Five thrillers featuring female psychopaths

Julia Bartz is a Brooklyn-based writer and practicing therapist. Her fiction writing has appeared in The South Dakota Review, InDigest Magazine, and more.

The Writing Retreat is her first novel.

At CrimeReads Bartz tagged five favorite psychological thrillers featuring "a female character who throws off societal conventions–even if the result is violence, mayhem, and murder." One title on the list:

They Never Learn by Layne Fargo

Psychopaths may be self-interested, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have their own moral code. Gorgeous and quick-witted protagonist Scarlett is a lauded professor at a university–and she’s also a serial killer. Each year, Scarlett chooses the most harmful, abusive man on campus to do away with; in her mind, she’s doing the school a favor. When the head of the school’s investigation starts getting too close to the truth, Scarlett knows she should take a break, but how can she when she’s got the perfect victim in her sight?

Read about another entry on the list.

They Never Learn is among Misha Popp's eight recent novels featuring truly fatal femmes fatales, Lesley Kara's six top crime novels about settling old scores, Heather Levy's top eight books on those darkest guilty pleasures we love to devour, Melissa Colasanti's six deliciously duplicitous female characters in thrillers, Amy Gentry's novels of the new Dark Academia canon, and Molly Odintz's six best vigilante thrillers.

My Book, The Movie: They Never Learn.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Jennifer Caplan's "Funny, You Don't Look Funny"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Funny, You Don't Look Funny: Judaism and Humor from the Silent Generation to Millennials by Jennifer Caplan.

About the book, from the publisher:

In this comprehensive approach to Jewish humor focused on the relationship between humor and American Jewish practice, Jennifer Caplan calls us to adopt a more expansive view of what it means to "do Jewish," revealing that American Jews have turned, and continue to turn, to humor as a cultural touchstone. Caplan frames the book around four generations of Jewish Americans from the Silent Generation to Millennials, highlighting a shift from the utilization of Jewish-specific markers to American-specific markers.

Jewish humor operates as a system of meaning-making for many Jewish Americans. By mapping humor onto both the generational identity of those making it and the use of Judaism within it, new insights about the development of American Judaism emerge. Caplan’s explication is innovative and insightful, engaging with scholarly discourse across Jewish studies and Jewish American history; it includes the work of Joseph Heller, Larry David, Woody Allen, Seinfeld, the Coen brothers films, and Broad City. This example of well-informed scholarship begins with an explanation of what makes Jewish humor Jewish and why Jewish humor is such a visible phenomenon. Offering ample evidence and examples along the way, Caplan guides readers through a series of phenomenological and ideological changes across generations, concluding with commentary regarding the potential influences on Jewish humor of later Millennials, Gen Z, and beyond.

Visit Jennifer Caplan's website.

The Page 99 Test: Funny, You Don't Look Funny.

--Marshal Zeringue

Julie McElwain's "Ripples in Time," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Ripples in Time by Julie McElwain.

The entry begins:

Since A Murder in Time—the first book in the series—was released to my latest installment, Ripples in Time, I have been asked who I might have been inspired by when creating Kendra. While I have often denied having anyone in mind for Kendra when I sat down to write the books, I have since realized that the subconscious is a funny thing and I may have had someone in the back of my mind, after all.

When I was a child, I used to watch late night reruns of The Avengers with John Steed and Emma Peel. The latter, played fabulously by Diana Rigg, was a great influencer. As the only girl in a family of boys, I have always loved strong female characters in books and film. Mrs. Peel was not only strong—indeed, she tended to be the karate-chopping action heroine next to the sophisticated John Steed—but she was also brilliant, beautiful, and always maintained her cool composure under enormous pressure. When Dame Diana Rigg died in 2020 and...[read on]

Visit Julie McElwain's website.

The Page 69 Test: Caught in Time.

My Book, The Movie: Betrayal in Time.

The Page 69 Test: Betrayal in Time.

Q&A with Julie McElwain.

The Page 69 Test: Shadows in Time.

My Book, The Movie: Shadows in Time.

Writers Read: Julie McElwain.

The Page 69 Test: Ripples in Time.

My Book, The Movie: Ripples in Time.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven essential books about World War II women

Christopher C. Gorham holds degrees from the University of Michigan, Tufts University and Syracuse University College of Law. After practicing law for over a decade, for the last several years he has taught Modern American History at Westford Academy, outside Boston. His writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Literary Hub, and online publications.

The Confidante: The Untold Story of the Woman Who Helped Win WWII and Shape Modern America is his first book.

At Lit Hub Gorham tagged seven favorite books about World War II women, including:

The Light of Days: The Untold Story of the Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghettos by Judy Batalion

At the bottom of a box of documents in the British Museum were dusty notebooks written in Yiddish. When Judy Batalion, the granddaughter of Polish Holocaust survivors, dusted them off she unearthed the long-lost stories of the brave Jewish women who conducted their own secret war against German soldiers from within Poland’s Jewish ghettos. In Krakow, Warsaw, and Będzin, these young women smuggled weapons, couriered coded messages, and lured flirting German soldiers to their deaths.

To do their work, some passed as Aryans, and others pretended to be Christian. Many of them, like Renia Kukielkher, were teenagers. All risked their lives. The book’s descriptions of Nazi sadism, often victimizing women and children, are difficult to read, but it makes the resourcefulness and courageousness of the “ghetto girls” all the more admirable.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Melanie Heath's "Forbidden Intimacies"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Forbidden Intimacies: Polygamies at the Limits of Western Tolerance by Melanie Heath.

