Q&A with Arbor Sloane

From my Q&A with Arbor Sloane, author of Not Who You Think: A Thriller:

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

Titles are a tricky thing. The author might come up with a title that they feel encapsulates their book perfectly, but publishers could find that it's not as marketable as they would like. This is the case of Not Who You Think. Originally, I called the book Beyond the Glass because the book is about monsters who hide behind a computer screen, pretending to be harmless when they're really predators looking for their next victim. But I could see how that idea might not be immediately apparent to readers, so I think the alternate title works better. It hints that people are not always what they seem in a catchier way.

What's in a name?

Generally, I don't use a lot of symbolism when naming my characters. I usually just research the time frame in which the story takes place and select the most popular baby names. However...[read on]

Follow Arbor Sloane on Instagram.

The Page 69 Test: Not Who You Think.

Q&A with Arbor Sloane.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top thrillers set in small town America

Vaseem Khan's acclaimed Baby Ganesh Agency crime series won the Shamus Award in the US, with The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra selected by the Sunday Times as one of the 40 best crime novels published 2015-2020, now translated into 16 languages. The first novel in the Malabar House series, Midnight at Malabar House, won the CWA Historical Dagger 2021 and was shortlisted for the Theakstons Crime Novel of the Year Award.

Khan's newest novel is The Girl In Cell A.

At CrimeReads the author tagged five favorite small town America thrillers, including:

James Dickey, Deliverance

Included on the 2005 Time magazine list of 100 best novels English-language novels, I first came to this book via the screen adaptation. Although not quite set in a small town, the novel has everything that small town America has come to embody in the popular imagination, from the banjo-strumming local to the raging river that plays a central role in the action to the contrast between soft city folk and the dangerous backwoodsmen of the forested hills within which so many small towns in fiction are nestled including Eden Falls. It is that sense of wooded isolation that I borrowed for the claustrophobic environment of my setting.

Read about another entry on the list.

Deliverance is among Jeff Somers's five best novels written by poets, T.C. Boyle's six top books that explore man's inherent violence, and Pat Conroy's six favorite books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Stig Abell's "The Burial Place"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Burial Place: A Novel by Stig Abell.

About the book, from the publisher:

Former London detective Jake Jackson finds his new life in the country threatened when an old case from the past buried deep within an archeological dig site resurfaces in this beautifully written and deeply immersive mystery that will challenge your deductive skills.

A beautiful landscape . . .

It began as the project of a lifetime—a group of archaeologists, uncovering the remains of a Roman settlement on a picturesque hill in the glorious English countryside.

A looming threat . . .

But, the idyll is shattered when they begin receiving threatening letters. Former city detective Jake Jackson, now enjoying a quieter life in the local village, is pulled in to investigate.

A killer closing in . . .

Soon, threatening letters are the least of their problems, when a murderer strikes. Now, the race is on for Jake to find the mysterious culprit, before they kill again . . .

Follow Stig Abell on Instagram and Threads.

Q&A with Stig Abell.

The Page 69 Test: The Burial Place.

--Marshal Zeringue

Third reading: D.W. Buffa on Frances FitzGerald's "America Revised"

The Dark Backward is among D.W. Buffa's more recent novels to be released. The story revolves around not just the strangest case William Darnell had ever tried;

it was the strangest case ever tried by any lawyer anywhere. It was impossible to explain; or rather, impossible to believe. The defendant, who did not speak English or any other language anyone could identify, had been found on an island no one knew existed, and charged with murder, rape and incest. He was given the name Adam, and Adam, as Darnell comes to learn, is more intelligent, quicker to learn, than anyone he has ever met. Adam, he learns to his astonishment, is a member of an ancient civilization that has remained undiscovered for more than three thousand years.

Buffa is also the author of ten legal thrillers involving the defense attorney Joseph Antonelli. He has also published a series that attempts to trace the movement of western thought from ancient Athens, in Helen; the end of the Roman Empire, in Julian's Laughter; the Renaissance, in The Autobiography of Niccolo Machiavelli; and America in the twentieth century, in Neumann's Last Concert.

Buffa's latest take in his "Third Reading" series is on America Revised by Frances FitzGerald. It begins:

At the beginning of the novel, The Prosecution, the defense lawyer, Joseph Antonelli, tells the story of what happened when, a small boy, he broke his mother’s favorite crystal bowl and tried to hide the evidence of his crime.

“Holding one of the largest pieces in his hand, my father asked me that evening if I knew anything about it. I did what anyone would have done: I denied it.

“He did not seem to believe me. Sitting in his chair, he put his hand on my shoulder and started telling me about George Washington and the cherry tree. I knew then I was finished. That story was everywhere. You couldn’t run away from it. Every father told it to his son, and every schoolteacher told it to her class. You might go all the way through grade school without knowing anything about American history, but you knew young George had ruined it for the rest of us when he made his famous confession, ‘Father, I cannot tell a lie.’”

It does not occur to the young Antonelli - or to anyone else who was ever taught that story as a child - to ask why George Washington chopped down the cherry tree in the first place. Washington could not lie, but he could destroy for no apparent reason a tree that may have taken ten, or even twenty or thirty, years to grow! It is worse than you might think. Cutting down a tree in an orchard was no innocent boyhood escapade. Under the English common law, damage to an orchard was a felony. Felonies in the l8th century were punishable by death. George Washington, the Father of our country, was not just a felon, he should have been hung!

