Pg. 69: Clarissa Harwood's "Bear No Malice"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Bear No Malice: A Novel by Clarissa Harwood.

About the book, from the publisher:

Great Expectations meets Grantchester in this story of love and lies, secrets and second chances, set in Edwardian England.

Beaten and left for dead in the English countryside, clergyman and reformer Tom Cross is rescued and nursed back to health by Miranda and Simon Thorne, reclusive siblings who seem to have as many secrets as he does. Tom has spent years helping the downtrodden in London while lying to everyone he meets, but now he’s forced to slow down and confront his unexamined life.

Miranda, a skilled artist, is haunted by her painful past and unable to imagine a future. Tom is a welcome distraction from her troubles, but she’s determined to relegate him to her fantasy world, sensing that any real relationship with him would be more trouble than it’s worth. Besides, she has sworn to remain devoted to someone she’s left behind.

When Tom returns to London, his life begins to unravel as he faces the consequences of both his affair with a married woman and his abusive childhood. When his secrets catch up with him and his reputation is destroyed, he realizes that Miranda is the only person he trusts with the truth. What he doesn’t realize is that even if she believes him and returns his feelings, he can’t free her from the shackles of her past.

Visit Clarissa Harwood's website.

The Page 69 Test: Impossible Saints.

The Page 69 Test: Bear No Malice.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nancy Kress's "Terran Tomorrow," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Terran Tomorrow: Yesterday's Kin Trilogy (Volume 3) by Nancy Kress.

The entry begins:

What a treat! I get to cast my movie! Since this will never happen in real life, I can have anyone I want, so here goes:

For Marianne Jenner, sixty-ish geneticist, I want Helen Mirren. Helen is older than Marianne and British rather than American, but she can play anything. Hell, to have Helen Mirren, I’d make Marianne younger, British, whatever. For Helen Mirren, who I would watch recite the phone book if phone books still existed, I would rewrite the entire trilogy.

For Colonel Jason Jenner, late thirties, handsome and very earnest, I need someone who can portray strong-silent-type stress from the burden he’s carrying (basically, the survival of civilization). Ryan Gosling, maybe? DiCaprio is too old.

For Jason’s second-in-command, the reserved and frighteningly competent Major Elizabeth Duncan, I want...[read on]

Visit Nancy Kress's website, and follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

The Page 69 Test: Dogs.

The Page 69 Test: After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall.

The Page 69 Test: Tomorrow's Kin.

The Page 69 Test: If Tomorrow Comes.

The Page 69 Test: Terran Tomorrow.

My Book, The Movie: Terran Tomorrow.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best New Years in literature

John Mullan tagged ten of the most notable New Years in literature. One title on the list:

Middlemarch by George Eliot

The Vinceys throw a party on New Year's Day, and one of the guests, the kind vicar Mr Farebrother, sees the tensions that go unperceived by his jolly hosts. Rosamond has become bored by her husband; Lydgate is preoccupied by his money problems; Fred Vincey is jealous of Mr Farebrother's attentions to Mary Garth. Happy New Year.

Read about another book on the list.

Middlemarch also made Boris Kachka's list of twenty-six very long books worth the time, Mary Gordon's list of ten desert island books, Kirsty Gunn's top ten list of books about unrequited love, Jeff Somers's top five memorable books set on New Year’s Eve (and Day), Lauren Groff's list of six favorite portrayals of marriage in literature, John Mullan's lists of ten of the best bankers in literature, ten of the best marital rows, ten of the best examples of unrequited love, ten of the best funerals in literature, and ten of the best deathbed scenes in literature. It is among Emrys Westacott's five top books on philosophy & everyday living, Selma Dabbagh's top 10 stories of reluctant revolutionaries, Philip Pullman's six best books, Rebecca Goldstein's five best of novels of ideas, Tina Brown's five best books on reputation, Elizabeth Kostova favorite books, and Miss Manners' favorite novels. John Banville and Nick Hornby have not read it.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Leslie Archer reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Leslie Archer, author of The Girl at the Border: A Novel.

His entry begins:

I just finished reading a rather shocking novel, Out. Like all of Natsuo Kirino’s books, this one is about the role of women in modern-day Japan, a commentary on the hardships and depredations Japanese society heaps on them, and how powerless they find their lives. Everything about the novel is fascinating. I love her writing, and, luckily, she is translated quite well. A group of women- all with their own varied difficulties – are trying to make ends meet by working nights in a factory line that assembles pre-made packaged lunches. Taken simply on the level of learning about another culture so foreign to Americans is fascinating, but when one of the group strangles her abusive husband the four’s lives spiral down into the darkest depths of...[read on]

About The Girl at the Border, from the publisher:

One girl missing, one woman searching, both equally lost. Will a shared tragedy help them find their way home—even in the face of imminent danger?

Renowned archaeologist Richard Mathis is half a world away on the island of Crete when he learns his daughter, Bella, has gone missing. Within twenty minutes, he’s on his way back to the States. Two days later, he’s dead.

Richard’s young assistant, Angela Chase, is devastated by the loss of the man who had become both mentor and friend, and she’s determined to find the missing girl, who seems to have made dangerous connections—and whose lonely childhood so resembles Angela’s own. Born Laurel Springfield, Angela now spends her days digging up the origins of a lost civilization while struggling to keep her own past buried. But will the search for Bella expose Angela’s carefully disguised identity—and will she find Bella before she’s lost forever?

