendship

At Cosmopolitan Julie Buntin tagged twelve books that totally get female friendship, including:

Mary McCarthy's The Group scandalized the world when it was published in the early '60s with its frank take on sex, marriage, breastfeeding and the horrors of early birth control (oh my god, you guys, PESSARIES). Cosmopolitan called it, "Juicy, shocking, witty and almost continually brilliant," in one of its earliest reviews. The "group" is composed of eight Vassar grads tackling post-college life, and the novel weaves in and out of individual stories, so that the effect is a kind of collage. You see each girl through her own eyes and the group's eyes, a narrative trick that underscores the permanent way college friends influence our identity. If The Group leaves you hankering for more, follow it up with J. Courtney Sullivan's Commencement, a contemporary take on the same theme — except instead of Vassar, Sullivan's "group" graduated from Smith.

Read about another entry on the list.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Zana Fraillon reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Zana Fraillon, author of The Bone Sparrow.

Her entry begins:

The most recent book I have read is Moose Baby by Meg Rosoff and published by Barrington Stoke. I really love the Barrington Stoke books – they are short, accessible reads, beautifully designed on thick paper and often with beautiful illustrations to accompany them. Moose Baby is about a teenage mother who gives birth to – you guessed it – a Moose. Apparently a fairly common occurrence. It is a story full of warmth and humour and completely...[read on]

About The Bone Sparrow, from the publisher:

Subhi is a refugee. He was born in an Australian permanent detention center after his mother and sister fled the violence of a distant homeland, and the center is the only world he knows. But every night, the faraway whales sing to him, the birds tell him their stories, and the magical Night Sea from his mother's stories brings him gifts. As Subhi grows, his imagination threatens to burst beyond the limits of the fences that contain him. Until one night, it seems to do just that.

Subhi sees a scruffy girl on the other side of the wire mesh, a girl named Jimmie, who appears with a notebook written by the mother she lost. Unable to read it herself, Jimmie asks Subhi to unravel her family's love songs and tragedies that are penned there.

Subhi and Jimmie might both find comfort-and maybe even freedom-as their tales unfold. But not until each has been braver than ever before and made choices that could change everything.

Follow Zana Fraillon on Twitter.

My Book, The Movie: The Bone Sparrow.

Writers Read: Zana Fraillon.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Heather Dalton's "Merchants and Explorers"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Merchants and Explorers: Roger Barlow, Sebastian Cabot, and Networks of Atlantic Exchange 1500-1560 by Heather Dalton.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the early sixteenth century, a young English sugar trader spent a night at what is now the port of Agadir in Morocco, watching from the tenuous safety of the Portuguese fort as the local tribesmen attacked the "Moors." Having recently departed the familiar environs of London and the Essex marshes, this was to be the first of several encounters Roger Barlow was to have with unfamiliar worlds.

Barlow's family was linked to networks where the exchange of goods and ideas merged, and his contacts in Seville brought him into contact with the navigator, Sebastian Cabot. Merchants and Explorers follows Barlow and Cabot across the Atlantic to South America and back to Spain and Reformation England. Heather Dalton uses their lives as an effective narrative thread to explore the entangled Atlantic world during the first half of the sixteenth century. In doing so, she makes a critical contribution to the fields of both Atlantic and global history.

Although it is generally accepted that the English were not significantly attracted to the Americas until the second half of the sixteenth century, Dalton demonstrates that Barlow, Cabot, and their cohorts had a knowledge of the world and its opportunities that was extraordinary for this period. She reveals how shared knowledge as well as the accumulation of capital in international trading networks prior to 1560 influenced emerging ideas of trade, "discovery," settlement, and race in Britain. In doing so, Dalton not only provides a substantial new body of facts about trade and exploration, she explores the changing character of English commerce and society in the first half of the sixteenth century.

Learn more about Merchants and Explorers at the Oxford University Press website.

My Book, The Movie: Merchants and Explorers.

The Page 99 Test: Merchants and Explorers.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven books that celebrate the joys of solitude

At B&N Reads Jenny Shank tagged seven books that celebrate the joys of being alone, including:

Point of Direction by Rachel Weaver

People looking for solitude have been known to head to Alaska, America’s least densely populated state. Anna, the protagonist of Rachel Weaver’s sharp literary thriller, takes that quest for solitude one step further when she agrees with her boyfriend Kyle’s plan to buy a $1 lease from the Coast Guard and live over the winter in an Alaskan lighthouse overlooking a forbidding channel. Anna hopes that being alone with Kyle in the lighthouse will help them bond and help her finally overcome her trauma over a glacier-hiking expedition she led that ended badly. In short, things do not go as planned.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: J. Q. Coyle's "The Infinity of You & Me"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Infinity of You & Me: A Novel by J.Q. Coyle.

