Pg. 69: Eva Gates's "Shot Through the Book"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Shot Through the Book by Eva Gates.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the twelfth installment of the Lighthouse Library mysteries, Lucy McNeil is back on the case, but this time she’s on the case alone.

The upcoming YA book festival at the Bodie Island Lighthouse Library is bringing in renowned authors from all over the world. When best selling author Todd Harrison unexpectedly visits librarian Lucy McNeil at her Outer Banks beach house after a meeting, she is puzzled by his presence, since they’re virtually strangers. After she steps inside to get him a drink, she’s shocked to discover that he’s been murdered on her deck in the few minutes she left him alone.

Not knowing why he wanted to meet with her in private, or how someone managed to kill him in the time it takes to make lemonade, Lucy is determined to help with the investigation and figure out what happened. WhenHeather Harrison, Todd’s widow, shows up in town, her motivations aren’t inspired by grief. She’s intending to use her husband’s tragic death to launch her candidacy for state senator and her first order of business is to go after the local police force–and Lucy herself.

Caught between an intrusive fan club mourning Todd, squabbling authors fighting for prominence in his absence, and a politically ruthless widow, Lucy must roll up her sleeves and and catch the killer before the chapter closes on justice.

Follow Eva Gates on Facebook, and visit Vicki Delany's website.

The Page 69 Test: Death By Beach Read.

Writers Read: Eva Gates (June 2022).

The Page 69 Test: Death Knells and Wedding Bells.

Writers Read: Eva Gates (June 2023).

Writers Read: Eva Gates (May 2024).

The Page 69 Test: The Stranger in the Library.

The Page 69 Test: Shot Through the Book.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Jesse Browner reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Jesse Browner, author of Sing to Me: A Novel.

His entry begins:

You Dreamed of Empires, by Álvaro Enrigue. This is already my second read. My hands-down favorite book of 2024. It reinvents the story of Hernán Cortés’ first week in Tenochtitlan and his meeting with the Aztec emperor Moctezuma – probably one of the most fateful encounters in world history, as the future of the entire New World hung on its outcome. Yet Enrigue treats it with irreverence, irony, broad (almost slapstick) humor and compassion for all its protagonists. For me, You Dreamed of Empires is the ideal model of the historical novel, adhering to...[read on]

About Sing to Me, from the publisher:

After the fall of Troy, an eleven-year-old boy sets off for the razed city when his father and sister vanish into the war zone; this "gorgeously drawn" novel offers an intimate vision of the most storied war in history, as seen through the eyes of a child. (Laird Hunt)

His family farm and the surrounding community now emptied by war, young Hani embarks on an epic quest – assisted by a brooding yet brilliant donkey – to find his lost sister in the ruins of Troy. Some war stories transcend time and circumstance, and so it is with the resourceful and heartbroken Hani, who must employ every bit of intelligence, every scrap of ingenuity, and ultimately every ounce of his spirit and humor to withstand the forces of civilization’s collapse.

Hani is no ordinary boy, however, and a character unlike any you’ve ever met. His interior world is one of startling depth and complexity. His insights into life, lives, and history are breathtakingly fresh. And his hope for survival—not a given, and in fact, less than likely—will propel you to the startling conclusion of this brief, elegiac, and singular work.

Writers Read: Jesse Browner (January 2012).

Writers Read: Jesse Browner.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top books for fans of "Sinners"

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

At Lit Hub she tagged ten books for fans of Sinners, the 2025 American musical horror film produced, written, and directed by Ryan Coogler. One title on the list:

Victor LaValle’s The Ballad of Black Tom

LaValle is one of our strongest literary horror writers. The way he braids genres and subverts and honors magical tropes is consistently surprising. This disquieting Jazz Age tale follows a hustling musician who awakens a beast when he “delivers an occult tome to a reclusive sorceress in the heart of Queens.” Expect Black magic.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Ballad of Black Tom is among Chase Dearinger's seven horror titles where the setting is a monster and Colleen Kinder's ten titles about chance encounters with strangers.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nose in a book: Amy Shearn

Who: Amy Shearn

What: Animal Instint by Amy Shearn

When: May 2025

Where: Politics and Prose, Washington DC

Photo credit: Diana Friedman

Visit Amy Shearn's website.

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.

My Book, The Movie: Animal Instinct.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Steve Gowler's "Thoughts that Burned"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Thoughts That Burned: William Goodell, Human Rights, and the Abolition of American Slavery by Steve Gowler.