If no one knows this, it is because of what we were taught in school; what, to be more precise, we learned from the American history textbooks we were given to read. We are always talking about history, debating what really happened in the past, but no one stops to wonder how much of our disagreements are because what we were taught in grade school and high school has changed; that what we think our history has a history of its own. No one, that is, until Frances FitzGerald wrote America Revised in 1979 and made the dull and prosaic business of textbook publishing come alive. FitzGerald begins with what seems obvious: Each generation reads only one generation of schoolbooks. “That transient history is those children’s history forever - their particular version of history.” More important than the historical facts they are taught are the impressions created, impressions which, like other things learned in childhood, become the unexamined assumptions on which most of us think and act for the rest of our lives.

FitzGerald grew up in the l950s when, according to the textbooks she was given to read, “America was perfect: the greatest nation in the world, and the embodiment of democracy, freedom, and technological progress;” a country that “never changed in any important way.” When she read the textbooks that had been published over the two hundred years of American history, she discovered...[read on]

Visit D.W. Buffa's website.

Buffa's previous third reading essays: The Great Gatsby; Brave New World; Lord Jim; Death in the Afternoon; Parade's End; The Idiot; The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; The Scarlet Letter; Justine; Patriotic Gore; Anna Karenina; The Charterhouse of Parma; Emile; War and Peace; The Sorrows of Young Werther; Bread and Wine; “The Crisis of the Mind” and A Man Without Qualities; Eugene Onegin; The Collected Works of Thomas Babington Macaulay; The Europeans; The House of Mirth and The Writing of Fiction; Doctor Faustus; the reading list of John F. Kennedy; Jorge Luis Borges; History of the Peloponnesian War; Mansfield Park; To Each His Own; A Passage To India; Seven Pillars of Wisdom; The Letters of T.E. Lawrence; All The King’s Men; The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus; Naguib Mahfouz’s novels of ancient Egypt; Main Street; Theodore H. White's The Making of the President series, part I; Theodore H. White's The Making of the President series, part II; Thus Spoke Zarathustra; Fiction's Failure; Hermann Hesse's Demian; Frederick Douglass, Slavery, and The Fourth of July; Caesar’s Ghost; The American Constitution; A Tale of Two Cities; The Leopard; Madame Bovary; The Sheltering Sky; Tocqueville’s America and Ours; American Statesmen; Ancient and Modern Writers Reconsidered; Père Goriot; The Remarkable Edmund Burke; The Novels of W.H. Hudson; America Revised.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nolan Chase's "A Lonesome Place for Murder," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: A Lonesome Place for Murder by Nolan Chase.

A Lonesome Place for Murder is about cross-border smuggling in a small Washington town, and how family secrets come back to haunt the town’s new chief of police.

Chief Ethan Brand stumbles on an abandoned smuggling tunnel, with a body lying inside. The dead man is somehow connected to Ethan’s childhood friend Tyler Rash. What was Tyler doing in the tunnel, and who wanted to killed him? Ethan and his senior investigator, Brenda Lee Page, have to find answers before the killer finds them.

This is a more personal story for Ethan Brand, and it’s also a story about brothers.

Ethan is confident but slightly reckless, and new to the job of chief. A young Kris Kristofferson would be a good choice to play Ethan. Kristofferson’s performances in Cisco Pike, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, and Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore show that combination of affable confidence and vulnerability.

For Brenda Lee Page, I’d chose...[read on]

Visit Nolan Chase's website.

Writers Read: Nolan Chase.

The Page 69 Test: A Lonesome Place for Dying.

My Book, The Movie: A Lonesome Place for Dying.

My Book, The Movie: A Lonesome Place for Murder.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Bailey Brown's "Kindergarten Panic"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Kindergarten Panic: Parental Anxiety and School Choice Inequality by Bailey A. Brown.

About the book, from the publisher:

How school choice reproduces inequality by creating gendered and socioeconomic decision-making labor for parents

School choice policies have proliferated in recent years, with parents forced to navigate complex admission processes. In New York City, families have more options than ever before, but the search for the right school has proven to be time-consuming, painstaking, and anxiety-provoking work. In Kindergarten Panic, Bailey Brown examines the experiences of parents as they search for elementary schools, finding that socioeconomic inequalities and persistent disparities in resources, information access, and decision-making power contribute to broad variation in how families develop and manage their school-choice labor strategies. The labor that parents invest in searching for schools is unevenly distributed, and shaped by gender, socioeconomic background, and neighborhood contexts.

Drawing on interviews with more than a hundred parents of elementary school students in New York City, Brown shows how inequality manifests itself as parents and students deal with the uncertainties of the school choice process. By conceptualizing school decision making as labor, she makes visible the often-unseen work that goes into making educational decisions for children. Brown argues that recognizing school choice as labor both deepens our theoretical understanding of the challenges families confront and identifies vast disparities in parents’ labor across socioeconomic and gender divisions. If parents continue to be charged with searching for schools, we must take seriously how school choice policies reproduce the kind of inequality they are intended to reduce—and we must invest in providing equitable access to high-quality public schooling for all families.

Visit Bailey Brown's website.

The Page 99 Test: Kindergarten Panic.

