Coffee with a canine: Nan Fischer & Boone

The current featured duo at Coffee with a Canine: Nan Fischer & Boone.

The author, on how she and Boone were united:

I grew up with rescue Beagles from a medical testing facility, but allergies led my husband and I to get a Vizsla as they're super short haired and easy to keep clean. Even so, my husband had hives around his eyes for a full year before his body got used to Boone! Our dog was rejected from the show ring (of course we think he's perfect) and so the breeder wanted a home for him where he'd have tons of love and exercise and...[read on]

About Fischer's new novel, The Book of Silver Linings:

Within the margins of an antique book, a timeless love waits for a young woman on the precipice of a terrible mistake in this enthralling exploration of fate and independence from the acclaimed author of Some of It Was Real.

Constance Sparks always says yes…when her capricious best friend needs money; when her boss gives her more responsibility without a raise; and when her boyfriend, Hayden, who is very kind but also secretive, asks her to marry him.

While planning their wedding—and struggling with anxiety about the right course for her future—Constance researches the history of her antique engagement ring and unearths the name of a man who might be connected to it, plus his tragic love story. When she finds a book of letters in her library’s old manuscript section written by the long-dead man, Constance is deeply touched by his words and leaves a note for him confessing her uncertainty and doubts. She’s shocked days later to find a response tucked among the pages.

As the notes continue to arrive, Constance finds herself quickly falling in love with a ghost and putting her real-life relationship in jeopardy. Will a bond based on letters impossibly sent from the past derail her future? Or will Constance discover her voice and risk everything for the chance to somehow connect with her true soul mate?

Visit Nan Fischer's website.

Writers Read: Nancy Richardson Fischer (October 2019).

My Book, The Movie: The Speed of Falling Objects.

The Page 69 Test: The Speed of Falling Objects.

Coffee with a Canine: Nan Fischer & Boone.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine unforgettable novels about protagonists returning home

Sara Flannery Murphy grew up in Arkansas, where she divided her time between Little Rock and Eureka Springs, a small artists’ community in the Ozark Mountains. She received her MFA in creative writing at Washington University in St. Louis and studied library science in British Columbia. She lives in Utah with her husband and her two young sons.

Murphy is the author of The Possessions (2017), Girl One (2021), and The Wonder State (2023).

[My Book, The Movie: The Possessions; The Page 69 Test: The Possessions; Writers Read: Sara Flannery Murphy (March 2017).]

At CrimeReads she tagged "nine favorite novels about protagonists going back home – both thrillers and more lighthearted stories." One title on the list:

The Good Ones by Polly Stewart

The death of Nicola’s mother sends her back to her Appalachian hometown, intending to sell her mother’s house and swiftly depart again. But the town is irrevocably haunted by Nicola’s previous best friend, Lauren, who went missing under mysterious circumstances. And, as it turns out, the town is haunted by past versions of Nicola, too. In her atmospheric thriller, Stewart deftly explores the ways that our understanding of our younger selves is clouded by the stories we tell, and that others may remember events from entirely different angles.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Sabine Durrant

From my Q&A with Sabine Durrant, author of Sun Damage:

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

With every novel, I have a working title which I think is brilliant and in every case my publisher disagrees wildly and we play title ping-pong for several weeks until we finally come up with something that everyone’s happy with. My working title for Sun Damage was Lulu. The main character in the book is a con artist, who takes on personas and plays with identity, and I liked having a title that dealt with that head on (’Lulu’ isn’t her real name). But Sun Damage, which is what it ended up as, is a much better title. It tells you more. It gives you an atmosphere. Lulu could be a romantic comedy, or social realism or a pop star’s biography. Sun Damage could only be a thriller. It immediately sets up a tension between expectation and reality, between vacations in a sunny clime (the south of France) and...[read on]

Visit Sabine Durrant's Twitter perch and Instagram page.

The Page 69 Test: Sun Damage.

Q&A with Sabine Durrant.

--Marshal Zeringue

John Milas's "The Militia House," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Militia House by John Milas.

The entry begins:

My debut novel follows a small team of US Marines deployed to Afghanistan in 2010. The characters are already exhausted by their jobs, weary of each other, and disillusioned by the course of the War in Afghanistan when their routines are interrupted by a haunted house near their current duty station in the Helmand Province. Imagine John Cena acting in The Marine. Now imagine the opposite of that, in addition to ensuring that all of the actors are younger than what we're used to seeing in war films and you're approaching what would be more realistic for an adaptation of my book. We can cast some celebrities, but please no pro wrestlers.

I see a young Peter Sarsgaard as Corporal Loyette after his role in Jarhead, but here he would need to play it cold and bitter and he would need to be younger than he was in Jarhead.

For Blount I envision...[read on]

Visit John Milas's website.

Q&A with John Milas.

My Book, The Movie: The Militia House.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten books by neglected female thinkers

Regan Penaluna is a writer with a master’s degree in journalism and a PhD in philosophy. Previously, she was an editor at Nautilus Magazine and Guernica, where she wrote and edited long-form stories and interviews. A feature she wrote was listed in the Atlantic as one of “100 Exceptional Works of Journalism.”