Visit Leslie Archer's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Girl at the Border.

Writers Read: Leslie Archer.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top spy thrillers featuring Russia versus the West

CrimeReads senior editor Dwyer Murphy tagged ten thrillers featuring Russia versus the West, including:

Alan Furst, Night Soldiers

Over the last 30 years, Furst has established himself as the towering figure of historical spy fiction. Night Soldiers is a portrait of the clash between Nazi Germany and the early Soviet state as they struggled for influence in Europe and the Eastern bloc. In Bulgaria, Soviet spies recruit a young man from named Khristo Stoianev. He’s shipped off to serve the cause in Spain, where the Civil War is raging and all the key international players are assembling. When Khristo’s name ends up on the wrong side of a purge coming to Moscow, he takes off for Paris and ultimately falls in with the Resistance. The settings are always intoxicating in Furst’s novels, nowhere more so than in Night Soldiers, which is brimming with life in a wildly tumultuous time.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Ben Minteer's "The Fall of the Wild"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Fall of the Wild: Extinction, De-Extinction, and the Ethics of Conservation by Ben A. Minteer.

About the book, from the publisher:

The passenger pigeon, the great auk, the Tasmanian tiger—the memory of these vanished species haunts the fight against extinction. Seeking to save other creatures from their fate in an age of accelerating biodiversity loss, wildlife advocates have become captivated by a narrative of heroic conservation efforts. A range of technological and policy strategies, from the traditional, such as regulations and refuges, to the novel—the scientific wizardry of genetic engineering and synthetic biology—seemingly promise solutions to the extinction crisis.

In The Fall of the Wild, Ben A. Minteer calls for reflection on the ethical dilemmas of species loss and recovery in an increasingly human-driven world. He asks an unsettling but necessary question: Might our well-meaning efforts to save and restore wildlife pose a threat to the ideal of preserving a world that isn’t completely under the human thumb? Minteer probes the tension between our impulse to do whatever it takes and the risk of pursuing strategies that undermine our broader commitment to the preservation of wildness. From collecting wildlife specimens for museums and the wilderness aspirations of zoos to visions of “assisted colonization” of new habitats and high-tech attempts to revive long-extinct species, he explores the scientific and ethical concerns vexing conservation today. The Fall of the Wild is a nuanced treatment of the deeper moral issues underpinning the quest to save species on the brink of extinction and an accessible intervention in debates over the principles and practice of nature conservation.

Visit Ben Minteer's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Fall of the Wild.

--Marshal Zeringue

An essential reading list of Midwestern novels by women

Meghan O'Gieblyn is a writer who lives in Wisconsin. Her essays have appeared in Harper's Magazine, n+1, The Point, Boston Review, The Guardian, Ploughshares, newyorker.com, The Paris Review, and Tin House, and have been included in the Pushcart Prize anthologies and in The Best American Essays 2017. She is the author of the essay collection Interior States.

At LitHub she shared an essential reading list of Midwestern novels by women. One title on the list:

Lorrie Moore, A Gate at the Stairs

In some sense, this novel belongs to a tradition of coming-of-age stories in which a rural young woman arrives in the city (Dreiser’s Sister Carrie, Hamlin Garland’s Rose of the Dutcher’s Coolly). But in deference to the realities of the contemporary Midwest, the rural-urban divide in this novel is less a binary than a spectrum. Tassie, the young narrator, grows up on a farm, but it’s a small hobbyist outfit devoted to heirloom potatoes, and her father is eccentric enough that the neighbors find him suspicious. Moore is better than any contemporary writer on the perils of pretentiousness in the Midwest, a place in which painting one’s barn the wrong color—Tassie’s father opts for a whimsical blue and white, rather than the standard red—can doom one to social opprobrium. If Tassie’s family is too enlightened for the countryside, she finds herself equally alienated when she leaves for university in a more populous college town—the fictional city of Troy—where she confronts professors who hold forth on “Henry James’s masturbation of the comma” and where she finds herself staring bewilderedly at the menus of posh French restaurants that “served things that sounded like instruments—timables, quenelles.”

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Nancy Kress's "Terran Tomorrow"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Terran Tomorrow: Yesterday's Kin Trilogy (Volume 3) by Nancy Kress.

About the book, from the publisher:

Nancy Kress returns with Terran Tomorrow, the final book in the thrilling hard science fiction trilogy based on the Nebula Award–winning novella Yesterday's Kin.

The diplomatic mission from Earth to World ended in disaster, as the Earth scientists discovered that the Worlders were not the scientifically advanced culture they believed. Though they brought a limited quantity of the vaccine against the deadly spore cloud, there was no way to make enough to vaccinate more than a few dozen. The Earth scientists, and surviving diplomats, fled back to Earth.

But once home, after the twenty-eight-year gap caused by the space ship transit, they find an Earth changed almost beyond recognition. In the aftermath of the spore cloud plague, the human race has been reduced to only a few million isolated survivors. The knowledge brought back by Marianne Jenner and her staff may not be enough to turn the tide of ongoing biological warfare.

Visit Nancy Kress's website, and follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

The Page 69 Test: Dogs.