--Marshal Zeringue

The ten best fashion history books for beginners

At ELLE magazine Alexandra Hildreth tagged the ten best fashion history books for beginners, including:

Sex and Suits: The Evolution of Modern Dress

A little bit more on the theory side, Sex and Suits charts the history of men’s and women’s dress all the way from medieval times to the modern day. The book questions why menswear underwent such a drastic transformation following the 18th century and looks at how gender affects fashion to this day. [Anne] Hollander is unafraid to get into the nitty-gritty—all of her books are a must-read.

Read about another title on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Stig Abell

From my Q&A with Stig Abell, author of The Burial Place: A Novel:

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

I think The Burial Place is a fairly, and straightforwardly, descriptive title. Location is a central character in my story, and indeed the whole series in which Jake Jackson investigates murders in the depths of the British countryside. I've found that my working titles never make it to the book itself - I am too whimsical, publishers are (rightly) commercially-minded. Titles are almost the last thing that get agreed in my experience.

The Burial Place is set on an archaeological dig, and I called it "The Dig" as my working title. I then entered into a protracted discussion into whether the published title should have "Death" in it (the first two books of the series were respectively called "Death Under a Little Sky" and "Death in a Lonely Place"). I'm fond of series with threaded titles - I think of the colours in John D. Macdonald's wonderful tales about Travis McGee, or Kathy Reichs and her "Bones" - but I do think they can be a bit limiting. I plumped for The Unquiet Land for this one, with the whiff of fugitive poeticism about it. The publishers wanted it more prosaic, and that's...[read on]

Follow Stig Abell on Instagram and Threads.

Q&A with Stig Abell.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five fantasy books involving poison

At Book Riot Liberty Hardy tagged five "enthralling fantasy books, [in which the] main characters all deal with poison, whether as victims or perpetrators." One title on the list:

The Bane Witch by Ava Morgyn

Piers Corbin has always been drawn to poisonous things, but it is not until she flees her abusive husband and hides out with her estranged aunt that she learns that her interest in toxic things is a family legacy. Piers is a Bane Witch, destined to eat poison and dispose of evil men. But when she begins to practice her magic, like a witchy Dexter, Piers attracts the attention of a serial killer, who doesn’t like the competition.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Page 69 Test: The Bane Witch.

Q&A with Ava Morgyn.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Maria Corrigan's "Monuments Askew"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Monuments Askew: An Elliptical History of the Factory of the Eccentric Actor by Maria Corrigan.

About the book, from the publisher:

Monuments Askew: An Elliptical History of the Factory of the Eccentric Actor presents a cultural history of the Factory of the Eccentric Actor (FEKS), an avant-garde collective of Ukrainian artists whose unique approach to monumental history generated a new kind of cinema for a modernizing Soviet era. Often lost in the shuffle of this period, FEKS’s vibrant and experimental cinematic output initiated a youthful and cheeky overhaul of Soviet revolutionary culture. Monuments Askew reveals the foundational role of this understudied group of artists—including Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg—and uses their own theoretical contributions to undo the “foundations” of our understanding of Soviet media and arts. As a counter to a solely cinema-focused conceptualization of this era, Corrigan develops a transnational media theory of eccentricity. Defining eccentric circles as warped, irregular orbits that force a realignment of centers, Monuments Askew shows how FEKS’s body of work inspires an eccentric realignment of the pillars of Soviet visual culture, and indeed of monumentality itself.

Learn more about Monuments Askew at the Rutgers University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Monuments Askew.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Jamie Lee Sogn's "Always the Quiet Ones"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Always the Quiet Ones: A Novel by Jamie Lee Sogn.

About the book, from the publisher:

Fantasy and reality clash in a twisted novel of psychological suspense, where a shared moment of female outrage changes one woman’s career overnight―and her life forever.

Beatrice “Bea” Ku is sure this is it. The moment she finally receives her hard-earned promotion at the Seattle law firm where the young Filipina American attorney has toiled for five years. She can’t wait to tell her parents―and Allegra, her annoyingly perfect childhood friend. So when her boss betrays her, again, promoting a male colleague instead, she’s so angry she could kill.

Bea tries to suppress that anger, just like her anxiety. But she’s branded “too emotional,” dredging up old memories from high school and her unhealthy coping mechanisms. Allegra and her husband, Caleb, Bea’s former crush, were largely responsible for getting Bea hooked. And her family and friends paid dearly.

Tired of all the gaslighting and toxic masculinity, and emboldened by liquid courage, Bea vows to change things. When a kindred spirit suggests a murder pact, she jokingly agrees. But nobody’s laughing when their deal turns out to be all too real…

Visit Jamie Lee Sogn's website.

Q&A with Jamie Lee Sogn.

My Book, The Movie: Salthouse Place.

The Page 69 Test: Salthouse Place.

The Page 69 Test: Always the Quiet Ones.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Darcie Wilde reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Darcie Wilde, author of The Heir.

Her entry begins:

What am I reading? That’s always a complicated question. I’m an ecclectic and enthusiastic reader, not to mention a semi-pro history nerd. That means there are a whole lot of books opened at once. Here’s a sampling of the most recent:

The Wharton Plot by Mariah Fredericks

It is really hard to write a good mystery centered around a live person (something I learned while working on The Heir). But Mariah Fredericks does a fantastic job balancing the factual and the possible without straining credulity and while presenting a believable and compelling, if not always likeable, heroine. She’s also got a deft touch with the prose, bringing the reader into the time period without shading into parody of her heroine’s actual prose. But there’s something else here. One of the hardest parts of tracking a real life or real events is that reality doesn’t follow the pacing we expect in novels. This book is a master class in how to...[read on]

About The Heir, from the publisher:

For fans of The Crown, Young Victoria, and all things British royalty is a new mystery set in 1830s London and starring none other than the young Princess Victoria – future Queen of England – as a rebellious amateur sleuth.