About the book, from the publisher:

In Thoughts That Burned, Steve Gowler showcases the life of William Goodell, one of the most significant leaders of the antebellum antislavery movement. Between 1826 and 1864, Goodell edited more than a dozen reform newspapers and played a leading role in the formation of several organizations, including the American Anti-slavery Society, the Liberty Party, the American Missionary Association, and the Radical Abolition Party. His 1852 book Slavery and Anti-slavery was the first comprehensive history of the antislavery movement written by an American.

Convinced that the logic of slavery needed to be investigated and laid bare, Goodell explored the institution's deep structures. Whereas many abolitionists based their arguments on the inhumane consequences of enslavement, Goodell analyzed the legal and psychological relations constituting the slave system. At the heart of this analysis was his close reading of Southern slave codes and of the United States Constitution. He argued that the Constitution, properly understood, is incompatible with slavery and should be used as an instrument of emancipation. Among those influenced by his constitutional hermeneutic was Frederick Douglass, who described Goodell as the man "to whom the cause of liberty in America is as much indebted as to any other one American citizen." Thoughts That Burned is the first comprehensive biography of this extraordinary thinker, whose powerful political and theological arguments grounded abolition within the concept of human rights.

Visit Steve Gowler's website.

The Page 99 Test: Thoughts That Burned.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six great puzzle novels

K. A. Merson is a vaguely reclusive writer who lives in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, along with a patient spouse, a malevolent boxer dog, and an Airstream trailer.

The author's new novel is The Language of the Birds.

At CrimeReads Merson tagged six favorite puzzle novels, including:

The Raw Shark Texts by Stephen Hall

Several years ago, I was taking a creative writing course and working on The Language of the Birds, when one of the instructors said that my work reminded them of The Raw Shark Texts. Clearly, I had to read it. And I loved it. Few books can tackle hefty topics such as memory, identity, and grief while doing so with such a unique storyline. A cat-and-mouse hunting expedition for a voracious memory-eating predator, this funny, emotional, page-turning thriller is equal parts Stephen King, Michael Crichton, and Franz Kafka. Conceptually brilliant, The Raw Shark Texts was Steven Hall’s first novel and won the Borders Original Voices Award, the Somerset Maugham Award and was shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award.

Read about another puzzle novel on the list.

The Raw Shark Texts is among Jim Bob's top ten illustrated books for adults.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Jessica Guerrieri

From my Q&A with Jessica Guerrieri, author of Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea:

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

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea sets the tone before the first page. The cover’s striking image—water as both refuge and threat—mirrors the novel’s emotional stakes. The title speaks to being trapped between two impossible choices, something my protagonist, Leah, knows all too well. On the surface, she has it all: a handsome husband, three daughters, and a fresh start in a sleepy coastal town. But beneath that facade, she’s quietly unraveling—gripping tightly to the illusion of control, one drink at a time.

The "devil" can be read as addiction, guilt, or the crushing expectations of motherhood. The “deep blue sea” is both literal and symbolic: the beach town where Leah lives and surfs, and the murky depths of her own emotional landscape. It also hints at the secret she’s keeping from the O’Connor family—one that...[read on]

Visit Jessica Guerrieri's website.

Q&A with Jessica Guerrieri.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Catherine Ryan Hyde's "Michael Without Apology"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Michael Without Apology: A Novel by Catherine Ryan Hyde.

About the book, from the publisher:

A film student struggling with self-acceptance finally stops looking away from his traumatic past in a powerful novel by New York Times bestselling author Catherine Ryan Hyde.

Michael Woodbine was seven years old when a near-fatal fireworks accident scarred him and led to his placement in foster care. Now a college freshman, he is still trying to hide the effects of his trauma from his classmates, his adoptive family, and himself.

When Michael signs up for a film class, he meets Robert Dunning, a teacher who wears his own scars unapologetically. Robert encourages Michael to make a documentary that explores body image and self-perception. Michael places an ad seeking people who feel unattractive and rejected by society―and is surprised to learn that this is essentially everyone. Although some participants are recovering from injuries or surgeries, others are dealing with more everyday factors like aging or the changes to a body from giving birth.

As he collects these stories―and finally tells his own―Michael feels more connected to the world than he ever has before. But he knows his journey of self-acceptance has one more obstacle: his crushing doubts about why his birth parents wouldn’t fight to keep him.

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.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight titles exploring complicated feelings about ambition

Emma Pattee is a climate journalist and fiction writer. Her work has been published in The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and elsewhere.

Her debut novel, Tilt, is available now.

At Electric Lit Pattee tagged eight "contemporary novels that explore ambition in complicated, nuanced, and exciting ways." One title on the list:

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

Written in the form of a letter, The White Tiger tells the story of a Indian man who was born into incredible poverty and is now a self-made entrepreneur, and murderer. Aravind Adiga is one of my favorite writers, and this book is no exception. At turns a social critique of modern-day India, a meticulous satire of greed and striving, and an examination of ambition that comes from desperation but truly eats you alive. I read a review that called it an “anguishing howl of rage” about poverty and class inequity. I’d say that pretty much nails it.

