Nine books about boundary-breaking women of the Gilded Age

Maya Rodale is the best-selling and award-winning author of funny, feminist fiction including historical romance, YA and historical fiction. A champion of the romance genre and its readers, she is also the author of Dangerous Books For Girls: The Bad Reputation of Romance Novels, Explained.

Rodale's new book is The Mad Girls of New York: A Nellie Bly Novel.

At Lit Hub the author tagged nine favorite books about boundary-breaking women of the Gilded Age, including:

Renée Rosen, The Social Graces

This character-driven novel delves deeply into the rivalry between reigning queen of society Caroline Astor and socially ambitious upstart Alva Vanderbilt Belmont, who craves Mrs. Astor’s stamp of approval and will spend any amount of money to get it. Fans of the show Gilded Age will recognize the maneuvers of Mrs. Russell as she tries to gain favor from Mrs. Astor.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Page 69 Test: The Social Graces.

My Book, The Movie: The Social Graces.

--Marshal Zeringue

Karen Winn's "Our Little World," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Our Little World by Karen Winn.

The entry begins:

Set in the 1980s in a small and idyllic New Jersey town, Our Little World is a lyrical coming of age novel with a looming mystery about two sisters with a relationship equal parts love and envy, whose lives are suddenly and irrevocably changed by a neighborhood girl’s disappearance.

When Max and his little sister Sally move in across the street, soon-to-be seventh grader Bee and her sister Audrina are excited that their circle of local friends has expanded. But what begins as a usual fun-filled summer—playing kickball in their cul-de-sac and swimming at the local haunts—quickly goes awry when Sally goes missing at the town lake. In the aftermath, Bee and Audrina’s little world cracks, both inside the home, as secrets, guilt, and jealousy come between them, and outside of it, as the illusion of stability in their close-knit community is shattered.

This novel is full of 80s nostalgia and has a dark underbelly. It’s about complex sibling and family relationships, and small-town dynamics. The tone of the movie would be in the vein of Stand by Me, or the HBO limited series Mare of Easttown.

Here’s my dream cast of actors (from various stages in their careers):

Twelve-year-old Bee would be played by a young Christina Ricci (from the eras of The Addams Family or The Ice Storm).

The adult version of Bee would be played by Maggie Gyllenhaal.

Audrina, Bee’s eleven-year-old sister, would be...[read on]

Visit Karen Winn's website.

The Page 69 Test: Our Little World.

My Book, The Movie: Our Little World.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Bonnar Spring's "Disappeared"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Disappeared by Bonnar Spring.

About the book, from the publisher:

These two sisters are about to be permanently “disappeared”

Julie Welch’s sister, Fay Lariviere, disappears from their hotel in Morocco. Although she leaves a note that she’ll be back in two days, Fay doesn’t return.

Julie’s anger shifts to worry—and to fear when she discovers a stalker. Then, an attack meant for Julie kills another woman. Searching Fay’s luggage and quizzing the hotel staff, Julie discovers Fay’s destination—a remote village in the Saharan desert. Convinced her sister is in danger and propelled by her own jeopardy, Julie rushes to warn Fay.

By the time she reaches the village, Julie finds that Fay has traveled deeper into the desert. With a villager as guide, Julie follows—only to be stranded in the Sahara when the guide abandons her. Julie is eventually reunited with Fay—in a prison cell—and learns the reasons for Fay’s secrecy.

Although furious at Fay’s deception and weak from her desert ordeal, Julie knows they must work together. The sisters, ensnared in a web of dangerous lies and about to be permanently “disappeared”, pit their wits against soldiers and desert in a fight for their lives.

Perfect for fans of Tana French and Martin Cruz Smith

Visit Bonnar Spring's website.

Q&A with Bonnar Spring.

The Page 69 Test: Disappeared.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven novels about the theater set in Victorian London

In 2018, Lianne Dillsworth graduated from Royal Holloway with a MA in Creative Writing with distinction, and in 2019, she won a place on the London Library Emerging Writers Programme. She was awarded a bursary place for underrepresented writers on the Jericho Writers Self-Editing course and short-listed for the SI Leeds Literary Prize. She also holds an MA in Victorian studies and currently lives in London, where she works in diversity and inclusion.

Dillsworth's debut novel is Theatre of Marvels.

At Electric Lit she tagged seven titles about the theatre set in Victorian London, including:

The Prestige by Christopher Priest

Two illusionists battle for pre-eminence on the Victorian music hall stage, taking more and more risks as their rivalry becomes increasingly bitter. This novel is beautifully atmospheric and has as much to say about the class system as it does about magic.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: David L. Sloss's "Tyrants on Twitter"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Tyrants on Twitter: Protecting Democracies from Information Warfare by David L. Sloss.

About the book, from the publisher:

A look inside the weaponization of social media, and an innovative proposal for protecting Western democracies from information warfare.

When Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram were first introduced to the public, their mission was simple: they were designed to help people become more connected to each other. Social media became a thriving digital space by giving its users the freedom to share whatever they wanted with their friends and followers. Unfortunately, these same digital tools are also easy to manipulate. As exemplified by Russia's interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, authoritarian states can exploit social media to interfere with democratic governance in open societies.

