Five of the best books about conspiracy theories

James Ball is the Global Editor at The Bureau of Investigative Journalism. Previously special projects editor at The Guardian and special projects editor at BuzzFeed UK, James played a key role in the Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the NSA leaks by Edward Snowden, as well as the offshore leaks, HSBC Files, Reading the Riots and Keep it in the Ground projects.

At WikiLeaks he was closely involved in Cablegate - the publication of 250,000 classified US embassy cables in 2010 - as well as working on two documentaries based on the Iraq War Logs.

Ball is the author of The Other Pandemic: How QAnon Contaminated the World.

At the Guardian he tagged five of the best books about conspiracy theories, including:

Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein

Most people who write about conspiracy theories do so because they’ve been drawn to that world through their own curiosity. That wasn’t the case for Naomi Klein, who was largely dragged in against her will.

Through her career, Klein had often been confused with her fellow writer Naomi Wolf. But while once this was harmless (if annoying), when Wolf went down the Covid rabbit hole, it was anything but. Suddenly, Wolf was spreading dangerous misinformation about Covid vaccines – and people were still mixing up the two women. This book is Klein’s story of following her titular double into conspiracy-land.

Read about another book on the list.

Also see Colin Dickey's ten brilliant books to understand conspiracy thinking and Anna Merlan's five of the best books on conspiracy theories in America.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Kevin Padraic Donnelly's "The Descent of Artificial Intelligence"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Descent of Artificial Intelligence: A Deep History of an Idea 400 Years in the Making by Kevin Padraic Donnelly.

About the book, from the publisher:

The idea that a new technology could challenge human intelligence is as old as the warning from Socrates and Plato that written language eroded memory. With the emergence of generative artificial intelligence programs, we find ourselves once again debating how a new technology might influence human thought and behavior. Researchers, software developers, and “visionary” tech writers even imagine an AI that will equal or surpass human intelligence, adding to a sense of technological determinism where humanity is inexorably shaped by powerful new machines. But among the hundreds of essays, books, and movies that approach the question of AI, few have asked how exactly scientists and philosophers have codified human thought and behavior. Rather than focusing on technical contributions in machine building, The Descent of Artificial Intelligence explores a more diverse cast of thinkers who helped to imagine the very kind of human being that might be challenged by a machine. Kevin Padraic Donnelly argues that what we often think of as the “goal” of AI has in fact been shaped by forgotten and discredited theories about people and human nature as much as it has been by scientific discoveries, mathematical advances, and novel technologies. By looking at the development of artificial intelligence through the lens of social thought, Donnelly deflates the image of artificial intelligence as a technological monolith and reminds readers that we can control the narratives about ourselves.

Learn more about The Descent of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Pittsburgh Press website.

The Page 99 Test: The Descent of Artificial Intelligence.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Sarah Easter Collins

From my Q&A with Sarah Easter Collins, author of Things Don't Break on Their Own: A Novel:

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

As a title, Things Don’t Break On Their Own implies the involvement of outside forces: things can break, and more significantly, so can people, but none of that happens by itself, and this is certainly a true reflection of the nature of the story. A reader will discover two distinct families in Things Don’t Break On Their Own. Laika and Willa’s family is all about appearances, to the point that they are obsessed with not having any of their cracks showing, whereas in Robyn’s family, everything can always be fixed, mended, saved for later and made better. They are loud, messy and their cracks are visible and worn with love.

When a bowl breaks at Robyn’s house, her father shows the two girls how they can use the Japanese art of Kintsugi to mend it. I love the idea behind Kintsugi, that something can be made more beautiful by the very act of mending it. Robyn comes from a family where things break all the time, but vitally things – and people – are treasured. So healing is a big theme of the novel, and...[read on]

Visit Sarah Easter Collins's website.

The Page 69 Test: Things Don't Break on Their Own.

Q&A with Sarah Easter Collins.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Sheila Curran Bernard's "Bring Judgment Day"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Bring Judgment Day: Reclaiming Lead Belly's Truths from Jim Crow's Lies by Sheila Curran Bernard.

About the book, from the publisher:

Known worldwide as Lead Belly, Huddie Ledbetter (1889–1949) is an American icon whose influence on modern music was tremendous – as was, according to legend, the temper that landed him in two of the South's most brutal prisons, while his immense talent twice won him pardons. But, as this deeply researched book shows, these stories were shaped by the white folklorists who 'discovered' Lead Belly and, along with reporters, recording executives, and radio and film producers, introduced him to audiences beyond the South. Through a revelatory examination of arrest, trial, and prison records; sharecropping reports; oral histories; newspaper articles; and more, author Sheila Curran Bernard replaces myth with fact, offering a stunning indictment of systemic racism in the Jim Crow era of the United States and the power of narrative to erase and distort the past.

Visit Sheila Curran Bernard's website.

The Page 99 Test: Bring Judgment Day.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven sports novels about more than athleticism

Adrian Markle is the author of the novel Bruise and many short stories. Originally from Canada, he now lives with his partner in Cornwall, UK, where he teaches English and Creative Writing at Falmouth University.

"[S]port novels are never only about sport," Markle claims.

As sport exists as a product of our political and politicized cultures, so then do explorations and depictions of it. Stories about sport are also stories about class, gender, race, identity, mental health, disability, or collective vs individual identity (though probably not all of them all at once).