Read about another novel on the list.

The White Tiger is on Nathan Go's list of eight novels with narrators who defy our expectations, Saskia Lacey's list of fifty incredible literary works destined to become classics, Louise Doughty's six best books list, Amy Wilkinson's list of seven top books with "white" in the title, Julia Stuart's list of five of the best stories about domestic servants, Stephen Kelman's top ten list of outsiders' stories, and is one of The Freakonomics guys' six best books.

The Page 69 Test: The White Tiger.

--Marshal Zeringue

Paul Vidich's "The Poet’s Game," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Paul Vidich's The Poet's Game.

The entry begins:

The English director, John Madden, would be a good fit to make The Poet’s Game a movie. Madden directed Operation Mincemeat and much earlier in his career, he director the multiple- Oscar winner, Shakespeare in Love with a screenplay by Tom Stoppard. Both movies had ensembles casts and the story lines blended personal lives into an historical moment. The Poet’s Game shares those qualities: the tense political conflict between Moscow and Washington in 2018 provides the backdrop for a love story. Madden has the light touch of a director who can bring people’s stories alive and still sustain the suspense of a thrilling plot.

My main character, Alex Matthews, could be played by the chameleon-like Damian Lewis, whose remarkable range makes him a good candidate for the role. Lewis is a smart actor and has the right amount of devious sophistication to play a spy moving...[read on]

Visit Paul Vidich's website.

Q&A with Paul Vidich.

My Book, The Movie: The Mercenary.

The Page 69 Test: The Mercenary.

Writers Read: Paul Vidich (January 2022).

The Page 69 Test: The Matchmaker: A Spy in Berlin.

Writers Read: Paul Vidich (October 2023).

My Book, The Movie: Beirut Station.

The Page 69 Test: Beirut Station.

Writers Read: Paul Vidich.

My Book, The Movie: The Poet's Game.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight page-turning revenge thrillers

At Book Riot Addison Rizer tagged eight "satisfying revenge thrillers where the bad guys finally get their due." One title on the list:

Winter Counts by David Heska Wanbli Weiden

After the death of his sister, Virgil Wounded Horse takes guardianship of his nephew, Nathan. To get the money to send him to college, Virgil works as an enforcer in their community, doling out justice when the system fails.

When he’s offered a large sum to handle a drug issue on the reservation, he takes it. That is, until Nathan is caught in the drug scene too. Now, with a personal stake in the issue, Virgil is determined to find the source and put a stop to it.

Read about another thriller on the list.

Winter Countsis among Robert Justice's five best crime titles set in Denver, Brittany Bunzey's ten best Indigenous suspense novels, Tracy Clark's top ten crime books by writers of color, Erin E. Adams's seven novels that use mystery to examine race, S.F. Kosa's top ten psychological thrillers, Stephen Miller's favorite crime fiction of 2020, Molly Odintz's six favorite titles from the "new wave of thrillers where the oppressed get some well-earned revenge," and Jennifer Baker's top twelve mystery novels featuring BIPOC protagonists.

The Page 69 Test: Winter Counts.

My Book, The Movie: Winter Counts.

Q&A with David Heska Wanbli Weiden.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Lindsay O'Neill's "The Two Princes of Mpfumo"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Two Princes of Mpfumo: An Early Eighteenth-Century Journey into and out of Slavery by Lindsay O'Neill.

About the book, from the publisher:

A fascinating account of two eighteenth-century princes from East Africa, their travels, and their encounters with the British Empire and slavery

In 1716 two princes from Mpfumo—what is today Maputo, the capital of Mozambique—boarded a ship licensed by the East India Company bound for England. Instead, their perfidious captain sold them into slavery in Jamaica. After two years of pleading their case, the princes—known in the historical record as Prince James and Prince John—convinced a lawyer to purchase them, free them, and travel with them to London. The lawyer perished when a hurricane wrecked their ship, but the princes survived and arrived in England in 1720. Even though the East India Company had initially thought that the princes might assist in their aspirations to develop a trade for gold in East Africa and for enslaved labor in Madagascar, its interest waned. The princes would need to look elsewhere to return home. It was at this point that members of the Royal African Company and the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge took up their cause, in the hope that profit and perhaps Christian souls would follow. John would make it home, but tragically, James would end his own life just before the ship sailed for Africa.

