Pg. 69: Brittany Amara's "The Bleeding Woods"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Bleeding Woods by Brittany Amara.

About the book, from the publisher:

In this chilling debut horror novel, a young woman discovering dangerous new powers finds herself lost in the Appalachian Mountains with her first love, the sister she betrayed, and an infatuated stranger bound to her telepathically as a string of vicious murders taints the woods red.

Clara Lovecroft didn’t mean to kill her parents. She was fourteen when it happened. Something inside her had awoken, something terrible and dangerous that Clara’s kept at bay with pills ever since. Not that her sister, Jade, will ever forgive her for what happened. Not that Clara will ever forgive herself.

Nearly a decade later, on the anniversary of their parents’ deaths, Clara joins Jade, their childhood friend, Grayson, and his younger brother, Joey, on a weekend getaway to repair their broken relationship. The spontaneous road trip stalls when their car breaks down, stranding them in Blackstone Forest―a place deeper and darker than anyone can imagine. Here, the forest whispers, and within its haunting foliage, a strange man waits for Clara among the trees, their destinies rooted in death.

He would die for Clara. In fact, he would kill for her.

Before the weekend is over, blood will spill in Blackstone Forest. When it does, Clara will have to face the irresistible stranger in all his terrifying glory. She’ll also discover the truth about their shared pasts. Like the forest itself, it’s monstrous.

Visit Brittany Amara's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Bleeding Woods.

Writers Read: Brittany Amara.

The Page 69 Test: The Bleeding Woods.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Pamela Walker Laird's "Self-Made"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Self-Made: The Stories That Forged an American Myth by Pamela Walker Laird.

About the book, from the publisher:

'Self-Made' success is now an American badge of honor that rewards individualist ambitions while it hammers against community obligations. Yet, four centuries ago, our foundational stories actually disparaged ambitious upstarts as dangerous and selfish threats to a healthy society. In Pamela Walker Laird's fascinating history of why and how storytellers forged this American myth, she reveals how the goals for self-improvement evolved from serving the community to supporting individualist dreams of wealth and esteem. Simplistic stories of self-made success and failure emerged that disregarded people's advantages and disadvantages and fostered inequality. Fortunately, Self-Made also recovers long-standing, alternative traditions of self-improvement to serve the common good. These challenges to the myth have offered inspiration, often coming, surprisingly, from Americans associated with self-made success, such as Benjamin Franklin, Frederick Douglass, and Horatio Alger. Here are real stories that show that no one lives – no one succeeds or fails – in a vacuum.

Learn more about Self-Made at the Cambridge University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Self-Made.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five contemporary mysteries for lovers of the classics

Dana Johnson Vengrouskie is a writer, copy editor, and general creative who’s passionate about storytelling, art, and language. She writes fiction and poetry as Wendelyn Vega. When she’s not writing, editing, or daydreaming, she enjoys reading, doodling, trying out new recipes, spending time with her husband, and playing with the three mini tigers she keeps in her house.

At The Nerd Daily she tagged "five contemporary mysteries to read if you enjoy the classics," including:

Station Eternity by Mur Lafferty (2022)

In Station Eternity, by Mur Lafferty, Mallory, a reluctant “Nancy Drew,” has spent much of her adult life trying to flee from an uncanny ability to find murder wherever she goes. The quest to escape has led her to a sentient space station with few humans on board–as humans are the ones most likely to suffer from her curse–but when the station welcomes a new group of human guests, and with them comes a crop of murders, the longsuffering amateur detective has to put her skills to work to save the day.

Read about another entry on the list.

Station Eternity is among Thomas Mullen's eight top crime novels that blur the line into sci-fi.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jacinda Townsend's "Trigger Warning," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Trigger Warning: A Novel by Jacinda Townsend.

The entry begins:

Trigger Warning’s protagonist, Ruth, is a middle-aged woman who is revisiting the trauma of her father’s murder after the passage of two decades. Ruth would be so well-acted by Jurnee Smollett, who was one of my favorite actresses as a kid. Jurnee is a brunette as an adult, but she still brings that fierce redhead energy to her roles, albeit in the same muted, smoldering aura that Ruth has settled into at the time of my novel’s opening. In attempting to navigate her previously disavowed grief, Ruth absconds with her trans kid, Enix, on a cross-country trip from Louisville to a fictional town in Northern California, and Enix must navigate their mother’s middle-aged attempt at magmic transformation at the same time they themselves are handling gender fluidity and plain old adolescence. I’d cast...[read on]

Visit Jacinda Townsend's website.

My Book, The Movie: Mother Country.

My Book, The Movie: Trigger Warning.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Brittany Amara reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Brittany Amara, author of The Bleeding Woods.

From her entry:

I'm a feral fiction reader, just as I am a feral fiction writer. Most often, I read sci-fi, fantasy, romance, or anything that blends the three. Currently, I’m reading Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros. In it, we follow Violet Sorrengail as she strives to survive in a cutthroat academy for dragon riders, finding strength she never thought she had and love she never thought possible in the process. Before becoming an author, I worked at my local Barnes & Nobles, and witnessed the beautiful mayhem every time a new installment in her series was released. Still, back then, I never felt quite called to dive in myself. Then, on a random, dreary Autumn afternoon… my dog started pawing at the hardcover copy. I went outside, perched on a rock, and let myself fall into Yarros’s world right away. I am so grateful I did. The explosive joy she takes in building her beautiful, complex, expansive world is exactly the...[read on]

About The Bleeding Woods, from the publisher:

In this chilling debut horror novel, a young woman discovering dangerous new powers finds herself lost in the Appalachian Mountains with her first love, the sister she betrayed, and an infatuated stranger bound to her telepathically as a string of vicious murders taints the woods red.