She lives in Brooklyn.

Penaluna's new book is How to Think Like a Woman: Four Women Philosophers Who Taught Me How to Love the Life of the Mind.

At the Guardian she tagged ten "books by women, some of them long overlooked, but all deserving to be better known." One title on the list:

Love’s Work by Gillian Rose

Sometimes philosophy can be frustratingly dull. But in this 1995 memoir, Rose demonstrates how it can be so much more than “cleverness, a game” of the academy. In the wake of a terminal cancer diagnosis, she mercilessly examines her own suffering, while working out what is love, what is philosophy, and what is a life lived well. She reconsiders some of her earlier commitments to feminism and its ability to speak to her in this profound existential moment, and whether you’re persuaded by her or not, it’s a powerful, beautiful read.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Alan Philps's "The Red Hotel"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Red Hotel: Moscow 1941, the Metropol Hotel, and the Untold Story of Stalin's Propaganda War by Alan Philps.

About the book, from the publisher:

The untold history of Moscow's Metropol hotel—a fervent spot of intrigue, secrets, and the center of Stalin's nefarious propaganda during WWII.

In 1941, when German armies were marching towards Moscow, Lenin’s body was moved from his tomb on Red Square and taken to Siberia. By 1945, a victorious Stalin had turned a poor country into a victorious superpower. Over the course of those four years, Stalin, at Churchill's insistence, accepted an Anglo-American press corps in Moscow to cover the Eastern Front. To turn these reporters into Kremlin mouthpieces, Stalin imposed the most draconian controls – unbending censorship, no visits to the battle front, and a ban on contact with ordinary citizens.

The Red Hotel explores this gilded cage of the Metropol Hotel. They enjoyed lavish supplies of caviar and had their choice of young women to employ as translators and share their beds. On the surface, this regime served Stalin well: his plans to control Eastern Europe as a Sovietised ‘outer empire’ were never reported and the most outrageous Soviet lies went unchallenged.

But beneath the surface the Metropol was roiling with intrigue. While some of the translators turned journalists into robotic conveyors of Kremlin propaganda, others were secret dissidents who whispered to reporters the reality of Soviet life and were punished with sentences in the Gulag. Using British archives and Soviet sources, the unique role of the women of the Metropol, both as consummate propagandists and secret dissenters, is told for the first time.

At the end of the war when Lenin returned to Red Square, the reporters went home, but the memory of Stalin’s ruthless control of the wartime narrative lived on in the Kremlin. From the weaponization of disinformation to the falsification of history, from the moving of borders to the neutralisation of independent states, the story of the Metropol mirrors the struggles of our own modern era.

Visit Alan Philps's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Boy from Baby House 10.

The Page 99 Test: The Red Hotel.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Sabine Durrant's "Sun Damage"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Sun Damage: A Novel by Sabine Durrant.

About the book, from the publisher:

The heat is intense. The secrets are stifling. And there is no escape.

In a tiny village in Provence, nine guests arrive at a luxury holiday home.

The visitors know each other well, or at least they think they do.

The only stranger among them is Lulu, the young woman catering their stay. But Lulu is not exactly the woman on the video the guests thought they’d hired. Turns out Lulu has plenty to hide—and nowhere to run as the heat rises.

In this seemingly idyllic getaway, under the scorching sun, loyalties will be tested, secrets exposed, and tensions pushed to the brink . . .

Dripping in intrigue, Sun Damage is a glamorous, witty, and totally riveting story chock full of secrets, lies and . . . more lies.

Visit Sabine Durrant's Twitter perch and Instagram page.

The Page 69 Test: Sun Damage.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven books about daughters grieving their fathers

Kristina Busch is a lesbian writer living in Minnesota. She is an intern at Electric Literature, a prose editor for the Lumiere Review, and a staff editor at HerStry. She holds a BA in English from the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities.

At Electric Lit Busch tagged "seven books [that] portray the fragile and complex relationships between fathers and daughters, and the shock as that bond is forever severed," including:

H Is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald

After the death of her photojournalist father, MacDonald makes a shift in her life and decides to train a young goshawk, a wildly misunderstood species of bird that faced near extinction hundreds of years ago. As she revisits T.H. White’s misguided 1951 book The Goshawk, MacDonald sees her own experience mirroring the author’s: the fear of making a vital mistake and risk the hawk loathing you, the projection of the child-self as the headstrong hawk and the adult-self as its empathetic and patient teacher. In this gripping, unflinching love letter to birds and falconry, MacDonald writes, “Some deep part of me was trying to rebuild itself, and its model was right there on my fist. The hawk was everything I wanted to be: solidarity, self-possessed, free from grief, and numb to the hurts of human life. I was turning into a hawk.”

Read about another entry on the list.

