Pg. 99: Mark Vernon's "Awake!"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Awake!: William Blake and the Power of the Imagination by Mark Vernon.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the 200 years since Blake's death, the visionary artist, poet and writer has become a household name, often beloved. Yet many struggle to comprehend his kaleidoscopic ideas; how they speak to human longings and the challenges of living in anxious times.

Philosopher and psychotherapist Mark Vernon provides a fresh route into Blake, taking him at his word. Exploring this brilliant thinker's passionate writings, arresting artworks and fascinating life, Vernon illuminates Blake's vivid worldview. Like us, he lived in a tumultuous era of war, discontent, rapid technological change, and human estrangement from nature. He exposed the dark sides of political fervour and social moralising, while unashamedly celebrating love and liberty. But he also conversed with prophets and angels, and was powerfully, if unconventionally, religious. If we take this seriously--not easy, in secular times--then Blake can help us to unlock the transformative power of imagination.

Written for both longstanding fans and unfamiliar readers, Awake! reveals Blake as an invigorating and hopeful guide for our modern age.

Visit Mark Vernon's website.

The Page 99 Test: Science, Religion and the Meaning of Life.

The Page 99 Test: Awake!.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Joanna Schaffhausen's "Gone in the Night"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Gone in the Night: A Detective Annalisa Vega Novel by Joanna Schaffhausen.

About the book, from the publisher:

The fifth installment of the beloved Annalisa Vega series

Detective Annalisa Vega hasn’t forgiven her brother for his role in a murder, and he hasn’t forgiven her for turning him in, so she’s surprised when he asks her to visit him in prison. Turns out, he has a possible case for her: one of his fellow inmates, Joe Green, may be innocent of the murder that landed him behind bars.

Joe is doing hard time for killing his ex-wife’s lawyer, but an anonymous letter sent to the prison warns that the eyewitness in Joe’s trial made up her story. With her private investigation business foundering, Annalisa is desperate enough to start poking around into Joe’s meager case. She immediately finds two problems: One, the eyewitness definitely lied about what she saw the night of the murder, and two, Annalisa’s husband Nick was the cop who arrested Joe in the first place.

Faced with correcting Nick’s mistakes, Annalisa digs deeper into Joe’s past and discovers he has two ex-wives with nothing good to say about him. The women may have orchestrated an elaborate frame to put Joe in prison, but one wife has completely disappeared since then. Did Joe somehow kill her? Or is he the real victim? Annalisa’s search for the truth tests the bounds of her marriage, her family, and her own sense of justice. Meanwhile, a devious killer keeps sending men to a watery death in the vastness of Lake Michigan. If Annalisa doesn’t figure out the truth about Joe soon, her husband might be next.

Visit Joanna Schaffhausen's website.

The Page 69 Test: All the Best Lies.

Writers Read: Joanna Schaffhausen (February 2020).

Q&A with Joanna Schaffhausen.

My Book, The Movie: Gone for Good.

The Page 69 Test: Gone for Good.

Writers Read: Joanna Schaffhausen (August 2022).

The Page 69 Test: Dead and Gone.

The Page 69 Test: Gone in the Night.

--Marshal Zeringue

Kathleen Barber's "Both Things Are True," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Both Things Are True: A Novel by Kathleen Barber.

The entry begins:

I dreamcast on vibes rather than strictly on how well an actor physically resembles my character. So when I think about who I would cast to play Vanessa, the yoga influencer and hopeless romantic at the center of Both Things Are True, I imagine a cross between Sarah Jones, who played Tracy Stevens in For All Mankind, and Suki Waterhouse. Both have the energy and pluck that I envision for Vanessa.

For Sam, Vanessa's love interest, I feel like it's cliché to dreamcast Andrew Garfield in a romantic comedy, but...[read on]

Visit Kathleen Barber's website.

The Page 69 Test: Follow Me.

Writers Read: Kathleen Barber (March 2020).

12 Yoga Questions with Kathleen Barber.

The Page 69 Test: Both Things Are True.

