Seven top corporate thrillers

Chandler Baker lives in Austin with her husband and toddler where she also works as a corporate attorney.

Whisper Network is her adult debut. Baker is the author of the young adult thriller, Alive, as well as the High School Horror series.

At CrimeReads she tagged seven "workplace thrillers guaranteed to make you feel better about your job," including:

The Darlings by Cristina Alger

A former analyst at Goldman Sachs and a Big Law attorney, Cristina Alger is one of my favorite office thriller novelists to recommend. Her first book, The Darlings, follows Merrill Darling, daughter of a billionaire financier and her husband, attorney Paul Ross. It’s what I like to think of as aspirational turned upside down. A financial investigation and a scandal combined with competing loyalties, this one had my personal stress level at a ten up until the very last page.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: E. Tory Higgins's "Shared Reality"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Shared Reality: What Makes Us Strong and Tears Us Apart by E. Tory Higgins.

About the book, from the publisher:

What does it mean to be human? Why do we feel and behave in the ways that we do? The classic answer is that we have a special kind of intelligence. But to understand what we are as humans, we also need to know what we are like motivationally. And what is central to this story, what is special about human motivation, is that humans want to share with others their inner experiences about the world--share how they feel, what they believe, and what they want to happen in the future. They want to create a shared reality with others. People have a shared reality together when they experience having in common a feeling about something, a belief about something, or a concern about something. They feel connected to another person or group by knowing that this person or group sees the world the same way that they do--they share what is real about the world. In this work, Dr. Higgins describes how our human motivation for shared reality evolved in our species, and how it develops in our children as shared feelings, shared practices, and shared goals and roles. Shared reality is crucial to what we believe--sharing is believing. It is central to our sense of self, what we strive for and how we strive. It is basic to how we get along with others. It brings us together in fellowship and companionship, but it also tears us apart by creating in-group "bubbles" that conflict with one another. Our shared realities are the best of us, and the worst of us.

Learn more about Shared Reality at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Shared Reality.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Sarah Elaine Smith's "Marilou Is Everywhere"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Marilou Is Everywhere: A Novel by Sarah Elaine Smith.

About the book, from the publisher:

Consumed by the longing for a different life, a teenager flees her family and carefully slips into another — replacing a girl whose own sudden disappearance still haunts the town.

Fourteen-year-old Cindy and her two older brothers live in rural Pennsylvania, in a house with occasional electricity, two fierce dogs, one book, and a mother who comes and goes for months at a time. Deprived of adult supervision, the siblings rely on one another for nourishment of all kinds. As Cindy’s brothers take on new responsibilities for her care, the shadow of danger looms larger and the status quo no longer seems tolerable.

So when a glamorous teen from a more affluent, cultured home goes missing, Cindy escapes her own family’s poverty and slips into the missing teen’s life. As Jude Vanderjohn, Cindy is suddenly surrounded by books and art, by new foods and traditions, and most important, by a startling sense of possibility. In her borrowed life she also finds herself accepting the confused love of a mother who is constitutionally incapable of grasping what has happened to her real daughter. As Cindy experiences overwhelming maternal love for the first time, she must reckon with her own deceits and, in the process, learn what it means to be a daughter, a sister, and a neighbor.

Marilou Is Everywhere is a powerful, propulsive portrait of an overlooked girl who finds for the first time that her choices matter.

Visit Sarah Elaine Smith's website.

The Page 69 Test: Marilou Is Everywhere.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five of the best historical novels

The King’s Evil is the third novel in acclaimed author Andrew Taylor's Marwood-and-Lovett series set in the aftermath of the Great Fire, which began with The Ashes of London.

Taylor has won many awards, including the CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger, an Edgar Scroll from the Mystery Writers of America, the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Award (the only author to win it three times) and the CWA’s prestigious Diamond Dagger, awarded for sustained excellence in crime writing.

He lives with his wife Caroline in the Forest of Dean.

At the Waterstones blog Taylor tagged five favorite historical novels, including:

The Beginning of Spring by Penelope Fitzgerald

Fitzgerald, another Booker Prize-winner, turned increasingly toward historical fiction in her later books. This short and deceptively simple novel is set in Moscow, in 1913. It concerns a widowed printer, English but Russian born, and his relationship with his children’s nanny. Miraculously, it also captures a city unknowingly poised on the brink of war and revolution.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Janet Fitch's "Chimes of a Lost Cathedral," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Chimes of a Lost Cathedral by Janet Fitch.

The entry begins:

I definitely use actors as I’m thinking of my characters. They allow me to observe physicality, characterize gestures and voices, that certain flavor of bodily presence. I can use photographs and films to formulate descriptions of facial expressions and physical attitudes, and more than that, the feel of a certain personality—often a meld between the actor and a specific performance of theirs.

The actress I would imagine playing Marina Makarova would be a young Franka Potente as I saw her in The Bourne Identity—pretty sometimes, but also plain if in a bad situation, very physical and passionate and unrestrained, quick to laugh, a fighter, always authentic to her own nature.

Her father I always saw as Bergman’s great star...[read on]

Visit Janet Fitch's website.

The Page 99 Test: Paint It Black.

The Page 69 Test: The Revolution of Marina M..