Clara Lovecroft didn’t mean to kill her parents. She was fourteen when it happened. Something inside her had awoken, something terrible and dangerous that Clara’s kept at bay with pills ever since. Not that her sister, Jade, will ever forgive her for what happened. Not that Clara will ever forgive herself.

Nearly a decade later, on the anniversary of their parents’ deaths, Clara joins Jade, their childhood friend, Grayson, and his younger brother, Joey, on a weekend getaway to repair their broken relationship. The spontaneous road trip stalls when their car breaks down, stranding them in Blackstone Forest―a place deeper and darker than anyone can imagine. Here, the forest whispers, and within its haunting foliage, a strange man waits for Clara among the trees, their destinies rooted in death.

He would die for Clara. In fact, he would kill for her.

Before the weekend is over, blood will spill in Blackstone Forest. When it does, Clara will have to face the irresistible stranger in all his terrifying glory. She’ll also discover the truth about their shared pasts. Like the forest itself, it’s monstrous.

Visit Brittany Amara's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Bleeding Woods.

Writers Read: Brittany Amara.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Gerard N. Magliocca's "The Actual Art of Governing"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Actual Art of Governing: Justice Robert H. Jackson's Concurring Opinion in the Steel Seizure Case by Gerard N. Magliocca.

About the book, from the publisher:

Since the adoption of the US constitution, there has been ongoing calibration of the power balance between the three branches of government, often in the face of rapidly changing social and political contexts. In 1952, US Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson took up this debate in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Company v. Sawyer, a watershed case that barred President Harry S. Truman from seizing privately operated steel mills during the Korean War. Concurring with the majority decision, Jackson penned an opinion that would become the authoritative source on the constitutional boundary between congressional and executive authority.

In The Actual Art of Governing, eminent legal historian Gerard N. Magliocca takes a close look at this landmark opinion, providing a deep reading of the decision and the context surrounding it, and explaining its lasting influence. Magliocca skillfully shows how Justice Jackson's opinion broke free of the rules for judicial writing, taking a pragmatic approach to constitutional interpretation that drew on personal experience and historical examples, rather than sticking strictly to the text, judicial doctrine, and original public meaning. The framework that Jackson proposed took on crucial significance during the fallout of Richard Nixon's Watergate abuses and has continued to be relied upon in controversies involving the reach of the US President's power, including actions taken by Donald Trump. Magliocca concludes by arguing that a proper reading of Jackson's Youngstown concurrence would lead to significant curbs on emergency powers, the discretion of the federal courts, and presidential authority.

Learn more about The Actual Art of Governing at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: The Tragedy of William Jennings Bryan: Constitutional Law and the Politics of Backlash.

The Page 99 Test: American Founding Son.

The Page 99 Test: Washington's Heir.

The Page 99 Test: The Actual Art of Governing.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight titles about the excesses & intrigues of celebrity

Hannah Beer is a writer from North West England. She lives in London and works in communications. A reformed fangirl, she has an encyclopedic knowledge of celebrity culture that she writes about in her newsletter Emotional Speculation. When not working or writing, she enjoys reading, going to gigs, and cooking elaborate meals for her friends.

Beer's new novel is I Make My Own Fun.

At Electric Lit the author tagged eight books about the excesses and intrigues of celebrity. One title on the list:

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

It’s not possible to make a list of this kind and leave out Taylor Jenkins Reid. I had my pick—complex famous women are TJR’s specialty—but I had to go with Evelyn Hugo because the eponymous protagonist has that seismic, dial-shifting fame that is so difficult to capture. The book follows Evelyn Hugo, an elusive, Elizabeth Taylor-eqsue actor, as she opens up for the first time about her rise to fame, her decades in the spotlight, and her infamous seven marriages. This is the book you take on holiday and delay pre-dinner drinks to finish reading: It’s propulsive, emotionally absorbing, and oozing with old-Hollywood delights.

Read about another entry on Beer's list.

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo is among Susan Meissner's six novels of intrigue set in Golden Age Hollywood, People magazine staffers' favorite literary romances, Elizabeth Staple's eight titles about youthful mistakes that come back to haunt you, Katherine St. John's five top fiction titles about Hollywood, and Kerri Jarema's eleven top novels set in Old Hollywood.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Mirta Ojito

From my Q&A with Mirta Ojito, author of Deeper than the Ocean:

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

I don’t exactly know when I decided on Deeper than the Ocean as the title, but I do know that I never considered any other. The narrative in my historical novel is anchored on a very real event: the 1919 shipwreck of a Spanish ship, the Valbanera, with 488 people on board; most of them, immigrants who left Spain and were en route to Havana, Cuba, in search of a better life. A devastating hurricane derailed those dreams, and the ship sank far from Havana, off the coast of Key West. When it was found, the ship was buried in a bank of soft sand, and the bodies had disappeared. It is believed they were buried deep, deeper than the ocean. But the title also alludes to the love story that drives the story and to the ties that run deep and connect families across the oceans, migrations, generations, and...[read on]

Visit Mirta Ojito's website.