About the book, from the publisher:

A poignant account of everyday polygamy and what its regulation reveals about who is viewed as an "Other"

In the past thirty years, polygamy has become a flashpoint of conflict as Western governments attempt to regulate certain cultural and religious practices that challenge seemingly central principles of family and justice. In Forbidden Intimacies, Melanie Heath comparatively investigates the regulation of polygamy in the United States, Canada, France, and Mayotte. Drawing on a wealth of ethnographic and archival sources, Heath uncovers the ways in which intimacies framed as "other" and "offensive" serve to define the very limits of Western tolerance. These regulation efforts, counterintuitively, allow the flourishing of polygamies on the ground. The case studies illustrate a continuum of justice, in which some groups, like white fundamentalist Mormons in the U.S., organize to fight against the prohibition of their families' existence, whereas African migrants in France face racialized discrimination in addition to rigid migration policies. The matrix of legal and social contexts, informed by gender, race, sexuality, and class, shapes the everyday experiences of these relationships. Heath uses the term "labyrinthine love" to conceptualize the complex ways individuals negotiate different kinds of relationships, ranging from romantic to coercive. What unites these families is the secrecy in which they must operate. As government intervention erodes their abilities to secure housing, welfare, work, and even protection from abuse, Heath exposes the huge variety of intimacies, and the power they hold to challenge heteronormative, Western ideals of love.

Follow Melanie Heath on Twitter and visit her website.

The Page 99 Test: Forbidden Intimacies.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Molly Greeley's "Marvelous"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Marvelous: A Novel by Molly Greeley.

About the book, from the publisher:

A mesmerizing novel set in the French royal court of Catherine de’ Medici during the Renaissance, which recreates the touching and surprising true story behind the Beauty and the Beast legend, from the acclaimed author of The Clergyman’s Wife and The Heiress.

1547: Pedro Gonzales, a young boy living on the island of Tenerife, understands that he is different from the other children in his village. He is mercilessly ridiculed for the hair covering his body from head to toe. When he is kidnapped off the beach near his home, he finds himself delivered by a slave broker into the dangerous and glamorous world of France’s royal court. There “Monsieur Sauvage,” as he is known, learns French, literature, and sword fighting, becoming an attendant to the French King Henri II and a particular favorite of his queen, the formidable Catherine de’ Medici. Queen Catherine considers herself a collector of unusual people and is fascinated by Pedro…and determined to find him a bride.

Catherine Raffelin is a beautiful seventeen-year-old girl whose merchant father has fallen on hard times and offers up his daughter to Queen Catherine. The queen will pay his debts, and his daughter will marry Monsieur Sauvage.

Catherine meets Pedro for the first time on their wedding day. Barely recovered from the shock of her father’s betrayal, she soon finds herself christened “Madame Sauvage” by the royal courtiers, and must learn to navigate this strange new world, and the unusual man who is now her husband.

Gorgeously written, heartbreaking and hopeful, Marvelous is the portrait of a marriage, the story of a remarkable, resilient family, and an unforgettable reimaging of one of the world’s most beloved fairy tales.

Visit Molly Greeley's website.

Q&A with Molly Greeley.

The Page 69 Test: The Heiress.

The Page 69 Test: Marvelous.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten books about extraordinary “ordinary” women

Amazon Book Review editor Al Woodworth and colleagues tagged ten books by or about "extraordinary 'ordinary' women who have shared their lives on the page," including:

A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II by Sonia Purnell

Virginia Hall was an American spy who worked undercover in France during World War II for Britain’s Special Operations Executive (SOE). She was raised to be a debutante, but Hall was more comfortable studying languages—she eventually moved abroad where she worked for the State Department. Sonia Purnell brings Hall’s exploits to entertaining, fast-paced, three dimensional life. Virginia Hall was recruited by the recently formed SOE to serve as a spy in occupied France. She posed as a newspaper reporter, enlisting civilians for the French Resistance and establishing an underground network of allies, becoming one of the most important spies during World War II. Churchill is synonymous with the Second World War; but the victory was achieved by unsung heroes like Virginia Hall.

Read about another entry on the list.

A Woman of No Importance is among Ava Glass's six top non-fiction books about real spies and Ross Johnson's twelve essential history books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Chiara Galli's "Precarious Protections"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Precarious Protections: Unaccompanied Minors Seeking Asylum in the United States by Chiara Galli.

About the book, from the publisher:

More children than ever are crossing international borders alone to seek asylum worldwide. In the past decade, over a half million children have fled from Central America to the United States, seeking safety and a chance to continue lives halted by violence. Yet upon their arrival, they fail to find the protection that our laws promise, based on the broadly shared belief that children should be safeguarded. A meticulously researched ethnography, Precarious Protections chronicles the experiences and perspectives of Central American unaccompanied minors and their immigration attorneys as they pursue applications for refugee status in the US asylum process. Chiara Galli debunks assumptions about asylum, including the idea that people are being denied protection because they file bogus claims. In practice, the United States interprets asylum law far more narrowly than what is necessary to recognize real-world experiences of escape from life-threatening violence. This is especially true for children from Central America. Galli reveals the formidable challenges of lawyering with children and exposes the human toll of the US immigration bureaucracy.

Visit Chiara Galli's website.

