Five books that dive into the drug-fueled darkness of the club scene

Ivy Pochoda is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Wonder Valley, Visitation Street, These Women, and Sing Her Down which won the LA Times Book Prize. Her new novel is Ecstasy.

[The Page 69 Test: The Art of Disappearing; The Page 69 Test: Wonder Valley; The Page 69 Test: These Women]

Pochoda won the 2018 Strand Critics Award for Best Novel and the Prix Page America in France, and has been a finalist for the the Edgar Award, among other awards. For many years, she has led a creative writing workshop in Skid Row, Los Angeles where she helped found Skid Row Zine. She is currently a professor of creative writing at the University of California Riverside-Palm Desert low-residency MFA program. She lives in Los Angeles.

At CrimeReads Pochoda tagged "five books that mix nightlife with noir, where the dance floor becomes a crime scene and the come-up always ends in a comedown." One title on the list:

The Beach by Alex Garland (1996)
Backpacker utopia meets jungle paranoia—with MDMA-fueled mania

Before Garland was scripting dystopias, he wrote The Beach—an existential thriller of Gen X disillusionment set on a secret Thai island. Though not a “club” novel in setting, the spirit of the rave scene is all over this book: the search for pure experience, the retreat from consumer society, and the chemical highs used to fuel both. MDMA plays a key role in the group’s descent, from communal harmony to tribalism and violence. Garland’s prose pulses with the heat and sweat of the tropics—and the slow rot of paradise lost.

Read about another book on the list.

The Beach also appears on Andrea Bartz's list of seven psychological thrillers for White Lotus fans, Lucy Clarke's top ten list of books about castaways, Hephzibah Anderson's list of eleven previously hip books that have not aged well, S J watson's list of six novels that could only take place at the seashore, Cat Barton's top five list of books on Southeast Asian travel literature, Kate Kellaway's ten best list of fictional holidays, Eleanor Muffitt top 12 list of books that make you want to pack your bags and trot the globe, Anna Wilson's top ten list of books set on the seaside, the Guardian editors' list of the 50 best summer reads ever, John Mullan's list of ten of the best swimming scenes in literature, and Sloane Crosley's list of five depressing beach reads.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Katia Lief's "Women Like Us"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Women Like Us by Katia Lief.

About the book, from the publisher:

Katia Lief’s Women Like Us is a sharply-rendered literary thriller that examines the complexities and responsibilities of female friendship—what brings women together, and what drives them apart.

Joni Ackerman was tired of being invisible.

It’s been five years since Joni Ackerman tipped the antifreeze into her husband’s cocktail. Five years since he was found dead on the stairs. Five years since she got away with murder. At first, Joni feared the consequences of her transgression, but she’s learned to embrace the power of recklessness in a way she would have hated to see in anyone else. It was that recklessness, after all, that took her to this rewarding new life.

Joni now runs Sunny Day Productions alongside her daughter, Chris, and her best friend, Val. All is well in life and work until, one day, their balance is rocked when an unexpected, and unwelcome, visitor appears.

When Joni’s brother, Marc, resurfaces after a twenty-year estrangement, Joni braces for the sibling she knew—a cruel, vindictive conman who deftly switched between personas. But this Marc on her doorstep is different. He’s older, softer. And he seems to have overcome the self-inflicted traumas of his past.

But Val isn’t fooled. She knows exactly what sort of man Marc is, and she warns Joni to keep her guard up. When Mark inevitably betrays Joni’s trust, Joni is forced to look inward. As dark thoughts, and darker compulsions, take form, Joni can’t help but wonder: ‘Is psychopathy a family trait?’

Visit Katia Lief's website.

The Page 69 Test: Next Time You See Me.

My Book, The Movie: Next Time You See Me.

The Page 69 Test: Vanishing Girls.

My Book, The Movie: The Money Kill.

The Page 69 Test: Last Night.

Q&A with Katia Lief.

The Page 69 Test: Invisible Woman.