The Page 69 Test: After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall.

The Page 69 Test: Tomorrow's Kin.

The Page 69 Test: If Tomorrow Comes.

The Page 69 Test: Terran Tomorrow.

--Marshal Zeringue

Quiara Alegría Hudes’s ten favorite books

Quiara Alegría Hudes is a writer, strong wife and mother of two, barrio feminist and native of West Philly, U.S.A. Hailed for her work’s exuberance, intellectual rigor, and rich imagination, her plays and musicals have been performed around the world. They include Water By the Spoonful, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama; In the Heights, winner of the Tony Award for Best Musical and Pulitzer finalist; and Elliot, A Soldier’s Fugue, another Pulitzer finalist. Her most recent musical, Miss You Like Hell, appeared Off-Broadway at New York’s Public Theater.

One of Hudes's ten favorite books, as shared at Vulture.com:

For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf: A Choreopoem by Ntozake Shange

This book is an elixir, spirit medicine, and feminine life force. A series of brown girls’ step into the spotlight and testify to central moments in their girlhood. The final pages make me feel reborn each and every time.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is D.J. Daniels reading?

Featured at Writers Read: DJ Daniels, author of Green Jay and Crow.

Her entry begins:

At the moment I’m reading Wolfgang Jeschke’s The Cusanus Game which depicts a contaminated future in which human DNA is mutating. Jeschke is not an author I’ve ever read before, but the book was a library find which I borrowed in a bite-the-bullet spirit – the book’s themes looked very similar to my current work. So far, so good; they’re nothing alike. And Jeschke is a great author to...[read on]

About Green Jay and Crow, from the publisher:

A prescient science fiction vision of humanity and identity in a trans-human world

“I WAS MEANT TO COME TO BARLEWIN, BUT I WAS NEVER MEANT TO STAY.”

The half-forgotten streets of Barlewin, in the shadow of the High Track, are a good place to hide: among the aliens and the couriers, the robots and the doubles, where everyone has secrets.

Like Eva, a 3D-printed copy of another woman, built to be disposable.She should have disintegrated days ago... and she hasn’t.

And now her creator wants her back.

Visit D.J. Daniels's website.

Writers Read: DJ Daniels.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: John Strausbaugh's "Victory City"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Victory City: A History of New York and New Yorkers during World War II by John Strausbaugh.

About the book, from the publisher:

New York City during World War II wasn’t just a place of servicemen, politicians, heroes, G.I. Joes and Rosie the Riveters, but also of quislings and saboteurs; of Nazi, Fascist, and Communist sympathizers; of war protesters and conscientious objectors; of gangsters and hookers and profiteers; of latchkey kids and bobby-soxers, poets and painters, atomic scientists and atomic spies.

While the war launched and leveled nations, spurred economic growth, and saw the rise and fall of global Fascism, New York City would eventually emerge as the new capital of the world. From the Gilded Age to VJ-Day, an array of fascinating New Yorkers rose to fame, from Mayor Fiorello La Guardia to Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Langston Hughes to Joe Louis, to Robert Moses and Joe DiMaggio.

In VICTORY CITY, John Strausbaugh returns to tell the story of New York City’s war years with the same richness, depth, and nuance he brought to his previous books, City of Sedition and The Village, providing readers with a groundbreaking new look into the greatest city on earth during the most transformative — and costliest — war in human history.

Visit John Strausbaugh's website.

The Page 99 Test: Victory City.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top clerical sleuths

Reverend Jane Willan is a parish minister and author in Paxton, Massachusetts. She serves the First Congregational Church of Paxton and lives in the church parsonage with her husband Don and their two rescue dogs, Magi and Moses. She is the author of the Sister Agatha and Father Selwyn Mysteries.

At CrimeReads, Willan tagged ten great clerical sleuths, including:

Julia Spencer-Fleming, In the Bleak Midwinter

This riveting story by Julia Spencer-Fleming gives the reader the good feeling of a cozy complete with an Episcopal priest, a small town, and a somewhat handsome police chief to spark a bit of romance. But then, Fleming pulls the cozy rug out from under the reader when the priest/sleuth stumbles across a brutally murdered woman. This same woman had just dumped (albeit, gently) her newborn baby outside St. Alban’s—the church of the newly ordained Clare Fergusson, Spencer-Fleming’s amateur sleuth. Clare, an ordained priest, is certainly not Father Brown, but rather, an army pilot-gone-to-seminary. Many women who go into the parish as ordained clergy are second-career—always taking the skills learned in that career into the work of the church. Spencer-Fleming, in her character Clare Fergusson, demonstrates this reality and exemplifies the richness a second-career priest can bring to the parish– even if the first career had been a fighter pilot.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Leslie Archer's "The Girl at the Border"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Girl at the Border: A Novel by Leslie Archer.

About the book, from the publisher:

One girl missing, one woman searching, both equally lost. Will a shared tragedy help them find their way home—even in the face of imminent danger?

Renowned archaeologist Richard Mathis is half a world away on the island of Crete when he learns his daughter, Bella, has gone missing. Within twenty minutes, he’s on his way back to the States. Two days later, he’s dead.

