Q&A with Matt Plass

From my Q&A with Matt Plass, author of The Ten Worst People in New York: A Novel:

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

The Ten Worst People in New York wasn’t my first choice of title, or even my second, but now I can’t imagine the book with any other lettering along the spine.

The novel began life in 2017 as The Murder Club, based on my 2015 Kindle Single of the same name (a B-side to the Lawrence Block short story "Gym Rat"). When Richard Osmond released The Thursday Murder Club to wide acclaim in 2020 (Damn you, Richard!) I had to think again. The Murder Club became The List, then The Reckoning, and finally—at the suggestion of my amazing editor, Sara J. Henry—The Ten Worst People in New York.

Who are the ten worst people in New York? Imagine a television talk show host launches a new nightly feature: a live list of public hate figures, updated by online and audience votes. On the list you might find a real estate mogul who’s really nothing more than a slumlord, a conspiracy junky who targets the victims of gun massacres, a climate-change denying scientist, a corrupt local politician, a wealthy financier who everyone suspects of being a sexual predator... Each night on the show, the audience enjoys sniggering and booing at the very worst people in the great city of New York, and it’s just a bit of fun.

Until people on the list start dying.

We spend most of the book either with FBI Special Agent Alex Bedford, or with young filmmaker Jacob Felle, as they investigate the murders from different angles. But we also get to step inside the minds of individuals on the list of the ten worst people in New York. Seeing...[read on]

Visit Matt Plass's website.

Q&A with Matt Plass.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Chris Nickson reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Chris Nickson, author of No Precious Truth.

His entry begins:

Over the last several days, I've been re-reading Mick Herron's Slough House series, possibly more widely known as the Slow Horses series on Apple TV. The books are an absolute delight, full of twists and unexpected turns, spy novels that can make you laugh even as they crank up the tension. At the centre is Jackson Lamb, a former crack field agent who now runs his kingdom of agents exiled from the Park – the home of MI5 – for various offences. Lam, a dissolute-looking reprobate who seems to have no redeeming qualities, is still a supremely gifted agent, able to run rings around both opposition and those in charge at home, and his agents prove themselves better than those who were once their colleagues. They're just...[read on]

About No Precious Truth, from the publisher:

The first in a brand-new WWII historical thriller series introduces Sergeant Cathy Marsden – a female police officer working for the Special Investigation Branch – who risks her life to protect the city of Leeds from an escaped German spy!

Leeds, 1941. As the war rages across Europe, Police Sergeant Cathy Marsden’s life since she was seconded to the Special Investigation Branch has remained focused on deserters and home-front crimes. Until now.

Things take a chilling turn when Cathy’s civil servant brother, Dan, arrives from London with a dark secret: he is working for the XX Committee – a special MI5 unit set up to turn German spies into double agents. But one of these agents has escaped and is heading for Leeds, sent to destroy targets key to the war effort. Suddenly Cathy and the squad are plunged into an unfamiliar world of espionage and subterfuge.

With the fate of the country and the war in the balance, failure is not an option, and Cathy must risk everything, including her own life, to stop a spy.

This fast-paced World War II thriller is perfect for fans of Kate Quinn, Rhys Bowen and Kelly Rimmer!

Visit Chris Nickson's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Constant Lovers.

The Page 69 Test: The Constant Lovers.

The Page 69 Test: The Iron Water.

The Page 69 Test: The Hanging Psalm.

Q&A with Chris Nickson.

The Page 69 Test: The Molten City.

My Book, The Movie: Molten City.

Writers Read: Chris Nickson (August 2021).

The Page 69 Test: Brass Lives.

The Page 69 Test: The Blood Covenant.

The Page 69 Test: The Dead Will Rise.

Writers Read: Chris Nickson (March 2023).

The Page 69 Test: Rusted Souls.

Writers Read: Chris Nickson (September 2023).

The Page 69 Test: The Scream of Sins.

Writers Read: Chris Nickson (March 2024).

The Page 69 Test: Them Without Pain.

Writers Read: Chris Nickson (September 2024).

Writers Read: Chris Nickson.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Andrew Welsh-Huggins "The Mailman"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Mailman by Andrew Welsh-Huggins.

About the book, from the publisher:

In a new thriller from the author of The End of the Road, a former postal inspection agent tracks a violent crew through the Midwest to rescue a kidnapped woman.

Mercury Carter is a deliveryman and he takes his job very seriously. When a parcel is under his care, he will stop at nothing to deliver it directly to its intended recipient. Not even, as in the current case, when he finds a crew of violent men at the indicated address that threaten his life and take the woman who lives there hostage. That’s because Carter has special skills from his former life as a federal agent with the postal inspection service, skills that make him particularly useful for delivering items in circumstances as dangerous as these.

