Pg. 99: Robert K. Brigham's "This Is a True War Story"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: This Is a True War Story: My Improbable History with Vietnam by Robert K. Brigham.

About the book, from the publisher:

A personal account by a war historian and adoptee who discovers his biological father was a famous Marine combat photographer in Vietnam.

Robert K. Brigham has had a substantial career as a historian of the Vietnam War, with a hand in nine books, a documentary, public history projects, and more. While many a historian has felt compelled at some point to write about a subject close to them personally, Brigham did not think he was doing that. But, at age fifty-eight, Brigham, who had long known he was adopted, discovered that he’d improbably and unknowingly been studying and talking about his biological father for decades. That man, Bruce Atwell, was a Marine Corps photographer who took some of that war’s most indelible and widely reproduced pictures. Brigham had used those images over and over again in decades’ worth of classes and public lectures, never knowing the truth.

Both Brigham and Atwell were products of the American foster care and adoption system, and both were defined professionally by Vietnam. In a story shot through with echoes and shadows, Brigham not only reveals his own history as an adoptee but opens a startlingly fresh vantage on the fragility of American families; the power of social norms and taboos to shape lives; and the forces that inequitably disrupt families, not least of them war. The result is an accessible and moving book that is at once both a powerful personal story and an illuminating social critique.

Learn more about This Is a True War Story at the University of Chicago Press website.

The Page 99 Test: This Is a True War Story.

--Marshal Zeringue

Third reading: D.W. Buffa on "The Golden Bowl" by Henry James

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 covers The Golden Bowl by Henry James. It begins:

The novel is no longer a serious art form and has not been for a great many years. What is called a novel today is seldom more than a reader’s excuse for wasting time, a few hundred pages of mindless violence or insipid romance filled with characters who cannot speak in more than single sentences and, if they think at all, think only of themselves, what they want, what they have to have. We were warned this would happen. In 1936, when F. Scott Fitzgerald was forty, he wrote about why the novel - the serious novel - had begun to fall from favor, and why the situation would become even worse:

I saw the novel, which at my maturity was the strongest and supplest medium for conveying thought and emotion from one human being to another, was becoming subordinated to a mechanized and communal art that…was capable of reflecting only the tritest thought, the most obvious emotion. It was an art in which words were subordinate to images, where personality was worn down to the inevitable low gear of subordination. As long past as 1930, I had a hunch that the talkies would make the best-selling novelist as archaic as silent pictures.

This was not the first time someone insisted that the novel was in serious danger. Fitzgerald’s complaint that literature was losing its influence, that the motion picture was on its way to replacing the novel in the estimation of even the reading public, had been made years before the first motion picture. In 1891, Henry James was certain that the novel faced no greater danger than the magazines and newspapers, the mass publications to which the reading public had become more or less addicted. These were the publications in which the practice of literary criticism had reached a new low. It flowed “through the periodical press like a river that has burst its dikes.” It was a catastrophe; nothing less than “the failure of distinction, the failure of style, the failure of knowledge, the failure of thought.” Literature, which lives “upon example, upon perfection wrought,” he thought might not survive it. Books in great numbers were being sold, stories of all kinds, but...[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; The City And Man; "The Use And Abuse Of History"; I, Claudius; The Closing of The American Mind; History of Rome; Before The Deluge; Herodotus's Histories; The Education of Henry Adams; Duff Cooper’s Talleyrand; The Golden Bowl.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five great thrillers where writers are at the center of the action

Jamie Day, author of the new Beach Thriller, lives in one of those picture-perfect, coastal New England towns you see in the movies. And just like the movies, Day has two children and an adorable dog to fawn over. When not writing or reading, Day enjoys yoga, the ocean, cooking, and long walks on the beach with the dog, or the kids, or sometimes both.

At CrimeReads the author tagged "five books I’d recommend that give an inside look at the life (and grief) of a wordsmith," including:

The Plot — Jean Hanff Korelitz

I read this book the way I’d watch a car crash—one eye closed. It was quite distressing how accurate it felt—that quiet desperation, yearning to have a book that everyone wants to read. I’d venture to guess many writers who say they’re happy to toil in obscurity are lying. Everyone wants some recognition for their hard work—it’s just human nature to want to be successful. But thank goodness most of us have governors on our ambition. Otherwise, we writers might do as washed-up novelist Jacob Finch Bonner did, and steal the manuscript of a dead writing student and pass it off as his own. Naturally, the book is a hit (wouldn’t be much of a story otherwise), but all that glitters…well, the writer in me will let you finish the cliché. History would have been a good guide for Jacob, for there is no more surefire way to ensure one’s own downfall than to deceive the world.

Read about another novel on the list.

