Saturday, March 31, 2018

Seven top diverse historical fantasy novels

At the BN Teen Blog, Nicole Brinkley tagged "seven wonderful historical fantasies that don’t center on straight, cis, able-bodied white people," including:
The Girl With the Red Balloon, by Katherine Locke

Another time travel book that gets it right? The Girl With The Red Balloon! This 2018 Sydney Taylor Award Honor Book follows Ellie as, with the aid of a red balloon, she falls back through time to 1988 East Berlin. There, a secret group helps people escape over the Wall with the help of balloons and magic—balloons that are not supposed to travel through time. There’s a different magic at play, one that could change history and stop Ellie from returning home, and if she and her new friends don’t stop it, everything the group works for could crumble.
Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Kelli Stanley reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Kelli Stanley, author of City of Sharks: A Miranda Corbie Mystery.

Her entry begins:
When a novel is gestating, I rarely read fiction—I don’t want to be subconsciously influenced. While I sometimes make exceptions to this rule, I’m never without at least one history book on my nightstand.

Today, that book is the brilliant American Colonies, by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Alan Taylor.

The subtitle of this transcendental, urgent and at times transgressive work is “the settling of North America.” Not just the English-Pilgrim-Madison Avenue Americana history most of us over forty were saddled with in elementary school, but a wide view lens on Native American cultures and the various European powers who colonized, commodified and enslaved the land and the peoples of North America, the Caribbean and Africa.

Great non-fiction always gifts the reader with an “ah ha!” moment—that nano-second when your brain connects dots heretofore unthought and unexamined, and...[read on]
About City of Sharks, from the publisher:
The blonde secretary was scared when she visited Miranda Corbie’s office. A shove into a streetcar track, a box of poisoned chocolates…hateful, violent letters.

Someone was trying to kill her.

Miranda isn’t sure of anything at first except that Louise Crowley, the blonde who works as an assistant to Niles Alexander, San Francisco publisher, is in trouble. Despite her own preparations for an imminent voyage to a blitzkrieged Britain and a painful farewell to the city she loves, Miranda decides to help Louise and takes on her last case as a private detective in San Francisco…investigating her client, surveying the publishing world of 1940, and stumbling into murder with a trail that leads straight to Alcatraz…an island city of sharks.

Along the way, Miranda explores her beloved San Francisco once more, from Playland-at-the-Beach to Chinatown to Nob Hill and Treasure Island. She encounters John Steinbeck and C.S. Forester, and is aided and abetted by the charming and dapper San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen. And she also discovers personal truths she’s long denied…

With her characteristic luxurious, lyrical prose and insightful eye for character, Kelli Stanley paints a rich, authentic portrait of 1940 San Francisco in this latest installment of her award-winning series.
Visit Kelli Stanley's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Kelli Stanley & Bertie.

The Page 69 Test: City of Dragons.

The Page 69 Test: City of Secrets.

The Page 69 Test: City of Ghosts.

My Book, The Movie: City of Ghosts.

The Page 69 Test: City of Sharks.

My Book, The Movie: City of Sharks.

Writers Read: Kelli Stanley.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Sara Sheridan's "England Expects"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: England Expects by Sara Sheridan.

About the book, from the publisher:
Dangers abound in 1950s Brighton as former Secret Service operative Mirabelle Bevan cuts to the chase to solve multiple murders...

When sportswriter Joey Gillingham stops off at a Brighton barbershop for a shave and a trim, he gets more than he bargained for—a slashed throat. The journalist's next headline story in the paper is his obituary.

With the ghastly murder the talk of the seaside town, Mirabelle and her close friend and coworker Vesta Churchill find themselves irresistibly drawn to the case. Rumors of the newspaperman being a member of the freemasons lead the ladies to the group’s local lodge, where they happen upon a cleaning lady in the throes of poisoning. Are the two deaths related? The common thread seems to connect to the secret society.

Despite being warned off by Superintendent McGregor, the fearless friends continue to investigate, breaking into an abandoned royal residence in Brighton and following a trail of clues to a Cambridge college and bizarre masonic rituals.

To beard the lion in his own den, Mirabelle and Vesta will need to walk the razor's edge—but with desperate characters and more bodies turning up, it's going to be a close shave...
Visit Sara Sheridan's website.

My Book, The Movie: England Expects.

The Page 69 Test: England Expects.

--Marshal Zeringue

Friday, March 30, 2018

Thirty of literature's worst couples

One entry from Literary Hub's list of thirty of the worst couples in literature:
Hannah and Nate, The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.

This is maybe something of a cheat, since the whole point of Adelle Waldman’s The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. is to illustrate a certain kind of asymmetrical relationship—and a certain kind of entitled, if unconventional, masculinity—that thrives in supposedly liberal, artistic enclaves like gentrifying Brooklyn. But the recognizable types still make for cringe-inducing reading. Nate, a budding young literary intellectual with a checkered romantic history, becomes enamored of sensible, well-read Hannah, a fellow writer with much more self-possession than his previous exes. Their relationship seems good until it isn’t: Nate begins to tire of Hannah, and she shrinks under the unpredictability of his moods, becoming skittish and too eager to please, which annoys him further. (Nathaniel P. was published a little before the “gaslighting” boom, but one can see how it might have figured into the conversation). When he passive aggressively forces Hannah to end things between them, she points out the power imbalance that had wrecked things from the start: “Whatever happened between us was not going to affect you much one way or the other.”
Read about another entry on the list.

The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. also appears among Curtis Sittenfeld’s ten books every Pride and Prejudice fan must read, Jeff Somers's five most disastrous dinner parties in fiction, Melissa Albert's top five books to celebrate the start of the new season of HBO’s Girls, Esquire's five most important books of 2014 and Radhika Sanghani's top ten books to make sure you've read before graduating college.

The Page 69 Test: The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P..

--Marshal Zeringue

Christina Lynch's "The Italian Party," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Italian Party by Christina Lynch.