My Book, The Movie: Chimes of a Lost Cathedral.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight true crime books that combine the personal & the literary

Lisa Levy is a columnist and contributing editor at LitHub and CrimeReads.

At CrimeReads she tagged eight true crime books that combine the personal and the literary, including:

Alice Sebold, Lucky (Scribner)

Lucky is one of the most uncomfortable books I’ve ever read, which I mean as the highest compliment. Sebold’s account of her stranger rape during her freshman year at Syracuse University is both clinical and deeply felt: we follow her from the act itself through the exam at the hospital and the questioning by the police. We are with her as she has to tell her family and friends what has happened to her and reckon with their befuddlement and discomfort. We accompany her when she sees her attacker on campus and reports it to the police, and, perhaps most devastatingly, we are with her at the trial when she has to narrate the incident all over again. All the while the title echoes in the reader’s head: yes, Sebold has the privilege of being able to confront her attacker and see justice done, but how could being raped ever be lucky?

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Angie Kim's "Miracle Creek"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Miracle Creek: A Novel by Angie Kim.

About the book, from the publisher:

How far will you go to protect your family? Will you keep their secrets? Ignore their lies?

In a small town in Virginia, a group of people know each other because they’re part of a special treatment center, a hyperbaric chamber that may cure a range of conditions from infertility to autism. But then the chamber explodes, two people die, and it’s clear the explosion wasn’t an accident.

A powerful showdown unfolds as the story moves across characters who are all maybe keeping secrets, hiding betrayals. Chapter by chapter, we shift alliances and gather evidence: Was it the careless mother of a patient? Was it the owners, hoping to cash in on a big insurance payment and send their daughter to college? Could it have been a protester, trying to prove the treatment isn’t safe?

Visit Angie Kim's website.

My Book, The Movie: Miracle Creek.

The Page 69 Test: Miracle Creek.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Emily Devenport reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Emily Devenport, author of Medusa in the Graveyard: The Medusa Cycle (Volume 2) .

Her entry begins:

I have a full time day job, a household to run, a writing career to (mis)manage, and an odd collection of other pursuits that relate to all of the above, so my reading can be a bit spotty. Fortunately, there are audio books to help me multitask.

I just finished listening to Paper Son, by S.J. Rozan, the latest Lydia Chin/Bill Smith mystery. Lydia and Bill are very different people, who are sort of in love with each other but are also really good private investigators who discover quite a lot of culture and history along the way. Should anyone decide to give these two...[read on]

About Medusa in the Graveyard, from the publisher:

Medusa in the Graveyard is the action-packed, science fiction sequel to Emily Devenport's Medusa Uploaded.

Oichi Angelis, former Worm, along with her fellow insurgents on the generation starship Olympia, head deeper into the Charon System for the planet called Graveyard.

Ancient, sentient, alien starships wait for them—three colossi so powerful they remain aware even in self-imposed sleep. The race that made the Three are dead, but Oichi's people were engineered with this ancient DNA.

A delegation from Olympia must journey to the heart of Graveyard and be judged by the Three. Before they're done, they will discover that weapons are the least of what the ships have to offer.

Visit Emily Devenport's blog.

The Page 69 Test: Medusa Uploaded.

My Book, The Movie: Medusa Uploaded.

My Book, The Movie: Medusa in the Graveyard.

The Page 69 Test: Medusa in the Graveyard.

Writers Read: Emily Devenport.

--Marshal Zeringue

Piper Kerman's six book recommendations

Piper Kerman is the author of the memoir Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison from Spiegel & Grau.

The book has been adapted by Jenji Kohan into an Emmy Award-winning original series for Netflix.

Kerman is a graduate of Smith College. She lives in Columbus, Ohio, with her family and teaches writing in two state prisons as an Affiliate Instructor with Otterbein University.

At The Week magazine, she recommended six books, including:

Until We Reckon by Danielle Sered (2019).

For the U.S. to end our failed policy of mass incarceration, we must reconsider our response to violence in communities. Sered leads a pioneering restorative justice program called Common Justice. Here she shows clearly and thoughtfully how our criminal legal system fails survivors of violence, and how accountability that does not rely on banishment helps break cycles that harm us all.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Ethan Schrum's "The Instrumental University"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Instrumental University: Education in Service of the National Agenda after World War II by Ethan Schrum.

About the book, from the publisher:

In The Instrumental University, Ethan Schrum provides an illuminating genealogy of the educational environment in which administrators, professors, and students live and work today. After World War II, research universities in the United States underwent a profound mission change. The Instrumental University combines intellectual, institutional, and political history to reinterpret postwar American life through the changes in higher education.

Acknowledging but rejecting the prevailing conception of the Cold War university largely dedicated to supporting national security, Schrum provides a more complete and contextualized account of the American research university between 1945 and 1970. Uncovering a pervasive instrumental understanding of higher education during that era, The Instrumental University shows that universities framed their mission around solving social problems and promoting economic development as central institutions in what would soon be called the knowledge economy. In so doing, these institutions took on more capitalistic and managerial tendencies and, as a result, marginalized founding ideals, such as pursuit of knowledge in academic disciplines and freedom of individual investigators.