The Page 99 Test: Precarious Protections.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight recent novels featuring truly fatal femmes fatales

Misha Popp enjoys writing about murdery women and over-the-top baked goods, but not so much about herself. She lives in rural Massachusetts where she bakes entirely too many pies and sculpts things out of chocolate. An unrepentant school nerd, she has a collection of degrees that have nothing to do with the jobs that pay her.

Popp's new novel is A Good Day to Pie.

At CrimeReads she tagged eight truly fatal femmes fatales from recent novels, including:

Scarlett from They Never Learn – Layne Fargo

Scarlett, is, without question, the #MeToo hero the world needs. Limiting herself to one kill a year, this deadly vigilante goes after the academia’s worst sexual predators. With an opening chapter that reads almost like an AU version of Magic, Lies, and Deadly Pies, Scarlett is very much the darker side of Daisy’s feminist revenge coin. Of all the books on this list, this is the one I most want to see get a film or TV adaptation.

Read about another entry on the list.

They Never Learn is among Lesley Kara's six top crime novels about settling old scores, Heather Levy's top eight books on those darkest guilty pleasures we love to devour, Melissa Colasanti's six deliciously duplicitous female characters in thrillers, Amy Gentry's novels of the new Dark Academia canon, and Molly Odintz's six best vigilante thrillers.

My Book, The Movie: They Never Learn.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Christopher J. Preston's "Tenacious Beasts"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Tenacious Beasts: Wildlife Recoveries That Change How We Think about Animals by Christopher J. Preston.

About the book, from the publisher:

An inspiring look at wildlife species that are defying the odds and teaching important lessons about how to share a planet.

The news about wildlife is dire—more than 900 species have been wiped off the planet since industrialization. Against this bleak backdrop, however, there are also glimmers of hope and crucial lessons to be learned from animals that have defied global trends toward extinction. Bear in Italy, bison in North America, whales in the Atlantic. These populations are back from the brink, some of them in numbers unimaginable in a century. How has this happened? What shifts in thinking did it demand? In crisp, transporting prose, Christopher Preston reveals the mysteries and challenges at the heart of these resurgences.

Drawing on compelling personal stories from the researchers, Indigenous people, and activists who know the creatures best, Preston weaves together a gripping narrative of how some species are taking back vital, ecological roles. Each section of the book—farms, prairies, rivers, forests, oceans—offers a philosophical shift in how humans ought to think about animals, passionately advocating for the changes in attitude necessary for wildlife recovery.

Tenacious Beasts is quintessential nature writing for the Anthropocene, touching on different facets of ecological restoration from Indigenous knowledge to rewilding practices. More important, perhaps, the book offers a road map—and a measure of hope—for a future in which humans and animals can once again coexist.

Visit Christopher J. Preston's website.

The Page 99 Test: Tenacious Beasts.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Sarah Lyu

From my Q&A with Sarah Lyu, author of I Will Find You Again:

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

I have this habit where I come up with a title, pitch it to my editor, and then almost immediately hate it. We spent a few months going back and forth before landing on I Will Find You Again. It’s a bit long, but I love it—there’s a sense of loss and grief but also determination and hope. It encapsulates what the story is ultimately about: an intense love story and the aftermath of a deep, cutting loss.

What's in a name?

Chase Ohara, the main character and narrator of I Will Find You Again, has a name that’s...[read on]

Visit Sarah Lyu's website.

Q&A with Sarah Lyu.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine titles that rethink our narratives about health & healing

Maggie Laurel Boyd is a PhD Candidate, Teaching Fellow and Writing Fellow at Boston University. She is currently writing a dissertation on contemporary US and Irish narratives of healing.

At Electric Lit she tagged nine books that help us "rethink our existing narratives about healing and recognize that if our arc of recovery deviates from the template, then at least we’re in good company." One title on the list:

Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward

It has become a truism that “healing isn’t linear” a concept that Ward makes literal and also the subject of scrutiny in her 2013 memoir. Her reflections on the young Black men she has lost represents an utterly unique approach to narrating one’s own past, especially significant amid the current memoir boom. In alternating chapters, Ward moves forward in time from the 1970s and backward in time from 2004, desperate to make sense of the loss of her brother by approaching it from every angle. This structure prompts readers to see traces of the past in the present and of the present in the past. With heartbreaking honesty, Ward endeavors to show the tangled, traumatic reality of living with grief and of how healing can be strikingly nonlinear. Indeed, Ward reveals herself to be less healed than haunted, except in Ward’s framing, the haunting is itself a privilege, a reminder of her loved ones’ enduring presence. The memoir functions as an ode to these men’s lives, a critique of the systems that endangered them, and a testament to storytelling for its power to sustain connections.

Read about another entry on the list.

Men We Reaped is among Matthew Gavin Frank’s eleven books featuring flying things.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Kathy E. Ferguson's "Letterpress Revolution"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Letterpress Revolution: The Politics of Anarchist Print Culture by Kathy E. Ferguson.

About the book, from the publisher:

While the stock image of the anarchist as a masked bomber or brick thrower prevails in the public eye, a more representative figure should be a printer at a printing press. In Letterpress Revolution, Kathy E. Ferguson explores the importance of printers, whose materials galvanized anarchist movements across the United States and Great Britain from the late nineteenth century to the 1940s. Ferguson shows how printers—whether working at presses in homes, offices, or community centers—arranged text, ink, images, graphic markers, and blank space within the architecture of the page. Printers' extensive correspondence with fellow anarchists and the radical ideas they published created dynamic and entangled networks that brought the decentralized anarchist movements together. Printers and presses did more than report on the movement; they were constitutive of it, and their vitality in anarchist communities helps explain anarchism’s remarkable persistence in the face of continuous harassment, arrest, assault, deportation, and exile. By inquiring into the political, material, and aesthetic practices of anarchist print culture, Ferguson points to possible methods for cultivating contemporary political resistance.

