Pg. 69: Catherine Ryan Hyde's "Falling Apart and Other Gifts from the Universe"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Falling Apart and Other Gifts from the Universe: A Novel by Catherine Ryan Hyde.

About the book, from the publisher:

Two disparate people―lost in their own way―find an unexpected healing connection in a poignant novel about redemption and chosen family by New York Times bestselling author Catherine Ryan Hyde.

An army veteran with a career as a beat cop behind her, security guard Addie Finch is tough―on the outside. Internally, she’s in crisis mode. She’s lonely, introverted, struggling through AA, estranged from her son, and, at sixty-two years old, questioning her role as a protector. She also has a soft spot for the underdog that’s about to change her life.

Addie finds Jonathan, a homeless teenager abandoned by his mother, holed up in a warehouse and vulnerable to the elements and to predators. Touched by the boy’s gentle nature and a wisdom beyond his years, Addie offers him temporary shelter in her garden shed in exchange for maintaining the sprawling property. It’s an act of kindness and purpose that means the world to Jonathan. But when Addie faces a situation that sends her internal world tumbling, the emotional connection with Jonathan, once the unlikeliest of strangers, becomes her lifeline as well.

As both process past traumas, Addie and Jonathan forge a surrogate grandmother-grandson bond―a chosen family that could restore trust and heal hearts they thought were broken forever.

Visit Catherine Ryan Hyde's website.

Q&A with Catherine Ryan Hyde.

The Page 69 Test: Brave Girl, Quiet Girl.

The Page 69 Test: My Name is Anton.

The Page 69 Test: Seven Perfect Things.

The Page 69 Test: Boy Underground.

The Page 69 Test: Dreaming of Flight.

The Page 69 Test: So Long, Chester Wheeler.

The Page 69 Test: A Different Kind of Gone.

The Page 69 Test: Life, Loss, and Puffins.

The Page 69 Test: Rolling Toward Clear Skies.

The Page 69 Test: Michael Without Apology.

The Page 69 Test: Falling Apart and Other Gifts from the Universe.

--Marshal Zeringue

Marshall Fine's "Hemlock Lane," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Hemlock Lane: A Novel by Marshall Fine.

The entry begins:

Hemlock Lane is a family drama that takes place over the course of four days, with each day told from the viewpoint of one of the four central characters—the perfect structure for a limited series on a streaming service, in case you’re a producer seeking a project.

The story is about a flashpoint weekend in the life of a suburban family in the summer of 1967. Secrets are both kept and revealed, building to a family showdown between a domineering mother and an independent- minded daughter, who is about to start a professional life that will put her beyond her mother’s reach.

The mother, Lillian—haughty, sharp-tongued, full of secret fears—would be perfect for an actress who can shift from warm to glacial with barely a movement of her eyebrow. I’d love to see someone like Cate Blanchett or Patricia Clarkson, actresses who combine steeliness with vulnerability.

The father, Sol, is a successful businessman whose secret shame is...[read on]

Visit Marshall Fine's website, and follow him on Facebook and Instagram.

My Book, The Movie: The Autumn of Ruth Winters.

Q&A with Marshall Fine.

The Page 69 Test: Hemlock Lane.

My Book, The Movie: Hemlock Lane.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best brutal survival thrillers

At Fully Booked Laura Tarallo tagged ten books like The Running Man, including:

Market Forces by Richard K. Morgan

Welcome to corporate dystopia, where job promotions are earned via death matches in armored cars. No, really. This is Wall Street meets Mad Max, and it’s gloriously awful in all the best ways.

Morgan mixes capitalist critique with ultraviolence and makes you question why you ever tolerated team-building exercises. It’s mean, smart, and leaves a bruise.

Why we recommend it: If corporate backstabbing were an Olympic sport, this book would be the gold medalist. For readers fascinated by capitalism’s dark underbelly, where boardrooms become battlefields and profits are soaked in blood, this one hits hard and fast.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine top books about forbidden desire

Amy Shearn is the award-winning author of the critically acclaimed novels Dear Edna Sloane, Unseen City, The Mermaid of Brooklyn, and How Far is the Ocean From Here. She has worked as an editor for Medium, and her work has appeared in the New York Times Modern Love column, Slate, Real Simple, Martha Stewart Living, Oprah, Coastal Living, Poets & Writers, Literary Hub, Catapult, The Millions, The Rumpus, and many other publications.

Shearn has an MFA from the University of Minnesota, and currently lives in Brooklyn with her two children.