The Plot is among Peggy Townsend's four top academia-centered mysteries, Ayden LeRoux's seven top books about authorship hoaxes, Jane L. Rosen's nine books about book people, Elyse Friedman's eight novels featuring schemers & opportunists, E.G. Scott's five best books-within-books, Kimberly Belle's four thrillers with maximum escapism, and Louise Dean's top ten novels about novelists.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with DeAndra Davis

From my Q&A with DeAndra Davis, author of The Lovers, the Liars, and Me:

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

Titles are widely important to me and the first thing that I consider is not hating my title because I’ll have to say it so often once it’s chosen and out there. I like for titles to do at least half the heavy lifting as well. I don’t like for them to be so divorced from the book that you don’t know what to expect. I like for them to leave a little mystery but also be connected enough that you can understand it once you’ve read the book.

I definitely agonized over my title a bit because originally it had a title that really took you right into the story and the fleeting nature of my main character leaning into this single summer, but that title happened to already be in use by a really recent book, so I pivoted.

Ultimately, I decided to lean into the tarot and secret elements of the story, thinking to myself, what tarot card really represents the book and landed on the lovers. From there, the rest of the title came easily because of how trapped my character is with her love triangle, her tarot, and her secrets. It’s all entangled and I love that...[read on]

Visit DeAndra Davis's website. She can be found on most socials @DeAndraWrites.

My Book, The Movie: The Lovers, the Liars, and Me.

Writers Read: DeAndra Davis.

Q&A with DeAndra Davis.

--Marshal Zeringue

Christine Gunderson's "Behind White Picket Fences," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Behind White Picket Fences: A Novel by Christine Gunderson.

The entry begins:

One of the questions I am most often asked at book club meetings is this: Who would play the characters if my book were made into a movie?

I never know how to answer this question because inside my head, the people in my book are people, not characters, and I have a really hard time imagining them as anyone else, even famous actors.

But as release day approaches, I finally sat down and gave this question some serious thought.

Behind White Picket Fences is a book about three mothers who decide to take a break from modern motherhood. In the process, they try to re-create the kind of childhood they experienced as kids. Astute readers will notice subtle references to Leave It To Beaver, a TV show representing an idealized, bygone America.

Therefore, the character of Dottie in Behind White Picket Fences would be played by Barbara Billingsley, best known for her iconic role as June Cleaver, the perfect 1950’s era housewife and mother in Leave it to Beaver.

And yes, I realize this talented actress passed away in 2010 at the age of 94, but since we’re dream casting this movie, we can pretend she is still with us, lovely and gracious and in her prime.

The three modern moms in Behind White Picket Fences are easier to cast. Piper, the no-nonsense former diplomatic security agent would be played by...[read on]

Visit Christine Gunderson's website.

Q&A with Christine Gunderson.

My Book, The Movie: Behind White Picket Fences.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top soccer books

One title on Tertulia's list of ten soccer titles to read during World Cup 2026:

The Messi Effect: How the Global Legend Changed the Future of American Soccer
Paul Tenorio

When Lionel Messi arrived in Miami, a struggling MLS club became a global brand almost overnight. The Athletic's Paul Tenorio goes behind the closed doors of league offices, ownership meetings, and locker rooms to trace how a single player altered the trajectory of soccer in the United States—and exposed the growing intersection of sport, celebrity, and billion-dollar business.

Read about another title on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Daniel N. Jones's "Falling Fast"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Falling Fast: The Perils and Possibilities of Emophilia by Daniel N. Jones.

About the book, from the publisher:

A unique look at emophilia--the tendency to fall in love fast, easily, and often--and the profound impact it has on our lives and the lives of those around us.

Why do some people fall in love in an instant--again and again--while others take months or even years?

Across cultures, the concept of "love at first sight" has captivated us across recorded history. We all seem to know at least one hopeless romantic who falls quickly and easily, and while it's easy to dismiss this, only recently have we begun to study it from a psychological standpoint. In this book, social and personality psychologist Daniel N. Jones explores the fascinating science behind the tendency to fall in love fast, easily, and often. This groundbreaking book introduces emophilia--a powerful but often overlooked personality trait that influences how we connect, commit, and sometimes crash in our romantic lives. It draws upon cutting-edge research to explore topics like why some people are wired for whirlwind romances, risks behind what is known as "emotional promiscuity"--including infidelity and toxic partners--and impacts on emotional wellbeing.

With its fresh lens on love, intimacy, and the psychology of connection, this insightful, provocative, and deeply human book, offers a refined understanding of people who fall in love quickly and deeply--and sometimes out of love just as fast.

Visit Daniel N. Jones's website.

The Page 99 Test: Falling Fast.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Shana Galen's "A Shop Girl's Guide to Wooing a Lord"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: A Shop Girl's Guide to Wooing a Lord (The Heiress Hunters) by Shana Galen.

About the novel, from the publisher:

A down-on-her-luck shop girl and the son of an earl find they have more in common than they thought—including sexual chemistry they can’t resist—in this fresh Regency romance by Shana Galen.

