What is Sam Wiebe reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Sam Wiebe, author of Ocean Drive: A Novel.

His entry begins:

My last read of 2024 was Nicholas Nickleby, the novel Dickens started in the middle of writing Oliver Twist. It’s better (and less antisemitic) than Twist, but not as compelling as his latter masterpieces. What’s remarkable is that two years after Nickleby came out, the corrupt and brutal ‘Yorkshire schools’ the book takes aim against were nearly all out of business. Amazing to think...[read on]

About Ocean Drive, from the publisher:

A paroled killer and a small-town cop find themselves on a collision course when the murder-by-arson of a college student sparks off gang violence along the forty-ninth parallel.

His first day out of prison, paroled killer Cameron Shaw meets with a mysterious lawyer who offers him a small fortune to infiltrate the League of Nations crime syndicate. Shaw turns her down, intending to go straight. But with no job, no family and no prospects, he’s soon compelled to take her offer.

In the small Pacific Northwest town of White Rock, a body is pulled from a burning house. Staff Sgt. Meghan Quick identifies the victim as grad student Alexa Reed. Alexa’s behavior during her last few days strikes Quick as bizarre. Why did she remove the for-sale sign from her parents’ house, and why was she trying to meet with the League of Nations?

As Quick tries to solve Alexa’s homicide, Shaw moves deeper into the League’s cross-border drug trade.

With the threat of a gang war looming, and long-buried secrets coming to light, Quick must find Alexa’s killer, while rescuing Shaw from the brutal gang violence that threatens the future of White Rock.

Visit Sam Wiebe's website.

My Book, The Movie: Invisible Dead.

The Page 69 Test: Invisible Dead.

The Page 69 Test: Cut You Down.

Q&A with Sam Wiebe.

The Page 69 Test: Hell and Gone.

Writers Read: Sam Wiebe (March 2022).

My Book, The Movie: Hell and Gone.

My Book, The Movie: Sunset and Jericho.

Writers Read: Sam Wiebe (April 2023).

The Page 69 Test: Sunset and Jericho.

The Page 69 Test: Ocean Drive.

My Book, The Movie: Ocean Drive.

Writers Read: Sam Wiebe.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Todd McGowan's "Pure Excess"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Pure Excess: Capitalism and the Commodity by Todd McGowan.

About the book, from the publisher:

Todd McGowan forges a new theory of capitalism as a system based on the production of more than what we need: pure excess. He argues that the promise of more―more wealth, more enjoyment, more opportunity, without requiring any sacrifice―is the essence of capitalism. Previous socioeconomic systems set up some form of the social good as their focus. Capitalism, however, represents a revolutionary turn away from the good and the useful toward excessive growth, which now threatens the habitability of the planet.

Drawing on psychoanalytic theory, McGowan shows how the production of commodities explains the role of excess in the workings of capitalism. Capitalism and the commodity ensnare us with the image of the constant fulfillment of our desires―the seductive but unattainable promise of satisfying a longing that has no end. To challenge this system, McGowan turns to art, arguing that it can expose the psychological mechanisms that perpetuate capitalist society and reveal the need for limits. Featuring lively writing and engaging examples from film, literature, and popular culture, Pure Excess uncovers the hidden logic of capitalism―and helps us envision a noncapitalist life in a noncapitalist society.

Learn more about Pure Excess at the Columbia University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Capitalism and Desire.

The Page 99 Test: Pure Excess.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best classic retellings

At Fully Booked Meaghan Mains tagged ten top classic retellings, including:

Ten by Gretchen McNeil

Inspired by: And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

Do you have a love of classic retellings as well as murder mysteries? Does an Agatha Christie classic tickle your fancy? Then this fresh take of her masterpiece And Then There Were None is for you. When friends Meg & Minnie are invited to an extremely exclusive house party on the secluded Henry Island, they think they’re in for the time of their lives.

They have no idea that it’ll actually be the fight for their lives. With a storm raging and the guests being picked off one by one, they’ll need to unmask the killer, before they fall prey to the same fate as the other partygoers. If this sounds at all familiar, Lifetime made a loosely based film adaptation of the novel back in 2017.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Megan Collins's "Cross My Heart"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Cross My Heart: A Novel by Megan Collins.

About the book, from the publisher:

She has his wife’s heart; the one she wants is his. The author of The Family Plot brings her signature “taut, emotionally charged, and propulsive” (Jeneva Rose, New York Times bestselling author) prose to a twisty novel about a heart transplant patient who becomes romantically obsessed with her donor’s husband.

Rosie Lachlan wants nothing more than to find The One.

A year after she was dumped in her wedding dress, she’s working at her parents’ bridal salon, anxious for a happy ending that can’t come soon enough. After receiving a life-saving heart transplant, Rosie knows her health is precious and precarious. She suspects her heart donor is Daphne Thorne, the wife of local celebrity author Morgan Thorne, who she begins messaging via an anonymous service called DonorConnect, ostensibly to learn more about Daphne. But Rosie has a secret: She’s convinced that now that she has his wife’s heart, she and Morgan are meant to be together.

As she and Morgan correspond, the pretense of avoiding personal details soon disappears, even if Rosie’s keeping some cards close to her chest. But as she digs deeper into Morgan’s previous marriage, she discovers disturbing rumors about the man she’s falling for. Could Morgan have had something to do with his late wife’s death? And can Rosie’s heart sustain another break—or is she next?

Visit Megan Collins's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Family Plot.

The Page 69 Test: Thicker Than Water.