Richard’s young assistant, Angela Chase, is devastated by the loss of the man who had become both mentor and friend, and she’s determined to find the missing girl, who seems to have made dangerous connections—and whose lonely childhood so resembles Angela’s own. Born Laurel Springfield, Angela now spends her days digging up the origins of a lost civilization while struggling to keep her own past buried. But will the search for Bella expose Angela’s carefully disguised identity—and will she find Bella before she’s lost forever?

Visit Leslie Archer's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Girl at the Border.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five important books bearing witness to incarcerated Americans

The Literature for Justice initiative of the National Book Foundation tagged (via LitHub) "five books that shine a necessary light on the American criminal justice system and provide crucial perspectives that help further the nation’s understanding of this massive apparatus that impacts the lives of citizens and non-citizens alike," including:

James Kilgore, Understanding Mass Incarceration: A People’s Guide to the Key Civil Rights Struggle of Our Time (2015)

In the inaugural year of the Literature for Justice program, the committee felt it essential that readers were given an understanding of mass incarceration’s origin story—how it is that the United States came to imprison more people than any other country in the world—as well as some thoughts on how we might imagine a more humane and equitable justice system in the future. In ways powerfully and accessibly James Kilgore’s Understanding Mass Incarceration: A People’s Guide to the Key Civil Rights Struggle of Our Time offers just this sort of historical background while also helping us all to appreciate the the vast reach and destructive impact of today’s carceral apparatus and why we should indeed try to create a different justice future. Kilgore, a formerly incarcerated educator himself, narrows the lens on the complexities of mass incarceration, offering readers history, critique, and a blueprint for moving forward which makes this book an essential selection to include in the launch of this initiative.
–Dr. Heather Ann Thompson

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ann Howard Creel's "The River Widow," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The River Widow by Ann Howard Creel.

About the book, from the publisher:

If they make my book into a movie, I’d love to see Reese Witherspoon play Adah. Even though Adah’s hair is brown, I don’t care. Reese can show just the right mix of vulnerability and fighting instincts to make her a perfect Adah.

For Jack I’d choose Mark...[read on]

Visit Ann Howard Creel's website.

The Page 69 Test: The River Widow.

Writers Read: Ann Howard Creel.

My Book, The Movie: The River Widow.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten books on booze

Henry Jeffreys is a journalist who writes about wine and other drinks in the Guardian, Spectator and Food & Wine. He is the author of Empire of Booze.

One of the writer's top ten books on booze, as shared at the Guardian:

Casino Royale by Ian Fleming

No apologies for including such an obvious choice. So useful have the Bond novels been to drink writers and the drinks industry that there should be statues of James Bond (preferably as Roger Moore in a safari suit) outside Diageo HQ and Bollinger. I’ve picked Casino Royale as it has given us a cocktail, the Vesper martini: made with “three measures of Gordon’s gin, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it’s ice cold.” It is especially good made with a decent Polish potato vodka.

Read about another entry on the list.

Casino Royale also made Jeff Somers's list of eight books or series that make great party themes, Alan Judd's list of five favorite spy novels, Maddie Crum's top ten fictional characters who just might be psychopaths, Lee Child's list of six favorite debut novels, Danny Wallace's six best books list, Mary Horlock's list of the five best psychos in fiction, John Mullan's list of ten of the best floggings in fiction, Meg Rosoff's top ten list of adult books for teenagers, and Peter Millar's critic's chart of top spy books.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Susan Furlong reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Susan Furlong, author of Fractured Truth: Bone Gap Travellers Novel #2.

Her entry begins:

One of my favorite things to do is spend time in the mystery section of my local bookstore. I pull a dozen or so books from the shelf and read the first two to three pages to see which opening scene captures my attention. Recently, I pulled A.J. Finn’s The Woman in the Window and … wow! His writing captivated me from the first sentence and the unique voice of his character kept me reading. The story was fast-paced with an excellent twist at the end. The Woman in the Window was more than a good story, it was...[read on]

About Fractured Truth, from the publisher:

When the mutilated remains of a young woman are found in an Appalachian Mountain cave, newly sworn-in deputy sheriff Brynn Callahan is forced to track down a killer driven by twisted motives...

Not long after donning the uniform of the McCreary County Sheriff's department in Bone Gap, Tennessee, ex-Marine Brynn Callahan faces her first official homicide. On a cold February morning, a lone cross-country skier stumbles across the mutilated body of a young woman. Sent to investigate, Brynn is shocked when she recognizes the victim as a fellow Traveller, Maura Keene.

Maura held a solid standing both within the Travellers’ insular community and among the settled townspeople—a fact that makes her murder all the more disturbing to Brynn, who also straddles the two worlds. After her trained K-9, Wilco, digs up human bones, and then a scrap of paper scrawled with arcane Latin phrases is uncovered, Brynn finds evidence leading her to question those closest to her—and closing the case becomes a deeply personal matter.

While trying to suppress local superstitions and prejudices, Brynn discovers that Maura was keeping a dangerous secret. And as the bones Wilco found are analyzed by forensics, Brynn harbors the troubling suspicion that she knows who they belong to. Still struggling with PTSD, Brynn must put her career on the line and her life at risk to find justice for a woman not unlike herself—haunted by her past, and caught in a vicious cycle she may never escape...

Visit Susan Furlong's website.

My Book, The Movie: Splintered Silence.

The Page 69 Test: Splintered Silence.

