Dan Stout's "Titanshade," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Titanshade by Dan Stout.

The entry begins:

I admit to not having the most in-depth knowledge of who’s active in Hollywood, so I can’t do much in the way of dream casting. I can, however, talk about design work all day long! I’ve said before that Jordu Schell is an amazing creature designer, and I’d love to see the kind of takes he’d have on the world of Titanshade. Other designers like Simon Lee have an incredible dynamic element to their designs, and Don Lanning manages to give even the most horrific creatures a sense of power and grace, but Schell’s stuff always has a disquieting sense of otherness and alien appeal that I...[read on]

Visit Dan Stout's website.

My Book, The Movie: Titanshade.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven captivating works of cli-fi

At O, the Oprah Magazine, Amy Brady tagged seven books that provocatively tackle climate change, including:

Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward

The author received the National Book Award for this heartbreaking and often terrifying novel that takes place in Mississippi during Hurricane Katrina (“the mother that swept into the Gulf and slaughtered”). In it, the family of 15-year-old Esch, who’s expecting a baby, tries—with little in the way of shelter or resources—to cope. After the storm, Esch reflects: “I wonder where the world where that day happened has gone, because we are not in it.”

Read about another entry on the list.

Salvage the Bones is among six books on Jodi Picoult's recommended list, Peggy Frew's ten top books about "bad" mothers, and Jenny Shanks's five least supervised children in literature.

Also see: six top sci-fi books about climate change and ten top climate change fiction books for young readers.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Ayesha Harruna Attah reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Ayesha Harruna Attah, author of The Hundred Wells of Salaga: A Novel.

Her entry begins:

I just finished Bisi Adjapon’s Of Women and Frogs, a novel about a girl’s sexual and emotional awakening in a world where the adults can’t stop lying to her about life. Esi is a feisty half-Ghanaian half-Nigerian girl who questions everything she sees. Her father has mistresses and yet chastises his daughters for having boyfriends. She is caught between adoring her father and loathing him for his hypocrisy. Her intelligence means she’s privy to the secrets everyone around her is keeping, and yet, a big secret is...[read on]

About The Hundred Wells of Salaga, from the publisher:

Based on true events, a story of courage, forgiveness, love, and freedom in precolonial Ghana, told through the eyes of two women born to vastly different fates.

Aminah lives an idyllic life until she is brutally separated from her home and forced on a journey that transforms her from a daydreamer into a resilient woman. Wurche, the willful daughter of a chief, is desperate to play an important role in her father’s court. These two women’s lives converge as infighting among Wurche’s people threatens the region, during the height of the slave trade at the end of the nineteenth century.

Through the experiences of Aminah and Wurche, The Hundred Wells of Salaga offers a remarkable view of slavery and how the scramble for Africa affected the lives of everyday people.

Visit Ayesha Harruna Attah's website.

Writers Read: Ayesha Harruna Attah.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Christopher J. Phillips's "Scouting and Scoring"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Scouting and Scoring: How We Know What We Know about Baseball by Christopher J. Phillips.

About the book, from the publisher:

An in-depth look at the intersection of judgment and statistics in baseball

Scouting and scoring are considered fundamentally different ways of ascertaining value in baseball. Scouting seems to rely on experience and intuition, scoring on performance metrics and statistics. In Scouting and Scoring, Christopher Phillips rejects these simplistic divisions. He shows how both scouts and scorers rely on numbers, bureaucracy, trust, and human labor in order to make sound judgments about the value of baseball players.

Tracing baseball’s story from the nineteenth century to today, Phillips explains that the sport was one of the earliest and most consequential fields for the introduction of numerical analysis. New technologies and methods of data collection were supposed to enable teams to quantify the drafting and managing of players—replacing scouting with scoring. But that’s not how things turned out. Over the decades, scouting and scoring started looking increasingly similar. Scouts expressed their judgments in highly formulaic ways, using numerical grades and scientific instruments to evaluate players. Scorers drew on moral judgments, depended on human labor to maintain and correct data, and designed bureaucratic systems to make statistics appear reliable. From the invention of official scorers and Statcast to the creation of the Major League Scouting Bureau, the history of baseball reveals the inextricable connections between human expertise and data science.

A unique consideration of the role of quantitative measurement and human judgment, Scouting and Scoring provides an entirely fresh understanding of baseball by showing what the sport reveals about reliable knowledge in the modern world.

Visit Christopher J. Phillips's website.

The Page 99 Test: Scouting and Scoring.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Annie Ward's "Beautiful Bad"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Beautiful Bad by Annie Ward.

About the book, from the publisher:

There are two sides to every story… And every person.

Maddie and Ian’s love story began with a chance encounter at a party overseas, while she was a travel writer visiting her best friend, Jo. Now almost two decades later, married with a beautiful son, Charlie, they are living the perfect suburban life in Middle America. But when a camping accident leaves Maddie badly scarred, she begins attending writing therapy, where she gradually reveals her fears about Ian; her concerns for the safety of their young son; and the couple’s tangled and tumultuous past with Jo.

From the Balkans to England, Iraq to Manhattan, and finally to an ordinary family home in Kansas, sixteen years of love and fear, adventure and suspicion culminate in The Day of the Killing, when a frantic 911 call summons the police to the scene of a shocking crime.