H Is for Hawk is among Raynor Winn's nine top nature memoirs, Lit Hub's ten best memoirs of the decade, Sigrid Nunez's six favorite books that feature animals, Sam Miller's top ten books about fathers, Barack Obama's summer 2016 reading list, Jeffrey Lent's top ten books about justice and redemption, and Alex Hourston’s ten top unlikely friendships in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with John Milas

From my Q&A with John Milas, author of The Militia House: A Novel:

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

There's inherent tension when you have an obvious, literal title but the phrase isn't used immediately in the text. In the case of "militia house" not being seen as a phrase until chapter three, I hope the reader is wondering, "What is the militia house? Why is it important? Where is it? What's inside?" Things like that. The title implies a question for the reader, which establishes early, page-turning momentum. I love studying James A. Michener and Philip K. Dick as their titles range from inadequate to ridiculous. Between the two of them, they've come up with Space, Alaska, The Novel, VALIS, Ubik, and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. I mean, what do I do with a title like Space? As a reader, I'm wondering beforehand, is this a book that is about cosmic space, interior space, space in an abstract sense? I'm not sure the title pulls me into any of that in a way that generates inherent tension in a compelling way. On the other side of the coin, you've got...[read on]

Visit John Milas's website.

Q&A with John Milas.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Doris L. Bergen's "Between God and Hitler"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Between God and Hitler: Military Chaplains in Nazi Germany by Doris L. Bergen.

About the book, from the publisher:

During the Second World War, approximately 1000 Christian chaplains accompanied Wehrmacht forces wherever they went, from Poland to France, Greece, North Africa, and the Soviet Union. Chaplains were witnesses to atrocity and by their presence helped normalize extreme violence and legitimate its perpetrators. Military chaplains played a key role in propagating a narrative of righteousness that erased Germany's victims and transformed the aggressors into noble figures who suffered but triumphed over their foes. Between God and Hitler is the first book to examine Protestant and Catholic military chaplains in Germany from Hitler's rise to power, to defeat, collapse, and Allied occupation. Drawing on a wide array of sources – chaplains' letters and memoirs, military reports, Jewish testimonies, photographs, and popular culture – this book offers insight into how Christian clergy served the cause of genocide, sometimes eagerly, sometimes reluctantly, even unknowingly, but always loyally.

Learn more about Between God and Hitler at the Cambridge University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Between God and Hitler.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five time travel novels that explore what it means to be human

Holly Smale is the author of Geek Girl, Model Misfit, Picture Perfect, and All That Glitters. She was unexpectedly spotted by a top London modeling agency at the age of fifteen and spent the following two years falling over on catwalks, going bright red and breaking things she couldn’t afford to replace. By the time Smale had graduated from Bristol University with a BA in English Literature and an MA in Shakespeare she had given up modeling and set herself on the path to becoming a writer.

Smale's new novel is Cassandra in Reverse.

At Lit Hub she tagged five of the best time travel stories that explore what it means to be human, including:

Oona Out of Order by Margarita Montimore

An incredibly entertaining and poignant novel, Oona is a unique character: one gifted—or cursed—with experiencing each year of her life in the wrong order: hopping forwards and backwards in time, and attempting to piece it together into one cohesive whole. It’s a novel that explores the impact our life choices have on us, externally and internally, and allows the characters to develop organically on the inside, even as her outside jumps around. It also has immense fun with technology, the use of ‘seeing the future’ to financially profit, and how foresight doesn’t necessarily prevent it all happening again, but this is a book that predominantly focuses on the importance of making mistakes, as well as embracing every age of being human.

Read about another entry on the list.

Oona Out of Order is among Mackenzie Dawson's fifteen best books to read in our age of social isolation.

The Page 69 Test: Oona Out of Order.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Lisa Black's "What Harms You"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: What Harms You by Lisa Black.

About the book, from the publisher:

This suspense-driven installment in the Locard Institute Thriller series poses a chilling question: What happens when a serial killer goes to CSI school?

The Locard Institute is a state-of-the-art forensic research center where experts from around the world come together to confront and solve the world’s most challenging and perplexing crimes. When Dr. Ellie Carr arrives for her first day as an instructor at the prestigious facility, the buildings glimmer amid the brilliant fall foliage on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay. But within hours a colleague, Dr. Barbara Wright, is found dead on the floor of a supply closet. Her death appears to be an accident—but Ellie and her new supervisor, Dr. Rachael Davies, suspect a more sinister explanation.

A young woman attending a professional training program then disappears, only to be found in a gruesome tableau. Other than their link to the Institute, there seems to be no connection between the student and Dr. Wright. Although forensic traces are elusive, Ellie and Rachael are determined to find the bizarre link between the violent and diverse deaths.

As reporters shatter the privacy of Ellie’s new workplace, she searches old files and finds evidence of a crime that feels much too personal. But who, among those dedicated to justice, could be the threat? No matter how skilled she and Rachael may be in uncovering the truth, they may not be able to prevent a well-schooled killer from striking again.

Learn more about the book and author at Lisa Black's website.

The Page 69 Test: That Darkness.

My Book, The Movie: Unpunished.

The Page 69 Test: Unpunished.

My Book, The Movie: Perish.

The Page 69 Test: Perish.

The Page 69 Test: Suffer the Children.

Writers Read: Lisa Black (July 2020).