My Book, The Movie: Deeper than the Ocean.

The Page 69 Test: Deeper than the Ocean.

Q&A with Mirta Ojito.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: John R. Haddad's "Thrill Ride"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Thrill Ride: The Transformation of Hersheypark by John R. Haddad.

About the book, from the publisher:

More than an amusement park linked to a chocolate empire, Hershey Park in its early years was an extension of industrialist Milton Hershey’s paternalistic capitalism. Hershey sought to avoid the labor strife seen in other industries by giving his workers a better deal. He provided employees with affordable homes, free schools, utility subsidies, and municipal services as well as amenities including a theater, library, and amusement park. In exchange, he expected hard work, loyalty, and no strikes.

Eventually the Hershey Company faced intense market pressure from its competitor Mars and discontinued the services and amenities the community had come to expect. By the 1960s, the park had become so run-down that Hershey officials decided it needed a redesign, and they refashioned it into a Disney-style theme park. What had been an old-fashioned, pay-as-you-go amusement park for chocolate workers, their families, and the community would become a major mid-Atlantic attraction.

Haddad’s engaging and accessible social history explores how this remodel of the park strategically used symbols of the past and future to help the Hershey community cope with change. The new park guided patrons from depictions of the Old World through subsequent eras, culminating in a space exemplifying modernity, with colossal steel structures and sophisticated thrill rides.

Drawing on deep archival work and personal interviews, Haddad charts how memory and feelings are tied to locations and how people respond when change threatens those locations.

Learn more about Thrill Ride at the Penn State University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Thrill Ride.

--Marshal Zeringue

Four top novels about obsession, power, and dangerous bonds

Robin Merle is the author of Involuntary Exit: A Woman’s Guide to Thriving After Being Fired. She has published short fiction in The Chouteau Review, South Carolina Review, Kalliope, and Real Fiction. She holds a master’s degree from The Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, where she earned a fellowship. In her other professional life, as a nonprofit executive, she has raised over a half-billion dollars in philanthropic support to improve individuals’ quality of life and access to opportunities. A longtime New Yorker, Merle now lives in Scarborough, Maine with her family.

Her new novel is A Dangerous Friendship.

At CrimeReads Merle tagged four irrestible novels that "expose the shadow side of intimacy, the thin line between attraction and peril that reflects our darkest longings." One title on the list:

The Girls — Emma Cline

Evie is fourteen, restless, and hungry to belong when she is captivated by Suzanne, a magnetic, feral woman and petty thief who lives by her wits and daring. Evie is so vulnerable and eager to be loved that she joins Suzanne and her band of raggedy dressed girls who live on the streets of sunny Oakland, California. With blind trust in Suzanne, Evie follows her to a remote farmhouse where she is drawn into a cult led by the mesmerizing Russell. Suzanne is his muse, and her appetite for danger enthralls and chills Evie, who soon becomes entangled in acts she can’t undo. Inspired by the Manson family murders, this novel is a haunting look at manipulation, vulnerability, and the dark seductions of female friendship, masterfully written by Emma Cline.

Read about another novel on Merle's list.

The Girls is among Kate Robards's five top books about cults.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Corinne Demas's "Daughters"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Daughters: A Novel by Corinne Demas.

About the book, from the publisher:

From award-winning author Corinne Demas comes a moving story about the sometimes volatile but ultimately unbreakable bonds between mothers and daughters.

When Meredith flies home to New England, daughter Eloise in tow, she leaves her husband and a life back in LA. A heartbreaking loss is killing their marriage. So she looks to her mother and siblings for the support she desperately needs, and the love her daughter surely deserves―two things her husband can’t seem to provide.

Meredith’s mother, Delia, is thrilled by their sudden arrival at the family farm. But her husband braces for the chaos his stepdaughter and granddaughter will surely bring. Meredith’s announcement that she’s moved home for good takes the whole family by surprise and turns everything upside down.

While wrestling with her future, artist Meredith is forced to confront her past―and the disappointment she believes her mother, a violin teacher, felt when musically gifted Meredith abandoned the violin.

As Meredith works to repair relationships with members of her family, an old flame turns up and further complicates her life.

Delia, in a desperate attempt to rescue her daughter’s marriage, does something unforgivable, and Meredith has to decide if she should uproot Eloise and take off. When Eloise goes missing, help arrives from an unexpected quarter.

Visit Corinne Demas's website.

Q&A with Corinne Demas.

The Page 69 Test: The Road Towards Home.

My Book, The Movie: The Road Towards Home.

The Page 69 Test: Daughters.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Edward Watts's "Berserk Violence, Racial Vengeance, and Settler Colonialism in American Writing from Franklin to Melville"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Berserk Violence, Racial Vengeance, and Settler Colonialism in American Writing from Franklin to Melville by Edward Watts.

About the book, from the publisher:

Berserk Violence, Racial Vengeance, and Settler Colonialism in American Writing from Franklin to Melville studies the literary and cultural tradition of the “Indian Hater” in American writing from the decades between the Revolution and the Civil War. In dozens of short stories, novels, poems, plays, and historical publications, Indian Haters were white settlers on the western frontier who to kill all “Indians” to avenge the deaths of family members at the hands of a few. As they engage their episodes in racial violence, they attain transcendent racial powers based in traditions of historical white barbarism and the powers of the legendary berserker, the crazed Nordic super-warrior. Indian Haters' obsession with genocidal retribution reflected and participated in important conversations in the new nation about race, violence, nation, and masculinity, as well as the role of the emergent mass print culture in the distribution of propaganda, disinformation, and misrepresentation.