Her latest novel is Animal Instinct.

[The Page 99 Test: How Far Is the Ocean from Here; Writers Read: Amy Shearn (March 2013); Q&A with Amy Shearn; My Book, The Movie: Dear Edna Sloane; The Page 69 Test: Dear Edna Sloane; The Page 69 Test: Animal Instinct; Writers Read: Amy Shearn (March 2025); My Book, The Movie: Animal Instinct]

At Tertulia Shearn tagged "nine great works of fiction about characters who lust after what they’re not supposed to." One title on the list:

Big Swiss by Jen Beagin

This quirky novel awakened in me a deep lust for drafty and problematic farmhouses in upstate New York even though I know that was really not the point — but there’s also a tense and fascinating affair between two women, one of whom is married to a man. It’s vividly written, full of lush detail, and laugh-out-loud funny.

Read about another entry on the list.

Big Swiss is among Vanessa Lawrence's eight titles about young women searching for identity & purpose through work.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Arnoud S. Q. Visser's "On Pedantry"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: On Pedantry: A Cultural History of the Know-it-All by Arnoud S. Q. Visser.

About the book, from the publisher:

A lively and entertaining cultural history of a supremely annoying intellectual vice

Intellectuals have long provoked scorn and irritation, even downright aggression. Many learned individuals have cast such hostility as a badge of honor, a sign of envy, or a form of resistance to inconvenient truths. On Pedantry offers an altogether different perspective, revealing how the excessive use of learning has been a vice in Western culture since the days of Socrates.

Taking readers from the academies of ancient Greece to today’s culture wars, Arnoud Visser explains why pretentious and punctilious learning has always annoyed us, painting vibrant portraits of some of the most intensely irritating intellectuals ever known, from devious sophists and bossy savantes to hypercritical theologians, dry-as-dust antiquarians, and know-it-all professors. He shows how criticisms of pedantry have typically been more about conduct than ideas, and he demonstrates how pedantry served as a weapon in the perennial struggle over ideas, social status, political authority, and belief. Shifting attention away from the self-proclaimed virtues of the learned to their less-than-flattering vice, Visser makes a bold and provocative contribution to the history of Western thought.

Drawing on a wealth of sources ranging from satire and comedy to essays, sermons, and film, On Pedantry sheds critical light on why anti-intellectual views have gained renewed prominence today and serves as essential reading in an age of rising populism across the globe.

Learn more about On Pedantry at the Princeton University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: On Pedantry.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Jonathan Payne

From my Q&A with Jonathan Payne, author of Hotel Melikov:

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

Hotel Melikov is the sequel to Citizen Orlov. It picks up a week after the first book finishes, in the same unnamed, fictional central European country between the two world wars. The sequel kicks off with a bang, as tensions between the government and revolutionaries erupt into civil war.

This series revolves around Citizen Orlov, an unassuming fishmonger who accidentally becomes a spy. But, of course, I can only use his name as a title once. Naming the other books in the series is an interesting challenge.

I've always loved stories set in hotels, like A Gentleman In Moscow by Amor Towles and John Irving's Hotel New Hampshire. Since this novel both begins and ends in Hotel Melikov, the grandest hotel in my fictional capital, I hope the title will tempt readers to wonder what happens behind those walls, and what role the hotel plays in the civil war.

Also, since there are nuns on the cover, and one of them is carrying a gun...[read on]

Visit Jonathan Payne's website.

Q&A with Jonathan Payne.

--Marshal Zeringue

Four top academia-centered mysteries

Peggy Townsend is an award-winning journalist and author. Her work has appeared in Catamaran literary magazine, Santa Cruz Noir, The Boston Globe Magazine, Memoir, and the San Francisco Chronicle, among other publications. Twice she lived for seven weeks in her van, traveling to Alaska and along the back roads of the U.S.

Townsend's new novel is The Botanist's Assistant.

At CrimeReads she tagged four favorite academia-centered mystery novels, including:

Jean Hanff Korelitz, The Plot

This is the kind of mystery thriller that makes you regret again any questionable decision you ever made. Jacob Bonner is a struggling writer and MFA teacher at a low-level college who finds himself reluctantly agreeing with an unpleasant student’s claim that his idea for a novel is a guaranteed bestseller.

Years later, when Bonner learns the student died without ever writing his book, the failing author persuades himself that appropriating his student’s idea is not theft if he writes the manuscript himself. When Bonner’s book becomes a runaway hit and makes him a rich man, anonymous notes that threaten to expose him as a thief begin to appear.

