Five top Shakespeare-inspired novels

Rebecca Fallon is a New England-born Londoner and a graduate of Williams College and the University of Oxford.

Family Drama is her debut novel.

At Lit Hub she tagged five titles that make for:

a masterclass in how to steal from Shakespeare, featuring some world-class thieves. Each story contains shades of its foundation. All deal in Shakespeare’s timeless themes of power and family, loss and love. All strike at the most profound elements of life. But each also departs in truly original ways, allowing the author to express something honest and new through the conversation with the source.

One novel on the list:

Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven

Station Eleven opens with a Toronto-based production of Lear starring the famous actor, Arthur Leander. Leander is Lear-like offstage as well; his life is defined by three women, “a series of failed marriages,” that leave him regretful and unsure of who loves him and how much. On the night he has a heart attack onstage, a curtain falls over the whole world as a highly contagious flu becomes a full-blown pandemic. In the ensuing chaos, North America comes to resemble Lear’s Britain: a society without order or leadership, defined by acts of arbitrary justice and violence. Both texts wonder, who will inherit this “gored state?” But for Mandel’s characters, apocalypse is only the beginning.

Twenty-years after the catastrophe, one young actor from Leander’s last production, Kirsten Raymonde, takes on the role of Cordelia within a roaming theatre troupe. Along their journey, she finds herself constantly looking for Arthur, as Cordelia attempts to “search every acre in the high-grown field,” for her lost father. She collects clippings of him from old magazines, stores them in a plastic bag. She tells other members of the ensemble about him, and this act of recounting feels a means of keeping him (and his world) alive.

From the beginning, the novel is engaged with Shakespeare’s works as embodied performances that spark various reactions and interpretations in an audience. Some characters treat Shakespeare’s words with utter reverence, and others who find him “insufferable.” Regardless, the companies who bring them to life are bound together by deep bonds of trust and a love for stories that transcend centuries. Unlike Lear, Mandel’s novel is threaded with hope—often in the act of performance itself. Even the most tragic art is a form of salvation.

Read about another title on the list.

Station Eleven is among Lauren Wilson's eight top books featuring cults, Barnaby Martin's seven titles featuring parents & children at the end of the world, Brittany K. Allen's ten books that get the theatre world right, Jeanette Horn's nine twisted novels about theatrical performers, Isabelle McConville's fifteen books for fans of the post-apocalyptic TV-drama Fallout, Joanna Quinn's six best books set in & around the theatrical world, Carolyn Quimby's 38 best dystopian novels, Tara Sonin's seven books for fans of Margaret Atwood's The Testaments, Maggie Stiefvater's five fantasy books about artists & the magic of creativity, Mark Skinner's five top literary dystopias, Claudia Gray's five essential books about plagues and pandemics, K Chess's five top fictional books inside of real books, Rebecca Kauffman's ten top musical novels, Nathan Englander’s ten favorite books, M.L. Rio’s five top novels inspired by Shakespeare, Anne Corlett's five top books with different takes on the apocalypse, Christopher Priest’s five top sci-fi books that make use of music, and Anne Charnock's five favorite books with fictitious works of art.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is S.J. Rozan reading?

Featured at Writers Read: S. J. Rozan, author of First Do No Harm: A Lydia Chin/Bill Smith Mystery.

Her entry begins:

I've just finished one book and am starting another. Both are non-fiction, which I read a lot.

The first is Kate Fox's Watching the English. Fox, a British anthropologist, decided to turn the participant-observer techniques she uses on foreign societies back onto her own people, to see if she could find the essential nature of "Englishness." It's sharply observed and in places very funny. I'm writing a new series set in London so I thought I'd try to increase my understanding of my characters and their...[read on]

About First Do No Harm, from the publisher:

In the latest novel in S. J. Rozan’s groundbreaking mystery series, Lydia Chin and Bill Smith face a dangerous task: they must unlock a hospital's many secrets in order to save an innocent man.