After Carter dispatches the goons sent to kill him, he enters a home besieged by criminals―but the leader of the gang escapes with attorney Rachel Stanfield before the mailman can complete his assignment. With Rachel’s husband Glenn in tow, Carter takes off in pursuit of the kidnapper and his quarry, hunting them across Indiana, up to Chicago, and into small-town Illinois. Along the way, he slowly picks off members of the crew and uncovers a far-reaching conspiracy and a powerful crime syndicate, all in service of his main objective: to hand the package over to Rachel. Carter has never missed a delivery and isn’t about to start now.

Introducing a new lone-wolf protagonist to rival Lee Child’s Jack Reacher, Steve Hamilton’s Nick Mason, and Gregg Hurwitz’s Evan Smoak, The Mailman is a pulse-pounding series opener with captivating action and enough thrills to leave readers anxiously awaiting the next installment.

Visit Andrew Welsh-Huggins's website.

My Book, The Movie: An Empty Grave.

Q&A with Andrew Welsh-Huggins.

The Page 69 Test: An Empty Grave.

Writers Read: Andrew Welsh-Huggins (April 2023).

My Book, The Movie: The End of the Road.

The Page 69 Test: The End of the Road.

Writers Read: Andrew Welsh-Huggins (November 2024).

My Book, The Movie: Sick to Death.

The Page 69 Test: Sick to Death.

The Page 69 Test: The Mailman.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven top books that combine mystery and romance

Bellamy Rose has never solved an actual murder. When she’s not writing about them, she spends her time trying to taste every cuisine in the world, befriending all the animals she meets, and publishing non-murdery rom-coms as the USA Today bestselling author Amanda Elliot. She lives with her husband and daughter in New York City.

Roses's new novel is Pomona Afton Can So Solve a Murder.

At CrimeReads she tagged seven favorite books that combine mystery and romance. One title on the list:

Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea by Rebecca Thorne

Okay, so this one throws a third genre into the mix – it’s a sapphic romance/mystery/fantasy hybrid, and an absolutely delightful one at that. Reyna and Kianthe flee the tumultuous royal court to open the shop of their dreams and live a quiet life together, but said quiet life keeps getting interrupted by mysteries for them to solve… not to mention the stress of keeping that life not just quiet but secret from the vengeful queen.

Read about another title on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: J. Paul Kelleher's "The Social Cost of Carbon"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Social Cost of Carbon: Ethics and the Limits of Climate Change Economics by J. Paul Kelleher.

About the book, from the publisher:

Called the "the most important number you've never heard of" by leading environmental economists, the social cost of carbon (SCC) aims to capture in a precise number the harm caused by emitting a single ton of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. In The Social Cost of Carbon, J. Paul Kelleher offers a systematic analysis of the social cost of carbon, its theoretical basis, and its proper role in climate economics and climate policy design.

The book explains that the SCC is not one concept but four, each of which is addressed to a distinct task in climate economics. Moreover, these concepts can be sorted into two families that correspond to the two branches of welfare economics, social choice theory and general equilibrium theory. Kelleher draws on these radically different theoretical frameworks to explain how a mathematically identical pair of SCC concepts can emerge from each. He then argues that the analytical power of each SCC concept is limited by its inability to fully capture the ethical considerations that bear on responsible climate policy.

The book concludes by explaining how some SCC concepts can and should be put to work in real-world climate change policy analysis-providing practical advice for translating the SCC into tangible change.

Visit J. Paul Kelleher's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Social Cost of Carbon.

--Marshal Zeringue

Third reading: D.W. Buffa on American Statesmen

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 American statesmen. It begins:

Perhaps the best, but certainly the most interesting way, to get a real understanding of the present occupant of the White House is to read a biography written more than sixty years before his birth, a biography of Andrew Jackson written in 1882 as part of a series on “American Statesmen.” The author, William Graham Sumner, who taught politics and economics at Yale, quotes without adverse comment Thomas Jefferson’s remark that Jackson had no business being President, that he was, in fact, “one of the most unfit men I know for the place,” a “dangerous man” who has “very little respect for laws or constitutions.” This was especially the case after Jackson lost the presidency in what he became convinced was a stolen election.