The entry begins:
I was delighted when Publishers Weekly said that my main character in The Italian Party, Scottie, would have been played by Grace Kelly or Audrey Hepburn. I agree! I had Grace Kelly in mind when I wrote her. The Italian Party takes place in 1956, and Scottie is 20 and somewhat naïve at the beginning of the novel, but a very capable woman by the end. Today I think she would be played by Margot Robbie.

Scottie’s husband Michael is darkly handsome, but insecure and anxious about the many secrets he is keeping. I think Ben Whishaw would be excellent casting—I loved him in The Hour, which was set in the same time period.

For Carlo, the Italian aristocrat/horseman, Raoul Bova would be great. Carlo’s wife, Franca, is still tortured by the death of their son during the war. I think...[read on]
Visit Christina Lynch's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Italian Party.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: John C. Hulsman's "To Dare More Boldly"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: To Dare More Boldly: The Audacious Story of Political Risk by John C. Hulsman.

About the book, from the publisher:
Ten lessons from history on the dos and don’ts of analyzing political risk

Our baffling new multipolar world grows ever more complex, desperately calling for new ways of thinking, particularly when it comes to political risk. To Dare More Boldly provides those ways, telling the story of the rise of political risk analysis, both as a discipline and a lucrative high-stakes industry that guides the strategic decisions of corporations and governments around the world. It assesses why recent predictions have gone so wrong and boldly puts forward ten analytical commandments that can stand the test of time.

Written by one of the field's leading practitioners, this incisive book derives these indelible rules of the game from a wide-ranging and entertaining survey of world history. John Hulsman looks at examples as seemingly unconnected as the ancient Greeks and Romans, the Third Crusade, the Italian Renaissance, America's founders, Napoleon, the Battle of Gettysburg, the British Empire, the Kaiser's Germany, the breakup of the Beatles, Charles Manson, and Deng Xiaoping's China. Hulsman makes sense of yesterday's world, and in doing so provides an invaluable conceptual tool kit for navigating today's.

To Dare More Boldly creatively explains why political risk analysis is vital for business and political leaders alike, and authoritatively establishes the analytical rules of thumb that practitioners need to do it effectively.
Visit John C. Hulsman's website.

Writers Read: John C. Hulsman.

The Page 99 Test: To Dare More Boldly.

--Marshal Zeringue

Thursday, March 29, 2018

Seven complicated sibling bonds in sci-fi & fantasy books

At the B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy blog Nicole Hill tagged seven complicated sibling bonds in science fiction & fantasy books, including:
Kai and Ley
The Ruin of Angels, by Max Gladstone

The streets of Agdel Lex are dicey, prone to shifting at a moment’s notice, and are difficult to fully trust. Something similar can be said of the strained relationship between priestess Kai Pohala and her ne’er-do-well sister Ley. There’s a considerable amount of baggage between them (and even more of it once Ley ensnares her ex-girlfriend in a new and dangerous scheme), and not a little bit of envy and jealousy. In her own way, each feels inadequate to her wildly different sister. The dynamics propel the action and heighten the tension of the sixth, largely standalone installment of Max Gladstone’s addictive series of fantasy adventures-cum-legal thrillers, as Ley embarks on a plot that puts her on the wrong side of the law and Kai tries desperately to figure out her sister, and a plan to save her.
Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Jamey Bradbury's "The Wild Inside"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Wild Inside: A Novel by Jamey Bradbury.

About the book, from the publisher:
A promising talent makes her electrifying debut with this unforgettable novel, set in the Alaskan wilderness, that is a fusion of psychological thriller and coming-of-age tale in the vein of Jennifer McMahon, Chris Bohjalian, and Mary Kubica.

A natural born trapper and hunter raised in the Alaskan wilderness, Tracy Petrikoff spends her days tracking animals and running with her dogs in the remote forests surrounding her family’s home. Though she feels safe in this untamed land, Tracy still follows her late mother’s rules: Never Lose Sight of the House. Never Come Home with Dirty Hands. And, above all else, Never Make a Person Bleed.

But these precautions aren’t enough to protect Tracy when a stranger attacks her in the woods and knocks her unconscious. The next day, she glimpses an eerily familiar man emerge from the tree line, gravely injured from a vicious knife wound—a wound from a hunting knife similar to the one she carries in her pocket. Was this the man who attacked her and did she almost kill him? With her memories of the events jumbled, Tracy can’t be sure.

Helping her father cope with her mother’s death and prepare for the approaching Iditarod, she doesn’t have time to think about what she may have done. Then a mysterious wanderer appears, looking for a job. Tracy senses that Jesse Goodwin is hiding something, but she can’t warn her father without explaining about the attack—or why she’s kept it to herself.

It soon becomes clear that something dangerous is going on . . . the way Jesse has wormed his way into the family ... the threatening face of the stranger in a crowd . . . the boot-prints she finds at the forest’s edge.

Her family is in trouble. Will uncovering the truth protect them—or is the threat closer than Tracy suspects?
Visit Jamey Bradbury's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Wild Inside.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Damian Dibben reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Damian Dibben, author of Tomorrow: A Novel.

His entry begins:
So I have finally got round to reading The Goldfinch. Often I fear picking up long books, worried I won't have the time - or possibly the patience - to finish them (I'm a ridiculously slow reader..) This book was an exception. It is long, yes it could have been shorter if it had to be, but crucially I didn't want it to be.

The hook is the thing, I've never know one to have such a hold on me, to keep me rapt for more than 700 pages. We fall for young Theo. We fall for his mother too. When visiting an exhibition of Dutch old masters at the Met, there's a bomb. She dies, he lives. In a vast city, she was the only person of meaning in his world. In the dreamy aftermath of the explosion - one of the best early scenes I have ever read in a novel - Theo comforts another man who also dies, before exiting the gallery with a tiny but indescribably rare painting: the Goldfinch. As Theo grows up into a man, dealing or not dealing with his grief, he keeps the painting hidden. His secret, no one else's. In the same way as his grief is only his too, but just as epic and priceless and eternal. The question of how he'll turn out, how he'll survive the catastrophe, is locked inextricably to the question of whether he'll ever reveal his secret - and this...[read on]
About Tomorrow, from the publisher:
A wise old dog travels through the courts and battlefields of Europe and through the centuries in search of the master who granted him immortality

Tomorrow tells the story of a 217-year-old dog and his search for his lost master. His adventures take him through the London Frost Fair, the strange court of King Charles I, the wars of the Spanish succession, Versailles, the golden age of Amsterdam and to nineteenth-century Venice. As he journeys through Europe, he befriends both animals and humans, falls in love (only once), marvels at the human ability to make music, despairs at their capacity for war and gains insight into both the strength and frailties of the human spirit.