The Page 69 Test: Every Kind of Wicked.

Q&A with Lisa Black.

My Book, The Movie: What Harms You.

The Page 69 Test: What Harms You.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Yael Goldstein-Love

From my Q&A with Yael Goldstein-Love, author of The Possibilities: A Novel:

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

The book was originally called A Reasonable Woman to get at the dilemma that motherhood puts women in. You’re supposed to be instinctual but also rational, trust your gut but not be anxious. But while that title got at the psychological realism of the book, it hid that this is also a sci-fi thriller.

Then the book was called Hannah42 because my main character teams up a version of herself from another reality who calls herself Hannah42 in a nod to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. She feels that calling herself Hannah1 would be presumptuous given the infinite versions of herself she now knows to exist. This title had the opposite problem– it made the book sound like hard core sci-fi instead of a book that uses sci-fi as a metaphor to explore motherhood.

The Possibilities finally struck the right balance. My main character “rides the possibilities” – travels to other possible worlds – in order to save her son, and this is both the actual plot of the book and also a way of capturing what...[read on]

Visit Yael Goldstein-Love's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Possibilities.

Q&A with Yael Goldstein-Love.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top mysteries set in still waters

Alice Blanchard is an award-winning author.

Her latest novel is The Shadow Girls.

At CrimeReads, Blanchard tagged five mysteries involving murderous lakes, including:

Lady in the Lake, by Laura Lippman

Who killed the lady in the lake? The year is 1966, in the city of Baltimore. Flawed main character, Maddie Schwartz, is an unhappy housewife who finally leaves her husband after 20 awful years to find meaning in her life by working for a city newspaper. When a woman is found dead in a city park lake, Maddie attempts to discover who she was and who killed her. As she goes about solving the crime, she puts everyone she loves in danger in this kaleidoscopic historical mystery.

Read about another mystery on the list.

Lady in the Lake is among Brittany Bunzey's ten books that take you inside their characters’ heads, Kimberly Belle's six novels that show lakes are a perfect setting for a murder mystery, and CrimeReads' ten best crime novels of 2019.

The Page 69 Test: Lady in the Lake.

--Marshal Zeringue

Lisa Black's "What Harms You," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: What Harms You by Lisa Black.

The entry begins:

Dr. Ellie Carr’s first day at the prestigious Locard forensic institute isn’t going so well. Her keycard won’t let her into the imposing brick building, her snooty predecessor hasn’t bothered to clean out the office Ellie is to occupy, and then the woman turns up dead in a supply closet. Ellie’s new boss Rachael shares her concerns about the death—it doesn’t quite seem like an accident. But the institute, along with research and private cases, conducts training classes on forensic topics for those in the law enforcement community. When there’s another death and it’s clearly not an accident, the women realize their suspect pool consists of cops, death investigators and CSIs. Who else, should they choose to, would make the most successful serial killer?

Former pathologist Dr. Rachael Davies is thirty-eight, divorced, and raising her late sister’s toddler son. She’s given ten years of her life to build the Locard into what she loves it has become. My choice for her part would be Gabrielle Union—older than the role but looks too young for it, and way more beautiful than one would expect a scientist to be. But I think she’d be perfect for the intriguing and brilliant Rachael.

Ellie Carr, also a doctor (of forensics), left the FBI to...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Lisa Black's website.

The Page 69 Test: That Darkness.

My Book, The Movie: Unpunished.

The Page 69 Test: Unpunished.

My Book, The Movie: Perish.

The Page 69 Test: Perish.

The Page 69 Test: Suffer the Children.

Writers Read: Lisa Black (July 2020).

The Page 69 Test: Every Kind of Wicked.

Q&A with Lisa Black.

My Book, The Movie: What Harms You.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Campbell F. Scribner's "A is for Arson"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: A Is for Arson: A History of Vandalism in American Education by Campbell F. Scribner.

About the book, from the publisher:

In A Is for Arson, Campbell F. Scribner sifts through two centuries of debris to uncover the conditions that have prompted school vandalism and to explain why attempts at prevention have inevitably failed. Vandalism costs taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars every year, as students, parents, and even teachers wreak havoc on school buildings. Why do they do it? Can anything stop them? Who should pay for the damage? Underlying these questions are long-standing tensions between freedom and authority, and between wantonness and reason.

Property destruction is not simply a moral failing, to be addressed with harsher punishments, nor can the problem be solved through more restrictive architecture or policing. Scribner argues that education itself is a source of intractable struggle, and that vandalism is often the result of an unruly humanity. To understand schooling in the United States, one must first confront the all-too-human emotions that have led to fires, broken windows, and graffiti.

A Is for Arson captures those emotions through new historical evidence and diverse theoretical perspectives, helping readers understand vandalism variously as a form of political conflict, as self-education, and as sheer chaos. By analyzing physical artifacts as well as archival sources, Scribner offers new perspectives on children's misbehavior and adults' reactions and allows readers to see the complexities of education—the built environment of teaching and learning, evolving approaches to youth psychology and student discipline—through the eyes of its often resistant subjects.