With River Valley Hospital in the midst of negotiations to avert a nurses' strike, a wealthy benefactor is set to give a large donation to honor of the Chief of Emergency Medicine: Dr. Elliott Chin, the brother of private investigator Lydia Chin.

Before the donation can be finalized, a member of the nurses' negotiating committee is found murdered. A morgue assistant is arrested and although he denies even knowing the victim his father and brother, both doctors at the hospital, are quick to urge him to take a plea. Another negotiating committee member abruptly resigns and a senior biomedical technician disappears. An officially off-limits section of the hospital basement turns out to be a hotbed of unauthorized—and in some cases criminal—activity.

Hired by the arrested man's lawyer, Lydia Chin and her partner Bill Smith start to dig into the events and personnel at the hospital. Among the union disputes, blackmail, thefts, lies, and a detective who really, really doesn't like them, one thing becomes clear: the dictum to "First Do No Harm” is not in effect at River Valley. As time runs short, Lydia and Bill face a complicated and dangerous task: they must unlock the hospital's secrets to save an innocent man.

Visit S.J. Rozan's website.

The Page 69 Test: Paper Son.

The Page 69 Test: The Art of Violence.

Q&A with S. J. Rozan.

Writers Read: S.J. Rozan (February 2022).

The Page 69 Test: Family Business.

Writers Read: S. J. Rozan (November 2023).

The Page 69 Test: The Mayors of New York.

The Page 69 Test: First Do No Harm.

Writers Read: S. J. Rozan.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five novels that celebrate Mesoamerican cultures & mythologies

Angela Montoya has been obsessed with the magic of storytelling since she was a little girl. She hasn’t seen a day without a book in her hand, a show tune in her mind, or a movie quote on her lips. She is the author of Sinner's Isle and A Cruel Thirst. When she isn’t lost in the world of words, Montoya can be found hiding away on her small farm in Northern California, where she’s busy bossing around her partner and their two children, as well as a host of animals.

Montoya's new novel is Carnival Fantástico.

At The Nerd Daily the author tagged five novels that explore "the dynamic, complex deities that can only be found in Mesoamerican legends." One title on the list:

Daughter of Fire by Sofia Robleda

With magnificent prose and captivating storytelling, Robleda is an author whose books will always have a special place on my shelves. Set during 16th-century Guatemala, this historical fantasy draws heavily from Mesoamerican lore and history–– specifically K’iche’ Maya traditions. Catalina, our biracial protagonist, works in secret to preserve the sacred texts in the face of Spanish colonization. She is the kind of main character you root for the second you meet her on the page. Robleda weaves a tale that is heartbreaking, beautiful, and profoundly inspiring, rooted in the real-life suppression of the Mayan culture during this period. This is a novel that must not be missed. I’m also extremely excited for her upcoming book, The Other Moctezuma Girls.

Read about another novel on the list.

Daughter of Fire is among Carolina Ciucci's eight stunning historical novels by Latine authors.

The Page 69 Test: Daughter of Fire.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: George Lewis's "Un-Americanism"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Un-Americanism: A History of the Battle to Control an Idea by George Lewis.

About the book, from the publisher:

Inside notorious and influential struggles to define what it means to be “un-American,” illuminating the complex evolution of the term throughout US history

The term “un-American” has been wielded as a powerful tool throughout US history, from Jefferson’s vision of the early Republic to the Trump era, yet no objective definition has ever been universally agreed upon. For the first time, George Lewis’s Un-Americanism offers a long history of this term, tracing what it has meant to whom through close looks at the most prominent contests for control of its definition and deployment.

Lewis examines case studies that show politicians using the idea of the un-American to advance their agendas, organizations using it in racial nationalist campaigns, and federal committees using it in investigations such as those of the anticommunist “Red Scare” of the Cold War, along with activists and coalitions who have countered rhetoric of the “un-American” by claiming their own use of the term. In these chapters, Lewis delves into the role of institutions and organizations such as the American Legion, the House Un-American Activities Committee, and the American Civil Liberties Union. Lewis paints a compelling picture of how the term has both shaped and been shaped by the country’s social and political landscape.