At the same time, many authors used Indian Haters to represent the moral failure of the new nation, profoundly critiquing its ambitions and assumptions. Using theories and methods drawn from studies of settler colonialism, nationalism, media, sociology, trauma, and literary history, Edward Watts excavates dozens of long-lost Indian Hater accounts, as well as better known ones from Benjamin Franklin, Charles Brockden Brown, James Hall, Robert Montgomery Bird, and Herman Melville to tell the story of a story, and how that story exposes the complex machinations of the role of print culture's interactions with the violence of settler colonialism.

Learn more about Berserk Violence, Racial Vengeance, and Settler Colonialism in American Writing from Franklin to Melville at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Berserk Violence, Racial Vengeance, and Settler Colonialism in American Writing from Franklin to Melville.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top novels featuring the Black bourgeoisie

Brittany K. Allen is a writer and actor living in Brooklyn.

At Lit Hub she tagged five novels to read if you’re fascinated by the Black bourgeoisie. One entry on the list:

Rob Franklin, Great Black Hope

Franklin’s own debut novel, following a privileged Black youth experiencing a spectacular fall from grace, is partially set in the classy climes. Our protagonist Smith’s father is the one-time president of an Atlanta HBCU. And after a troubling tango with the law, our hero is forced to confront the heft of that legacy—even as he leans on its spoils.

This novel does a fine job bringing an under-seen family into the unforgiving spotlight. Franklin’s fond but firm on the family’s intricate contradictions.

Read about another novel on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Catriona McPherson reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Catriona McPherson, author of Scot's Eggs.

Her entry begins:

I've been injured and dealing with immobility, surgery and physiotherapy the last few months, which had an effect on my reading. I retreated into comfort. Now, since I'm a crime writer, my idea of comfort is maybe not everyone's. I had read and adored about five of Linda Castillo's seventeen Chief Kate Burkholder, Amish country procedurals. Immediately I got back from the ER, I bought myself the other twelve. I've read eleven and am saving the most recent installment, Rage, for the Christmas holidays. Blimey, they're good. They're pretty violent and not at all cosy - don't let "Amish" or "country" mislead you, but Kate's team of officers at Painter's Mill PD are the best kind of found family. And the plots are...[read on]

About Scot's Eggs, from the publisher:

It’s egg-hunt season, but Lexy Campbell is spending Easter hunting a killer!

Not even Cuento’s Easter bonnet parade can distract Lexy Campbell from conception woes and missing tourists Bill and Billie Miller. The Millers’ vintage Mustang has been abandoned, its interior covered in blood.

Is this a double murder, and if so, where are the bodies? Why were the Millers spending the night in their car? Did they pitch up at the Last Ditch Motel only to be turned away? Are they really dead? The Trinity for Trouble are quickly on the case!

As they start to identify the guests staying at the motel the weekend before Easter – including a Goth and a barbershop singer on stilts – disturbing evidence comes to light. Can Lexy see though all the deception to unmask the truth and save the Last Ditch?

Fans of Janet Evanovich and Sarah Strohmeyer will fall head over heels for this addictive mystery that's full of twists and laugh out loud humour.

Visit Catriona McPherson's website.

The Page 69 Test: Go to My Grave.

Writers Read: Catriona McPherson (November 2018).

My Book, The Movie: The Turning Tide.

The Page 69 Test: The Turning Tide.

My Book, The Movie: A Gingerbread House.

The Page 69 Test: Hop Scot.

The Page 69 Test: Deep Beneath Us.

Q&A with Catriona McPherson.

The Page 69 Test: The Witching Hour.

Writers Read: Catriona McPherson (September 2024).

Writers Read: Catriona McPherson (December 2024).

The Page 69 Test: Scotzilla.

My Book, The Movie: Scotzilla.

The Page 69 Test: Scot's Eggs.

Writers Read: Catriona McPherson.

--Marshal Zeringue

Brittany Amara's "The Bleeding Woods," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Bleeding Woods by Brittany Amara.

The entry begins:

The Bleeding Woods is part-botanical horror, part-speculative fiction, part-dark romance. Set within the eerie stretches of forestry in upstate New York, it pulls inspiration from the drives I’d take to visit my family when I was a little girl. They always seemed endless, and no matter what I did, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was… watching me. Something was studying me just as closely as I was studying it. As I grew, a fuller story took shape. Then, it served as a conduit through which I was able to turn horror into healing. Clara Lovecroft is a monster who craves to be human caught between two warring forces: a human family urging her toward complacency, and a monster so equally matched, it feels like fate.

Every time I write a novel, I can’t help but envision it for the screen. Alongside writing, I am deeply passionate about acting and filmmaking. I’ve seen magic happen when the three fall into perfect synergy. Crafting a story is delightfully solitary, but bringing that story to life on film is all about collaborative creative flow and connection. I like to believe that, should The Bleeding Woods find its way to the screen, I’ve been in connection with those destined to work on it from the start.

This novel did so much to help me alchemize struggles that I hadn’t found the bravery to say aloud at the time. When I dare to dream of a team who will lift it from its pages, I dream of people who need it now as much as I needed it then. I dream of an actress who might find a deeper sense of self-love through playing Clara and an actor who might learn to face his own demons by playing Jasper. I dream of a director who will see into the heart of the story, and consequently, into how my heart ached as I wrote it. Together, we’d create a piece as gory and horrifying as it is heartfelt and healing.