In The Two Princes of Mpfumo, Lindsay O’Neill brings to life individuals caught up in the eighteenth-century slave trade. O’Neill also shows how the princes’ experiences reflect the fragmented, chaotic, and often deadly realities of the early British empire. A fascinating and deeply researched historical narrative, The Two Princes of Mpfumo blurs the boundaries between the Atlantic and Indian ocean worlds; reveals the intertwined networks, powerful individuals, and unstable knowledge that guided British attempts at imperial expansion; and illuminates the power of African polities, which decided who lived and who died on their coasts.

Learn more about The Two Princes of Mpfumo at the University of Pennsylvania Press website.

The Page 99 Test: The Two Princes of Mpfumo.

--Marshal Zeringue

Three of the best--and three of the worst--mothers in literature

BBC.com Culture tagged three of the best--and three of the worst--mothers in literature. One of the good ones:

Marilla Cuthbert, Anne of Green Gables

Outwardly steely, the adoptive mother of red-haired orphan Anne reveals herself as a softie through the course of the 1908 novel: so much so that Margaret Attwood has claimed that Marilla is the true central character: “Only Marilla unfolds into something unimaginable to us at the beginning of the book. Her growing love for Anne, and her growing ability to express that love – not Anne's duckling-to-swan act – is the real magic transformation. Anne is the catalyst who allows the crisp, rigid Marilla to finally express her long-buried softer human emotions.”

Read about another mother on the list.

Anne of Green Gables is among the Observer's ten best fictional mothers, Bea Davenport's top ten books about hair and the Observer's ten best fictional mothers.

Marilla's raspberry cordial in Anne of Green Gables is one of Jane Brocket's top ten food scenes in children's literature.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Paul Vidich reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Paul Vidich, author of The Poet's Game.

His entry begins:

I am fascinated by the different paths that espionage fiction has taken in the England, where is began with Erskine Childers and Eric Ambler in the early 20 th century, and its American expression, which didn’t emerge until the 1960’s with Robert Ludlum and Charles McCarry. There are interesting differences between English and American spy fiction and to understand the differences, I recently began to reread early American spy fiction classics, Charles McCarry’s The Tears of Autumn and Robert Littell’s The Amateur.

McCarry, a CIA intelligence officer before he turned to writing novels, reimagines the assassination of JFK as an act of revenge for America’s killing of South Vietnam’s president Diem in 1963. McCarry’s protagonist, Paul Christopher, is a weary anti-Bond figure who pursues his theory against the advice of agency’s higher-ups, and finds himself out in the cold. It’s a fine novel with an interesting premise, and what makes it stand out is...[read on]

About The Poet's Game, from the publisher:

A hall of mirrors with no exits, The Poet's Game is a sophisticated portrait of a spy working to uncover layers of deceit behind a Russian plot on the American president.

Alex Matthews thought he had left it all behind: his CIA career, the viper's den of bureaucracy at headquarters, the deceits of the cat-and-mouse game of double agents, and the sudden trips to Russia, which poisoned his marriage and made him an absentee husband and father, with tragic results.

But then the Director came asking for a favor. Something that only Alex could do because it involved the asset Byron—a Russian agent whom Alex had recruited. Byron had something of great interest to the CIA; the Director said it was a matter of grave national security that implicated the White House, and that Byron would hand over the kompromat once he was extricated from Russia.

But Alex is a different man than when he had run Moscow station: he has pieced his life back together after a tragic accident killed his wife and daughter—but the scars remain. He left the agency; started a financial firm that made him wealthy; and met a new woman, Anna, who works as an interpreter in the CIA. Anna is beautiful and supportive and helps him find love again after years of drowning in grief alongside his son. Throughout the last years, Alex has remained, in his mind, a patriot, and so he begrudgingly accepts the Director's request.

Something, though, doesn’t feel right about the whole operation from the start. The Russians seem one step ahead and the CIA suspects there is a traitor in the agency, passing along secrets to the Russians. Alex realizes that, by getting back into the game, he has risked everything he has worked for: his marriage, his family’s safety, and the trust of his closest colleagues—one of whom is betraying him. As the noose tightens around Alex, and the FSB closes in on Byron, the operation becomes a hall of mirrors with no exits. To find redemption, Alex must uncover Byron’s secrets or risk losing everything.

The Poet’s Game is a remarkably sophisticated and emotionally resonant portrait of a spy from a renowned master of the genre.

Visit Paul Vidich's website.

Q&A with Paul Vidich.

My Book, The Movie: The Mercenary.

The Page 69 Test: The Mercenary.

Writers Read: Paul Vidich (January 2022).

The Page 69 Test: The Matchmaker: A Spy in Berlin.

Writers Read: Paul Vidich (October 2023).