Un-Americanism offers a profound analysis of how this term has drawn and redrawn lines between what is considered “good” or “bad” politically. By exploring its complex evolution, the book highlights how the term has impacted each generation’s understanding of national values and American identity. Lewis challenges readers to reflect on its ongoing influence in defining who truly belongs in the American story.

Learn more about Un-Americanism at the University Press of Florida website.

The Page 99 Test: Un-Americanism.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Mara Williams's "The Epicenter of Forever"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Epicenter of Forever: A Novel by Mara Williams.

About the book, from the publisher:

A moving story about family, forgiveness, and unexpected love―where the fault lines of a fractured past become the foundation for building something new.

Eden Hawthorne spent idyllic childhood summers in Grand Trees, a mountain town perched along a restless earthquake fault in the heart of California’s fire country. But her family and future were shattered there, and she vowed never to return―until news of her estranged mother’s illness forces her back twenty years later.

Still reeling from her recent divorce, Eden has to confront her mom’s found family, including single father Caleb Connell, who blames Eden for the seismic rift that drove her away. But as they move beyond a battle of wills, Eden and Caleb discover shared wounds and intertwined histories―and succumb to an attraction that feels fated.

When her mother’s condition worsens, Eden faces an impossible choice between the man she’s falling for and the mother she’s just beginning to forgive. And with time running out, Eden fears her decision will doom her to relive the aftershocks of past heartbreak.

Visit Mara Williams's website.

Q&A with Mara Williams.

The Page 69 Test: The Truth Is in the Detours.

My Book, The Movie: The Truth Is in the Detours.

Writers Read: Mara Williams (August 2025).

My Book, The Movie: The Epicenter of Forever.

Writers Read: Mara Williams.

The Page 69 Test: The Epicenter of Forever.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five spy thrillers that are also good literature

Michael Idov is a novelist, director, and screenwriter. A Latvian-born American raised in Riga under Soviet occupation, he moved to New York after graduating from the University of Michigan.

Idov’s writing career began at New York Magazine, where his features won three National Magazine Awards. His first book, 2009’s satirical novel Ground Up, sold over 100,000 copies worldwide and was optioned for a series by HBO. From 2012 to 2014, he was the editor-in-chief of GQ Russia, an experience that became the basis for his 2018 memoir Dressed Up for a Riot.

In addition to spy novels The Collaborators (2024) and The Cormorant Hunt (2026), Idov has worked on numerous film and TV projects, including Londongrad, Deutschland 83, Cannes Main Competition title Leto, and his own 2019 directing debut The Humorist. He and his wife and screenwriting partner, Lily, divide their time between Los Angeles, Berlin, and Portugal.

[Writers Read: Michael Idov (October 2009); Q&A with Michael Idov]

At CrimeReads Idov tagged five favorite books "that work both as excellent spy thrillers and good literature, delivering all the clandestine kicks while treating the reader as an actual adult." One title on the list:

Lea Carpenter, Ilium

Behind a cheeky le Carré epigraph (“Then the new style began”) lies a well-observed first-person novel about falling in love with an older man…who then recruits you to entrap a Russian oligarch with a killer past. With a relatable amateur agent at its center, discovering tradecraft and its attendant moral ambiguities as she goes, it is a great transitional text for the romance-minded but espionage-curious.

Read about another novel on the list.

Ilium is among Barbara Nickless's seven spy novels to take you around the world and Flynn Berry's four great novels of subtle espionage.

Q&A with Lea Carpenter.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Madeleine Dunnigan

From my Q&A with Madeleine Dunnigan, author of Jean: A Novel:

What's in a name?