Learn more about A Is for Arson at the Cornell University Press website and follow Scribner on Twitter.

The Page 99 Test: The Fight for Local Control.

The Page 99 Test: A Is for Arson.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten books to change how you think about fairy tales

Charlie Jane Anders is the author of the young adult Unstoppable trilogy: Victories Greater Than Death, Dreams Bigger Than Heartbreak, and Promises Stronger Than Darkness. She's also the author of the short story collection Even Greater Mistakes, and Never Say You Can't Survive, a book about how to use creative writing to get through hard times. Her other books include The City in the Middle of the Night and All the Birds in the Sky. She's won the Hugo, Nebula, Sturgeon, Lambda Literary, Crawford and Locus Awards.

In 2016 at Gizmondo she tagged ten books that will change how you see the fairy tale, including:

Not One Damsel in Distress: World Folktales for Strong Girls by Jane Yolen

The prolific Jane Yolen has been called America’s Hans Christian Andersen, and with this book she hunts down great folktales from around the world and presents them for young readers. The female heroes in these tales include a fierce Medieval knight named Bradamante, Li Chi, the Chinese girl who slays a serpent, and the Songhai hero Nana Miriam.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Yael Goldstein-Love's "The Possibilities"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Possibilities: A Novel by Yael Goldstein-Love.

About the book, from the publisher:

What if the life you didn’t live was as real as the one you did?

Hannah is having a bad day. A bad month. A bad year? That feels terrible to admit, since her son Jack was born just eight months ago and she loves him more than anything. But ever since his harrowing birth, she can’t shake the feeling that it could have gone the other way. That her baby might not have made it. Terrifying visions of the different paths her life could have taken begin to disrupt her cozy, claustrophobic days with Jack, destabilizing her marriage and making her husband concerned for her mental health. Are the strange things Hannah is seeing just new-mom anxiety, or is something truly weird and sinister afoot? What if Hannah really did unlock a dark force during childbirth?

When Hannah’s worst nightmare comes true and Jack disappears from his crib, she must tap into an extraordinary ability she never knew she had in order to save him: She must enter different versions of her life while holding on to what is most important to her in this one to bring her child back home.

From the intimate joys of parenthood to the cosmic awe of the multiverse, The Possibilities is an ingenious and wildly suspenseful novel that stares down into the dizzying depths of maternal love, vulnerability, and strength.

Visit Yael Goldstein-Love's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Possibilities.

--Marshal Zeringue

12 Yoga Questions with Michael Mark

Featured at 12 Yoga Questions: Michael Mark, poet.

Mark's chapbook Visiting Her in Queens Is More Enlightening than a Month in a Monastery in Tibet is a Rattle Chapbook Prize Winner.

Learn about Michael Mark's yoga journey at 12 Yoga Questions and visit his website to read and listen to more of his poetry.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Bruce Borgos

From my Q&A with Bruce Borgos, author of The Bitter Past: A Mystery:

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

It's funny because I didn't pick the title. I had a working title for what ultimately became The Bitter Past, but it wasn't until my editor and the team at Minotaur started kicking around some alternatives that we were able to find a title that did exactly that - it took readers into the story. My novel is about a time in our history when we were racing to stay ahead of the Soviet Union and "win" a nuclear war, if necessary. We were literally blowing up the Nevada desert, sending poisonous clouds of radiation downwind and, eventually, across the globe. In many ways, we didn't understand or appreciate the consequences of those actions. It is a bitter past.

What's in a name?

I used to pull character names out of a phone book. Of course, we don't have those now. For this novel, I...[read on]

Visit Bruce Borgos's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Bitter Past.

My Book, The Movie: The Bitter Past.

Q&A with Bruce Borgos.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Mark Gregory Pegg's "Beatrice's Last Smile"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Beatrice's Last Smile: A New History of the Middle Ages by Mark Gregory Pegg.

About the book, from the publisher:

A new history of the Middle Ages, revealing how Christianity and Islam evolved out of a shared cultural and religious ferment, and how this shaped the development of the West

Mark Gregory Pegg's history of the Middle Ages opens and closes with martyrdom, the first that of a young Roman mother in a North African amphitheater in 203 and the second a French girl burned to death beside the Seine in 1431. Both Vibia Perpetua and Jeanne la Pucelle died for their Christian beliefs, yet that for which they willingly sacrificed their lives connects and separates them. Both were divinely inspired, but one believed her deity shared the universe with other gods, and the other knew that her Creator ruled heaven and earth. Between them, across the centuries, lives were shaped by the ebb and flow of the divine and the human. Here is the story of people struggling in life and in death to understand themselves and their relationship to God.