My Book, The Movie: Beirut Station.

The Page 69 Test: Beirut Station.

Writers Read: Paul Vidich.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine top books about women without children

Nicole Louie is a writer and translator based in Ireland. Her essays have appeared in Oh Reader Magazine, The Walrus, and The Guardian and her curated collections of books, movies and podcasts about women who are not mothers by choice, circumstance or ambivalence can be found on Instagram: @bynicolelouie.

Others Like Me: The Lives of Women Without Children is her first book.

At Electric Lit Louie tagged nine favorite books "by women who placed writing, not babies, at the center of their lives and flourished outside of motherhood." One title on the list:

Manifesto: On Never Giving Up by Bernardine Evaristo

Manifesto: On Never Giving Up walks us through how Bernardine Evaristo came to be the first Black woman and Black British person to win the Booker Prize, receive over 80 awards, nominations, fellowships, and honours, and have her books named the Book of the Year over sixty times.

Delving into her English, Nigerian, Irish, German and Brazilian heritage, romantic relationships, personal development and activism, Evaristo outlines her trajectory over six decades. Her ninth book also offers glimpses of her decision not to have children. “Instead of becoming a mother, I became an aunt and godmother, roles I’ve loved. I also describe myself as child-free, as opposed to childless, which implies a failure to fulfil my role as a woman rather than an active choice not to have them.”

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Tennessee Hill

From my Q&A with Tennessee Hill, author of Girls with Long Shadows: A Novel:

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

I went back and forth with this title quite a lot and ultimately landed on Girls with Long Shadows because I think it introduces a sense of foreboding that is important to the tone. I love that “Girls” is in the title, too, because it highlights the tension between the way the sisters want to be seen and the way they are actually perceived by their community.

What's in a name?

Names are so important, not just to characters but to people and places and things. Having the sisters named...[read on]

Visit Tennessee Hill's website.

Q&A with Tennessee Hill.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight globe-spanning books on World War II

Natasha Lester is the New York Times bestelling author of The Paris Seamstress, The Paris Orphan, and The Paris Secret, and a former marketing executive for L’Oréal. Her novels have been international bestsellers and are translated into twenty-one different languages and published all around the world. When she’s not writing, she loves collecting vintage fashion, practicing the art of fashion illustration, and traveling the world. Natasha lives with her husband and three children in Perth, Western Australia.

Lester's newest novel is The Mademoiselle Alliance.

At Lit Hub the author tagged eight books "which are set in different theaters of the Second World War, from France to Hong Kong, Britain, Japan, Australia and Germany." One title on the list:

Kate Atkinson, A God in Ruins

This is another book with a twist that cut me to the core. It’s a companion novel to Atkinson’s Life After Life in that it features the same English family, but it isn’t necessary to have read that one first. In this novel, Teddy is a WWII British bomber pilot and thus he and his fellow pilots have the shortest lives of almost anyone serving in the war.

All of them are desperate to stay alive until they reach the required number of flights to end their tour of duty. But Teddy, although terrified of dying, keeps going back for more, serving three tours by war’s end.

It’s Atkinson’s descriptions of life as a bomber pilot and her rumination on life, death and storytelling that make this one of the best books in the genre.

Read about another book on the list.

A God in Ruins is among Tessa Arlen’s five top historical novels, ELLE UK's fifteen of the best books of 2015, Time magazine's top ten fiction books of 2015, and Tracy Chevalier's six best books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Erin M.B. O'Halloran's "East of Empire"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: East of Empire: Egypt, India, and the World between the Wars by Erin M.B. O'Halloran.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the outset of the twentieth century, Egyptian and Indian leaders understood their movements for self-determination as linked and part of a shared project. Following World War I, as connections between the Middle East and South Asia proliferated, Egypt and India lay squarely at the heart of increasingly complex and multilateral relations. East of Empire traces how anticolonial nationalism gained momentum across the East and documents the friendships, rivalries, cultural exchanges, and shifting political alliances that came to animate the interwar project of Easternism: a cosmopolitan vision of the world whose center of gravity lay beyond Europe, in the great city of Cairo. Erin O'Halloran offers a compelling new account of the era immediately preceding decolonization and the epochal partitions of India and Palestine. Alongside well-known figures like Mohandas K. Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Saad Zaghlul, she introduces less familiar but no less intriguing personalities: feminists, diplomats, and poets; surrealists, socialists and spies. Each dreamed, wrote, organized and fought for the liberation of the East—a space universally evoked, though seemingly impossible to pin down. Drawing on a broad cross-section of Indian, Arab, British, and European sources, East of Empire transcends archival partitions to tell a powerful and nearly forgotten set of stories about the rise of anticolonial nationalism and the end of empire across the Middle East and South Asia.