Learn more about Letterpress Revolution at the Duke University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Letterpress Revolution.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Julie McElwain's "Ripples in Time"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Ripples in Time by Julie McElwain.

About Ripples in Time:

July 1816-Kendra Donovan could use a distraction. The FBI agent has been dealing with a serious case of cold feet after impulsively agreeing to marry Alec, the Marquis of Sutcliffe. And if that isn't enough, there is also the tantalizing possibility that maybe, just maybe she could return to her own timeline as the one-year anniversary of her shocking arrival in the early 19th century approaches.

When Reginald Lansing, the Earl of Craymore, is found mortally wounded on the Duke of Aldridge's land, Kendra gets the distraction that she's been looking for. At first glance, it appears as though the aristocrat is the victim of a highwayman. After all, Lansing had been traveling with the Anahita Pink, a priceless pink diamond that can be traced to the lost treasure of King John, and has since vanished. However, some things aren't adding up, and Kendra begins to suspect that there's more to the crime than a simple robbery.

Certainly, Craymore's life proves to be complicated. He had his sister, Lady Evelyn, committed to a madhouse to prevent her from marrying a fortune hunter, and recently he'd been heard arguing with his radical cousin, who is next in line to inherit the title and Craymore fortune. Both could benefit from the earl's untimely death. On the other hand, anyone who managed to get their hands on the Anahita Pink would benefit.

No one knows better than Kendra that humanity's darker impulses can cause devastating ripples. And when the killer strikes again, Kendra realizes that her investigation is more than a puzzle, more than a distraction-it is a terrifying game of cat and mouse against a ruthless killer, who will stop at nothing to win.

Visit Julie McElwain's website.

The Page 69 Test: Caught in Time.

My Book, The Movie: Betrayal in Time.

The Page 69 Test: Betrayal in Time.

Q&A with Julie McElwain.

The Page 69 Test: Shadows in Time.

My Book, The Movie: Shadows in Time.

Writers Read: Julie McElwain.

The Page 69 Test: Ripples in Time.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten cads in fiction

Charlotte Vassell studied History at the University of Liverpool and completed a Master’s in Art History at the School of Oriental & African Studies before training as an actor at Drama Studio London. Other than treading the boards Vassell has also worked in advertising, as a "headhunter" and as a purveyor of silk top hats.

In her debut novel, The Other Half, "the antagonist, Rupert Beauchamp, is a terrible Wodehousian wanker with a title, a fortune which his ancestors grabbed during the Raj, and a very good motive for murdering his Instagram-influencer girlfriend."

At the Guardian Vassell tagged ten of Rupert’s literary ancestors, including:

Tom Buchanan in The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald

Tom, horrendously wealthy midwesterner, polo player and white supremacist is one of Fitzgerald’s most repugnant creations. I take comfort that Fitzgerald based him on his first love’s husband – petty literary-based romantic revenge at its best.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Great Gatsby appears among Sarah Blake's top ten tales about the rich, Lupita Nyong’o’s ten favorite books, Christian Blauvelt's five top NYC-set novels that became NYC-set films, Kate Williams's six best books, Jeff Somers's ten best book covers...ever and seven most disastrous parties in fiction, Brian Boone's six "beloved classic novels whose authors nearly cursed with a terrible title," four books that changed C.K. Stead, four books that changed Jodi Picoult, Joseph Connolly's top ten novels about style, Nick Lake’s ten favorite fictional tricksters and tellers of untruths in books, the Independent's list of the fifteen best opening lines in literature, Molly Schoemann-McCann's list of five of the lamest girlfriends in fiction, Honeysuckle Weeks's six best books, Elizabeth Wilhide's nine illustrious houses in fiction, Suzette Field's top ten literary party hosts, Robert McCrums's ten best closing lines in literature, Molly Driscoll's ten best literary lessons about love, Jim Lehrer's six favorite 20th century novels, John Mullan's lists of ten of the best clocks in literature and ten of the best misdirected messages, Tad Friend's seven best novels about WASPs, Kate Atkinson's top ten novels, Garrett Peck's best books about Prohibition, Robert McCrum's top ten books for Obama officials, Jackie Collins' six best books, and John Krasinski's six best books, and is on the American Book Review's list of the 100 best last lines from novels. Gatsby's Jordan Baker is Josh Sorokach's biggest fictional literary crush.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Paul J. Gutacker's "The Old Faith in a New Nation"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Old Faith in a New Nation: American Protestants and the Christian Past by Paul J. Gutacker.

About the book, from the publisher:

Conventional wisdom holds that tradition and history meant little to nineteenth-century American Protestants, who relied on common sense and "the Bible alone." The Old Faith in a New Nation challenges this portrayal by recovering evangelical engagement with the Christian past. Even when they appeared to be most scornful toward tradition, most optimistic and forward-looking, and most confident in their grasp of the Bible, evangelicals found themselves returning, time and again, to Christian history. They studied religious historiography, reinterpreted the history of the church, and argued over its implications for the present. Between the Revolution and the Civil War, American Protestants were deeply interested in the meaning of the Christian past.