I found myself flipping through the pages, my heart racing, as Bonner tries to find his accuser. This is a book that will keep you up at night, but in the best possible way.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Plot is among Ayden LeRoux's seven top books about authorship hoaxes, Jane L. Rosen's nine books about book people, Elyse Friedman's eight novels featuring schemers & opportunists, E.G. Scott's five best books-within-books, Kimberly Belle's four thrillers with maximum escapism, and Louise Dean's top ten novels about novelists.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Edward Hall's "Power and Powerlessness"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Power and Powerlessness: The Liberalism of Fear in the Twenty-First Century by Edward Hall.

About the book, from the publisher:

Power and Powerlessness: The Liberalism of Fear in the Twenty-First Century examines whether the liberalism of fear - the negative and cautionary vein of liberal thinking, most famously articulated by Judith Shklar, which urges us to prioritize the avoidance of public cruelty - can effectively orient our political thinking in the twenty first century.

Hall systematically engages with Shklar's writings to offer a defence of liberalism in these terms, and also methodically works through a variety of practical political issues - torture, policing, immigration control, and hate speech. In so doing, Hall upends the suggestion that the liberalism of fear is an outdated species of Cold War Liberalism, arguing that as long as some people are invested with coercive power to exercise over others, there is a likelihood for public cruelty to emerge. Moreover, by examining some central features of politics in the twenty-first century, the book offers a series of vital and original recommendations about how we can respond to public cruelty, here and now.

Learn more about Power and Powerlessness at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Power and Powerlessness.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten books that refuse to dramatize or sanitize mental illness

Fredrik deBoer is a writer and academic. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Playboy, and Harper’s among many others. His nonfiction books include The Cult of Smart (2020) and How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement (2023). He holds a PhD in English with a concentration in writing assessment and higher education policy from Purdue University.

The writer's new novel is The Mind Reels.

At Electric Lit deBoer tagged ten books

that make a noble attempt at negotiating the gap between interior illness and exterior narrative. They don’t sanitize the disorientation, the self-doubt, the breakdowns that follow breakdowns; they resist turning mental illness into a metaphor or exotic spectacle.

One title on the list:

Sons, Daughters, and Sidewalk Psychotics by Neil Gong

In Sons, Daughters, and Sidewalk Psychotics, sociologist Neil Gong offers a stark examination of mental health care disparities in Los Angeles. Through ethnographic research, Gong contrasts the experiences of individuals receiving public mental health services with those attending elite private treatment centers. He uncovers a dual system where the wealthy access personalized care aimed at rehabilitation, while the impoverished often face minimal intervention focused on containment. Gong critiques the notion of “freedom” in treatment, highlighting how autonomy can sometimes lead to neglect, especially for those without resources. The book challenges readers to reconsider societal values and the ethics of care, urging a reevaluation of how mental health services are structured and who they really serve.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Page 99 Test: Sons, Daughters, and Sidewalk Psychotics.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Marshall Fine's "Hemlock Lane"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Hemlock Lane: A Novel by Marshall Fine.

About the book, from the publisher:

In this riveting story of family bonds and buried truths, a young woman’s homecoming becomes a reckoning as four days together threaten to shatter the comfortable lies that have held her family together.

In the summer of 1967, the Levitsky family convenes for a long weekend at their home in the suburbs―an idyllic holiday for the perfect family.

But Nora has always known better.

Growing up, she learned to tiptoe around her mother Lillian’s explosive temper. Her father did the same. Nora’s sole confidante was their housekeeper, Clara, and their bond has only strengthened through the years. In fact, it’s all that’s keeping Nora together for her homecoming. But under that lifetime of pressure, the facade is beginning to splinter.

Over the next four days, everyone’s secrets are at risk. None more so than what Nora really wants for her life, how Clara has helped her get it…and how they’ve orchestrated it all behind Lillian’s back.

As the family grapples with the complex ties that bind them, Nora discovers that facing the truth―however painful―might be the key to finally breaking free. This weekend, Nora’s bravest act may be in knowing which bonds to cherish and which ones need to be gently set aside, making room for a future of her own choosing.

Visit Marshall Fine's website, and follow him on Facebook and Instagram.

My Book, The Movie: The Autumn of Ruth Winters.

Q&A with Marshall Fine.