With the rich historical vision of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell and the captivating canine perspective of A Dog’s Purpose, Tomorrow draws us into a unique century-spanning tale of the unbreakable connection between dog and human.
Visit Damian Dibben's website.

My Book, The Movie: Tomorrow.

The Page 69 Test: Tomorrow.

Writers Read: Damian Dibben.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top books based in Tangier

Christine Mangan's new novel is Tangerine. One of the author's top ten books based in Tangier, as shared at the Guardian:
Let It Come Down by Paul Bowles

It is impossible to write about literary Tangier without mentioning Bowles, one of Tangier’s most famous expats. Let It Come Down is set in the Tangier International Zone, where American Nelson Dyer attempts to start a new life. Taking its name from Macbeth, the novel details Dyer’s misadventures, which lead him down a path of self-destruction.
Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Wednesday, March 28, 2018

Pg. 99: Rick Shine's "Cane Toad Wars"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Cane Toad Wars by Rick Shine.

About the book, from the publisher:
In 1935, an Australian government agency imported 101 specimens of the Central and South American Cane Toad in an attempt to manage insects that were decimating sugar-cane harvests. In Australia the Cane Toad adapted and evolved with abandon, voraciously consuming native wildlife and killing predators with its lethal skin toxin. Today, hundreds of millions of Cane Toads have spread across the northern part of Australia and continue to move westward. The humble Cane Toad has become a national villain.

Cane Toad Wars chronicles the work of intrepid scientist Rick Shine, who has been documenting the toad’s ecological impact in Australia and seeking to buffer it. Despite predictions of devastation in the wake of advancing toad hordes, the author’s research reveals a more complex and nuanced story. A firsthand account of a perplexing ecological problem and an important exploration of how we measure evolutionary change and ecological resilience, this book makes an effective case for the value of long-term natural history research in informing conservation practice.
Learn more about Cane Toad Wars at the University of California Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Cane Toad Wars.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Kate Greathead's "Laura & Emma"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Laura & Emma by Kate Greathead.

About the book, from the publisher:
A tender, witty debut novel about a single mother raising her daughter among the upper crust of New York City society in the late twentieth century from a nine-time Moth StorySLAM champion.

Laura hails from the Upper East Side of Manhattan, born into old money, drifting aimlessly into her early thirties. One weekend in 1981 she meets Jefferson. The two sleep together. He vanishes. And Laura realizes she’s pregnant.

Enter: Emma.

Despite her progressive values, Laura raises Emma by herself in the same blue-blood world of private schools and summer homes she grew up in, buoyed by a host of indelible characters, including her eccentric mother, who informs her society friends and Emma herself that she was fathered by a Swedish sperm donor; her brother, whose childhood stutter reappears in the presence of their forbidding father; an exceptionally kind male pediatrician; and her overbearing best friend, whose life has followed the Park Avenue script in every way except for childbearing. Meanwhile, the apple falls far from the tree with Emma, who begins to question her environment in a way her mother never could.

Told in vignettes that mine the profound from the mundane, with meditations on everything from sex and death to insomnia and the catharsis of crying on the subway, a textured portrait emerges of a woman struggling to understand herself, her daughter, and the changing landscape of New York City in the eighties and nineties. Laura & Emma is an acutely insightful exploration of class and family warfare from a new author whose offbeat sensibility, understated wit, and stylish prose celebrate the comedy and pathos that make us human.
Visit Kate Greathead's website.

The Page 69 Test: Laura & Emma.

--Marshal Zeringue

Daniel Livesay's "Children of Uncertain Fortune," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Children of Uncertain Fortune: Mixed-Race Jamaicans in Britain and the Atlantic Family, 1733-1833 by Daniel Livesay.

The entry begins:
In general, the thought of Hollywood being remotely interested in what I do feels pretty laughable. But, in some ways I think that a movie actually could be made about my book. Although there is a lot of historical context and analysis that runs through Children of Uncertain Fortune, it’s also largely a collection of stories about individuals. In this case, the stories are about mixed-race Jamaicans – the children of white men, and free and enslaved women – who leave the Caribbean for Britain to escape colonial persecution, but find new challenges across the ocean.

I do think that there are ways to make characters out of the subjects of the book. A number of the mixed-race migrants I trace have really remarkable stories. Some are born into slavery before being manumitted and sent to elite schools in England. Some wear disguises to hide their African heritage when interviewing for positions in Britain. Some travel on to India to try to make their own fortune. Others arrive in Britain, struggle to become accepted by their families, and return to Jamaica. So there are a lot of great accounts to work with.

A number of the subjects in the book are women, and I would love for their stories to come out. If I had to choose an actress to play one of those women, it would have to be Antonia...[read on]
Learn more about Children of Uncertain Fortune at the publisher's website.

The Page 99 Test: Children of Uncertain Fortune.

Writers Read: Daniel Livesay.

My Book, The Movie: Children of Uncertain Fortune.

--Marshal Zeringue

Fifty sci-fi essentials written by women

Jeff Somers is the author of Lifers, the Avery Cates series from Orbit Books, Chum from Tyrus Books, and the Ustari Cycle from Pocket/Gallery, including We Are Not Good People. At the B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy blog he tagged fifty science fiction essentials written by women, including:
All the Birds in the Sky, by Charlie Jane Anders

Charlie Jane Anders’ science fantasy debut could fit on any number of lists—it’s one of those rare books that’s a lot of different things all at once. It tells the story of Patricia Delfine and Laurence Armstead, childhood friends who discover early on that they’re extremely talented—Patricia in magic, Laurence in science. Separated for years, they pursue their respective disciplines and are in turn recruited into twin efforts to save an Earth slowly being torn apart by climate change and other forces. When they find each other again, it’s not certain whether they’re destined to save the world, or destroy it. The divide between science and magic is a recurring theme, and adds a wonderful sense of tension to a novel bursting with ideas.
Read about another entry on the list.