In the election of 1824...[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.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Sandra Chwialkowska

From my Q&A with Sandra Chwialkowska, author of The Ends of Things: A Novel:

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

The working title for my novel was Eleuthera, which is the name of the Bahamian island where my book is set. I liked how eleutheria is also the Greek word for freedom, which is a motif in the book, as well as the epithet of the Greek goddess Artemis (Diana) who is referenced in the novel. My heroine, Laura, yearns to have the confidence and freedom embodied by Diana, the solo female traveler she encounters at the beach resort, who later goes missing. My acquisitions editor encouraged me to find an alternative title, one that was a bit easier to pronounce (haha), had an internal tension, and also suggested the genre of the book, which is psychological suspense. My beta reader pulled a phrase from my book—the ends of things—and it instantly clicked with me because it encapsulates what the book is about: my heroine, Laura, always imagines the worst-case scenario, or “the ends of things,” which causes…[read on]

Visit Sandra Chwialkowska's website.

Q&A with Sandra Chwialkowska.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top fantasy journeys

Grace Curtis is a freeroaming writer from Newcastle-Upon-Tyne.

Her debut Frontier, a queer space western about climate change (really), came out in March last year.

The follow up Floating Hotel was a bestseller in the UK.

When she’s not dreaming up stories, Curtis can usually be found up a hill somewhere, climbing or hiking or lolling idly in the grass.

Idolfire is her first work of fantasy.

At The Nerd Daily the author tagged five of the best fantasy journeys, including:

Christopher Buehlman – The Blacktongue Thief

‘They don’t make ‘em like this anymore!’ But actually they DO! The Blacktongue Thief is a modern novel with a very classical charm. A motley crew, a perilous quest, a richly imagined world ripe for capering across… Buehlman’s novel is deliciously dark and always, always fun. Plus, we really need more books where the heroes are at risk of being lowered into a large cauldron and turned into stew. That’s just good storytelling.

Read about another title on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Susan Meissner "A Map to Paradise"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: A Map to Paradise by Susan Meissner.

About the book, from the publisher:

1956, Malibu, California: Something is not right on Paradise Circle.

With her name on the Hollywood blacklist and her life on hold, starlet Melanie Cole has little choice in company. There is her next-door neighbor, Elwood, but the screenwriter’s agoraphobia allows for just short chats through open windows. He’s her sole confidante, though, as she and her housekeeper, Eva, an immigrant from war-torn Europe, rarely make conversation.

Then one early morning Melanie and Eva spot Elwood’s sister-in-law and caretaker, June, digging in his beloved rose garden. After that they don’t see Elwood at all anymore. Where could a man who never leaves the house possibly have gone?

As they try to find out if something has happened to him, unexpected secrets are revealed among all three women, leading to an alliance that seems the only way for any of them to hold on to what they can still call their own. But it’s a fragile pact and one little spark could send it all up in smoke…

Visit Susan Meissner's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Susan Meissner & Bella.

My Book, The Movie: Stars Over Sunset Boulevard.

My Book, The Movie: A Bridge Across the Ocean.

The Page 69 Test: A Bridge Across the Ocean.

The Page 69 Test: The Last Year of the War.

The Page 69 Test: Only the Beautiful.

The Page 69 Test: A Map to Paradise.

--Marshal Zeringue

Su Chang's "The Immortal Woman," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Su Chang's The Immortal Woman.

The entry begins:

If someone wants to adapt my novel, The Immortal Woman, into a movie (ideally a tragicomedy), I’d like either Lulu Wang or Yung Chang to direct it. I loved Lulu’s 2019 film The Farewell; she nailed the differences between Eastern and Western cultures and the awkward but often comical cross-cultural experiences of immigrants. I was shocked to watch the film, as my family almost went through that exact same story in real life, and I felt completely seen. Lulu would understand the nuances of my novel – the conflictual feelings towards one’s birth country, the erosion of an immigrant’s identity, the push and pull of assimilation and birth heritage, the suspicion of “dual loyalties,” etc. etc.

The documentary filmmaker Yung Chang would also be a fantastic director for the adaptation. He was the only Chinese-Canadian boy who grew up in a small town in Ontario without other Asians; he'd intuitively understand characters like Lin and Dali. I adored his documentary Up the Yangtze so much that I watched it multiple times. His Wuhan Wuhan was also a triumph. He is adept at capturing intimate human stories against the backdrop of massive historical events. He has a beautifully subtle sensibility that resists over-editorializing.

And in terms of my dream cast...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Su Chang's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Immortal Woman.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven novels to change the way you think about divorce

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

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

Her new novel is Animal Instinct.