The technocratic turn eroded some practices that made the American university special. Yet, as Schrum suggests, the instrumental university was not yet the neoliberal university of the 1970s and onwards in which market considerations trumped all others. University of California president Clark Kerr and other innovators in higher education were driven by a progressive impulse that drew on an earlier tradition grounded in a concern for the common good and social welfare.

Learn more about The Instrumental University at the Cornell University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: The Instrumental University.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight crime books of deep, dark family lore

Victoria Helen Stone, formerly writing as USA Today bestselling novelist Victoria Dahl, was born and raised in the flattest parts of the Midwest. Now that she’s escaped the plains of her youth, she writes dark suspense from an upstairs office high in the Wasatch Mountains of Utah. She enjoys summer trail hikes with her family almost as much as she enjoys staying inside during the winter. Since leaving the lighter side of fiction, she has written the critically acclaimed, bestselling novels Evelyn, After; Half Past; Jane Doe; and her latest Amazon Charts bestseller, False Step.

At CrimeReads she tagged eight crime books that are full of family secrets, including:

My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

This novel set in Lagos is a wonderful, tight read about the compromises a woman makes as she contorts herself to protect her little sister and the terrible secrets they share. Quick and fascinating.

Read about another entry on the list.

My Sister the Serial Killer is among Kristen Roupenian's six best books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Christopher Ruocchio's "Howling Dark"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Howling Dark by Christopher Ruocchio.

About the book, from the publisher:

The second novel of the galaxy-spanning Sun Eater series merges the best of space opera and epic fantasy, as Hadrian Marlowe continues down a path that can only end in fire.

Hadrian Marlowe is lost.

For half a century, he has searched the farther suns for the lost planet of Vorgossos, hoping to find a way to contact the elusive alien Cielcin. He has not succeeded, and for years has wandered among the barbarian Normans as captain of a band of mercenaries.

Determined to make peace and bring an end to nearly four hundred years of war, Hadrian must venture beyond the security of the Sollan Empire and among the Extrasolarians who dwell between the stars. There, he will face not only the aliens he has come to offer peace, but contend with creatures that once were human, with traitors in his midst, and with a meeting that will bring him face to face with no less than the oldest enemy of mankind.

If he succeeds, he will usher in a peace unlike any in recorded history. If he fails…the galaxy will burn.

Follow Christopher Ruocchio on Twitter.

My Book, The Movie: Empire of Silence.

The Page 69 Test: Empire of Silence.

My Book, The Movie: Howling Dark.

The Page 69 Test: Howling Dark.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best British political novels

At the Waterstones blog, Mark Skinner tagged ten of the best British political novels, including:

House of Cards
Michael Dobbs

The eternally scheming, marvellously Machiavellian Chief Whip Francis Urquhart plots a course to Number Ten in Michael Dobbs’ scabrous assault on political ambition. Spawning not one but two classic television adaptations, House of Cards is a wickedly entertaining portrayal of Westminster at its venal, amoral worst.

Read about another entry on the list.

House of Cards is among Peter Stone's twelve essential political scandal thrillers, Jeff Somers's ten best political thrillers, and Terry Stiastny’s ten top books about Westminster politics.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Kali Wallace reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Kali Wallace, author of Salvation Day.

Her entry begins:

As usual, I've got a couple of books going, because I like to blaze through some fast-paced fiction while savoring heftier fiction or nonfiction over a longer period.

This week I've been on a bit of a tear, as I turned in one novel and launched another recently, so I'm giving my own writing brain a rest by absorbing other people's words. I find it extremely comforting and relaxing to dive into other people's worlds when I'm exhausted by thinking about my own. And my go-to for comfort reading is always crime novels from across the Atlantic. I just finished Denise Mina's novel Conviction, a thriller that definitely scratches an itch for my true-crime-loving self, and Flynn Berry's A Double Life, which tweaks those same interests as a fictionalized version of the Lord Lucan case and what happens when...[read on]

About Salvation Day, from the publisher:

They thought the ship would be their salvation.

Zahra knew every detail of the plan. House of Wisdom, a massive exploration vessel, had been abandoned by the government of Earth a decade earlier, when a deadly virus broke out and killed everyone on board in a matter of hours. But now it could belong to her people if they were bold enough to take it. All they needed to do was kidnap Jaswinder Bhattacharya—the sole survivor of the tragedy, and the last person whose genetic signature would allow entry to the spaceship.

But what Zahra and her crew could not know was what waited for them on the ship—a terrifying secret buried by the government. A threat to all of humanity that lay sleeping alongside the orbiting dead.

And then they woke it up.

Visit Kali Wallace's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Memory Trees.

The Page 69 Test: City of Islands.

Writers Read: Kali Wallace.

--Marshal Zeringue

Angie Kim's "Miracle Creek," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Miracle Creek: A Novel by Angie Kim.

The entry begins:

I wrote Miracle Creek between 2012 and 2015, and during that time, I was obsessed with the TV show, The Americans. So it’s probably not surprising that I pictured actors/actresses from that show playing the characters in my novel. Young Yoo, the Korean immigrant mother, for example, I pictured being played by Ruthie Ann Miles, the amazing Tony-award-winning actress who portrayed the Korean immigrant character Young-hee. Elizabeth, the mother on trial for murdering her 8-year old son, I pictured being played by Keri Russell (who played Elizabeth Jennings in The Americans), and I thought...[read on]

Visit Angie Kim's website.