The Page 69 Test: Hemlock Lane.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Jonathan S. Jones's "Opium Slavery"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Opium Slavery: Civil War Veterans and America's First Opioid Crisis by Jonathan S. Jones.

About the book, from the publisher:

During the Civil War, the utility and widespread availability of opium and morphine made opiates essential to wartime medicine. After the war ended, thousands of ailing soldiers became addicted, or “enslaved,” as nineteenth-century Americans phrased it. Veterans, their families, and communities struggled to cope with addiction’s health and social consequences. Medical and government authorities compounded veterans' suffering and imbued the epidemic with cultural meaning by branding addiction as a matter of moral weakness, unmanliness, or mental infirmity. Framing addiction as “opium slavery” limited the efficacy of care and left many veterans to suffer needlessly for decades after the war ended.

Drawing from veterans' firsthand accounts as well as mental asylum and hospital records, government and medical reports, newspaper coverage of addiction, and advertisements, Jonathan S. Jones unearths the poorly understood stories of opiate-addicted Civil War veterans in unflinching detail, illuminating the war’s traumatic legacies. In doing so, Jones provides critical historical context for the modern opioid crisis, which bears tragic resemblance to that of the post–Civil War era.

Visit Jonathan S. Jones's website.

The Page 99 Test: Opium Slavery.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight top true stories from history about survival

Carolina Ciucci is a teacher, writer and reviewer based in the south of Argentina. She hoards books like they’re going out of style. In case of emergency, you can summon her by talking about Ireland, fictional witches, and the Brontë family. At Book Riot she tagged eight compelling true stories from history about survival. One title on the list:

The Devil’s Highway by Luis Alberto Urrea

In May 2001, twenty-six men tried to cross the border into the United States through The Devil’s Highway, a brutally dangerous desert. Only twelve of them survived. The book explores how these men managed to live through a lethal desert and a deep betrayal to reach Southern Arizona.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Devil’s Highway is among Joe Meno's seven true stories about the journey to seek asylum in the U.S.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Brittany Amara

From my Q&A with Brittany Amara, author of The Bleeding Woods:

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

The story behind The Bleeding Woods’s title is actually very special to me. Its very first incarnation was simply called The Woods, since I like to give all of my stories codenames as they lounge in the “dreaming phase.” Later, my beloved antagonist, Jasper, insisted he take center stage, and so the title switched to Jasperwood. His suggestion reigned supreme until the final stages of editing, when my publishing team suggested we try out some alternatives.

After weeks of brainstorming, I asked one of my closest friends if she had any ideas. She followed my question with a question, “What are some things the book wouldn’t be the same without?” I started rambling through a handful of disjointed elements ranging from thematic to aesthetic. “Blood”, “woods”, and Jasper’s unrelenting desire to make his sinister mark on the world kept returning. The Bleeding Woods flowed from her lips as intuitively and effortlessly as a stream. We paused in stunned silence, then in unison, muttered, “It’s perfect.”

I immediately sent an email back to my publisher, and we all fell in love. I think The Bleeding Woods harnesses the essence of the story from both a direct, visceral perspective and from a more symbolic one.

To me, the inclusion of a The channels Jasper’s inflated sense of self-importance. It could have just been Bleeding Woods, but Jasper simply wouldn’t have it. He relies so heavily on the idea that he is above humanity, and that his presence is one of borderline divine retribution. There’s a lot of power in labelling something a The, and he feeds off of that power.

The Bleeding Woods portion of the title is where our intent to express gory intrigue meets layers of symbolic undergrowth, pun intended. Of course, a lot of blood spills in Blackstone Forest. At this point, the soil is more cadaver than earth. The trees themselves are victims of Jasper’s, twisted and mutated to decorate his domain. However, the mere existence of the forest is due to the monstrous blood that coats human hands. That is to say, it takes a monster to make a monster, and Jasper and Clara are very much made-monsters. This forest doesn’t just blossom from blood; it was...[read on]

Visit Brittany Amara's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Bleeding Woods.

Writers Read: Brittany Amara.

The Page 69 Test: The Bleeding Woods.

Q&A with Brittany Amara.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Justin Randolph's "Mississippi Law"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Mississippi Law: Policing and Reform in America’s Jim Crow Countryside by Justin Randolph.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the segregated American South, policing was war. Rampant police violence came to the back roads and cattle pastures of America’s rural countryside as ideas of race, property, and belonging reshaped the role of government in everyday life. In Mississippi Law, Justin Randolph explores rural law enforcement to explain US racial authoritarianism between the Civil War and the civil rights movement. In Jim Crow Mississippi, the force behind the police officer’s autocracy carried legacies of empire and slavery into the age of agribusiness and automobiles—from state troops and slave patrols to state troopers and highway patrols. But this is no isolated story of individual barbarism. US military and reform traditions informed ruling-class beliefs in thoughtful police improvement through both the state militia and its inheritor, the state police.

