What is Carol Goodman reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Carol Goodman, author of The Other Mother.

Her entry begins:

I’ve long been a fan of Laura Lippman’s books—both her realistic and gritty Tess Monaghan series and her psychologically astute stand-alones—so I had high expectations for her latest Sunburn. My expectations were exceeded.

Lippman has called her book her “Cain homage,” and it indeed has the mood and set-up of James M. Cain’s first novel, The Postman Always Rings Twice. Two drifters meet at a roadside diner, sparks fly—and not just from the grill—suspicions follow … and murder. Lippman deftly evokes the mood of noir: the sultry heat of cheap motels and boarding houses, the neon glow of a jukebox, sunsets over flat cornfields, a redhead in a sundress with sunburnt shoulders. It’s as if she’s laying tinder for a fire. But she does much more.

Reading Sunburn sent me back to...[read on]

About The Other Mother, from the publisher:

From the author of the internationally bestselling The Lake of Dead Languages comes a gripping novel about madness, motherhood, love, and trust.

When Daphne Marist and her infant daughter, Chloe, pull up the gravel drive to the home of Daphne’s new employer, it feels like they’ve entered a whole new world. Tucked in the Catskills, the stone mansion looks like something out of a fairy tale, its lush landscaping hiding the view of the mental asylum just beyond its border. Daphne secured the live-in position using an assumed name and fake credentials, telling no one that she’s on the run from a controlling husband who has threatened to take her daughter away.

Daphne’s new life is a far cry from the one she had in Westchester where, just months before, she and her husband welcomed little Chloe. From the start, Daphne tries to be a good mother, but she’s plagued by dark moods and intrusive thoughts that convince her she’s capable of harming her own daughter. When Daphne is diagnosed with Post Partum Mood Disorder, her downward spiral feels unstoppable—until she meets Laurel Hobbes.

Laurel, who also has a daughter named Chloe, is everything Daphne isn’t: charismatic, sophisticated, fearless. They immediately form an intense friendship, revealing secrets to one another they thought they’d never share. Soon, they start to look alike, dress alike, and talk alike, their lives mirroring one another in strange and disturbing ways. But Daphne realizes only too late that being friends with Laurel will come at a very shocking price—one that will ultimately lead her to that towering mansion in the Catskills where terrifying, long-hidden truths will finally be revealed....

Visit Carol Goodman's website.

Writers Read: Carol Goodman.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top novels with strong-willed female protagonists

Curtis Sittenfeld's new book, You Think It, I'll Say It, is her first short-story collection. One of her six favorite books with strong-willed female protagonists, as shared at The Week magazine:

Make Your Home Among Strangers by Jennine Capó Crucet

In another recent novel set in the '90s, another freshman has traded working-class Cuban-American Miami for an elite college in upstate New York. Back in Florida, an Elián González–inspired drama unfolds; up north, Lizet navigates academic and romantic confusion. Capó Crucet is equally brilliant writing about class, sex, and what it's like to experience snow for the first time.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Amelia Brunskill's "The Window"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Window by Amelia Brunskill.

About the book, from the publisher:

If you love The Third Twin and One of Us Is Lying and binge-watched Thirteen Reasons Why, get ready for a heart-wrenching psychological thriller about a girl who knows her twin sister better than anyone ... or does she? Taut and atmospheric, The Window will keep you guessing until the end.

Secrets have a way of getting out....

Anna is everything her identical twin is not. Outgoing and athletic, she is the opposite of quiet introvert Jess. The same on the outside, yet so completely different inside–it’s hard to believe the girls are sisters, let alone twins. But they are. And they tell each other everything.

Or so Jess thought.

After Anna falls to her death while sneaking out her bedroom window, Jess’s life begins to unravel. Everyone says it was an accident, but to Jess, that doesn’t add up. Where was Anna going? Who was she meeting? And how long had Anna been lying to her?

Jess is compelled to learn everything she can about the sister she thought she knew. At first it’s a way to stay busy and find closure . . . but Jess soon discovers that her twin kept a lot of secrets. And as she digs deeper, she learns that the answers she’s looking for may be truths that no one wants her to uncover.

Because Anna wasn’t the only one with secrets.

Visit Amelia Brunskill's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Window.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Heather Widdows's "Perfect Me: Beauty as an Ethical Ideal"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Perfect Me: Beauty as an Ethical Ideal by Heather Widdows.

About the book, from the publisher:

How looking beautiful has become a moral imperative in today’s world

The demand to be beautiful is increasingly important in today's visual and virtual culture. Rightly or wrongly, being perfect has become an ethical ideal to live by, and according to which we judge ourselves good or bad, a success or a failure. Perfect Me explores the changing nature of the beauty ideal, showing how it is more dominant, more demanding, and more global than ever before.

Heather Widdows argues that our perception of the self is changing. More and more, we locate the self in the body--not just our actual, flawed bodies but our transforming and imagined ones. As this happens, we further embrace the beauty ideal. Nobody is firm enough, thin enough, smooth enough, or buff enough—not without significant effort and cosmetic intervention. And as more demanding practices become the norm, more will be required of us, and the beauty ideal will be harder and harder to resist.