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

At Electric Lit Shearn tagged "seven novels that each made me think about divorce—and life—a little differently." One title on the list:

Hot Air by Marcy Dermansky

There is nothing like the funny frankness of a Marcy Dermansky novel, in which absurd circumstances tend to befall the most complex and yet oddly relatable women. I considered highlighting The Red Car here, Dermansky’s 2016 book about an unhappily married woman on the run in a cursed red car haunted by her dead boss (obviously), of which the author has said, “I think I was writing a case for divorce with this book.” But the prolific Dermansky has a new addition to the divorce novel canon with Hot Air, which opens with the divorced protagonist going on her first date in seven years: “Joannie was not certain how the date was going… She had never been on a proper date with her ex-husband even before they were married. He had just sort of worn her down, so clearly in love with her. And that was a big chunk of her life. Her marriage. Years and years of her life. Stolen.” The first date in question is interrupted by, you guessed it, a hot air balloon piloted by a squabbling married couple crashing into a swimming pool. (What, you didn’t guess that?) Joanie’s introduction to her post-divorce desire is thus defined by an unexpected adventure she embarks on with these unhappy billionaires – and Cesar Aira-level coincidences, as the husband turns out to be the person Joanie had her first kiss with back at summer camp as a child. Proof that life after divorce can be very, very surprising.

Read about another novel on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Benjamin Wallace's "The Mysterious Mr. Nakamoto"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Mysterious Mr. Nakamoto: A Fifteen-Year Quest to Unmask the Secret Genius Behind Crypto by Benjamin Wallace.

About the book, from the publisher:

In October 2008, someone going by the name Satoshi Nakamoto posted a white paper outlining “a peer-to-peer electronic cash system” called Bitcoin to an arcane listserv populated by Cypherpunks. No one in the community had heard of Nakamoto, and just as people were starting to wonder who he was, he vanished. As the years passed, and the scope of Nakamoto’s achievement became clear, the truth of his identity grew into the greatest unsolved mystery of our time.

The Mysterious Mr. Nakamoto traces Benjamin Wallace’s attempt to unmask the figure behind the currency and the world it wrought. Nakamoto’s Bitcoin at first seemed destined to fulfill the dreams of fringe 1990s utopians for a currency set free from governments and big banks. Yet after he disappeared, his creation took on a strange new life in the financial markets, where rampant speculation fueled a vision of crypto as a potential windfall, inviting charlatans and scammers and opening a vast gulf between Bitcoin’s idealistic origins and its troubled reputation.

But who was Nakamoto? Whoever he was could rightly claim to have invented one of the most important technologies of the new century. And Nakamoto was a billionaire—his Bitcoin wallet held an untouched eleven-figure fortune waiting to be claimed.

With the same propulsive-narrative flair that made his New York Times bestseller The Billionaire’s Vinegar an instant success, Benjamin Wallace presents a page-turning work of investigative journalism. Tracking leads from London to Oslo to Los Angeles, from coastal Australia to the Arizona desert, he takes readers through a rogues’ gallery tour of Nakamoto suspects—from benevolent geniuses like cryptographer Hal Finney to difficult ones like a reclusive polymath known to his followers only as Jim; from the mercurial Australian Craig Wright, who claims to be Nakamoto, to a secret team at the National Security Agency. With the forensic skill of Sherlock Holmes and the storytelling verve of Arthur Conan Doyle, Wallace follows the trail of computer code and personal writings to the heart of the Nakamoto mystery while interrogating the very nature of mystery itself.

Learn more about the book and author at Benjamin Wallace's website.

Writers Read: Benjamin Wallace (February 2008).

The Page 99 Test: The Billionaire’s Vinegar.

The Page 99 Test: The Mysterious Mr. Nakamoto.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Margarita Montimore's "The Dollhouse Academy"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Dollhouse Academy: A Novel by Margarita Montimore.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the NATIONAL BESTSELLING author of GMA Book Club Pick OONA OUT OF ORDER, a novel about two best friends and aspiring actresses who join the Dollhouse Academy, where stars are made and dangerous secrets are hidden

Ivy Gordon is living on borrowed time. For the past eighteen years, she has been the most famous star at the Dollhouse Academy, the elite boarding school and talent incubator that every aspiring performer dreams of attending. But now, at age thirty-four, she is tired of pretending everything is fine. In secret diary entries, Ivy begins to reveal the truth of her life at the Dollhouse: strange medical exams, mysterious supplements, and something unspeakable that’s left Ivy terrified and feeling like a prisoner.

Ramona Halloway and her best friend, Grace Ludlow, grew up idolizing Ivy. Now both twenty-two, neither has made much headway in showbiz until a lucky break grants them entry to the Dollhouse. They’re enchanted by the picturesque campus and the chance to perform alongside their idols. When Ramona begins to receive threatening anonymous messages, it’s easy to dismiss them as a prank from a rival. Her bigger concern is Grace’s skyrocketing success, while Ramona struggles to keep up with the fierce competition. As the messages grow more unsettling, so does life at the Dollhouse. Can Ramona overcome her jealousy and resentment to figure out what’s really going on? Will Ivy finally find her voice, before another young performer follows her catastrophic path?