Visit Annie Ward's website.

The Page 69 Test: Beautiful Bad.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top epistolary novels

Shelley Wood is a writer, journalist, and editor. Her work has appeared in the New Quarterly, Room, the Antigonish Review, Causeway Lit, and the Globe and Mail (UK). Born and raised in Vancouver, she has lived in Montreal, Cape Town, and the Middle East, and now has a home, a man, and a dog in British Columbia, Canada. Her debut (epistolary) novel is The Quintland Sisters.

At LitHub Wood tagged her top five epistolary reads, including:

Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer

It’s a stretch to classify The Sympathizer as an epistolary novel, but it meets my standards on several counts. The novel, which opens in the flaming finale of the Vietnam War, takes the form of a sprawling written confession. “Dear Commandant,” writes the anonymous prisoner, who goes on to detail his life as a dual agent, both as an aide to a South Vietnam general with ties to the CIA and as a spy for Communist forces in North Vietnam. Whereas the classic epistolary novel reveals the true character of the writer through what he or she details about her subjects (or leaves out), the rhetorical device here is a narrator who tells us too much so as to tell us nothing. His lush, longwinded confession withholds even the names of his associates and, as we learn, serves to muddy the truth of his misdeeds both from his captors and himself.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Coffee with a canine: Shelley Sackier & Haggis

Featured at Coffee with a Canine: Shelley Sackier & Haggis.

The author, on how Haggis got his name:

Haggis is named after my favorite food. A Scottish dish that’s a little bit like a round sausage. There are a few more bits and bobs than just meat within the “sausage,” but as some of those ingredients tend to make people a teensy bit queasy, I shall refrain from including them in this description. But oh, wow, yum. Seriously. Nearly as scrumptious as my hound.

He is also referred to as Mr. Muttonchops and...[read on]

About Sackier's new novel The Antidote, from the publisher:

From the author of The Freemason’s Daughter comes a lush romantic fantasy perfect for fans of Everless!

In the world of healers, there is no room for magic.

Fee knows this, just as certainly as she knows that her magic must be kept secret.

But the crown prince Xavi, Fee’s best friend and only source of comfort, is sick. So sick, that Fee can barely contain the magic lying dormant inside her. She could use it, just a little, to heal him. But magic comes at a deadly cost—and attracts those who would seek to snuff it out forever.

A wisp of a spell later, Fee finds herself caught in a whirl of secret motivations and dark pasts, where no one is who—or what—they appear to be. And saving her best friend means delving deeper into the tempting and treacherous world whose call she’s long resisted—uncovering a secret that will change everything.

Laini Taylor meets Sara Holland in this lavish fantasy from lauded historical romance author Shelley Sackier!

Visit Shelley Sackier's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Antidote.

Coffee with a Canine: Shelley Sackier & Haggis.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Mariah Stewart reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Mariah Stewart, author of The Goodbye Café (The Hudson Sisters Series).

Her entry begins:

I love thrillers – suspense – police procedurals – mysteries. I thought I’d read just about everyone but then I stumbled over John Sandford and slapped myself on the forehead. How had I missed John Sandford? I’d picked up one book in the supermarket – we live in the country and there is no such thing as a local bookstore – on a day I had nothing to read and snow was in the forecast. I wasn’t aware the book was part of a series, but by the time I’d finished it – the following day, by the way, time off for eating and sleeping only – I wanted all the books in the Prey series and I wanted them right then and there. Accepting the sad fact that even I could read only one book at a time (I do read really really fast!), I started ordering them three at a time. My plan was to read three books/week. That’s worked out pretty well, actually.

So I’ve gone from the first book in the series (Rules of Prey) straight on through to Twisted Prey (and yes, I’ve preordered Neon Prey, which goes on sale on April 23). So what, you ask, is the big deal? Sandford...[read on]

About The Goodbye Café, from the publisher:

California girl Allie Hudson Monroe can’t wait for the day when the renovations on the Sugarhouse Theater are complete so she can finally collect the inheritance from her father and leave Pennsylvania. After all, her life and her fourteen-year-old daughter are in Los Angeles.

But Allie’s divorce left her tottering on the edge of bankruptcy, so to keep up on payments for her house and her daughter’s private school tuition, Allie packed up and flew out east. But fate has a curve-ball or two to toss in Allie’s direction—she just doesn’t know it yet.

She hadn’t anticipated how her life would change after reuniting with her estranged sister, Des, or meeting her previously unknown half-sister, Cara. And she’d certainly never expected to find small-town living charming. But the biggest surprise was that her long-forgotten artistry would save the day when the theater’s renovation fund dried up.

With opening day upon the sisters, Allie’s free to go. But for the first time in her life, she feels like the woman she was always meant to be. Will she return to the West Coast and resume her previous life, or will the love of “this amazing, endearing family of women” (Robyn Carr, #1 New York Times bestselling author) be enough to draw her back to the place where the Hudson roots grow so deep?

Visit Mariah Stewart's website.

Writers Read: Mariah Stewart.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top thrillers in which memory is unreliable, at best

Michelle Adams is a British writer living abroad in Cyprus. She is a part-time scientist and has published several science fiction novels under a pseudonym, including a YA dystopian series. If You Knew My Sister (published as My Sister in the UK) is her first psychological thriller.