If I had to dreamcast and select a dream director, if only to help readers get a sense of how I see, hear and feel this world, I’m definitely happy to give it a shot!

In terms of directing, I deeply admire Guillermo Del Toro’s handling of horror. He is able to imbue even the goriest and most visceral scenes with such poetry. I recently watched his take on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and I was blown away by how uniquely gothic and vibrantly alive the world felt. I am also a big fan of Pan’s Labyrinth, The Shape of Water, and Pacific Rim. Each deals with monsters of profound complexity, and without fail, I end up caring about them. I’d like people to empathize with Clara and Jasper the same way.

In the role of Clara...[read on]

Visit Brittany Amara's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Bleeding Woods.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Satya Shikha Chakraborty's "Colonial Caregivers"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Colonial Caregivers: Ayahs and the Gendered History of Race and Caste in British India by Satya Shikha Chakraborty.

About the book, from the publisher:

Colonial Caregivers offers a compelling cultural and social history of ayahs (nannies/maids), by exploring domestic intimacy and exploitation in colonial South Asia. Working for British imperial families from the mid-1700s to the mid-1900s, South Asian ayahs, as Chakraborty shows, not only provided domestic labor, but also provided important moral labor for the British Empire. The desexualized racialized ayah archetype upheld British imperial whiteness and sexual purity, and later Indian elite 'upper' caste domestic modernity. Chakraborty argues that the pervasive cultural sentimentalization of the ayah morally legitimized British colonialism, while obscuring the vulnerabilities of caregivers in real-life. Using an archive of petitions and letters from ayahs, fairytales they told to British children, court cases, and vernacular sources, Chakraborty foregrounds the precarious lives, voices, and perspectives of these women. By placing care labor at the center of colonial history, the book decolonizes the history of South Asia and the British Empire.

Visit Satya Shikha Chakraborty's website.

The Page 99 Test: Colonial Caregivers.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight books to help you own your wild

Kim DeRose writes dark, magical stories about strong, magical girls for teens and former teens. She is the author of Hear Her Howl and For Girls Who Walk Through Fire, which was selected for ALA’s 2025 Rise: A Feminist Book Project List, received a starred review from School Library Journal, praise from Kirkus Reviews and Booklist, and was the recipient of the 2024 Millikin Medal for Excellence in Young Adult Fiction.

[Q&A with Kim DeRose; The Page 69 Test: For Girls Who Walk through Fire; My Book, The Movie: For Girls Who Walk through Fire; The Page 69 Test: Hear Her Howl; Writers Read: Kim DeRose]

She grew up in Santa Barbara, California, earned her MFA in film directing from UCLA, and currently lives in Brooklyn, NY as a recovering Catholic and ex-good girl. When she’s not writing or reading, she can be found listening to endless podcasts, taking long walks through the woods (of Prospect Park), and teaching her children how to howl.

Hear Her Howl is her most recent book.

At The Nerd Daily DeRose shared eight book recommendations to help you own your wild. One title on the list:

The Lesbiana’s Guide to Catholic School by Sonora Reyes

This debut YA novel a) has an amazing title, and b) is such a delight. It follows Yamilet, a queer closeted Mexican-American girl who’s transferring schools after being outed to her friend group…by her best friend and crush, no less. With this fresh start, Yami’s determined to hide her sexual identity. But when she becomes friends with annoyingly perfect Bo, the only out queer kid at her new school and begins to fall for her (whoops!), Yami’s entire plan becomes a little…difficult. This book handles Yamilet’s experiences so sensitively, and the characters are all so nuanced and heartfelt. And if you read this book and love it, I have great news for you, Sonora Reyes has a new companion book out: The Golden Boy’s Guide to Bipolar.

Read about another book on DeRose's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Brigitte Dale

From my Q&A with Brigitte Dale, author of The Good Daughters: A Novel:

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

My book is called The Good Daughters, but for a very long time while I was writing my first drafts, I called it The Jail Keeper's Daughter. One of my main characters, Emily, is in fact the daughter of the warden of Holloway Prison, the notorious jail where suffragettes were imprisoned in London. When Emily comes face to face with a young suffragette, Charlotte, on the other side of her father's prison bars, she's forced to confront the similarity of their lives, and begins to work in secret on the behalf of the women's suffrage campaign. Eventually, that title didn't serve the story well enough, because it's bigger than just Emily. The Good Daughters is about four wildly different young women at the frontlines of the battle for women’s suffrage. All four women weigh their familial and societal expectations with their own ambitions and sense of justice. That's how...[read on]

Visit Brigitte Dale's website.

Q&A with Brigitte Dale.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Mirta Ojito's "Deeper than the Ocean"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Deeper than the Ocean by Mirta Ojito.

About the book, from the publisher:

A moving multigenerational novel about the enduring power of a mother’s love, the ripple effect of secrets, and the strength of family bonds from a Pulitzer Prize-winning author.

One hundred years after the shipwreck of the Valbanera, known to history as the “poor man’s Titanic,” Mara Denis gets an assignment to report on the Canary Islands, where her ancestors lived before they moved to Cuba. Unexpectedly, she discovers that the grandmother her mother cherished was listed among the dead of the Valbanera, years before Mara’s mother was even born. This fateful twist changes everything Mara thought she knew about her family and herself, and sends her on a quest to find the truth. If her great grandmother is a ghost, who is she and where did she come from?