Tyrants on Twitter is the first detailed analysis of how Chinese and Russian agents weaponize Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube to subvert the liberal international order. In addition to examining the 2016 U.S. election, David L. Sloss explores Russia's use of foreign influence operations to threaten democracies in Europe, as well as China's use of social media and other digital tools to meddle in Western democracies and buttress autocratic rulers around the world.

Sloss calls for cooperation among democratic governments to create a new transnational system for regulating social media to protect Western democracies from information warfare. Drawing on his professional experience as an arms control negotiator, he outlines a novel system of transnational governance that Western democracies can enforce by harmonizing their domestic regulations. And drawing on his academic expertise in constitutional law, he explains why that system—if implemented by legislation in the United States—would be constitutionally defensible, despite likely First Amendment objections. With its critical examination of information warfare and its proposal for practical legislative solutions to fight back, this book is essential reading in a time when disinformation campaigns threaten to undermine democracy.

Follow David L. Sloss on Twitter and learn more about Tyrants on Twitter at the Stanford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Tyrants on Twitter.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Marc Cameron

From my Q&A with Marc Cameron, author of Cold Snap (An Arliss Cutter Novel):

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

We’re going for Northern Noir. The Cutter novels are set in Alaska, most often in rural communities—what we call “the bush.” I want the books to have that icy, isolated flavor. Cold Snap takes place during the spring. In the lower forty-eight flowers are blooming and kids are flying kites in the park. But—like the old Johnny Horton song, springtime in Alaska can dip well below zero. The land, water, even the air itself conspire to crush anyone who’s not prepared. Deputy US Marshal Arliss Cutter is a skilled outdoorsman and fugitive hunter, but he’s from Florida. The intense chill of the Arctic grates on him, especially when in his mind, it should be spring. A sudden cold snap in the mountains makes for deadly conflict—man v man in a frozen environment that will happily kill both hunter and hunted. It would be impossible to write an honest story about Alaska without...[read on]

Visit Marc Cameron's website.

Q&A with Marc Cameron.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Alma Katsu reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Alma Katsu, author of The Fervor.

Her entry begins:

I had the opportunity to do an early read of a number of horror novels coming out in a few months. For those who are unaware, horror has been having a moment for the past couple years: bookstores are bringing back horror sections and filling it with more than Stephen King and Dean Koontz. Publishers are launching new horror imprints. It’s become a big tent, with more psychological suspense and speculative fiction being shelved alongside traditional horror.

The Pallbearers Club by Paul Tremblay. Paul Tremblay is a case in point. His work tends to ask big existential questions in unexpected ways, and The Pallbearers Club is no exception. While appearing simple on the surface (and eminently readable), it’s so complex that it ends up being hard to explain. On one level, it’s about a strange friendship that develops between two people, an awkward teenager growing up in a small Massachusetts town and a cool stranger who happens to take pictures of corpses. But as the story develops, you begin to ask yourself what’s really going on here? Is it a memoir disguised as a novel or is it something else? Is it a new kind of vampire story? Is it supernatural at all? It’s a damned amazing piece of storytelling and...[read on]

About The Fervor, from the publisher:

From the acclaimed and award-winning author of The Hunger and The Deep comes a new psychological and supernatural twist on the horrors of the Japanese American internment camps in World War II.

1944: As World War II rages on, the threat has come to the home front. In a remote corner of Idaho, Meiko Briggs and her daughter, Aiko, are desperate to return home. Following Meiko’s husband’s enlistment as an air force pilot in the Pacific months prior, Meiko and Aiko were taken from their home in Seattle and sent to one of the internment camps in the Midwest. It didn’t matter that Aiko was American-born: They were Japanese, and therefore considered a threat by the American government.

Mother and daughter attempt to hold on to elements of their old life in the camp when a mysterious disease begins to spread among those interned. What starts as a minor cold quickly becomes spontaneous fits of violence and aggression, even death. And when a disconcerting team of doctors arrive, nearly more threatening than the illness itself, Meiko and her daughter team up with a newspaper reporter and widowed missionary to investigate, and it becomes clear to them that something more sinister is afoot, a demon from the stories of Meiko’s childhood, hell-bent on infiltrating their already strange world.

Inspired by the Japanese yokai and the jorogumo spider demon, The Fervor explores a supernatural threat beyond what anyone saw coming; the danger of demonization, a mysterious contagion, and the search to stop its spread before it’s too late.

Visit Alma Katsu's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Taker.

My Book, The Movie: The Hunger.

The Page 69 Test: The Hunger.

Writers Read: Alma Katsu (March 2020).

The Page 69 Test: The Deep.

The Page 69 Test: Red Widow.

Q&A with Alma Katsu.

The Page 69 Test: The Fervor.

Writers Read: Alma Katsu.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten books about performance – the lives of actors & musicians

Imogen Crimp studied English at Cambridge, followed by an MA in contemporary literature from University College London, where she specialized in female modernist writers. After university, she briefly studied singing at a London conservatory. She lives in London.

Crimp is the author of A Very Nice Girl.