Beatrice's Last Smile interweaves vivid portraits of such individuals to offer a sweeping and immersive story. Some are of enduring renown — Augustine, Muhammad, Charlemagne, Heloise —and others are obscure. An Egyptian youth fighting demons in the desert as the first monk; a Briton becomes a holy man after enslavement in Ireland; an emperor in Constantinople watches as rioters torch the city; a old Syrian monk advises the English on sex; the soul of a Merovingian noble flies through the night sky to heaven; an Irish warrior surfs the waves like a dolphin as he flees the Vikings; a crusader's boots squelch with blood on the streets of Jerusalem; a troubadour sings of love; a Muslim lord expresses admiration of the Templars; a pope proclaims that Christendom encompasses all time and space; a barefoot Franciscan friar visits the Great Khan of the Mongols; a Parisian rabbi argues for the holiness of the Talmud; and a poet laments being alive amid the horror of the Black Death. Together, they take readers from the vastness of the Roman Empire to small communities between the Mediterranean and the North Sea, from the nomads of the Asian steppes to the triumphant Church of Latin Christendom.

Beatrice's Last Smile offers a pulsating history of the West: the passionate belief in the old gods that yields to a cosmos shaped by one; the transition from a penitential culture to a confessional one; the universal obsession with imitating Christ. The book is named for the moment in Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy when his long-dead love, Beatrice, smiles one final time at Dante in paradise before turning away to look eternally upon the face of God.

Mark Gregory Pegg's epic narrative captures a millennium within that fleeting smile, in ways that modern readers will find illuminating and haunting.

Learn more about Beatrice's Last Smile at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Beatrice's Last Smile.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven crime books featuring special events going off the rails

Jamie Day lives in one of those picture-perfect, coastal New England towns you see in the movies. And just like the movies, Day has two children and an adorable dog to fawn over. When not writing or reading, Day enjoys yoga, the ocean, cooking, and long walks on the beach with the dog, or the kids, or sometimes both.

At CrimeReads the author tagged seven "favorite twisted tales of special events that go from pleasant to catastrophic," including:

Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty

What could be more harmless and fun than a trivia night fundraiser at a local school? Unfortunately, when you mix secrets, jealousy, and betrayal, the combination can be quite deadly. Moriarty’s novel, which was made into a hugely successful HBO miniseries, centers on three women, Madeline, Jane, and Celeste, and examines issues of domestic violence, parenting, friendships, and the little lies we all tell ourselves to get by, that can have deadly consequences.

Read about another entry on the list.

Big Little Lies is among Ashley Audrain’s six great thrillers featuring manipulative mom-friends, Nicole Hackett's six top mysteries about motherhood & crime, Janice Hallett's five notable gripping mysteries set in small towns, Tracy Dobmeier and Wendy Katzman's six riveting titles of ultra-competitive parents, Pamela Crane's five novels featuring parenting gone wild, Michelle Frances's eight top workplace thrillers, and Jeff Somers's ten novels that teach you something about marriage.

--Marshal Zeringue

Bruce Borgos's "The Bitter Past," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Bitter Past: A Mystery by Bruce Borgos.

The entry begins:

I think there are several actors who I think would do a great job in the lead role of Sheriff Porter Beck. I say that because I purposely did not include a description of him in the book that would tell a reader exactly what he looks like. I tried to leave at least a little of that to the imagination. We all know what Jack Reacher or Walt Longmire looks like from reading those wonderful pages by Lee Child and Craig Johnson. The actor I pictured most of the time was Chris Pratt. He's the right age and has the same quick wit as Porter Beck. But there's Ryan Reynolds, too, who would be a good fit. Jeremy Renner could do it. He lives here in Nevada, and he was great in Wind River. He has the grit and the humor. And here's a pick out of left field: Jason Bateman. I don't think he's ever played a rural cop, though he did a terrific job playing an FBI agent in The Kingdom, and he's not a superman. Neither is Porter Beck.

As far as directors go, I would want one that had...[read on]

Visit Bruce Borgos's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Bitter Past.

My Book, The Movie: The Bitter Past.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight books for every era of Barbie

Claudia Guthrie is a writer covering culture, entertainment, and lifestyle content. Her work has appeared in ELLE, The Muse, Food52, and more. Originally from Kansas City, she now resides in Denver, where you can find her reading the newest thriller or knitting sweaters for her cats.

At Electric Lit she tagged eight "books for the different eras of Barbie," including:

The OG Barbie: The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan

When Mattel released the very first Barbie in 1959, it was a revolution. She wasn’t the plain Jane baby doll most children were playing with. She was blonde, with a face full of makeup and a fashionable black and white bathing suit. She was a woman for little girls to admire.

Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique four years later in 1963. Like Barbie, the book challenged the status quo—by arguing that women can find fulfillment outside of being a homemaker. And while both the book and the Barbie have faced (valid) criticisms and controversy throughout the years, they each had a major lasting impact on the lives of women.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Laura Lippman's "Prom Mom"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Prom Mom: A Novel by Laura Lippman.

About the book, from the publisher:

New York Times bestseller Laura Lippman tells the story of Amber Glass, desperately trying to get away from her tabloid past but compulsively drawn back to the city of her youth and the prom date who destroyed everything she was reaching for.

Amber Glass has spent her entire adult life putting as much distance as possible between her and her hometown of Baltimore, where she fears she will forever be known as “Prom Mom”—the girl who allegedly killed her baby on the night of the prom after her date, Joe Simpson, abandoned her to pursue the girl he really liked. But when circumstances bring Amber back to the city, she realizes she can have a second chance—as long as she stays away from Joe, now a successful commercial real estate developer, married to a plastic surgeon, Meredith, to whom he is devoted.