The Page 69 Test: Cross My Heart.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Mark Povich's "Rules to Infinity"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Rules to Infinity: The Normative Role of Mathematics in Scientific Explanation by Mark Povich.

About the book, from the publisher:

One of the central aims of science is to provide explanations of natural phenomena. What role does mathematics play in achieving this aim? How does mathematics contribute to the explanatory power of science? Rules to Infinity defends the thesis that mathematics contributes to the explanatory power of science by expressing conceptual rules that allow for the transformation of empirical descriptions. It claims that mathematics should not be thought of as describing, in any substantive sense, an abstract realm of eternal mathematical objects, as traditional Platonists have thought.

This view, which Mark Povich calls "mathematical normativism," is updated with contemporary philosophical tools, which are used to form the argument that normativism is compatible with mainstream semantic theory. This allows the normativist to accept that there are mathematical truths, while resisting the Platonistic idea that there exist abstract mathematical objects that explain such truths. There is a distinction between scientific explanations that are in some sense distinctively mathematical--those that explain natural phenomena in some uniquely mathematical way--and those that are only standardly mathematical, and Povich defends a particular account of this distinction.

Rules to Infinity compares normativism to other prominent views in the philosophy of mathematics, such as neo-Fregeanism, fictionalism, conventionalism, and structuralism, and offers an entry point into debates at the forefront of philosophy of science and mathematics as it defends its novel positions.

Visit Mark Povich's website. Rules to Infinity is an open access title: read it here.

The Page 99 Test: Rules to Infinity.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top literary adaptations coming to TV & film in 2025

Jalen Giovanni Jones is a Black and Filipino writer from Los Angeles, and is an editorial intern at Electric Literature. His work has been supported by the Tin House Workshop, the Lambda Literary Retreat, and ART PAPERS. Jalen’s work has won the David Madden MFA Award, and has been published by The Offing. He is the Assistant Editor of the New Delta Review, an MFA candidate in Louisiana State University’s Creative Writing Program, and is working on a collection of short stories and a novel.

At Electric Lit Jones tagged ten of the most anticipated literary adaptations coming to TV and film in 2025. One title on the list:

Mickey7 by Edward Ashton

In Edward Ashton’s Mickey7, space colonist Mickey Barnes is an Expendable—meaning he is a disposable employee, sent on fatal missions that will likely end in death. But each time he dies, a new body is regenerated with most of his memories intact. While on a mission to colonize Niflheim, misplaced assumptions lead to the accidental creation of two Mickeys at once. The novel’s film adaptation, Mickey17, is scheduled for a theatrical release by Warner Bros. Pictures on April 18. The science fiction black comedy was produced, written, and directed by Parasite-director Bong Joon-ho, and stars Robert Pattinson, Naomi Ackie, Steven Yeun, Toni Collette, and Mark Ruffalo.

Read about another novel on the list.

The Page 69 Test: Mickey7.

The Page 69 Test: Antimatter Blues.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Heather O'Neill

From my Q&A with Heather O'Neill, author of The Capital of Dreams: A Novel:

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

My novel is about a fictional country that gets its borders after World War 1. They invest in the arts, and hold it above everything else. They believe they don’t need to invest in an army. They will be protected by the West should they be attacked. And then at the height of their golden era, the Enemy comes to wipe them off the face of the earth.

The Capital of the country is so important in the novel. Sofia, a fourteen-year-old girl, is entrusted with getting her mother’s manuscript out of the country, so the culture can be saved.

I liked the idea of having a sophisticated girl from the cultural elite, having to make her way through the war-torn countryside. I wanted to see how the philosophy of The Capital made sense to her once she was out of it. Can a clarinet tune stop a war? Can a poem save a people? I have always believed in the power of art.

I wanted to show why artists and children are targeted by genocidal invaders. And how they are...[read on]

Follow Heather O’Neill on Instagram.

Q&A with Heather O'Neill.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Gitanjali Surendran's "Democracy's Dhamma"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Democracy's Dhamma: Buddhism in the Making of Modern India, c. 1890–1956 by Gitanjali Surendran.

About the book, from the publisher:

In 1956, B. R. Ambedkar publicly converted to Buddhism raising questions about his turn from constitutionalism to religion. The answer lies in Buddhism itself. In the late colonial era, the struggle to produce an appropriate Buddhism for a nation-in-the-making reveals a secret history foundational to modern India. Thinkers, activists, reformers, pilgrims, and monks from around South, Southeast and East Asia discussed universalism, nationalism, modernity, democracy, and caste radicalism and advocated an Indian return to Buddhism and the Buddha. This book traces this genealogy through the Buddhist itineraries and political projects of figures like Anagarika Dharmapala, Swami Vivekananda, Rabindranath Tagore, Jawaharlal Nehru, Vinayak D. Savarkar, Rahul Sankrityayan and Ambedkar, to reveal how Buddhism emerged as democracy's dhamma, the religion of democracy.

Learn more about Democracy's Dhamma at the Cambridge University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Democracy's Dhamma.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top books that tell complex, hopeful stories about migration

An award-winning teacher, scholar, and documentary film producer, Stanton E.F. Wortham is Charles Donovan, S.J., Dean of the Lynch School of Education and Human Development, Boston College. A linguistic anthropologist and educational ethnographer with a particular expertise in how identities develop in human interactions, Wortham has conducted research spanning education, anthropology, linguistics, psychology, sociology, and philosophy. He is the author or editor of ten books and more than 100 articles and chapters that cover a range of topics including linguistic anthropology, discourse analysis, learning identity, and education in the new Latino diaspora.