At Electric Lit the author tagged seven contemporary novels about sport. One title on the list:

Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Straightforward and punchy, Carrie Soto Is Back is about the titular Carrie, the winningest Grand Slam champion in tennis history. She retires on top. And then, five years later, the younger Nicki Chan dominates the tour and closes in on Carrie’s records. But all the spiky, unpopular Carrie Soto really has is her records, so she laces up her signature shoes for one last season to keep what records she can and reclaim the rest. Along the way, she tries to rebuild her relationships with her father—who had been her coach once, until she fired him—with her exes and opponents, with the sport of tennis, with the concept of winning, and with herself. Who will she be when, eventually, she’s no longer the best in the world?

Read about another novel on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Sarah Easter Collins's "Things Don’t Break On Their Own"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Things Don't Break on Their Own: A Novel by Sarah Easter Collins.

About the book, from the publisher:

A heart-wrenching mystery about sisters, lovers, and a dinner party gone wrong.

Twenty-five years ago, a young girl left home to walk to school. Her younger sister soon followed. But one of them arrived, and one of them didn’t.

Her sister’s disappearance has defined Willa’s life. Everyone thinks her sister is dead, but Willa knows she isn’t. Because there are some things that only sisters know about each other—and some bonds only sisters can break.

Willa sees fragments of her sister everywhere — the way that woman on the train turns her head, the gait of that woman in Paris. If there’s the slightest resemblance, Willa drops everything, and everyone, and tries to see if it is her.

When Willa is invited to a dinner party thrown by her first love, she has no reason to expect it will be anything other than an ordinary evening. Both of them have moved on, ancient history. But nothing about Willa’s life has been ordinary since the day her sister disappeared, and that’s not about to change tonight.

Sarah Easter Collins has written an extraordinary novel about memory, lost love, and long-buried secrets that sometimes see the light of day.

Visit Sarah Easter Collins's website.

The Page 69 Test: Things Don't Break on Their Own.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Tracy L. Steffes's "Structuring Inequality"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Structuring Inequality: How Schooling, Housing, and Tax Policies Shaped Metropolitan Development and Education by Tracy L. Steffes.

About the book, from the publisher:

How inequality was forged, fought over, and forgotten through public policy in metropolitan Chicago.

As in many American metropolitan areas, inequality in Chicagoland is visible in its neighborhoods. These inequalities are not inevitable, however. They have been constructed and deepened by public policies around housing, schooling, taxation, and local governance, including hidden state government policies.

In Structuring Inequality, historian Tracy L. Steffes shows how metropolitan inequality in Chicagoland was structured, contested, and naturalized over time even as reformers tried to change it through school desegregation, affordable housing, and property tax reform. While these efforts had modest successes in the city and the suburbs, reformers faced significant resistance and counter-mobilization from affluent suburbanites, real estate developers, and other defenders of the status quo who defended inequality and reshaped the policy conversation about it. Grounded in comprehensive archival research and policy analysis, Structuring Inequality examines the history of Chicagoland’s established systems of inequality and provides perspective on the inequality we live with today.

Learn more about Structuring Inequality at the University of Chicago Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Structuring Inequality.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top thrillers set in Italy

Tom Hindle hails from Leeds and lives in Oxfordshire with his wife, a cat and two surprisingly cunning tortoises.

He is the author of A Fatal Crossing, The Murder Game, and Murder on Lake Garda – which were inspired by masters of the crime genre such as Agatha Christie and Anthony Horowitz.

At the Waterstones blog Hindle tagged six favorite thrillers set in Italy, as is of course Murder on Lake Garda. One title on the list:

Imperium by Robert Harris

For those partial to a historical thriller, the first entry in Robert Harris’s Cicero trilogy transports us to ancient Rome, where we follow a promising young lawyer as he embarks on one of the most dramatic courtroom battles ever fought. If he wins, Cicero may seize control of Rome itself. Lose, however, and he’ll be finished. An all-round masterclass in historical fiction-writing, this story of an epic struggle for power is one for the ages.

Read about another entry on the list.

Also see John Hooper's top ten books about Italy.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Menika B. Dirkson's "Hope and Struggle in the Policed City"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Hope and Struggle in the Policed City: Black Criminalization and Resistance in Philadelphia by Menika B. Dirkson.

About the book, from the publisher:

Explores how concerns about poverty-induced Black crime cultivated by police, journalists, and city officials sparked a rise in tough-on-crime policing in Philadelphia

During the Great Migration of African Americans to the North, Philadelphia’s police department, journalists, and city officials used news media to create and reinforce narratives that criminalized Black people and led to police brutality, segregation, and other dehumanizing consequences for Black communities. Over time, city officials developed a system of racial capitalism in which City Council financially divested from social welfare programs and instead invested in the police department, promoting a “tough on crime” policing program that generated wealth for Philadelphia’s tax base in an attempt to halt white flight from the city.

Drawing from newspapers, census records, oral histories, interviews, police investigation reports, housing project pamphlets, maps, and more, Hope and Struggle in the Policed City draws the connective line between the racial bias African Americans faced as they sought opportunity in the North and the over-policing of their communities, of which the effects are still visible today. Menika B. Dirkson posits that the tough-on-crime framework of this time embedded itself within every aspect of society, leading to enduring systemic issues of hyper-surveillance, the use of excessive force, and mass incarceration.