At the Guardian she tagged ten "books that include scenes of musical or theatrical performance [and] often explore ideas of performance in a broader sense – the way we try on different identities or perform to conceal aspects of ourselves." One title on the list:

The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro

Ryder, a famous pianist, arrives in an unnamed European city to perform in a concert that he can’t remember agreeing to. He’s meant to be following a strict schedule of obligations, but has misplaced it, and the narrative unfolds with the bizarre logic of a dream; everyone he encounters waylays him, divulging their secrets and demanding his help, while he pretends to understand what’s going on. Ishiguro explores the social performance of politeness, the way this stops us from speaking or acting on our desires – and the longing for connection that lies underneath.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Unconsoled is among Jason Tougaw's twelve great books about the human brain and Robert McCrum's ten most difficult books to finish.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Stephen C. Angle's "Growing Moral"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Growing Moral: A Confucian Guide to Life by Stephen C. Angle.

About the book, from the publisher:

Ancient and enduring, rich and wide-ranging, the tradition of Confucianism offers profound insights into how we can lead good lives--lives built on understanding that we are deeply connected to one another.

For thousands of years, Confucian thinkers have carefully honed a philosophy for living fully, passing that knowledge along to their students over generations. Kongzi, also known as Confucius (551-479 BCE), is the most famous of the 2500-year-long tradition's philosophers. Though Kongzi lived more than two millennia ago and on the other side of the earth from many picking up this book, his teachings about how to live reverberate everywhere there are parents, children, and families; everywhere people feel stirrings of compassion for others, but sometimes selfishly ignore them; everywhere people wonder how they should interact with their environment.

In Growing Moral, philosopher Stephen C. Angle engages readers to reflect on and to practice the teachings of Confucianism in the contemporary world. Angle draws on the whole history of Confucianism, focusing on three thinkers from the classical era (Kongzi, Mengzi, and Xunzi) and two from the Neo-Confucian era (Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming). While laying out the fundamental teachings of Confucianism, the book highlights the enduring lessons that the philosophy offers contemporary readers.

Although the book reveals the many helpful ways we can engage Confucian philosophy in our modern lives, it also scrutinizes those elements of Confucianism that may not align with 21st-century standpoints. Angle questions whether Confucianism, historically affiliated with patriarchal societies and monarchical governments, genuinely can be attractive to those committed to gender equality and democratic politics, and points the way towards a progressive, evolving version of Confucianism that is nonetheless consistent with the principles it has upheld over the centuries.

At its core, Confucianism describes a way for humans to live and grow together in our world--a way characterized at its best by joy, beauty, and harmony. This book builds a case for modern Confucianism as a way of life well worth the attention of reflective modern readers no matter their age, where they live, or the paths they've taken so far.

Learn more about Growing Moral at the Oxford University Press website, and visit the Warp, Weft, and Way website for information about Chinese and Comparative philosophy.

The Page 99 Test: Growing Moral.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Karen Winn's "Our Little World"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Our Little World by Karen Winn.

About the book, from the publisher:

July 1985. It’s a normal, sweltering New Jersey summer for soon-to-be seventh grader Bee Kocsis. Her thoughts center only on sunny days spent at Deer Chase Lake, on evenings chasing fireflies around her cul-de-sac with the neighborhood kids, and on Max, the boy who just moved in across the street. There’s also the burgeoning worry that she’ll never be as special as her younger sister, Audrina, who seems to effortlessly dazzle wherever she goes.

But when Max’s little sister, Sally, goes missing at the lake, Bee’s long-held illusion of stability is shattered in an instant. As the families in her close-knit community turn inward, suspicious and protective, things in Bee’s own home become increasingly strained, most of all with Audrina, when a shameful secret surfaces. With everything changed, Bee and Audrina’s already-fraught sisterhood is pushed to the limit as they grow up—and apart—in the wake of an innocence lost too soon.

Perfect for readers of Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You, Our Little World is a powerful and lyrical coming-of-age story that examines the complicated bond of sisterhood, the corrosive power of envy, and how the traumas of our youths can shape our identities for a lifetime.

Visit Karen Winn's website.

The Page 69 Test: Our Little World.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six thrillers with very surprising twists

Jeneva Rose is the Amazon Charts, Apple Books, and Publishers Weekly bestselling author of The Perfect Marriage. It’s been translated into a dozen languages, and the film/tv rights were optioned by Picture Perfect Federation.

Her new suspense novel is One of Us Is Dead.

At CrimeReads Rose tagged "six thrillers that I believe will fool even the most seasoned readers." One title on the list:

Never Let You Go by Chevy Stevens

Lindsay escapes with her young daughter, leaving behind her abusive relationship. Her ex-husband, Andrew, is sent to jail and she starts her life over. Flash forward eleven years—Andrew’s released and tracks down his family, wanting to reconnect with his teenage daughter because he claims he’s a changed man. However, things begin to go awry. There’s a break-in, someone is messing with Lindsay, and she feels she’s being watched. Could her ex be the one behind everything? Is it time for her to run again? Stevens weaves a well-written story, laced with many twists and turns throughout. Just as you’re given a breadcrumb of a clue as to who could be behind everything, another clue leads you in a different direction. Even when you think you’ve figured it out, you probably didn’t.

Read about another entry on the list.

Never Let You Go is among Jennifer Hillier's eight psychological thrillers of women starting over.

The Page 69 Test: Never Let You Go.

My Book, The Movie: Never Let You Go.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Avram Alpert's "The Good-Enough Life"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Good-Enough Life by Avram Alpert.

About the book, from the publisher:

We live in a world oriented toward greatness, one in which we feel compelled to be among the wealthiest, most powerful, and most famous. This book explains why no one truly benefits from this competitive social order, and reveals how another way of life is possible—a good-enough life for all.