The Page 69 Test: Women Like Us.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Joseph Kellner's "The Spirit of Socialism"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Spirit of Socialism: Culture and Belief at the Soviet Collapse by Joseph Kellner.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Spirit of Socialism is a cultural history of the Soviet collapse. It examines the millions of Soviet people who, during the cascading crises of the collapse and the post-Soviet transition, embarked on a spirited and highly visible search for new meaning. Amid profound disorientation, these seekers found direction in their horoscopes, or behind gurus in saffron robes or apocalyptic preachers, or by turning from the most basic premises of official science and history to orient themselves anew. The beliefs they seized on and, even more, the questions that guided their search reveal the essence of late-Soviet culture and its legacy in post-Soviet Russia.

To skeptical outsiders, the seekers appeared eccentric, deviant, and above all un-Soviet. Yet they came to their ideas by Soviet sources and Soviet premises. As Joseph Kellner demonstrates, their motley beliefs reflect modern values that formed the spiritual core of Soviet ideology, among them a high regard for science, an informed and generous internationalism, and a confidence in humanity to chart its own course. Soviet ideology failed, however, to unite these values in an overarching vision that could withstand historical change.

And so, as The Spirit of Socialism shows, the seekers asked questions raised but not resolved by the Russian Revolution and subsequent Soviet order―questions of epistemic authority, of cultural identity, and of history's ultimate meaning. Although the Soviet collapse was not the end of history, it was a rupture of epochal significance, whose fissures extend into our own uncertain era.

Learn more about The Spirit of Socialism at the Cornell University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: The Spirit of Socialism.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight books about the quiet power of libraries & museums

Marian Womack is a bilingual Hispano-British writer of Weird fiction, speculative and hybrid fiction, and fiction of the Anthropocene. Her novels include The Swimmers (one of the best ten SF books of 2021, The Sunday Times) and in the Walton & Waltraud uncanny mystery series The Golden Key (2020) and On the Nature of Magic (2023). Her short fiction has been collected in Lost Objects and Out of the Window, Into the Dark, nominated to two British Fantasy Awards and one British Science Fiction Association Award, and selected for Year’s Bests. She lives in Cambridge (UK).

At Electric Lit Womack tagged eight titles about the quiet power of libraries and museums, including:

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, translated by Lucia Graves

Twenty years after its publication in English in Lucia Graves’s delectable translation, The Shadow of the Wind hasn’t lost any of its charm, and remains a classic of the “secret library” sub-genre of books (such as Arturo Pérez-Reverte’s El Club Dumas and Sarah Waters’ Fingersmith) which imagine the library as the physical shape of occult or mystical desires. Its young protagonist, a bookseller’s son, becomes obsessed with Julian Carax, an obscure, cursed author, and starts investigating what could have happened to him along with his vanished bibliography. When the young bookseller’s life becomes intertwined with the truths he starts to discover about Carax, reality and fiction are shown to be different sides of the same coin. At its heart, this engrossing novel is an ode to the transformative power of books and storytelling, masterfully articulating that wondrous moment of discovery we’ve all experienced when finding the book that turned us into readers. But The Shadow of the Wind is not simply about books—the library at its centre, the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, serves as a heart-wrenching metaphor for all that was lost under the long shadow of Franco’s dictatorship in Spain, and in particular for the shameful “pact of forgetting” that the democratic transition imposed on Spanish citizens, removing the possibility of restorative justice around the horrors of Franco’s regime. This is a novel that became a modern classic for all the right reasons.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Shadow of the Wind is among Stuart Kells's top ten libraries in fiction and Bartholomew Bennett's top ten fictional booksellers.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Shana Youngdahl

From my Q&A with Shana Youngdahl, author of A Catalog of Burnt Objects:

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

The title, A Catalog of Burnt Objects, comes from “objects,” scattered throughout the book. These short chapters tell the story of objects different community members lost in the catastrophic wildfire that hits Sierra in the middle of the book. The opening chapter is the protagonist, Caprice Alexander’s, object. It tells of the Talking Heads LP her grandfather gave her, and in doing so introduces us to the geography and culture of the town, as well as her gramps' important role in her life.

I had this title picked very early before the book was written because I knew the project would be about fire and what is lost and community. I know that the title doesn’t tell you that this is also a sibling story and a love story, but I hope that...[read on]

Visit Shana Youngdahl's website.