Destined for a life beyond her wildest dreams, born fifth in succession to the throne, and determined to get to the bottom of a most foul puzzle, the future queen vows to solve the mystery of a dead man scandalously discovered on the grounds of Kensington Palace—by her!

The young Victoria remembers nothing but Kensington Palace. Arriving as a baby, she has been brought up inside its musty, mold-ridden walls. Others may see the value of Kensington’s priceless artifacts and objets d’art, but the palace is a jail cell for young Victoria. Raised with an incredibly strict regimen to follow, watched at all times by her mother, the controlling, German-born Victoire, and Victoire’s prized advisor, the power-hungry Sir John Conroy, the bright 15-year-old is allowed no freedom at any time—except that which she steals or wheedles for, always in the company of Conroy’s resentful daughter, Jane.

But one fateful afternoon, Victoria slips away from her mother to ride out on her beloved gelding, Prince. With reluctant Jane in tow, the princess gallops out from the palace green. But what would normally be an uneventful trot around very familiar terrain presents the mutinous princess with a most bewildering sight—a dead man, and on the grounds of the palace, no less.

Determined to get to the bottom of the inscrutable puzzle, young Victoria is met with shocking disrespect and any number of obstacles. Sir John lies to her, her uncles and aunts join with her mother to stonewall her questions and curtail her movements. But Victoria will not be deterred. With Jane Conroy as a tentative and untrustworthy ally, Victoria’s first “case” is underway . . .

Visit Darcie Wilde's website.

My Book, The Movie: And Dangerous to Know.

The Page 69 Test: And Dangerous to Know.

The Page 69 Test: A Lady Compromised.

Q&A with Darcie Wilde.

Writers Read: Darcie Wilde (November 2021).

The Page 69 Test: A Counterfeit Suitor.

The Page 69 Test: The Secret of the Lost Pearls.

Writers Read: Darcie Wilde (January 2023).

Writers Read: Darcie Wilde.

--Marshal Zeringue

D.W. Gillespie's "Grin," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Grin by D. W. Gillespie.

The entry begins:

Like a lot of authors, I do find it helpful, and even fun, to picture the characters as actors. It really helps to click some of those fine details into place as I write.

For Grin, I’ll admit that I don’t have a great choice for the main character Danny, just because I don’t know a ton of actors in that age group. He’s an anxious but brave early teenager who’s obsessed with video games, so I could see some of the Stranger Things crew fitting that description before they aged out of it.

The more interesting choice to consider in my mind is his Uncle Bill. Bill is…technically an adult. He runs a massive retro arcade called Pixel-works, and he (illegally) lives in a trailer in the parking lot. He’s both a big sweetheart and almost shockingly irresponsible at times, which makes for a fun mix. He also happens to be massively tall and strong, easily able to muscle around heavy arcade cabinets on his own.

Mild spoilers, but later in the story, he gets taken over by a much more malevolent personality, so we’d need an actor who can embody both the goofy boyishness along with pure, gleeful evil.

In short, he’s a fun character, and I can think of two wildly different actors that could bring him to life. My first choice would be Eric Wareheim. The name might not jump out at you, but you’ve probably seen him here and there, especially if you watched any Adult Swim. He’s half of the comedy pair of Tim and Eric, and he also just happens to be...[read on]

Visit D. W. Gillespie's website.

My Book, The Movie: Grin.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Thomas Sattig's "How Time Passes"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: How Time Passes by Thomas Sattig.

About the book, from the publisher:

Time organizes things in a dynamic fashion, whereas space organizes things in a static fashion-so things in time undergo passage, whereas things in space do not. What makes the temporal organization of things dynamic? What is the nature of the passage of time? Traditional discussions of passage have taken one of two perspectives. Some philosophers start with passage as a phenomenon that occurs in the physical world. They ask what constitutes this objective phenomenon. Theirs is a project in metaphysics and the foundations of physics. Others begin with passage as a phenomenon that is given in our experiences of the world. They ask what constitutes this subjective phenomenon. Theirs is a project in philosophy of mind and cognitive science.

In How Time Passes, Thomas Sattig gives both perspectives on passage equal weight. The first part of the book concerns the existence and nature of physical passage. The second part is concerned with the existence and nature of experiential passage. In both parts, the standard kind of explanation of passage is juxtaposed with a new kind of explanation. On the tripartite approach, which has dominated classical and contemporary philosophy of time, the denizens of time undergo passage, in virtue of changing with respect to what is past, what is present, and what is future. On the geometrical approach, the denizens of time undergo passage, in virtue of being temporally organized in a manner that does not involve the holding of any geometrical relations between them.

Learn more about How Time Passes at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: How Time Passes.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five speculative fiction novels with feminist themes

A graduate of Wesleyan University, Melissa Pace is a former editor and writer for Elle, as well as a past finalist for the Humanitas New Voices Fellowship for emerging film and television writers. The mother of three amazing children, Pace lives with her husband in Los Angeles, and when not writing she likes to lace up her cleats and get all her ya-yas out on the soccer field.