Writers Read: Susan Furlong.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten books that defined the 1970s

At LitHub Emily Temple tagged the ten books that defined the 1970s, including:

Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, All the President’s Men (1974)

“It’s the work that brought down a presidency and launched a thousand reporting careers,” as Alex Altman put it in TIME. “It remains a testament to the power of shoe-leather reporting—and is perhaps the most influential piece of journalism in history.” Yes, Woodward and Bernstein changed the country with this book—or, to be precise, first with their reporting on Nixon and the Watergate scandal, next with this book, and finally with the film adaptation, because Robert Redford makes anything go down smoother. This, of course, was back in the 70s, when disco was in, we all had shag carpets, and Congress actually cared whether or not the American president was a corrupt liar. Indeed, Nixon resigned only a few months after the book’s publication. Better days, friends.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Sophia Rosenfeld's "Democracy and Truth: A Short History"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Democracy and Truth: A Short History by Sophia Rosenfeld.

About the book, from the publisher:

"Fake news," wild conspiracy theories, misleading claims, doctored photos, lies peddled as facts, facts dismissed as lies—citizens of democracies increasingly inhabit a public sphere teeming with competing claims and counterclaims, with no institution possessing the authority to settle basic disputes in a definitive way.

The problem may be novel in some of its details—including the role of political leaders, along with broadcast and digital media, in intensifying the epistemic anarchy—but the challenge of determining truth in a democratic world has a backstory. In this lively and illuminating book, historian Sophia Rosenfeld explores a longstanding and largely unspoken tension at the heart of democracy between the supposed wisdom of the crowd and the need for information to be vetted and evaluated by a learned elite made up of trusted experts. What we are witnessing now, under the pressure of populism, is the unraveling of the détente between these competing aspects of democratic culture.

In four bracing chapters, Rosenfeld substantiates her claim by tracing the history of the vexed relationship between democracy and truth. She begins with an examination of the period prior to the eighteenth-century Age of Revolutions, where she uncovers the political and epistemological foundations of our democratic world. Subsequent chapters move from the Enlightenment to the rise of technocratic notions of democracy during the nineteenth century to the troubling trends—including the collapse of social trust—that have led to the rise of our "post-truth" public life. Rosenfeld concludes by offering suggestions for how to defend the idea of an extra-political truth against the forces that would undermine it.

Learn more about Democracy and Truth at the University of Pennsylvania Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Common Sense: A Political History.

The Page 99 Test: Democracy and Truth.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five fun & funny reads to help cope with the holidays

Lish McBride is the author of funny and creepy Young Adult books such as Hold Me Closer, Necromancer; Necromancing the Stone; Firebug; and Pyromantic. At Tor.com she tagged five fun and funny reads to escape the hectic holidays, including:

Generation V by M.L. Brennan

Generation V is another book that I discovered from a Tor.com post and I’m so glad I did. The cover is fairly generic urban fantasy and in no way conveys how funny and different this book is. Fortitude Scott is not a badass alpha male fighting his way through anything. He’s a broke film major working crappy jobs and doing his best to avoid becoming a vampire. His bodyguard is a kitsune who spends more time messing with him than actually protecting him.

The whole Generation V series is full of fun and interesting mythology, snarky dialogue, and characters you can’t help but love. And Fort, man, you just can’t help feel bad for the guy doing his best to avoid his genetic fate.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Ann Howard Creel reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Ann Howard Creel, author of The River Widow.

Her entry begins:

I’ve recently discovered the writing of Megan Chance. Chance’s latest books are works of historical fiction with elements of the paranormal. Normally I’m not a fan of the paranormal in novels, but Chance’s writing is so strong I’m immediately pulled in as soon as I start reading.

My first Chance novel was A Drop of Ink, which features awesome historical atmosphere and tells a tale of misguided love. I’ve also read The Visitant, a novel I’ve recommended to anyone who likes a good ghost story. The story isn’t...[read on]

About The River Widow, from the publisher:

From the bestselling author of The Whiskey Sea comes a stirring novel of a young woman’s survival and liberation during the Great Depression.

In 1937, with flood waters approaching, Adah Branch accidentally kills her abusive husband, Lester, and surrenders his body to the raging river, only to be swept away herself.

So begins her story of survival, return to civilization, defense against accusations of murder, and the fight to save herself and her stepdaughter, Daisy, from the clutches of her husband’s notoriously cruel family, who have their sights set on revenge for Lester’s death. Essentially trapped, Adah must plan an escape.

But when she develops feelings for the one person essential to her plan’s success, she faces a painful choice: Will she choose to risk everything saving Daisy or take the new life offered by a loving man?

Visit Ann Howard Creel's website.

The Page 69 Test: The River Widow.

Writers Read: Ann Howard Creel.

--Marshal Zeringue

The best stories to celebrate the magic of Christmas

Cressida Cowell is an English children’s author, best known for the novel series, How to Train Your Dragon.

At the Guardian she tagged some books for the season "to terrify and cheer – and even inspire a little kindness," including:

Six centuries after an unknown poet wrote down his story of Gawain and the Green Knight, I still feel a shiver of shock when Gawain chops off the Green Knight’s head and the knight reaches down and picks it up from the ground. From that moment, the clock is ticking for Gawain. In a year and a day’s time, the Green Knight will come back and Gawain will have to allow him one blow at his own neck in return. There’s a message in this extraordinary poem that could not be more relevant to modern times. Respect nature, poor humans. Be humble in the face of forces larger than yourself. Be kind, and who knows? The axe of the Green Knight may be merciful in return.