Avram Alpert shows how our obsession with greatness results in stress and anxiety, damage to our relationships, widespread political and economic inequality, and destruction of the natural world. He describes how to move beyond greatness to create a society in which everyone flourishes. By competing less with each other, each of us can find renewed meaning and purpose, have our material and emotional needs met, and begin to lead more leisurely lives. Alpert makes no false utopian promises, however. Life can never be more than good enough because there will always be accidents and tragedies beyond our control, which is why we must stop dividing the world into winners and losers and ensure that there is a fair share of decency and sufficiency to go around.

Visionary and provocative, The Good-Enough Life demonstrates how we can work together to cultivate a good-enough life for all instead of tearing ourselves apart in a race to the top of the social pyramid.

Visit Avram Alpert's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Good-Enough Life.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Bonnar Spring

From my Q&A with Bonnar Spring, author of Disappeared:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

Fay disappears on page one, so the title leads directly into the story. The mystery of Disappeared is learning where Fay went and why she left without giving any hint to her sister, Julie, what she was doing.

Without giving away too much of the plot, ‘disappeared’ also refers to other characters in the novel. And it hints at the loss of trust between the sisters caused by Fay’s disappearance.

Julie’s search for her sister prompted the original title, The Black Desert, because most of the cat-and-mouse intrigue and the dangers the women encounter take place in that stony wasteland adjacent to the Sahara.

But the novel is an on-the-road adventure, and The Black Desert started (after numerous re-writes and editor complaints) sounding too static. I came up with Disappeared, which ties into the themes I write about and spotlights the story’s action and emotion of the two sisters...[read on]

Visit Bonnar Spring's website.

Q&A with Bonnar Spring.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Taylor Brown's "Wingwalkers"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Wingwalkers: A Novel by Taylor Brown.

About the book, from the publisher:

A former WWI ace pilot and his wingwalker wife barnstorm across Depression-era America, performing acts of aerial daring.

“They were over Georgia somewhere, another nameless hamlet whose dusty streets lay flocked and trembling with the pink handbills they’d rained from the sky that morning, the ones that announced the coming of DELLA THE DARING DEVILETTE, who would DEFY THE HEAVENS, shining like a DAYTIME STAR, a WING-WALKING WONDER borne upon the wings of CAPTAIN ZENO MARIGOLD, a DOUBLE ACE of the GREAT WAR, who had ELEVEN AERIAL VICTORIES over the TRENCHES OF FRANCE.”

Wingwalkers is one-part epic adventure, one-part love story, and, as is the signature for critically-acclaimed author Taylor Brown, one large part American history. The novel follows the adventures of Della and Zeno Marigold, a pair of Great Depression barnstormers who are funding their journey west by performing death-defying aerial stunts from town to town, and braids them with the real-life exploits of author (and thwarted fighter pilot) William Faulkner. When their paths cross during a dramatic air show, there will be unexpected consequences for all.

Brown has taken a tantalizing tidbit from Faulkner’s real life—an evening's chance encounter with two daredevils in New Orleans—and set it aloft in this fabulous novel. With scintillating prose and an action-packed plot, he has captured the true essence of a bygone era and shed a new light on the heart and motivations of one of America's greatest authors.

Visit Taylor Brown's website.

My Book, The Movie: The River of Kings.

The Page 69 Test: The River of Kings.

Writers Read: Taylor Brown (March 2020).

My Book, The Movie: Pride of Eden.

The Page 69 Test: Pride of Eden.

Q&A with Taylor Brown.

My Book, The Movie: Wingwalkers.

The Page 69 Test: Wingwalkers.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five books featuring uploaded minds and memories

At Tor.com James Davis Nicoll tagged five favorite books featuring uploaded minds and memories, including:

Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty (2016)

Interstellar travel is slow and dangerous. Therefore, prudent planners have contingency plans to deal with unexpected deaths. In the case of sleeper ship Dormouse, three light years on its way to Tau Ceti, the contingency plans center on mind tapes and cloning. Why lose a skilled crewmember forever when one can simply unbottle a fresh clone and imprint it with the memories of the dead caretaker?

Maria Arena’s latest iteration wakes to discover that the ship, and its cloning system, has been attacked. Person or persons unknown massacred the entire crew, sabotaged Dormouse’s AI, and sent the ship off-course. Even the cloning system was targeted: The clones have the memories of their predecessors, but those memories are years out of date. Working out the killer’s identity and their motive will therefore be challenging. Good news, though: The suspect list is quite short. Because the passengers are in cold sleep and Sol is three light years away, the killer or killers must have been crew themselves.

Read about another entry on the list at Tor.com.

Six Wakes is among Edward Ashton's eight books about what it means to be human and Elisa Shoenberger's seven top SFF murder mysteries.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Neil Levy's "Bad Beliefs"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Bad Beliefs: Why They Happen to Good People by Neil Levy.

About the book, from the publisher:

Bad beliefs - beliefs that blatantly conflict with easily available evidence - are common. Large minorities of people hold that vaccines are dangerous or accept bizarre conspiracy theories, for instance. The prevalence of bad beliefs may be politically and socially important, for instance blocking effective action on climate change. Explaining why people accept bad beliefs and what can be done to make them more responsive to evidence is therefore an important project.