Black Mississippians fought to raise awareness and defend their loved ones against the violence spawned by paramilitary police reform. Some took up arms against police officers; others imagined a legal off-ramp to remake public safety after Jim Crow. Ultimately, the transformation of what one activist called “Mississippi Law” came with more funding and more authority for policing, a key piece of infrastructure for the age of mass incarceration that followed the civil rights revolution. Recounting the works of both famous and forgotten activists, Mississippi Law is a genealogy of Jim Crow rule and dreams of a safety that might have been and might yet be.

Learn more about Mississippi Law at The University of North Carolina Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Mississippi Law.

--Marshal Zeringue

The fifteen best "Frankenstein" retellings

Emily Burack is the Senior News Editor for Town & Country, where she covers entertainment, culture, the royals, and a range of other subjects. Before joining T&C, she was the deputy managing editor at Hey Alma, a Jewish culture site.

At Town & Country she tagged fifteen of the best Frankenstein retellings, including:

Instead of retelling Frankenstein’s story, Caroline Lea instead choses to focus on Mary Shelley’s life the summer she wrote Frankenstein. It’s 1816, and Mary has left London for Lord Byron’s villa at Lake Geneva. Byron challenges each of his guests to write a supernatural tale, and Shelley takes him upon the task. Author Emma Stonex wrote, “A deliciously dark reimagining of the birth of literature's greatest monster, Love, Sex & Frankenstein is at once a heartbreaking Gothic love story and a chilling study of rage, betrayal and the mysterious origins of the creative impulse. A triumph.”

Read about another entry on the list.

Also see seven great horror novels inspired by Frankenstein.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Emma Stonex's "The Sunshine Man"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Sunshine Man: A Novel by Emma Stonex.

About the book, from the publisher:

“The week I shot a man clean through the head began like any other . . .”

A taut, electrifying thriller about a woman determined to avenge her sister’s murder—and the killer who must confront his own ghosts

Birdie Keller wakes one freezing January morning to the news she’s been waiting eighteen years to hear. Jimmy Maguire, the man who killed her sister, has been freed from jail. She leaves for London with a pistol and a plan: to find this man and make him pay.

But every story has two sides. Jimmy can sense he’s being hunted. He knew Birdie a long time ago, in a life she’d sooner forget, and he isn’t the only one with something to hide. As the two circle each other in a heart-stopping game of cat and mouse, they plunge into a murky world of family secrets, betrayals, and unsolved mysteries.

A tense, spellbinding page-turner, The Sunshine Man twists its way through the web of lives left shattered after a terrible crime and crafts an unforgettable tale of loss and revenge.

Follow Emma Stonex on Instagram.

Q&A with Emma Stonex.

The Page 69 Test: The Sunshine Man.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Matthew Mason's "Seeking the High Ground"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Seeking the High Ground: Slavery and Political Conflict in the British Atlantic World by Matthew Mason.

About the book, from the publisher:

How American slavery engendered a new political vocabulary used on both sides of the Atlantic

How is it, Samuel Johnson famously asked on the eve of the Revolution, that Americans could so vociferously demand freedom for themselves while so conspicuously continuing to deny it to those they held in slavery? With Seeking the High Ground, Matthew Mason helps answer that piercing question. As he shows, the language of slavery and freedom had long suffused Anglo-American political debates in the eighteenth century, with the Revolution emerging as one particularly hyperdramatic act during which combatants on both sides of the war of words connected the idea of slavery to the headline issues of the day. Mason details how Patriots and Loyalists alike deployed the rhetoric of slavery in their debates about all the crucial questions of the day, including republicanism, taxation and representation, and—by claiming the moral high ground—the nature of the Revolutionary War itself. These debates left complex rhetorical and political legacies for those seeking to abolish and defend slavery in both the new US and the remaining British Empire.

Learn more about Seeking the High Ground at the University of Virginia Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Seeking the High Ground.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine top divorce memoirs about the empowering potential of endings

Heather Sweeney is a Virginia-based writer whose essays and creative nonfiction work about life as a military spouse, divorce and relationships, parenting, and women’s health have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, HuffPost, The TODAY Show, Newsweek, Business Insider, Good Housekeeping, and elsewhere.