My Book, The Movie: Miracle Creek.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five children’s books every adult should read

Katherine Rundell's books include Rooftoppers, Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms (a Boston Globe–Horn Book Award winner), The Wolf Wilder, The Explorer, and The Good Thieves. She grew up in Zimbabwe, Brussels, and London, and is currently a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. Rundell begins each day with a cartwheel and believes that reading is almost exactly the same as cartwheeling: it turns the world upside down and leaves you breathless. In her spare time, she enjoys walking on tightropes and trespassing on the rooftops of Oxford colleges.

At the Guardian, Rundell tagged five children’s books every adult should read, including:

Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak

“But the wild things cried, ‘Oh please don’t go – we’ll eat you up – we love you so!’

“And Max said, ‘No!’

“The wild things roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws but Max stepped into his private boat and waved goodbye.”

There are as many interpretations of Where the Wild Things Are as there are people who have read it, and it means something very different when you are 30 from what it meant when you were three. I think it’s about the ferocity of love; about how we devour each other, and are devoured.

It’s also about, I think, the stark strangeness of the world. Max returns home to find his dinner “was still hot”. According to Sendak, his editors wanted him to cut or change that line, because it was impossible – or at least to edit it, to a more believable, “and it was still warm”. In an interview, he said: “‘Warm’ doesn’t burn your tongue. There is something dangerous in ‘hot’ … Hot is the trouble you can get into. But I won.” The world is, after all, rampantly strange. Children deserve books that are so too.

Read about another entry on the list.

Where the Wild Things Are is among five books that changed Dav Pilkey, Molly Schoemann-McCann's five favorite fictional creatures, Michael Rosen's six best books, Jessica Ahlberg's top ten family-themed picture books, Edward Carey's top ten writer/illustrators, Sara Maitland's top ten books of the forest, and Anthony Browne's six best books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Emily Devenport's "Medusa in the Graveyard"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Medusa in the Graveyard: The Medusa Cycle (Volume 2) by Emily Devenport.

About the book, from the publisher:

Medusa in the Graveyard is the action-packed, science fiction sequel to Emily Devenport's Medusa Uploaded.

Oichi Angelis, former Worm, along with her fellow insurgents on the generation starship Olympia, head deeper into the Charon System for the planet called Graveyard.

Ancient, sentient, alien starships wait for them—three colossi so powerful they remain aware even in self-imposed sleep. The race that made the Three are dead, but Oichi's people were engineered with this ancient DNA.

A delegation from Olympia must journey to the heart of Graveyard and be judged by the Three. Before they're done, they will discover that weapons are the least of what the ships have to offer.

Visit Emily Devenport's blog.

The Page 69 Test: Medusa Uploaded.

My Book, The Movie: Medusa Uploaded.

My Book, The Movie: Medusa in the Graveyard.

The Page 69 Test: Medusa in the Graveyard.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Liz Skilton's "Tempest: Hurricane Naming and American Culture"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Tempest: Hurricane Naming and American Culture by Liz Skilton.

About the book, from the publisher:

In Tempest, Liz Skilton considers the history of hurricane naming, why we name storms, and what effect these names have on society. The study chronologically traces the development of the naming system from its pre-WWII origins, as connected with other naming and identification systems of the natural world, through the present. Taking a Gulf South perspective, the study focuses on key storms that have shaped not only naming history but also understanding of hurricanes in American culture.

Visit Liz Skilton's website.

The Page 99 Test: Tempest.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top crime novels about overcoming self-doubt

Kerry Lonsdale is the bestselling author of emotionally charged domestic drama. Brimming with suspense, mystery, and romance, her chart-topping stories take you from the beach, to the bay, and beyond. Her new novel is Last Summer.

At CrimeReads Lonsdale tagged "five favorite page-turners that draw momentum from the protagonist’s quest to overcome their own self-doubts," including:

After Nightfall by A.J. Banner (Psychological Suspense)

Marissa Parlette is newly engaged and hosting a dinner party to celebrate her engagement. She invites her closest friend, a woman seeking Marissa’s forgiveness after betraying her years previous. Hostilities arise, the evening is ruined, and everyone goes to bed – but the next day, her friend’s body is found at the bottom of a rocky cliff. Was it suicide? Murder? An accident? Marissa wants to find out. As she plays sleuth and more clues are uncovered, doubts about her marriage, her friendship, and herself arise, doubts Marissa must overcome if she wants to find out who betrayed her friend. What unfolds after is a classic “who dunnit” mystery, and A.J. Banner executes this brilliantly. I had no idea who was at fault, if anyone, until the last few pages.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Page 69 Test: After Nightfall.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Binnie Kirshenbaum's "Rabbits for Food"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Rabbits for Food by Binnie Kirshenbaum.

About the book, from the publisher:

Master of razor-edged literary humor Binnie Kirshenbaum returns with her first novel in a decade, a devastating, laugh-out-loud funny story of a writer’s slide into depression and institutionalization.