Hope and Struggle in the Policed City makes important contributions to our understanding of how a city government’s budgetary strategy can function as racial capitalism that relies on criminal scapegoating. Most cogently, it illustrates how this perpetuates the cycle of poverty-induced crime, inflates rates of incarceration and police brutality, and marginalizes poor people of color.

Learn more about Hope and Struggle in the Policed City at the NYU Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Hope and Struggle in the Policed City.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top feminist caper stories

Tess Amy was born in Johannesburg but now enjoys a nomadic lifestyle, living between Europe and South Africa. She holds a master’s degree from The Durban University of Technology, is an outdoor enthusiast, animal lover and unfaltering optimist.

The Confidence Games is her debut contemporary fiction novel. She also writes historical fiction as T.A. Willberg.

At CrimeReads Amy tagged five "favorite feisty feminist caper stories," including:

The Heist by Janet Evanovich & Lee Goldberg

Although Janet Evanovich started out writing romance, she is, in my opinion, the Queen of contemporary crime fiction. The Heist, which is co-written by bestselling author and television writer, Lee Goldberg, is the first in her long running and tremendously popular Fox and O’Hare series.

The Heist introduces us to FBI Special Agent Kate O’Hare as she sets out on the trail of the world’s greatest con man: the charming Nicholas Fox. But when Fox is eventually captured, he pulls off his finest con yet by cajoling the FBI into releasing him on the condition that he joins forces with Kate and works alongside her to hunt down other criminals. This book has all the dazzling action and sharp wit Evanovich is known for, plus a dash of romantic tension. What more could anyone want?

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ellen Won Steil’s “Becoming Marlow Fin,” the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Becoming Marlow Fin: A Novel by Ellen Won Steil.

The entry begins:

Becoming Marlow Fin is a suspense, family drama that centers around the sudden appearance of a little girl at the Baek Family’s Lake Superior cabin, and how her absorption into the family disrupts their seemingly perfect lives. Isla watches on as her adopted sister Marlow, grows up into a famous model and actress, their lives continually intwining with both moments of closeness and tension. Told through Isla’s reflections and Marlow’s perspective in a sensationalized “tell all” interview format, the twists and turns all culminate into a deadly incident at the lake where it all began.

As an author, I’m very visual in my process and tend to picture “scenes” playing out in my mind as I write them. Even with dialogue, I find it helps to envision the characters and their facial expressions. Especially with this story, I wanted characters who were diverse and uniquely beautiful, showcasing how our physical differences are truly our gifts.

For Marlow: The absolute dream, ideal casting for this multi-layered character is Zendaya. Unique in her loveliness both inside and out, she personifies how the standard for what we consider “beautiful” has changed. There’s something enigmatic about her and it’s hard to...[read on]

Visit Ellen Won Steil's website.

My Book, The Movie: Becoming Marlow Fin.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: David Grundy's "Never By Itself Alone"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Never By Itself Alone: Queer Poetry, Queer Communities in Boston and the Bay Area, 1944―Present by David Grundy.

About the book, from the publisher:

Providing an unprecedented exploration of key moments in queer literary history, Never By Itself Alone changes our sense of both the American literary and political landscapes from the late 1940s through the 21st century. Grundy presents the first comprehensive history of post-war queer writing in Boston and San Francisco, intertwining analysis of lesbian, gay, and queer writing, and insisting on the link between activism and literature.

The book centers a host of underrepresented writers, especially writers of color and those with gender non-conforming identities, and challenges the Stonewall exceptionalism of queer historiography. Starting with Robert Duncan's 1944 essay, 'The Homosexual in Society', one of the first significant public defenses of homosexuality in the US, Grundy takes the reader through pioneering works by queer voices of the era, including Adrian Stanford's Black and Queer, the first published book by an out, Black gay poet in the US; the Boston collective Fag Rag and their radical reconsideration of family, private property and the State; the Combahee River Collective, whose Black Feminist analysis drew together race, class, and sexuality; the anthology This Bridge Called My Back, in which women of color spoke truth to power, together; and New Narrative writing, which audaciously mixed Marxism, porn and gossip while uniting against the New Right. Linking these works to the context which produced them, Grundy uncovers the communities formed around activism and small press publishing during this era and elevates neglected voices to narrate a history that before now has never been told in its entirety.

Drawing on extensive archival research, Never By Itself Alone is a rigorous and unmatched work of both literary criticism and queer scholarship which underscores the vital importance of radical accounts of race, class, and gender in any queer studies worthy of the name.

Learn more about Never By Itself Alone at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Never By Itself Alone.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top books about women colliding with wild creatures

Julia Phillips is the author of the bestselling novels Bear and Disappearing Earth, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and one of The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of the Year. A 2024 Guggenheim fellow, she lives with her family in Brooklyn.

[Writers Read: Julia Phillips (June 2019)]

At Electric Lit Phillips tagged ten books in which

the women who meet wild creatures, both animal and mythical, are often trapped in their own lives. Domestic drudgery rules. They’re homemakers, caretakers, wives and mothers and daughters and sisters who are struggling against the limitations imposed on them. When they meet a beast, though, they are able to get to a previously inaccessible wildness. They break away from human rules, a strictly human world, and into something other—something extraordinary, something free. The beast outside provokes the transformation within.