My Book, The Movie: Both Things Are True.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven top novels set during times of great political upheaval

Daphne Fama was born in the American South, embedded in its tight-knit Filipino community. When she’s not writing stories about monsters and the women who love them, she’s writing about video games. And when she’s not writing, she’s spending every minute adoring her partner and pup.

Fama's new novel is House of Monstrous Women.

At CrimeReads she tagged seven novels "of political upheaval [that] capture the terror and resilience of those caught in history’s undertow, where survival is an act of defiance." One title on Fama's list:

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

Beginning in a poor Korean fishing village during Japanese occupation, Pachinko follows four generations of one family as they migrate to Japan and struggle to build a life in a country that will never fully accept them. Against the backdrop of war, poverty, and relentless discrimination, they endure through sacrifice and resilience. Min Jin Lee’s epic is a powerful family saga of identity, belonging, and survival.

Read about another novel on the list.

Pachinko is among Mia Barzilay Freund's eighteen best historical fiction books of the last several decades, Courtney Rodgers's best historical fiction of the 21st century so far, Bethanne Patrick's twenty-five best historical fiction books of all time, Asha Thanki seven books about families surviving political unrest, the Amazon Book Review editors' twelve favorite long books, Gina Chen's twelve books for fans of HBO’s Succession, Cindy Fazzi's eight books about the impact of Japanese imperialism during WWII, Eman Quotah's eight books about mothers separated from their daughters, Karolina Waclawiak's six favorite books on loss and longing, Allison Patkai's top six books with strong female voices, Tara Sonin's twenty-one books for fans of HBO’s Succession, and six books Jia Tolentino recommends.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Simon Ball's "Death to Order"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Death to Order: A Modern History of Assassination by Simon Ball.

About the book, from the publisher:

A deeply researched history of assassination in the modern world, from Franz Ferdinand to Osama bin Laden

Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Leon Trotsky, Reinhard Heydrich, Mahatma Gandhi, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Indira Gandhi, Benazir Bhutto, Osama bin Laden, Qasem Soleimani: assassination—the murder of a specific individual by an organised conspiracy in pursuit of political ends—has rarely failed to grip the imagination.

In this incisive new history, Simon Ball shows how targeted political murder has become a tool of democratic states but also a key strategy of those who wish to topple them. Ball introduces us to the techniques of assassination and those who wield them, as well as the security regimes that have developed to prevent this violent practice. From the First World War and the age of empire to terrorism and the development of pilotless drones, Death to Order places assassination at the heart of modern political history—and shows how it continues to impact our world.

Learn more about Death to Order at the Yale University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Death to Order.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Nolan Chase reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Nolan Chase, author of A Lonesome Place for Murder.

His entry begins:

The James Bond novels by Ian Fleming and Ian Fleming: The Complete Man by Nicholas Shakespeare

There’s an interesting paradox with the original Bond novels—they’re rooted in real-life espionage, yet pure adventure stories. Casino Royale and From Russia With Love are the best of them (From Russia was one of JFK’s favorite books).

Nicholas Shakespeare’s Fleming bio covers Fleming’s early life at Eton, his Navy service where he contributed to the creation of what became the CIA, and his years as...[read on]

About A Lonesome Place for Murder, from the publisher:

In this dark mystery, perfect for fans of C. J. Box, one wrong step leads Ethan Brand to the most dangerous case of his career...and the most personal.

Hoping to surprise his sons, Ethan Brand, the chief of police of a small town in northern Washington state, is contemplating buying a horse. But when the horse literally stumbles upon an abandoned smuggling tunnel, Ethan and his lead investigator Brenda Lee Page discover a dead body connected to a decade-old mystery.

Ten years ago, Tyler Rash, a troubled friend of Ethan’s, vanished without a trace. The body in the tunnel has Tyler’s ID and personal effects.