Wortham's newest book is Migration Narratives: Diverging Stories in Schools, Churches, and Civic Institutions.

At Shepherd the author tagged five of the best books that tell complex, hopeful stories about migration. One title on the list:

Children of the Revolution by Laura J. Enríquez

I love the multigenerational stories that this book tells, tracing the children and grandchildren of the protagonists across generations.

I appreciate how the author does not flinch from describing challenges while also attending to the hope and persistence of the migrant women from Nicaragua. I also love how the story moves toward the possibilities that are open for future generations.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Clay McLeod Chapman reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Clay McLeod Chapman, author of Wake Up and Open Your Eyes.

His entry begins:

Good Night, Sleep Tight by Brian Evenson

Evenson is known for his economy. Within his stories, there's never a sentence that feels unnecessary. There's no fat to his fiction. It's all lean, efficient and effective and profoundly unnerving. His most recent collection expands upon this at such an exponential rate, which may be due to the fact that there's just as much scifi here as horror. Explorations of liminality, autonomy and parenthood run throughout. The minimalism within each sentence ended up creating a...[read on]

About Wake Up and Open Your Eyes, from the publisher:

From master of horror Clay McLeod Chapman, a relentless social horror novel about a family on the run from a demonic possession epidemic that spreads through media.

Noah has been losing his polite Southern parents to far-right cable news for years, so when his mother leaves him a voicemail warning him that the “Great Reawakening” is here, he assumes it’s related to one of her many conspiracy theories. But when his phone calls go unanswered, Noah makes the drive from Brooklyn to Richmond, Virginia. There, he discovers his childhood home in shambles and his parents locked in a terrifying trancelike state in front of the TV. Panicked, Noah attempts to snap them out of it.

Then Noah’s mother brutally attacks him.

But Noah isn’t the only person to be attacked by a loved one. Families across the country are tearing each other apart—literally—as people succumb to a form of possession that gets worse the more time they spend glued to a screen. In Noah’s Richmond-based family, only he and his young nephew Marcus are unaffected. Together, they must race back to the safe haven of Brooklyn—but can they make it before they fall prey to the violent hordes?

This ambitious, searing novel from one of horror's modern masters holds a mirror to our divided nation, and will shake readers to the core.

Visit Clay McLeod Chapman's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Remaking.

The Page 69 Test: The Remaking.

My Book, The Movie: Whisper Down the Lane.

Q&A with Clay McLeod Chapman.

The Page 69 Test: Whisper Down the Lane.

Writers Read: Clay McLeod Chapman (September 2022).

The Page 69 Test: What Kind of Mother.

Writers Read: Clay McLeod Chapman (September 2023).

Writers Read: Clay McLeod Chapman.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Christian Warren's "Starved for Light"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Starved for Light: The Long Shadow of Rickets and Vitamin D Deficiency by Christian Warren.

About the book, from the publisher:

A wide-ranging history of rickets tracks the disease’s emergence, evolution, and eventual treatment—and exposes the backstory behind contemporary worries about vitamin D deficiency.

Rickets, a childhood disorder that causes soft and misshapen bones, transformed from an ancient but infrequent threat to a common scourge during the Industrial Revolution. Factories, mills, and urban growth transformed the landscape. Malnutrition and insufficient exposure to sunlight led to severe cases of rickets across Europe and the United States, affecting children in a variety of settings: dim British cities and American slave labor camps, moneyed households and impoverished ones. By the late 1800s, it was one of the most common pediatric diseases, seemingly an intractable consequence of modern life.

Starved for Light offers the first comprehensive history of this disorder. Tracing the efforts to understand, prevent, and treat rickets—first with the traditional remedy of cod liver oil, then with the application of a breakthrough corrective, industrially produced vitamin D supplements—Christian Warren places the disease at the center of a riveting medical history, one alert to the ways society shapes our views on illness. Warren shows how physicians and public health advocates in the United States turned their attention to rickets among urban immigrants, both African Americans and southern Europeans; some concluded that the disease was linked to race, while others blamed poverty, sunless buildings and cities, or cultural preferences in diet and clothing. Spotlighting rickets’ role in a series of medical developments, Warren leads readers through the encroachment on midwifery by male obstetricians, the development of pediatric orthopedic devices and surgeries, early twentieth-century research into vitamin D, appalling clinical experiments on young children testing its potential, and the eventual commercialization of all manner of vitamin D supplements. As vitamin D consumption rose in the mid-twentieth century, rickets—previously a major concern for doctors, parents, and public health institutions—faded in its severity and frequency, and as a topic of discussion. But despite the availability of drugstore supplements and fortified milk, small numbers of cases still appear today, and concerns and controversies about vitamin D deficiency in general continue to grow.

Sweeping and engaging, Starved for Light illuminates the social conditions underpinning our cures and our choices, helping us to see history’s echoes in contemporary prescriptions.

Learn more about Starved for Light at the University of Chicago Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Starved for Light.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five historical crime novels featuring Agatha Christie vibes

Fiona Davis is the New York Times bestselling author of eight historical fiction novels set in iconic New York City buildings, including The Stolen Queen, The Spectacular, The Magnolia Palace, The Address, and The Lions of Fifth Avenue, which was a Good Morning America book club pick.