Her new psychological thriller is Between the Lies.

At CrimeReads Adams tagged five favorite thrillers in which memory is unreliable, at best. One title on the list:

Denis Lehane, Shutter Island

Being assigned to investigate the mysterious case of a missing patient from a high security asylum for the criminally insane, Teddy Daniels arrives on Shutter Island determined to uncover the truth. But as things turn increasingly bizarre, with a murderess on the loose, a hurricane battering the island, and staff who seem to want to cover something up, Teddy’s job proves more and more difficult. He begins to realize that nothing is quite what it seems on Shutter Island, perhaps not even himself. This thriller is absolutely brilliant.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Lorna Landvik's "Chronicles of a Radical Hag (with Recipes)," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Chronicles of a Radical Hag (with Recipes): A Novel by Lorna Landvik.

The entry begins:

My terms during contract negotiations: I write the screenplay (I want Screenwriters Guild dental insurance!) and act in a minor comic role (maybe as Caroline’s evangelical Christian mother), and the film be directed by a woman (Mimi Leder or Greta Gerwig or Patty Jenkins). Other than that, I’m easy.

I never picture a real person or actor while I’m writing and in fact, while I feel I intimately know my characters, I see more their essence than their physicality but as a fan of old movies, I’d make suggestions like these to the casting director:

For Haze Evans, who appears in the book as a vibrant woman in her thirties — how about a young Rosalind Russell. For Haze Evans, who also appears as a comatose (!) octogenarian — how about an old...[read on]

Visit Lorna Landvik's website.

My Book, The Movie: Chronicles of a Radical Hag (with Recipes).

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Susan Meissner's "The Last Year of the War"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Last Year of the War by Susan Meissner.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the acclaimed author of Secrets of a Charmed Life and As Bright as Heaven comes a novel about a German American teenager whose life changes forever when her immigrant family is sent to an internment camp during World War II.

Elise Sontag is a typical Iowa fourteen-year-old in 1943–aware of the war but distanced from its reach. Then her father, a legal U.S. resident for nearly two decades, is suddenly arrested on suspicion of being a Nazi sympathizer. The family is sent to an internment camp in Texas, where, behind the armed guards and barbed wire, Elise feels stripped of everything beloved and familiar, including her own identity.

The only thing that makes the camp bearable is meeting fellow internee Mariko Inoue, a Japanese-American teen from Los Angeles, whose friendship empowers Elise to believe the life she knew before the war will again be hers. Together in the desert wilderness, Elise and Mariko hold tight the dream of being young American women with a future beyond the fences.

But when the Sontag family is exchanged for American prisoners behind enemy lines in Germany, Elise will face head-on the person the war desires to make of her. In that devastating crucible she must discover if she has the will to rise above prejudice and hatred and re-claim her own destiny, or disappear into the image others have cast upon her.

The Last Year of the War tells a little-known story of World War II with great resonance for our own times and challenges the very notion of who we are when who we’ve always been is called into question.

Visit Susan Meissner's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Susan Meissner & Bella.

My Book, The Movie: Stars Over Sunset Boulevard.

My Book, The Movie: A Bridge Across the Ocean.

The Page 69 Test: A Bridge Across the Ocean.

The Page 69 Test: The Last Year of the War.

--Marshal Zeringue

Thomas Keller’s ten favorite books

Thomas Keller is chef and proprietor of The French Laundry, Per Se, Bouchon, Bar Bouchon, Bouchon Bakery, Ad Hoc, and TAK Room. He has authored five cookbooks.

One of Keller’s ten favorite books, as shared at Vulture.com:

Ma Gastronomie by Fernand Point

I cite this book as the cookbook that most influenced me as a young cook. First published in the United States in 1974, but long out of print, Fernand Point’s page-turner cookbook was republished in 2008, and I was honored to contribute a foreword to that edition. The book is half recipes, half stories, and the stories about Point himself are remarkable and beautifully told. I recall the day I learned about this book very clearly. I was working at the Dunes Club in Narragansett, Rhode Island, when my mentor Roland Henin loaned me his copy. He said it was a special book — his favorite. I found it extraordinary. I took it everywhere with me for two years throughout France, and read it whenever I had a moment to spare.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Gavriel D. Rosenfeld's "The Fourth Reich"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Fourth Reich: The Specter of Nazism from World War II to the Present by Gavriel D. Rosenfeld.

About the book, from the publisher:

Ever since the collapse of the Third Reich, anxieties have persisted about Nazism's revival in the form of a Fourth Reich. Gavriel D. Rosenfeld reveals, for the first time, these postwar nightmares of a future that never happened and explains what they tell us about Western political, intellectual, and cultural life. He shows how postwar German history might have been very different without the fear of the Fourth Reich as a mobilizing idea to combat the right-wing forces that genuinely threatened the country's democratic order. He then explores the universalization of the Fourth Reich by left-wing radicals in the 1960s, its transformation into a source of pop culture entertainment in the 1970s, and its embrace by authoritarian populists and neo-Nazis seeking to attack the European Union since the year 2000. This is a timely analysis of a concept that is increasingly relevant in an era of surging right-wing politics.