If you have ever felt the urge to "make the best of yourself" or worried that you were "letting yourself go," this book explains why. Perfect Me examines how the beauty ideal has come to define how we see ourselves and others and how we structure our daily practices—and how it enthralls us with promises of the good life that are dubious at best. Perfect Me demonstrates that we must first recognize the ethical nature of the beauty ideal if we are ever to address its harms.

Learn more about Perfect Me at the Princeton University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Perfect Me: Beauty as an Ethical Ideal.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five inspiringly badass women in YA fiction

Adrienne Young is a born and bred Texan turned California girl. She is a foodie with a deep love of history and travel and a shameless addiction to coffee. When she’s not writing, you can find her on her yoga mat, scouring antique fairs for old books, sipping wine over long dinners, or disappearing into her favorite art museums. She lives with her documentary filmmaker husband and their four little wildlings beneath the West Coast sun.

Young's new novel is Sky in the Deep.

One of her five favorite inspiringly badass YA women, as shared at the BN Teen blog:

Jude (The Cruel Prince, by Holly Black)

How could I not kick off with this hand-stabbing, body-hiding, poison-drinking mortal? Raised as a human in Faerie by the man who murdered her parents in front of her, Jude is a character who just wouldn’t let me go after I turned that last page. Determined, stubborn, and rebellious, this girl is one do-or-die moment after the other in pursuit of what she wants. And she’s just as cunning as she is fierce, calculating and moving pieces on the chessboard of the story in a way that had me gasping more than once.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Teresa Dovalpage's "Death Comes in through the Kitchen," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Death Comes in through the Kitchen by Teresa Dovalpage.

The entry begins:

The novel takes place, for the most part, in Havana. The director may want to shoot it somewhere in Florida. La Pequeña Habana, perhaps. Or who knows, they may get to film the whole thing in Cuba.

The story starts with Matt Sullivan, a San Diego journalist, arriving in Havana. Yarmila, his Cuban girlfriend, should be waiting for him at the airport, but she is not. After finding her dead in a bathtub, Matt asks Padrino, a private detective, for help.

Idris Elba would be the perfect actor to play Padrino, a Santeria practitioner who...[read on]

Visit Teresa Dovalpage's website.

Writers Read: Teresa Dovalpage.

The Page 69 Test: Death Comes in through the Kitchen.

My Book, The Movie: Death Comes in through the Kitchen.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Jennifer Caloyeras reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Jennifer Caloyeras, author of Unruly Creatures.

Her entry begins:

I am definitely what someone might call a book devourer. I am at my local library at least once or twice a week returning stacks of book and replacing them with new ones. I typically read between two and four books a week, so getting to share some recent picks with readers is fantastic.

I recently finished Chloe Benjamin’s The Immortalists. This is such a beautifully written book. It’s about four young siblings who see a fortune teller and she predicts the exact dates that they will each die. We follow each child and see how knowing this information affects them. I love the structure of the novel – each section is told from the point of view of a separate character. The book covers so many...[read on]

About Unruly Creatures, from the publisher:

In this collection rife with humor and pathos, alienated characters struggle to subvert, contain, control, and even escape their bodies. A teenage girl grapples with pubic hair grown wild, a biologist finds herself in love with a gorilla, a prisoner yearns to escape her biological destiny.

In some stories, the bodies have surrogates: a high-school girl babysits an elderly woman's plastic doll while negotiating her own sexual awakening, and a young man finds that he can only receive affection from his father when he is in costume. Dark humor and magical realism put into sharp relief the everyday trials of Americans in a story collection that asks, in what way are we more than the sum of our parts.

Visit Jennifer Caloyeras's website, blog, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.

Coffee with a Canine: Jennifer Caloyeras & Reba and Dingo.

The Page 69 Test: Unruly Creatures.

Writers Read: Jennifer Caloyeras.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top stories that celebrate the everyday in science fiction

Jack McDevitt is the Nebula Award–winning author of The Academy series, including The Long Sunset. He went to La Salle University, then joined the Navy, drove a cab, became an English teacher, took a customs inspector’s job on the northern border, and didn’t write another word for a quarter-century. He received a master’s degree in literature from Wesleyan University in 1971. He returned to writing when his wife, Maureen, encouraged him to try his hand at it in 1980. Along with winning the Nebula Award in 2006, he has also been nominated for the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, and the Philip K. Dick Award. In 2015 he was awarded the Robert A. Heinlein Award for Lifetime Achievement.

At Tor.com McDevitt tagged "five stories, from the heart, about science fiction and everyday life," including:

Michael Bishop delivers “Rattlesnakes and Men.” It’s a tale of a family that, after being hammered by a tornado, moves from Arkansas to Georgia, where they settle in the small town of Nokuse. It’s a pleasant village, with a friendly population. But they do have an unsettling characteristic: Every citizen is required by law to own a rattlesnake. The rattlesnake is primed to protect its owner, and other members of the family, from intruders.

Much of the town’s sense of community arises from the Nokuse Rattlesnake Alliance, which has a long and illustrious history. Annually for fifty years, they’ve hosted Nokuse County’s Rattlesnake Rodeo and Roundup in Wriggly County. And they are part of the community life in every way.

It’s hard to believe people would engage in activities that are inherently dangerous, but we’ve a long history of alcoholism and tobacco, which do kill considerable damage. And for anyone who wishes to stay with animals, there’ve been occasional stories about someone attacked by a pet wildcat.