[My Book, The Movie: The Address; My Book, The Movie: The Masterpiece; My Book, The Movie: The Chelsea Girls; The Page 69 Test: The Chelsea Girls; My Book, The Movie: The Lions of Fifth Avenue]

At CrimeReads Davis tagged "five historical fiction novels that incorporate [Agatha] Christie’s signature moves and will keep you on the edge for the entire ride, and don’t be surprised if the grand dame herself doesn’t show up in one or two." One title on the list:

The Briar Club by Kate Quinn

Quinn’s latest, about the residents of a Washington, DC women’s boarding house during the McCarthy era, put me in mind of Christie’s The Orient Express. Any one of the characters—some charming, others manipulative, and one or two quite villainous—might have a possible motive for murder, but which one committed the terrible act of violence alluded to on page one? The Briar Club thrives on the tension between seemingly respectable individuals whose dark secrets gradually unravel. Quinn, much like Christie, excels in creating a web of intrigue, where every character has something to hide, and each point of view is written with a keen psychological insight.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Vicki Delany's "The Incident of the Book in the Nighttime"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Incident of the Book in the Nighttime by Vicki Delany.

About the book, from the publisher:

Bookshop owner Gemma Doyle heads to London for a wedding, but when a body is found in connection with a rare book, Gemma sets out to sleuth the slaying in bestselling author Vicki Delany's tenth Sherlock Holmes Bookshop mystery.

Gemma Doyle and her friends have packed their bags and headed to London for her sister Pippa’s wedding. Waiting for her in the hotel lobby is none other than Gemma’s ex-husband, Paul Erikson. Paul has a rare book he wants her to see—calling it “the real deal”—so Gemma agrees to meet him at their old shop, Trafalgar Fine Books, the following day. But when Gemma arrives, accompanied by Grant, a rare book dealer, they find Paul dead in his office.

Paul had been down on his luck, but Gemma never expected this. Had he borrowed money from people he shouldn’t have? And where is the valuable book he was so anxious for Gemma to see? It’s nowhere to be found in the shop. Because of their previous relationship, Gemma feels she owes something to Paul and vows to find his killer.

As Gemma and her best friend Jayne Wilson follow Paul’s trail of friends, enemies, clients, and ex-lovers through London to Yorkshire, she realizes the puzzle of Paul’s last days is more twisted than she originally thought.

This mystery is anything but elementary, and Gemma and Jayne have to use all their wit to get to the bottom of it before their time in London—or in life—is over.

Visit Vicki Delany's website, and follow her on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.

The Page 69 Test: Rest Ye Murdered Gentlemen.

The Page 69 Test: A Scandal in Scarlet.

The Page 69 Test: Murder in a Teacup.

Writers Read: Vicki Delany (September 2021).

The Page 69 Test: Deadly Summer Nights.

The Page 69 Test: The Game is a Footnote.

Writers Read: Vicki Delany (January 2023).

Writers Read: Vicki Delany (January 2024).

The Page 69 Test: The Sign of Four Spirits.

The Page 69 Test: A Slay Ride Together With You.

Writers Read: Vicki Delany.

The Page 69 Test: The Incident of the Book in the Nighttime.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Deondra Rose's "The Power of Black Excellence"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Power of Black Excellence: HBCUs and the Fight for American Democracy by Deondra Rose.

About the book, from the publisher:

A powerful and revealing history of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), which have been essential for empowering Black citizens and for the ongoing fight for democracy in the US.

From their founding, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) educated as many as 90 percent of Black college students in the United States. Although many are aware of the significance of HBCUs in expanding Black Americans' educational opportunities, much less attention has been paid to the vital role that they have played in enhancing American democracy.

In The Power of Black Excellence, Deondra Rose provides an authoritative history of HBCUs and the unique role they have played in shaping American democracy since 1837. Drawing on over six years of deep research, Rose brings into view the historic impact that government support for HBCUs has had on the American political landscape, arguing that they have been essential for not only empowering Black citizens but also reshaping the distribution of political power in the United States. Rose challenges the conventional wisdom that, prior to the late twentieth century, the federal government took a laissez-faire approach to education. Instead, governmental action contributed to the expansion of HBCUs in an era plagued by racist policies and laws. Today, HBCUs remain extremely important, as evidenced by the outsized number of black political leaders--including Kamala Harris--who attended them. Rose stresses that policymakers promote democracy itself when they support HBCUs and their unique approach to postsecondary education, which includes a commitment to helping students develop politically empowering skills, promoting political leadership, and fostering a commitment to service.

A fresh look into the relationship between education and democracy, The Power of Black Excellence is essential reading for anyone interested not just in HBCUs, but the broader trajectory of Black citizenship in American history.

Visit Deondra Rose's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Power of Black Excellence.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine sci-fi & fantasy novels involving tarot

At BookRiot Vanessa Diaz tagged nine top sci-fi and fantasy novels involving tarot. One title on the list:

The Black Bird Oracle by Deborah Harkness

This is the latest entry in Harkness’ All Souls series that began with A Discovery of Witches. Diana is an Oxford scholar and reluctant witch who finds a missing alchemical manuscript and then falls in love with a vampire, thrusting her into an age-old inter-species power struggle. She and her vampire go on the run to trace the manuscript’s origins and figure out why so many would kill to possess its missing pages, sending the couple on an adventure through time and places like Oxford, the French countryside, the Northeastern US, and Elizabethan England.

If you haven’t read the first three books in that series, you’ll want to do that before diving into The Black Bird Oracle (spoilers ahead). When the Congregation demands the twins be brought in for examination, Diana visits her great-aunt to understand her own power better. In hopes of protecting the children from whatever lies ahead, she embarks on a dark path of magic that her mother once pursued with a magical oracle deck to guide her.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Michael Cannell's "Blood and the Badge," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Blood and the Badge: The Mafia, Two Killer Cops, and a Scandal That Shocked the Nation by Michael T. Cannell.