Tamsin Archer might just be having the worst year of her life. And that’s saying something, considering her father is dead, her mother was maimed at work, and her family regularly sleeps under London’s bridges. But when her younger siblings go missing, Tamsin decides it’s time to step up and fight.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, and Tamsin’s more than willing to take a few risks to reunite with her siblings. But while disguising herself to sneak into homes and steal from the rich, Tamsin is caught by Garret Kildare, the second son of an earl. Much to Tamsin’s surprise, Garret doesn’t want to turn her in. He wants to help her. Though Tamsin’s wary—she’s learned to never trust supposed “good luck”—the unlikely pair form an alliance, one that quickly muddles their class differences.

Garret knows he must be careful. Falling for a woman of a lower class could be the nail in the coffin for his family’s tenuous social standing, and there are eyes everywhere. Ignoring their attraction proves impossible, though, and soon the lines they’ve drawn around their partnership begin to blur. As more focus lands on Tamsin and Garret, they wonder if their red-hot connection means giving up everything—and everyone—they’ve ever known.

Visit Shana Galen's website.

The Page 69 Test: A Shop Girl's Guide to Wooing a Lord.

--Marshal Zeringue

Three top nonfiction books for Caribbean Heritage Month

At Book Riot Kendra Winchester tagged three top nonfiction books for Caribbean Heritage Month, including:

The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe by Marlene L. Daut

This one’s for the history lovers who adore diving into a tome of a book. In The First and Last King of Haiti, Yale scholar Marlene L. Daut explores the life of Henry Christophe, a complex figure in Haitian history. Born to an enslaved mother in Grenada, Christophe would go on to be a key leader in Haiti’s revolution for independence. Eventually, he would go on to declare himself King of Haiti, but died by suicide nine years later.

Read about another title on the list.

The Page 99 Test The First and Last King of Haiti.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Thomas Douglas's "Protecting Minds"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Protecting Minds: The Right Against Mental Interference by Thomas Douglas.

About the book, from the publisher:

It is widely accepted that we each possess a right against interference with our bodies. In this book, Thomas Douglas argues that we also possess an analogous right against interference with our minds. He defends the existence of this right―both by appealing to intuitions regarding cases and by invoking the notion of self-ownership―and he describes its content and contours.

In Douglas' view, the right against mental interference protects us against actions that significantly alter our mental states and operate via processes that are insensitive to the reasons that bear on the mental alteration. The interventions that most obviously infringe the right are 'nonconsensual neurointerventions'―interventions that alter a person's mental states by physically modulating their brain states, and are performed without the target's consent. But Douglas argues that some psychological forms of influence can infringe the right too. Examples include the use of subliminal imagery and conditioning-based interventions, such as the use of loot boxes in computer games.

This book contributes both to the increasingly vigorous debate over 'neurorights' and to the wider discussion of the ethics of mental and behavioural influence. Such discussion has traditionally treated manipulation, coercion and persuasion as the most important categories of influence; this volume introduces mental interference as a further category warranting attention.

Learn more about Protecting Minds at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Protecting Minds.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Tracy Lynne Oliver

From my Q&A with Tracy Lynne Oliver, author of Magician:

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

I really struggled with titling my book. The story started with a powerful image; an old black man, head in his hands, sitting on the edge of a bed in a decrepit hotel room or some sort of run-down apartment. I needed to write his story. After putting words down, and learning where it was going, I eventually just used Magician as a working title. I referred to my work in progress as such until the book was complete.

But when the novel was finished, the question I asked myself was what to call it. I did my best to come up with alternatives but nothing else seemed to fit. I kept Magician.

As the book’s story takes you through the life journey of one man, Magician doesn’t seem to capture what the totality of the book is. Magician is only the final version of this man. His story begins even before he is the Boy. So, it might not be the best representation of what the novel is fully about, but it does highlight the gravitas of what he becomes and...[read on]

Visit Tracy Lynne Oliver's website.

Q&A with Tracy Lynne Oliver.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top thrillers with troubled parent-child relationships

Leah Rowan is an author living in Brooklyn and the Catskills.

Marion is her new thriller.

Megan Collins, author of Cross My Heart, called Marion a "pitch-perfect thriller that feels like the primal scream every woman has been holding back her entire life."

At CrimeReads Rowan tagged "six scintillating stories where the parent-child relationship is a little (or a lot) off." One title on the list:

Zoje Stage, Baby Teeth

Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage has quickly become a classic of the parent-child relationship gone wrong trope, right alongside mainstays such as The Bad Seed. It tracks Suzette and her seven-year-old daughter Hanna, who’s been kicked out of almost every school she’s gone to, and has taken to torturing Suzette during their daily homeschooling, while always playing the perfect child when Daddy’s home.

A powerful exploration not only of mother-child dynamics but of the lengths men will go to not believe women, it’s a horror-thriller must-read that promises to keep you up long past bedtime.

Read about another thriller on the list.