Read about another book Cowell tagged.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Taylor Stevens's "Liars' Paradox"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Liars' Paradox: A Jack and Jill Thriller #1 by Taylor Stevens.

About the book, from the publisher:

They live in the shadows, Jack and Jill, feuding twins who can never stop running. From earliest memory they’ve been taught to hide, to hunt, to survive. Their prowess is outdone only by Clare, who has always been mentor first and mother second. She trained them in the art of espionage, tested their skills in weaponry, surveillance, and sabotage, and sharpened their minds with nerve-wracking psychological games. As they grew older they came to question her motives, her methods—and her sanity...

Now twenty-six years old, the twins are trying to lead normal lives. But when Clare’s off-the-grid safehouse explodes and she goes missing, they’re forced to believe the unthinkable: Their mother’s paranoid delusions have been real all along. To find her, they’ll need to set aside their differences; to survive, they’ll have to draw on every skill she’s trained them to use. A twisted trail leads from the CIA, to the KGB, to an underground network of global assassins where hunters become the hunted. Everyone, it seems, wants them dead—and, for one of the twins, it’s a threat that’s frighteningly familiar and dangerously close to home...

Filled with explosive action, suspense, and powerful human drama, Liars’ Paradox is world-class intrigue at its finest.

Visit Taylor Stevens's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Mask.

The Page 69 Test: Liars' Paradox.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten mysteries that explore the treacherous world of social media

Molly Odintz is the Associate Editor for CrimeReads. She grew up in Austin and worked as a bookseller at BookPeople for years before her recent move up to New York City for a life in crime. She likes cats, crime novels, and coffee.

At CrimeReads she tagged ten "mystery novels to make us even more afraid of technology than we already are," including:

The Watcher in the Wall by Owen Laukkanen

Laukkanen’s series characters, FBI Agents Windemere and Stevens, track down a killer who’s posing as a suicidal teen and using social media to convince teens to kill themselves. Laukkanen’s series has explored contemporary issues from the start—his first, The Professionals, involves a gang of unemployed millennials who turn to heists in order to pay off student loans—but The Watcher in the Wall, and its lingering questions about how to prove guilt when words delivered via the internet are the cause of death, is his most intriguing yet.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Scott L. Cummings's "Blue and Green: The Drive for Justice at America’s Port"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Blue and Green: The Drive for Justice at America's Port by Scott L. Cummings.

About the book, from the publisher:

How an alliance of the labor and environmental movements used law as a tool to clean up the trucking industry at the nation's largest port.

In Blue and Green, Scott Cummings examines a campaign by the labor and environmental movements to transform trucking at America's largest port in Los Angeles. Tracing the history of struggle in an industry at the epicenter of the global supply chain, Cummings shows how an unprecedented “blue-green” alliance mobilized to improve working conditions for low-income drivers and air quality in nearby communities. The campaign for “clean trucks,” Cummings argues, teaches much about how social movements can use law to challenge inequality in a global era.

Cummings shows how federal deregulation created interrelated economic and environmental problems at the port and how the campaign fought back by mobilizing law at the local level. He documents three critical stages: initial success in passing landmark legislation requiring port trucking companies to convert trucks from dirty to clean and drivers from contractors to employees with full labor rights; campaign decline after industry litigation blocked employee conversion; and campaign resurgence through an innovative legal approach to driver misclassification that realized a central labor movement goal—unionizing port truckers.

Appraising the campaign, Cummings analyzes the tradeoffs of using alternative legal frameworks to promote labor organizing, and explores lessons for building movements to regulate low-wage work in the “gig” economy. He shows how law can bind coalitions together and split them apart, and concludes that the fight for legal reform never ends, but rather takes different turns on the long road to justice.

Learn more about Blue and Green at the MIT Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Blue and Green.

--Marshal Zeringue

William Finnegan's ten favorite books

William Finnegan is a staff writer at The New Yorker.

His latest book is Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life.

One of the author's ten favorite books, as shared at Vulture.com:

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante

The first volume in the Neapolitan quartet, this one changes in the mind’s eye if you’re pulled, as I am, helplessly through the subsequent books, with its primal scenes from early childhood deepening throughout. Is there a better portrait of friendship in literature than the story of Elena Greco, the narrator, and her brilliant friend, Lila Cerullo? Elena escapes the old neighborhood, and the poverty of postwar Naples, through education, but Lila remains the incandescent figure. The tormented power of their relationship never flags, through “The Story of a New Name,” “Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay,” and the devastating “The Story of a Lost Child.” I hear the TV series is good. The books are a universe.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Jane Tesh reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Jane Tesh, author of Death by Dragonfly: A Grace Street Mystery.