The entry begins:

Hollywood and the Mafia formed a mutual admiration pact ninety- three years ago when Edward G. Robinson played a character based loosely on Al Capone in the black-and-white movie Little Caesar. The subsequent connections and cross-pollinations are many. In the early 1930s Bugsy Siegel took up residence in a Beverly Hills mansion where he threw debauched parties. Guests included George Raft, Gary Cooper and Jean Harlow. A few years later the Murder, Inc. hitman Gangi Cohen fled Brooklyn for Hollywood where, in an odd twist on art imitating life, he played tough-guy roles under a pseudonym. In the 1970s Joe Colombo extracted concessions from Francis Ford Coppola while making The Godfather.

Not surprisingly, I had the mob-and-movie connection in mind while writing Blood and the Badge: The Mafia, Two Killer Cops and a Scandal That Shocked the Nation, the true story of two decorated NYPD detectives who secretly worked for the Lucchese Crime family in the early 1990s.

If, by some miracle, I was granted the authority to cast the detectives, I would choose John Goodman to play Louie Eppolito, a stout, loud figure who was born into a mob family and rebelled by joining the police department — only to be draw back into the family’s illicit affairs. He later played small roles in a dozen movies.

Like many enduring partnerships, Eppolito and his sidekick, Stephen Caracappa, were polar opposites. If Eppolito was boastful and excitable, Caracappa was...[read on]

Visit Michael T. Cannell's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Limit.

The Page 99 Test: The Limit.

My Book, The Movie: Incendiary.

My Book, The Movie: A Brotherhood Betrayed.

Writers Read: Michael Cannell.

My Book, The Movie: Blood and the Badge.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Meryl Gordon's "The Woman Who Knew Everyone"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Woman Who Knew Everyone: The Power of Perle Mesta, Washington's Most Famous Hostess by Meryl Gordon.

About the book, from the publisher:

A deeply researched biography of the socialite, political hostess, activist and United States envoy to Luxembourg, Perle Mesta, from New York Times bestselling author Meryl Gordon.

Perle Mesta was a force to be reckoned with. In her heyday, this wealthy globe-trotting Washington widow was one of the most famous women in vAmerica, garnering as much media attention as Eleanor Roosevelt. Renowned for her world-class parties featuring politicians and celebrities, she was very close to three presidents–Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower and Lyndon Johnson. Truman named her as the first female envoy to Luxembourg, which inspired the hit musical based on Perle’s life – “Call Me Madam” – which starred Ethel Merman, ran on Broadway for two years and later became a movie. A pioneering supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment, she was a prodigious Democratic fundraiser and rescued Harry Truman’s financially flailing 1948 campaign.

In this intensely researched biography, author Meryl Gordon chronicles Perle’s lavish life and society adventures in Newport, Manhattan and Washington, while highlighting her important, but nearly forgotten contribution to American politics and the feminist movement.

Visit Meryl Gordon's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Phantom of Fifth Avenue.

Writers Read: Meryl Gordon (October 2017).

The Page 99 Test: Bunny Mellon.

My Book, The Movie: Bunny Mellon.

My Book, The Movie: The Woman Who Knew Everyone.

Writers Read: Meryl Gordon.

The Page 99 Test: The Woman Who Knew Everyone.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five great spy novels set in small towns

Ryan Britt is the author of the non-fiction books Luke Skywalker Can’t Read, The Spice Must Flow, and Phasers on Stun! His writing has appeared with Esquire, Den of Geek, and Inverse, where he is an editor. Britt teaches for the Maine Writers and Publisher’s Alliance, and is a guest instructor at Colby College.

At CrimeReads he tagged five top spy novels set in small towns, including:

The Spy Coast (2023) by Tess Gerritsen

The most recent smash-hit small-town spy book is perhaps the best so far in this quiet subgenre. Retired spy “Maggie Bird,” is living a fairly secluded life in a snowy town in Purity, Maine, until an operative tries to pull her back into the game after sixteen years. Soon, we learn that Maggie isn’t the only retired spy in this town, she regularly hangs out with others who have forged a new life for themselves, and are known as “the Martini Club.”

Purity, Maine might not be a real small town in the Pine Tree State, but Gerritsen makes it feel as real, if not more real, than many of Stephen King’s faux-Maine locations like Castle Rock or Salem’s Lot. From the way the population sees itself, to local police chief, Jo Thibodeau, trying to deal with meddling spies in her town, all the elements of The Spy Coast mix together into a riveting cocktail. But, what makes this book so grounded, is that within that cocktail, Gerritsen is always reminding us of what kind of booze the local bars and stores have, and exactly how much it costs. The life of a spy is sometimes thought of as glamorous, but The Spy Coast makes it seem not only real but affordable, too.

Read about another novel on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Alafair Burke "The Note"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Note: A Novel by Alafair Burke.

About the book, from the publisher:

A vacation in the Hamptons goes terribly wrong for three friends with a complicated history.

It was meant to be a harmless prank.

Growing up, May Hanover was a good girl, always. Well-behaved, top of her class, a compulsive rule-follower. Raised by a first-generation Chinese single mother with high expectations, May didn’t have room to slip up, let alone fail. Her friends didn’t call her the Little Sheriff for nothing.

But even good girls have secrets. And regrets. When it comes to her friendship with Lauren and Kelsey, she's had her fair share of both. Their bond—forged when May was just twelve years old—has withstood a tragic accident, individual scandals, heartbreak and loss. Now the three friends have reunited for the first time in years for a few days of sun and fun in the Hamptons. But a chance encounter with a pair of strangers leads to a drunken prank that goes horribly awry.