The problem is, Amber can’t stay away from Joe. And Joe finds that it’s increasingly hard for him to ignore Amber, if only because she remembers the boy he was and the man he said he was going to be. Against the surreal backdrop of 2020 and early 2021, the two are slowly drawn to each other and eventually cross the line they’ve been trying not to cross.

And then Joe asks Amber to help him do the unthinkable…

Visit Laura Lippman's website.

The Page 69 Test: Another Thing to Fall.

The Page 69 Test: What the Dead Know.

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

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

The Page 69 Test: The Most Dangerous Thing.

The Page 69 Test: Hush Hush.

The Page 69 Test: Wilde Lake.

My Book, the Movie: Wilde Lake.

The Page 69 Test: Sunburn.

The Page 69 Test: Lady in the Lake.

The Page 69 Test: Dream Girl.

The Page 69 Test: Prom Mom.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Simon Toyne

From my Q&A with Simon Toyne, author of The Clearing: A Novel:

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

The Clearing was not the first title for the book. For most of the first draft it was called The Cinderman which refers to the urban legend of a forest dwelling bogeyman who is supposed to haunt the ancient Forest of Dean in the west of England where the book is set. The Cinderman, as I reveal in an origin story within the book, was a charcoal burner whose daughter vanished, driving him mad and cursing him to roam the forest in search of young women to replace her. In the “now” of the story women are going missing in the forest and the local police don’t seem to be that bothered about it. My lead character, however, Dr. Laughton Rees doesn’t believe in ghosts and legends so when another young woman goes missing she heads there to try and find out what is going on. Her investigation centres around an off-grid community at the heart of the forest called The Clearing.

I always liked The Cinderman as a title, but my editors in the UK and US were both worried it might read more as a horror story than a thriller. Calling it The Clearing definitely grounds the book as something taking place somewhere specific, and I think readers like that. They like to know that the story is anchored somewhere and a forest clearing can be both welcoming and sinister. Lots of the most gruesome fairy-tales take place in forest clearings. That’s where witches tend to live and I’ve got a real-life one...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Simon Toyne's website, Facebook page, Twitter perch, and Instagram page.

My Book, The Movie: Sanctus.

The Page 69 Test: Sanctus.

The Page 69 Test: The Tower.

My Book, The Movie: The Tower.

My Book, The Movie: The Searcher.

Writers Read: Simon Toyne (October 2015).

The Page 69 Test: The Searcher.

The Page 69 Test: The Clearing.

My Book, The Movie: The Clearing.

Q&A with Simon Toyne.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight books on the independence of women & self-discovery

At B&N Reads Brittany Bunzey tagged eight "books of the independence of women and self-discovery in all its messy glory," including:

My Body by Emily Ratajkowski

Actress/model/entrepreneur and writer Emily Ratajkowski ruminates on what it means to be a woman in a culture that objectifies the female body. A memoir that scrutinizes the male gaze, internalized misogyny and social media’s impact on women, My Body is thought-provoking and deeply personal book, told with nuance and bravery.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Matthew Titolo's "Privatization and Its Discontents"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Privatization and Its Discontents: Infrastructure, Law, and American Democracy by Matthew Titolo.

About the book, from the publisher:

In Privatization and Its Discontents, Matthew Titolo situates the contemporary debate over infrastructure in the long history of public–private governance in the United States. Titolo begins with Adam Smith's arguments about public works and explores debates over internal improvements in the early republic, moving to the twentieth-century regulatory state and public-interest liberalism that created vast infrastructure programs. While Americans have always agreed that creation and oversight of 'infrastructure' is a proper public function, Titolo demonstrates that public–private governance has been a highly contested practice throughout American history. Public goods are typically provided with both government and private actors involved, resulting in an ideological battle over the proper scope of the government sphere and its relationship to private interests. The course of that debate reveals that 'public' and 'private' have no inherent or natural content. These concepts are instead necessarily political and must be set through socially negotiated compromise.

Learn more about Privatization and Its Discontents at the Cambridge University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Privatization and Its Discontents.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six novels featuring female psycho serial killers

Molly Odintz is the Senior Editor for CrimeReads and the editor of Austin Noir, forthcoming from Akashic Books. She grew up in Austin and worked as a bookseller at BookPeople, and recently returned to Central Texas after five years in NYC. She likes cats, crime novels, and coffee.

At CrimeReads Odintz tagged six new or recent novels featuring psycho female serial killers. One title on the list:

C. J. Leede, Maeve Fly

For all those who stan the creepy girls/learned the Wednesday dance, Maeve Fly is a delicious, disturbing treat. Leede’s very-much-antiheroine is a Disney princess by day (one of the Frozen sisters, which makes it even funnier), and a serial killer by night. She has a best friend, a grandmother who understands her, and the kind of beauty that screams innocence. But when her grandmother’s health takes a turn for the worse, and her best friend’s hockey-playing brother comes to town, her perfectly arranged life begins to unravel. Damn, this book is messed up.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Simon Toyne's "The Clearing," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Clearing: A Novel by Simon Toyne.