In spare, beautiful writing, the author transports the reader to the Canary Islands and Cuba in the early part of the twentieth century and New York and Key West in the present. This is an epic tale of a young woman’s passion for her beloved, as well as the redeeming power of family secrets at last uncovered.

This moving, sweeping novel is perfect for fans of Isabel Allende, Julia Alvarez, and Kristin Hannah.

Visit Mirta Ojito's website.

My Book, The Movie: Deeper than the Ocean.

The Page 69 Test: Deeper than the Ocean.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Scot Danforth's "An Independent Man"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: An Independent Man: Ed Roberts and the Fight for Disability Rights by Scot Danforth.

About the book, from the publisher:

The first biography of one of the founders of the disability rights movement, An Independent Man chronicles the life of an activist who reimagined the meaning of equality and inspired generations of reformers.

Before Jonas Salk's vaccine, polio was a social death sentence. The disabled were expected to disappear into their limitations, pitied by those around them. This might have been the story of Ed Roberts, paralyzed and consigned to sleep in an iron lung. But Roberts insisted on what all people deserve: a full life.

Scot Danforth deftly captures Roberts's adventurous personality and radical vision, chronicling his life from his student activist days at the University of California, Berkeley, in the early 1960s to his career highlights of establishing the pioneering Center for Independent Living and directing California's Department of Rehabilitation. By insisting that disabled persons are valuable members of society, and by translating his ideas into action, Roberts laid the ground for the Americans with Disabilities Act and the ongoing movement for equality.

Learn more about An Independent Man at the University of California Press website.

The Page 99 Test: An Independent Man.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight titles that reckon with the impacts of cancel culture

Allie Tagle-Dokus is a writer and high school teacher. She received her BFA in writing, literature and publishing from Emerson College and her MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She currently lives in Gardner, Massachusetts.

Tagle-Dokus's new novel is Lucky Girl.

At Electric Lit the author tagged eight books that reckon with the impacts of cancel culture: seven novels and a play that "ask how we strike the balance between calling out harm and accepting when accountability goes too far." One title on the list:

I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai

Rebecca Makkai’s novel tackles our obsession with true crime podcasts as filmmaker Bodie returns to her alma mater to teach some media courses on films and podcasts. Years ago, the campus was rocked by a shocking murder of Bodie’s roommate, a murder she finds herself unpacking with her plucky students. These Gen Zers cannily intuit the police were quick to condemn athletic director Omar, one of the few people of color on campus. The kids get to crafting a podcast that seeks to crack the case open. In the background, Bodie contends with a more personal issue: Her amicable ex-husband has been accused of sexual misconduct—his culpability is fuzzy, think Aziz Ansari-level fuzzy—but the online discourse seeks to quickly dismiss him, and Bodie along with it. Makkai uses this B-plot to interrogate the main focus of the novel, illuminating the dangers of certainty.

Read about another entry on the list.

I Have Some Questions For You is among Jo Firestone's five top laugh-out-loud mysteries, Jacqueline Faber's seven top thrillers about the role of the witness, Kat Davis's top ten feminist crime novels subverting the Dead Girl trope, Elise Juska’s eight best campus novels ever written, Nicole Hackett's six top mysteries about motherhood and crime, Brittany Bunzey's ten books that take you inside their characters’ heads, Anne Burt's four top recent titles with social justice themes, and Heather Darwent's nine best campus thrillers.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Elizabeth Hobbs reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Elizabeth Hobbs, author of Murder Made Her Wicked: A Marigold Manners Mystery.

Her entry begins:

For a writer, reading is not just a relaxing pleasure, but an essential tool for keeping my imagination full of new and different voices and ideas and vocabulary. I usually have a few different books going at once and usually a combination of fiction and non-fiction. But the common denominator is usually a strong female protagonist. This month, I’ve read:

The Wind in the Willows

This is an annual re-read for me. During my recent downsizing, I pulled this 1908 Kenneth Grahame book out of my children’s bookshelf to put in my ‘keeper’ pile, but ended up sitting down and re-immersing myself in the pastoral children’s tale of a group of anthropomorphized animals who band together to save a feckless friend. What once seemed a charming adventure tale, now strikes me quite differently— Mole, Ratty, Badger and Mr. Toad have stuck with me throughout my writing life as archetypes of the Fish Out of Water, The Loyal Stalwart Friend, the Wise Leader and the Feckless Ne’er-do-Well. I think that every protagonist I’ve ever written—male or female—is some version of Ratty, that rugged, persistent fellow who lives in the moment, packs an extravagant picnic basket, stands loyally by his many and varied friends and never, ever gives up. Beneath all that children’s charm lies...[read on]

About Murder Made Her Wicked, from the publisher:

Bicycle-riding, aspiring archaeologist Marigold Manners is back and ready for adventure in Elizabeth Hobbs’s next mesmerizing historical mystery.

“A humdinger…whose characters bring to mind those of both Emily Brontë and L. M. Montgomery” (Kirkus), this second installment is perfect for fans of Deanna Rayborn.

1894, Boston. Penniless Boston heiress and accomplished modern woman Marigold Manners has put her past to good use, selling the story of the Great Misery Island Murders to earn enough money to resume the life she was always meant to have and return to her studies at Wellesley College. But her carefully laid plans for academic excellence are thrown into disarray when she stumbles across the body of a young woman in the campus lake.