Baby Teeth is among Sarah Pekkanen's five titles exploring twisted mother/daughter relationships, Leah Konen's seven thrillers that explore the darker side of motherhood, Rebecca Kelley's nine books featuring female villains who lean into their wickedness, Amber Garza's five titles featuring (possibly) murderous children, Christina Dalcher's seven crime books that challenge notions of inherent female goodness, May Cobb's five psychological thrillers featuring single-minded villains & anti-heroes, Jae-Yeon Yoo's top ten books about the promise & perils of alternative schooling, Pamela Crane's five top novels featuring parenting gone wild, Damien Angelica Walters's five titles about the horror of girlhood, and Sally Hepworth's eight messed up fictional families.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is DeAndra Davis reading?

Featured at Writers Read: DeAndra Davis, author of The Lovers, the Liars, and Me.

Her entry begins:

I always tackle a few books at a time because I’m a mood reader. Currently, I’m vacillating between books for pleasure and research (though the books for research are still pleasurable).

Immortal Dark by Tigest Girma is, for me, such a well-done work of mystery, dark academia, and fantasy. I really wanted to tap into this vampire story, especially pulling from the brevity of the chapters, the timing of reveals, and the tension between the main character and her antagonist because of how well written I believe it is. That tension especially. I...[read on]

About The Lovers, the Liars, and Me, from the publisher:

A teen travels to Jamaica hoping to answer questions about her absent mother, only to discover more about her identity than she could have ever expected—and find herself caught up in an unexpected love triangle—in this dazzling young adult coming-of-age novel by award-winning author DeAndra Davis.

Jaliya Powell has never had a real adventure, a real boyfriend, or spoken up for herself. She’s never even been kissed. Despite being valedictorian of her high school class, Jaliya is used to fading into the background.

But this summer will be different.

This summer, Jaliya is visiting her uncle and his family in Jamaica. Under the guise of one last vacation before college, she plans to find out more about her estranged mother, whose absence has remained an unspoken mystery. But things have changed in the seven years since Jaliya last visited. Her cousin has his own life and is reluctant to let Jaliya in, her childhood crush has only gotten hotter and more unavailable, and her aunt and uncle aren’t everything she remembered, either. Then she meets India, who’s vibrant, gorgeous, and free-spirited. And who makes Jaliya feel something she’s never felt before.

While searching for traces of her mother across the island, Jaliya finds herself entangled in complicated relationships, tricky secrets, and a passionate new love. As she navigates this perfectly complicated summer, Jaliya must choose between who she has always been or who she hopes to become.

Visit DeAndra Davis's website. She can be found on most socials @DeAndraWrites.

My Book, The Movie: The Lovers, the Liars, and Me.

Writers Read: DeAndra Davis.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Hilary Davidson's "Every Lie I Told"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Every Lie I Told by Hilary Davidson.

About the novel, from the publisher:

From bestselling and award-winning author Hilary Davidson, Every Lie I Told is a propulsive, twisty thriller about the devastating consequences of the lies we tell to protect others--and ourselves.

How far would you go to protect a killer?

Jackie Swift does whatever it takes to succeed. At work, she spins lies to protect questionable clients at a shady public-relations firm. At home, she helps her younger sister, Madi, evade consequences for dangerous choices she's made about friends and drugs. But Jackie's professional and personal worlds collide one night when she gets a call from Madi telling her she overdosed. Rushing to the rescue, Jackie stumbles on an awful scene at an Upper East Side mansion. Madi is nowhere to be found, but she's left behind a dead body.

Worse for Jackie, she knows the dead man all too well: He's her former boss and mentor, and she's been paid to cover up his crimes in the past.

Jackie is willing to do anything to protect her missing sister, even as the NYPD builds a case against Madi, who may be involved in the deaths of other sexually abusive men. As Jackie searches for her sister--and sets up plausible suspects to take Madi's place in the eyes of the police--she's haunted by the terrible things she's done in service of her career. And she soon discovers there are people who've been waiting in the shadows for a chance to take her down.

Visit the official Hilary Davidson site.

The Page 69 Test: The Damage Done.

The Page 69 Test: Blood Always Tells.

The Page 69 Test: One Small Sacrifice.

Writers Read: Hilary Davidson (July 2019).

The Page 69 Test: Don't Look Down.

The Page 69 Test: Her Last Breath.

Q&A with Hilary Davidson.

The Page 69 Test: Every Lie I Told.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top Gothic novels about cults

Catriona Silvey was born in Glasgow and grew up in Scotland and England. After collecting an unreasonable number of degrees from various universities in the UK and the US, she moved to Edinburgh where she lives with her husband and children. She is the author of Meet Me in Another Life (2021), Love and Other Paradoxes (2025), and the newly released Vervain Hollow.

At The Nerd Daily she tagged five "Gothic novels about cults, where the aesthetic and thematic tropes of the Gothic marry perfectly with the authors’ explorations of brainwashing, groupthink, and coercive control." One title on the list:

Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez

Part horror, part magic realism, Enriquez’s epic novel takes on the legacy of the Argentinian dictatorship through the story of a family entangled in a darkness-worshipping cult. Weaving back and forth through forty years, the story follows Juan and Rosario as they attempt to protect their son Gaspar from the machinations of the cult they are both deeply enmeshed in: Juan as the medium who can call the darkness into the human world, and Rosario as a privileged scion of the cult’s founding family.