All The Birds in The Sky is among Nancy Kress's five best books with ambitious birds and Laura Lam's five top books about futuristic California.

My Book, The Movie: All the Birds in the Sky.

--Marshal Zeringue

Tuesday, March 27, 2018

Sara Sheridan's "England Expects," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: England Expects by Sara Sheridan.

The entry begins:
I run a list at the back of my diary of actors I think could play roles in the Mirabelle books. Sometimes I spot a character actor in a minor role in a TV drama and I just know they’d be perfect for someone in the series so I take a note. But the thing is, I can’t tell you. I’m not going to tell you - because...[read on]
Visit Sara Sheridan's website.

My Book, The Movie: England Expects.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five books to change our minds and heal our souls

At the Guardian Elif Shafak tagged five books to change our minds and heal our souls, including:
Mary Beard’s Women & Power is a fascinating read that will be discussed in bookclubs, among friends, in groups and asks how history treated women who dared speak up in public spaces, and whether things have improved. In some ways yes, in some ways not at all. This enlightening book explains how misogyny works and why it is so resilient. Patriarchal societies have a different set of criteria for women in politics and women in positions of power. I like the way Beard questions the notion of power and how it has been used to silence women. She makes it clear that it is time to change language that systematically discriminates against women.
Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is John C. Hulsman reading?

Featured at Writers Read: John C. Hulsman, author of To Dare More Boldly: The Audacious Story of Political Risk.

His entry begins:
I am blessedly immersed in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels, having finished My Brilliant Friend and The Story of a New Name. While I make a living writing about history, international relations, and current events (and love reading good work on them), I find myself often drawn to fiction, in which the quality of the writing is often better and which says so much about the human condition. Both these attributes are often shockingly lacking in my discipline. For example, I make every intern I have read Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald, for the beauty and the brevity of the prose, and what they said about the Twentieth Century. It is an effort to cleanse them of...[read on]
About To Dare More Boldly, from the publisher:
Ten lessons from history on the dos and don’ts of analyzing political risk

Our baffling new multipolar world grows ever more complex, desperately calling for new ways of thinking, particularly when it comes to political risk. To Dare More Boldly provides those ways, telling the story of the rise of political risk analysis, both as a discipline and a lucrative high-stakes industry that guides the strategic decisions of corporations and governments around the world. It assesses why recent predictions have gone so wrong and boldly puts forward ten analytical commandments that can stand the test of time.

Written by one of the field's leading practitioners, this incisive book derives these indelible rules of the game from a wide-ranging and entertaining survey of world history. John Hulsman looks at examples as seemingly unconnected as the ancient Greeks and Romans, the Third Crusade, the Italian Renaissance, America's founders, Napoleon, the Battle of Gettysburg, the British Empire, the Kaiser's Germany, the breakup of the Beatles, Charles Manson, and Deng Xiaoping's China. Hulsman makes sense of yesterday's world, and in doing so provides an invaluable conceptual tool kit for navigating today's.

To Dare More Boldly creatively explains why political risk analysis is vital for business and political leaders alike, and authoritatively establishes the analytical rules of thumb that practitioners need to do it effectively.
Visit John C. Hulsman's website.

Writers Read: John C. Hulsman.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five books Hollywood should adapt into corny sitcoms

At the B&N Reads blog Brian Boone tagged five classic books Hollywood should adapt into corny sitcoms, including:
High Fidelity, by Nick Hornby

Think Cheers, but instead of barflies in a bar, it involves a different public place catering to a different compulsion: obsessive record collectors trying to buy records. Except that gloomy store owner Rob, aggressive employee Barry, and milquetoast Dick hilariously criticize the bad taste of anybody who comes in to buy a record. Sure, there are some colorful regulars, but most of the action revolves around Rob, Barry, and Dick ruminating on women, just like in Hornby’s novel. Also, it takes place someplace “cool,” like Portland or Austin, so bands are always dropping by to play a song or two.
Read about another entry on the list.

High Fidelity also made Lisa Jewell's six best books list, Jen Harper's list of seven top books to help you get through your divorce, Chris Moss's top 19 list of books on "how to be a man," Jeff Somers's lists of five of the best novels in which music is a character and six books that’ll make you glad you’re single, Chrissie Gruebel's top ten list of books set in London, Ted Gioia's list of ten of the best novels on music, Melissa Albert's top five list of books that inspire great mix tapes, Rob Reid's six favorite books list, Ashley Hamilton's list of 8 books to read with a broken heart, Tiffany Murray's top 10 list of rock'n'roll novels, Mark Hodkinson's critic's chart of rock music in fiction, and John Sutherland's list of the best books about listing.

--Marshal Zeringue

Monday, March 26, 2018

Pg. 69: Damian Dibben's "Tomorrow"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Tomorrow: A Novel by Damian Dibben.

About the book, from the publisher:
A wise old dog travels through the courts and battlefields of Europe and through the centuries in search of the master who granted him immortality

Tomorrow tells the story of a 217-year-old dog and his search for his lost master. His adventures take him through the London Frost Fair, the strange court of King Charles I, the wars of the Spanish succession, Versailles, the golden age of Amsterdam and to nineteenth-century Venice. As he journeys through Europe, he befriends both animals and humans, falls in love (only once), marvels at the human ability to make music, despairs at their capacity for war and gains insight into both the strength and frailties of the human spirit.

With the rich historical vision of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell and the captivating canine perspective of A Dog’s Purpose, Tomorrow draws us into a unique century-spanning tale of the unbreakable connection between dog and human.
Visit Damian Dibben's website.

My Book, The Movie: Tomorrow.

The Page 69 Test: Tomorrow.

--Marshal Zeringue

Kelli Stanley's "City of Sharks," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: City of Sharks: A Miranda Corbie Mystery by Kelli Stanley.