Visit Gavriel D. Rosenfeld's website.

The Page 99 Test: Hi Hitler!.

The Page 99 Test: The Fourth Reich.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top evil narrators

Leo Benedictus was born in London and graduated from Oxford University. He worked as an advertising copywriter and as a freelance sub-editor for the Guardian. His work on immigration issues has earned him widespread recognition: his article “London: The World in One City” won the Amnesty International UK Media Award (2005) and the Race in the Media Award (2006). His work has appeared in Prospect, The Observer, The New Statesman, The London Review of Books and The Literary Review.

Benedictus’s debut novel The Afterparty was long-listed for the 2011 Desmond Elliott Prize. His second novel is Consent (in the UK and Commonwealth, and Read Me in the US and elsewhere).

One of the author's ten top evil narrators, as shared at the Guardian:

Humbert Humbert in Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

Many people may feel instinctively that Humbert does something worse than killing, which is child sexual abuse, regular and premeditated. Perhaps worse still is the way he talks about it. Humbert implores our sympathy not for Lolita, whom he abuses, but for himself having to live with the desire. That erotic and romantic ache, in Nabokov’s beautiful style, is what I still remember. It takes you to the point where you empathise with this man even when he drugs and rapes a 12-year-old girl.

Read about another entry on the list.

Lolita appears on Juno Dawson's best banned books list, Jo Nesbø's six favorite books list, Emily Temple's list of ten essential road trip books that aren’t On the Road, Olivia Sudjic's list of eight favorite books about love and obsession, Jeff Somers's list of five best worst couples in literature, Brian Boyd's ten best list of Vladimir Nabokov books, Billy Collins' six favorite books list, Charlotte Runcie's list of the ten best bad mothers in literature, Kathryn Williams's list of fifteen notable works on lust, Boris Kachka's six favorite books list, Fiona Maazel's list of the ten worst fathers in books, Jennifer Gilmore's list of the ten worst mothers in books, Steven Amsterdam's list of five top books that have anxiety at their heart, John Banville's five best list of books on early love and infatuation, Kathryn Harrison's list of favorite books with parentless protagonists, Emily Temple's list of ten of the greatest kisses in literature, John Mullan's list of ten of the best lakes in literature, Dan Vyleta's top ten list of books in second languages, Rowan Somerville's top ten list of books of good sex in fiction, Henry Sutton's top ten list of unreliable narrators, Adam Leith Gollner's top ten list of fruit scenes in literature, Laura Hird's literary top ten list, Monica Ali's ten favorite books list, Laura Lippman's 5 most important books list, Mohsin Hamid's 10 favorite books list, and Dani Shapiro's 10 favorite books list. It is Lena Dunham's favorite book.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Elisabeth Elo's "Finding Katarina M."

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Finding Katarina M. by Elisabeth Elo.

About the book, from the publisher:

Natalie March is a respected surgeon enjoying a busy, productive life in Washington DC. As her demanding career has left little time for friends or romance, her deepest relationship is with her mother, Vera March, a Russian immigrant and MS patient confined to a rehabilitation center. Vera is still haunted by the fact that her Ukrainian parents, innocent of any wrongdoing, were sent to the gulag, Stalin’s notorious network of labor camps, when she was just a baby. All her life she has presumed that they perished there along with millions of other Russian citizens. Natalie would do anything to heal her mother’s psychic pain: it’s the one wound that she, a doctor, cannot mend.

When a young Russian dancer named Saldana Tarasova comes to Natalie’s office claiming to be her cousin, and providing details about her grandmother that no stranger could know, Natalie must face a surprising truth: her grandmother, Katarina Melnikova, is still very much alive. She escaped from the labor camp, married a native Siberian, and had another child, Saldana’s mother. Natalie is thrilled to think that her Russian family is reaching out and that Vera may be able to reunite with her mother after so many years. In fact, Saldana has a darker motive for making contact. Suggesting that her family is in grave danger from Putin’s government, she pleads for Natalie’s help to defect. Unwilling to break the law, Natalie puts her off. Then the unthinkable happens, and Natalie is drawn step by step into a web of family secrets that will ultimately pit her against Russian security forces and even her own government.

How far will Natalie go to find Katerina M. and satisfy her mother’s deepest wish? How much will she risk to protect her Russian family―and her own country―from a dangerous international threat? Masterfully plotted and beautifully written, FINDING KATARINA M. takes the reader on an extraordinary journey across Siberia―to reindeer herding camps, Russian prisons, Sakha villages, and parties with endless vodka toasts―while it explores what it means to be loyal to one’s family, one’s country, and ultimately to oneself.

Visit Elisabeth Elo's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Elisabeth Elo & Freddie.

My Book, The Movies: Finding Katarina M.

The Page 69 Test: Finding Katarina M.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Samantha Downing reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Samantha Downing, author of My Lovely Wife.

Her entry begins:

Right now I’m reading Milkman by Anna Burns, novel that recently won the Man Booker Prize. Immediately I was struck by the language, which both intrigued me and drew me in. The female narrator is eighteen years old and is dealing with unwanted advances from an older man. All women can identify with...[read on]

About My Lovely Wife, from the publisher:

Dexter meets Mr. and Mrs. Smith in this wildly compulsive debut thriller about a couple whose fifteen-year marriage has finally gotten too interesting…

Our love story is simple. I met a gorgeous woman. We fell in love. We had kids. We moved to the suburbs. We told each other our biggest dreams, and our darkest secrets. And then we got bored.