What makes this novel Gothic is not just the surface elements – ghosts, family secrets, legacies of trauma – but the darkness within the characters: Juan and Rosario are trapped in the cult partly by their inability to let go of the power and prestige it offers. Meanwhile, the cult itself, and the colonial compound that serves as its stronghold, function as a clear allegory for the callousness of the rich and their complicity in the country’s suffering. Often deeply painful, the novel is also drenched in wonder and love of beauty, bringing an aching tenderness especially to the complicated father-son relationship between Juan and Gaspar.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Amelia Frank-Vitale's "Leave If You Can"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Leave If You Can: Migration and Violence in Bordered Worlds by Amelia Frank-Vitale.

About the book, from the publisher:

The consequences of U.S. border policies through the experiences of Honduran migrants.

Hondurans have been at the heart of some of the most visible migration phenomena in the last few years, as well as the direct target of anti-immigrant rhetoric and policy. In Leave If You Can, Amelia Frank-Vitale offers a detailed portrait of the Honduran exodus and what it reveals about the broader consequences of changing US border enforcement policies. She highlights the stories of those who are often presented as unsympathetic: deported young men implicitly associated with the very violence they are trying to flee. In the process, she challenges underlying assumptions frequently held by policy makers and humanitarian agencies.

Connecting overlapping regimes of mobility control, from the invisible gangland borders within San Pedro Sula to the growing expansiveness of the U.S. border's reach, this book shows how deportation does not deter migration but, in fact, keeps people moving, and how U.S. policies fuel the migration "crisis" they claim to address. Drawing from her own experiences accompanying migrant caravans over many years, Frank-Vitale also explores how caravans emerge as both protest movement and migration tactic in response to this expanding border regime.

Visit Amelia Frank-Vitale's website.

The Page 99 Test: Leave If You Can.

--Marshal Zeringue

DeAndra Davis's "The Lovers, the Liars, and Me," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Lovers, the Liars, and Me by DeAndra Davis.

The entry begins:

If it’s one thing I love, it’s a good face cast, and with this book, it was no different. I feel like The Lovers, the Liars, and Me is inherently visual with the descriptions of the island and locations. I tried to be lush and descriptive, and that also applies to characters in this love triangle romance meets contemporary drama. I definitely have a primary person in mind with my main character and her supporting cast of friends that I believe would bring the story to life.

Marsai Martin is my immediate choice for Jaliya. Marsai is a brilliant and gorgeous actress, and I know she could bring both the character to life aesthetically, and tap into that growth from hesitant, unsure teen to self-assured and confident. Marsai is also so funny, and I think she could get into the quippy banter the friend group has going in The Lovers, the Liars, and Me.

Jahi Winston would be my pick for...[read on]

Visit DeAndra Davis's website. She can be found on most socials @DeAndraWrites.

My Book, The Movie: The Lovers, the Liars, and Me.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven books about deep human-animal connections

Lauren Acampora is the author of The Animal Room, The Hundred Waters, The Paper Wasp, and The Wonder Garden. Her work has won or been nominated for the GLCA New Writers Award, the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, the Story Prize, and the New England Book Award, and she’s been named an Artist Fellow in Fiction by The New York Foundation for the Arts. Her writing has appeared in publications such as The Paris Review, One Story, and The New York Times Book Review and has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories.

At Lit Hub the author tagged "seven standout works of fiction that illuminate the inextricable links we share with our animal compatriots." One title on the list:

Sigrid Nunez, The Friend

Although this novel is already widely celebrated with its own movie adaptation, I can’t offer a list of books about humans and animals without it. Nunez offers a beautifully insightful and moving account of a solitary writer in Manhattan who inherits a massive Great Dane from her friend who has died by suicide. After she reluctantly agrees to steward him in her tiny studio apartment that does not allow pets, woman and dog find a bond in their shared mourning for their lost friend. Echoing the disorientation of grief, the novel doesn’t take the form of a straightforward story, but rather a mosaic of flashbacks, anecdotes, and reflections. The narrator’s thoughts about literature and the purpose of art are interlaced with historical vignettes and moments of absurdity familiar to any writer or teacher, while she simultaneously navigates the unlikely and sometimes comical situation of sharing a tiny space and public life with a giant animal. An unforgettable, silent friendship arises between woman and dog as they lean on each other, literally and figuratively. The novel includes what is, in my opinion, one of the best lines ever written about human-animal companionship, and one of my favorite literary quotes ever: “What are we…if not two solitudes that protect and border and greet each other?”

Read about another book on the list.

The Friend is among Eliza Smith's twenty books to help you navigate grief.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Gautham Rao's "White Power"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: White Power: Policing American Slavery by Gautham Rao.