The entry begins:
I had one actress in mind when Miranda Corbie introduced herself to me in City of Dragons.

Rita Hayworth.

Miranda looks like a young Rita, can turn on the kilowattage like a young Rita (think Gilda), and, underneath her hardboiled defenses, is an exquisitely sensitive soul. Her armor is as tough as she is vulnerable … indeed, that’s why the armor exists.

Rita could express that kind of vulnerability, even in more traditional (i.e. misogynistic) femme fatale roles (think Lady from Shanghai) … and, for my money, her performance as Gilda—the play of conflicting, competing emotions that played across her face in so many scenes—was one of the best in the entire noir oeuvre. Rita combined intelligence, strength, wit, sexual allure, romanticism, beauty and vulnerability in a way few actresses ever have.

But now we’re in the fourth book of the series—City of Sharks. Actresses that could’ve played the role several years ago—Charlize Theron, for example—have aged out of it. Could a contemporary younger actress capture Miranda? And capture her in a way that...[read on]
Learn more about the novel and author at Kelli Stanley's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Kelli Stanley & Bertie.

The Page 69 Test: City of Dragons.

The Page 69 Test: City of Secrets.

The Page 69 Test: City of Ghosts.

My Book, The Movie: City of Ghosts.

The Page 69 Test: City of Sharks.

My Book, The Movie: City of Sharks.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Adam Winkler's "We the Corporations"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights by Adam Winkler.

About the book, from the publisher:
We the Corporations chronicles the revelatory story of one of the most successful, yet least known, “civil rights movements” in American history.

In this groundbreaking portrait of corporate seizure of political power, We the Corporations reveals how American businesses won equal rights and transformed the Constitution to serve the ends of capital. Corporations—like minorities and women—have had a civil rights movement of their own, and now possess nearly all the same rights as ordinary people. Uncovering the deep historical roots of Citizens United, Adam Winkler shows how that controversial 2010 Supreme Court decision was the capstone of a two-hundred-year battle over corporate personhood and constitutional protections for business. Bringing to resounding life the legendary lawyers and justices involved in the corporate rights movement—among them Daniel Webster, Roger Taney, Lewis Powell, and even Thurgood Marshall—Winkler’s tour de force exposes how the nation’s most powerful corporations gained our most fundamental rights and turned the Constitution into a bulwark against the regulation of big business.
Learn more about We the Corporations at the publisher's website.

Adam Winkler, a professor of constitutional law at the University of California, Los Angeles, has been featured on CNN and in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and The New Republic.

The Page 99 Test: Gunfight.

The Page 99 Test: We the Corporations.

--Marshal Zeringue

Anna Quindlen's 6 favorite books by contemporary female authors

Anna Quindlen's new novel is Alternate Side. One of her six favorite books by contemporary female authors, as shared at The Week magazine:
Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson

Atkinson has also produced a series of crackerjack crime novels, and scored big several years ago with a time-bending tour de force called Life After Life. But her debut novel is unforgettable, the story of one existence interspersed with all those that touch it over time. First chapter: conception. First sentence: "I exist."
Read about another entry on the list.

Behind the Scenes at the Museum is among Kate Young's ten fictional feasts for Christmas, Miranda Doyle's ten top books about lies, Jenny Eclair's six best books, and Ester Bloom's top fifteen books everyone should read before having kids.

--Marshal Zeringue

Sunday, March 25, 2018

What is Daniel Livesay reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Daniel Livesay, author of Children of Uncertain Fortune: Mixed-Race Jamaicans in Britain and the Atlantic Family, 1733-1833.

His entry begins:
I have been on something of an eclectic reading journey recently. I just finished Steve Martin’s Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life. I’ve always been a fan of Martin – The Jerk was my favorite movie as kid – and so I was interested in reading more about his meteoric rise to fame. In the memoir, Martin navigates the ups and downs of an early life in standup comedy. So much of that life was filled with rejection, isolation, and only temporary reprieves of audience appreciation. What stuck out so much to me was the degree of loneliness that Martin experienced while he was...[read on]
About Children of Uncertain Fortune, from the publisher:
By tracing the largely forgotten eighteenth-century migration of elite mixed-race individuals from Jamaica to Great Britain, Children of Uncertain Fortune reinterprets the evolution of British racial ideologies as a matter of negotiating family membership. Using wills, legal petitions, family correspondences, and inheritance lawsuits, Daniel Livesay is the first scholar to follow the hundreds of children born to white planters and Caribbean women of color who crossed the ocean for educational opportunities, professional apprenticeships, marriage prospects, or refuge from colonial prejudices.

The presence of these elite children of color in Britain pushed popular opinion in the British Atlantic world toward narrower conceptions of race and kinship. Members of Parliament, colonial assemblymen, merchant kings, and cultural arbiters--the very people who decided Britain’s colonial policies, debated abolition, passed marital laws, and arbitrated inheritance disputes--rubbed shoulders with these mixed-race Caribbean migrants in parlors and sitting rooms. Upper-class Britons also resented colonial transplants and coveted their inheritances; family intimacy gave way to racial exclusion. By the early nineteenth century, relatives had become strangers.
Learn more about Children of Uncertain Fortune at the publisher's website.

The Page 99 Test: Children of Uncertain Fortune.

Writers Read: Daniel Livesay.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten literary classics we're supposed to like...but don't

At LitHub Emily Temple asked her colleagues about the literary classics we're supposed to like...but don't.

One title from the survey:
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick

Like many people, I [Alicia Kroell] tired of the extensive whale anatomy lessons from Moby-Dick. I tried getting into it—have you ever thought about whales like that? have you ever thought about someone else thinking about whales like that?—but it wasn’t enough to sustain my interest. I did love the philosophical, poetic aspects of the book; or I convinced myself I loved those parts enough to “read” the book over several years, packing it and unpacking it as I moved between five different houses. At one point, I resolved to skip over the detail-heavy chapters, focusing on the adventure and relationships aboard the Pequod. I had tried a similar plan with The X-Files a few years prior, skipping “Monster of the Week” episodes with the intent of solely following the conspiracy arc. I didn’t follow through on either plan. Maybe I needed that extra fat (blubber?) as context or cushion. Regardless, I feel like trying to read a book over multiple years is more than a fair try. And I’ve long since ditched my copy of Moby-Dick.
Read about another book on the list.