Read about another entry on the list.

Writers Read: Jack McDevitt (April 2018).

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Edward G. Goetz's "The One-Way Street of Integration"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The One-Way Street of Integration: Fair Housing and the Pursuit of Racial Justice in American Cities by Edward G. Goetz.

About the book, from the publisher:

The One-Way Street of Integration examines two contrasting housing policy approaches to achieving racial justice. Integration initiatives and community development efforts have been for decades contrasting means of achieving racial equity through housing policy. Edward G. Goetz doesn’t see the solution to racial injustice as the government moving poor and nonwhite people out of their communities, and by tracing the tensions involved in housing integration and policy across fifty years and myriad developments he shows why.

Goetz’s core argument, in a provocative book that shows today’s debates about housing, mobility, and race have deep roots, is that fair housing advocates have adopted a spatial strategy of advocacy that has increasingly brought it into conflict with community development efforts. The One-Way Street of Integration critiques fair housing integration policies for targeting settlement patterns while ignoring underlying racism and issues of economic and political power. Goetz challenges liberal orthodoxy, determining that the standard efforts toward integration are unlikely to lead to racial equity or racial justice in American cities. In fact, in this pursuit it is the community development movement rather than integrated housing projects that has the greatest potential for connecting to social change and social justice efforts.

Learn more about The One-Way Street of Integration at the Cornell University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: New Deal Ruins.

The Page 99 Test: The One-Way Street of Integration.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten novels that end their apocalypses on a beach

At the B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog Ceridwen Christensen tagged "nine (and possibly 10) novels that find themselves on the beach at the finale." One title on the list:

The Road, by Cormac McCarthy

We are introduced to the unnamed boy and father on The Road, heading toward the ocean. They’ve been living in a cabin in the wasteland the world has become; all life, down to the bacterial, appears to be dead. Their journey is a grotesque picaresque punctuated by all manner of horrors, but the dream of the sea and its redemption are forefront. The boy and his father are “the good guys.” But when they reach the sea, it’s just as dead as everything else, a slopping soup of iodine and salt. While the beach isn’t the place of salvation the two expect, it still gives the boy his next transition—maybe not precisely from boy to man, but something close and intimate, not unlike an adoption. “In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery,” McCarthy writes in the final lines. The image of trout in the water is a form of metonymy for the human spirit—cool and deep and hidden, less mercurial than the ocean, but just as vast.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Road appears on Steph Post's top ten classic (and perhaps not so classic) road trip books, a list of five of the best climate change novels, Claire Fuller's top five list of extreme survival stories, Justin Cronin's top ten list of world-ending novels, Rose Tremain's six best books list, Ian McGuire's ten top list of adventure novels, Alastair Bruce's top ten list of books about forgetting, Jeff Somers's lists of five science fiction novels that really should be considered literary classics and eight good, bad, and weird dad/child pairs in science fiction and fantasy, Amelia Gray's ten best dark books list, Weston Williams's top fifteen list of books with memorable dads, ShortList's roundup of the twenty greatest dystopian novels, Mary Miller's top ten list of the best road books, Joel Cunningham's list of eleven "literary" novels that include elements of science fiction, fantasy or horror, Claire Cameron's list of five favorite stories about unlikely survivors, Isabel Allende's six favorite books list, the Telegraph's list of the 15 most depressing books, Joseph D’Lacey's top ten list of horror books, the Barnes & Noble Review's list of five unforgettable fathers from fiction, Ken Jennings's list of eight top books about parents and kids, Anthony Horowitz's top ten list of apocalypse books, Karen Thompson Walker's list of five notable "What If?" books, John Mullan's list of ten of the top long walks in literature, Tony Bradman's top ten list of father and son stories, Ramin Karimloo's six favorite books list, Jon Krakauer's five best list of books about mortality and existential angst, William Skidelsky's list of the top ten most vivid accounts of being marooned in literature, Liz Jensen's top 10 list of environmental disaster stories, the Guardian's list of books to change the climate, David Nicholls' top ten list of literary tear jerkers, and the Times (of London) list of the 100 best books of the decade. In 2009 Sam Anderson of New York magazine claimed "that we'll still be talking about [The Road] in ten years."

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: S.J. Morden's "One Way"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: One Way by S. J. Morden.

About the book, from the publisher:

When the small crew of ex cons working on Mars start getting murdered, everyone is a suspect in this terrifying science fiction thriller from bona fide rocket scientist and award winning-author S. J. Morden.

It’s the dawn of a new era – and we’re ready to colonize Mars. But the company that’s been contracted to construct a new Mars base, has made promises they can’t fulfill and is desperate enough to cut corners. The first thing to go is the automation ... the next thing they’ll have to deal with is the eight astronauts they’ll send to Mars, when there aren’t supposed to be any at all.

Frank – father, architect, murderer – is recruited for the mission to Mars with the promise of a better life, along with seven of his most notorious fellow inmates. But as his crew sets to work on the red wasteland of Mars, the accidents mount up, and Frank begins to suspect they might not be accidents at all. As the list of suspect grows shorter, it’s up to Frank to uncover the terrible truth before it’s too late.

Visit Simon Morden's website.