With dark academia twists and enormous heart, The Dollhouse Academy is a novel about the complexities of friendship, our desire to be seen and understood, and the true cost of making our dreams a reality.

Visit Margarita Montimore's website.

The Page 69 Test: Oona Out of Order.

The Page 69 Test: Acts of Violet.

The Page 69 Test: The Dollhouse Academy.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Xhenet Aliu

From my Q&A with Xhenet Aliu, author of Everybody Says It's Everything: A Novel:

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

Disembodied from the text, the title Everybody Says It’s Everything plays with the ambiguity of the indefinite pronouns “everybody” and “everything” in a way I find kind of fun and mysterious. Who’s everybody, what’s everything? Tell me, book, tell me! Spoiler alert: the story pretty explicitly clarifies that the title refers to family, which is very much what the story is about, despite the backdrop of a real-life geopolitical conflict, i.e., the Kosovo War. The title is extracted directly from a piece of dialogue in the book, in fact, though landing on it was a real struggle. Before that, the working title was Eagle Calling, which referred to the name of a fictionalized group of Albanian expats collecting funds and weapons for the Kosovo war; it works fine for that purpose, but as a book title, it read like...[read on]

Visit Xhenet Aliu's website.

The Page 69 Test: Everybody Says It's Everything.

Q&A with Xhenet Aliu.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top mysteries that will make you turn back to page one

Before turning to fiction, Aggie Blum Thompson worked as a newspaper reporter, covering cops, courts, and trials, with a healthy dose of the mundane mixed in. Her writing has appeared in newspapers such as The Boston Globe and The Washington Post. She lives in the suburbs just over the Washington D.C. line with her husband, two children, cat, and dog.

Thompson's new novel is You Deserve to Know.

At CrimeReads the author tagged six mysteries with a very late reveal thar "reframes the entire book and turns everything we think we just learned on its head..., sending us back to chapter one to see if we can spot what was hiding in plain sight all along." One title on the list:

The Wife Stalker by Liv Constantine

An unreliable narrator is an essential linchpin in these types of endings, and Liv Constantine’s psychological suspense delivers not one, but two in The Wife Stalker. The first voice belongs to a sympathetic woman seemingly struggling to keep her family intact, while the second point of view belongs to a ruthless gold-digger who wants to marry up. The man at the center of this frenzy is hardly the point — you keep reading to see which of these women will prevail. It’s not until the very end that you learn of a relevant detail, carefully omitted, which casts the entire book, and the trustworthiness of the two women, in a startling new light.

Read about another mystery on the list.

The Wife Stalker is among Kaira Rouda's thirteen books highlighting the wives in domestic suspense.

My Book, The Movie: The Wife Stalker.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Mia Bloom's "Veiled Threats"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Veiled Threats: Women and Global Jihad by Mia Bloom.

About the book, from the publisher:

Veiled Threats challenges the idea that women in violent terrorist groups lack agency. Too often, these women are assumed to be controlled by men: their fathers, their husbands, or some other male relative. Mia Bloom contests this narrow understanding. Although extremist groups often control different aspects of women's lives, including their religious obligations or dress, jihadi women have asserted themselves in myriad ways. Bloom interrogates the prevailing perceptions about women's involvement in violent extremism exclusively as victims: manipulated, drugged, or coerced. Following her pioneering work on women in Bombshell, Bloom lifts the veil of the secret world of women in jihadi groups to provide a nuanced and complex explanation of their motivations and challenge misperceptions about women's agency.

Veiled Threats explores the range of roles of the women involved in jihad―not only across secular and religious groups but within affiliated religious groups―and examines how these extremist groups have used rape as a weapon of war. Bloom explains how women are used and abused, deployed and destroyed, and the many ways in which their roles in terrorism have evolved over the past three decades.

Learn more about Veiled Threats at the Cornell University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Bombshell: Women and Terrorism by Mia Bloom.

The Page 99 Test: Pastels and Pedophiles by Mia Bloom & Sophia Moskalenko.

The Page 99 Test: Veiled Threats.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine books set on trains that show how they changed the world

Emma Donoghue is the author of sixteen novels, including the award-winning national bestseller Room, the basis for the acclaimed film of the same name.

Her latest novel is The Paris Express.

Donoghue has also written the screenplays for Room and The Wonder and nine stage plays. Her next film (adapted with Philippa Lowthorpe from Helen Macdonald’s memoir) is H Is for Hawk.