Moby-Dick appears among Sara Flannery Murphy ten top stories of obsession, Harold Bloom's six favorite books that helped shape "the American Sublime,"  Charlotte Seager's five well-known literary monomaniacs who take things too far, Ann Leary's top ten books set in New England, Martin Seay's ten best long books, Ian McGuire's ten best adventure novels, Jeff Somers's five top books that will expand your vocabulary and entertain, Four books that changed Mary Norris, Tim Dee's ten best nature books, the Telegraph's fifteen best North American novels of all time, Nicole Hill's top ten best names in literature to give your dog, Horatio Clare's five favorite maritime novels, the Telegraph's ten great meals in literature, Brenda Wineapple's six favorite books, Scott Greenstone's top seven allegorical novels, Paul Wilson's top ten books about disability, Lynn Shepherd's ten top fictional drownings, Peter Murphy's top ten literary preachers, Penn Jillette's six favorite books, Peter F. Stevens's top ten nautical books, Katharine Quarmby's top ten disability stories, Jonathan Evison's six favorite books, Bella Bathurst's top 10 books on the sea, John Mullan's lists of ten of the best nightmares in literature and ten of the best tattoos in literature, Susan Cheever's five best books about obsession, Christopher Buckley's best books, Jane Yolen's five most important books, Chris Dodd's best books, Augusten Burroughs' five most important books, Norman Mailer's top ten works of literature, David Wroblewski's five most important books, Russell Banks' five most important books, and Philip Hoare's top ten books about whales.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Tessa Arlen's "Death of An Unsung Hero"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Death of an Unsung Hero: A Lady Montfort Mystery (Volume 4) by Tessa Arlen.

About the book, from the publisher:
In 1916, the world is at war and the energetic Lady Montfort has persuaded her husband to offer his family’s dower house to the War Office as an auxiliary hospital for officers recovering from shell-shock with their redoubtable housekeeper Mrs. Jackson contributing to the war effort as the hospital’s quartermaster.

Despite the hospital’s success, the farming community of Haversham, led by the Montfort’s neighbor Sir Winchell Meacham, does not approve of a country-house hospital for men they consider to be cowards. When Captain Sir Evelyn Bray, one of the patients, is found lying face down in the vegetable garden with his head bashed in, both Lady Montfort and Mrs. Jackson have every reason to fear that the War Office will close their hospital. Once again the two women unite their diverse talents to discover who would have reason to murder a war hero suffering from amnesia.

Brimming with intrigue, Tessa Arlen's Death of an Unsung Hero brings more secrets and more charming descriptions of the English countryside to the wonderful Lady Montfort and Mrs. Jackson series.
Visit Tessa Arlen's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Tessa Arlen & Daphne.

The Page 69 Test: Death of a Dishonorable Gentleman.

My Book, The Movie: Death of a Dishonorable Gentleman.

The Page 69 Test: Death Sits Down to Dinner.

My Book, The Movie: Death Sits Down to Dinner.

The Page 69 Test: A Death by Any Other Name.

Writers Read: Tessa Arlen.

The Page 69 Test: Death of an Unsung Hero.

--Marshal Zeringue

Saturday, March 24, 2018

Fifteen top Easter picture books

At the BN Kids Blog the B&N editors tagged fifteen terrific Easter picture books, including:
Tucker Digs Easter, by Leslie McGuirk

Tucker the dog loves to dig holes in the ground, and he is very good at his job. When the Easter bunny asks Tucker to help, he’s all too eager to dig holes all around and hide the bunny’s eggs. He even gets to wear a special Easter Bunny costume! When the kids cannot find the eggs, Tucker leaps into action to help the children locate them. Tucker gets to be a canine hero twice in this sweet board book Easter story.
Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Dennis Palumbo reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Dennis Palumbo, author of Head Wounds.

His entry begins:
I’m currently reading a terrific, sobering nonfiction book called The Revenge of Geography by Robert D. Kaplan. It’s a geopolitical analyst’s clear-eyed assessment of the roiling situation in the Middle East, and what thirty years of trying to create a democratic system in the region has wrought. The author’s understanding and explanation of how the very terrain of the region contributes to reinforcing an entrenched tribalism, and how this attitude is the antithesis of the kind of egalitarianism from which a democratic political system arises, seems...[read on]
About Head Wounds, from the publisher:
Psychologist Dr. Daniel Rinaldi consults with the Pittsburgh Police. His specialty is treating victims of violent crime—those who’ve survived an armed robbery, kidnapping, or sexual assault, but whose traumatic experience still haunts them. Head Wounds picks up where Rinaldi’s investigation in Phantom Limb left off, turning the tables on him as he, himself, becomes the target of a vicious killer.

“Miles Davis saved my life.” With these words Rinaldi becomes a participant in a domestic drama that blows up right outside his front door, saved from a bullet to the brain by pure chance. In the chaos that follows, Rinaldi learns his bad-girl, wealthy neighbor has told her hair-triggered boyfriend Rinaldi is her lover. As things heat up, Rinaldi becomes a murder suspect.

But this is just the first act in this chilling, edge-of-your-seat thriller. As one savagery follows another, Rinaldi is forced to relive a terrible night that haunts him still. And to realize that now he—and those he loves—are being victimized by a brilliant killer still in the grip of delusion. Determined to destroy Rinaldi by systematically targeting those close to him—his patients, colleagues, and friends—computer genius Sebastian Maddox strives to cause as much psychological pain as possible, before finally orchestrating a bold, macabre death for his quarry.

How ironic. As Pittsburgh morphs from a blue-collar town to a tech giant, a psychopath deploys technology in a murderous way.

Enter two other figures from Rinaldi’s past: retired FBI profiler Lyle Barnes, once a patient who Rinaldi treated for night terrors; and Special Agent Gloria Reese, with whom he falls into a surprising, erotically charged affair. Warned by Maddox not to engage the authorities or else random innocents throughout the city will die, Rinaldi and these two unlikely allies engage in a terrifying cat-and-mouse game with an elusive killer who’ll stop at nothing in pursuit of what he imagines is revenge.