One title on the list:

Sea Change by Gina Chung

Sticking with the sea but scaling back the sex, this tender, gorgeous debut novel is about a grieving young woman’s bond with a giant Pacific octopus. The octopus, Dolores, is the main character’s last link to her lost father—but their connection is threatened when Dolores is threatened with a sale to a private aquarium. In interviews, Chung has said, “This is a story about love, loss, and cephalopods; things that everyone can relate to.” How true! So wrap your tentacles around this one and enjoy.

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Michael D. Hattem's "The Memory of '76"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Memory of '76: The Revolution in American History by Michael D. Hattem.

About the book, from the publisher:

The surprising history of how Americans have fought over the meaning and legacy of the Revolution for nearly two and a half centuries

Americans agree that their nation’s origins lie in the Revolution, but they have never agreed on what the Revolution meant. For nearly two hundred and fifty years, politicians, political parties, social movements, and ordinary Americans have constantly reimagined the Revolution to fit the times and suit their own agendas.

In this sweeping take on American history, Michael D. Hattem reveals how conflicts over the meaning and legacy of the Revolution—including the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution—have influenced the most important events and tumultuous periods in the nation’s history; how African Americans, women, and other oppressed groups have shaped the popular memory of the Revolution; and how much of our contemporary memory of the Revolution is a product of Cold War–era propaganda.

By exploring the Revolution’s unique role in American history as a national origin myth, The Memory of ’76 shows how remembering the nation’s founding has often done far more to divide Americans than to unite them, and how revising the past is an important and long-standing American political tradition.

Visit Michael D. Hattem's website.

The Page 99 Test: Past and Prologue.

The Page 99 Test: The Memory of '76.

--Marshal Zeringue

Fifteen top books about Appalachia

In 2020 at Book Riot Kendra Winchester tagged fifteen books in "the rich tradition of Appalachian literature," including:

The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia by Emma Copley Eisenberg

Part true crime, part history, and part memoir, The Third Rainbow Girl follows author Emma Copley Eisenberg as she moves to West Virginia and makes a home for herself. She eventually learns that decades ago in Pocahontas County, West Virginia, two girls were murdered. As she follows that case, she weaves in stories from her own experience in Appalachia, skillfully tying together the many threads of this genre-defying book.

Read about another title on the list.

The Third Rainbow Girl is among James Polchin's seven top queer true crime books.

The Page 99 Test: The Third Rainbow Girl.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Frances Kolb Turnbell's "Spanish Louisiana"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Spanish Louisiana: Contest for Borderlands, 1763–1803 by Frances Kolb Turnbell.

About the book, from the publisher:

Frances Kolb Turnbell’s study of Spanish colonial Louisiana is the first comprehensive history of the colony. It emphasizes the Lower Mississippi valley’s status as a borderland contested by empires and the region’s diverse inhabitants in the era of volatility that followed the Seven Years’ War. As Turnbell demonstrates, the Spanish era was characterized by tremendous transition as the colony emerged from the neglect of the French period and became slowly but increasingly centered on plantation agriculture. The transformations of this critical period grew out of the struggles between Spain and Louisiana’s colonists, enslaved people, and Indians over issues related to space and mobility. Many borderland peoples, networks, and alliances sought to preserve Louisiana as a flexible and fluid zone as the colonial government attempted to control and contain the region’s inhabitants for its own purposes through policy and efforts to secure loyalty and its own advantageous alliances.

Turnbell first examines the period from 1763 through the American Revolution, when the Mississippi River was a boundary between empires. The river’s designation as an imperial border ran counter to the topography of North America and counter to the practices of the valley’s inhabitants, who employed its waterways to trade, communicate, migrate, and survive. Turnbell pays special attention to the Revolt of 1768, the burgeoning trade along the Mississippi prior to the American Revolution that involved British and American merchants, Spanish preparation for war, and the crucial involvement of the borderland’s diverse inhabitants as the war played out on the Lower Mississippi.

Turnbell then explains how the activity of borderland peoples evolved after the Revolutionary War when the Lower Mississippi was no longer an imperial boundary. She considers the instability and fluidity of postwar years in Louisiana, American trade and migration, Louisiana’s experience of the Age of Revolutions—from pro-French sentiments to plans for rebellion among the enslaved—and ultimately, Spain’s political demise in the Mississippi River valley.

Learn more about Spanish Louisiana at the LSU Press website.

The Page 99 Test:Spanish Louisiana.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight thrillers and horror novels set at terrible summer camps

Molly Odintz is the managing editor for CrimeReads and the editor of Austin Noir, now available from Akashic Books. She grew up in Austin and worked as a bookseller before becoming a Very Professional Internet Person. She lives in central Texas with her cat, Fritz Lang.

At CrimeReads Odintz tagged eight top thrillers and horror novels set at terrible summer camps, including:

Sami Ellis, Dead Girls Walking

Sapphic romance and serial killers at summer camp! Sami Ellis seems to have included every trope I have on my checklist, and they all work together seamlessly for an irrepressibly entertaining horror experience.

Read about another book on the list.

My Book, The Movie: Dead Girls Walking.

Q&A with Sami Ellis.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven top novels about brilliant freaks

Jane Flett is a Scottish writer who lives in Berlin. Her debut novel is Freakslaw.