The entry begins:

I kind of think of myself as a failed movie director and whenever I write a book I’m always effectively making the movie in my head then transcribing the action into book form.

With The Clearing, I already had some of the cast as it’s a follow up to my last book, Dark Objects, which also features Dr. Laughton Rees, a young, brilliant academic with a teenage daughter and OCD. DCI Tannahill Khan, half-Irish, half-Pakistani, an outsider within the traditionally predominantly white institution of the London Metropolitan.

Laughton is very much in the mould of Clarice Starling, smart, brave, feisty, a small woman but with a big person’s energy. Laughton is also the smartest person in the room but is often underestimated, particularly by men, because she’s young, pretty and small. She’s also based on my oldest daughter Roxy, who is all of these things too, but to play her on screen I always saw her as...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Simon Toyne's website, Facebook page, Twitter perch, and Instagram page.

My Book, The Movie: Sanctus.

The Page 69 Test: Sanctus.

The Page 69 Test: The Tower.

My Book, The Movie: The Tower.

My Book, The Movie: The Searcher.

Writers Read: Simon Toyne (October 2015).

The Page 69 Test: The Searcher.

The Page 69 Test: The Clearing.

My Book, The Movie: The Clearing.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Samantha Downing's "A Twisted Love Story"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: A Twisted Love Story by Samantha Downing.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the bestselling author of My Lovely Wife comes a reckless, delicious thriller that gives a whole new meaning to the dangers of modern dating.

Wes and Ivy are madly in love. They’ve never felt anything like it. It’s the type of romance people write stories about.

But what kind of story?

When it’s good, it’s great. Flowers. Grand gestures. Deep meaningful conversations where the whole world disappears.

When it’s bad, it’s really bad. Vengeful fights. Damaged property. Arrest warrants.

But their vicious cycle of catastrophic breakups and head-over-heels reconciliations needs to end fast. Because suddenly, Wes and Ivy have a common enemy–and she’s a detective.

There’s something Wes and Ivy never talk about–in good times or bad. The night of their worst breakup, when one of them took things too far, and someone ended up dead.

If they can stick together, they can survive anything–even the tightening net of a police investigation.

Because one more breakup might just be their last…

Visit Samantha Downing's website.

The Page 69 Test: My Lovely Wife.

The Page 69 Test: He Started It.

The Page 69 Test: For Your Own Good.

The Page 69 Test: A Twisted Love Story.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Marcia C. Inhorn's "Motherhood on Ice"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Motherhood on Ice: The Mating Gap and Why Women Freeze Their Eggs by Marcia C. Inhorn.

About the book, from the publisher:

Answers the question: Why are women freezing their eggs?

Why are women freezing their eggs in record numbers? Motherhood on Ice explores this question by drawing on the stories of more than 150 women who pursued fertility preservation technology. Moving between narratives of pain and empowerment, these nuanced personal stories reveal the complexity of women’s lives as they struggle to preserve and extend their fertility.

Contrary to popular belief, egg freezing is rarely about women postponing fertility for the sake of their careers. Rather, the most-educated women are increasingly forced to delay childbearing because they face a mating gap―a lack of eligible, educated, equal partners ready for marriage and parenthood. For these women, egg freezing is a reproductive backstop, a technological attempt to bridge the gap while waiting for the right partner. But it is not an easy choice for most. Their stories reveal the extent to which it is logistically complicated, physically taxing, financially demanding, emotionally draining, and uncertain in its effects.

In this powerful book, women share their reflections on their clinical encounters, as well as the immense hopes and investments they place in this high-tech fertility preservation strategy. Race, religion, and the role of men in the lives of single women pursuing this technology are also explored. A distinctly human portrait of an understudied and rapidly growing population, Motherhood on Ice examines what is at stake for women who take comfort in their frozen eggs while embarking on their quests for partnership, pregnancy, and parenting.

Visit Marcia C. Inhorn's website.

The Page 99 Test: Motherhood on Ice.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Elizabeth L. Silver

From my Q&A with Elizabeth L. Silver, author of The Majority: A Novel:

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

The title has several meanings that I hope will become clear as people read the book. A majority opinion in the law is literally the judicial decision handed down by a judge or Supreme Court Justice that becomes the law. Also, women are the majority population of America, but the minority in power, and so the novel explores both of these themes as it imagines the life of a first fictional woman on the Supreme Court.

What's in a name?

Sylvia Olin Bernstein, or S.O.B. is the narrator of the story, and her name and initials...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Elizabeth L. Silver's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Execution of Noa P. Singleton.

My Book, The Movie: The Execution of Noa P. Singleton.

The Page 99 Test: The Tincture of Time.

Writers Read: Elizabeth L. Silver (November 2017).

The Page 69 Test: The Majority.

My Book, The Movie: The Majority.

Q&A with Elizabeth L. Silver.

--Marshal Zeringue