Born in Dublin, she lives in Ontario with her family.

At Lit Hub Donoghue tagged nine books set on trains and showing how they changed the world. One entry on the list:

Graham Greene, Stamboul Train

Graham Greene’s breakout novel Stamboul Train (1932, retitled Orient Express for the US) is set over a three-day trip from the Flemish city of Ostend to Istanbul. Its colorful cast includes a lesbian journalist and a vain, bestselling author whose portrait was so thinly veiled that J. B. Priestley’s lawyers forced Greene to rewrite twenty pages before publication.

Some find the characterization of Myatt the Jewish businessman nasty, but to me it reads more like Greene’s rueful awareness of pervasive antisemitism in 1930s Europe.

Read about another entry on the list.

Stamboul Train is among Marcus Sedgwick's top ten books about borders.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Xhenet Aliu's "Everybody Says It's Everything"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Everybody Says It's Everything: A Novel by Xhenet Aliu.

About the book, from the publisher:

In this unforgettable novel from the award-winning author of Brass, twins growing up in the United States in the nineties unravel larger truths about identity and sibling bonds when one of them gets wrapped up in the war in Kosovo.

Raised in Connecticut, adopted twins Drita and Petrit (aka Pete) had no connection to their Albanian heritage. Their lives were all about Barbie dolls, the mall, and roller skating at the local rink. Although they were inseparable during their childhood, their paths diverged once they became teenagers: Drita was a good girl with good manners who was going to attend a good college; Pete was a bad boy going nowhere fast. Even their twinhood was not enough to keep them together.

Fast-forward to their twenties. Drita has given up on her dreams for the future, abandoning her graduate studies to move back home and take care of their mother. She hasn’t heard from Pete in three years when his girlfriend and their son unexpectedly show up without him and in need of help. Realizing that Pete’s child may offer the siblings a second chance at being family, Drita becomes determined to find her brother. But what she ends up discovering—about their connection to their Albanian roots, the war in Kosovo, and the story of their adoption—will surprise everyone, and become what brings them together, or tears them apart for good.

In Everybody Says It’s Everything, critically acclaimed author Xhenet Aliu tells the story of a family both fractured and foundering, desperate to connect with the other and the world at large, but not knowing how.

Visit Xhenet Aliu's website.

The Page 69 Test: Everybody Says It's Everything.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with C. I. Jerez

From my Q&A with C.I. Jerez, author of At the Island's Edge: A Novel:

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

The title of the book makes it clear that an island will be central to the story’s premise. The cover art further supports the island we are referring to. However, what I loved about the title was the implication of being at the island’s edge. This can be taken literally, but when I first heard the proposed title by an editor at the publishing house, I immediately thought of the figurative illustration and how the protagonist in the story is at the edge of her emotional limits following her return from the war. It also implies that it’s the island she returns to while reaching her own personal limit. That’s accurate. It’s when I knew we had the right title.

Up until then I was using the working title, Isla Magic. I still really love that title, but I agreed with the editors that it could be misleading, lending itself to magical realism or even fantasy. I didn’t want any potential reader to be confused by the “magic” elements of the story. This is a story about a raw and powerful young woman battling the impact of her life experiences by returning home. The title...[read on]

Visit C.I. Jerez's website.

My Book, The Movie: At the Island's Edge.

The Page 69 Test: At the Island's Edge.

Q&A with C. I. Jerez.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven books to read when the world is on fire

Sari Fordham is a writer, professor, and environmental activist. Committed to being kind to the earth, Sari writes a free monthly newsletter, "Cool It: Simple Steps to Save the Planet.” Each newsletter focuses on practical actions we can take for a more sustainable planet.

Fordham has lived in Uganda, Kenya, Thailand, South Korea, and Austria. She has a BA from Southern Adventist University, an MA from Iowa State University, and an MFA from the University of Minnesota.

Fordham teaches creative nonfiction at SUNY Oswego and lives in upstate New York with her husband and daughter.

Wait for God to Notice, a memoir about her childhood in Uganda, is her first book.

At Electric Lit Fordham tagged "seven books to read that offer a sustainable path forward." One title on the list:

The Day the World Stops Shopping by J.B. MacKinnon

In his evocative and well-researched book The Day the World Stops Shopping, journalist J.B. MacKinnon imagines how life would be different if we stopped shopping. Chapter four is titled “Suddenly, we’re winning the fight against climate change.” Shopping, it turns out, is a big reason we’re heating the planet. The gains we make with renewable energy are canceled out by our escalating consumption. Each decade, we buy more and more things, requiring more and more energy. On the day the world stops shopping, however, we not only win our fight against climate change, but we have more time and richer experiences. MacKinnon is clear that his book’s premise is only a thought exercise, yet he is serious about conscious consumption and how it is the key to saving the planet and ourselves.