I knew Jean’s name early on. Jean’s mother is a German Jewish refugee and a francophile. I knew Jean’s name needed to be French because of this; I also knew it needed to complicate his identity as an English teenage boy.

In French, ‘Jean’ is a boy’s name; in English, we would use ‘Gene’ for a boy and ‘Jean’ for a girl. This subtle difference, although not pressed upon in the novel, was essential to the crafting of his character. From birth, he feels like an outsider. To others, there is something mysterious and...[read on]

Visit Madeleine Dunnigan's website.

My Book, The Movie: Jean.

The Page 69 Test: Jean.

Writers Read: Madeleine Dunnigan.

Q&A with Madeleine Dunnigan.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Mara Williams reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Mara Williams, author of The Epicenter of Forever: A Novel.

Her entry begins:

Most Eligible by Isabelle Engel.

The Bachelor meets Miss Congeniality in this hilarious romcom about a reporter who goes undercover as a contestant on a dating show and finds out the host is her one-night-stand from a year ago, and whoops…she might be falling for the wrong person. The hijinks and shenanigans in this one are unmatched. I caught myself laughing out loud and swooning in equal measure. It’s perfect for fans of reality television and classic romcoms, and for anyone looking for an infusion of...[read on]

About The Epicenter of Forever, from the publisher:

A moving story about family, forgiveness, and unexpected love―where the fault lines of a fractured past become the foundation for building something new.

Eden Hawthorne spent idyllic childhood summers in Grand Trees, a mountain town perched along a restless earthquake fault in the heart of California’s fire country. But her family and future were shattered there, and she vowed never to return―until news of her estranged mother’s illness forces her back twenty years later.

Still reeling from her recent divorce, Eden has to confront her mom’s found family, including single father Caleb Connell, who blames Eden for the seismic rift that drove her away. But as they move beyond a battle of wills, Eden and Caleb discover shared wounds and intertwined histories―and succumb to an attraction that feels fated.

When her mother’s condition worsens, Eden faces an impossible choice between the man she’s falling for and the mother she’s just beginning to forgive. And with time running out, Eden fears her decision will doom her to relive the aftershocks of past heartbreak.

Visit Mara Williams's website.

Q&A with Mara Williams.

The Page 69 Test: The Truth Is in the Detours.

My Book, The Movie: The Truth Is in the Detours.

Writers Read: Mara Williams (August 2025).

My Book, The Movie: The Epicenter of Forever.

Writers Read: Mara Williams.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Daniel K. Williams's "The Search for a Rational Faith"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Search for a Rational Faith: Reason and Belief in the History of American Christianity by Daniel K. Williams.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Enlightenment and Darwinism posed threats to traditional Christianity. So why have so many highly educated Americans remained committed believers?

The Search for a Rational Faith challenges popular theories of secularization with a sweeping 400-year history of Anglo-American Protestant defenses of the Christian faith. Through a detailed study of the arguments of those who found Christian faith compatible with Enlightenment reason, Daniel K. Williams explains why Christian faith has continued to remain a viable intellectual option in the United States even for educated people who accept modern science.

From the seventeenth-century New England Puritans who founded Harvard College to the twentieth-century university professors who believed that Christian theism was the only viable grounding for morality in the atomic age, faith and reason have been an integral part of the Anglo-American experience. This book chronicles that story.

It is a story that intersects with the spiritual lives of well-known figures such as Isaac Newton, John Locke, John Adams, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Martin Luther King Jr., all of whom wrestled with the question of the reason to believe. It is the story of Christian apologists who crafted intellectually sophisticated defenses of the faith. And above all, it is the story of the development of an idea-the idea that there is a rational basis for Christian belief.

This book shows how that idea was transmitted from England to America in the seventeenth century and how it continued to develop and transform over the next four centuries in response to the Enlightenment, Darwinian evolution, historical criticism of the Bible, new theories of religious epistemology, and the ethical challenge of the civil rights movement. The Search for a Rational Faith is the story of what that idea meant in the past and what it still means today, in a new era of secularization.