About the book, from the publisher:

Almost fifteen, Alicia is smart and funny with a deep connection to the poet Sylvia Plath, but she’s ultimately failing at life. With a laundry list of diagnoses, she hallucinates different worlds—strange, decaying, otherworldly yet undeniably real worlds that are completely unlike her own with her single mom and one true friend. In one particularly vivid hallucination, Alicia is drawn to a boy her own age named Jax who’s trapped in a dying universe. Days later, her long-lost father shows up at her birthday party, telling her that the hallucinations aren’t hallucinations, but real worlds; she and Jax are bound by a strange past and intertwining present. This leads her on a journey to find out who she is while trying to save the people and worlds she loves. J.Q. Coyle’s The Infinity of You & Me is a wild ride through unruly hearts and vivid worlds guaranteed to captivate.

Visit the websites of Julianna Baggott and Quinn Dalton.

The Page 69 Test: The Infinity of You & Me.

--Marshal Zeringue

Philippe Girard's "Toussaint Louverture," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Toussaint Louverture: A Revolutionary Life by Philippe Girard.

The entry begins:

Every historian is convinced that their book would make a great Hollywood spectacular. Meet a historian at a conference, and after a couple drinks he or she will inevitably tell you that their 700-page Ph.D. dissertation on 13th century Serbian church steeples could be a blockbuster if only Michael Bay would pick up the script (That is the true “drunk history”).

I am no exception! I am convinced that my biography of Toussaint Louverture, the man who led the only successful slave revolt in world history, would make for an incredible biopic. The Haitian Revolution featured plenty of sex, violence, intriguing characters, stirring speeches, battles, and betrayals. Take all the historical importance of Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln and liven it up with the blood and gore of Game of Thrones and the layered character studies of Master and Commander. Add some pirates, a Caribbean locale, a Voodoo ceremony, and voilà: the Haitian Revolution.

Casting the actor to play Toussaint Louverture would be no easy task: he was a man of incredible depth and complexity, so humanizing him while remaining faithful to his true self would be quite a challenge. I’ve spent over ten years studying him, and even I can’t say that I truly know who the “real” Toussaint Louverture is.

To portray the many facets of his personality, a director could make the radical choice of employing different actors for the different periods of his life. Mahershala Ali, the crafty and ruthless Remy Danton of House of Cards, would be a great early Louverture, when he made his way from lowly slave to...[read on]

Learn more about Toussaint Louverture at the Basic Books website.

My Book, The Movie: Toussaint Louverture.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top books by indigenous authors

At LitHub, Emily Temple tagged ten top books by indigenous authors, including:

Sherman Alexie, Blasphemy: New and Selected Stories

Sherman Alexie is extraordinarily prolific, and his abilities range from poetry to short stories to YA to literary novels—really, you can reach blindly into the Alexie bag, because almost everything by him is great. You’re probably already familiar with The Absolutely True Story of a Part-Time Indian—and if you haven’t read it, it’s likely already been recommended to you, and if it hasn’t, well, read that one too—so let’s settle on another, his recent collection Blasphemy. This book concludes with my all-time favorite story of his, “What You Pawn I Will Redeem.” Even if you don’t read anything else from this list, read this. Trust me.

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Sharon Farmer's "The Silk Industries of Medieval Paris"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Silk Industries of Medieval Paris: Artisanal Migration, Technological Innovation, and Gendered Experience by Sharon Farmer.

About the book, from the publisher:

For more than one hundred years, from the last decade of the thirteenth century to the late fourteenth, Paris was the only western European town north of the Mediterranean basin to produce luxury silk cloth. What was the nature of the Parisian silk industry? How did it get there? And what do the answers to these questions tell us?
According to Sharon Farmer, the key to the manufacture of silk lies not just with the availability and importation of raw materials but with the importation of labor as well. Farmer demonstrates the essential role that skilled Mediterranean immigrants played in the formation of Paris's population and in its emergence as a major center of luxury production. She highlights the unique opportunities that silk production offered to women and the rise of women entrepreneurs in Paris to the very pinnacles of their profession. The Silk Industries of Medieval Paris illuminates aspects of intercultural and interreligious interactions that took place in silk workshops and in the homes and businesses of Jewish and Italian pawnbrokers.

Drawing on the evidence of tax assessments, aristocratic account books, and guild statutes, Farmer explores the economic and technological contributions that Mediterranean immigrants made to Parisian society, adding new perspectives to our understanding of medieval French history, luxury trade, and gendered work.