When she finds herself at the center of an urgent police investigation, May begins to wonder whether Lauren and Kelsey are keeping secrets from her, testing the limits of her loyalty to lifelong friends.

What had they gone and done?

The Note is a page-turner of the highest order from one of our greatest contemporary suspense writers.

Visit Alafair Burke's website.

The Page 69 Test: Dead Connection.

The Page 69 Test: Angel’s Tip.

The Page 69 Test: 212.

The Page 69 Test: All Day and a Night.

The Page 69 Test: The Ex.

The Page 69 Test: The Wife.

The Page 69 Test: The Better Sister.

Q&A with Alafair Burke.

The Page 69 Test: The Note.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Andrea Mansker's "Matchmaking and the Marriage Market in Postrevolutionary France"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Matchmaking and the Marriage Market in Postrevolutionary France by Andrea Mansker.

About the book, from the publisher:

Matchmaking and the Marriage Market in Postrevolutionary France uncovers the unexplored history of matrimonial agents, their novel marketing tactics, and the rise of personal advertisements to track the commercialization of marriage in nineteenth-century France. Brokers transformed courtship and marriage into forms of commercial exchange, linking them to the burgeoning urban values of abundance, pleasure, and social mobility.

By studying agents' and readers' media fictions on love alongside court cases, legislation, and literature surrounding the industry, Andrea Mansker reveals the intimate and socioeconomic pressures of finding a spouse. At the same time, she demonstrates how contemporaries used the business of matrimony to reimagine their public identities, relationships, and courtship rituals following unprecedented historical change due to the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars. The matchmaking business both responded to and helped shape national anxieties over fluctuating nuptial rates and changing laws on marriage and divorce. As a result, marriage itself was reconceived as a commercial contract inseparable from the atomistic and corrupt marketplace.

The debates and pressures Mansker describes in Matchmaking and the Marriage Market in Postrevolutionary France are still relevant today. As contemporary online daters likely understand, the possibility of finding a mate in an expanded pool of candidates beyond one's family, locality, and nation offered individuals the liberating opportunity to explore new personas just as it produced a novel sense of danger about these impersonal transactions in the anonymous marketplace.

Visit Andrea Mansker's website.

The Page 99 Test: Matchmaking and the Marriage Market in Postrevolutionary France.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top novels about women discovering unimaginable strength through tragedy

Melanie Maure holds a Master’s in Counselling Psychology and lives in central British Columbia. She is second generation Irish and spends a great deal of time in Ireland, which is an enduring source of inspiration for her work.

Sisters of Belfast is Maure's debut novel.

[The Page 69 Test: Sisters of Belfast; My Book, The Movie: Sisters of Belfast; Q&A with Melanie Maure]

At Shepherd Maure tagged five of the "best novels about seemingly ordinary women discovering unimaginable strength through tragedy." One title on the list:

All the Light We Cannot by Anthony Doerr

This novel took my breath away. The power of this novel is in the descriptive details and the fresh perspective on WWII. I adore a book that brings a global story down to the intricate details of the humans involved, their relationships, and, in particular, how people seemingly on opposite sides of violence are only love-seeking humans when all is said and done. The resilience of the characters, especially the young woman named Marie-Laure, who is blind, is truly inspiring. It's a reminder of the strength we all possess, even in the most challenging circumstances.

As with my other favorite novels, the unlikely protagonist and shero is a young woman named Marie-Laure, who is blind. I was taken by the way this novel explores her ability to navigate her known world and then a world that is devastated physically and emotionally. Marie-Laure, along with all of the characters in this novel, is so complex and easily inhabited. Reading this novel left me changed as a writer and reader. It raised the bar in both respects.

Read about another novel on the list.

All the Light We Cannot See is among Audrey Gale's five top novels about war, Jyoti Patel's top ten books about family secrets, Kimi Cunningham Grant's top six books featuring father-daughter relationships, Liz Boulter's top ten novels about France, Emily Temple's fifty best contemporary novels over 500 pages, Jason Allen's seven top books with family secrets, Whitney Scharer's top ten books about Paris, David Baldacci's six favorite books with an element of mystery, Jason Flemyng's six best books, Sandra Howard's six best books, Caitlin Kleinschmidt's twelve moving novels of the Second World War and Maureen Corrigan's 12 favorite books of 2014.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Michael Cannell reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Michael Cannell, author of Blood and the Badge: The Mafia, Two Killer Cops, and a Scandal That Shocked the Nation.

His entry begins:

Some years ago a book editor took me to lunch at a Midtown Manhattan sushi restaurant. Over miso soup and tuna rolls, I proposed a complicated structure for the book he had hired me to write. His response was this: I don’t care what structure you employ, as long as you ask yourself what the characters want at the start of each chapter. It was the best advice I ever received.

I write in a style know as narrative non-fiction. I’m a journalist. I tell true stories drawn from history. I fabricate nothing. Nor do I exaggerate or embellish. My books may, however, read like fiction, at least I hope they do, because I borrow techniques found in novels. Among other things, I try to impart my subjects’ feelings and motivations — their inner lives — as my editor suggested.

Where might you observe the most skillful examples of character development? I direct you to...[read on]

About Blood and the Badge, from the publisher:

For the first time in forty years, former New York Times editor Michael Cannell unearths the full story behind two ruthless New York cops who acted as double agents for the Mafia.