About the book, from the publisher:

Beginning in the colonial era and growing through the American Revolution and the Southern plantation system, slaveholders’ violent police regime continued after Emancipation, through Reconstruction, to today. Moving across time, space, and place, White Power uncovers how slaveholders created their own white supremacist police and government to deny Black people rights, power, and humanity.

Legal historian Gautham Rao introduces us to laws that empowered white people to forcibly exercise their desired racial superiority over Black people, shows how they spread from the South throughout the nation, and traces the rebellions, fugitivity, activism, and legal systems that challenged them. Rao’s narrative includes slaveholders, lawmakers, and the Ku Klux Klan, dramatic escapes by runaway enslaved people, abolitionist activism in courtroom showdowns, and pitched battles between white paramilitaries and enslaved rebels. He offers a new interpretation of the history of policing in the US, centering the institution and legacy of slavery and speaking to the origins of today’s persistence of white vigilance, white supremacist militia groups, and white racist cops determined to maintain power over Black people by force. Equally determined, however, was Black Americans’ refusal to accept it.

Visit Gautham Rao's website.

The Page 99 Test: White Power.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Tessa Yang

From my Q&A with Tessa Yang, author of The Jellyfish Problem:

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

“Jellyfish problems” was the thoughtless title I gave the Microsoft Word file where I was writing. It evolved into the title of the book because, as it turned out, it was doing quite a bit to take readers into the story. What problem is being caused by a jellyfish? How will the characters solve it? The book actually sold as Clementine; or, The Jellyfish Problem, à la Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, and was shortened during edits to just The Jellyfish Problem. I appreciate that it’s a mysterious title with a touch of whimsy, like...[read on]

Visit Tessa Yang's website.

Q&A with Tessa Yang.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five dual-timeline historical fiction novels

Rachel Brittain is a writer, Day Dreamer, and Amateur Aerialist. Her short fiction has appeared in Luna Station Quarterly, Andromeda Spaceways, and others. She is a contributing editor for Book Riot, where she screams into the void about her love of books. Brittain lives in Northwest Arkansas with a rambunctious rescue pup, a snake, and a houseful of plants (most of which aren’t carnivorous).

At Book Riot she tagged "five dual-timeline historical fiction novels that bring past and present together." One entry on the list:

The Lost Book of Elizabeth Barton by Jennifer N. Brown

Tudor Era England and Present Day England

A scholar delving into the life of Reformation Era prophetess Elizabeth Barton jumps at the chance to join an elite consortium in England among a handful of fellow researchers—including her ex. Even better, the consortium takes place in an aging manor right next to the ruins of the priory where Barton once lived. But as the timeline jumps between Alison in the present day and Elizabeth in the 16th century, it becomes clear that the secret agendas taking place around these women could very well lead to their doom.

Read about another entry on the list.

Q&A with Jennifer N. Brown.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Kira Ganga Kieffer's "Unvaccinated Under God"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Unvaccinated Under God: Religion and Vaccine Hesitancy in Modern America by Kira Ganga Kieffer.

About the book, from the publisher:

How vaccine hesitancy can be understood as religious expression

Vaccine hesitancy in America didn’t begin with the uproar over the mRNA vaccines for Covid-19. The late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries saw resistance to a wide variety of vaccines. In Unvaccinated Under God, Kira Ganga Kieffer shows that debates over vaccine safety and mandatory vaccination were about more than diseases or injections. They have been proxies for existential concerns about justice and morality. Kieffer argues that vaccine hesitancy in the U.S. should be understood as religious expression—not as the product of scientific misinformation.

Through a series of historical case studies, which range from the “mother warriors” who claimed a link between the MMR vaccine and autism during the 1990s to opposition to masking and vaccines during the Covid-19 pandemic, Kieffer frames vaccination controversies as contests over religious freedom and moral authority. These debates concerned bodily, spiritual, and sexual purity; the morality of state-mandated medical risk; the importance of children; and the authority of parents and doctors. Kieffer explains that diverse groups of Americans utilized religious ideals and practices to question or resist vaccination. With this new, illuminating perspective on vaccine hesitancy, Kieffer offers a novel and even-handed way to understand Americans’ changing and increasingly divided attitudes toward biomedical knowledge and technology. Her account offers readers an accessible set of tools for how to “think with religion” when it comes to contemporary contests over medical authority.

Visit Kira Ganga Kieffer's website.

The Page 99 Test: Unvaccinated Under God.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Kerri Hakoda's "Too Deep to Cross"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Too Deep to Cross: A Thriller by Kerri Hakoda.

About the novel, from the publisher:

Homicide Detective DeHavilland Beans is back in his hometown with a case much more dangerous—and personal—than it seems.

Told through multiple points of view, this thrilling sequel to Cold to the Touch is perfect for fans of Alice Henderson and Dana Stabenow.