Her entry begins:

I always enjoy books with offbeat humor, especially if they contain supernatural elements, so I was pleased to I discover Richard Kadrey’s The Everything Box and its sequel, The Wrong Dead Guy. Coop is a thief who specializes in stealing magical objects mainly because he is immune to magic. When a mysterious client hires him to steal an equally mysterious box, Coop finds himself involved with the quirky Department of Peculiar Sciences, a top secret government force that polices anything out of the ordinary. Along with his partners in crime, Giselle, who can make everyone around her invisible, and Morty, whose talent allows him to open any lock just by looking at it, Coop realizes there’s more to this box than...[read on]

About Death by Dragonfly, from the publisher:

Flamboyant actor Leo Pierson’s Art Nouveau treasures have been stolen, including a one-of-a-kind Lalique glass dragonfly he claims is cursed. David Randall, 302 Grace Street’s private eye, agrees to recover the valuables before he realizes murder has raised its ugly head in the Parkland art community. Samuel Gallant of the museum board is missing, until Randall and his landlord/consultant Camden find Gallant’s body stuffed in a museum closet. When another board member suffers a fatal accident and the art critic for the Parkland Herald is attacked, Randall suspects the stolen dragonfly is indeed cursed. He investigates Richard Mason, curator of the Little Gallery, whose artwork consists of ugly mechanical sculptures, and Nancy Piper, finance manager at the Parkland Art Museum.

Meanwhile, Camden struggles against psychic visions he’s had since birth, taking pills to limit sudden intense visions. His wife, Ellin, fends off Matt Grabber, a television celebrity healer threatening to take over her Psychic Service Network and using his two large pythons to emphasize his bid. The pythons take a liking to Camden, upping his stress level, while he takes more pills hoping his visions—and the snakes—disappear. Kit, a new tenant at Grace Street, is a young rock star who is also psychic. As Camden becomes more addicted, Kit becomes an early warning system, alerting Randall to the next attack.

Randall works to solve the murders, find the jeweled collection, help Cam, deter Grabber and his pythons, romance the young lovely Kary, and avoid stray curses. A spirit on the Other Side surprisingly requests his help, a spirit with ties to the stolen pieces of Art Nouveau.

Learn more about the book and author at Jane Tesh's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Jane Tesh and Winkie.

The Page 69 Test: Mixed Signals.

The Page 69 Test: Now You See It.

The Page 69 Test: Death by Dragonfly.

Writers Read: Jane Tesh.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten books that defined the 1980s

At LitHub Emily Temple tagged the ten books that defined the 1980s, including:

Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987)

If you’re reading this space, I probably don’t have to expound on the importance of Toni Morrison to you. But just to cover all our bases, Beloved won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988, and was a finalist for the 1987 National Book Award—though lost out to something called Paco’s Story, which rankled then and rankles now. In 2006, the editors of the New York Times asked “a couple hundred” writers, critics, and editors to vote on “the single best work of American fiction published in the last 25 years,” and the winner—by a relatively large margin—was Beloved. “Any other outcome would have been startling,” wrote A.O. Scott, “since Morrison’s novel has...[read on]

Read about another entry on the list.

Beloved also appears on Megan Abbott's list of six of the best books based on true crimes, Melba Pattillo Beals's 6 favorite books list, Sarah Porter's list of five favorite books featuring psychological hauntings, Matthew Fellion and Katherine Inglis' list of ten books that were subject to silencing or censorship, Jeff Somers's list of ten fictional characters based on real people, Christopher Barzak's top five list of books about magical families, Ayelet Gundar-Goshen's ten top list of wartime love stories, Judith Claire Mitchell's list of ten of the best (unconventional) ghosts in literature, Kelly Link's list of four books that changed her, a list of four books that changed Libby Gleeson, The Telegraph's list of the 15 most depressing books, Elif Shafak's top five list of fictional mothers, Charlie Jane Anders's list of ten great books you didn't know were science fiction or fantasy, Peter Dimock's top ten list of books that challenge what we think we know as "history", Stuart Evers's top ten list of homes in literature, David W. Blight's list of five outstanding novels on the Civil War era, John Mullan's list of ten of the best births in literature, Kit Whitfield's top ten list of genre-defying novels, and at the top of one list of contenders for the title of the single best work of American fiction published in the last twenty-five years.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Yona Zeldis McDonough's "Courageous"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Courageous by Yona Zeldis McDonough.

About the book, from the publisher:

Aiden is the son of a fisherman on the south coast of England, and he's been afraid of the ocean since his oldest brother was killed at sea. But that doesn't matter when he and his best friend, Sally, hear chatter on their radio. It's May 1940, and British troops, including Aiden's surviving brother, George, are trapped in northern France, surrounded by Nazi forces. The Allies have come up with a daring plan to rescue their troops. But in order to get their boys out of France and back across the Channel, they'll need every boat they can get their hands on.

Aiden's parents forbid him from volunteering, but he and Sally are determined to help, and they secretly set off to join Operation Dynamo. It's a deadly journey, and the friends are in grave danger as they help ferry the troops from Dunkirk, all the while desperately searching for George. But can Aiden find the courage to keep going, or will he, Sally, and George be lost forever?

From Yona Zeldis McDonough, author of The Bicycle Spy, comes a gripping story of courage under fire on the high seas.

Learn more about the author and her work at Yona Zeldis McDonough's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Yona Zeldis McDonough & Willa and Holden.

Writers Read: Yona Zeldis McDonough.

The Page 69 Test: Courageous.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Wilbur R. Miller's "A History of Private Policing in the United States"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: A History of Private Policing in the United States by Wilbur R. Miller.