The Once and Future Me is her first novel.

At CrimeReads Pace tagged five favorite speculative fiction novels with feminist themes, including:

Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

A cornerstone of feminist speculative fiction, this book is even more chilling to me now, in these times we find ourselves living in, than it was the day it was published. It takes place in a dystopian future where a totalitarian regime called Gilead has overthrown the United States in response to a global fertility crisis and fertile women called Handmaids are forced to bear children for the ruling class.

Told through the eyes of Offred, a Handmaid, the novel explores the themes of female oppression, loss of individual freedom, and resistance against a religious extremist government, and is a warning about the fragility of democracy.

When I first heard about this book way back in the fall of 1985, I had to have it, but I was earning verrrry little as an editorial assistant at Elle, so I put it on my Christmas list. Yes, I still gave my mother a Christmas list at age twenty-three. Shut up! Mom came through and I still have that first edition with its incredible cover!

This book did not disappoint. It grabbed me by the throat and literally changed how I saw the world, got me to listen for the signs and sounds of the patriarchal power structure still quietly humming away behind the scenes of my 1980s world, pulling the levers and running our society.

Most of all The Handmaid’s Tale made me realize how easily the rights I took for granted could slip away, step by step, if we don’t stay vigilant and loud. Though I read it long before I ever imagined writing a book of my own, it deposited itself in my brain and waited….

Read about another title on Pace's list.

The Handmaid's Tale made Megan Cummins's list of seven novels that prove writers can make the best protagonists, Max Barry's list of five top books that are secretly science fiction, Louisa Treger's top ten list of great boundary-breaking women of fiction, Claire McGlasson's top ten list of books about cults, Siobhan Adcock's list of five top books about motherhood and dystopia, a list of four books that changed Meg Keneally, A.J. Hartley's list of five favorite books about the making of a dystopia, Lidia Yuknavitch's 6 favorite books list, Elisa Albert's list of nine revelatory books about motherhood, Michael W. Clune's top five list of books about imaginary religions, Jeff Somers's top six list of often misunderstood SF/F novels, Jason Sizemore's top five list of books that will entertain and drop you into the depths of despair, S.J. Watson's list of four books that changed him, Shaun Byron Fitzpatrick's list of eight of the most badass ladies in all of banned literature, Guy Lodge's list of ten of the best dystopias in fiction, art, film, and television, Bethan Roberts's top ten list of novels about childbirth, Rachel Cantor's list of the ten worst jobs in books, Charlie Jane Anders and Kelly Faircloth's list of the best and worst childbirth scenes in science fiction and fantasy, Lisa Tuttle's critic's chart of the top Arthur C. Clarke Award winners, and PopCrunch's list of the sixteen best dystopian books of all time.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Arbor Sloane's "Not Who You Think"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Not Who You Think: A Thriller by Arbor Sloane.

About the book, from the publisher:

The copycat of a killer made famous by a true crime author kidnaps a classmate of the author’s daughter in this twisty thriller, perfect for fans of Paula Hawkins.

Amelia Child has devoted her life to researching Gerald Shapiro, the Catfish Killer, a man who pretended to be other people online to gain women’s trust before meeting and killing them. Her book on the Catfish Killer, Into the Glass, earned wild success and a legion of true crime fans. Years later, Amelia is pulled back into the case when a girl from her daughter’s high school disappears, and all signs point to a copycat killer mimicking the Catfish Killer’s every move.

As Amelia meets with the detective who helped her study Gerald Shapiro years ago and they become suspicious of Shapiro’s son, Amelia’s daughter Gabby receives a letter from the kidnapper threatening that she might be next. Desperate to find the culprit before her classmate is killed or she becomes the latest victim, Gabby conducts her own search for the missing girl.

With Amelia’s own family at risk and the entire true crime world obsessing and investigating online, the stakes have never been higher. Everyone wants to find the killer—but when his modus operandi is to pretend to be someone else, he’s not going to be easy to catch.

Follow Arbor Sloane on Instagram.

The Page 69 Test: Not Who You Think.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Peter Rosch

From my Q&A with Peter Rosch, author of What the Dead Can Do: A Thriller:

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

I’d say quite a bit of work. There are dead people in my book. Check. We are going to see what they can and can’t do. Check. It sounds ominous and dark, and this book is that and more. Check and check. I like the title What The Dead Can Do for a whole host of reasons, but it was not the original title. Tend was the original title. That one word drove a lot of the plot, too. This is the story of a mother tending to her child from the afterlife. My interpretation of the word had always been tinted with empathy, love, care, and all the things that society expects from perfect mothers. Amanda, the mother here, is pushing the envelope on what it means to tend to her child—she’s trying to kill him to bring him to her so she can continue to care for him and ensure his well-being. In the end, though, I came to realize that the word tend was dated. Many people think of money first when they hear the word. It was doing nothing to take readers into the story and, in many cases, was confusing them. I count myself lucky that it did, to be honest—I was forced to re-evaluate. And I think What The Dead Can Do sets up the story and, more importantly, the vibe I want people to feel when they crack open the book.

What's in a name?

Everything. And nothing. Personally...[read on]

Visit Peter Rosch's website and follow him on Facebook, BlueSky, Instagram, and Threads.