The Page 69 Test: One Way.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top books about public housing

John Boughton is the author of Municipal Dreams: The Rise and Fall of Council Housing. At the Guardian, he tagged a (UK-centric) top ten list of books about public housing, including:

NW by Zadie Smith

Smith grew up on a Willesden council estate, and NW depicts the lives of four others, now in their thirties, shaped – in very different ways – by their formative years on the fictional Caldwell estate: “five blocks connected by walkways and bridges and staircases, and lifts that were to be avoided almost as soon as they were built”. With its broad range of characters and forms, NW captures something important and authentic about the divergent realities of working-class life in London. It’s the only work of fiction I feel able to recommend here.

Read about another book on the list.

NW is among Lisa Halliday's top ten novels that track unconnected but related stories and Jessica Winter's six favorite books on girl power.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Elizabeth J. Duncan reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Elizabeth J. Duncan, author of The Marmalade Murders: A Penny Brannigan Mystery (Volume 9).

Her entry begins:

The Convictions of John Delahunt by Andrew Hughes

Andrew Hughes, a former researcher with RTE, Ireland’s national broadcasting service, uncovered details of a horrific murder while researching his non-fiction book Lives Less Ordinary: Dublin’s Fitzwilliam Square, 1798-1922.

He spun that research into a stunning tale, written as a prison memoir told by a narrator who describes his descent from poor university student to murderer in Victorian Dublin -- a city awash at the time in poverty, corruption, violence, and political unrest.

The Convictions of John Delahunt is skilfully crafted and beautifully written, with a...[read on]

About The Marmalade Murders, from the publisher:

The latest book in an award-winning mystery series, celebrated for its small-town charm and picturesque Welsh setting and starring amateur sleuth Penny Brannigan.

The competition is friendly and just a little fierce at the annual Llanelen agricultural show as town and country folk gather for the outdoor judging of farm animals and indoor judging of cakes, pies, pastries, chutneys, jams and jellies, along with vegetables, fruit and flowers. But this year, there’s a new show category: murder.

Local artist, Spa owner, and amateur sleuth Penny Brannigan agrees to help with the intake of the domestic arts entries and to judge the children’s pet competition on show day. When the president of the Welsh Women's Guild isn’t on hand to see her granddaughter and pet pug win a prize, the family becomes concerned. When a carrot cake entered in the competition goes missing, something is clearly amiss.

A black Labrador Retriever belonging to the agricultural show’s president discovers the body of the missing woman under the baked goods table. A newcomer to town, a transgender woman, is suspected, but amateur sleuth Penny Brannigan believes her to be innocent. She sets out to find the real killer, but when a second body is discovered days later, the case is thrown into confusion, and Penny knows it’s up to her to figure out what happened—and why.

Visit Elizabeth J. Duncan's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Elizabeth J. Duncan and Dolly.

The Page 69 Test: The Cold Light of Mourning.

The Page 69 Test: A Brush with Death.

The Page 69 Test: Never Laugh As a Hearse Goes By.

The Page 69 Test: Slated for Death.

The Page 69 Test: Murder on the Hour.

Writers Read: Elizabeth J. Duncan.

--Marshal Zeringue

D.J. Butler's "Witchy Winter," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Witchy Winter by D.J. Butler.

The entry begins:

I haven't cast all the roles of the Witchy War books in my head, but I have thought about several:

Krysten Ritter plays Jessica Jones with the kind of damaged fragility and rage that my protagonist Sarah Elytharias Penn needs to show. Her coloring is also right, and if she's clearly much too good-looking ... well, that's...[read on]

Visit D.J. Butler's website.

The Page 69 Test: Witchy Winter.

Writers Read: D.J. Butler.

My Book, The Movie: Witchy Winter.

--Marshal Zeringue

Twenty-four novels with stories, settings, & characters inspired by Ireland

At B&N Reads Tara Sonin tagged twenty-four swoonworthy novels inspired by Ireland, including:

The Girl in the Castle, by Santa Montefiore

Kitty Deverill has a lovely life living in Castle Deverill in beautiful Ireland. She and Jack O’Leary fall in love…a love threatened by a jealous friend, a war between the Irish and the British, and the destruction of her home. Downton Abbey fans will love this dramatic portrayal of upstairs-downstairs hope and heartbreak.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Jennifer Caloyeras's "Unruly Creatures"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Unruly Creatures by Jennifer Caloyeras.

About the book, from the publisher:

In this collection rife with humor and pathos, alienated characters struggle to subvert, contain, control, and even escape their bodies. A teenage girl grapples with pubic hair grown wild, a biologist finds herself in love with a gorilla, a prisoner yearns to escape her biological destiny.

In some stories, the bodies have surrogates: a high-school girl babysits an elderly woman's plastic doll while negotiating her own sexual awakening, and a young man finds that he can only receive affection from his father when he is in costume. Dark humor and magical realism put into sharp relief the everyday trials of Americans in a story collection that asks, in what way are we more than the sum of our parts.

Visit Jennifer Caloyeras's website, blog, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.

Coffee with a Canine: Jennifer Caloyeras & Reba and Dingo.

The Page 69 Test: Unruly Creatures.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Harold J. Cook's "The Young Descartes"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Young Descartes: Nobility, Rumor, and War by Harold J. Cook.