It’s New Year’s Eve, the holiday of forced fellowship, mandatory fun, and paper hats. While dining out with her husband and their friends, Kirshenbaum’s protagonist—an acerbic, mordantly witty, and clinically depressed writer—fully unravels. Her breakdown lands her in the psych ward of a prestigious New York hospital, where she refuses all modes of recommended treatment. Instead, she passes the time chronicling the lives of her fellow “lunatics” and writing a novel about what brought her there. Her story is a brilliant and brutally funny dive into the disordered mind of a woman who sees the world all too clearly.

Propelled by razor-sharp comic timing and rife with pinpoint insights, Kirshenbaum examines what it means to be unloved and loved, to succeed and fail, to be at once impervious and raw. Rabbits for Food shows how art can lead us out of—or into—the depths of disconsolate loneliness and piercing grief. A bravura literary performance from one of our most indispensable writers.

Learn more about the book and author at Binnie Kirshenbaum's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Scenic Route.

My Book, The Movie: Rabbits for Food.

The Page 69 Test: Rabbits for Food.

--Marshal Zeringue

Christopher Ruocchio's "Howling Dark," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Howling Dark by Christopher Ruocchio.

The entry begins:

I’ve not wavered in my determination that Harry Lloyd (Viserys Targaryen from Game of Thrones) is still the perfect actor for Hadrian. Not only does he have the look, but I’m consistently impressed with his depth and range in each role I see him in, and have no trouble seeing him as both the romantic, Byronic figure that Hadrian is and the Bonaparte/Darth Vader-esque terror he must become. I have reconsidered Valka. I rewatched Skyfall recently and very much enjoyed Berenice Marlohe’s too-brief turn as Severine. She was pure class with a sharp-edged cruelty in her mannerisms that were pure Valka to me.

I’ll do a couple new ones. The Undying, the Lord of Vorgossos, is in my mind played by the great...[read on]

Follow Christopher Ruocchio on Twitter.

My Book, The Movie: Empire of Silence.

The Page 69 Test: Empire of Silence.

My Book, The Movie: Howling Dark.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Jeremy Slack's "Deported to Death"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Deported to Death: How Drug Violence Is Changing Migration on the US–Mexico Border by Jeremy Slack.

About the book, from the publisher:

What happens to migrants after they are deported from the United States and dropped off at the Mexican border, often hundreds if not thousands of miles from their hometowns? In this eye-opening work, Jeremy Slack foregrounds the voices and experiences of Mexican deportees, who frequently become targets of extreme forms of violence, including migrant massacres, upon their return to Mexico.

Navigating the complex world of the border, Slack investigates how the high-profile drug war has led to more than two hundred thousand deaths in Mexico, and how many deportees, stranded and vulnerable in unfamiliar cities, have become fodder for drug cartel struggles. Like no other book before it, Deported to Death reshapes debates on the long-term impact of border enforcement and illustrates the complex decisions migrants must make about whether to attempt the return to an often dangerous life in Mexico or face increasingly harsh punishment in the United States.

Learn more about Deported to Death at the University of California Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Deported to Death.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten books about Baltimore

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

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

Lippman's new novel is Lady in the Lake.

At the Guardian she tagged ten top books about Baltimore, including:

The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler (1985)

If I have to pick just one Tyler as a classic Baltimore novel, I’d go with The Accidental Tourist because Macon Leary and his siblings typify a certain kind of north Baltimore eccentric. Alphabetised kitchen, a family card game that only the family understands? I know these people.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Jennifer Honeybourn's "Just My Luck"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Just My Luck by Jennifer Honeybourn.

About the book, from the publisher:

Funny and fresh, Jennifer Honeybourn's Just My Luck follows a teen who has to get her good luck back by returning items she stole—all while falling for a hotel guest.

Marty has terrible luck and she knows exactly why. While working as a housekeeper at the ritzy Grand Palms hotel in Maui, Marty made it a habit to steal small items from the guests. What better way to stick it to the rich snobs they have to clean up after? Marty knows how to turn her luck around—she just has to return all of the items she stole.

When Marty meets Will, a new guest who is staying for the summer, she does the one thing she always promised herself she'd never do—fall for an out-of-towner. But Will's special, different from the other guests at the hotel. Maybe Marty's luck is finally turning around.

After a string of misunderstandings and accidents threaten Will and Marty's relationship, Marty has to find a way to fix her luck for good—or say goodbye to Will forever.

Visit Jennifer Honeybourn's website.

My Book, The Movie: Just My Luck.

The Page 69 Test: Just My Luck.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Chris Tebbetts reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Chris Tebbetts, author of Me Myself & Him.

His entry begins:

I haven’t intended to focus my reading on characters in (or traveling to) the Eastern hemisphere, but as I think about my favorite reads of 2019, that’s where they all line up. I’ll share one middle grade, one YA, and one adult novel (though I’m recommending these for everyone).