No episode in NYPD history surpasses the depravities of Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, two decorated detectives who covertly acted as mafia informants and paid assassins in the Scorsese world of 1980s Brooklyn.

For more than ten years, Eppolito and Caracappa moonlighted as the mob’s early warning alert system, leaking names of mobsters secretly cooperating with the government and crippling investigations by sharing details of surveillance, phone taps and impending arrests. The Lucchese boss called the two detectives his crystal ball: Whatever detectives knew, the mafia soon learned. Most grievously, Eppolito and Caracappa earned bonuses by staging eight mob hits, pulling the trigger themselves at least once.

Incredibly, when evidence of their wrongdoing arose in 1994, FBI officials failed to muster an indictment. The allegations lay dormant for a decade and were only revisited due to relentless follow up by Tommy Dades, a cop determined to break the cold case before his retirement. Eppolito and Caracappa were finally tried and then sentenced to life in prison in 2009, nearly thirty years after their crimes took place.

Cannell’s Blood and the Badge is based on entirely new research and never-before-released interviews with mobsters themselves, including Sammy “the Bull” Gravano. Eppolito and Caracappa’s story is more relevant than ever as police conduct comes under ever-increasing scrutiny.

Visit Michael T. Cannell's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Limit.

The Page 99 Test: The Limit.

My Book, The Movie: Incendiary.

My Book, The Movie: A Brotherhood Betrayed.

Writers Read: Michael Cannell.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: David Shoemaker's "The Architecture of Blame and Praise"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Architecture of Blame and Praise: An Interdisciplinary Investigation by David Shoemaker.

About the book, from the publisher:

Many philosophers assume that to be a responsible agent is to be an apt target of responses like blame and praise. But what do these responses consist of, precisely? And do they really belong together, simply negative and positive symmetrical counterparts of each other? While there has been a lot of philosophical work on the nature of blame over the past 15 years--yielding multiple conflicting theories--there has been little on the nature of praise. Indeed, those few who have investigated praise--including both philosophers and psychologists--have concluded that it is quite different in some respects than blame, and that the two in fact may not be symmetrical counterparts at all.

In this book, David Shoemaker offers the first detailed deep-dive into the complicated nature of blame and praise, teasing out their many varieties while defending a general symmetry between them. The book provides a thorough normative grounding for the many types and modes of blame and praise, albeit one that never appeals to desert or the metaphysics of free will. The volume draws from moral philosophy, moral psychology, the philosophy and psychology of humor, the psychology of personality disorders, and experimental economics. The many original contributions in the book include: the presentation and defense of a new functionalist theory of the entire interpersonal blame and praise system; the revelation of a heretofore unrecognized kind of blame; a discussion of how the capacities and impairments of narcissists tell an important story about the symmetrical structure of the blame/praise system; an investigation into the blame/praise emotions and their aptness conditions; an exploration into the key differences between other-blame and self-blame; and an argument drawn from economic games for why desert is unnecessary to render apt the ways in which blame sometimes sanctions.

Learn more about The Architecture of Blame and Praise at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: The Architecture of Blame and Praise.

--Marshal Zeringue

The top nonfiction crime books of 2024

One title from the CrimeReads editors' list of the best nonfiction books of 2024:

Dean Jobb, A Gentleman and a Thief

Arthur Barry rose to fame during the American Jazz Age as the so-called “aristocrat of crime” – a real-life gentleman burglar who moved in rarefied circles and swindled just about anyone who was worth swindling. And doing it, by all accounts, with a dash of class. Jobb tells the wildly entertaining story of Barry’s exploits with admirable style, adding a nice heft of scholarship to the mix. Running through Barry’s scams and thefts becomes a kind of who’s who of the era, and the public’s fascination with the gentleman burglar seems to represent a shifting national consciousness. Jobb is one of the best crime historians at work today, and his latest has all the elements of an epic tale, with a surprisingly moving love story coursing just under the rap sheets and police reports.

Read about another title on the list.

A Gentleman and a Thief is among Jeff Somers's eleven top nonfiction books for Erik Larson fans.

The Page 99 Test: A Gentleman and a Thief.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Isa Arsén's "The Unbecoming of Margaret Wolf"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Unbecoming of Margaret Wolf by Isa Arsén.

About the book, from the publisher:

Two Shakespearean actors in an unconventional marriage get caught up in a renowned director’s scheme that will bring them closer than ever or rip them apart for good.

Up-and-coming stage actress Margaret Shoard has just taken a bow as Lady Macbeth, the role she has always believed was destined for her. At home, she plays wife to her best friend Wesley, even if she doesn’t hold his sole attention romantically. After a public breakdown threatens all she holds dear, Margaret’s doctor prescribes her uppers—just a little help to get through the days.

When Wesley is invited by eccentric director Vaughn Kline to join the cast for an inaugural Shakespeare performance in the New Mexico desert, Margaret decides to accompany him in hopes the time away will set her back to rights . . . but the world she finds in Vaughn’s company is filled with duplicity and betrayal. Margaret and Wesley, embroiled in an affair with a man who may not be all he seems, must find a way forward together before their story becomes the real tragedy.

Visit Isa Arsén's website.

Q&A with Isa Arsén.

The Page 69 Test: The Unbecoming of Margaret Wolf.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Jennifer Denbow's "Reproductive Labor and Innovation"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Reproductive Labor and Innovation: Against the Tech Fix in an Era of Hype by Jennifer Denbow.