Q&A with Shana Youngdahl.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Eve Darian-Smith's "Policing Higher Education"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Policing Higher Education: The Antidemocratic Attack on Scholars and Why It Matters by Eve Darian-Smith.

About the book, from the publisher:

On the essential role of higher education and academic freedom in thriving democracies.

Higher education is facing an existential crisis. Students and staff are surveilled with cameras and facial recognition software. Police zip-tie and arrest students during protests. As universities across the United States become epicenters of ideological warfare, Policing Higher Education contextualizes these skirmishes within a broader global framework. From the contentious debates surrounding free speech and curriculum control to the denial of tenure for outspoken faculty, Eve Darian-Smith examines the myriad ways higher education has become a battleground.

Darian-Smith highlights the intersecting global trends of rising authoritarianism and declining academic freedom, revealing how the United States is part of a larger pattern seen in democracies worldwide, including in Brazil, Hungary, Germany, India, and the Philippines. This book challenges readers to view educational conflicts not merely as culture wars but as intense and connected struggles over economic, political, and social power. Drawing from extensive scholarship, Darian-Smith humanizes the impacts of these attacks on scholars and students, offering poignant stories of persecution and resilience.

With a critical eye on the historical and structural drivers of antidemocracy, this book pushes for new, meaningful conversations about academic freedom that transcend national borders. It emphasizes the vital role of universities in fostering social responsibility and combating the global drift toward authoritarianism.

Learn more about Policing Higher Education at the Johns Hopkins University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Global Burning.

The Page 99 Test: Policing Higher Education.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top fantasy novels

Kate Elliott has been publishing science fiction and fantasy for over thirty years with a particular focus in immersive world building and epic stories of adventure & transformative cultural change. She’s written fantasy, science fiction, space opera based on the life of Alexander the Great (Unconquerable Sun), Young Adult fantasy, the seven volume (complete!) Crown of Stars epic fantasy series set in a landscape reminiscent of early medieval Europe, and the Afro-Celtic post-Roman alternate-history fantasy with lawyer dinosaurs, Cold Magic, as well as two novellas set in the Magic: The Gathering multiverse. Her work has been nominated for the Nebula, World Fantasy, Norton, and Locus Awards.

Elliott's new novel is The Witch Roads.

At The Strand Magazine she tagged her top ten fantasy novels, including:

The Books of the Raksura by Martha Wells

Martha Wells is having a big moment with her Murderbot books (and Apple TV+ series, out now—it’s great!). She’s also written a number of fantasy novels, all of them good. I want to highlight The Cloud Roads and its sequels (five novels and two collections) which feature some of the most staggeringly original world building I have ever read: a world of many sapient species who live in various ecological niches. Come for the wonderful “who am I?” journey of our hero, Moon, and stay for the splendid ingenuity of Wells’ endlessly inventive imagination.

Read about another novel on Elliott's list.

The Cloud Roads is among Kameron Hurley's five novels to inspire you to imagine a better future.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top books exploring romantic obsession

Olivia Worley is an author born and raised in New Orleans. A graduate of Northwestern University, she now lives in New York City, where she spends her time writing thrillers, over-analyzing episodes of The Bachelor, and hoping someone will romanticize her for reading on the subway. She is the author of the young adult novels People to Follow and The Debutantes. Her newly released adult debut is So Happy Together.

At CrimeReads Worley tagged six "books about romantic obsession that either inspired So Happy Together or that I’d be honored to see it shelved beside. ... [T]hese books all have one thing in common: they’re sure to get your heart pounding." One title on the list:

A Novel Obsession by Caitlin Barasch

Another literary novel that feels like a thriller, this one follows aspiring writer Naomi as she becomes obsessed with her boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend, Rosemary—who quickly becomes the inspiration for Naomi’s new novel. While A Novel Obsession doesn’t delve into murder territory, Naomi’s quickly-snowballing secrets are just as impossible to look away from.

Read about another entry on the list.