Flett's fiction has been commissioned for BBC Radio 4 and features in Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading. She is a recipient of the Scottish Book Trust New Writer Award, the New Orleans Writing Residency and the Berlin Senate Stipend for non-German literature. Her work has also been Highly Commended in the Bridport Prize and performed at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

At Electric Lit Flett tagged seven favorite novels about brilliant freaks, including:

Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder

The mother at the center of Nightbitch has given up her art career and much of her identity for the past two years to stay home and care for her child. But things are beginning to change. Her canines are growing and sharpening, and there’s a thick new patch of hair on the back of her neck—signs of the essentially feral and freakish self she’s tried to repress. Everything becomes more interesting as she increasingly gives space to her gleeful dog impulses, casting off the woman the patriarchy says she should be, and making room for her alter ego Nightbitch instead. This book is a celebration of living unapologetically—a deranged manual for subverting the pressures and expectations of motherhood, and coming back to yourself.

Read about another novel on the list.

Nightbitch is among Erin Swan's five books about fragile worlds.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Rena Steinzor's "American Apocalypse"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: American Apocalypse: The Six Far-Right Groups Waging War on Democracy by Rena Steinzor.

About the book, from the publisher:

A thorough analysis of the right-wing interests contributing to the downfall of American democracy

The war on American democracy is at a fever pitch. Such a corrosive state of affairs did not arise spontaneously up from the people but instead was pushed, top-down, by six private sector special interest groups―big business, the House Freedom Caucus, the Federalist Society, Fox News, white evangelicals, and armed militias. In American Apocalypse Rena Steinzor argues that these groups are nothing more than well-financed armies fighting a battle of attrition against the national government, with power, money, and fame as their central motivations.

The book begins at the end of Lyndon Johnson's presidency, when the modern regulatory state was born. Agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration ensured that everything from our air to our medicine was safe. But efforts to thwart this "big government" agenda began swiftly, albeit in the shadows. Business leaders built a multi-billion dollar presence in the Capitol, and the rest of the six interest groups soon followed.

While the groups do not coordinate their attacks, and sometimes their short-term goals even conflict, their priorities fall within a surprisingly tight bullseye: the size and power of the administrative state. In the near-term, their campaigns will bring the crucial functions of government to a halt, which will lead to immediate suffering by the working classes, and a rapid deterioration of race relations. Over the long-term, as the prevalence of global pandemics and climate crises increase, an incapacitated national government will usher in unimaginable harm.

This book is the first to conceptualize these groups together, as one deconstructive and awe-inspiring force. Steinzor delves into each of their histories, mapping the strategies, tactics, and characteristics that make them so powerful. She offers the most comprehensive story available about the downfall of American democracy, reminding us that only by recognizing what we are up against can we hope to bring about change.

Learn more about American Apocalypse at the Stanford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: American Apocalypse.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top body horror novels

Monika Kim is a second-generation Korean-American living in Los Angeles’ Koreatown.

In her first novel, The Eyes are the Best Part, she writes:

Ji-won is a seemingly normal college student whose life unravels after her father’s departure and the arrival of her mother’s creepy new Caucasian boyfriend, George. After eating a fish eye for luck during a traditional Korean meal, Ji-won develops a morbid obsession with George’s blue eyes, culminating in acts of violence that confront the white male gaze in a very literal fashion.

At the Guardian Kim tagged five favorite titles for readers who "have the intestinal fortitude for body horror tales." One novel on the list:

Earthlings by Sayaka Murata

Murata’s novel is compulsively readable in spite of the many disturbing themes it covers. Natsuki, who is neglected by her family, seeks meaning in her existence after a series of traumatic events cause her to question gender norms and societal expectations. Bizarre and unpredictable, Earthlings features plenty of unsettling moments and will stay fixed in your mind long after you turn the last page.

Read about another entry on the list.

Earthlings is among Katie Yee's eight fictional housewives who snapped (in a fun way).

--Marshal Zeringue

Six creepy novels about stalking and obsession

Born and raised in North London, S.B. Caves is the international bestselling author of A Killer Came Knocking and I Know Where She Is, which The Sun described as "sinister, unsettling and gripping."

His new high concept thriller is Honeycomb.

Caves now lives in South London with his wife and two sons.

At CrimeReads the author tagged six creepy novel about stalking and obsesson "with some of the most twisted plots and even more twisted antagonists." One titele on the list:

The Shards by Bret Easton Ellis

This masterfully layered, epic autofiction thriller recounts the author’s final years at a prestigious high school in the early eighties. The arrival of Robert Mallory, a gorgeous new boy who inserts himself into Ellis’s elite circle of friends, kickstarts the novel’s central mystery. After a few acute observations, Ellis almost intuitively feels that something is deeply amiss with Mallory, though Ellis is seemingly the only one picking up on all his apparent lies and contradictions. At the same time, there is a sadistic serial killer known as The Trawler stalking LA, and a strange, Manson-like satanic cult running wild through the city. While dealing with the complexities of his deteriorating social life, Ellis is unable to shake the idea that Robert is in fact The Trawler, and this unwavering conviction eventually leads to a violent confrontation.

The depiction of The Trawler’s atrocities is beyond horrific and genuinely unnerving. Though, what might not be apparent upon a first read is just how clever this novel really is. There is so much going on beneath the surface here. The Shards almost demands a second and third readthrough so we can more closely analyze our narrator’s intentions and behavior toward this attractive ‘God’ that appears to throw Ellis’s life into flux. It is then that we collate clues that might have been missed originally. Is Mallory really the problem, or is Ellis’s paranoid fascination with him blowing things out of proportion? Could Mallory really be the maniacal murderer on the rampage, or is our narrator’s unhealthy fixation a symptom of something darker?