A true page-turner, Head Wounds is the electrifying fifth in a critically acclaimed series of thrillers by Dennis Palumbo. Formerly a Hollywood screenwriter, Dennis Palumbo is now a licensed psychotherapist in private practice.
Learn more about the book and author at Dennis Palumbo's website.

My Book, The Movie: Night Terrors.

The Page 69 Test: Phantom Limb.

My Book, The Movie: Phantom Limb.

The Page 69 Test: Head Wounds.

Writers Read: Dennis Palumbo.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top mind-bending novels

Chuma Nwokolo's is the author of the novel The Extinction of Menai and other works. One of five essential mind-bending novels he tagged at Publishers Weekly:
The Palm Wine Drinkard by Amos Tutuola

Amos Tutuola lays out his plot simply in the first three pages: his hero’s palm wine tapper has fallen to his death. Finding no replacement to supply his beverage, our hero determines to pop over to the land of the dead to fetch his tapper back. It is a testimony to the art of the storyteller that the reader does not toss down the book at this point, for The Palm Wine Drinkard drips charm, even in its 66th year of publication. The narrator’s colorful voice lends felicity to the tale. The supernatural powers of the characters are deployed dreamily. The novelist strings a quilt of tall tales in an idiosyncratic language that serves its subject matter well, and the reader never gets enough.
Read about another entry on the list.

The Palm-Wine Drinkard is among Matthew Kressel's five favorite fantasy novels with fantastic, awe-inspiring settings and Alain Mabanckou's six favorite books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Susan Goldman Rubin's "Coco Chanel"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Coco Chanel: Pearls, Perfume, and the Little Black Dress by Susan Goldman Rubin.

About the book, from the publisher:
Award-winning author Susan Goldman Rubin introduces readers to the most well-known fashion designer in the world, Coco Chanel. Beginning with the difficult years Chanel spent in an orphanage, Goldman Rubin traces Coco’s development as a designer and demonstrates how her determination to be independent helped her gain worldwide recognition. Coco Chanel focuses on the obstacles Chanel faced as a financially independent woman in an era when women were expected to marry; as well as her fierce competition with the Italian fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli; and some of her most memorable firsts for the fashion industry, including the little black dress, the quilted purse with gold chain, and the perfume Chanel No. 5. The book includes a bibliography, a list of where to see her work, and an index.
Visit Susan Goldman Rubin's website.

Writers Read: Susan Goldman Rubin.

The Page 99 Test: Coco Chanel.

--Marshal Zeringue

Friday, March 23, 2018

Five top books about the history of booze

At B&N Reads Madina Papadopoulos tagged five books about the history of booze, including:
Imbibe! Updated and Revised Edition: From Absinthe Cocktail to Whiskey Smash, a Salute in Stories and Drinks to “Professor” Jerry Thomas, Pioneer of the American Bar, by David Wondrich

When one thinks cocktails and history, the name ‘David Wondrich’ quickly comes to mind. Both a mixologist and a historian, Wondrich is a leader in the field of cocktail history. No booze-shelf is complete without his James Beard Award winning book, Imbibe! Through a snifter glass, the book peers back in time, beginning with “The Archaic Age” of mixology in the United States of the late 1700s, then following developments of punches, juleps, cocktails, and other delights. Wondrich knows how to mix a drink as masterfully as he turns a phrase, which makes the book not only an informative but also a gratifying read.
Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Nancy Kress's "If Tomorrow Comes"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: If Tomorrow Comes: Book 2 of the Yesterday's Kin Trilogy by Nancy Kress.

About the book, from the publisher:
Nancy Kress returns with If Tomorrow Comes, the sequel of Tomorrow's Kin, part of an all-new hard science fiction trilogy based on a Nebula Award-winning novella

Ten years after the Aliens left Earth, humanity succeeds in building a ship, Friendship, to follow them home to Kindred. Aboard are a crew of scientists, diplomats, and a squad of Rangers to protect them. But when the Friendship arrives, they find nothing they expected. No interplanetary culture, no industrial base—and no cure for the spore disease.

A timeslip in the apparently instantaneous travel between worlds has occurred and far more than ten years have passed.

Once again scientists find themselves in a race against time to save humanity and their kind from a deadly virus while a clock of a different sort runs down on a military solution no less deadly to all. Amid devastation and plague come stories of heroism and sacrifice and of genetic destiny and free choice, with its implicit promise of conscious change.
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.

Writers Read: Nancy Kress.

The Page 69 Test: If Tomorrow Comes.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Tessa Arlen reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Tessa Arlen, author of Death of an Unsung Hero: A Lady Montfort Mystery.

Her entry begins:
I have been absolutely riveted by Sonia Purnell’s biography of Clementine Churchill: First Lady: The Life And Wars Of Clementine Churchill. It is an engrossing account of a strong-willed and ambitious woman without whom – so Purnell argues with authority – Winston Churchill’s political career would have been a washout!

As much a character as her husband, Clementine wholly differed from him in every way: she supported women’s suffrage –Winston loudly did not; she was a Liberal at heart –he was as right wing as they made them then; she counted the pennies and he was frighteningly extravagant. She also loathed most of his best friends and had a notoriously high flashpoint: Winston fondly described an enraged Clemmie as “a jaguar dropping out of a tree.” But how she managed to survive her marriage to him was a constant question I found myself asking.

Clementine was married to Winston at a time when aristocratic women took a back seat in the world. They were...[read on]
About Death of an Unsung Hero, from the publisher:
In 1916, the world is at war and the energetic Lady Montfort has persuaded her husband to offer his family’s dower house to the War Office as an auxiliary hospital for officers recovering from shell-shock with their redoubtable housekeeper Mrs. Jackson contributing to the war effort as the hospital’s quartermaster.