A common view is that bad beliefs are largely explained by widespread irrationality. This book argues that ordinary people are rational agents, and their beliefs are the result of their rational response to the evidence they're presented with. We thought they were responding badly to evidence, because we focused on the first-order evidence alone: the evidence that directly bears on the truth of claims. We neglected the higher-order evidence, in particular evidence about who can be trusted and what sources are reliable. Once we recognize how ubiquitous higher-order evidence is, we can see that belief formation is by and large rational.

The book argues that we should tackle bad belief by focusing as much on the higher-order evidence as the first-order evidence. The epistemic environment gives us higher-order evidence for beliefs, and we need to carefully manage that environment. The book argues that such management need not be paternalistic: once we recognize that managing the epistemic environment consists in management of evidence, we should recognize that such management is respectful of epistemic autonomy.

Learn more about Bad Beliefs at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Bad Beliefs.

--Marshal Zeringue

Aaron Angello's "The Fact of Memory," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Fact of Memory: 114 Ruminations and Fabrications by Aaron Angello.

The entry begins:

If someone had unlimited financial resources and wanted to make The Fact of Memory: 144 Ruminations and Fabrications into a film, they would 1) find it nearly impossible and 2) end up making either the best or worst film ever. The book is a series of 114 brief lyric essays, prose poems, and flash fictions, each a response to one word from Shakespeare’s 29th sonnet. I can imagine a film that consists of 114 very short, unique films, and that does seem cool – kind of like a much more frenetic version of Thirty-Two Short Films about Glenn Gould. On the other hand, the individual pieces that make up the book, when taken together, do form a kind of long lyric essay or lyric autobiography. The way the pieces work together to create a kind of cohesive (though certainly nonlinear) narrative surprised even me. It is, as someone much smarter than me has said of it, “a Gen X coming of age of sorts.”

So, the challenge in making this film would be in casting the “I” (which is, very clearly, me) at different points in his life. Though one might be inclined to look for similar characteristics in each of the actors who play “I” at different ages, I would encourage the director and his casting staff to look for characteristics that embody “I” at those different times, even if they’re inconsistent.

“I” age 3, running up on the stage at the Elks Club where his father is playing 50s rock and roll (page 92): Jeff Cohen, the kid who played Chunk in The Goonies, but we would need to cast him as a child. I’m not sure how we do that.

“I” age 6, sifting through the rubble of a burned-down grocery store in the small mountain town of Cripple Creek (page 99): One of the twins from The Shining. They need to wear the blue dress as well.

“I” age 8, riding in a car through the mountains, collecting a pet cloud (page 21):...[read on]

Visit Aaron Angello's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Fact of Memory.

Writers Read: Aaron Angello.

My Book, The Movie: The Fact of Memory.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven books centered on people of color & technology

Claire Stanford's fiction has appeared in Black Warrior Review, The Rumpus, Third Coast, Redivider, Paper Darts, and Tin House Flash Fridays, among other publications. Her work has received fellowships and grants from the Jerome Foundation, the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, the Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts, and the Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts & Sciences.

Stanford holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Minnesota and is currently a PhD candidate in English at UCLA, where she studies science fiction/speculative fiction, narrative theory, and novel theory. Born and raised in Berkeley, she lives in Los Angeles.

Her debut novel is Happy for You.

At Electric Lit Stanford tagged seven books centered on people of color and technology, including:

The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell

Built on an epic scale, The Old Drift weaves together the stories of three Zambian families (Black, white, and Brown), spanning the course of more than a century (1903 to the near future) and mingling multiple genres (historical fiction, surrealism, fantasy, science fiction). The final section considers an array of technologies, both real and speculative: nanorobots and microdrones, gene-editing and CRISPR, and devices called Digit-All Beads that are implanted in users’ hands and work similarly to smartphones (with similar problems of surveillance). Serpell traces the connection between past colonialism and present-day government control, looking toward a future when technology no longer forces people to submit, but allows them to revolt.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Cécile Fabre's "Spying Through a Glass Darkly"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Spying Through a Glass Darkly: The Ethics of Espionage and Counter-Intelligence by Cécile Fabre.

About the book, from the publisher:

Cécile Fabre draws back the curtain on the ethics of espionage and counterintelligence.

Espionage and counter-intelligence activities, both real and imagined, weave a complex and alluring story. Yet there is hardly any serious philosophical work on the subject. Cécile Fabre presents a systematic account of the ethics of espionage and counterintelligence. She argues that such operations, in the context of war and foreign policy, are morally justified as a means, but only as a means, to protect oneself and third parties from ongoing violations of fundamental rights. In doing so, she addresses a range of ethical questions: are intelligence officers morally permitted to bribe, deceive, blackmail, and manipulate as a way to uncover state secrets? Is cyberespionage morally permissible? Are governments morally permitted to resort to the mass surveillance of their and foreign populations as a means to unearth possible threats against national security? Can treason ever be morally permissible? Can it ever be legitimate to resort to economic espionage in the name of national security? The book offers answers to those questions through a blend of philosophical arguments and historical examples.

Visit Cécile Fabre's website.

The Page 99 Test: Spying Through a Glass Darkly.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Alma Katsu's "The Fervor"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Fervor by Alma Katsu.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the acclaimed and award-winning author of The Hunger and The Deep comes a new psychological and supernatural twist on the horrors of the Japanese American internment camps in World War II.