A Novel Obsession is among Hanna Halperin's nine novels about infatuations that are all consuming.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: David C. Hoffman's "American Freethought"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: American Freethought: The History of a Social Movement, 1794–1948 by David C. Hoffman.

About the book, from the publisher:

A history of how the freethought movement fought to maintain a secular United States.

Although today it has largely faded from public memory, the American freethought movement played an important role in shaping the religious landscape of the United States. Without its influence, state and local governments might still demand that public officeholders subscribe to specific religious doctrines and prosecute those who question the existence of God or the authority of the Bible for blasphemy.

In American Freethought, David C. Hoffman traces the history of the freethought movement to discover the strategies that allowed it to endure and succeed in a fervently religious nation. Hoffman argues that American freethought has proceeded through four waves: a period of deism inspired by Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason and allied with Jeffersonian republicanism in the 1790s; a revival in 1825 that centered on the celebration of Paine's birthday and drew in the followers of utopian socialist Robert Owen; a "golden age of freethought" in the late 1870s that saw an unprecedented explosion of freethought publications and organizations together with a demand for the separation of church and state; and a final resurgence in the 1920s that helped realize the remarkable series of twentieth-century Supreme Court decisions that created America's present conditions of secularism.

Hoffman argues that the freethought movement was successful because it united people with a wide variety of religious outlooks―including deists, pantheists, Unitarians, Universalists, spiritualists, transcendentalists, Humanists, agnostics, and atheists―behind the idea that religion is freer and the state is more just when the government refrains from religious involvement.

Learn more about American Freethought at the Johns Hopkins University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: American Freethought.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Laura Lippman's "Murder Takes a Vacation"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Murder Takes a Vacation: A Novel by Laura Lippman.

About the book, from the publisher:

Highly acclaimed New York Times bestselling author Laura Lippman returns with an irresistible mystery featuring Muriel Blossom, a former private investigator and middle-aged widow whose vacation on a Parisian river cruise turns into a deadly international mystery…that only she can solve.

Mrs. Blossom has a knack for blending into the background, which was an asset during her days assisting private investigator Tess Monaghan. But when she finds a winning lottery ticket in a parking lot, everything changes. She is determined to see the world that she sometimes feels is passing her by.

When Mrs. Blossom booked her cruise through France on the MS Solitaire, she did not expect to meet Allan on her transatlantic flight. He is the first man who’s sparked something inside her since her beloved husband passed.

She also didn’t expect Allan to be found, dead, twenty-four hours later in Paris, a city he wasn’t supposed to be in.

Now Mrs. Blossom doesn’t know who to trust on board the ship, especially when a mystifying man, Danny, keeps popping up around every corner, always present when things go awry. He is convinced that Allan was transporting a stolen piece of art, and Mrs. Blossom knows more than she lets on, regarding both the artifact and Allan’s death.

Mrs. Blossom’s questions only increase as the cruise sails down the Seine. Why does it feel like she is being followed? Who was Allan, and why was he killed? Most alarmingly, why do these mysterious men keep flirting with her?

Visit Laura Lippman's website.

The Page 69 Test: Another Thing to Fall.

The Page 69 Test: What the Dead Know.

The Page 69 Test/Page 99 Test: Life Sentences.

The Page 69 Test: I'd Know You Anywhere.

The Page 69 Test: The Most Dangerous Thing.

The Page 69 Test: Hush Hush.

The Page 69 Test: Wilde Lake.

My Book, the Movie: Wilde Lake.

The Page 69 Test: Sunburn.

The Page 69 Test: Lady in the Lake.

The Page 69 Test: Dream Girl.

The Page 69 Test: Prom Mom.

The Page 69 Test: Murder Takes a Vacation.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight top epic BIPOC crime novels

Elisa Shoenberger is a freelance writer and journalist. At Book Riot she tagged eight of "the best BIPOC crime novels you can read right now." One title on the list:

The Missing American by Kwei Quartey

The first in the four-book “Emma Djan Investigation” series, Emma Djan has resigned herself to a life as a private investigator. She’s lucky for it, since she was kicked off the police force, and she got the PI role from a former cop. Her first case involves a middle-aged widower from the US who has gone missing. He had been corresponding with a Ghanaian widow who asked for monetary help after an accident. Not only does he give her the money, but he also travels to Ghana to find his new love, and then goes missing. Can Emma find the lost American and potentially bring the scammers to justice?