A shocking discovery on a remote beach brings Detective DeHavilland Beans back to his Yukon River hometown—and a missing person's case turns into a murder investigation. On administrative leave after an unsettling officer-involved shooting, Beans comes to the aid of his childhood friend and sole police officer in the village, Felicia Gunnerson, who is leading the case.

The new evidence suggests the missing man, Lloyd Paul, the overindulged scion of a prominent family, was murdered. Lloyd had a contentious relationship with many of the locals, especially with Beans and his mother, Mari.

As Beans and Felicia dig deeper, events that neither of them could have predicted are set in motion. Meanwhile, in the San Francisco Bay Area, Mari uncovers secrets that threaten to rewrite the Beans family’s history.

Spanning a sprawling time frame ranging from World War II to the present day, the danger has never felt closer to home.

Visit Kerri Hakoda's website.

Writers Read: Kerri Hakoda.

Q&A with Kerri Hakoda.

The Page 69 Test: Too Deep to Cross.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five great mysteries set in the Boston area

Hannah Selinger is a James Beard Award-nominated lifestyle writer and mother of two based in Boxford, MA, and the author of the memoir Cellar Rat: My Life in the Restaurant Underbelly. Her print and digital work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, Eater, Travel + Leisure, Food & Wine, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and elsewhere. Her 2021 Bon Appétit essay, “In My Childhood Kitchen, I Learned Both Fear and Love,” is anthologized in the 2022 Best American Food Writing collection.

Selinger's new novel is Valley of the Moms.

At CrimeReads the author tagged "five titles, set in Massachusetts towns, [that] bring together people, plot, and place." One novel on the list:

Peter Swanson, Kill Your Darlings

Set in a fictional town on my own North Shore, Swanson’s 2025 book chronicles a murder and its underpinnings in reverse; the book begins with a deed that readers must travel backwards in time to understand. Thom and Wendy Graves, spouses for over two decades, have a secret, and that secret has ultimately eroded their relationship in the present tense.

Working backwards, Swanson carefully unveils a series of acts, executed at the start of their marriage, that has set in motion the inevitable end of their union. Brooding and thoughtful, the book’s nuance hinges on its sense of place, a small Massachusetts town where just about anything can happen.

Read about another novel on the list.

Kill Your Darlings is among Addison Rizer's top six thrillers about marriage.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Molly Hales's "Vital Ties"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Vital Ties: Digitally Mediated Intimacies with the Dead by Molly Hales.

About the book, from the publisher:

Vital Ties depicts an emergent form of intimacy with the dead mediated by digital technologies. In southern Australia, a game developer crafts a virtual reality experience, reuniting his best friend with an avatar of his late father. In Northern California, a woman creates a smartphone app to log moments in which her deceased mother appears. In Chicago, a high school teacher visits her late brother's Facebook page, hypnotized by the shifting content that animates and reanimates him. As digital media offer ways to bring the dead to presence, the living and the dead are haunted in new ways, affecting relationships to both media and death. Lyrical and moving, Vital Ties offers a powerful rethinking of death, memory, and mediation in the digital age.

Learn more about Vital Ties at the Cornell University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Vital Ties.

--Marshal Zeringue

Samantha Silva's "Sometime This Century," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Sometime This Century: A Regency Rom-Com by Samantha Silva.

The entry begins:

Sometime This Century is a swoon-worthy love story wrapped in a time-travel rom-com that finds my bookish, Jane-Austen loving, wannabe writer heroine, Annabel Blake, transported to the Regency era where she might just have everything she’s ever wished for, including the attentions of the dashing Henry Leighton D’Evercy. But when she and her companions—her party-girl-slash-influencer sister Cassie and ex-boyfriend Billy—find themselves trapped in the year 1815 and have to figure out how to make a life there, the stakes couldn't be higher.

Funnily, the novel began life as a screenplay 25 years ago, so I’ve had lots of time to think about who might play these roles. Having cut my teeth as a screenwriter, I tend to cast as I go, usually with someone in mind, at least as a type. That said, most of the actors on my dream list have aged out of the roles! The conversations with my twenty-something daughter (resident casting director) start with, “Who’s the young Rachel McAdams. The next Elle Fanning? Is there a Colin Firth I should know about?”

The heroine of Sometime This Century is Annabel Blake, a 22-year-old lit-nerd who’s always felt she was born in the wrong century. Her skin is untouched by sun or ink and she might just be wearing vintage Laura Ashley with a pair of ballet flats. Fina Strazza, the Tony-nominated star of John Proctor is the Villain, would be right at home in the Regency world of Annabel's beloved Jane Austen. And she looks like...[read on]

Visit Samantha Silva's website.

Q&A with Samantha Silva.

The Page 69 Test: Sometime This Century.

Writers Read: Samantha Silva.

My Book, The Movie: Sometime This Century.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six books with actually realistic sex

Brodie Crellin lives in London and is an editor at Granta Magazine.

A Sense of Occasion is their first novel.