Learn more about The Silk Industries of Medieval Paris at the University of Pennsylvania Press website.

The Page 99 Test: The Silk Industries of Medieval Paris.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top books about women in the British empire

Stephen Taylor is a writer of biography, history and travel. He has an enduring connection with Africa, where he was born and which provided the setting for his first four book, but in recent years he has turned to people and events from the Georgian age. These themes come together in his latest book, the first comprehensive life of Lady Anne Barnard.

One of Taylor's top ten books about women in the British empire, as shared at the Guardian:

Out of Africa by Karen Blixen

She had a farm in Africa, in the Ngong Hills, and wrote about that landscape, its people and wildlife with a passion and lyricism that seem a world away from a decadent colonial Kenya. The reality is that her aristocratic Swedish husband could have stepped straight out of White Mischief and her lover, Denys Finch-Hatton, was forever taking to the air. But in Blixen’s Africa, beauty prevails.

Read about another book on the list.

Out of Africa is among Amelia Schonbek's four riveting nonfiction adventure books and Helena Frith Powell's top five books on glamour.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Stephen L. Moore reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Stephen L. Moore, author of As Good As Dead: The Daring Escape of American POWs From a Japanese Death Camp.

His entry begins:

The most recent book I’ve read is James Hornfischer’s new release, The Fleet at Flood Tide, which covers the last year of the war in the Pacific. The depths of his research is evident in an important work that helps reveal the startling psyche of a Japanese culture that must be reckoned with if the Allies decide to invade...[read on]

About As Good As Dead, from the publisher:

The heroic story of eleven American POWs who defied certain death in World War II—As Good as Dead is an unforgettable account of the Palawan Massacre survivors and their daring escape.

In late 1944, the Allies invaded the Japanese-held Philippines, and soon the end of the Pacific War was within reach. But for the last 150 American prisoners of war still held on the island of Palawan, there would be no salvation. After years of slave labor, starvation, disease, and torture, their worst fears were about to be realized. On December 14, with machine guns trained on them, they were herded underground into shallow air raid shelters—death pits dug with their own hands.

Japanese soldiers doused the shelters with gasoline and set them on fire. Some thirty prisoners managed to bolt from the fiery carnage, running a lethal gauntlet of machine gun fire and bayonets to jump from the cliffs to the rocky Palawan coast. By the next morning, only eleven men were left alive—but their desperate journey to freedom had just begun.

As Good as Dead is one of the greatest escape stories of World War II, and one that few Americans know. The eleven survivors of the Palawan Massacre—some badly wounded and burned—spent weeks evading Japanese patrols. They scrounged for food and water, swam shark-infested bays, and wandered through treacherous jungle terrain, hoping to find friendly Filipino guerrillas. Their endurance, determination, and courage in the face of death make this a gripping and inspiring saga of survival.

Visit Stephen L. Moore's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Battle for Hell’s Island.

Writers Read: Stephen L. Moore.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven surreal works of metaphysical science fiction

Sam Reader is a writer and conventions editor for The Geek Initiative. He also writes literary criticism and reviews at strangelibrary.com. One of seven trippy works of metaphysical science fiction that he tagged at the B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog:

The Gone-Away World, by Nick Harkaway

Nick Harkaway has made a name for himself by mixing philosophical and existential concepts with pulp science fiction and B-movie tropes to create engaging and weird novels. The Gone-Away World, his debut, takes place after an apocalyptic disaster has covered the world with clouds of “stuff,” essentially blank spaces filled with nightmares made real. When a pipeline of “stuff repellent” catches fire, Gonzo Lubitsch and his salvage team are dispatched to repair it and save the world. But as the job goes wrong, it reveals things about the relationship between Gonzo and his friends that lead them into stranger and stranger conflicts—with ninjas, Trappist mimes, martial artists, and monsters. Harkaway’s strong narrative voice and unnerving powers of description make this one heck of a ride, and it’s still my favorite of his works, if only because it makes a plot twist you’ve definitely seen before seem brand-new.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Adam Kotsko's "The Prince of This World"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Prince of This World by Adam Kotsko.

About the book, from the publisher:

The most enduring challenge to traditional monotheism is the problem of evil, which attempts to reconcile three incompatible propositions: God is all-good, God is all-powerful, and evil happens. The Prince of This World traces the story of one of the most influential attempts to square this circle: the offloading of responsibility for evil onto one of God's rebellious creatures. In this striking reexamination, the devil's story is bitterly ironic, full of tragic reversals. He emerges as a theological symbol who helps oppressed communities cope with the trauma of unjust persecution, torture, and death at the hands of political authorities and eventually becomes a vehicle to justify oppression at the hands of Christian rulers. And he evolves alongside the biblical God, who at first presents himself as the liberator of the oppressed but ends up a cruel ruler who delights in the infliction of suffering on his friends and enemies alike. In other words, this is the story of how God becomes the devil—a devil who remains with us in our ostensibly secular age.