When the peace of the bucolic campus is shattered by the murder, the cloistered world of a women’s college that Marigold finds so comforting proves it is not immune to the malice and wickedness of the world. The closed community becomes a hothouse where disparagement blooms into insult and small slights that have festered for years blossom into academic rivalries that could spill over into something far more sinister. Marigold must use every ounce of her logic and enlist her eccentric, colorful cast of fellow students and found family to identify the girl and find the murderer—before they kill again.

Visit Elizabeth Hobbs's website.

Q&A with Elizabeth Hobbs.

Writers Read: Elizabeth Hobbs.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Mitchell B. Cruzan's "Looking Down the Tree"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Looking Down the Tree: The Evolutionary Biology of Human Origins by Mitchell B. Cruzan.

About the book, from the publisher:

We know much about our history from bones and DNA, but these studies do not tell us about the characteristics that are not preserved in the fossil record -- the fleshy parts and behaviors. Evolutionary biologists are more interested in the processes of evolution than the patterns; what caused the changes we see in the fossil record? Looking Down the Tree applies evolutionary principles to understand the history of our species and the pressures of natural selection which led to our unique appearance and behaviors.

Cruzan draws upon evidence from fossils, genomics, phylogenetics, coalescence theory, and the anatomy and physiology of our human ancestors and other animals to arrive at an understanding of the origin of human appearance and behavior. This evidence is discussed in the context of comparative biology, natural and sexual selection, evolutionary constraints, inbreeding and inclusive fitness, and genetic and cultural evolution.

The story of our past that we piece together provides a novel view of how savanna habitats favored a unique set of adaptations including bipedalism and the loss of fur in our early australopithecine ancestors. Other characteristics were outcomes of increasing brain size, which led to the birth of helpless infants that required years of childcare. Cooperation was favored through inbreeding and inclusive fitness in the clans of our ancestors as they struggled to survive through extensive periods of severe drought in eastern Africa. We end this discussion with an evaluation of the increasing importance of cultural evolution, as the transmission of skills and knowledge became ever-more important for human life. Like any other species, we discover that we are the product of the environments that our ancestors experienced.

Visit the Cruzan Lab website.

The Page 99 Test: Looking Down the Tree.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven thrillers and mysteries where the celebration turns deadly

Heather Gudenkauf is the critically acclaimed author of several novels, including the New York Times bestsellers The Weight of Silence, The Overnight Guest, and Everyone Is Watching. She lives in Iowa with her husband and children.

[Coffee with a Canine: Heather Gudenkauf and Maxine; Coffee with a Canine: Heather Gudenkauf & Lolo; My Book, The Movie: Not A Sound; The Page 69 Test: Not A Sound; Writers Read: Heather Gudenkauf (April 2019); The Page 69 Test: Before She Was Found; The Page 69 Test: This Is How I Lied; The Page 69 Test: The Overnight Guest; Q&A with Heather Gudenkauf]

Gudenkauf's new novel is The Perfect Hosts.

At CrimeReads she tagged "seven mysteries and thrillers that prove that even the most meticulously planned parties can simmer with tension, secrets, and even murder." One title on the list:

We all know about block parties, bachelorette, birthday, and going-away parties, but have you heard about an “after-I-die” bash? Intrigued? Then the unputdownable Party Planning Can Be Murder by Kerry Schafer & Kerry Anne King is the book for you. Enter Addy Winters, a small-town party planner who, instead of a funeral, is tasked with organizing the ultimate going-away party for world-famous rockstar and old friend, Leo Masterson. But when Leo dies earlier than expected and under suspicious circumstances, Addy is on the case and intent on serving justice.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Catriona McPherson's "Scot's Eggs"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Scot's Eggs by Catriona McPherson.

About the novel, from the publisher:

It’s egg-hunt season, but Lexy Campbell is spending Easter hunting a killer!

Not even Cuento’s Easter bonnet parade can distract Lexy Campbell from conception woes and missing tourists Bill and Billie Miller. The Millers’ vintage Mustang has been abandoned, its interior covered in blood.

Is this a double murder, and if so, where are the bodies? Why were the Millers spending the night in their car? Did they pitch up at the Last Ditch Motel only to be turned away? Are they really dead? The Trinity for Trouble are quickly on the case!

As they start to identify the guests staying at the motel the weekend before Easter – including a Goth and a barbershop singer on stilts – disturbing evidence comes to light. Can Lexy see though all the deception to unmask the truth and save the Last Ditch?

Fans of Janet Evanovich and Sarah Strohmeyer will fall head over heels for this addictive mystery that's full of twists and laugh out loud humour.

Visit Catriona McPherson's website.

The Page 69 Test: Go to My Grave.

Writers Read: Catriona McPherson (November 2018).

My Book, The Movie: The Turning Tide.

The Page 69 Test: The Turning Tide.

My Book, The Movie: A Gingerbread House.

The Page 69 Test: Hop Scot.

The Page 69 Test: Deep Beneath Us.

Q&A with Catriona McPherson.

The Page 69 Test: The Witching Hour.

Writers Read: Catriona McPherson (September 2024).

Writers Read: Catriona McPherson (December 2024).

The Page 69 Test: Scotzilla.

My Book, The Movie: Scotzilla.