We look like a normal couple. We’re your neighbors, the parents of your kid’s friend, the acquaintances you keep meaning to get dinner with.

We all have our secrets to keeping a marriage alive.

Ours just happens to be getting away with murder.

Visit Samantha Downing's website.

The Page 69 Test: My Lovely Wife.

Writers Read: Samantha Downing.

--Marshal Zeringue

Four classic fictional trials that subverted the truth

Bonnie Kistler is a former trial lawyer. She spent her career in private practice with major law firms and successfully tried cases in federal and state courts across the country, as well as teaching writing skills to other lawyers and lecturing frequently to professional organizations and industry groups. Her new novel is House on Fire.

One of four classic fictional trials that subverted the truth she tagged at CrimeReads:

Presumed Innocent, by Scott Turow

If Anatomy of a Murder created a whole new genre of fiction, then Presumed Innocent deserves credit for elevating that genre to a literary level. A dazzling blend of whodunit with whoishe, it’s not only a murder mystery but a deep dive into the psyche of the narrator Rusty Sabich. Like Justice Voelker, Turow was both a prosecutor and a defense attorney, and he brings acute authenticity to both the gritty politics of the story and all the legal chicanery on display.

Rusty Sabich is a husband, a father, and chief deputy prosecutor in Kindle County (Turow’s fictional stand-in for Chicago). He’s assigned to investigate the murder of lawyer Carolyn Polhemus, a victim of what appears to be a sexual bondage game turned ugly. Carolyn was not only Rusty’s colleague, she was briefly his lover, a conflict of interest he does not disclose. As he digs into the case, all the evidence seems startlingly to point back to Rusty himself. He’s been set up.

He’s indicted and goes on trial, prosecuted by his political enemies and defended by the brilliant Sandy Stern, a veteran lawyer who blows storm clouds of smoke to suggest that Rusty has been framed by the prosecution. The strategy succeeds, and the case is dismissed.

The murder of Carolyn Polhemus remains unsolved—publicly, at least. At home, Rusty discovers the murder weapon in the basement and learns that his own wife, deranged with jealousy over Rusty’s affair, killed Carolyn and framed Rusty for it. And in perhaps the most shocking twist of all, he decides not only to conceal her crime but also to stay in their marriage.

The trial at the heart of Presumed Innocent serves justice insofar as it exonerates Rusty. But it fails spectacularly at divining the actual truth of what occurred.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Presumed Innocent is among five books that changed Reece Hirsch's life, Fiona Barton's ten favorite books centering on marriages that hold dark secrets and Alafair Burke's favorite "Lawyers are People Too" books. Sandy Stern in Presumed Innocent is one of Simon Lelic's top ten lawyers in fiction.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Mark Wild's "Renewal"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Renewal: Liberal Protestants and the American City after World War II by Mark Wild.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the decades following World War II, a movement of clergy and laity sought to restore liberal Protestantism to the center of American urban life. Chastened by their failure to avert war and the Holocaust, and troubled by missionaries’ complicity with colonial regimes, they redirected their energies back home.

Renewal explores the rise and fall of this movement, which began as an effort to restore the church’s standing but wound up as nothing less than an openhearted crusade to remake our nation’s cities. These campaigns reached beyond church walls to build or lend a hand to scores of organizations fighting for welfare, social justice, and community empowerment among the increasingly nonwhite urban working class. Church leaders extended their efforts far beyond traditional evangelicalism, often dovetailing with many of the contemporaneous social currents coursing through the nation, including black freedom movements and the War on Poverty.

Renewal illuminates the overlooked story of how religious institutions both shaped and were shaped by postwar urban America.

Learn more about Renewal: Liberal Protestants and the American City after World War II at the University of Chicago Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Renewal: Liberal Protestants and the American City after World War II.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top books exploring Britain’s island mentality

Madeleine Bunting was for many years a columnist for the Guardian, which she joined in 1990. Born in North Yorkshire, Bunting read History at Cambridge and Politics at Harvard. She is the author of several works of nonfiction and a new novel, Island Song.

At the Guardian Bunting tagged five books exploring Britain’s island mentality, including:

Islands have a tendency to be self-referential, even small minded, a point made by both Andrea Levy and Bill Bryson, in their titles for books on Britain (Small Island and Notes from a Small Island). Perhaps my favourite of this island literature is the haunting Concrete Island by JG Ballard. An island is much more than a geographical entity: it can be a state of mind, or one can suddenly be marooned by an unexpected turn of events, so that islands lurk in many shapes and situations, even in the heart of a city. An architect is driving home when his car crashes and plunges into wasteland, where he is trapped. As he searches for escape, water and food, he discovers he is not alone and the feeling of danger builds ... After reading this, no journey over a spaghetti junction has ever been quite the same; I find myself gripping the steering wheel tightly.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Samantha Downing's "My Lovely Wife"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: My Lovely Wife by Samantha Downing.