Read about another book on Fordham's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Janet Todd's "Living with Jane Austen"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Living with Jane Austen by Janet Todd.

About the book, from the publisher:

Fanny Price, in Mansfield Park, tells her persistent suitor that 'we have all a better guide in ourselves...than any other person can be'. Sometimes, however, we crave external guidance: and when this happens we could do worse than seek it in Jane Austen's own subtle novels. Written to coincide with Austen's 250th birthday, this approachable and intimate work shows why and how - for over half a century - Austen has inspired and challenged its author through different phases of her life. Part personal memoir, part expert interaction with all the letters, manuscripts and published novels, Janet Todd's book reveals what living with Jane Austen has meant to her and what it might also mean to others. Todd celebrates the undimmable power of Austen's work to help us understand our own bodies and our environment, and teach us about patience, humour, beauty and the meaning of home.

Visit Janet Todd's website.

The Page 99 Test: Living with Jane Austen.

--Marshal Zeringue

Amy Shearn's "Animal Instinct," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Animal Instinct by Amy Shearn.

The entry begins:

I have thought about this one a lot, as this is my first book I actually have a film agent for. I think it would actually work better as a limited series, is that allowed?

I'd love to see Melanie Lynsky or Lizzy Caplan as Rachel, the main character -- someone who is earthy and sexy and has a bit of an edge.

Her ex-husband could be Will Arnett.

Rachel's best friend Lulu is kind of a...[read on]

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

Thirty-six of the best mystery thrillers

At Marie Claire Andrea Park tagged "the 36 best mystery thriller books of all time." One title on the list:

Lady in the Lake by Laura Lippman

To build out her suspense-filled story of two murders in Baltimore in the 1960s, Laura Lippman took inspiration from the real-life unrelated deaths of a young Jewish girl and a Black woman in her 30s during that time in the city. Her resulting book has been hailed for how it tackles both the racism and the misogyny of the time, as its protagonist, a bored housewife and aspiring journalist, begins investigating the pair of mysterious murders.

Read about another title on the list.

Lady in the Lake is among Alice Blanchard's five top mysteries set in still waters, Brittany Bunzey's ten books that take you inside their characters’ heads, Kimberly Belle's six novels that show lakes are a perfect setting for a murder mystery, and CrimeReads' ten best crime novels of 2019.

The Page 69 Test: Lady in the Lake.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Peter Colt's "The Banker"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Banker (An Andy Roark mystery, 6) by Peter Colt.

About the book, from the publisher:

Embezzlement, murder, and beautiful women . . . Andy Roark, Vietnam veteran turned private investigator is on the case in this thrilling hardboiled mystery that’s perfect for fans of Robert B. Parker and Jeremiah Healy.

Boston, 1986. Spring in Boston is always a miserable affair, and Andy Roark’s latest case offers nothing to raise his spirits. The ex-military operative turned private investigator has been hired by a bank president to investigate three of his staff. One of them has embezzled over two million dollars – and Brock wants Roark to find out who’s living above their means.

Sounds exciting enough, but after two weeks' tedious surveillance uncovers a grand total of nothing, Roark gives it up as a bad job. Brock needs a forensic accountant on the case, not a PI.

But several weeks later, the bank is held up, and one of Brock’s suspects is murdered by the robber. Is there a connection? Roark can’t see how, but he’s never been a fan of coincidence.

With the case niggling at him, he relaunches an investigation on his own dime. Soon he’s rubbing shoulders with some very shady characters – and trying his best not just to solve the case, but also to come out of it alive.

Written by a US Army veteran and New England police officer, the Andy Roark mystery series will appeal to fans of classic private detective novels, packed with wry humor, unexpected twists and explosive scenes.

Visit Peter Colt's website.

My Book, The Movie: Back Bay Blues.

The Page 69 Test: Back Bay Blues.

Q&A with Peter Colt.

The Page 69 Test: Death at Fort Devens.

My Book, The Movie: Death at Fort Devens.

Writers Read: Peter Colt (June 2022).

My Book, The Movie: The Ambassador.

The Page 69 Test: The Ambassador.

The Page 69 Test: The Judge.

My Book, The Movie: The Judge.

Writers Read: Peter Colt (May 2024).

Writers Read: Peter Colt.

My Book, The Movie: The Banker.