1944: As World War II rages on, the threat has come to the home front. In a remote corner of Idaho, Meiko Briggs and her daughter, Aiko, are desperate to return home. Following Meiko’s husband’s enlistment as an air force pilot in the Pacific months prior, Meiko and Aiko were taken from their home in Seattle and sent to one of the internment camps in the Midwest. It didn’t matter that Aiko was American-born: They were Japanese, and therefore considered a threat by the American government.

Mother and daughter attempt to hold on to elements of their old life in the camp when a mysterious disease begins to spread among those interned. What starts as a minor cold quickly becomes spontaneous fits of violence and aggression, even death. And when a disconcerting team of doctors arrive, nearly more threatening than the illness itself, Meiko and her daughter team up with a newspaper reporter and widowed missionary to investigate, and it becomes clear to them that something more sinister is afoot, a demon from the stories of Meiko’s childhood, hell-bent on infiltrating their already strange world.

Inspired by the Japanese yokai and the jorogumo spider demon, The Fervor explores a supernatural threat beyond what anyone saw coming; the danger of demonization, a mysterious contagion, and the search to stop its spread before it’s too late.

Visit Alma Katsu's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Taker.

My Book, The Movie: The Hunger.

The Page 69 Test: The Hunger.

Writers Read: Alma Katsu (March 2020).

The Page 69 Test: The Deep.

The Page 69 Test: Red Widow.

Q&A with Alma Katsu.

The Page 69 Test: The Fervor.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top female sleuths in long-running historical mystery series

Anna Lee Huber is the USA Today bestselling and Daphne award-winning author of the Lady Darby Mysteries, the Verity Kent Mysteries, and the Gothic Myths series, as well as the anthology The Deadly Hours. She is a summa cum laude graduate of Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee, where she majored in music and minored in psychology.

Huber's latest mystery is A Perilous Perspective.

At CrimeReads she tagged ten favorite female sleuths in long-running historical mystery series, including:

Tasha Alexander – Lady Emily Hargreaves

Secrets of the Nile, which releases on October 4th, will be the sixteenth entry in Alexander’s bestselling Lady Emily Mystery series set in the Victorian era. The series began in And Only to Deceive with Lady Emily embracing the freedoms afforded by widowhood after the husband she’d wed only to escape her overbearing mother is killed while on safari in Africa. Her intellectual curiosity, awakened by her late husband’s journals, is part of Lady Emily’s charm, as well as her willingness to push the strict boundaries of Victorian society, whether it be drinking port with the men or investigating murders. The romance between her charming suitor-turned-husband and investigative partner, Colin Hargreaves, only adds greater depths to Alexander’s characters. One particular highlight of the series is all the various settings Emily and Colin visit, from Constantinople to Paris to Venice to St. Petersburg to Egypt, in her latest.

Read about another entry on the list.

Q&A with Tasha Alexander.

The Page 69 Test: The Dark Heart of Florence.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Christopher T. Burris's "Evil in Mind"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Evil in Mind: The Psychology of Harming Others by Christopher T. Burris.

About the book, from the publisher:

What is evil? Who does evil things? Who is evil? How do you know? Whether in response to witnessing mass suffering or feeling the sting of personal injustice, people confidently apply the "evil" label to perpetrators and the harm that they inflict, yet evil's essence remains mysterious to many.

This book offers readers an accessible, social-scientific definition and analysis of evil in its various incarnations to foster a sophisticated and self-reflective understanding of the phenomenon, departing from ghoulish or self-righteous generalizations. Part 1 explores why most of us want to be seen as good, when and why we deem something evil, and what psychological and environmental factors increase our propensity for harming others in spite of our drive for social acceptance. Part 2 presents illustrative examples of how Part 1's insights can be applied, specifically examining hate, sadism, serial killers, group-based atrocities, organizational offenses, and familial abuse. The concluding chapter amplifies and integrates the book's big themes to foster a more mindful, informed confrontation of the elusive problem we call evil.

Evil in Mind delivers a systematic, research-based psychological understanding of evil that is compact, digestible, and potentially transformative for academics, students, and educated lay readers.

Learn more about Evil in Mind at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Evil in Mind.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Aaron Angello reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Aaron Angello, author of The Fact of Memory: 114 Ruminations and Fabrications.

His entry begins:

Currently, I’m teaching, so I am pretty much rereading what I’m teaching. Fortunately, though, I’m teaching a great class I’m calling Weird-Ass Books: Formal Experimentation in Modern and Contemporary Fiction (cool, right?), and I’ve included some books that I haven’t read in a long time, so it’s a great excuse to reread them and experience them again. Here are the most recent books I’ve read:

Autobiography of Red – Anne Carson

This novel in verse takes as its starting point the surviving fragments of the ancient Greek lyric poet Stesichorus’ Geryoneis – a retelling of the story of Heracles and Geryon, from the perspective of the red, winged monster (in addition to being a great poet, Carson is a classicist and translator of ancient Greek texts, including the best translation of Sappho out there, in my opinion). Carson sets the story of Autobiography of Red in a modern world that is both very recognizable and mythic. In her version, Geryon is a boy who just happens to be red and winged. He is also sensitive, a developing artist, a bit broken, and prone to fall in love with the very handsome and insensitive Heracles. Because she chose to write the novel in lineated verse, Carson allows herself freedom to move away from descriptive formulations more typical of the novel. Instead, she consistently surprises the reader with her shocking...[read on]

About The Fact of Memory: 114 Ruminations and Fabrications, from the publisher:

A child keeps a pet cloud in a dresser drawer. A man has coffee with his doppelganger. A 20-something stunt double performs pirate swordplay at birthday parties. A schoolkid ponders the absurdity of Hell. A woman sings a Diana Ross song to a stranger across a subway platform. In this genre-defying collection of short prose pieces, Aaron Angello explores the subtleties of recollection, imagination, and the connections, both momentary and long-lasting, between oneself and others. Each piece riffs on a word from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29; over the course of 114 days, Angello woke early, meditated upon a single word from the sonnet, and wrote.