As Ethan and Brenda Lee investigate Tyler’s disappearance, they follow a trail that leads them to a cross-border smuggling operation connected to the town’s notorious family of smugglers. And when a bomb is sent to Ethan’s own house, the case takes a deadly and personal turn. A killer is stalking Ethan Brand–a killer he’ll have to face if he wants to see his family again.

Visit Nolan Chase's website.

Writers Read: Nolan Chase (May 2024).

The Page 69 Test: A Lonesome Place for Dying.

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

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

Writers Read: Nolan Chase.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Kathleen Barber's "Both Things Are True"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Both Things Are True: A Novel by Kathleen Barber.

About the book, from the publisher:

For two exes who meet again, moving on is harder than ever in a funny and heartfelt romantic comedy about starting over by the author of Truth Be Told, now a major Apple TV+ series.

Vanessa is a yoga influencer living high in New York. But after her crypto-entrepreneur fiancé ruins both their lives by fleeing the country amid fraud allegations, Vanessa’s only choice is to start over―by flying home to Chicago and moving in with her sister.

Just as Vanessa puts her life back together, she bumps into Sam. Years ago, they fell hard and too fast. Their relationship ended in heartbreak after an impromptu Las Vegas wedding officiated by a Dolly Parton impersonator―and an annulment that was just as sudden. Now Sam is co-owner of a solar company with a promising future, a future Vanessa wants to be included in. But she can’t shake the whiff of scandal from her AWOL fiancé, and to protect Sam’s reputation, she’s keeping her distance. Then again…

If anyone can turn a negative into a positive―and a first love into a second chance―it’s a young woman with influence.

Visit Kathleen Barber's website.

The Page 69 Test: Follow Me.

Writers Read: Kathleen Barber (March 2020).

12 Yoga Questions with Kathleen Barber.

The Page 69 Test: Both Things Are True.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Katherine E. Rohrer's "Daughters of Divinity"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Daughters of Divinity: Evangelical Protestant Christianity and the Making of a New Southern Woman, 1830-1930 by Katherine E. Rohrer.

About the book, from the publisher:

Katherine E. Rohrer’s Daughters of Divinity tells the story of how well-educated white women of the South used evangelical Protestant Christianity as an instrument to expand their intellectual and professional capacities as well as their agency and influence at home and throughout the world between 1830 and 1930.

Learn more about Daughters of Divinity at the LSU Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Daughters of Divinity.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven books about toxic work environments

Cleyvis Natera is the author of the critically acclaimed novel Neruda on the Park and the recently published sophomore novel, The Grand Paloma Resort. At Electric Lit she tagged seven books" "rooted in a person’s relationship to work."

[F]rom views into the lives of a working population during genocidal mandates from the government, to tender illuminations on what it means to be part of a society that fails to count women’s work as labor, to the seduction of wealth and power that lead many of these characters to become complicit in systems that benefit from their own dehumanization, each of these novels offers an unvarnished understanding of an individual’s search for self-actualization through labor.

One title on Natera's list:

The Farming of Bones by Edwidge Danticat

Published in 1998, Danticat’s historical novel follows Amabelle, a young Haitian woman who lives through the 1937 Parsley Massacre in the Dominican Republic. Amabelle is a domestic worker who lost her parents in the river that would become the setting for tens of thousands of murders decades later. In this lyrical novel, Danticat weaves the present and the past in a dream-like structure, showcasing the fluidity of a border between two countries where most people travelled daily for work and commerce. Danticat is deft at showcasing the class divide between the Haitian workers and the rich Dominicans they work for—here the toxic work environment extends past private homes, beyond sugarcane plantations to encompass an entire country. Early on in the novel, we witness as the death of a sugarcane worker goes unpunished due to the status of the person who commits the crime. Amabelle becomes aware of the intricacies of state-sponsored crimes as her employer is a high-ranking member of the army. As news spreads that the government has unleashed a massacre, we follow Amabelle as she attempts to find her lover and escape death.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with D. W. Gillespie

From my Q&A with D. W. Gillespie, author of Grin:

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

With Grin, I knew I needed a title that could double duty. It’s the name of the book, but also the name of the arcade game inside the book. It’s short, simple, and hopefully intriguing for readers, especially when paired with that absolutely awesome cover.