Despite the hospital’s success, the farming community of Haversham, led by the Montfort’s neighbor Sir Winchell Meacham, does not approve of a country-house hospital for men they consider to be cowards. When Captain Sir Evelyn Bray, one of the patients, is found lying face down in the vegetable garden with his head bashed in, both Lady Montfort and Mrs. Jackson have every reason to fear that the War Office will close their hospital. Once again the two women unite their diverse talents to discover who would have reason to murder a war hero suffering from amnesia.

Brimming with intrigue, Tessa Arlen's Death of an Unsung Hero brings more secrets and more charming descriptions of the English countryside to the wonderful Lady Montfort and Mrs. Jackson series.
Visit Tessa Arlen's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Tessa Arlen & Daphne.

The Page 69 Test: Death of a Dishonorable Gentleman.

My Book, The Movie: Death of a Dishonorable Gentleman.

The Page 69 Test: Death Sits Down to Dinner.

My Book, The Movie: Death Sits Down to Dinner.

The Page 69 Test: A Death by Any Other Name.

Writers Read: Tessa Arlen.

--Marshal Zeringue

Damian Dibben's "Tomorrow," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Tomorrow: A Novel by Damian Dibben.

The entry begins:
My background is in screenwriting, having worked in the UK and Hollywood for ten years before I started writing novels. (Actually my first book, The History Keepers, was originally intended as a screenplay & when it was completed, Working Title bought the movie rights) That said, Tomorrow may just be un-filmable. It is filmic certainly, taking in an epic sweep of history from the reign of Elizabeth I of England, through the gruesome wars of the 17th century, Versailles, the golden age of Amsterdam and up to nineteenth century Venice, but it is also narrated by a dog and his voice, its reflective, philosophical quality is vital to the power of the story.

Of course, having originally been an actor too, I always think of casting. I would hold open auditions for the two principal dogs of the story, 'I' & 'Sporco', - the latter an endearingly eccentric stray from the alleyways of Venice - but the equally important human characters of 'the Master' and 'Vilder', both middle-aged but immortal, would provide great opportunities for two heavyweight British actors. 'The Master' would be Daniel Day Lewis, if he could be coaxed out of retirement. He would bring...[read on]
Visit Damian Dibben's website.

My Book, The Movie: Tomorrow.

--Marshal Zeringue

Thursday, March 22, 2018

Ten top runaway mothers in fiction

Laura Lippman was a reporter for twenty years, including twelve years at The (Baltimore) Sun. She began writing novels while working full-time and published seven books about “accidental PI” Tess Monaghan before leaving daily journalism in 2001.

Her work has been awarded the Edgar ®, the Anthony, the Agatha, the Shamus, the Nero Wolfe, Gumshoe and Barry awards.

Lippman's new novel is Sunburn.

One of the author's top ten runaway mothers in fiction, as shared at the Guardian:
A Mother and Two Daughters by Gail Godwin

This novel follows its titular characters in the year after the death of the family patriarch. Lydia Mansfield, the younger, usually dutiful daughter, decides to leave her marriage and only takes one of her two sons with her. She believes her decision is merely pragmatic – her older son prefers living in the family house, while the younger one needs more supervision – and is shocked to discover that the school psychologist sees her as a selfish, indifferent mother. It’s a small plot point in a sprawling, satisfying book about three women recalibrating their identities.
Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Daniel Livesay's "Children of Uncertain Fortune"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Children of Uncertain Fortune: Mixed-Race Jamaicans in Britain and the Atlantic Family, 1733-1833 by Daniel Livesay.

About the book, from the publisher:
By tracing the largely forgotten eighteenth-century migration of elite mixed-race individuals from Jamaica to Great Britain, Children of Uncertain Fortune reinterprets the evolution of British racial ideologies as a matter of negotiating family membership. Using wills, legal petitions, family correspondences, and inheritance lawsuits, Daniel Livesay is the first scholar to follow the hundreds of children born to white planters and Caribbean women of color who crossed the ocean for educational opportunities, professional apprenticeships, marriage prospects, or refuge from colonial prejudices.

The presence of these elite children of color in Britain pushed popular opinion in the British Atlantic world toward narrower conceptions of race and kinship. Members of Parliament, colonial assemblymen, merchant kings, and cultural arbiters--the very people who decided Britain’s colonial policies, debated abolition, passed marital laws, and arbitrated inheritance disputes--rubbed shoulders with these mixed-race Caribbean migrants in parlors and sitting rooms. Upper-class Britons also resented colonial transplants and coveted their inheritances; family intimacy gave way to racial exclusion. By the early nineteenth century, relatives had become strangers.
Learn more about Children of Uncertain Fortune at the publisher's website.

The Page 99 Test: Children of Uncertain Fortune.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Nancy Kress reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Nancy Kress, author of If Tomorrow Comes: Book 2 of the Yesterday's Kin Trilogy.

Her entry begins:
Books get chosen for different reasons. Right now I am or have been reading:

Homo Deus, by Yuval Noah Harari. This non-fiction was chosen by my science book club for this quarter’s meeting. A historian with an astonishing breadth of information discusses the paradigms and beliefs that have guided societies in the past (religions), that do guide us in the present (humanism and science), and will guide us in the future, when we achieve immortality and become as gods (hence the title). Interesting book, but he...[read on]
About If Tomorrow Comes, from the publisher:
Nancy Kress returns with If Tomorrow Comes, the sequel of Tomorrow's Kin, part of an all-new hard science fiction trilogy based on a Nebula Award-winning novella

Ten years after the Aliens left Earth, humanity succeeds in building a ship, Friendship, to follow them home to Kindred. Aboard are a crew of scientists, diplomats, and a squad of Rangers to protect them. But when the Friendship arrives, they find nothing they expected. No interplanetary culture, no industrial base—and no cure for the spore disease.

A timeslip in the apparently instantaneous travel between worlds has occurred and far more than ten years have passed.

Once again scientists find themselves in a race against time to save humanity and their kind from a deadly virus while a clock of a different sort runs down on a military solution no less deadly to all. Amid devastation and plague come stories of heroism and sacrifice and of genetic destiny and free choice, with its implicit promise of conscious change.
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.

Writers Read: Nancy Kress.

--Marshal Zeringue