Q&A with Peter Rosch.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Maneesh Arora's "Parties and Prejudice"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Parties and Prejudice: The Normalization of Antiminority Rhetoric in US Politics by Maneesh Arora.

About the book, from the publisher:

An essential guide to how the interactions between social norms, party politics, and expressions of prejudice are driving contemporary politics.

Antiminority rhetoric in American politics has grown more overt. What were once fringe comments on Stormfront have now become typical campaign appeals from many mainstream politicians. If there was ever a doubt, this is a poignant reminder that the boundaries of what is “acceptable” and “unacceptable” to say and do are fluid and socially enforced.

In Parties and Prejudice, Maneesh Arora offers a broad framework for understanding this new political terrain. Arora argues that the interaction between social norms and party politics determines what the political consequence of prejudicial speech will be. He illuminates this nuanced relationship by showing that norms vary based on the targeted minority group and the intended audience.

Drawing on experiments, survey data, news coverage, and real-world examples, Parties and Prejudice examines the distinctive ways that egalitarian/inegalitarian norms have developed—within each party—for Black, Muslim, and LGBTQ+ Americans. It is essential reading for understanding Donald Trump’s rise to power, the modern conservative agenda (including opposition to critical race theory and transgender rights), and threats to the development of a multiracial democracy.

Visit Maneesh Arora's website.

The Page 99 Test: Parties and Prejudice.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten Ukrainian books that show its many sides

Sam Wachman's new novel is The Sunflower Boys.

He is a writer from Cambridge, Massachusetts with Ukrainian roots. His short fiction has appeared in Sonora Review, Berkeley Fiction Review, and New England Review. Before writing The Sunflower Boys, he taught English to primary schoolers in central Ukraine and worked with refugee families in Europe and the United States.

At Electric Lit Wachman tagged ten Ukrainian books that show the many sides of a nation. One title on the list:

The Orphanage by Serhiy Zhadan, translated by Reilly Costigan-Humes and Isaac Stackhouse Wheeler

Set during the first years of the war in Donbas, The Orphanage follows Pasha, a Ukrainian-language teacher who must traverse the frontlines to rescue his thirteen year-old nephew. His nephew is stranded in occupied territory in an internat, an untranslatable Soviet institution halfway between an orphanage and a boarding school. With echoes of Dante’s Inferno, Zhadan documents Pasha’s journey across the war-torn landscape with startling clarity.

Serhiy Zhadan is an unstoppable cultural force—a rock star, a poet, an activist, and one of Ukraine’s foremost novelists. Through The Orphanage, he reminds readers that the war in Ukraine did not emerge ex nihilo; Russia has occupied and tormented southern and eastern Ukraine since 2014.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Maria Malone reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Maria Malone, author of Death in the Countryside: A Novel.

Her entry begins:

The Winds from Further West by Alexander McCall Smith

“Sometimes you want to get away from something that’s become too much. You want to put something behind you.”

I picked this up recently, shortly after returning from a holiday in Scotland, during which a trip to the Isle of Mull was cancelled due to ferry problems. The book was the perfect read, leaving me determined one day to visit Mull. The story perfectly evokes island life and illustrates the ease with which something entirely innocent can abruptly get out of hand in today’s society.

During a lecture, Dr Neil Anderson unknowingly offends a student and finds himself the subject of a complaint. All he has to do to make the problem go away is apologise … for something he never said. Madness. He can’t, he won’t.

With one seemingly small event, a single flimsy allegation, everything is about to change.

Soon, his life in Edinburgh – ordered, settled, happy, unremarkable – is in a state of collapse. Discredited, facing an uncertain future, he resigns. On impulse, he decides he needs a break to get away from things, and escapes to the Hebridean island of Mull, off Scotland’s west coast, where he...[read on]

About Death in the Countryside, from the publisher:

The sudden disappearance of a local woman reopens an old case in a small English town where everyone knows everyone’s business.

This debut police dog mystery will delight fans of Ann Cleeves and Margaret Mizushima.

Sergeant Ali Wren has recently returned to her charming Yorkshire hometown of Heft, accompanied by her trusty canine companion Officer PD Wilson, a Springer Spaniel with a nose for trouble. Together they are the police force quietly serving the town.

When Brian, an older resident, reports his wife, Melody, missing, Ali at first suspects a routine case. Melody, tired of playing dutiful wife to an inattentive husband, may simply have left. But suspicion soon begins to mount when it emerges that Brian’s first wife died under tragic circumstances and Ali uncovers evidence of Melody’s recent puzzling behavior.

Visit Maria Malone's website.

Writers Read: Maria Malone.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Gabriella Buba's "Daughters of Flood and Fury"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Daughters of Flood and Fury: The Stormbringer Saga by Gabriella Buba.

About the book, from the publisher:

This powerful sequel to Saints of Storm and Sorrow brims with unruly magic and pirates, moon-eating dragons and sizzling Sapphic romance. Enthralling Filipino-inspired fantasy for fans of The Hurricane Wars, R.F. Kuang and Tasha Suri.

Five years after the fall of the Palisade in Aynila, the Codicíans are closing in with a vast armada. Lunurin and Alon have been working desperately to solidify their alliances across the archipelago, but petty rivalries, suspicion, and conflicted loyalties threaten to undermine their efforts. To stand any chance, they must unify the disparate factions of their forces at the festival of the eclipse, when the laho will swallow the moon, and the islands’ magic will be at its strongest.