About the book, from the publisher:

Dexter meets Mr. and Mrs. Smith in this wildly compulsive debut thriller about a couple whose fifteen-year marriage has finally gotten too interesting…

Our love story is simple. I met a gorgeous woman. We fell in love. We had kids. We moved to the suburbs. We told each other our biggest dreams, and our darkest secrets. And then we got bored.

We look like a normal couple. We’re your neighbors, the parents of your kid’s friend, the acquaintances you keep meaning to get dinner with.

We all have our secrets to keeping a marriage alive.

Ours just happens to be getting away with murder.

Visit Samantha Downing's website.

The Page 69 Test: My Lovely Wife.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine books about women, wilderness, storms, & survival

Carla Buckley is the author of The Good Goodbye, The Deepest Secret, Invisible, and The Things That Keep Us Here, which was nominated for a Thriller Award as a best first novel and the Ohioana Book Award for fiction. She is a graduate of Oberlin College and the Wharton School of Business, and lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, with her husband and three children.

Buckley's new novel is The Liar's Child.

At CrimeReads she tagged nine top books pitting woman against nature, including:

The Possible World by Liese O’Halloran Schwarz

At the heart of this tremendous, genre-spanning multi-generational novel is the devastating hurricane of 1938 and Clare, one of three narrators of the book. She tells her story, with all of its dark and terrible secrets, in 2018 as she approaches her hundredth birthday. Schwarz’s ability to bring character and scene into full dimension is extraordinary, and we are with Clare every step of the way through the storm and its aftermath. There are many surprising twists in this novel, and when Clare finally reveals the truth about what happened that fateful day, the payoff is unbelievably satisfying.

Read about another entry on the list.

My Book, The Movie: The Possible World.

The Page 69 Test: The Possible World.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Joy Fielding reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Joy Fielding, author of All the Wrong Places: A Novel.

Her entry begins:

I've recently discovered Swedish writer, Fredrik Backman, and am greedily devouring all his books. A friend recommended Beartown, the story of a small town whose worship of its high school hockey team is put to the test by a shocking act of violence, which I thought was one of the best books I've ever read. I've since read A Man Called Ove, Britt-Marie Was Here, and...[read on]

About All the Wrong Places, from the publisher:

Four women—friends, family, rivals—turn to online dating for companionship, only to find themselves in the crosshairs of a tech-savvy killer using an app to target his victims in this harrowing thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of See Jane Run and The Bad Daughter.

Online dating is risky—will that message be a sweet greeting or an unsolicited lewd photo? Will he be as handsome in real life as he is in his photos, or were they taken ten years and twenty pounds ago? And when he asks you to go home with him, how do you know it’s safe? The man calling himself “Mr. Right Now” in his profile knows that his perfect hair, winning smile, and charming banter put women at ease, silencing any doubts they might have about going back to his apartment. There, he has a special evening all planned out: steaks, wine, candlelight ... and, by the end of the night, pain and a slow, agonizing death.

Driven to desperation—by divorce, boredom, infidelity, a beloved husband’s death—a young woman named Paige, her cousin and rival Heather, her best friend, Chloe, and her mother, Joan, all decide to try their hand at online dating. They each download an app, hoping to right-swipe their way to love and happiness.

But one of them unwittingly makes a date with the killer, starting the clock on a race to save her life.

New York Times bestselling author Joy Fielding has written a complex, electrifying thriller about friendship, jealousy, and passion—a deadly combination.

Learn more about the book and author at Joy Fielding's website.

The Page 69 Test: Shadow Creek.

My Book, The Movie: Shadow Creek.

The Page 69 Test: Someone Is Watching.

My Book, The Movie: Someone Is Watching.

My Book, The Movie: The Bad Daughter.

The Page 69 Test: The Bad Daughter.

My Book, The Movie: All the Wrong Places.

The Page 69 Test: All the Wrong Places.

Writers Read: Joy Fielding.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six books recommended by Greg Iles

Greg Iles was born in Germany in 1960, where his father ran the US Embassy Medical Clinic during the height of the Cold War. Iles spent his youth in Natchez, Mississippi, and graduated from the University of Mississippi in 1983. While attending Ole Miss, Iles lived in the cabin where William Faulkner and his brothers listened to countless stories told by “Mammy Callie,” their beloved nanny, who had been born a slave.

Iles's new standalone thriller is Cemetery Road.

One of six books the author recommended at The Week magazine:

The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris (1988).

Lambs proves "genre" authors can be every bit as observant and insightful as literary giants. Of a female hostage in a pit: "...in the absolute dark, she could hear the tiny clicks her eyes made when she blinked." Try it sometime. Harris knows of what he writes, at every level.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Silence of The Lambs is among Kathy Reichs's six best books, Matt Suddain's five great meals from literature, Elizabeth Heiter's ten favorite serial killer novels, Jill Boyd's five books with the worst fictional characters to invite to Thanksgiving, Monique Alice's six great fictional evil geniuses, sixteen book-to-movie adaptations that won Academy Awards. Red Dragon appears on Kimberly Turner's list of the ten most disturbing sociopaths in literature and John Mullan's lists of ten of the best dragons in literature and ten of the best tattoos in literature, and the (U.K.) Telegraph 110 best books; Andrew Gross says "it should be taught as [a text] in Thriller 101."