What's in a name?

For me, names are always a gut feeling. I don’t spend a ton of time going through deeper meanings or trying to be overly symbolic with my character names, but they do have to feel right if that makes sense.

Danny is a sweet kid, but he’s also anxious and unsure of himself. Contrast that with Uncle Bill who is straight to the point, simple, and uncomplicated.

One fun bit of trivia about his friend Jodi… I don’t know where the name came from, but...[read on]

Visit D. W. Gillespie's website.

My Book, The Movie: Grin.

Q&A with D. W. Gillespie.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six of the best possession novels

Peter Rosch is the author of multiple dark fictions born from the various addictions he chased while living in New York City as an award-winning writer and creative director. He’s many years sober now but remains an addict’s addict. What the Dead Can Do is his debut novel.

[Q&A with Peter Rosch; My Book, The Movie: What The Dead Can Do]

Rosch grew up in the Southwest, lived in New York for nearly 20 years, and now resides midway between Austin and San Antonio in Wimberley, TX where he works as an author, freelance creative director and copywriter in advertising, and most importantly, full-time dad.

At CrimeReads Rosch tagged six favorite posession novels, stories that show how "we can be possessed by an idea or a relationship (with another human, with a substance, with a home, or even with religion and spirituality itself) that can lead us to act out in a demonic-possession way as well." One title on the list:

Paul Tremblay, A Head Full of Ghosts

Isn’t it surprising that we don’t already have a real-life version of the exorcism show from this book? At least not to my knowledge (go easy on me, I don’t believe in network TV anymore).

Read about another title on the list.

A Head Full of Ghosts is among Steph Auteri's top ten modern horror classics, Heather Gudenkauf's five mysteries and thrillers with a reality TV twist, Lee Kelly's eight fictional dinner parties gone wrong, and Wendy Webb's eight top modern gothic mysteries.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Faisal Devji's "Waning Crescent"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Waning Crescent: The Rise and Fall of Global Islam by Faisal Devji.

About the book, from the publisher:

A compelling examination of the rise of Islam as a global historical actor

Until the nineteenth century, Islam was variously understood as a set of beliefs and practices. But after Muslims began to see their faith as an historical actor on the world stage, they needed to narrate Islam’s birth anew as well as to imagine its possible death. Faisal Devji argues that this change, sparked by the crisis of Muslim sovereignty in the age of European empire, provided a way of thinking about agency in a global context: an Islam liberated from the authority of kings and clerics had the potential to represent the human race itself as a newly empirical reality.

Ordinary Muslims, now recognized as the privileged representatives of Islam, were freed from traditional forms of Islamic authority. However, their conception of Islam as an impersonal actor in history meant that it could not be defined in either religious or political terms. Its existence as a civilizational and later ideological subject also deprived figures like God and the Prophet of their theological subjectivities while robbing the Muslim community of its political agency. Devji illuminates this history and explores its ramifications for the contemporary Muslim world.

Learn more about Waning Crescent at the Yale University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: The Impossible Indian.

The Page 99 Test: Waning Crescent.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Carla Malden's "Playback"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Playback by Carla Malden.

About the book, from the publisher:

Witty, touching, and insightful, Playback revisits the 17-year-old Mari Caldwell of Shine Until Tomorrow, now 34, to tell the story of a woman obsessed with the past who must risk the future to learn to live in the present “Once upon a time there was a summer.”

That’s the way the bedtime story starts, the one Mari Caldwell tells her little girl. It’s also her secret story of waking up one day in San Francisco, 1967, having time-traveled to the tie-dyed Summer of Love.

But she was seventeen then. Now, at 34, where Mari once saw 60’s idealism, she now sees only disillusionment. Newly divorced and stuck in a settled-for career, Mari’s failed at giving her child the perfect family she’d envisioned. That weird weekend in the sixties— the rock band she crashed with, the musician she loved, the hit song he wrote for her— lives in the way-back of her mind. Did it even happen? She’s not so sure… Until it happens again.