About the book, from the publisher:

René Descartes is best known as the man who coined the phrase “I think, therefore I am.” But though he is remembered most as a thinker, Descartes, the man, was no disembodied mind, theorizing at great remove from the worldly affairs and concerns of his time. Far from it. As a young nobleman, Descartes was a soldier and courtier who took part in some of the greatest events of his generation—a man who would not seem out of place in the pages of The Three Musketeers.

In The Young Descartes, Harold J. Cook tells the story of a man who did not set out to become an author or philosopher—Descartes began publishing only after the age of forty. Rather, for years he traveled throughout Europe in diplomacy and at war. He was present at the opening events of the Thirty Years' War in Central Europe and Northern Italy, and was also later involved in struggles within France. Enduring exile, scandals, and courtly intrigue, on his journeys Descartes associated with many of the most innovative free thinkers and poets of his day, as well as great noblemen, noblewomen, and charismatic religious reformers. In his personal life, he expressed love for men as well as women and was accused of libertinism by his adversaries.

These early years on the move, in touch with powerful people and great events, and his experiences with military engineering and philosophical materialism all shaped the thinker and philosopher Descartes became in exile, where he would begin to write and publish, with purpose. But though it is these writings that made ultimately made him famous, The Young Descartes shows that this story of his early life and the tumultuous times that molded him is sure to spark a reappraisal of his philosophy and legacy.

Learn more about The Young Descartes at the University of Chicago Press website.

The Page 69 Test: Matters of Exchange.

The Page 99 Test: The Young Descartes.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Alex Grecian reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Alex Grecian, author of The Saint of Wolves and Butchers.

His entry begins:

I’m always reading several books at once, and I split my time between fiction and nonfiction. The books I read for pleasure travel from the table next to the couch, to the table next to my bed, and to all points between.

Right now I’m finishing up All the Pieces Matter: The Inside Story of The Wire, an oral history by Jonathan Abrams. I’m a fan of the show, of course, but also of David Simon’s books, and I picked this up hoping to get a little insight into his working process. There isn’t enough of that here, and there’s less time spent talking about the writer’s room than I might have liked, but there are still great nuggets of information sprinkled throughout, and short interviews with the outstanding writers involved in The Wire, including Dennis Lehane, George Pelecanos, and...[read on]

About The Saint of Wolves and Butchers, from the publisher:

From the bestselling author of The Yard comes a chilling contemporary thriller about an enigmatic hunter on the trail of a Nazi who has secretly continued his devilish work here in America.

Travis Roan and his dog, Bear, are hunters: They travel the world pursuing evildoers in order to bring them to justice. They have now come to Kansas on the trail of Rudolph Bormann, a Nazi doctor and concentration camp administrator who snuck into the U.S. under the name Rudy Goodman in the 1950s and has at last been identified. Travis quickly learns that Goodman has powerful friends who will go to any length to protect the Nazi; what he doesn’t know is that Goodman has furtively continued his diabolical work, amassing a congregation of followers who believe he possesses Godlike powers. Caught between these men is Kansas State Trooper Skottie Foster, an African American woman and a good cop who must find a way to keep peace in her district–until she realizes the struggle between Roan and Bormann will put her and her family in grave peril.

Visit Alex Grecian's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Devil's Workshop.

The Page 69 Test: The Saint of Wolves and Butchers.

Writers Read: Alex Grecian.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five of the best books to explain how we behave in the digital world

Olivia Sudjic’s debut novel is Sympathy. At the Guardian, she tagged five of the best books to get a grip on internet addiction, including:

Novels are under threat from the internet, we’re told, as attention spans become shorter. But the digital world is also inspiring novelists. Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story (2010) is set in a near-future dystopian New York: the US has become ungovernable; books and privacy are anachronisms; everyone owns a device that can live-stream thoughts (a version of this has since been created at MIT) and enables a fully quantified self, from health to hotness. Shteyngart seizes on nascent fears of online addiction and the internet’s dark side. Revisiting it now, the book reads less like science fiction, more like an account of a Faustian pact we’ve already made.

Read about another entry on the list.

Super Sad True Love Story appears on Leslie Berlin's top ten list of books about high-tech, Corey J. White's list of five books about the collapse of New York City, Ginni Chen's list of seven books that belong on your social media–obsessed friend’s shelf, Molly Schoemann-McCann's list of five of the best--and more familiar--tropes in fiction, Charlie Jane Anders's lists of ten great science fiction novels, published since 2000, that raise huge, important questions and ten satirical novels that could teach you to survive the future, and Nicholas Carr's list of five notable books on the impact of the Information Age.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Sam Peters's "From Darkest Skies"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: From Darkest Skies by Sam Peters.

About the book, from the publisher:

FROM DARKEST SKIES is a high-concept science fiction thriller wrapped around a love story, a man's search for the truth about his dead wife, and his relationship with the artificial intelligence he has built to replace her. Set in a future where the aliens came, waged war, and then vanished again, this is a striking new voice in science fiction.

After a five year sabbatical following the tragic death of his wife and fellow agent Alysha, Keon Rause returns to the distant colony world of Magenta to resume service with the Magentan Intelligence Service. With him he brings an artificial recreation of his wife's personality, a simulacrum built from every digital trace she left behind. She has been constructed with one purpose - to discover the truth behind her own death - but Keon's relationship with her has grown into something more, something frighteningly dependent, something that verges on love.