Read about another novel on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: James Graham Wilson's "America's Cold Warrior"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: America's Cold Warrior: Paul Nitze and National Security from Roosevelt to Reagan by James Graham Wilson.

About the book, from the publisher:

In America's Cold Warrior, James Graham Wilson traces Paul Nitze's career path in national security after World War II, a time when many of his mentors and peers returned to civilian life. Serving in eight presidential administrations, Nitze commanded White House attention even when he was out of government, especially with his withering criticism of Jimmy Carter during Carter's presidency. While Nitze is perhaps best known for leading the formulation of NSC-68, which Harry Truman signed in 1950, Wilson contends that Nitze's most significant contribution to American peace and security came in the painstaking work done in the 1980s to negotiate successful treaties with the Soviets to reduce nuclear weapons while simultaneously deflecting skeptics surrounding Ronald Reagan. America's Cold Warrior connects Nitze's career and concerns about strategic vulnerability to the post-9/11 era and the challenges of the 2020s, where the United States finds itself locked in geopolitical competition with the People's Republic of China and Russia.

Learn more about America's Cold Warrior at the Cornell University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: America's Cold Warrior.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Minsoo Kang

From my Q&A with Minsoo Kang, author of The Melancholy of Untold History: A Novel:

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

Whenever I set out to write a novel, I usually have a definite idea for the title, one that is designed to be both evocative and informative of the kind of story it is going to tell. I have a special love for long and complicated titles, like Milan Kundera’s Unbearable Lightness of Being, Italo Calvino’s If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler, and Haruki Murakami’s Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. But this novel was unusual in that the original title I had, Return to Four Verdant Mothers, was not one that I was particularly in love with. It was an apt one in the sense that the fictional mountain known as Four Verdant Mothers plays a central role in the narrative, symbolizing home, peace, and innocence as well as escape, to which the myriad characters of the novel are trying to get back to. But my agent thought it might be too mysterious for prospective readers, so he suggested The Melancholy of Untold History, a phrase that my historian character utters, which I loved. It points to the millennia-long span of the novel as well as its concern with telling stories of people who have been left out of mainstream historical narratives. And all my characters, living in vastly different points in time, are dealing with the melancholy of being lost in one way or another. So I...[read on]

Follow Minsoo Kang on Facebook and Instagram.

The Page 99 Test: Sublime Dreams of Living Machines.

Q&A with Minsoo Kang.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five of the best books with kickass women characters

James L’Etoile is a former associate warden in a maximum-security prison, hostage negotiator, facility captain, and director of California’s state parole system, and he uses his twenty-nine years “behind bars” as an influence in his award-winning novels, short stories, and screenplays. His novels include Dead Drop, Black Label, At What Cost, Bury the Past, and Little River.

Face of Greed is his latest novel and the first book in the Detective Emily Hunter Mystery Series.

At Shepherd L’Etoile five favorite books with kickass women characters, including:

The Paris Widow by Kimberly Belle

Domestic suspense is having a moment. These aren’t your “damsel in distress” stories where a woman waits for someone to save her. I like women who bounce back hard after a setback, and this book is exactly that.

Without spoilers, when Stella’s husband goes missing after a bombing, she can’t accept the fact she has to start over. I love the fact she wants answers, and when she doesn't get them, she strikes out on her own.

Kimberly Belle creates strong female lead characters in her books, and if you’re like me, they keep you turning the pages. Kimberly is always one of my must-buy authors—The Paris Widow is no exception.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Page 69 Test: The Paris Widow.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Michael Lobel's "Van Gogh and the End of Nature"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Van Gogh and the End of Nature by Michael Lobel.

About the book, from the publisher:

A groundbreaking reassessment that foregrounds Van Gogh’s profound engagement with the industrial age while making his work newly relevant for our world today

Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) is most often portrayed as the consummate painter of nature whose work gained its strength from his direct encounters with the unspoiled landscape. Michael Lobel upends this commonplace view by showing how Van Gogh’s pictures are inseparable from the modern industrial era in which the artist lived—from its factories and polluted skies to its coal mines and gasworks—and how his art drew upon waste and pollution for its subjects and even for the very materials out of which it was made. Lobel underscores how Van Gogh’s engagement with the environmental realities of his time provides repeated forewarnings of the threats of climate change and ecological destruction we face today.

Van Gogh and the End of Nature offers a radical revisioning of nearly the full span of the artist’s career, considering Van Gogh’s artistic process, his choice of materials, and some of his most beloved and iconic pictures. Merging a timely sense of environmental urgency with bold new readings of the work of one of the world’s most acclaimed artists, this book weaves together detailed historical research and perceptive analysis into an illuminating portrait of an artist and his changing world.

Learn more about Van Gogh and the End of Nature at the Yale University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Van Gogh and the End of Nature.

--Marshal Zeringue

Molly MacRae's "Come Shell or High Water," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Come Shell or High Water by Molly MacRae.