Visit Daniel K. Williams's website.

The Page 99 Test: God's Own Party.

The Page 99 Test: Defenders of the Unborn.

The Page 99 Test: The Search for a Rational Faith.

--Marshal Zeringue

Twelve top memoirs of widowhood

Marion Winik is the author of nine books, including The Big Book of the Dead (2019) and First Comes Love (1996; reissued with a new introduction in 2026). Her essays have been published in The New York Times Magazine, The Sun, and elsewhere; her column at BaltimoreFishbowl.com has been running since 2011.

[Coffee with a Canine: Marion Winik and Beau (December 2009); Coffee with a Canine: Marion Winik and Beau (June 2013); Writers Read: Marion Winik (June 2013)]

A professor at the University of Baltimore, she reviews books for The Washington Post, Oprah Daily, and People, among others, and hosts the NPR podcast The Weekly Reader. She was a commentator on All Things Considered for fifteen years. She is the recipient of the 2023 National Book Critics Circle Service Award.

At Publishers Weekly Winik tagged twelve top widow memoirs, including:

Black Widow: A Sad-Funny Journey Through Grief for People Who Normally Avoid Books with Words Like “Journey” in the Title
Leslie Gray Streeter

Streeter was working for a Florida newspaper as “the black Carrie Bradshaw” when she reconnected with Scott Jervitz, a white high school classmate, on a Facebook reunion page. They had only five and a half years before she found herself planning a funeral instead of a 45th birthday party. Opening her memoir with a riff on casket selection before flashing back to the night of Scott’s death, Streeter’s ability to ferret out the funny in almost anything is rare among books of this kind.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Michael Idov

From my Q&A with Michael Idov, author of The Cormorant Hunt: A Novel:

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

None. I should be completely honest about this. The editing notes I receive on the Cormorant Trilogy are mercifully light; in return, I pretty much let the publisher title the books for me. It's probably wise, too, because I'm terrible at it. I had originally designed a whole convention where all three titles would be these ambiguously German/Russian K-words. The first novel would be called Kosmopolit, the second Konservator, etc. Then I was gently reminded that the people buying the book at a store should, as a rule, be able to pronounce its title.

That said, I did mount a brief campaign to call this one Gray Actors: a political term for people or institutions with unclear or complicated intentions, which describes its plot pretty well. But The Cormorant Hunt is snappier, and retains some of the same ambiguity because it's the character named Cormorant who's...[read on]

Visit Michael Idov's website.

Writers Read: Michael Idov (October 2009).

Q&A with Michael Idov.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six of the most surprising thrillers ever written

Jamie Canavés is the Tailored Book Recommendations coordinator and Unusual Suspects mystery newsletter writer — in case you’re wondering what you do with a Liberal Arts degree.

At Book Riot she tagged the six most surprising thrillers ever written, including:

Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinborough

This has a shocking surprise twist, of course, but Pinborough’s novel also has an element of WTF that adds to the fun of reading this psychological thriller about a single mom who discovers that her one-night stand is her new boss and that his wife wants to befriend her. In my first review of this book, I wrote, “You might want a reading partner for this one so you can share your guesses and discuss the ending,” which I feel is always a bonus to a book.

You can watch the six-episode series adaptation on Netflix, which stars Eve Hewson, Simona Brown, and Tom Bateman.

Read about another thriller on the list.

Behind Her Eyes is among Maia Chance's six best uncanny domestic thrillers, L.K. Bowen's ten best marriage-gone-bad thrillers, Clare Whitfield's seven literary murderers hiding in plain sight, Alice Feeney's eight top novels featuring odd couples and unexpected partnerships, Leah Konen's seven dark thrillers about friendships gone wrong, and Camilla Bruce's eight novels to make you question reality.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Kent Lehnhof's "Voice and Ethics in Shakespeare's Late Plays"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Voice and Ethics in Shakespeare's Late Plays by Kent Lehnhof.