The Bridge Home by Padma Venkatraman does one of the things I love most in great books. It finds true, uncompromising beauty right alongside true, uncompromising, and harsh realities in the lives of its characters. In this case, the characters are a group of kids forced by circumstances to live on the streets of Chennai, India; and yet, somehow, with writing that’s just as beautiful as this book’s amazing cover, the author managed to leave me feeling...[read on]

About Me Myself & Him, from the publisher:

When Chris Schweitzer takes a hit of whippets and passes out face first on the cement, his nose isn’t the only thing that changes forever. Instead of staying home with his friends for the last summer after high school, he’s shipped off to live with his famous physicist but royal jerk of a father to prove he can “play by the rules” before Dad will pay for college.

Or ... not.

In an alternate time line, Chris’s parents remain blissfully ignorant about the accident, and life at home goes back to normal–until it doesn’t. A new spark between his two best (straight) friends quickly turns Chris into a (gay) third wheel, and even worse, the truth about the whippets incident starts to unravel. As his summer explodes into a million messy pieces, Chris wonders how else things might have gone. Is it possible to be jealous of another version of yourself in an alternate reality that doesn’t even exist?

With musings on fate, religion, parallel universes, and the best way to eat a cinnamon roll, Me Myself & Him examines how what we consider to be true is really just one part of the much (much) bigger picture.

Visit Chris Tebbetts's website.

My Book, The Movie: Me Myself & Him.

The Page 69 Test: Me Myself & Him.

Writers Read: Chris Tebbetts.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten suspenseful horror novels featuring domestic terrors

T. Marie Vandelly has wanted to write her entire life but (after a career change) has only recently been granted the freedom to pursue her dream full-time. She lives on Gwynn’s Island, in the Chesapeake Bay, with her husband and their two dogs. Theme Music is her first novel.

At CrimeReads Vandelly tagged "ten suspenseful horror novels featuring housebound terrors will scare the hell out of your inner child," including:

Victor Lavalle, The Changeling

Be careful what you wish for when reading The Changeling by Victor Lavalle, especially if it’s “a life full of adventure.” And what an adventure this story was! When Apollo Kagwa’s father abandons him as a young boy, a disturbing storybook and a lifetime of nightmares are all that Apollo has to remember him by. Now as an adult, and a rare book dealer, Apollo and his wife, Emma, a librarian, have a baby of their own to raise. Knowing firsthand the heartache of a broken home, Apollo swears to be a better father to his son than his father was to him. But when his wife’s sudden and strange behavior threatens to destroy their happy home, Apollo begins to worry that a stable family unit may not be possible. After receiving cryptic text pictures of her baby boy in situations that are as implausible as they are dreadful, Emma starts to deteriorate both physically and mentally. Troubles at home reach a perilous pitch when Apollo awakes chained to a radiator, a red hot kettle screaming on the stove top. Emma states “it’s not a baby” just before entering the nursery with the kettle of boiling water balanced on her bare palm. After being released from prison for holding his wife’s coworkers at gun point to obtain information on her whereabouts, Apollo embarks on a dangerous crusade to find the truth of what happened to his son. But as the truth leads him down a dark path in a forest just outside of New York City, the meaning behind the ghastly fairytale his father read to him as a child becomes frighteningly clear: “Monsters aren’t real until you meet one.”

Read about another entry on the list.

The Changeling is among C.J. Tudor's six thrillers featuring missing, mistaken, or "changed" children.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Alyshia Gálvez's "Eating NAFTA"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Eating NAFTA: Trade, Food Policies, and the Destruction of Mexico by Alyshia Gálvez.

About the book, from the publisher:

Mexican cuisine has emerged as a paradox of globalization. Food enthusiasts throughout the world celebrate the humble taco at the same time that Mexicans are eating fewer tortillas and more processed food. Today Mexico is experiencing an epidemic of diet-related chronic illness. The precipitous rise of obesity and diabetes—attributed to changes in the Mexican diet—has resulted in a public health emergency.

In her gripping new book, Alyshia Gálvez exposes how changes in policy following NAFTA have fundamentally altered one of the most basic elements of life in Mexico—sustenance. Mexicans are faced with a food system that favors food security over subsistence agriculture, development over sustainability, market participation over social welfare, and ideologies of self-care over public health. Trade agreements negotiated to improve lives have resulted in unintended consequences for people’s everyday lives.

Visit Alyshia Gálvez's website.

The Page 99 Test: Eating NAFTA.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Carrie Jones & Steven Wedel's "In the Woods"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: In the Woods by Carrie Jones and Steven E. Wedel.

About the book, from the publisher:

New York Times bestselling author Carrie Jones teams up with acclaimed cowriter Steven Wedel in the supernatural mystery, In the Woods…

It should have been just another quiet night on the farm when Logan witnessed the attack, but it wasn’t.

Something is in the woods.
Something unexplainable.
Something deadly.

Hundreds of miles away, Chrystal’s plans for summer in Manhattan are abruptly upended when her dad reads tabloid coverage of some kind of grisly incident in Oklahoma. When they arrive to investigate, they find a witness: a surprisingly good-looking farm boy.

As townsfolk start disappearing and the attacks get ever closer, Logan and Chrystal will have to find out the truth about whatever’s hiding in the woods…before they become targets themselves.

Visit Carrie Jones's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Carrie Jones & Tala.

My Book, The Movie: In the Woods.

The Page 69 Test: In the Woods.