Paul J. Gutacker draws from hundreds of print sources-sermons, books, speeches, legal arguments, political petitions, and more-to show how ordinary educated Americans remembered and used Christian history. While claiming to rely on the Bible alone, antebellum Protestants frequently turned to the Christian past on questions of import: how should the government relate to religion? Could Catholic immigrants become true Americans? What opportunities and rights should be available to women? To African Americans? Protestants across denominations answered these questions not only with the Bible but also with history. By recovering the ways in which American evangelicals remembered and used Christian history, The Old Faith in a New Nation shows how religious memory shaped the nation and interrogates the meaning of "biblicism."

Follow Paul J. Gutacker on Twitter.

The Page 99 Test: The Old Faith in a New Nation.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Julie McElwain reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Julie McElwain, author of Ripples in Time.

Her entry begins:

I recently had the pleasure of reading The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley. The story is a beautifully written whodunit told from multiple viewpoints, and alternates between three days in the past and the present (when the body is discovered). Foley gathers a group of friends (most having met at university) in a remote lodge in the Highlands, and allows the characters to propel the story forward by slowly revealing their petty disagreements, jealousies, and hatreds, which have...[read on]

About Ripples in Time:

July 1816-Kendra Donovan could use a distraction. The FBI agent has been dealing with a serious case of cold feet after impulsively agreeing to marry Alec, the Marquis of Sutcliffe. And if that isn't enough, there is also the tantalizing possibility that maybe, just maybe she could return to her own timeline as the one-year anniversary of her shocking arrival in the early 19th century approaches.

When Reginald Lansing, the Earl of Craymore, is found mortally wounded on the Duke of Aldridge's land, Kendra gets the distraction that she's been looking for. At first glance, it appears as though the aristocrat is the victim of a highwayman. After all, Lansing had been traveling with the Anahita Pink, a priceless pink diamond that can be traced to the lost treasure of King John, and has since vanished. However, some things aren't adding up, and Kendra begins to suspect that there's more to the crime than a simple robbery.

Certainly, Craymore's life proves to be complicated. He had his sister, Lady Evelyn, committed to a madhouse to prevent her from marrying a fortune hunter, and recently he'd been heard arguing with his radical cousin, who is next in line to inherit the title and Craymore fortune. Both could benefit from the earl's untimely death. On the other hand, anyone who managed to get their hands on the Anahita Pink would benefit.

No one knows better than Kendra that humanity's darker impulses can cause devastating ripples. And when the killer strikes again, Kendra realizes that her investigation is more than a puzzle, more than a distraction-it is a terrifying game of cat and mouse against a ruthless killer, who will stop at nothing to win.

Visit Julie McElwain's website.

The Page 69 Test: Caught in Time.

My Book, The Movie: Betrayal in Time.

The Page 69 Test: Betrayal in Time.

Q&A with Julie McElwain.

The Page 69 Test: Shadows in Time.

My Book, The Movie: Shadows in Time.

Writers Read: Julie McElwain.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five crime novels that deepen our appreciation of collective trauma

Frank Sennett has an MFA in creative writing from the University of Montana and a journalism degree from Northwestern University. He has taught creative writing at UCLA Extension and has published nine books. He has served as a senior leader at multiple media outlets, including Time Out Chicago and MTV.com. He also spent one lucky season in the Wrigley Field press box covering the Chicago Cubs. He lives in Chicago with his wife, three children and two cats.

Sennett's new novel is Shadow State.

At CrimeReads he tagged five "crime novels that play out in the long shadows of national trauma [and] how they can help us contextualize and explore tragic events in a deeper way than the news and social media cycles allow." One title on the list:

Lou Berney, November Road

In my new series opener Shadow State, protagonist Rafe Hendrix is on the trail of a mad man re-creating political assassinations as he prepares to kill the sitting president. So I would be remiss to skip Berney’s novel set in the aftermath of JFK’s murder. In capturing the mood and atmosphere of the time through the eyes of his well-drawn characters, Berney gives readers—especially those of us who were not yet born on that infamous day—a deeper understanding of the societal shock and disillusionment that followed Kennedy’s assassination.

In detailing the specific human experiences of national tragedies, including those that are seldom included in breaking news reports, crime novels like these are as important in their own way as they are entertaining.

Read about another entry on the list.

November Road is among Dwyer Murphy's eleven top modern classics of conspiracy noir.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Amy Dockser Marcus's "We the Scientists"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: We the Scientists: How a Daring Team of Parents and Doctors Forged a New Path for Medicine by Amy Dockser Marcus.

About the book, from the publisher:

A Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter’s moving narrative of a group of patient advocates who are revolutionizing the way medical research is conducted.

For more than half a century, medical advances have been driven by investigators launching experiments inside labs. Science is often conducted in isolation and geared toward the long view. This is the story of a group of people who tried to force the lab doors open: parents whose children had been diagnosed with a rare and fatal genetic condition known as Niemann-Pick disease type C. The disease prevents cells from processing cholesterol, which leads to the progressive loss of the brain’s and the body’s ability to function. Recognizing that there would never be a treatment in time to save their children if things stayed the same, the parents set up a collaboration with researchers and doctors in search of a cure.