Playback rewinds Mari’s life as she makes a second visit to Haight-Ashbury in 1967, now autumn. The band, Mari’s rival, and her first love all see the 17-year-old girl they met in June. But inside, adult Mari faces both tender and devastating choices. What if, regardless of how the times have a-changed, love changes everything after all? What if it even changes her?

Visit Carla Malden's website.

My Book, The Movie: Playback.

Writers Read: Carla Malden.

Q&A with Carla Malden.

The Page 69 Test: Playback.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Arbor Sloane reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Arbor Sloane, author of Not Who You Think: A Thriller:

Her entry begins:

I'm in the midst of reading two books right now.

I picked up the first one, Dear Future Me by Deborah O'Connor, while shopping for books to read on vacation this summer. The premise intrigued me... twenty years ago, an English teacher gave his students the assignment to write a letter to themselves twenty years in the future, and then he actually sends those letters out when the kids have grown up. The twist is that a student died mysteriously around the time the kids wrote the letters, and everyone only knows a piece of what happened to him. When one of the kids in the future receives her letter, she is so upset by her memories that she ends up taking her own life. Her best friend from the class, Miranda, becomes determined to solve the mystery of both deaths by interviewing former classmates. I'm really...[read on]

About Not Who You Think, from the publisher:

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

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

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

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

Follow Arbor Sloane on Instagram.

The Page 69 Test: Not Who You Think.

Q&A with Arbor Sloane.

Writers Read: Arbor Sloane.

--Marshal Zeringue

Peter Rosch's "What The Dead Can Do," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Peter Rosch's What The Dead Can Do.

The entry begins:

In many ways, What The Dead Can Do is a possession story. A unique one, but as a film, it’s a safe bet that it would pop up in the “Viewers Also Watched” section on Netflix underneath The Conjuring or The Exorcist and other possession films. Of course, like those, it’s much more, too.

What The Dead Can Do is the story of a recently deceased mother, grieving for the child she left behind after a plane crash, who seeks out a way to possess the living to kill that still-living child and reunite her family in the afterlife. Dark stuff. Heady stuff. Taboo stuff, maybe. But if I did what I think I’ve done with the story, it and the film adaptation will not be inaccessible to a broader audience. It was important to me to write this paranormal thriller in a way that would appeal to a wide array of people. Even now, as I wander the country promoting the book, I’ve referred to it from time to time as a paranormal family drama or a gateway book to horror. It’s a story that’s terrifying in a way similar to Poltergeist, which scared many of all walks and ages.

To achieve the right balance of horror, hope, and even humor, I had a handful of films on my mind as I penned the manuscript: 1982’s Poltergeist (story by Steven Spielberg) because it was so accessible as an instrument of horror. And because at 10, I saw it, and the family felt authentic and grounded to me. Still...[read on]

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

Q&A with Peter Rosch.

My Book, The Movie: What The Dead Can Do.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: John Marriott's "Land, Law and Empire"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Land, Law and Empire: The Origins of British Territorial Power in India by John Marriott.

About the book, from the publisher:

In this innovative exploration of British rule in India, John Marriott tackles one of the most significant and unanswered questions surrounding the East India Company's success. How and when was an English joint stock company with trading interests in the East Indies transformed into a fully-fledged colonial power with control over large swathes of the Indian subcontinent? The answer, Marriott argues, is to be found much earlier than traditionally acknowledged, in the territorial acquisitions of the seventeenth century secured by small coteries of English factors. Bringing together aspects of cultural, legal and economic theory, he demonstrates the role played by land in the assembly of sovereign power, and how English discourses of land and judicial authority confronted the traditions of indigenous peoples and rival colonial authorities. By 1700, the Company had established the sites of Madras, Bombay and Calcutta, providing the practical foothold for further expansion.