The entry begins:

Professional storyteller and mollusk biologist Maureen Nash sees narrative cues woven through her life. Like the series of letters addressed to her late husband from a stranger—the owner of The Moon Shell, a shop on Ocracoke Island off the coast of North Carolina. The store is famous among shell collectors, but it’s the cryptic letters from shop owner Allen Withrow that convince Maureen to travel to the small island at the tail end of a hurricane.

In Maureen’s first hours on Ocracoke, she averts several life-threatening accidents, stumbles over a body, and meets the ghost of an eighteenth-century Welsh pirate, Emrys Lloyd. To the untrained eye, these unusual occurrences would seem to be random misfortunes, but Maureen senses there may be something connecting these stories. With Emrys’s supernatural assistance, and the support of a few new friends, Maureen sets out to unravel the truth, find a killer, and hopefully give the tale a satisfying ending . . . while also rewriting her own.

Winona Ryder will make a fine Maureen Nash. Maureen, in her early fifties, has an adventurous streak, a love for jokes and puns, and a healthy fear of unhealthy situations like being in a sinking boat surrounded by sharks. While practical, she’s also prone to flights of fancy. Ryder has a wide range of talents and proved...[read on]

Visit Molly MacRae's website.

My Book, The Movie: Plaid and Plagiarism.

The Page 69 Test: Plaid and Plagiarism.

The Page 69 Test: Scones and Scoundrels.

My Book, The Movie: Scones and Scoundrels.

The Page 69 Test: Crewel and Unusual.

The Page 69 Test: Heather and Homicide.

Q&A with Molly MacRae.

Writers Read: Molly MacRae.

The Page 69 Test: Come Shell or High Water.

My Book, The Movie: Come Shell or High Water.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten novels about breakups, heartbreak, and moving on

Liz Riggs is a writer based in Nashville. She holds an MFA in Fiction from NYU and her work has been published in The Atlantic, Bon Appétit, American Songwriter, MTV and others.

Her debut novel is Lo Fi.

At Electric Lit Riggs tagged ten books that "explore the grief of loss, the things we’ll do (often stupidly) for love, and the ways we try to move on and fail. The people or exes that we keep coming back to." One title on the list:

Search History by Amy Taylor

This was one of my favorite releases of last year, by the Australian writer Amy Taylor. A breakup tale for the digital age, the narrator, Ana, begins dating a new guy she meets online after a breakup, and she quickly becomes obsessed with his ex, whom she finds out has died the year prior. It is terrifying and compelling to go down the digital rabbit hole with Ana (we’ve all done it, right? Stalking a new lover’s old flame?) but Taylor renders it all with such an undercurrent of unease as we wonder when the narrator’s obsession will come to light, what consequences it will have. It reminded me of the delicate tension of a Ripley novel, the way Ana stalks in plain sight as we hold our breaths, wondering what she will find. I like that this book turns a breakup narrative on its head: Ana doesn’t stalk her ex—in fact, he’s never even named—instead she’s haunted by another woman, one who isn’t even alive. But the frantic obsession still occupies her every thought, making it nearly impossible to actually enjoy her new relationship. In the end, which obsession is worse?

Read about another novel on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Andrew Denning's "Automotive Empire"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Automotive Empire: How Cars and Roads Fueled European Colonialism in Africa by Andrew Denning.

About the book, from the publisher:

In Automotive Empire, Andrew Denning uncovers how roads and vehicles began to transform colonial societies across Africa but rarely in the manner Europeans expected. Like seafaring ships and railroads, automobiles and roads were more than a mode of transport―they organized colonial spaces and structured the political, economic, and social relations of empire, both within African colonies and between colonies and the European metropole.

European officials in French, Italian, British, German, Belgian, and Portuguese territories in Africa shared a common challenge―the transport problem. While they imagined that roads would radiate commerce and political hegemony by collapsing space, the pressures of constructing and maintaining roads rendered colonial administration thin, ineffective, and capricious. Automotive empire emerged as the European solution to the transport problem, but revealed weakness as much as it extended power.

As Automotive Empire reveals, motor vehicles and roads seemed the ideal solution to the colonial transport problem. They were cheaper and quicker to construct than railroads, overcame the environmental limitations of rivers, and did not depend on the recruitment and supervision of African porters. At this pivotal moment of African colonialism, when European powers transitioned from claiming territories to administering and exploiting them, automotive empire defined colonial states and societies, along with the brutal and capricious nature of European colonialism itself.

Learn more about Automotive Empire at the Cornell University Press website.

Writers Read: Andrew Denning (December 2014).

The Page 99 Test: Skiing into Modernity

The Page 99 Test: Automotive Empire.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Christina McDonald reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Christina McDonald, author of What Lies in Darkness.

Her entry begins:

I read almost exclusively fiction, and tend to stick within the thriller genre, which is also what I write. As an author, I’m lucky to be given early reader copies of upcoming books in order to blurb if I enjoy them. One I’ve read lately that really stands out for me is Catch You Later by Jessica Strawser.

Catch You Later is about two best friends, Mikki and Lark, who have nothing but each other. Working night shift together at a highway travel stop, Mikki and Lark are going nowhere fast. Until a stranger stops by the travel stop and Mikki impulsively leaves with him, never to be seen again.

Hypnotic, elegant and beguiling, Catch You Later is a beautifully written story about...[read on]

About What Lies in Darkness, from the publisher:

A missing family. A traumatized detective. The past and present collide in a riveting novel of suspense by the USA Today bestselling author of These Still Black Waters, Do No Harm, Behind Every Lie, and The Night Olivia Fell.