Reconciling different views of science took work. The parents, doctors, and researchers didn’t always agree—among themselves or with each other. But together they endeavored to accelerate the development of new drugs. The parents became citizen scientists, identifying promising new treatments and helping devise experiments. They recorded data about the children and co-authored scientific papers sharing findings. They engaged directly with the FDA at each step of the drug approval process. Along the way, they advanced the radical idea that science must belong to us all.

Amy Dockser Marcus shows what happens when a community joins forces with doctors and researchers to try to save children’s lives. Their extraordinary social experiment reveals new pathways for treating disease and conducting research. Science may be forever changed.

Follow Amy Dockser Marcus on Twitter.

The Page 99 Test: We the Scientists.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Kitty Zeldis's "The Dressmakers of Prospect Heights"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Dressmakers of Prospect Heights: A Novel by Kitty Zeldis.

About the book, from the publisher:

For fans of Fiona Davis, Beatriz Williams, and Joanna Goodman, a mesmerizing historical novel from Kitty Zeldis, the author of Not Our Kind, about three women in 1920s New York City and the secrets they hold.

Brooklyn, 1924. As New York City enters the jazz age, the lives of three very different women are about to converge in unexpected ways. Recently arrived from New Orleans, Beatrice is working to establish a chic new dress shop with help from Alice, the orphaned teenage ward she brought north with her. Down the block, newlywed Catherine is restless in her elegant brownstone, longing for a baby she cannot conceive.

When Bea befriends Catherine and the two start to become close, Alice feels abandoned and envious, and runs away to Manhattan. Her departure sets into motion a series of events that will force each woman to confront the painful secrets of her past in order to move into the happier future she seeks.

Moving from the bustling streets of early twentieth century New York City to late nineteenth-century Russia and the lively quarters of New Orleans in the 1910s, The Dressmakers of Prospect Heights is a story of the families we are born into and the families we choose, and of the unbreakable bonds between women.

Kitty Zeldis is the pseudonym for a novelist and non-fiction writer of books for adults and children. She lives with her family in Brooklyn, NY.

My Book, The Movie: Not Our Kind.

Writers Read: Kitty Zeldis.

Coffee with a Canine: Kitty Zeldis & Dottie.

The Page 69 Test: Not Our Kind.

The Page 69 Test: The Dressmakers of Prospect Heights.

--Marshal Zeringue

Peggy Rothschild's "Playing Dead," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Playing Dead by Peggy Rothschild.

About the book, from the publisher:

Molly Madison is a former cop and P. I. Three months before the book begins, she relocated from Massachusetts to California to escape the rumors and suspicion about her possible involvement in her husband’s murder. Now working as a dog trainer, Molly is getting to know her new beachside town. She’s thirty-seven and has two dogs of her own, Harlow, a golden retriever, and Noodle, a Saint Berdoodle. When she takes her dogs to Playtime Academy to try out their classes, everything’s going great—until one of her dogs discovers a dead body. The universally unpopular victim was seen having a heated argument with Felicity—another agility handler—earlier in the day. Molly doesn’t believe Felicity is a killer, but her new friend won’t tell her what the fight was about. With a murder charge hanging over Felicity’s head, Molly begins investigating—with the help of her dogs.

I don’t usually picture actors when I’m writing. In Playing Dead, the lone exception was the character of Shondra Davis. The entire time I was writing her, I pictured Erica Tazel. But as I widened my thought process to dream-cast my book, the following actors came to mind:

For Molly Madison, I can easily see the wonderful Mary Elizabeth Winstead. She’s played a range of characters in her career and her portrayal of Nikki Swango in Fargo was perfect. She’s great at messaging inner strength—as well as physical strength—and does so well with light touches of humor.

Miguel Vasquez is a detective in the Pier Point Police Department and Molly’s boyfriend. The two rushed into a relationship and now Molly suspects her smart, sexy man is...[read on]

Visit Peggy Rothschild's website.

Q&A with Peggy Rothschild.

The Page 69 Test: Playing Dead.

My Book, The Movie: Playing Dead.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Samantha Barbas's "Actual Malice"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Actual Malice: Civil Rights and Freedom of the Press in New York Times v. Sullivan by Samantha Barbas.

About the book, from the publisher:

A deeply researched legal drama that documents this landmark First Amendment ruling—one that is more critical and controversial than ever.

Actual Malice tells the full story of New York Times v. Sullivan, the dramatic case that grew out of segregationists' attempts to quash reporting on the civil rights movement. In its landmark 1964 decision, the Supreme Court held that a public official must prove "actual malice" or reckless disregard of the truth to win a libel lawsuit, providing critical protections for free speech and freedom of the press.

Drawing on previously unexplored sources, including the archives of the New York Times Company and civil rights leaders, Samantha Barbas tracks the saga behind one of the most important First Amendment rulings in history. She situates the case within the turbulent 1960s and the history of the press, alongside striking portraits of the lawyers, officials, judges, activists, editors, and journalists who brought and defended the case. As the Sullivan doctrine faces growing controversy, Actual Malice reminds us of the stakes of the case that shaped American reporting and public discourse as we know it.

Visit Samantha Barbas's website.

The Page 99 Test: Laws of Image.

The Page 99 Test: Newsworthy.

The Page 99 Test: The Rise and Fall of Morris Ernst, Free Speech Renegade.