Learn more about Land, Law and Empire at the Cambridge University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Land, Law and Empire.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five sci-fi books that deserve a bigger audience

At Book Riot Liberty Hardy tagged five quality sci-fi books that not enough readers have yet discovered, including:

To Each This World by Julie E. Czerneda

Sleeper ships grow more and more popular in sci-fi as our own planet continues to fall apart. They’re ships that set out to find habitable new planets, designed to sustain humans in stasis for the long journeys. But what happens if Earth never hears back from them? In this exciting novel, three humans on Earth join up with alien allies to find these long-lost ships and discover what became of them, while something is making a move to control the universe for itself.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Page 69 Test: To Each This World.

My Book, The Movie: To Each This World.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Samantha Downing's "Too Old for This"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Too Old for This by Samantha Downing.

About the book, from the publisher:

A retired serial killer’s quiet life is upended by an unexpected visitor. To protect her secret, there’s only one option left—what’s another murder? From bestselling author Samantha Downing.

Lottie Jones thought her crimes were behind her.

Decades earlier, she changed her identity and tucked herself away in a small town. Her most exciting nights are the weekly bingo games at the local church and gossiping with her friends.

When investigative journalist Plum Dixon shows up on her doorstep asking questions about Lottie’s past and specifically her involvement with numerous unsolved cases, well, Lottie just can’t have that.

But getting away with murder is hard enough when you’re young. And when Lottie receives another annoying knock on the door, she realizes this crime might just be the death of her…

Visit Samantha Downing's website.

The Page 69 Test: My Lovely Wife.

The Page 69 Test: He Started It.

The Page 69 Test: For Your Own Good.

The Page 69 Test: A Twisted Love Story.

The Page 69 Test: Too Old for This.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best crime novels set in London

Mark Ellis is a thriller writer from Swansea and a former barrister and entrepreneur.

He is the creator of DCI Frank Merlin, an Anglo-Spanish police detective operating in World War 2 London. His books treat the reader to a vivid portrait of London during the war skillfully blended with gripping plots, political intrigue and a charismatic protagonist.

The newest title in the DCI Frank Merlin series is Death Of An Officer.

At The Strand Magazine Ellis tagged ten great crime novels set in London, all pre-dating the current century (to indicate that they have have stood the test of time). One title on the list:

Original Sin by PD James (1994)

Last in my list of great London crime books is one from another master female crime author, P.D. James. She wrote 15 detective novels featuring her policeman hero Inspector Adam Dalgleish. Original Sin is Number 9 in the series. In this story, Dalgleish investigates the murder of the managing director of a London publishing house. The victim has many enemies and there are more murders as the Inspector unravels a tangled story. Marvellous.

Read about another entry on Ellis's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Anderson Hagler's "Sins of Excess"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Sins of Excess: The Spatial Politics of Idolatry and Magic in Colonial Mexico by Anderson Hagler.

About the book, from the publisher:

For the Spanish colonizers of Mexico in the sixteenth century, the concept of “excess”—even the word itself—covered a multitude of sins, including idolatry and magic. In Sins of Excess, Anderson Hagler uses the language of excess as a lens for examining how the colonizers of New Spain conflated cultural diversity into a superficially—and usefully—homogeneous whole under the pejorative umbrella of excess in its many forms. In this way, Hagler suggests, deploying excess and its derivatives influenced how Spanish colonists came to view the practices of the Indigenous population.

In the viceroyalty of New Spain descriptive terms such as “harms and excesses” (daños y excesos) not only referred to crimes like murder and robbery (muertes y robos) but also became generalized to refer to Native religious, social, or cultural practices that fell outside the boundaries of Catholic orthodoxy. A reading of royal decrees and ecclesiastical missives, commoner testimony from criminal cases, and the trials of the Mexican Inquisition reveals a calculated rhetorical strategy that gathered non-European social-cultural experiences into a negative category. Consequently, “excess” provides an analytical framework for understanding how colonial officials interacted with Indigenous peoples and those of African descent as they attempted to impose social order.