About the book, from the publisher:

Breaking new ground in Shakespearean sound studies, Kent Lehnhof draws scholarly attention to the rich ethical significance of the voice and vocality. Less concerned with semantics, stylistics, and rhetoric than with the sensuous, sonorous, and somatic dimensions of human speech, Lehnhof performs close readings of five plays – Coriolanus, King Lear, Pericles, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest – to demonstrate how Shakespeare's later works present the act of speaking and the sound of the voice as capable of constructing, deconstructing, and reconstructing interpersonal relationships and obligations. By thinking widely and innovatively about the voice and vocality, Lehnhof models a fresh form of philosophically-minded criticism that resists logocentrism and elevates the voices of marginalized groups and individuals including women, members of societal “underclasses”, racialized persons and non-humans.

Learn more about Voice and Ethics in Shakespeare's Late Plays at the Cambridge University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Voice and Ethics in Shakespeare's Late Plays.

--Marshal Zeringue

Mara Williams's "The Epicenter of Forever," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Epicenter of Forever: A Novel by Mara Williams.

From the entry:

The Epicenter of Forever is about a woman who returns to the scene of her greatest loss to convince her ailing, estranged mother to come home and seek treatment—but instead falls for a man whose identity is anchored to the place that broke her. It’s about romantic and familial love and about healing all the wounds that hold us back.

Scene: Springtime in Grand Trees, California, a fictional town nestled in the Sierra Nevadas with a mountain lake, a summer camp property, and several groves of Giant Sequoias.

Eden Hawthorne (thirty-something former ballerina turned nonprofit fundraiser): It would be a dream to see Rachel Brosnahan in this role. Her comedic timing is incredible, and she has pitch-perfect chemistry with her co-stars and could really sell a love story.

Caleb Connell (thirty-something single dad and jack of all trades): I see...[read on]

Visit Mara Williams's website.

Q&A with Mara Williams.

The Page 69 Test: The Truth Is in the Detours.

My Book, The Movie: The Truth Is in the Detours.

Writers Read: Mara Williams (August 2025).

My Book, The Movie: The Epicenter of Forever.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Laura Carney reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Laura Carney, author of My Father's List: How Living My Dad's Dreams Set Me Free.

Her entry begins:

I hoard books, and it doesn't help that I picked up books for free when I worked full-time at a women's magazine (I also now own enough anti-aging cream to look 47 forever). But since publishing My Father's List: How Living My Dad's Dreams Set Me Free, in June 2023, I've discovered yet another reason to own too many books—publishing a successful one makes lots of people want you to blurb theirs. Or pass theirs along to your agent. I'm happy to do so, and I'm also happy to pre-order every new book a new author friend publishes. The result: I currently have about 60 books in my to-be-read pile, next to my nightstand, which probably scared my in-laws when they house-sat. Or at least tripped them.

Of the 60 or so I'm currently reading, here are the ones I'm most excited about (and keep in mind I bought about 15 more when I was on vacation after my One City, One Book award in Greensboro, NC):

Gratitude and Trust: Six Affirmations That Will Change Your Life: I bought this book before I interviewed one of my heroes, the composer Paul Williams, and I highly recommend it. Oprah liked it too. I've learned a lot from my conversations with Paul, but mainly to "view every no as a gift," one of his mottos, and to view every turn in my life as a direction from "the big amigo." The insights in this book...[read on]

About My Father's List, from the publisher:

On the cusp of middle age, a newlywed journalist discovers and finishes the bucket list of her late free-spirited father.

Fifty-four adventures in six years. That’s what thirty-eight-year-old journalist Laura Carney embarked on when she discovered her late father Mick’s bucket list.