Visit Erin M.B. O'Halloran's website.

The Page 99 Test: East of Empire.

--Marshal Zeringue

Third reading: D.W. Buffa on "Père Goriot"

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 Honoré de Balzac's Père Goriot. It begins:

In December of l875, Henry James published a review of the French writer Honoré de Balzac that ran nearly seventeen thousand words. The review can be found in the Library of America’s edition entitled, Henry James: European Writers and The Prefaces. It should be read by anyone with a serious interest in Balzac, and a serious concern with how far the 21st century has fallen below the literary standards, and perhaps not just the literary standards, of the 19th century.

One of the great, if least noticed, differences between what was written then and what is written now, is that writers devoted their lives to what they did. Born in 1799, Balzac spent three years working in a lawyer’s office, the necessary apprenticeship to practice law in France, and then, over the protests of his family, decided to become a writer, and before he was thirty he had written a number of unreadable novels which left him as impoverished as he had been when he started. He learned from his failures, and instead of narrowing, broadened the scope of his ambition. He would write a series of novels that would together describe the human condition, that is to say, the human comedy, the world as it really existed, or at least that part of the world known as Paris. The best of these novels is Père Goriot, a novel Henry James considered among “the few greatest novels we possess.”

Père Goriot begins with nothing of what is usually considered action, nothing that immediately captures the reader’s attention, nothing that creates a sense of mystery or adventure or even anticipation. It opens with the description of a place, a boarding house where no one would live if they could afford something better. Everything about it is dismal.

“In the whole of Paris there is no district more hideous, and none, we must add, more unknown.” The boarding house is four stories high, and of a “squalid appearance,” every squalid detail of which is described. The boarders have their meals on “a long table covered with oilcloth so greasy that a playful diner can autograph it with his finger.” It is a place of poverty, “pinched, concentrated, threadbare poverty,” a place “where all hope and eagerness have been extinguished.”

This goes on for pages, one grim, depressing detail after another. And it is all quite deliberate. “The place in which an event occurred,” explains Henry James, was in Balzac’s view, “of equal moment with the event itself; it was part of the action; it was not a thing to take or to leave, or to be vaguely and gracefully indicated; it imposed itself; it had a part to play; and need to be made as definite as anything else.” It is the same thing with persons as with things....[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.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Joseph G. Peterson's "The Perturbation of O"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Perturbation of O by Joseph G. Peterson.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Perturbation of O tells the comic story of how a loser became a winner with the publication of his memoir, Gideon’s Confession, and the chaotic aftermath that the book and an encounter with Oprah Winfrey have had on two people: Gideon Anderson and Regina Blast, a woman about whom Gideon wrote intimately in his memoir.

Told mostly in a single conversation between Gideon and Regina as they sit on a spring morning drinking coffee and eating pastries, The Perturbation of O deals with concepts of fame and intimacy, and who has the right to speak about whom.

Visit Joseph G. Peterson's website.

The Page 69 Test: Beautiful Piece.

Writers Read: Joseph G. Peterson.

The Page 69 Test: The Perturbation of O.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top books about rivers

Robert Macfarlane is Professor of Literature and the Environmental Humanities at the Faculty of English in Cambridge. He is well-known as a writer about nature, climate, landscape, people and place, and his books –– which include Underland (2019), a book-length prose-poem Ness (2018), Landmarks (2015), The Old Ways (2012) and Mountains of the Mind (2003) –– have been translated into more than thirty languages, won prizes around the world, and been widely adapted for music, film, television, radio and theatre.

Macfarlane's new book, Is a River Alive?, is his most personal and political work to date.

At the Waterstones blog the author tagged "five books that present the complexity and importance of rivers through both fiction and non-fiction." One title on the list:

There Are Rivers In The Sky by Elif Shafak

In Shafak’s beautiful, sweeping novel, three river-stories flow and braid with one another across cultures, landscapes and centuries –– from ancient Mesopotamia to Victorian London and modern Turkey. The Thames and the Tigris are at this book’s heart, and the third great current is the Epic of Gilgamesh itself, a story powerful enough to carry readers and characters onwards, and to set history itself aswirl. This hugely popular novel has already found its way into the hearts of hundreds of thousands of readers: water, connection and compassion are its keynotes.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Nicola Kraus

From my Q&A with Nicola Kraus, author of The Best We Could Hope For: A Novel:

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

While the novel had many titles over the eight years that I was writing it, once I hit on The Best We Could Hope For it was so clearly non-negotiable. I love language with multiple meanings. This title immediately asks readers to consider, is the story they’re about to learn the best case scenario? Or the worst case scenario? For many characters it’s both. Additionally, since the narrative starts in the postwar era, the idea of the best looms large for this sprawling family, wanting the best, deserving the best, having the best. And falling so far short. Hope is also a powerful recurring theme. Hope as an active agent for change, and hope as delusion.