Inez has been training as a tide-touched healer, but the gentle side of her goddess’s gift does not come naturally to her. When she hears rumors that her sister, Catalina, has returned to the archipelago, Inez embarks on a dangerous journey over the sea. Aboard a pirate ship, she meets the fierce firetender Umali, who has no fear of her own power, and burns brighter than anyone Inez has ever known. Yet Inez worries her untamed, hungry magic may prove too much even for a pirate captain, and the threat of the Codicíans’ return hangs heavy over both their heads.

Three goddesses stand ready to fight. But without human allies, even their power may not be enough to keep Aynila and the archipelago free.

Visit Gabriella Buba's website.

My Book, The Movie: Daughters of Flood and Fury.

Writers Read: Gabriella Buba.

Q&A with Gabriella Buba.

The Page 69 Test: Daughters of Flood and Fury.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Adam Cureton's "Sovereign Reason"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Sovereign Reason: Autonomy and our Interests of Reason by Adam Cureton.

About the book, from the publisher:

We often invoke broad ideas of reason, rationality, reasonableness, reasons, reasoning, and related concepts in commonsense and express their apparent authority through ordinary language and social practices. Despite what many philosophers, economists, psychologists, novelists, and others claim, the reason of everyday life is far more substantive than cold logic or calculating self-interest. Sovereign Reason: Autonomy and our Interests of Reason explores the idea that our power of reason includes an expansive set of governing abilities, substantive motives, and substantive principles. The volume develops this novel but partial theory of reason by drawing on a wide variety of Kant's texts and highlighting themes in our ordinary ways of speaking and thinking.

The unifying idea of the Sovereignty Conception of Reason is that of an autonomous person who governs herself by reason in all respects. The Sovereignty Conception of Reason dramatically extends traditional Kantian conceptions of rational self-governance. We are able to govern our many mental powers by reason, not just our ability to make choices, and we can legislate, execute, and adjudicate in ourselves all kinds of principles of reason, not just moral ones. The Sovereignty Conception of Reason holds that our reason includes substantive final interests in various things. Part of having a rational nature is to care about knowledge, enlightenment, explanation, happiness, the lives of persons, and solidarity for their own sake. These interests of reason do not depend on our natural desires but are instead constitutive of our power of reason itself. The Sovereignty Conception of Reason also holds that our reason includes a principle of justifiability according to which mental acts of all kinds, including choices, beliefs, desires, and even feelings, are required by reason if and because they are justifiable to rational people on the basis of their substantive interests of reason. Many specific requirements that we affirm in commonsense can be derived from this abstract principle. The book contrasts the Sovereignty Conception of Reason with other prominent theories and explores specific rational principles it grounds concerning beneficence, coercion, deception, friendship, expressing respect, education, envy, self-development, and others.

Learn more about Sovereign Reason at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Sovereign Reason.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight top historical thrillers with macabre medical themes

Tonya Mitchell is the author of The Arsenic Eater’s Wife, an historical true crime Gothic mystery set in 1889 Liverpool. Her debut historical novel, A Feigned Madness, won the Reader Views Reviewers Choice Award and the Kops-Fetherling International Book Award for Best New Voice in Historical Fiction.

Mitchell's latest novel is Needle and Bone, "a gothic tale of guilt, vengeance, and a girl’s fight to reclaim her soul from the shadows."

At CrimeReads the author tagged "eight novels with medical themes at their core with gothic twists you’d expect from a subgenre steeped in the creepy." One title on the list:

Jennifer Cody Epstein, The Madwomen of Paris

This finalist for the Edgar Award is inspired by true events. After Josephine is committed to the Salpêtrière asylum in nineteenth century Paris,

she becomes the patient of director Jean-Martin Charcot, an expert in hysteria. Under his thrall, Josephine is hypnotized and soon captures the attention of rapt audiences.

However, when Josephine’s memory returns, she begins to suspect she has committed a terrible crime. Will Laure, the asylum attendant who’s become close to her help her escape or should Josephine remain, having committed a horrific murder?

Read about another title on the list.

Q&A with Jennifer Cody Epstein.

The Page 69 Test: The Madwomen of Paris.

My Book, The Movie: The Madwomen of Paris.

--Marshal Zeringue

Leigh Dunlap's "Bless Your Heart," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Leigh Dunlap's Bless Your Heart: A Thriller.

The entry begins:

I’m normally (or abnormally?) a screenwriter, and I’m used to writing things with the screen in mind. However, I usually try not to be too specific about characters. With screenwriting, you don’t have a lot a space on the page to describe a character. Maybe you just have one line. Example: Birdie marches into the room and commands it. She is 45 but expects you to think she looks younger. She is average height but wills herself to look taller. That’s all you get and that’s more than you usually get in a screenplay. I like to keep it simple and let the reader (or director, or casting director) fill in the blanks. I have to admit, though, that actresses invaded my writing process and I couldn’t help but fill in the blanks myself. The number one was...[read on]

Visit Leigh Dunlap's website.

Q&A with Leigh Dunlap.

Writers Read: Leigh Dunlap.

My Book, The Movie: Bless Your Heart.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Sulari Gentill's "Five Found Dead"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Five Found Dead: A Novel by Sulari Gentill.