Learn more about The Prince of This World at the Stanford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: The Prince of This World.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Ashley Weaver's "A Most Novel Revenge"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: A Most Novel Revenge by Ashley Weaver.

About A Most Novel Revenge, from the publisher:

“Well, darling, who do you suppose will turn up dead this time?”

With two murder investigations behind them and their marriage at last on steady ground, Amory and Milo Ames intend to winter quietly in Italy. The couple finds their plans derailed, however, when Amory receives an urgent summons to the English countryside from her cousin Laurel. At Lyonsgate, the country house of Laurel’s friend Reginald Lyons, Amory and Milo are surprised to discover an eccentric and distinguished group of guests have also been invited, led by the notorious socialite Isobel Van Allen.

After years of social exile, Isobel has returned to England to write a sequel to her scandalous first book, the thinly fictionalized account of a high society murder at the very country house to which the Ameses have been called. Her second incriminating volume, she warns the house’s occupants—all of whom were present when one of their companions was killed years ago—will tell everything that really happened that fateful night. But some secrets are meant to stay buried, and when a desperate person turns to murder, it’s up to Amory and Milo to sort through a web of scandal and lies to uncover the truth, and the identity of a killer.

Visit Ashley Weaver's website.

Writers Read: Ashley Weaver.

The Page 69 Test: A Most Novel Revenge.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine revelatory books about motherhood

Elisa Albert is the author of After Birth (2015), The Book of Dahlia (2008), How This Night is Different (2006), and the editor of the anthology Freud’s Blind Spot (2010). At The Huffington Post she tagged nine radical books about motherhood, including:

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

I don’t love this book, though it is host to a completely fascinating setup: a dystopia (Past? Present? Future?) in which women are enslaved breeders, subject to intense oppression and ritual. Atwood’s prose bugs me; the narrative and tone don’t quite suit one another, so it’s like a zany soundtrack where a mournful would be appropriate. Maybe it’s telling about my own deep longing for societal support structures in the childbearing year, but I read about the forced, isolated communal lives of these women with a degree of idealization. Things must be pretty freakin’ bleak in contemporary childbearing culture if one can read about a brutal society in which pregnancy and birth are strictly regulated by pernicious pseudo-religious male overlords and think: hey, at least those women all are in it together!

Read about another entry on the list.

The Handmaid's Tale made Michael W. Clune's top five list of books about imaginary religions, Jeff Somers's top six list of often misunderstood SF/F novels, Jason Sizemore's top five list of books that will entertain and drop you into the depths of despair, S.J. Watson's list of four books that changed him, Shaun Byron Fitzpatrick's list of eight of the most badass ladies in all of banned literature, Guy Lodge's list of ten of the best dystopias in fiction, art, film, and television, Bethan Roberts's top ten list of novels about childbirth, Rachel Cantor's list of the ten worst jobs in books, Charlie Jane Anders and Kelly Faircloth's list of the best and worst childbirth scenes in science fiction and fantasy, Lisa Tuttle's critic's chart of the top Arthur C. Clarke Award winners, and PopCrunch's list of the sixteen best dystopian books of all time.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Erynn Masi de Casanova's "Buttoned Up"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Buttoned Up: Clothing, Conformity, and White-Collar Masculinity by Erynn Masi de Casanova.

About the book, from the publisher:

Who is today's white-collar man? The world of work has changed radically since The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit and other mid-twentieth-century investigations of corporate life and identity. Contemporary jobs are more precarious, casual Friday has become an institution, and telecommuting blurs the divide between workplace and home. Gender expectations have changed, too, with men's bodies increasingly exposed in the media and scrutinized in everyday interactions. In Buttoned Up, based on interviews with dozens of men in three U.S. cities with distinct local dress cultures—New York, San Francisco, and Cincinnati—Erynn Masi de Casanova asks what it means to wear the white collar now.

Despite the expansion of men’s fashion and grooming practices, the decrease in formal dress codes, and the relaxing of traditional ideas about masculinity, white-collar men feel constrained in their choices about how to embody professionalism. They strategically embrace conformity in clothing as a way of maintaining their gender and class privilege. Across categories of race, sexual orientation and occupation, men talk about "blending in" and "looking the part" as they aim to keep their jobs or pursue better ones. These white-collar workers’ accounts show that greater freedom in work dress codes can, ironically, increase men’s anxiety about getting it wrong and discourage them from experimenting with their dress and appearance.