The Page 69 Test: Scot's Eggs.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Matthew Davis's "A Biography of a Mountain"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: A Biography of a Mountain: The Making and Meaning of Mount Rushmore by Matthew Davis.

About the book, from the publisher:

A comprehensive narrative history of Mt. Rushmore, written in light of recent political controversies, and a timely retrospective for the monument's 100th anniversary in 2025

“Well, most people want to come to a national park and leave with that warm, fuzzy feeling with an ice cream cone. Rushmore can’t do that if you do it the right way. If you do it the right way people are going to be leaving pissed.”

Gerard Baker, the first Native American superintendent of Mt. Rushmore, shared those words with author Matthew Davis. From the tragic history of Wounded Knee and the horrors of Indian Boarding Schools, to the Land Back movement of today, Davis traces the Native American story of Mt. Rushmore alongside the narrative of the growing territory and state of South Dakota, and the economic and political forces that shaped the reasons for the Memorial's creation.

A Biography of A Mountain combines history with reportage, bringing the complicated and nuanced story of Mt. Rushmore to life, from the land’s origins as sacred tribal ground; to the expansion of the American West; to the larger-than-life personality of Gutzon Borglum, the artist who carved the presidential faces into the mountain; and up to the politicized present-day conflict over the site and its future. Exploring issues related to how we memorialize American history, Davis tells an imperative story for our time.

Visit Matthew Davis's website.

The Page 99 Test: A Biography of a Mountain.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six great brain-on science fiction & fantasy books

At Book Riot Liberty Hardy tagged six top sci-fi and fantasy books that may require your full concentration, including:

Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee

In this exciting military space opera, a disgraced captain is given a second chance, but it comes with a high price. Captain Kel Cheris is grateful that Kel Command has decided to take one more chance on her and give her a new assignment. She is to capture the Fortress of Scattered Needles back from the heretics. Complicating matters is undead tactician Shuos Jedao, who might be able to offer Cheris her best strategy for retaking the fortress. But he also went mad and massacred a bunch of people in his first life, so she has that possibility hanging over her mission, as well as the fear of failure.

Read about another entry on the list.

Ninefox Gambit (and the Machineries of Empire series) is among Karen Osborne's five top humans turned weapons of science fiction, Ada Hoffmann's five best science fiction books by autistic authors, Jenn Lyons's five villains who see themselves as heroes, Jeff Somers's fifty greatest debut sci-fi and fantasy novels ever written, and T.W. O'Brien's five recent books that explore the secret lives of robots.

My Book, The Movie: Ninefox Gambit.

--Marshal Zeringue

Elle Marr's "The Lie She Wears," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Lie She Wears by Elle Marr.

The entry begins:

Set in Portland, Oregon, The Lie She Wears begins with museum curator and Asian-American Pearl receiving a letter from her recently deceased mother—confessing to murder. Pearl thinks she’s uncovered her mother’s darkest secret. But, when more letters surface, and new victims appear, Pearl realizes she’s caught in a deadly game of cat and mouse.

While I’m writing, I never think of what actor or filmmaker would be a fit for a screen adaptation of my book. However, it would be my dream to see this story brought to life by today’s talented variety of Asian-American creatives out there. First, and most importantly, I’d dreamcast Lana Condor as Pearl, as I think she’d bring the angsty innocence that Pearl exhibits through most of the book, and she’d also bring to life the heartbreak that characterizes Pearl at the beginning of the story.

As Pearl’s mother, and a deceased character at the outset of my book, Sally’s casting requires an actress who can exude exhaustion and disdain through the text of the hidden letters, as well as the deep-abiding love for her daughter that underlines each biting retort. Lucy Liu would be a fantastic Sally.

Liam, Pearl’s father and a man living with...[read on]

Visit Elle Marr's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Missing Sister.

The Page 69 Test: Lies We Bury.

My Book, The Movie: The Lie She Wears.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Sarah Griswold's "Resurrecting the Past"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Resurrecting the Past: France's Forgotten Heritage Mandate by Sarah Griswold.

About the book, from the publisher:

In Resurrecting the Past, Sarah Griswold shows how the Levant became a crucial front in a post-1918 fight over the French past―a contingent and contradictory but always hard-charging struggle over a forgotten "heritage mandate." Many scholars, clergy, pundits, politicians, and investors perceived the moment Allied forces entered Jerusalem in December 1917 to be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to expand French influence, evoking the vision of a new colony in the territory: a French Levant. But what transpired for the French state in the Levant after World War I, and why does that ill-conceived venture still matter today?

Resurrecting the Past investigates how heritage politics led to a new form of empire―a French mandate for Syria and Lebanon―and with it a tide of regional and international critique. Against such opposition, the heritage mandate leaned heavily on spectacle and science, generating a sprawling set of sites and objects―Ottoman mansions, crusader castles, Umayyad mosques, Roman arches, buried synagogues, and Sumerian ziggurats.

As Griswold traces how French heritage efforts cycled through multiple ideal pasts in the Levant from 1918 to 1946, she reveals how each one, though grounded in realities, also complicated those constructs and the work of French heritage-makers. Resurrecting the Past offers a parable of how efforts in heritage politics aimed to construct a union of ideologies and objects deemed the best past for France's uncertain future but struggled as much as they succeeded. Eventually those same heritage politics ironically helped officials justify the end of the "French Levant."

Learn more about Resurrecting the Past at the Cornell University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Resurrecting the Past.

--Marshal Zeringue