What's in a name?

The daughter in my novel is named Linden because...[read on]

Visit Nicola Kraus's website.

Q&A with Nicola Kraus.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Carrie N. Baker's "Abortion Pills"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Abortion Pills: US History and Politics by Carrie N. Baker.

About the book, from the publisher:

This is the first book to offer a comprehensive history of abortion pills in the United States. Public intellectual and lawyer Carrie N. Baker shows how courageous activists waged a decades-long campaign to establish, expand, and maintain access to abortion pills. Weaving their voices throughout her book, Baker recounts both dramatic and everyday acts of their resistance. These activists battled anti-abortion forces, overly cautious policymakers, medical gatekeepers, and fearful allies in their four-decade-long fight to free abortion pills. In post-Roe America, abortion pills are currently playing a critically important role in providing safe abortion access to tens of thousands of people living in states that now ban and restrict abortion. Understanding this struggle will help to ensure continued access into the future.

Visit Carrie N. Baker's website.

The Page 99 Test: Abortion Pills.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven Southern Gothic books set in small towns

Tennessee Hill holds an MFA from North Carolina State University. Her work has been featured in Poetry magazine, Best New Poets, Southern Humanities Review, Adroit Journal, Arkansas International, and elsewhere. She is a native of South Texas, where she still lives and teaches with her husband and their dog.

Hill's new novel is Girls with Long Shadows.

At Electric Lit she tagged seven "books about the small-town Southern Gothic and the creature comforts and ghosts that inhabit it." One title on the list:

A Visitation of Spirits by Randall Kenan

The Southern Gothic genre loves its ghosts, but I’ve scarce encountered apparitions stranger than those that lurk Kenan’s fictional town of Tims Creek. The novel centers a young Horace Cross reckoning with his sexuality and race as a gay, black teenager in the fictional Tims Creek, a rural North Carolina town where the Cross family has lived for generations. Ghosts taking the shapes of animals and Horace himself haunt the young man as he spends a distressing evening wandering parts of his hometown stamped with his family name, praying, yearning, and battling. Kenan’s Tims Creek is a vibrant, difficult character, a landscape the late author returned to in other fictional works. The town itself becomes a way of looking closely at the South, its historical complicities, and its contemporary ones too.

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jessica Anya Blau's "Shopgirls," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Shopgirls: A Novel by Jessica Anya Blau.

The entry begins:

A story about a young woman finding her way through life in day-glo, high-fashion, San Francisco in 1985.

Zippy is on a quest. She wants to 1. find her father as she is the result of a one-night-stand and her mother doesn’t remember her father’s name. 2. Figure out how to be an adult (her mother was no example). 3. Learn how to kiss a man and date (she was a theater geek in school). And, 4. Figure out how to make a living doing what you love (Zippy loves clothes and fashion).

The Cast:

Zippy: she’s 19 and grew up in a one-bedroom apartment above a liquor store in San Francisco. When her mother’s boyfriend moved in, she slept in the hall beside the bathroom with the swollen, un-shuttable door.

Zippy has a great eye and an excellent sense of style. She buys some clothes from the Salvation Army, fixes them up, and gets a job at I. Magnin, the most exclusive department store in San Francisco.

Zippy needs to be played by someone whose name we don’t yet know. Anyone plucky, smart, joyful, and open to the world.

The Lifetime Salesgirls: It’s 1985 so they are all called "girls" no matter how old they are, and at work they are referred to as "Miss." Some are resentful of youthful, energetic Zippy, and some love her and want to help her navigate adulthood.

They could be played by:

Parker Posey — mean Miss Yolanda

Amy Adams — confused Miss Liaskas

Julia Roberts and Kyra Sedgwick — the snooty Miss Braughn and Miss Braughn

Lucy Liu — the phlegmatic Miss Lee

Viola Davis — the watchful...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Jessica Anya Blau's website, Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.

Coffee with a Canine: Jessica Anya Blau and Pippa.

The Page 69 Test: The Wonder Bread Summer.

My Book, The Movie: The Wonder Bread Summer.

The Page 69 Test: The Trouble with Lexie.

My Book, The Movie: The Trouble with Lexie.

Writers Read: Jessica Anya Blau (June 2016).

The Page 69 Test: Mary Jane.

Q&A with Jessica Anya Blau.

Coffee with a Canine: Jessica Anya Blau & Baby.