--Marshal Zeringue

Emily Devenport's "Medusa in the Graveyard," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Medusa in the Graveyard: The Medusa Cycle (Volume 2) by Emily Devenport.

The entry begins:

I thought up a cast for Medusa Uploaded while I was still writing it, and I'm still happy with the people I pictured in those roles: Ruth Negga as Oichi, Vanessa Williams as Lady Sheba, Nichelle Nichols as Lady Gloria, Michelle Yeoh as Oichi's mother, Neal McDonough as Gennady Mironenko, Mehcad Brooks as Nuruddin, Sendhil Ramamurthy as Captain Nemo, Chiaki Kuriyama as Medusa. I pictured them all while I was writing the sequel, Medusa in the Graveyard, but a few of the new characters may be more challenging to cast.

For instance, there's Cocteau, an engineer on the Union Ship, Merlin: Her hair was so white, I wondered if she lightened it. The contrast with her dark skin made her look like a magical creature. A fairy godmother? An elf? Yet despite her apparent age, her skin was smooth, and Cocteau’s accented voice possessed the timbre of a fine instrument...

Cicely Tyson is the first actress who comes to my mind, but possibly that's because I'm American. Lena Horne and Dorothy Dandridge are also easy to picture. I'm not as familiar with African actresses, or French, or British. Someday soon I may see a movie or TV show in which the perfect Cocteau is a player.

Merlin's captain, Epatha Thomas, is much easier to peg. I knew who she was as soon as she appeared on the page:...[read on]

Visit Emily Devenport's blog.

The Page 69 Test: Medusa Uploaded.

My Book, The Movie: Medusa Uploaded.

My Book, The Movie: Medusa in the Graveyard.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top novels involving alternate realities

Helen Phillips's new novel is The Need.

Her other books include a novel, The Beautiful Bureaucrat, a story collection, And Yet They Were Happy, which was named a notable collection by The Story Priz, and the children’s adventure book, Here Where the Sunbeams Are Green.

At The Week magazine, Phillips tagged six top novels involving alternate realities, including:

Amatka by Karin Tidbeck (2012).

Vanja is a bureaucrat in a dystopian society where everything that isn't properly labeled with a name tag turns to sludge. On assignment in the town of Amatka, Vanja starts to engage in small acts of defiance and strains her social bonds, including her relationship with her lover, Nina.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: James Tharin Bradford's "Poppies, Politics, and Power"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Poppies, Politics, and Power: Afghanistan and the Global History of Drugs and Diplomacy by James Tharin Bradford.

About the book, from the publisher:

Historians have long neglected Afghanistan's broader history when portraying the opium industry. But in Poppies, Politics, and Power, James Tharin Bradford rebalances the discourse, showing that it is not the past forty years of lawlessness that makes the opium industry what it is, but the sheer breadth of the twentieth-century Afghanistan experience. Rather than byproducts of a failed contemporary system, argues Bradford, drugs, especially opium, were critical components in the formation and failure of the Afghan state.

In this history of drugs and drug control in Afghanistan, Bradford shows us how the country moved from licit supply of the global opium trade to one of the major suppliers of hashish and opium through changes in drug control policy shaped largely by the outside force of the United States. Poppies, Politics, and Power breaks the conventional modes of national histories that fail to fully encapsulate the global nature of the drug trade. By providing a global history of opium within the borders of Afghanistan, Bradford demonstrates that the country's drug trade and the government's position on that trade were shaped by the global illegal market and international efforts to suppress it. By weaving together this global history of the drug trade and drug policy with the formation of the Afghan state and issues within Afghan political culture, Bradford completely recasts the current Afghan, and global, drug trade.

Learn more about Poppies, Politics, and Power at the Cornell University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Poppies, Politics, and Power.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Laura Lippman's "Lady in the Lake"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Lady in the Lake by Laura Lippman.

About the book, from the publisher:

The revered New York Times bestselling author returns with a novel set in 1960s Baltimore that combines modern psychological insights with elements of classic noir, about a middle-aged housewife turned aspiring reporter who pursues the murder of a forgotten young woman.

In 1966, Baltimore is a city of secrets that everyone seems to know—everyone, that is, except Madeline “Maddie” Schwartz. Last year, she was a happy, even pampered housewife. This year, she’s bolted from her marriage of almost twenty years, determined to make good on her youthful ambitions to live a passionate, meaningful life.

Maddie wants to matter, to leave her mark on a swiftly changing world. Drawing on her own secrets, she helps Baltimore police find a murdered girl—assistance that leads to a job at the city’s afternoon newspaper, the Star. Working at the newspaper offers Maddie the opportunity to make her name, and she has found just the story to do it: a missing woman whose body was discovered in the fountain of a city park lake.

Cleo Sherwood was a young African-American woman who liked to have a good time. No one seems to know or care why she was killed except Maddie—and the dead woman herself. Maddie’s going to find the truth about Cleo’s life and death. Cleo’s ghost, privy to Maddie’s poking and prying, wants to be left alone.

Maddie’s investigation brings her into contact with people that used to be on the periphery of her life—a jewelry store clerk, a waitress, a rising star on the Baltimore Orioles, a patrol cop, a hardened female reporter, a lonely man in a movie theater. But for all her ambition and drive, Maddie often fails to see the people right in front of her. Her inability to look beyond her own needs will lead to tragedy and turmoil for all sorts of people—including the man who shares her bed, a black police officer who cares for Maddie more than she knows.