The Page 69 Test: The Banker.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Ava Morgyn

From my Q&A with Ava Morgyn, author of The Bane Witch: A Novel:

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

My title, The Bane Witch, is fairly straightforward, as the book is about the main character discovering that she possesses the unique and hereditary magic of the women of her line, making her a witch. The word bane points to the poisonous nature of their power and hints at the death toll that is to follow. I also believe that the archaic etymology of the word bane subtly implies the ancient origins of their magic.

I knew from the moment I first conceived the premise of this story that I wanted to title it, The Bane Witch. On the surface, it lets readers know this is a novel about witches and therefore carries a fantastical element. But the implications it carries for something dark and deadly were...[read on]

Visit Ava Morgyn's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Bane Witch.

Q&A with Ava Morgyn.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top supernatural serial killers

Cynthia Pelayo is a Bram Stoker Award winning and International Latino Book Award winning author and poet. She is the first Latina in history to win a Bram Stoker Award. Pelayo writes fairy tales that blend genre and explore concepts of grief, mourning, and cycles of violence. She is the author of Loteria, Santa Muerte, The Missing, Poems of My Night, Into the Forest and All the Way Through, Children of Chicago, Crime Scene, The Shoemaker’s Magician, Forgotten Sisters, as well as dozens of standalone short stories and poems.

At CrimeReads Pelayo tagged five "novels that explore supernatural serial killers." One title on the list:

The Nightmare Man by J.H. Markert

Best-selling horror author Ben Bookman grew up on a dark and eerie estate known as Blackwood. He returns home to finish his latest novel, The Scarecrow. The events of that stay are mysterious, and Ben can’t really explain them, but the novel was completed. Before the novel is released, tragic events similar to those he wrote seem to be slipping off the page and taking place in real life. Detective Mills and Detective Blue begin investigating a series of murders known as the Scarecrow Crimes, and Ben becomes the primary target. This novel blends crime investigation and the supernatural to produce a fantastic horror experience that makes you wonder who, or what, is the killer.

Read about another entry on the list.

My Book, The Movie: The Nightmare Man.

The Page 69 Test: The Nightmare Man.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Michael Rosino's "Democracy Is Awkward"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Democracy Is Awkward: Grappling with Racism inside American Grassroots Political Organizing by Michael Rosino.

About the book, from the publisher:

In uncertain times, confronting pressing problems such as racial oppression and the environmental crisis requires everyday people to come together and wield political power for the greater good. Yet, as Michael Rosino shows, progressive political organizations in the United States have frequently failed to achieve social change. Why? Rosino posits that it is because of the unwillingness of white progressives at the grassroots level to share power with progressives of color.

Using rich ethnographic data, Rosino focuses on participants in a real grassroots progressive political party in the northeastern United States. While the organization’s goals included racial equity and the inclusion of people of color, its membership and leadership remained disproportionately white, and the group had mixed success in prioritizing and carrying out its racial justice agenda. By highlighting the connections between racial inequality, grassroots democracy, and political participation, Rosino weaves in the voices and experiences of party members and offers insights for building more robust and empowering spaces of grassroots democratic engagement.

Visit Michael Rosino's website.

The Page 99 Test: Democracy Is Awkward.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Amy Shearn reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Amy Shearn, author of Animal Instinct.

Her entry begins:

I tend to read several books at once, which confounds my friends who are more organized readers. Right now it happens to be:

Lifesaving, a memoir by Judith Barrington published in 2000. I teach personal essay and memoir-writing, and I often use Barrington's writing about writing memoir, but it only recently occurred to me to read her actual memoir! This is a gorgeous and thoughtful book about the aftermath of her parents' sudden death when she was 19 -- she expatriated to Spain, had some adventures, and started to come to terms with her sexuality and queerness. It's every bit as good as...[read on]

About Animal Instinct, from the publisher:

The world has stopped. But Rachel is just getting started…

It’s spring of 2020 and Rachel Bloomstein—mother of three, recent divorcée, and Brooklynite—is stuck inside. But her newly awakened sexual desire and lust for a new life refuse to be contained. Leaning on her best friend Lulu to show her the ropes, Rachel dips a toe in the online dating world, leading to park dates with younger men, flirtations with beautiful women, and actual, in-person sex. None of them, individually, are perfect . . . hence her rotation.

But what if one person could perfectly cater to all her emotional needs? Driven by this possibility, Rachel creates Frankie, the AI chatbot she programs with all the good parts of dating in middle age . . . and some of the bad. But as Rachel plays with her fantasy to her heart’s content, she begins to realize she can’t reprogram her ex-husband, her children, her friends, or the roster of paramours that’s grown unwieldy. Perhaps real life has more in store for Rachel than she could ever program for herself.

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.

--Marshal Zeringue