My Book, The Movie: Shopgirls.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Catherine Boland Erkkila's "Spaces of Immigration"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Spaces of Immigration: American Ports, Railways, and Settlements by Catherine Boland Erkkila.

About the book, from the publisher:

By transporting waves of newly arrived immigrants along rail lines from both coasts, railway companies played an active role in repopulating the interior of the country. Spaces of Immigration follows the travel routes of immigrants during a foundational period of American infrastructure—from ports of arrival to train cars and depots to settlements—showing how the built environment of the railways fostered segregation through physical isolation and reinforced hierarchies according to race, ethnicity, and class. Catherine Boland Erkkila highlights the magnitude of this forced separation: how spatial design and the experiences within it reflected prejudices of contemporary middle-class Americans who viewed immigrants as poor, diseased, and dangerous. Spaces of Immigration draws attention to the control wielded by railroad companies and government officials, who dispatched European immigrants to ethnic enclaves across the Midwest, some of which still exist. These colonization efforts, Boland Erkkila argues, were motivated by profit through exploitation: the promise of cheap labor and the purchase of land along designated routes. At the same time, Asian immigrants were detained like prisoners on the West Coast. This book ultimately offers a greater understanding of the immigrant experience in America through the lens of spatial history, revealing deeply embedded conflicts still pervasive in our society today.

Follow Catherine Boland Erkkila on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.

The Page 99 Test: Spaces of Immigration.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven top titles in cross-genre Gothic fiction

Paulette Kennedy is the author of The Artist of Blackberry Grange (2025), The Devil and Mrs. Davenport (2024), The Witch of Tin Mountain (2023), and Parting the Veil (2021), which received the HNS Review Editor’s Choice Award. Her work has been featured in People Magazine, The Mary Sue, Paste Magazine, and BookBub. Originally from the Missouri Ozarks, she now lives with her family and a menagerie of rescue pets in sunny Southern California, where sometimes, on the very best days, the mountains are wreathed in gothic fog.

[The Page 69 Test: Parting the Veil; The Page 69 Test: The Devil and Mrs. Davenport; My Book, The Movie: The Artist of Blackberry Grange]

At CrimeReads Kennedy tagged "seven novels [that] combine aspects of sci-fi, romance, magic, and fantasy with the traditional conventions of the Gothic genre to create something new and fresh." One title on the list:

In The Garden of Monsters by Crystal King

Lush, sensual, and steeped in mythology, In The Garden of Monsters is a darkly entrancing Gothic fairy tale that reimagines the story of Hades and Persephone through the eyes of an artist’s model suffering from amnesia. When Julia Lombardi receives an invitation to pose for famed artist Salvador Dali in the Sacro Bosco, Italy’s famed Garden of Monsters, she’d be foolish to refuse. But when she arrives at the Palazzo Orsini, Julia has the odd sensation that she’s been there before. Their enigmatic and charming host, Ignazio, is strangely familiar, and plies Julia with decadent meals garnished with pomegranate seeds. Convinced that she is the goddess Persephone, Dali pleads with Julia to consume the seeds so she can rejoin her king in the Underworld. As Julia explores the palazzo and the Sacro Bosco, strange visions and memories disturb her waking and sleeping hours, leading her to wonder whether there might be some truth to Dali’s fanatical obsessions.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Melissa Poett's "The Enemy's Daughter"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Enemy's Daughter by Melissa Poett.

About the book, from the publisher:

A stunning reimagining of Tristan and Isolde set in a dystopian world woven with magic. An addictive debut YA enemies-to-lovers romantasy—perfect for fans of Rebecca Ross and Sarah Underwood as well as books like Curious Tides, The Hurricane Wars, and Belladonna.

It’s been thirty-seven years since the Republic was destroyed. Now two settlements—the five clans and the Kingsland—fight for control of the untainted land. Though the five clans are outnumbered, they’ve finally struck, killing Kingsland’s brutal leader.

In the war that follows, Isadora, an eighteen-year-old healer, risks her life to help injured soldiers. But when she stops an attack from Tristan, a Kingsland assassin, his soldiers shoot her with a poisoned arrow. As Isadora lies dying, Tristan does the unimaginable: He offers to save her life using a rare magic.

In choosing to live, Isadora is unknowingly bound to the mysterious Tristan. Worse, even acknowledging the attraction between them allows him to glean fragments of her memories and the very knowledge he needs to destroy the five clans. But their magical connection works both ways. So to save her people, Isadora will have to open her heart to her most cunning enemy. Because in a race for ultimate survival, she’ll need to destroy Tristan and his people first.

Visit Melissa Poett's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Enemy's Daughter.

--Marshal Zeringue