Late Christmas Eve, the Harper family’s car crashed on a desolate stretch outside Black Lake. Sixteen-year-old Alice was found injured by the side of the road―alone. It was as if her parents and younger sister, Ella, had simply disappeared.

One year later, Alice is still dealing with nightmares and unanswered questions when she and her friends find Ella’s bloodstained backpack in the basement of an abandoned home. As Detective Jess Lambert investigates, she uncovers dark secrets that put her on a collision course with her past. Jess’s only witness is haunted by her own ghosts―ghosts that might ultimately be connected to Jess.

Jess will do anything to find out what happened to the Harpers―no matter how deep she has to dig. Because neither the living nor the dead are giving up their secrets easily.

Visit Christina McDonald's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Night Olivia Fell.

Writers Read: Christina McDonald (February 2019).

The Page 69 Test: These Still Black Waters.

Q&A with Christina McDonald.

Writers Read: Christina McDonald.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top thrillers with a side of romance

Vi Keeland is a #1 New York Times, #1 Wall Street Journal, and USA TODAY bestselling author. With millions of books sold, her titles are currently translated in twenty-six languages and have appeared on bestseller lists in the US, Germany, Brazil, Bulgaria, Israel, and Hungary. Three of her short stories have been turned into films by Passionflix, and two of her books are currently optioned for movies. She resides in New York with her husband and their three children where she is living out her own happily ever after with the boy she met at age six.

Keeland's debut thriller is The Unraveling.

At CrimeReads she tagged six favorite thrillers with a side of romance, including:

The Wife Between Us by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen

Stop reading now if you’ve not read this one, because it’s impossible to tell you what I loved without spoiling the story. Vanessa is a woman scorned. Her husband Richard has moved on, replaced her with a younger, newer model. She’s jealous and obsessed with Nellie, the woman who took her place. Seems simple, right? Husband, wife, mistress. Nothing new here. Or so it seems… Until we find out that Vanessa and Nellie are the same person, and Richard isn’t quite the charming husband he appears to be.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Wife Between Us is among Lizzy Barber's seven novels about wealthy people behaving badly.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Matthew K. Shannon's "Mission Manifest"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Mission Manifest: American Evangelicals and Iran in the Twentieth Century by Matthew K. Shannon.

About the book, from the publisher:

In Mission Manifest, Matthew Shannon argues that American evangelicals were central to American-Iranian relations during the decades leading up to the 1979 revolution. These Presbyterian missionaries and other Americans with ideals worked with US government officials, nongovernmental organizations, and their Iranian counterparts as cultural and political brokers―the living sinews of a binational relationship during the Second World War and early Cold War.

As US global hegemony peaked between the 1940s and the 1960s, the religious authority of the Presbyterian Mission merged with the material power of the American state to infuse US foreign relations with the messianic ideals of Christian evangelicalism. In Tehran, the missions of American evangelicals became manifest in the realms of religion, development programs, international education, and cultural associations. Americans who lived in Iran also returned to the United States to inform the growth of the national security state, higher education, and evangelical culture. The literal and figurative missions of American evangelicals in late Pahlavi Iran had consequences for the binational relationship, the global evangelical movement, and individual Americans and Iranians.

Mission Manifest offers a history of living, breathing people who shared personal, professional, and political aims in Iran at the height of American global power.

Learn more about Mission Manifest at the Cornell University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Mission Manifest.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Molly MacRae's "Come Shell or High Water"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Come Shell or High Water by Molly MacRae.

About the book, from the publisher:

From Molly MacRae, acclaimed author of the Highland Bookshop Mysteries, the first in a charming new series set on a beautiful barrier island off the coast of North Carolina and featuring a widowed folklorist, a seashell shop, and the ghost of an 18th century pirate…

As a professional storyteller, Maureen Nash can’t help but see the narrative cues woven through her life. Like the series of letters addressed to her late husband from a stranger—the proprietor of The Moon Shell, a shop on Ocracoke Island, off the coast of North Carolina. The store is famous with shell collectors, but it’s the cryptic letters from Allen Withrow, the shop’s owner, that convince Maureen to travel to the small coastal town in the middle of hurricane season. At the very least, she expects she’ll get a good story out of the experience, never anticipating it could end up a murder mystery . . .

In Maureen’s first hours on the storm-lashed island, she averts several life-threatening accidents, stumbles over the body of a controversial Ocracoke local, and meets the ghost of an eighteenth-century Welsh pirate, Emrys Lloyd. To the untrained eye, all these unusual occurrences would seem to be random misfortunes, but Maureen senses there may be something connecting these stories. With Emrys’s supernatural assistance, and the support of a few new friends, Maureen sets out unravel the truth, find a killer, and hopefully give this tale a satisfying ending . . . while also rewriting her own.

Visit Molly MacRae's website.

My Book, The Movie: Plaid and Plagiarism.

The Page 69 Test: Plaid and Plagiarism.

The Page 69 Test: Scones and Scoundrels.

My Book, The Movie: Scones and Scoundrels.

The Page 69 Test: Crewel and Unusual.

The Page 69 Test: Heather and Homicide.

Q&A with Molly MacRae.

Writers Read: Molly MacRae.

The Page 69 Test: Come Shell or High Water.

--Marshal Zeringue