The results are sometimes funny, sometimes profound, and sometimes heartbreaking, accumulating into a map of a mind at work, a Gen X coming-of-age of sorts, seamlessly invoking the likes of The Golden Girls, Spinoza, Rick Springfield, and Rimbaud. The Fact of Memory uses its innovative structure to pause and consider how language—and people—can both enthrall and abandon us, how the invincibility of youthful ambition gives way to the nuanced disappointments of aging, how unanswerable philosophical questions can share the page with glimpses of our former selves navigating a fragmented past.

Visit Aaron Angello's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Fact of Memory.

Writers Read: Aaron Angello.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven top Korean novels set in Seoul

A native of Nyack, New York, Soon Wiley received his BA in English & Philosophy from Connecticut College. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Wichita State University. His writing has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and earned him fellowships in Wyoming and France. He resides in Connecticut with his wife and their two cats.

When We Fell Apart is his debut novel.

At Electric Lit Wiley tagged seven "books that unfold against the backdrop of the bustling South Korean capital" that he read after he finished writing his own. One title on the list:

Everything Belongs to Us by Yoojin Grace Wuertz

A historical novel set in 1978 Seoul, Yoojin Grace Wuertz’s novel follows the lives of two women from distinctly different economic means as they struggle to make a life for themselves under Park Chung-hee’s oppressive and industrialization-obsessed regime. Astounding in both its epic scope and intimately drawn characters, Wuertz weaves a tale about friendship, loyalty, and betrayal against the backdrop of national upheaval. This novel will leave you reaching for a history book on one of Korea’s most tumultuous time periods.

Read about another entry on the list.

My Book, The Movie: Everything Belongs to Us.

The Page 69 Test: Everything Belongs to Us.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Eve Darian-Smith's "Global Burning"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Global Burning: Rising Antidemocracy and the Climate Crisis by Eve Darian-Smith.

About the book, from the publisher:

How extreme-right antidemocratic governments around the world are prioritizing profits over citizens, stoking catastrophic wildfires, and accelerating global climate change.

Recent years have seen out-of-control wildfires rage across remote Brazilian rainforests, densely populated California coastlines, and major cities in Australia. What connects these separate events is more than immediate devastation and human loss of life. In Global Burning, Eve Darian-Smith contends that using fire as a symbolic and literal thread connecting different places around the world allows us to better understand the parallel, and related, trends of the growth of authoritarian politics and climate crises and their interconnected global consequences.

Darian-Smith looks deeply into each of these three cases of catastrophic wildfires and finds key similarities in all of them. As political leaders and big business work together in the pursuit of profits and power, anti-environmentalism has become an essential political tool enabling the rise of extreme right governments and energizing their populist supporters. These are the governments that deny climate science, reject environmental protection laws, and foster exclusionary worldviews that exacerbate climate injustice.

The fires in Australia, Brazil and the United States demand acknowledgment of the global systems of inequality that undergird them, connecting the political erosion of liberal democracy with the corrosion of the environment. Darian-Smith argues that these wildfires are closely linked through capitalism, colonialism, industrialization, and resource extraction. In thinking through wildfires as environmental and political phenomenon, Global Burning challenges readers to confront the interlocking powers that are ensuring our future ecological collapse.

Learn more about Global Burning at the Stanford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Global Burning.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Sarah Bird's "Last Dance on the Starlight Pier"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Last Dance on the Starlight Pier: A Novel by Sarah Bird.

About the book, from the publisher:

Set during the Great Depression, Sarah Bird's Last Dance on the Starlight Pier is a novel about one woman—and a nation—struggling to be reborn from the ashes.

July 3. 1932. Shivering and in shock, Evie Grace Devlin watches the Starlite Palace burn into the sea and wonders how she became a person who would cause a man to kill himself. She’d come to Galveston to escape a dark past in vaudeville and become a good person, a nurse. When that dream is cruelly thwarted, Evie is swept into the alien world of dance marathons. All that she has been denied—a family, a purpose, even love—waits for her there in the place she dreads most: the spotlight.

Last Dance on the Starlight Pier is a sweeping novel that brings to spectacular life the enthralling worlds of both dance marathons and the family-run empire of vice that was Galveston in the Thirties. Unforgettable characters tell a story that is still deeply resonant today as America learns what Evie learns, that there truly isn’t anything this country can’t do when we do it together. That indomitable spirit powers a story that is a testament to the deep well of resilience in us all that allows us to not only survive the hardest of hard times, but to find joy, friends, and even family, in them.

Visit Sarah Bird's website.

Q&A with Sarah Bird.