Cashing in old favours, Keon uses his return to the Service to take on a series of cases that allow him and the artificial Alysha to piece together his wife's last days. His investigations lead him inexorably along the same paths Alysha followed five years earlier, to a sinister and deadly group with an unhealthy fascination for the unknowable alien Masters; but as the wider world of Magenta is threatened with an imminent crisis, Keon finds himself in a dilemma: do his duty and stand with his team to expose a villainous crime, or sacrifice them all for the truth about his wife?

Visit Sam Peters's website.

The Page 69 Test: From Darkest Skies.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Michele Dillon's "Postsecular Catholicism"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Postsecular Catholicism: Relevance and Renewal by Michele Dillon.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Catholic Church faces the challenge of maintaining its relevance in an increasingly secularized society. On issues ranging from sexuality and gender equality to economic policy and social welfare, the church hierarchy is frequently out-of-step with Catholics and non-Catholics alike. In Postsecular Catholicism, Michele Dillon argues that the Church's relevance is increasingly contingent on its ability to incorporate secular experiences and expectations into the articulation of the Church's teachings.

Informed by the postsecular notion that religious and secular actors should recognize their mutual relevance in contemporary society, Dillon examines how secular realities and church doctrine intersect in American Catholicism. She shows that the Church's 21st-century commitment to institutional renewal has been amplified by Pope Francis's vision of public Catholicism and his accessible language and intellectual humility. Combining wide-ranging survey data with a rigorous examination of Francis's statements on economic inequality, climate change, LGBT rights, and women's ordination, the highly consequential Vatican Synod on the Family, and the US Bishops' religious freedom campaign, Postsecular Catholicism assesses the initiatives and strategies impacting the Church's relevance in the contemporary world.

Learn more about Postsecular Catholicism at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Postsecular Catholicism.

--Marshal Zeringue

Man Martin's "The Lemon Jell-O Syndrome," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Lemon Jell-O Syndrome by Man Martin.

The entry begins:

Bone King, suffering a mysterious neurological condition that intermittently prevents his going through doors, consults with the famous Dr. Limongello (pronounced Lemon Jell-O) who gives a bizarre diagnosis - King’s soul is becoming detached from his brain - and an equally bizarre therapy; when stuck at a door, he is to dance - following the same logic that stutterers communicate clearly when they sing. And each day, to address the underlying problem, he must perform a series of tasks aimed at relearning empathy for others and ultimately for himself.

Casting this to my satisfaction will require a time-machine.

Dr. Limongello is a bit “mad;” a doctor whose infectious self-confidence could make a patient accept a patently absurd diagnosis. Who better than John Astin, best known for his role of Gomez Addams on television’s The Addams Family. Cartoonist Charles Addams’ original Gomez was pudgy and sleepy-eyed, but Astin’s version was...[read on]

Visit Man Martin's website and blog.

Coffee with a Canine: Man Martin and Zoe.

The Page 69 Test: The Lemon Jell-O Syndrome.

My Book, The Movie: The Lemon Jell-O Syndrome.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six sci-fi novels about ecological disaster & environments gone mad

Sam Reader is a writer and conventions editor for The Geek Initiative. He also writes literary criticism and reviews at strangelibrary.com. At the B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog he tagged "six science fiction novels about ecological disasters and environments gone mad," including:

Wonderblood, by Julia Whicker

An unexplained disaster in Kansas released “wonderblood” into the soil, causing mass destruction, disease, and death. In the years since, humanity has built itself a kingdom centered around the rocket towers of Cape Canaveral and perverted the studies of science into a weird form of religion, punishing actual science and medicine as a form of heresy and depending on astrology, religion, and the totemic worship of heretics’ shrunken heads. The world is thrown into an uproar by the arrival of Aurora, a young woman who gets caught in the struggle between a traveling carnival owned by a prophecy-obsessed megalomaniac and the kingdom’s chief advisor, just as mysterious lights appear in the sky. Whicker captures a tone somewhere between dark fairy tale and grotesque new weird fantasy, setting her violent, apocalyptic science-fantasy in a grotesque, fully-realized setting augmented by equally surreal illustrations, creating a strange and hopefully timeless work of climate apocalypse fiction.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Carol Goodman reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Carol Goodman, author of The Other Mother.

Her entry begins:

When the editor was kind enough to ask me to contribute to Writers Read I thought: “Aha! I’ve got this!” Usually such requests catch me in a lowbrow moment when I’ve just read the latest potboiler suspense novel. Not that there’s anything wrong with potboiler suspense novels—they’re what I write and I write them because I love reading them. In fact, I recently read two delicious ones: A.J. Finn’s The Woman in the Window and Greer Hendricks’ and Sarah Pekkanen’s The Wife Between Us, both compulsively readable novels featuring unreliable narrators, shifting identities, and some hard drinking. All my favorite things! But this time I also had a tonier response: I just finished reading Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë.

I’d read it in my teens, but unlike Jane Eyre, which I’ve reread four times, I hadn’t reread it since. My vague recollections of the novel were of romantic wanderings on windswept moors, Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon playing the star-crossed lovers Cathy and Heathcliff in the 1939 film, and some ghosts. But wasn’t there a whole second half of the book concerning...[read on]

About The Other Mother, from the publisher:

From the author of the internationally bestselling The Lake of Dead Languages comes a gripping novel about madness, motherhood, love, and trust.