Killed in a car crash when Laura was twenty-five, Mick seemed lost forever. My Father’s List is the story of how one woman—with the help of family, friends, and even strangers—found the courage to go after her own dreams after realizing those of a beloved yet mysterious man. This is a story about secrets—and the freedom we feel when we learn to trust again: in life, in love, and in a father’s lessons on how to fully live.

Visit Laura Carney's website.

The Page 99 Test: My Father's List.

My Book, The Movie: My Father's List.

Writers Read: Laura Carney.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Janet Burroway's "Simone in Pieces"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Simone in Pieces by Janet Burroway.

About the book, from the publisher:

Readers first meet Simone Lerrante, a Belgian war orphan, as a child refugee in Sussex, England, her memory damaged by trauma. This novel offers a kaleidoscopic vision of her fractured life and piecemeal understanding of self across multiple points of view. Following her from Cambridge to New York City and across the United States—through a disastrous marriage, thwarted desire, and the purgatory of academic backwaters—the novel charts Simone’s unexpected reconnection with her past, which provides both autonomy and inspiration for her future. Janet Burroway slowly reveals a multifaceted, fascinating protagonist, who observes her own life without always allowing herself to be immersed in it. Spanning seven decades, this story is both epic and contained, rewarding readers at every turn.

Visit Janet Burroway's website.

The Page 69 Test: Bridge of Sand.

The Page 69 Test: Simone in Pieces.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Michelle Pace's "Un-welcome to Denmark"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Un-welcome to Denmark: The paradigm shift and refugee integration by Michelle Pace.

About the book, from the publisher:

Un—welcome to Denmark, by Michelle Pace with Sarah El—Abd, critically assesses Denmark’s migration regime by directly engaging the voices of multiple stakeholders impacted by its harshness. It puts forward the theory of the 'unwelcome migrant' by undertaking an extensive analysis of the programmatic and legal foundations for the 'undeserving migrant' as well as of the lived experiences of Syrian refugees, welfare professionals and private businesses tasked with supporting them. It thereby documents the ways in which the Danish migration gaze produces and perpetuates the hyper precarity of the everyday lives of Syrians and the anxiety that overshadows the manner in which Syrians and those who support them navigate its maze. By so doing, it traces how a once admired, liberal, tolerant and open society with a strong reverence for human rights has turned into one of the harshest migration regimes in Europe, if not internationally.

Learn more about Un-welcome to Denmark at the Manchester University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Un-welcome to Denmark.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven novels that bear witness to Latin America’s Dirty Wars

Jahia de Rose is an antillana-deutsch artist, landworker, writer, and scholar. Her bylines appear in Electric Literature, midnight + indigo (forthcoming), PetitMort, Business Insider, and several indie publications. She is at work on a novel and her first memoir. She blogs on Substack as @autumnwildroses, and her Substack publication ‘Roadworthy’ chronicles her off-grid life on the road in Europe.

At Electric Lit the writer tagged seven "works of historical fiction about events in [Latin America and the Caribbean] which touch on the Dirty Wars." One title on the list:

The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende

Isabel Allende, cousin of the overthrown, democratically elected Chilean president, Salvador Allende, is the author of the surrealist, at times humorous, often sorrowful epic that is The House of the Spirits. This novel tells the socio-political story of Chile in the early and mid-20th century by following three generations of the Trueba family and their lovers, associates, and enemies. All the book’s events radiate out from the central foci of husband and wife, Esteban and Clara Trueba. Clara, around whom the novel’s events begin, speaks to spirits, predicts the future, and levitates objects. Esteban, symbolic of the conservative influences behind Chile’s anti-socialist opposition of the time period, imagines himself to be a man of traditional values and good character, yet he exploits, cheats, and beats his way through life. The book is a noteworthy reflection upon the ways in which conservative politicians are often revealed to be hypocritical of their espoused values.

Read about another novel on the list.