The Page 99 Test: Actual Malice.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight top action/adventure thrillers

Last summer at the Amazon Book Review Vannessa Cronin tagged eight favorite action/adventure thrillers, including:

Heat 2 by Michael Mann and Meg Gardiner

This book has not been screen adapted yet, but given its provenance, it’s surely just a matter of time. The first crime novel co-written by Meg Gardiner and Michael Mann—the latter is of course, the director of Heat, likely the greatest heist movie ever made—Heat 2 picks up the story where the movie left off, so it’s a sequel. But it’s also a prequel, taking readers back to the early days of the lead characters’ careers: homicide detective Vincent Hanna (played in Heat by Al Pacino) and criminals Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro) and Chris Shiherlis (Val Kilmer). This will be a must for fans of the movie, but the novel stands on its own too, as an epic L.A. crime feast.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top New Jersey crime novels

Kimberly Giarratano is an author of mysteries for teens and adults. Her debut novel, Grunge Gods and Graveyards, won the 2015 Silver Falchion Award for Best YA at Killer Nashville. A former librarian, she is currently an instructor at a SUNY Orange County Community College and a reviewer for BookPage. She is also the chapter liaison for Sisters in Crime.

Born in New York and raised in New Jersey, Giarratano and her husband moved to the Poconos to raise their three kids amid black bears and wild turkeys. While she doesn’t miss the Jersey traffic, she does miss a good bagel and lox.

Her new novel is Death of A Dancing Queen.

At CrimeReads Giarratano tagged a few favorite Garden State crime titles, including:

When One Man Dies by Dave White

Former cop and recovering drug addict Jackson Donne turns to private investigation to pay the bills. When his friend, an old-timer, is killed in a hit-and-run outside a New Brunswick bar, Donne takes the case. He also gets hired by a woman to tail her unfaithful husband in Morristown. As Donne drives up and down Route 287, he is being sidelined by his shady ex-partner, Bill Martin. Jackson Donne is a chip off Philip Marlowe, complete with drinking problem, lady trouble, and run-ins with the law. When One Man Dies was originally published in 2007, so Donne is often using Mapquest for directions or circling streets until he finds his mark — very nostalgic. The second book takes place seven years later so life will surely change for Donne. This is a superb series for Raymond Chandler fans looking for an East Coast contemporary.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Page 69 Test: When One Man Dies.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Ryan Donovan's "Broadway Bodies"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Broadway Bodies: A Critical History of Conformity by Ryan Donovan.

About the book, from the publisher:

Broadway has body issues.

What is a Broadway Body? Broadway has long preserved the ideology of the "Broadway Body": the hyper-fit, exceptionally able, triple-threat performer who represents how Broadway musicals favor certain kinds of bodies. Casting is always a political act, situated within a power structure that gives preference to the Broadway Body.

In Broadway Bodies, author Ryan Donovan explores how ability, sexuality, and size intersect with gender, race, and ethnicity in casting and performance. To understand these intersectional relationships, he poses a series of questions: Why did A Chorus Line, a show that sought to individuate dancers, inevitably make dancers indistinguishable? How does the use of fat suits in musicals like Dreamgirls and Hairspray stigmatize fatness? What were the political implications of casting two straight actors as the gay couple in La Cage aux Folles in 1983? How did deaf actors change the sound of musicals in Deaf West's Broadway revivals? Whose bodies does Broadway cast and whose does it cast aside?

In answering these questions, Broadway Bodies tells a history of Broadway's inclusion of various forms of embodied difference while revealing its simultaneous ambivalence toward non-conforming bodies.

Visit Ryan Donovan's website.

The Page 99 Test: Broadway Bodies.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Josh Riedel's "Please Report Your Bug Here"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Please Report Your Bug Here: A Novel by Josh Riedel.

About the book, from the publisher:

Once you sign an NDA it's good for life. Meaning legally, I shouldn't tell you this story. But I have to.

A college grad with the six-figure debt to prove it, Ethan Block views San Francisco as the place to be. Yet his job at hot new dating app DateDate is a far cry from what he envisioned. Instead of making the world a better place, he reviews flagged photo queues, overworked and stressed out. But that's about to change.

Reeling from a breakup, Ethan decides to view his algorithmically matched soulmate on DateDate. He overrides the system and clicks on the profile. Then, he disappears. One minute, he’s in a windowless office, and the next, he’s in a field of endless grass, gasping for air. When Ethan snaps back to DateDate HQ, he’s convinced a coding issue caused the blip. Except for anyone to believe him, he’ll need evidence. As Ethan embarks on a wild goose chase, moving from dingy startup think tanks to Silicon Valley’s dominant tech conglomerate, it becomes clear that there’s more to DateDate than meets the eye. With the stakes rising, and a new world at risk, Ethan must choose who—and what—he believes in.

Adventurous and hypertimely, Please Report Your Bug Here is an inventive millennial coming-of-age story, a dark exploration of the corruption now synonymous with Big Tech, and, above all, a testament to the power of human connection in our digital era.

Visit Josh Riedel's website.

The Page 69 Test: Please Report Your Bug Here.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Amy Poeppel

From my Q&A with Amy Poeppel, author of The Sweet Spot: A Novel:

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

I thought of the title for The Sweet Spot early in the process of writing this book. I wanted a title that worked on multiple levels, and most importantly, one that set the right tone for the novel. Greenwich Village, the setting of my story, is in many ways the sweet spot of New York City; it’s beautiful, a little gritty, and very lively at any time of day or night. In the novel, there’s a dive bar in the basement of the family brownstone called The Sweet Spot, and it’s a place where all manner of fun and happenstance can occur. The many characters in the novel are trying to find their own sweet spots, the exact place where...[read on]

Visit Amy Poeppel's website.