While primary sources in non-European languages such as Nahuatl reveal a similar preoccupation with excess, Hagler reveals in this insightful book how incongruities between Nahua and Spanish interpretations of the term extended through the colonial era and generated increasing conflict.

Visit Anderson Hagler's website.

The Page 99 Test: Sins of Excess.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Beth Morrey reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Beth Morrey, author of Isabella's Not Dead.

Her entry begins:

I tend to read in fits and starts – maybe three books in a week and then nothing at all for three weeks; it’s very erratic. I also don’t read very much when I’m writing, as it’s too tempting to copy the style of the book I’m reading. On holiday, I binge-read, and I’ve just been to Cornwall for two weeks, so I’ve got a few stone-cold bangers under my belt:

Annie Bot, by Sierra Greer

This was recommended by a writer friend and is absolutely outstanding. It’s a lightly speculative novel about the relationship between a man and a robot-woman. She’s virtually indistinguishable from a human and is programmed to be autodidactic so she learns from cues and interactions with others. The relationship between Annie and her ‘owner’ Doug is fascinating, creepy and completely gripping, exploring coercive control, autonomy and equality. It’s like Westworld meets Anora, but so much more – a tale told incredibly tightly, with great nuance and compassion. I really loved it and it was one of those books that felt...[read on]

About Isabella's Not Dead, from the publisher:

A hilarious and thought-provoking murder mystery about the death of a friendship, and one woman’s quest to track down the best friend who disappeared, for fans of Where'd You Go, Bernadette.

Isabella’s NOT dead.

That’s what Gwen tells anyone who asks about the friend who ghosted them all fifteen years ago. But if Isabella’s not dead, then where is she? And why did she leave, just when Gwen needed her most?

Freshly fifty-three, out of a job, and with children who are starting to fly the nest, Gwen decides to turn detective. Setting out to solve the mystery, Gwen embarks on an adventure across England—then across Europe—that will test her marriage and put her on a collision course with reluctant acquaintances, a mother-in-law best described as eccentric, and a rabbit hole full of clues. But Isabella’s not the only one who’s lost.

A tale of deep, frayed friendship, fractured memories, and skewed perspectives, Isabella’s Not Dead is the story of one woman’s quest to reclaim her best friend—and herself.

Visit Beth Morrey's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Beth Morrey & Polly.

The Page 69 Test: The Love Story of Missy Carmichael.

My Book, The Movie: The Love Story of Missy Carmichael.

Q&A with Beth Morrey.

The Page 69 Test: Delphine Jones Takes a Chance.

My Book, The Movie: Delphine Jones Takes a Chance.

Writers Read: Beth Morrey (April 2022).

Writers Read: Beth Morrey.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Arbor Sloane

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

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

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

What's in a name?

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

Follow Arbor Sloane on Instagram.

The Page 69 Test: Not Who You Think.

Q&A with Arbor Sloane.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top thrillers set in small town America

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

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

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

James Dickey, Deliverance

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

Read about another entry on the list.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

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

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

About the book, from the publisher:

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

A beautiful landscape . . .

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

A looming threat . . .

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

A killer closing in . . .

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

Follow Stig Abell on Instagram and Threads.

Q&A with Stig Abell.

The Page 69 Test: The Burial Place.

--Marshal Zeringue

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Visit D.W. Buffa's website.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Visit Nolan Chase's website.

Writers Read: Nolan Chase.

The Page 69 Test: A Lonesome Place for Dying.

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

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

--Marshal Zeringue

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

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

About the book, from the publisher:

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

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

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

Visit Bailey Brown's website.

The Page 99 Test: Kindergarten Panic.

--Marshal Zeringue

The ten best fashion history books for beginners

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

Sex and Suits: The Evolution of Modern Dress

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

Read about another title on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Stig Abell

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

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

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

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

Follow Stig Abell on Instagram and Threads.

Q&A with Stig Abell.

--Marshal Zeringue