The House of the Spirits is among Vanessa Saunders's seven speculative feminism books written by women, Lois Parkinson Zamora's five top books to capture the magic of magical realism, Christopher Barzak's five books about magical families, and Elif Shafak's five favorite literary mothers.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Carrie Classon

From my Q&A with Carrie Classon, author of Loon Point: A Novel:

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

Loon Point is my first novel, so other than my weekly syndicated column, I have no name recognition as a writer, and I wanted something both memorable and not overly used. Neither my agent nor my publisher had any issues with it or other suggestions.

“Loon” conjures up wilderness for most people, and that is a good image to begin with. “Point” implies a small place, and that is also accurate. Loon Point deals with the lives of a middle-aged woman, an older man, and a young girl all living in the Northwoods and their various brands of loneliness, so I think beginning with their shared location makes sense.

What’s in a name?

I seem to have two types of character names: the ones that show up with...[read on]

Visit Carrie Classon's website.

The Page 69 Test: Loon Point.

Writers Read: Carrie Classon.

Q&A with Carrie Classon.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top memoirs that make grief feel less lonely

Charley Burlock is the Books Editor at Oprah Daily where she writes, edits, and assigns stories on all things literary. She holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from NYU, where she also taught undergraduate creative writing. Her work has been featured in the Atlantic, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Hyperallergic, the Apple News Today podcast, and elsewhere.

At Oprah Daily Burlock tagged "six memoirs that make grief feel a tiny bit less lonely," including:

Memorial Days, by Geraldine Brooks

On Memorial Day 2019, while Brooks was in the throes of writing her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Horse, her vibrant, healthy sixty-year-old husband collapsed on a D.C. sidewalk and died. Flashing between the chaotic immediate wake of Tony’s heart attack and the meditative “memorial days” she gave herself four years later to “do the unfinished work of grieving” on Australia’s Flinders Island, Brooks unspools a pulse-quickening love story woven within a sharp-toothed indictment of “the brutal bureaucracy of death.” While there is no shortage of moving grief memoirs, there are vanishingly few that offer bereaved readers more than a mirror to their own experience. In addition to gorgeously evoking the man she lost and the pain he left, Brooks gives practical guidance for tending to that pain and preparing in advance for a legal and logistical obstacle course that few know to train for.

Read about another memoir on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Emily Lieb's "Road to Nowhere"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Road to Nowhere: How a Highway Map Wrecked Baltimore by Emily Lieb.

About the book, from the publisher:

Traces the birth, plunder, and scavenging of Rosemont, a Black middle-class neighborhood in Baltimore.

In the mid-1950s Baltimore’s Rosemont neighborhood was alive and vibrant with smart rowhouses, a sprawling park, corner grocery stores, and doctor’s offices. By 1957, a proposed expressway threatened to gut this Black, middle-class community from stem to stern.

That highway was never built, but it didn’t matter—even the failure to build it destroyed Rosemont economically, if not physically. In telling the history of the neighborhood and the notional East–West Expressway, Emily Lieb shows the interwoven tragedies caused by racism in education, housing, and transportation policy. Black families had been attracted to the neighborhood after Baltimore’s Board of School Commissioners converted several white schools into “colored” ones, which had also laid the groundwork for predatory real-estate agents who bought low from white sellers and sold high to determined Black buyers. Despite financial discrimination, Black homeowners built a thriving community before the city council formally voted to condemn some nine hundred homes in Rosemont for the expressway, leading to deflated home values and even more predatory real estate deals.

Drawing on land records, oral history, media coverage, and policy documents, Lieb demystifies blockbusting, redlining, and prejudicial lending, highlighting the national patterns at work in a single neighborhood. The result is an absorbing story about the deliberate decisions that produced racial inequalities in housing, jobs, health, and wealth—as well as a testament to the ingenuity of the residents who fought to stay in their homes, down to today.

Visit Emily Lieb's website.

The Page 99 Test: Road to Nowhere.

--Marshal Zeringue