About the book, from the publisher:

In Reproductive Labor and Innovation, Jennifer Denbow examines how the push toward technoscientific innovation in contemporary American life often comes at the expense of the care work and reproductive labor that is necessary for society to function. Noting that the gutting of social welfare programs has shifted the burden of solving problems to individuals, Denbow argues that the aggrandizement of innovation and the degradation of reproductive labor are intertwined facets of neoliberalism. She shows that the construction of innovation as a panacea to social ills justifies the accumulation of wealth for corporate innovators and the impoverishment of those feminized and racialized people who do the bulk of reproductive labor. Moreover, even innovative technology aimed at reproduction—such as digital care work platforms and noninvasive prenatal testing—obscure structural injustices and further devalue reproductive labor. By drawing connections between innovation discourse, the rise of neoliberalism, financialized capitalism, and the social and political degradation of reproductive labor, Denbow illustrates what needs to be done to destabilize the overvaluation of innovation and to offer collective support for reproduction.

Learn more about Reproductive Labor and Innovation at the Duke University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Reproductive Labor and Innovation.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top novels for novelists

At B&N Reads Isabelle McConville tagged six novels for novelists. One title on the list:

The Cemetery of Untold Stories by Julia Alvarez

Any writer knows how it feels to see your characters through murky waters, just out of reach and never fully formed. What if they decided to do the job for you? When Alma inherits an ancestral plot of land in the Dominican Republic, she knows exactly what she wants to do with it — turn it into a literary graveyard. She decides to give up on her unfinished characters and let them rest in peace, but when they begin talking back to her and revising their own manuscripts, Alma realizes they won’t go down without a fight. A funny, life-affirming novel about storytelling, friendship and death from the author of How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Ellie Brannigan

From my Q&A with Ellie Brannigan, author of Death at an Irish Wedding:

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

For Death at an Irish Wedding, I was asked to come up with several titles. In fact, this was the third title selected, and I wrote the book under a completely different title and saved my word doc that way. When I went to look for my story later, I couldn’t find the manuscript. Any author might imagine my immediate reaction of holy smokes, my work has all disappeared: belly tightening, sweaty palms, slightly sick…but then I went to my saved emails and found the email stream with my editor. Crisis averted, but it was an awful ten minutes of panic.

This is the Irish Castle series, and at the end of the first book there was the question of ghosts in the castle. I liked Haunting in an Irish Castle, but my publisher wasn’t sold. Once the story progressed, I realized it was more about the super-secret Hollywood wedding of Rayne’s rich American client and her actor boyfriend than ghosts. We came up with alternates and Death at an Irish Wedding stuck. It was a lot of fun to bring in Irish wedding traditions to the getaway weekend to fit the title.

Through each story, the struggle for Rayne and Ciara to save Grathton Village is paramount and it is unfortunate that people keep kicking the bucket—which is why...[read on]

Visit Ellie Brannigan's website.

Q&A with Ellie Brannigan.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Mariana Chilton's "The Painful Truth about Hunger in America"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Painful Truth about Hunger in America: Why We Must Unlearn Everything We Think We Know--and Start Again by Mariana Chilton.

About the book, from the publisher:

A radical and urgent new approach to how we can solve the problems of hunger and poverty in the US.

Most people think hunger has to do with food: researchers, policymakers, and advocates focus on promoting government-funded nutrition assistance; well-meaning organizations try to get expired or wasted food to marginalized communities; and philanthropists donate their money to the cause and congratulate themselves for doing so. But few people ask about the structural issues undergirding hunger, such as, Who benefits from keeping people in such a state of precarity? In The Painful Truth about Hunger in America, Mariana Chilton shows that the solution to food insecurity lies far beyond food and must incorporate personal, political, and spiritual approaches if we are serious about fixing the crisis.

Drawing on 25 years of research, programming, and advocacy efforts, Chilton compellingly demonstrates that food insecurity is created and maintained by people in power. Taking the reader back to the original wounds in the United States caused by its history of colonization, genocide, and enslavement, she forces us to reckon with hard questions about why people in the US allow hunger to persist. Drawing on intimate interviews she conducted with many Black and Brown women, the author reveals that the experience of hunger is rooted in trauma and gender-based violence—violence in our relationships with one another, with the natural world, and with ourselves—and that if we want to fix hunger, we must transform our society through compassion, love, and connection. Especially relevant for young people charting new paths toward abolition, mutual aid, and meaningful livelihoods, The Painful Truth about Hunger in America reinvigorates our commitment to uprooting the causes of poverty and discrimination, and points to a more generative and humane world where everyone can be nourished.

Visit Mariana Chilton's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Painful Truth about Hunger in America.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eleven contemporary retellings of classic books

At Teen Vogue Costa B. Pappas tagged "eleven books that are contemporary retellings of classic titles," including:

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Madeline Miller gifts readers a queer twist to the Greek classic, The Iliad, paying homage to the story through the eyes of Patroclus and his companionship-turned-romance with the legendary Greek figure Achilles. This novel explores war, masculinity, the fluidity of sexuality, and the lengths those in love have always gone in order to stay together, against all odds.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Song of Achilles is among Bethanne Patrick's twenty-five best historical fiction books of all time, Mark Skinner's nineteen top Greek myth retellings, Alexia Casale's top eight titles sparked by the authors' work life, Allison Epstein's eight queer historical fiction books set around the world, Phong Nguyen's seven titles that live halfway between history & myth, The Center for Fiction's 200 books that shaped two centuries of literature, Sara Stewart's six best books and Nicole Hill's fourteen characters who should have lived.

My Book, The Movie: The Song of Achilles.

--Marshal Zeringue