--Marshal Zeringue

Leanna Renee Hieber's "Miss Violet and the Great War," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Miss Violet and the Great War by Leanna Renee Hieber.

The entry begins:

Acting and writing were always entwined for me, growing up. I wrote plays for my high school while performing leading roles, then I earned a collegiate performance degree and began a career in classical theatre. All the while I was writing novels, beginning the long road towards eventual publication. One can imagine, then, how important it is to me that I feel a character within me strongly or I cast someone in the role to help envision their portrayal. I find, writing my 13th novel, I only need to cast one or two anchor characters; presences I need to leap onto my pages. For my debut series, one anchor of an actor led all the rest.

It isn’t any surprise to anyone who has followed my Strangely Beautiful saga in all it’s complications since the debut of The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker in 2009 that the hero of the saga, Professor Alexi Rychman was inspired by the actor...[read on]

Visit Leanna Renee Hieber's website, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.

My Book, The Movie: Miss Violet and the Great War.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Carla Buckley's "The Liar's Child"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Liar's Child: A Novel by Carla Buckley.

About the book, from the publisher:

In this intense and intimate family portrait that moves at a thriller’s pace, a troubled woman faces a gripping moral dilemma after rescuing two abandoned children from a hurricane.

On the outskirts of North Carolina’s Outer Banks sits the Paradise, an apartment complex where renters never stay long enough to call the place “home”—and neighbors are seldom neighborly. It’s ideal for Sara Lennox, who moved there to escape a complicated past—and even her name—and rebuild a new life for herself under the radar. But Sara cannot help but notice the family next door, especially twelve-year-old Cassie and five-year-old Boon. She hears rumors and whispers of a recent tragedy slowly tearing them apart.

When a raging storm threatens then slams the coastal community, Sara makes a quick, bold decision: Rescue Cassie and Boon from the storm and their broken home—without telling a soul. But this seemingly noble act is not without consequences. Some lethal.

Carla Buckley crafts a richly rewarding psychological portrait, combining a heart-wrenching family drama with high-stakes suspense, as the lives of three characters intertwine in an unforgettable story of fury, fate—and redemption.

Visit Carla Buckley's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Liar's Child.

--Marshal Zeringue

Isaac Mizrahi's ten favorite books

Isaac Mizrahi performs cabaret across the country, has written two books, hosted his own television talk show, and made countless appearances in movies and television. He has directed and designed many productions for the stage and screen. He founded his design company in 1987, was the star and cocreator of the documentary Unzipped, and was the subject of a large-scale, mid-career survey at the Jewish Museum in New York City. He currently develops projects in television, theatre, and literature through his own production company, Isaac Mizrahi Entertainment.

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

I, Claudius by Robert Graves

All those plot twists and intrigue. I could read and reread it on the desert island and never be bored.

Read about another entry on the list.

I, Claudius also appears on Tessa Arlen’s top five list of historical novels, Christopher Wilson's top ten list of books about tyrants, Sarah Dunant's six favorite books list, Daniel Godfrey's top five list of books about ancient Rome, Jeff Somers's lists of eight books that make great party themes and six historical fiction novels that are almost fantasy, Tracy-Ann Oberman's six best books list, the Telegraph's lists of the 21 greatest television adaptations of novels and the twenty best British and Irish novels of all time, Daisy Goodwin's list of six favorite historical fiction books, a list of the eleven best political books of all time, David Chase's six favorite books list, Andrew Miller's top ten list of historical novels, Mark Malloch-Brown's list of his six favorite novels of empire, Annabel Lyon's top ten list of books on the ancient world, Lindsey Davis' top ten list of Roman books, and John Mullan's lists of ten of the best emperors in literature and ten of the best poisonings in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: D.W. Pasulka's "American Cosmic"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology by D.W. Pasulka.

About the book, from the publisher:

More than half of American adults and more than seventy-five percent of young Americans believe in intelligent extraterrestrial life. This level of belief rivals that of belief in God. American Cosmic examines the mechanisms at work behind the thriving belief system in extraterrestrial life, a system that is changing and even supplanting traditional religions.

Over the course of a six-year ethnographic study, D.W. Pasulka interviewed successful and influential scientists, professionals, and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who believe in extraterrestrial intelligence, thereby disproving the common misconception that only fringe members of society believe in UFOs. She argues that widespread belief in aliens is due to a number of factors including their ubiquity in modern media like The X-Files, which can influence memory, and the believability lent to that media by the search for planets that might support life. American Cosmic explores the intriguing question of how people interpret unexplainable experiences, and argues that the media is replacing religion as a cultural authority that offers believers answers about non-human intelligent life.

Visit Diana Walsh Pasulka's website.

The Page 99 Test: Heaven Can Wait.

The Page 99 Test: American Cosmic.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine "unlikeable" protagonists in classic literature

Laura Benedict is the Edgar- and ITW Thriller Award- nominated author of seven novels of suspense, including the newly released The Stranger Inside. On the lighter side of mystery, Benedict wrote Small Town Trouble, a cozy crime novel, for the Familiar Legacy series. Her Bliss House gothic trilogy includes: The Abandoned Heart, Charlotte’s Story (Booklist starred review), and Bliss House. Her short fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, and in numerous anthologies like Thrillers: 100 Must-Reads, The Lineup: 20 Provocative Women Writers, and St. Louis Noir. A native of Cincinnati, she lives in Southern Illinois with her family.