The Page 69 Test: Last Dance on the Starlight Pier.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven top novels of crime and coming-of-age

Samantha Jayne Allen has an MFA in fiction from Texas State University. Her writing has been published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, The Common, and Electric Literature. Raised in small towns in Texas and California, she now lives with her husband in Atlanta.

Pay Dirt Road is Allen's debut novel.

At CrimeReads she tagged "seven excellent crime meets coming-of-age novels," including:

The House Uptown by Melissa Ginsburg

I loved Ginsburg’s writing style and it was no surprise for me to learn that she is also a poet. The novel is about fourteen-year-old Ava, who after the death of her mother goes to live with her grandmother, Lane, in New Orleans. Lane is an eccentric, talented painter, and in addition to tracking Ava’s coming-of-age, the novel follows Lane’s loosening grip on reality and the explosive secret she’s been keeping finally coming to light. There’s a nod to Flannery O’Connor in the book, and there’s something in Ginsburg’s telling, too, that perfectly captures the inevitability of a violent reckoning.

Read about another entry on the list.

Q&A with Melissa Ginsburg.

The Page 69 Test: The House Uptown.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Daniel Lee's "The Right of Sovereignty"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Right of Sovereignty: Jean Bodin on the Sovereign State and the Law of Nations by Daniel Lee.

About the book, from the publisher:

Sovereignty is the vital organizing principle of modern international law. This book examines the origins of that principle in the legal and political thought of its most influential theorist, Jean Bodin (1529/30-1596). As the author argues in this study, Bodin's most lasting theoretical contribution was his thesis that sovereignty must be conceptualized as an indivisible bundle of legal rights constitutive of statehood. While these uniform 'rights of sovereignty' licensed all states to exercise numerous exclusive powers, including the absolute power to 'absolve' and release its citizens from legal duties, they were ultimately derived from, and therefore limited by, the law of nations. The book explores Bodin's creative synthesis of classical sources in philosophy, history, and the medieval legal science of Roman and canon law in crafting the rules governing state-centric politics.

The Right of Sovereignty is the first book in English on Bodin's legal and political theory to be published in nearly a half-century and surveys themes overlooked in modern Bodin scholarship: empire, war, conquest, slavery, citizenship, commerce, territory, refugees, and treaty obligations. It will interest specialists in political theory and the history of modern political thought, as well as legal history, the philosophy of law, and international law.

Learn more about The Right of Sovereignty at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: The Right of Sovereignty.

--Marshal Zeringue

Taylor Brown's "Wingwalkers," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Wingwalkers: A Novel by Taylor Brown.

The entry begins:

I tend to have what seems like a cinematic imagination, in that I often "watch" my stories unfold as I write them, as if I'm watching a film. In my opinion, Wingwalkers would make a great movie. It follows the story of a husband-wife barnstorming duo, wingwalker Della the Daring and her former WWI ace husband, Zeno Marigold, as they attempt to coax their aging biplane across America during the Great Depression, living quite literally on a wing and a prayer. Their story alternates with that of none other than William Faulkner, following the legendary novelist and thwarted fighter pilot as he comes up in the world, both in terms of his work and flying pursuits.

I think actor Tom Hardy would make a perfect Zeno. He's burly and swarthy, like Zeno, and he can exude a physical menace that speaks to the violence and trauma that hovers beneath the surface of Zeno's charismatic exterior. Also, Lawless showed us that Hardy can do a Southern-ish accent. As for Della, I think Jessica...[read on]

Visit Taylor Brown's website.

My Book, The Movie: The River of Kings.

The Page 69 Test: The River of Kings.

Writers Read: Taylor Brown (March 2020).

My Book, The Movie: Pride of Eden.

The Page 69 Test: Pride of Eden.

Q&A with Taylor Brown.

My Book, The Movie: Wingwalkers.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Tim Pratt reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Tim Pratt, author of Prison of Sleep: Book II of the Journals of Zaxony Delatree.

The entry begins:

I enjoyed a couple of the Harlan Coben adaptation shows on Netflix, and had never read any of his books, so I went to my library site and picked up what they had on hand. That turned out to be mostly the Myron Bolitar series, so I read those (and the newish spin-off, Win, about one of the supporting characters), about a dozen books in all. I love long-running private-eye series (in this case a quasi-amateur PI; Myron is a sports agent with a small background in investigation who gets entangled in various sorts of criminal complications). The structure of standalone stories with ongoing character development across the series always delights me.

The Platonic ideal of the long-running private-eye series, of course, is...[read on]

About Prison of Sleep, from the publisher:

Every time Zaxony Delatree falls asleep he wakes up on a new world. Now Zax has been joined once again by Ana, a companion he thought he left behind long ago. Ana is one of the Sleepers, a group of fellow travellers between worlds. Ana tells Zax that he is unknowingly host to a parasitic alien that exists partly in his blood and partly between dimensions. The chemical that the alien secretes is what allows Zax to travel. Every time he does, however, the parasite grows, damaging the fabric of the universes. Ana is desperate to recruit Zax to her cause and stop the alien.

But there are others who are using the parasite too, such as the cult who serve the Prisoner – an entity trapped in the dimension between universes. Can Zax, Minna, Ana and the other Sleepers band together and stop them?

Visit Tim Pratt's website.

Writers Read: Tim Pratt (October 2019).

Writers Read: Tim Pratt.

--Marshal Zeringue