At Lit Hub the author tagged six books by "writers whose depictions of sex had most closely held my attention." One title on the list:

Vox by Nicholson Baker

Abby and Jim meet on the phone. They’ve both signed up to an erotic hotline, and the novel follows the shape of their conversation. This couple is horny, open minded, and capable of locating the weird and crooked details that give a sexual encounter its charge. I read Vox on the train, in the space of a few hours, submitting completely to the back and forth between two unruly, associative minds. But the images that linger aren’t explicitly sexual. Baker notices everything—objects, textures and packaging matter in this novel. When I think about this book, what I remember most is the description of the blanket tossed across Jim and his coworker as they masturbate together, I think about the plaid pattern and the way it tents and collapses on top of them. People on Reddit have described Vox as prose porn, which feels unfair. Porn favors universality, simple stories that allow for projection, but in this book, it is the detail, how closely Baker pays attention, that makes the climaxes and connections sexy.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Roy A. Meals's "Ligaments"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Ligaments: Appreciating the Bands That Bind Us by Roy A. Meals.

About the book, from the publisher:

A lively tour through the biology, health, human performance, and popular culture of our bodies' essential connective tissue.

Ligaments are the quiet workhorses of the human body. They anchor our bones, guide our movements, and protect our joints—yet they remain largely unseen and misunderstood. In Ligaments: Appreciating the Bands that Bind Us, orthopedic surgeon and acclaimed science writer Roy A. Meals explores anatomy, biology, history, health, human performance, and popular culture to unlock the mysteries of ligaments. Completing a trilogy that began with Bones and Muscle, this richly illustrated volume offers a wide-ranging exploration of the anatomy, history, injuries, and cultural relevance of ligaments.

These bone-to-bone connectors are the critical linking mechanisms that allow our muscles to produce purposeful movement. Dr. Meals explains how ligaments stabilize the skeleton like hinge pins on a door, resist the forces of gravity in the face and breasts, and contribute to feats of athleticism, contortion, and childbirth. Readers will learn how ligaments are stronger than steel, how they recover from injury (or fail to), and how they can be stretched, stiffened, or surgically replaced. He also clarifies the differences among ligaments, tendons, and fascia, and why some people are "double-jointed" and others are not. Covering current and emerging treatments for ligament injuries, including artificial and engineered ligaments, the book provides practical insights into maintaining joint stability and flexibility across the lifetime.

Whether examining career-ending sports injuries, congenital laxity, or the elasticity of the vocal cords, Dr. Meals builds a case for why ligaments deserve center stage in our understanding of movement and health.

Visit Roy A. Meals's website.

The Page 99 Test: Ligaments.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Ilona Bannister reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Ilona Bannister, author of Five: A Novel.

Her entry begins:

I love learning from other writers. Reading a wide range of authors and genres while I’m writing is part research, part search for inspiration, and part coaching session in craft. To write Five, I drew from fiction and non-fiction to inform my characters’ lives and to keep suspense-building at the forefront of my mind. I have learned that the stories and facts I take from books to fill up my subconscious may seem unrelated at the time that I read them, but they always work themselves into my fiction in unexpected ways. One of the best non-fiction books I have ever read for research was Unnatural Causes by Dr. Richard Shepherd. He is the UK’s most distinguished forensic pathologist, and this book is as much a memoir of an extraordinary career as it is a fascinating, factual examination of the social importance of this little understood but absolutely vital work. I have no medical background and I’m not a scientifically oriented person, which made this book doubly intriguing and unputdownable because it taught me about a profession I knew nothing about, but which we should all be very...[read on]

About Five, from the publisher:

Five lives. Five stories. Four will live—one will die. Who it will be? In this slow-burn masterpiece of psychological fiction, the choice is all yours.

Have you ever tried to pass the time by imagining the lives of the strangers standing next to you? Ilona Bannister’s Five introduces readers to five seemingly random people waiting for a train. But these are not just any five people. From the beginning we know that one of them is going to die soon. Very soon. In five minutes the next train to London will arrive, killing one of them. But before this happens you will learn their stories.

None of these people are saints. Readers might fall in love with the beautiful young man who is on the verge of gambling his life away. They may pity the cantankerous old woman who has fallen to the ground yet is refusing help. Perhaps readers will look away from the child throwing a tantrum. Or judge his mother, who must surely be to blame. And some will be curiously compelled by the successful and damaged businessman orbiting them all.

These are the candidates for this morning’s misfortune. But they don’t know it. Only you know. And you, our complicit reader, will not be able to resist deciding who deserves to walk away, and who deserves only five more minutes to live.

An incredibly original novel that breaks the fourth wall and asks the reader to be judge, jury, and executioner, Five looks at some of the most complicated issues of contemporary life: motherhood, disability, addiction. Every stranger has a story. And in Ilona Bannister’s skillful hands, five people’s stories come together to create an unforgettable novel.

Visit Ilona Bannister's website.

Q&A with Ilona Bannister.

The Page 69 Test: When I Ran Away.

Writers Read: Ilona Bannister.

--Marshal Zeringue