About the book, from the publisher:

On a train, there are only so many places to hide…

Crime fiction author Joe Penvale has won the most brutal battle of his life. Now that he has finished his intense medical treatment, he and his twin sister, Meredith, are boarding the glorious Orient Express in Paris, hoping for some much-needed rest and rejuvenation. Meredith also hopes that the literary ghosts on the train will nudge Joe's muse awake, and he'll be inspired to write again. And he is; after their first evening spent getting to know some of their fellow travelers, Joe pulls out his laptop and opens a new document. Seems like this trip is just what the doctor ordered…

And then some. The next morning, Joe and Meredith are shocked to witness that the cabin next door has become a crime scene, bathed in blood but with no body in sight. The pair soon find themselves caught up in an Agatha Christie-esque murder investigation. Without any help from the authorities, and with the victim still not found, Joe and Meredith are asked to join a group of fellow passengers with law enforcement backgrounds to look into the mysterious disappearance of the man in Cabin16G. But when the steward guarding the crime scene is murdered, it marks the beginning of a killing spree which leaves five found dead—and one still missing. Now Joe and Meredith must fight once again to preserve their newfound future and to catch a cunning killer before they reach the end of the line.

USA Today bestselling author Sulari Gentill brings readers on a heart-pounding ride filled with intrigue, suspense, and literary charm in Five Found Dead, perfect for fans of twisty mysteries and books about books.

Visit Sulari Gentill's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Sulari Gentill & Rowly, Alfie, Miss Higgins and Pig.

The Page 69 Test: Five Found Dead.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Jane S. Smith's "A Blacklist Education"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: A Blacklist Education: American History, a Family Mystery, and a Teacher Under Fire by Jane S. Smith.

About the book, from the publisher:

In A Blacklist Education, a mysterious file of family papers triggers a journey through the dark days of political purges in the 1950s. Jane S. Smith tells the story of the anticommunist witch hunt that sent shockwaves through New York City’s public schools as more than a thousand teachers were targeted by Board of Education investigators. Her father was one of them—a fact she learned only long after his death.

Beginning in 1949, amid widespread panic about supposed communist subversion, investigators questioned teachers in their homes, accosted them in their classrooms, and ordered them to report to individual hearings. The interrogations were not published, filmed, open to the public, or reported in the news. By 1956, hundreds of New York City teachers had been fired, often because of uncorroborated reports from paid informers or anonymous accusers.

Most of the targeted teachers resigned or retired without any public process, their names recorded only in municipal files and their futures never known. Their absence became the invisible outline of an educational void, a narrowing of thought that pervaded classrooms for decades. In this highly personal story, family lore and childhood memory lead to restricted archives, forgotten inquisitions, and an eerily contemporary campaign to control who could teach and what was acceptable for students to learn.

Visit Jane S. Smith's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Garden of Invention.

The Page 99 Test: A Blacklist Education.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top novels of existential shipwreck

Peter Mann is the author of the novels The Torqued Man (2022) and World Pacific (2025). A longtime resident of San Francisco, he grew up in Kansas City, went to Wesleyan University, and got a PhD in Modern European history before becoming a novelist and a cartoonist.

[Q&A with Peter Mann; The Page 69 Test: The Torqued Man]

At The Strand Magazine Mann tagged "five great, albeit wildly different, novels that explore the theme of existential shipwreck and the drama of staying afloat." One title on the list:

In the Night of Time by Antonio Muñoz Molina (2009)

Similar themes of war and exile here, only this is a novel about the Spanish Civil War and is a work of historical fiction, which always sounds like a stupid qualification, as if great fiction weren’t often historical in its focus (War and Peace? Blood Meridian? The Singapore Grip? Come on.) What I mean is that Muñoz Molina, unlike Seghers, is writing his story at some seventy years’ remove from the events portrayed. But it is to my knowledge, with the possible exception of Javier Cercas’s slim but brilliant Soldiers of Salamis, the best novel about the Spanish Civil War. It captures the shipwreck of an entire nation, and with it the millions of lives shattered and set adrift. In a sweeping, richly textured story of an architect fleeing Madrid for New York, recalling the fragments of his life in Spain leading up to the war, Muñoz Molina gives the reader not only a sense of how a society tears itself apart and the acute dispossession experienced by those who live through it, but how that sense of shipwreck persists even once you’ve reached the other shore.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Carla Malden

From my Q&A with Carla Malden, author of Playback:

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

When I landed on the title, Playback, I knew that was it. That happened relatively early on. Before that, for a brief spell, I toyed with the title Backspace which communicated the idea of going back in time, but had a writerly (typewriterly) connotation that didn’t work. Writing is not at the heart of the book; music is. Playback evokes that music element, as well as the concept of getting a do-over at a lost relationship and at life in general.

Playback also conjures the idea that you might hear something new, something missed when you listen to something second time, much like Mari’s return trip to Haight-Ashbury, 1967 reveals different aspects of that time and place from the ones that impacted her the first time.

As an aside, I also like that the word “play” is embedded in the title. Subconsciously, it provides a sense of whimsy that suits the story of time travel, tie-dye, and tender regrets.

What's in a name?

Coming up with characters’ names is great fun for me...[read on]

Visit Carla Malden's website.

My Book, The Movie: Playback.

Writers Read: Carla Malden.

Q&A with Carla Malden.

--Marshal Zeringue