When Daphne Marist and her infant daughter, Chloe, pull up the gravel drive to the home of Daphne’s new employer, it feels like they’ve entered a whole new world. Tucked in the Catskills, the stone mansion looks like something out of a fairy tale, its lush landscaping hiding the view of the mental asylum just beyond its border. Daphne secured the live-in position using an assumed name and fake credentials, telling no one that she’s on the run from a controlling husband who has threatened to take her daughter away.

Daphne’s new life is a far cry from the one she had in Westchester where, just months before, she and her husband welcomed little Chloe. From the start, Daphne tries to be a good mother, but she’s plagued by dark moods and intrusive thoughts that convince her she’s capable of harming her own daughter. When Daphne is diagnosed with Post Partum Mood Disorder, her downward spiral feels unstoppable—until she meets Laurel Hobbes.

Laurel, who also has a daughter named Chloe, is everything Daphne isn’t: charismatic, sophisticated, fearless. They immediately form an intense friendship, revealing secrets to one another they thought they’d never share. Soon, they start to look alike, dress alike, and talk alike, their lives mirroring one another in strange and disturbing ways. But Daphne realizes only too late that being friends with Laurel will come at a very shocking price—one that will ultimately lead her to that towering mansion in the Catskills where terrifying, long-hidden truths will finally be revealed....

Visit Carol Goodman's website.

Writers Read: Carol Goodman.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Simon Beaufort's "Mind of a Killer"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Mind of A Killer by Simon Beaufort.

About the book, from the publisher:

Newspaper reporter Alec Londale discovers that a series of seemingly random murders may be connected in this absorbing historical mystery.

1882. Following up a story about a fatal house fire, newspaper reporter Alec Londale discovers that the victim's death was no accident. But why would someone murder a humble shop assistant and steal part of his brain? Alec is about to uncover evidence of a shocking conspiracy that reaches the highest echelons of Victorian society.

Visit Simon Beaufort's website.

The Page 69 Test: Mind of A Killer.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Michael Ramirez's "Destined for Greatness"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Destined for Greatness: Passions, Dreams, and Aspirations in a College Music Town by Michael Ramirez.

About the book, from the publisher:

Pursuing the dream of a musical vocation—particularly in rock music—is typically regarded as an adolescent pipedream. Music is marked as an appropriate leisure activity, but one that should be discarded upon entering adulthood. How then do many men and women aspire to forge careers in music upon entering adulthood?

In Destined for Greatness, sociologist Michael Ramirez examines the lives of forty-eight independent rock musicians who seek out such non-normative choices in a college town renowned for its music scene. He explores the rich life course trajectories of women and men to explore the extent to which pathways are structured to allow some, but not all, individuals to fashion careers in music worlds. Ramirez suggests a more nuanced understanding of factors that enable the pursuit of musical livelihoods well into adulthood.

Learn more about Destined for Greatness at the Rutgers University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Destined for Greatness.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top stories of deception

Sara Shepard's new novel--her first adult thriller--is The Elizas. One of her six favorite stories of deception, as shared at The Week magazine:

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

Deception doesn't occur only in thrillers — a complicated relationship can be just as fertile ground. In this beautifully written new book, a great domestic betrayal occurs, but it's one that's arguably justified.

Read about another entry on the list.

An American Marriage is among Julia Dahl's ten top books about miscarriages of justice.

--Marshal Zeringue

J. E. Smyth's "Nobody's Girl Friday," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Nobody's Girl Friday: The Women Who Ran Hollywood by J. E. Smyth.

The entry begins:

It’s a catchy title. But a feature film? Meh. I happen to think actress Olivia de Havilland was quite right about Feud (2017) and the scandalous way the male screenwriter portrayed her, playing fast and loose with the facts to construct a story about another Hollywood catfight between Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. The California judge was correct when she said no one “owns history,” but 75 years ago, Hollywood producers routinely consulted living historical subjects and scrutinized the script to avoid libel suits. I think in this recent case, the writer was too sloppy or stupid to realize Ms. de Havilland was still alive.

What I would like is to develop Nobody’s Girl Friday as...[read on]

Learn more about Nobody's Girl Friday at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Nobody's Girl Friday.

My Book, The Movie: Nobody's Girl Friday.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Patrice Sarath reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Patrice Sarath, author of The Sisters Mederos.

Her entry begins:

I’m going through a nonfiction phase, specifically about Native Americans, so two books that I’ve devoured recently are Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Tribe in American History, by S.C. Gwynne, and...[read on]

About The Sisters Mederos, from the publisher:

House Mederos was once the wealthiest merchant family in Port Saint Frey. Now the family is disgraced, impoverished, and humbled by the powerful Merchants Guild. Daughters Yvienne and Tesara Mederos are determined to uncover who was behind their family’s downfall and get revenge. But Tesara has a secret – could it have been her wild magic that caused the storm that destroyed the family’s merchant fleet? The sisters’ schemes quickly get out of hand – gambling is one thing, but robbing people is another…

Together the sisters must trust each another to keep their secrets and save their family.

Learn more about the book and author at Patrice Sarath's website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: The Unexpected Miss Bennet.