Visit Laura Lippman's website.

The Page 69 Test: Another Thing to Fall.

The Page 69 Test: What the Dead Know.

The Page 69 Test/Page 99 Test: Life Sentences.

The Page 69 Test: I'd Know You Anywhere.

The Page 69 Test: The Most Dangerous Thing.

The Page 69 Test: Hush Hush.

The Page 69 Test: Wilde Lake.

My Book, the Movie: Wilde Lake.

The Page 69 Test: Sunburn.

The Page 69 Test: Lady in the Lake.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is J. Todd Scott reading?

Featured at Writers Read: J. Todd Scott, author of This Side of Night.

His entry begins:

At any given time, I’m reading multiple books simultaneously, both on my Kindle and the “real thing,” all stacked up on my nightstand. Here are a few now: Riley Sager’s, Lock Every Door, Adrian McKinty’s The Chain, Chuck Wendig’s Wanderers, and Jonathan Moore’s Blood Relations. At the time I’m writing this, I’m a few days away from the launch of This Side of Night, and I’m set to share an event with David Bell (who I’ve gotten to know), and Cristina Alger (who I’m looking forward to meeting). Since I want to be able to talk about their books, I’m reading David’s Layover and Cristina’s Girls Like Us. So far, both are fantastic, although they’re...[read on]

About This Side of Night, from the publisher:

The vicious Mexican cartel war boils over into the Big Bend in the explosive new novel from the author of The Far Empty and High White Sun.

In the Mexican borderlands, a busload of student protesters is gunned down in broad daylight, a violent act blamed on the Nemesio cartel. But its aging leader, Fox Uno, sees the attack for what it is: another salvo in the long-running battle for control of Nemesio itself; perhaps by a rival cartel, or maybe someone closer to home…

Across the Rio Grande, Sheriff Chris Cherry and his deputies America Reynosa and Danny Ford find themselves caught in Fox Uno’s escalating war with the recent discovery of five dead men at the river’s edge. But when El Paso DEA agent Joe Garrison’s own Nemesio investigation leads him into the heart of the Big Bend, he’s not ready to accept the cartel leader’s retreat or defeat. Not only does he suspect a high-profile drug task force in a neighboring county is corrupt, he can’t shake lingering doubts about the loyalty and motives of the young deputy, Ame Reynosa. And he won’t let Sheriff Cherry ignore them either.

In this pitiless land it’s kill or be killed, where everyone will make one final bloody stand to decide the fate of Nemesio, the law in the Big Bend, and most of all, the future of America Reynosa.

Visit J. Todd Scott's website.

The Page 69 Test: High White Sun.

My Book, The Movie: High White Sun.

My Book, The Movie: This Side of Night.

The Page 69 Test: This Side of Night.

Writers Read: J. Todd Scott.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight top thrillers featuring ambitious women

Layne Fargo is a thriller author with a background in theater and library science. She’s a Pitch Wars mentor, a member of the Chicagoland chapter of Sisters in Crime, and the cocreator of the podcast Unlikeable Female Characters. Fargo lives in Chicago with her partner and their pets.

Her debut novel is Temper.

At CrimeReads Fargo tagged eight thrillers featuring ambitious women, including:

Give Me Your Hand by Megan Abbott

Kit and Diane also bonded over their shared sense of ambition back when they were teenagers. But by the time Give Me Your Hand begins, they’re rival scientists vying for the approval of their tough-as-nails boss, Dr. Lena Severin. No shine theory for these two: there’s a single spot available on the research team for Dr. Severin’s groundbreaking new research study, so in order for one to succeed, the other has to fail. Both women are brilliant and striving, but Diane’s ruthlessness gives her the edge. There’s nothing Diane won’t do to get what she wants, and Kit admires her as much as she fears her.

That just about sums up how we as readers feel about most of the women on this list. They may shock and scare us, but we can’t help rooting for them a little bit too—and turning those pages to find out what their ambitions might drive them to do next!

Read about another entry on the list.

Give Me Your Hand is among Allison Dickson's ten thrillers featuring a dance of girlfriends and deception and Carl Vonderau's nine notable moral compromises in crime fiction.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jennifer Honeybourn's "Just My Luck," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Just My Luck by Jennifer Honeybourn.

The entry begins:

I think it’s probably every writer’s dream to see one of their books made into a movie. One of the first things I do when I start a new book is cast the characters in my head — and for some reason, I usually pull from Disney Channel stars. For Just My Luck, I imagined:

Marty Taylor: Laura Marano. She starred on the Disney Channel’s Austin and Ally and, more recently, in The Perfect Date on Netflix. I especially loved her character in that movie.

Will Foster: Noah Centineo. He was really great in To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, the Netflix adaption of Jenny Han’s wonderful book. And, coincidentally, he starred opposite Laura Marano in The Perfect Date. Plus, it wouldn’t take much to...[read on]

Visit Jennifer Honeybourn's website.

My Book, The Movie: Just My Luck.

--Marshal Zeringue