At CrimeReads Benedict tagged nine favorite "unlikeable" protagonists in literature, including:

Richard Everett, Expensive People, Joyce Carol Oates, 1968

Richard Everett, repulsive child murderer, doesn’t want to be pitied. Expensive People is the fictional Richard’s confessional memoir that recollects the troubling details of his prosperous, suburban, 1960s childhood. It’s not just Richard who is unlikable here. He comes by his unpleasantness honestly enough, through the behavior modeled by his restless, selfish father and neglectful writer of a mother. His wry, witty, and often sarcastic tone is recognizable as that of a bitterly disappointed but clever man-child. Given the vulnerability of every young child, it should be a natural for the contemporary reader to pity Richard his early life, yet condemn his brutal actions. But it’s not so easy. Come for Oates’s suspense skills and superior hand with the grotesque, and stay for the alarming food porn.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Page 69 Test: The Stranger Inside.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Karen Odden reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Karen Odden, author of A Dangerous Duet: A Novel.

Her entry begins:

I just finished reading several books, all of which I’d recommend, for each has fed my writing spirit. I am currently writing my third book, A Trace of Deceit, and with roughly 80% written, I feel like the Kraken with that giant maw, gulping inspiration and energy from all sorts of directions.

One book is Miss Burma, an historical novel by Charmaine Craig, who came to Phoenix to speak. She shared that she drew upon her own family’s story for this book: her mother was “Miss Burma” (as in the tiara-and-sash variety) and a highly public and political figure. I knew...[read on]

About A Dangerous Duet, from the publisher:

This dazzling new Victorian mystery from USA Today bestselling author Karen Odden introduces readers to Nell Hallam, a determined young pianist who stumbles upon the operations of a notorious—and deadly—crime ring while illicitly working as the piano player in a Soho music hall. Perfect for readers of Tasha Alexander, Anne Perry, and Deanna Raybourn.

Nineteen-year-old Nell Hallam lives in a modest corner of Mayfair with her brother Matthew, an inspector at Scotland Yard. An exceptionally talented pianist, she aspires to attend the Royal Academy; but with tuition beyond their means, Nell sets out to earn the money herself—by playing piano in a popular Soho music hall. And the fact that she will have to disguise herself as a man and slip out at night to do it doesn’t deter her.

Spending evenings at the Octavian is like entering an alternate world, one of lively energy, fascinating performers, raucous patrons—and dark secrets. And when Nell stumbles upon the operations of an infamous crime ring working in the shadows of the music hall, she is drawn into a conspiracy that stretches the length of London. To further complicate matters, she has begun to fall for the hall owner's charismatic son, Jack, who has secrets of his own.

The more Nell becomes a part of the Octavian’s world, the more she risks the relationships with the people she loves. And when another performer is left for dead in an alley as a warning, she realizes her future could be in jeopardy in more ways than one.

Visit Karen Odden's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Karen Odden and Rosy.

The Page 69 Test: A Lady in the Smoke.

My Book, The Movie: A Lady in the Smoke.

My Book, The Movie: A Dangerous Duet.

The Page 69 Test: A Dangerous Duet.

Writers Read: Karen Odden.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Joy Fielding's "All the Wrong Places"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: All the Wrong Places: A Novel by Joy Fielding.

About the book, from the publisher:

Four women—friends, family, rivals—turn to online dating for companionship, only to find themselves in the crosshairs of a tech-savvy killer using an app to target his victims in this harrowing thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of See Jane Run and The Bad Daughter.

Online dating is risky—will that message be a sweet greeting or an unsolicited lewd photo? Will he be as handsome in real life as he is in his photos, or were they taken ten years and twenty pounds ago? And when he asks you to go home with him, how do you know it’s safe? The man calling himself “Mr. Right Now” in his profile knows that his perfect hair, winning smile, and charming banter put women at ease, silencing any doubts they might have about going back to his apartment. There, he has a special evening all planned out: steaks, wine, candlelight ... and, by the end of the night, pain and a slow, agonizing death.

Driven to desperation—by divorce, boredom, infidelity, a beloved husband’s death—a young woman named Paige, her cousin and rival Heather, her best friend, Chloe, and her mother, Joan, all decide to try their hand at online dating. They each download an app, hoping to right-swipe their way to love and happiness.

But one of them unwittingly makes a date with the killer, starting the clock on a race to save her life.

New York Times bestselling author Joy Fielding has written a complex, electrifying thriller about friendship, jealousy, and passion—a deadly combination.

Learn more about the book and author at Joy Fielding's website.

The Page 69 Test: Shadow Creek.

My Book, The Movie: Shadow Creek.

The Page 69 Test: Someone Is Watching.

My Book, The Movie: Someone Is Watching.

My Book, The Movie: The Bad Daughter.

The Page 69 Test: The Bad Daughter.

My Book, The Movie: All the Wrong Places.

The Page 69 Test: All the Wrong Places.

--Marshal Zeringue