Learn more about Buttoned Up at the Cornell University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Making Up the Difference.

The Page 99 Test: Buttoned Up.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight tales of technology run amok

Jeff Somers is the author of the Avery Cates series, The Ustari Cycle, Lifers, and Chum (among many other books) and numerous short stories.

At the B&N Reads blog he tagged eight accounts of technology run amok, including:

Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro

The idea of extending your life always seems like a good one. If you could have some replacement organs grown so that your spoiled kidney, liver, or heart could be swapped out without any chance of rejection, why wouldn’t you? Except, of course, when you think about the sad, short lives of your clones, born and raised solely to keep your replacement parts warm until you need them. A lot of sci-fi presents technology as clean and sterile—encased in Apple-like white boxes. But the real horror of technology gone mad will be the visceral blood-and-guts cost.

Read about another entry on the list.

Never Let Me Go is on a list of five books that shaped Jason Gurley's Eleanor, Anne Charnock's list of five favorite books with fictitious works of art, Jeff Somers's top seven list of speculative works for those who think they hate speculative fiction, Esther Inglis-Arkell's list of nine great science fiction books for people who don't like science fiction, Sabrina Rojas Weiss's list of ten favorite boarding school novels, Allegra Frazier's top four list of great dystopian novels that made it to the big screen, James Browning's top ten list of boarding school books, Jason Allen Ashlock and Mink Choi's top ten list of tragic love stories, Allegra Frazier's list of seven characters whose jobs are worse than yours, Shani Boianjiu's list of five top novels about coming of age, Karen Thompson Walker's list of five top "What If?" books, Lloyd Shepherd's top ten list of weird histories, and John Mullan's lists of ten of the best men writing as women in literature and ten of the best sentences as titles.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Stephen Aryan reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Stephen Aryan, author of Battlemage.

His entry begins:

I’m currently reading 666 Charing Cross Road by Paul Magrs. I was in the mood for something light hearted and funny, but also gothic and a bit dark, so this book is perfect. I’d previously read most of his Brenda and Effie books, about the Bride of Frankenstein and her friend who is a witch, as two old biddies fighting the forces of darkness in Whitby. His books are always funny, clever and very witty.

In 666 Charing Cross Road, imagine if Buffy had retired and was now someone’s grandmother. She’s enjoying her quiet time when once again the forces of darkness rise up in New York and she very reluctantly has to dust off her stakes and go out and fight evil again. The story is fast paced, the humour leaps off the page and Magrs always...[read on]

About Battlemage, from the publisher:

"I can command storms, summon fire and unmake stone," Balfruss growled. "It's dangerous to meddle with things you don't understand."

Balfruss is a battlemage, sworn to fight and die for a country that fears and despises his kind.

Vargus is a common soldier -- while mages shoot lightning from the walls of the city, he's down in the front lines getting blood on his blade.

Talandra is a princess and spymaster, but the war may force her to risk everything and make the greatest sacrifice of all.

Magic and mayhem collide in this explosive epic fantasy from a major new talent.

Visit Stephen Aryan's website.

My Book, The Movie: Battlemage.

The Page 69 Test: Battlemage.

Writers Read: Stephen Aryan.

--Marshal Zeringue

J. Michelle Coghlan's "Sensational Internationalism," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Sensational Internationalism: The Paris Commune and the Remapping of American Memory in the Long Nineteenth Century by J. Michelle Coghlan.

The entry begins:

Victoria Woodhull, the freewheeling, free-love socialist publisher who became, in 1872, the first woman to run for the U.S. presidency, was an ardent champion of the Paris Commune. She showed her support for the 1871 uprising by running Marx’s famous dissection of the events in Paris, The Civil War in France, in her weekly newspaper, Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly, in the summer following the Commune’s suppression, and also by helping to organize a cross-racial, cross-class march in December 1871 in memory of the martyrs of “the Universal Republic” at a moment when the Commune had been otherwise denounced in every major U.S. newspaper and in sermons across the country. If my book became a movie, Jessica Chastain would rock this part.

Lucy Gonzalez Parsons, who Chicago police described as “more dangerous than a thousand rioters” and historian D.G. Kelley has identified as “the most prominent African American woman radical of the nineteenth century,” was born a slave in Texas in 1852 and married...[read on]

Learn more about Sensational Internationalism at the publisher's website.

My Book, The Movie: Sensational Internationalism.

--Marshal Zeringue