Writers Read: Patrice Sarath.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Alex Grecian's "The Saint of Wolves and Butchers"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Saint of Wolves and Butchers by Alex Grecian.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the bestselling author of The Yard comes a chilling contemporary thriller about an enigmatic hunter on the trail of a Nazi who has secretly continued his devilish work here in America.

Travis Roan and his dog, Bear, are hunters: They travel the world pursuing evildoers in order to bring them to justice. They have now come to Kansas on the trail of Rudolph Bormann, a Nazi doctor and concentration camp administrator who snuck into the U.S. under the name Rudy Goodman in the 1950s and has at last been identified. Travis quickly learns that Goodman has powerful friends who will go to any length to protect the Nazi; what he doesn’t know is that Goodman has furtively continued his diabolical work, amassing a congregation of followers who believe he possesses Godlike powers. Caught between these men is Kansas State Trooper Skottie Foster, an African American woman and a good cop who must find a way to keep peace in her district–until she realizes the struggle between Roan and Bormann will put her and her family in grave peril.

Visit Alex Grecian's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Devil's Workshop.

The Page 69 Test: The Saint of Wolves and Butchers.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best anti-novels

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 Reads blog he tagged ten top anti-novels, including:

Remainder, by Tom McCarthy

This is actually one of the easier anti-novels on this list to enter, the story of a man who suffers debilitating brain damage after an accident he doesn’t quite remember and is awarded a fortune in damages, money he uses to hire people to recreate moments from his life he only partially remembers. His obsession with these moments leads him to reenact increasingly violent events that may or may not have actually happened, as the whole thing spins into what might be the textbook example of the most unreliable narration of all time. The questions McCarthy raises about memory, and identity, and how we can rely on what we “know” make the effort well worth it.

Read about another entry on the list.

Remainder is among Emily Temple's fifty best novels about madness.

The Page 69 Test: Remainder.

--Marshal Zeringue

Coffee with a canine: Arin Greenwood & Murray

Featured at Coffee with a Canine: Arin Greenwood & Murray.

The author, on how Murray got his name:

The general rule in our household is that I bring home the pets and my husband gets to name them. Our dog's full name is Murray Rothbark. He's named after one of my husband's favorite economists, Murray Rothbard. My husband works at a think tank called the R Street Institute, and our Murray actually holds a position there as well - he's director of canine policy. He's got bylines on a couple of published op-eds, too, if...[read on]

About Greenwood's new novel, Your Robot Dog Will Die, from the publisher:

Fusing the heart of Julie of the Wolves with the imagination of Little Brother and Ship Breaker, this speculative YA is a must-read for any dog lover.

Seventeen-year-old Nano Miller was born and raised on Dog Island: home to Mechanical Tail, the company behind lifelike replacements for “man’s best friend.” The island is also home to the last living dogs, all but extinct. When a global genetic experiment went awry and canines stopped wagging their tails, mass hysteria ensued and the species was systematically euthanized. Here, they are studied in a natural and feral state.

Nano’s life has become a cycle of annual heartbreak. Every spring, Mechanical Tail gives her the latest robot dog model to test, only to tear it from her arms a year later. This year is complicated by another heartbreak: the loss of her brother, Billy, who recently vanished without a trace. But nothing can prepare her for a discovery that upends everything she’s taken for granted: it’s a living puppy that miraculously wags its tail. There is no way she’s letting this dog go.

Visit Arin Greenwood's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Arin Greenwood & Murray.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Keith Gandal's "War Isn’t the Only Hell"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: War Isn't the Only Hell: A New Reading of World War I American Literature by Keith Gandal.

About the book, from the publisher:

American World War I literature has long been interpreted as an alienated outcry against modern warfare and government propaganda. This prevailing reading ignores the US army’s unprecedented attempt during World War I to assign men—except, notoriously, African Americans—to positions and ranks based on merit. And it misses the fact that the culture granted masculinity only to combatants, while the noncombatant majority of doughboys experienced a different alienation: that of shame.

Drawing on military archives, current research by social-military historians, and his own readings of thirteen major writers, Keith Gandal seeks to put American literature written after the Great War in its proper context—as a response to the shocks of war and meritocracy. The supposedly antiwar texts of noncombatant Lost Generation authors Dos Passos, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Cummings, and Faulkner addressed—often in coded ways—the noncombatant failure to measure up.

Gandal also examines combat-soldier writers William March, Thomas Boyd, Laurence Stallings, and Hervey Allen. Their works are considered straight-forward antiwar narratives, but they are in addition shaped by experiences of meritocratic recognition, especially meaningful for socially disadvantaged men. Gandal furthermore contextualizes the sole World War I novel by an African American veteran, Victor Daly, revealing a complex experience of both army discrimination and empowerment among the French. Finally, Gandal explores three women writers—Katherine Anne Porter, Willa Cather, and Ellen La Motte—who saw the war create frontline opportunities for women while allowing them to be arbiters of masculinity at home. Ultimately, War Isn’t the Only Hell shows how American World War I literature registered the profound ways in which new military practices and a foreign war unsettled traditional American hierarchies of class, ethnicity, gender, and even race.

Learn more about War Isn't the Only Hell at the Johns Hopkins University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: War Isn't the Only Hell.

--Marshal Zeringue