The Page 69 Test: Musical Chairs.

Q&A with Amy Poeppel.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top books about eerie islands

Carole Johnstone is an award-winning writer from Scotland, whose short stories have been published all over the world. Her debut novel, Mirrorland, is a psychological suspense thriller with a gothic twist, set in Edinburgh. Her second novel, The Blackhouse, is a very unusual murder-mystery set on a fictional island off the west coast of the Isle of Lewis.

[Q&A with Carole Johnstone]

Having grown up in Lanarkshire, she now lives in Glencoe in the Highlands of Scotland, although her heart belongs to the wild islands of the Outer Hebrides.

At Shepherd Johnstone tagged five favorite books about eerie islands, including:

Red Bones by Ann Cleeves

I have read and loved all of Ann Cleeves’ books about Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez, set on the Scottish Shetland Islands. Red Bones is about two feuding families with generations of secrets between them, who are somehow involved in at least two murders. Islands, particularly those that are small and/or remote, foster communities that are incredibly tight-knit by necessity – often your survival entirely depends on one another. That has always made me wonder what lengths such communities might go to in order to survive; what secrets they might have to keep, what lies they might have to tell if something terrible happens that could jeopardise their whole existence. My time living on the Isle of Lewis in the Scottish Outer Hebrides very much inspired The Blackhouse, but it was in no small part also inspired by the wild Shetland Islands as described in Cleeves’ wonderful stories.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Page 99 Test: Red Bones.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Peter H. Wilson's "Iron and Blood"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Iron and Blood: A Military History of the German-Speaking Peoples since 1500 by Peter H. Wilson.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the author of the acclaimed The Thirty Years War and Heart of Europe, a masterful, landmark reappraisal of German military history, and of the preconceptions about German militarism since before the rise of Prussia and the world wars.

German military history is typically viewed as an inexorable march to the rise of Prussia and the two world wars, the road paved by militarism and the result a specifically German way of war. Peter Wilson challenges this narrative. Looking beyond Prussia to German-speaking Europe across the last five centuries, Wilson finds little unique or preordained in German militarism or warfighting.

Iron and Blood takes as its starting point the consolidation of the Holy Roman Empire, which created new mechanisms for raising troops but also for resolving disputes diplomatically. Both the empire and the Swiss Confederation were largely defensive in orientation, while German participation in foreign wars was most often in partnership with allies. The primary aggressor in Central Europe was not Prussia but the Austrian Habsburg monarchy, yet Austria’s strength owed much to its ability to secure allies. Prussia, meanwhile, invested in militarization but maintained a part-time army well into the nineteenth century. Alongside Switzerland, which relied on traditional militia, both states exemplify the longstanding civilian element within German military power.

Only after Prussia’s unexpected victory over France in 1871 did Germans and outsiders come to believe in a German gift for warfare—a special capacity for high-speed, high-intensity combat that could overcome numerical disadvantage. It took two world wars to expose the fallacy of German military genius. Yet even today, Wilson argues, Germany’s strategic position is misunderstood. The country now seen as a bastion of peace spends heavily on defense in comparison to its peers and is deeply invested in less kinetic contemporary forms of coercive power.

Learn more about Iron and Blood at the Harvard University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: The Thirty Years War.

The Page 99 Test: Iron and Blood.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Alyssa Wees reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Alyssa Wees, author of Nocturne: A Novel.

Here entry begins:

The thing that first drew me to Strega by Johanne Lykke Holm was the title, which means “witch” in Italian. It’s about a nineteen-year-old girl who goes to work as a maid in a hotel where there are no guests day after day. But after a large and glamorous party is held there one night, a girl goes missing and nothing will be the same. This is a short book, but it’s as sharp as a blade, dripping with a haunting, oppressive atmosphere and characters that purposefully blend together into one voice, one piercing cry against the boundaries and expectations of womanhood. It’s surreal and labyrinthe, a ghost story though there isn’t...[read on]

About Nocturne, from the publisher:

In this haunting, evocative fantasy set in 1930s Chicago, a talented ballerina finds herself torn between her dreams and her desires when she’s pursued by a secretive patron who may be more than he seems.

Growing up in Chicago’s Little Sicily in the years following the Great War, Grace Dragotta has always wanted to be a ballerina, ever since she first peered through the windows of the Near North Ballet company. So when Grace is orphaned, she chooses the ballet as her home, imagining herself forever ensconced in a transcendent world of light and beauty so different from her poor, immigrant upbringing.

Years later, with the Great Depression in full swing, Grace has become the company’s new prima ballerina—though achieving her long-held dream is not the triumph she once envisioned. Time and familiarity have tarnished that shining vision, and her new position means the loss of her best friend in the world. Then she attracts the attention of the enigmatic Master La Rosa as her personal patron and realizes the world is not as small or constricted as she had come to fear.

Who is her mysterious patron, and what does he want from her? As Grace begins to unlock the Master’s secrets, she discovers that there is beauty in darkness as well as light, finds that true friendship cannot be broken by time or distance, and realizes there may be another way entirely to achieve the transcendence she has always sought.

Visit Alyssa Wees's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Waking Forest.

The Page 69 Test: The Waking Forest.

Writers Read: Alyssa Wees.

--Marshal Zeringue