Sweeney's new memoir is Camouflage: How I Emerged from the Shadows of a Military Marriage.

At Electric Lit the writer tagged nine books that "speak to the universal truths and personal trials that accompany the end of a marriage." One title on the list:

This Story Will Change by Elizabeth Crane

This Story Will Change tells the story of Crane’s marriage and its end with humor, wisdom, and a unique stream of consciousness style that blends short vignettes and a third-person point of view. When Crane’s husband of fifteen years unexpectedly confesses that he’s unhappy in their marriage, she suddenly finds herself in couples counseling and living in an apartment with a friend, searching for answers amidst confusion and deep-diving into what went wrong in order to heal. Crane’s nonlinear method of storytelling mimics the nonlinear nature of breakups and the disorienting, discordant, often confusing blend of messy emotions associated with divorce and heartache. The title itself is the ultimate chef’s kiss, because as anyone who has gone through a divorce knows, the story, the lessons learned, the takeaways, and the big feelings will all change with the passage of time.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with T. Kingfisher

From my Q&A with T. Kingfisher, author of Snake-Eater.

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

Snake-Eater describes a predator, and furthermore, a predator that feeds on animals many people find alarming. Hopefully the reader will go “Wow, badass!” and want to see what got that name and why. This is the story of a woman who comes to a small desert town, fleeing an abusive relationship, and finds that the desert is full of beings, and that the one called Snake-Eater has an eye on her in particular....[read on]

Visit T. Kingfisher's website.

Q&A with T. Kingfisher.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Edward E. Andrews's "Newport Gardner's Anthem"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Newport Gardner's Anthem: A Story of Slavery, Struggle, and Survival in Early America by Edward E. Andrews.

About the book, from the publisher:

Newport Gardner's Anthem explores the remarkable life of Occramer Marycoo, an enslaved African who went on to become one of early America's most important Black leaders. In the mid-eighteenth century, Marycoo was taken from West Africa to Newport, Rhode Island, where he was forced into racial bondage and given a name that symbolized the power that his new city and new enslaver held over him: Newport Gardner. In this powerful book, Edward E. Andrews pieces together newspaper articles, church records, letters, and Gardner's own writings to tell the story of his life.

After acquiring his freedom via a winning lottery ticket in 1791, Gardner became a kind of Founding Father for Newport's free Black community. He established and led several Black benevolent organizations that helped the community navigate the complicated waters of freedom as Rhode Island slowly began the process of emancipation. He became a popular educator to young Black Newporters, and also emerged as a key religious figure, serving as a long-standing pillar of Newport's First Congregational Church and later founding an independent Black church in the 1820s. His final act was leading a group of about three dozen Black New Englanders to Liberia, in hopes that a new start in Africa would be better than the discrimination they faced in America.

A richly textured account, Newport Gardner's Anthem tells the story of a forgotten Black leader while exploring the new, but tragically limited, opportunities for formerly enslaved people in the post-Revolutionary world.

Learn more about Newport Gardner's Anthem at the Cornell University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Newport Gardner's Anthem.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eleven mystery novels that explore the power of rumors & gossip

Lauren Oliver is an author, screenwriter, and media entrepreneur. Her works include multiple New York Times bestselling novels for teens, including Before I Fall (which spent seventeen weeks on the list and was adapted into a feature film released by Open Road), the Delirium trilogy (a two-million-copy-selling dystopian series translated into thirty-five languages), and Panic, which she later adapted into the streaming TV show on Amazon Prime of the same name, for which she wrote every episode and served as Executive Producer.

Oliver's new novel is What Happened to Lucy Vale.

At CrimeReads the author tagged eleven novels in where "the truth is hidden not under a rock but concealed in the rumors passed between neighbors." One title on the list:

Louise Penny, A Fatal Grace (Inspector Gamache series)

This book, like many others by Penny, is set in the small, seemingly idyllic village of Three Pines. Gossip is an ever-present force, shaping perceptions and fueling speculation when a murder occurs. Inspector Gamache often has to sift through the village’s interconnected web of rumors and long-held opinions to find the truth.

Read about another entry on the list.

A Fatal Grace is among Amy Pershing's ten best murder mysteries that take place during Christmas Peter Swanson's top ten Christmas crime stories.

My Book, The Movie: A Fatal Grace.

--Marshal Zeringue

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