About the book, from the publisher:

Private law enforcement and order maintenance have usually been seen as working against or outside of state authority. A History of Private Policing in the United States surveys private policing since the 1850s to the present, arguing that private agencies have often served as a major component of authority in America as an auxiliary of the state.

Wilbur R. Miller defines private policing broadly to include self-defense, stand your ground laws, and vigilantism, as well as private detectives, security guards and patrols from gated community security to the Guardian Angels. He also covers the role of detective agencies in controlling labor organizing through spies, guards and strikebreakers.

A History of Private Policing in the United States is an overview integrating various components of private policing to place its history in the context of the development of the American state.

Learn more about A History of Private Policing in the United States at the publisher's website.

The Page 99 Test: A History of Private Policing in the United States.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Scott E. Page reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Scott E. Page, author of The Model Thinker: What You Need to Know to Make Data Work for You.

His entry begins:

I recently finished reading The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity by Kwame Anthony Appiah, which I cannot recommend enough. Appiah decomposes identity through six (partially overlapping) categories: classifications, creed, country, color, class, and culture. I found his description of Bourdieu’s concept of habitus as ways that we respond to the natural world. Each of us sees our own way as natural and those of others as unnatural. How we walk, greet, engage. What we wear and eat as well as how we wear clothes and how we eat. These are all habitus. Appiah does such a wonderful job of sharing his erudition, wisdom, and cosmopolitanism without coming across as pompous. Instead, he embodies an enlightened tolerance that we might all emulate. The book is approachable to anyone and a fabulous companion read with the novel In Light of What We Know by Zia Haider Rahman, which also focuses on culture, class, and...[read on]

About The Model Thinker, from the publisher:

How anyone can become a data ninja

From the stock market to genomics laboratories, census figures to marketing email blasts, we are awash with data. But as anyone who has ever opened up a spreadsheet packed with seemingly infinite lines of data knows, numbers aren’t enough: we need to know how to make those numbers talk. In The Model Thinker, social scientist Scott E. Page shows us the mathematical, statistical, and computational models–from linear regression to random walks and far beyond–that can turn anyone into a genius. At the core of the book is Page’s “many-model paradigm,” which shows the reader how to apply multiple models to organize the data, leading to wiser choices, more accurate predictions, and more robust designs. The Model Thinker provides a toolkit for business people, students, scientists, pollsters, and bloggers to make them better, clearer thinkers, able to leverage data and information to their advantage.

Visit Scott E. Page's faculty webpage.

The Page 99 Test: The Model Thinker.

Writers Read: Scott E. Page.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten fictional Christmas feasts

Kate Young is the author of The Little Library Cookbook. At the Guardian she tagged ten fictional feasts for Christmas, including:

The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding, Agatha Christie

In The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding, Hercule Poirot’s hosts have promised “an old-fashioned Christmas in the English countryside”. On Christmas Day, they provide oyster soup, two turkeys, crystallised fruits and ginger, mince pies and a plum pudding – with a ruby hidden in the centre. I will be spending Christmas night reading Christie, with a box of crystallised ginger beside me.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Mary Stockwell's "Interrupted Odyssey," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Interrupted Odyssey: Ulysses S. Grant and the American Indians by Mary Stockwell.

The entry begins:

His picture is everywhere this holiday season: in stores, especially near toy departments, in online ads that pop up while browsing the web, and most of all, in posters mounted in front of local movie theaters. He is Aquaman, the latest DC comic book hero to come to life in cinemas around the world. Fierce and muscular, his arms and chest are wrapped in the golden scales of a magical sea creature. He wears shining blue-green pants and boots that clearly show he belongs in the depths of the ocean. His gloves are the same color and made of the same glistening material. In his right hand, he grasps a golden trident that brings to mind the ancient legends of Neptune, the ruler of all the waters of the world. Standing high on a ledge with a stream flowing under his boots and still more showers cascading behind him, he scowls at the viewer. He frightens us until we remember that he is a hero who has come to save us from the dangers that swirl about us on the land as well as the sea.

Every time I have looked back at Aquaman staring at me from a poster or a computer screen, I have thought of only one thing. Jason...[read on]

Visit Mary Stockwell's website.

My Book, The Movie: Unlikely General.

My Book, The Movie: Interrupted Odyssey.

--Marshal Zeringue

Uzo Aduba’s ten favorite books

Uzoamaka Nwanneka "Uzo" Aduba is a Nigerian-American actress. She is known for her role as Suzanne "Crazy Eyes" Warren on the Netflix original series Orange Is the New Black, for which she won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series in 2014, an Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series in 2015, and two Screen Actors Guild Awards for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series in 2014 and 2015.

One of her ten favorite books, as shared at Vulture.com:

Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

My tribe were the primary victims of this wretched war, and like most who have survived the sights of war, they don’t like to talk about it because they are hard, very real memories. I knew pieces of my family’s story during this time, but when I read this book, I felt like I suddenly understood who my parents, aunts, and uncles were and what part of their formative years had entailed.

Read about another entry on the list.

Half of a Yellow Sun is among Barnaby Phillips's ten top books about Nigeria, Pushpinder Khaneka's three best books on Nigeria, and Lorraine Adams's six best books.

--Marshal Zeringue