Read about another entry on the list.

The Missing American is among Femi Kayode's four top crime novels set in Africa.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Robert N. Spengler III's "Nature's Greatest Success"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Nature's Greatest Success: How Plants Evolved to Exploit Humanity by Robert N. Spengler III.

About the book, from the publisher:

The 15,000-year story of how grass seduced humanity into being its unwitting labor force—and the science behind it.

Domesticated crops were not human creations, and agriculture was not simply invented. As Robert N. Spengler shows, domestication was the result of an evolutionary process in which people played a role only unwittingly and as actors in a numberless cast that spanned the plant and animal kingdoms. Nature's Greatest Success is the first book to bring together recent scientific discoveries and fascinating ongoing research to provide a systematic account of not only how agriculture really developed but why.

Through fifteen chapters, this book dives deep into the complex processes that drove domestication and the various roles that plants and animals, including humans, played in bringing about those changes. At the intersection of popular history, archaeology, and evolutionary biology, Nature's Greatest Success offers a revolutionary account of humanity not at the apex of nature but deeply embedded in the natural world and the evolutionary processes that continue to guide it even today.

Visit Robert N. Spengler III's website.

The Page 99 Test: Fruit from the Sands.

The Page 99 Test: Nature's Greatest Success.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top high school novels for adult readers

Miriam Gershow is the author of Closer, Survival Tips: Stories and The Local News. Her writing is featured in The Georgia Review, Gulf Coast, and Black Warrior Review, among other journals. She is the recipient of a Fiction Fellowship from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, an Oregon Literary Fellowship, and is a two-time finalist for the Oregon Book Award. She is the organizer of “100 Notable Small Press Books,” a curated list of the year’s recommended books from independent publishers.

[The Page 69 Test: The Local News]

At Lit Hub Gershow tagged "a half dozen books worth the trip back into the classrooms and corridors of high school." One title on the list:

Lisa Lutz, The Swallows

If you loved Rebecca Makkai’s boarding school mystery, I Have Some Questions For You, put The Swallows at the top of your list. This novel has it all: fish-out-of-water new teacher Alexandra Witt; Stonebridge Academy and its buildings named for writers (Wilde Bathhouse and Woolf Hall among the best); a story of escalating, vicious gender wars told in the voices of students, teachers, and administrators; campus maps, text messages, lesson plans, student notes; and dual unfolding mysteries. What is this mysterious organization, The Darkroom, that lurks unseen at Stonebridge? And who is the stalker who takes an interest in Witt? If this all sounds dark, in Lutz’s hands, it’s nearly gleeful. Best known for her Spellman File books, Lutz brings her signature wit and pace to The Swallows. It sweeps you up and gallops along.

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: KD Adlyn's "Sister, Butcher, Sister"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Sister, Butcher, Sister: A Novel by KD Aldyn.

About the book, from the publisher:

The chilling prose of Karin Slaughter meets the high-stakes plotting of The Butcher and the Wren in a dark debut following three normal sisters, their own forgotten traumas, and the serial killer that lives within one, begging the question: can you ever truly recognize the evil around you?

Three sisters. One killer. Which one is SHE?

The Rowling sisters have always been people you can understand – with partners and children, homes and dreams. And secrets, the sisters have those too. But when Kate, the eldest, finally returns to buy her late grandfather's home, the dark things each sister has kept buried soon rise to the surface.

Is Kate having unexplained visions tied to a past she can hardly recall? Is Aurora, the married mother of two, finally acting out in the face of her sisters' indiscretions? Is Peggy, the youngest and a recovering addict, able to move on from the memories that haunt her?

And then there's SHE.

SHE is one of them, but SHE is not like them at all. SHE is defined only by the carnage she lets the world see, the murders that have swept through their coastal community. And as the police close in on their newest serial killer, scrutiny lands on the Rowlings, forcing them to face their demons and reveal all they have kept hidden.

Visit KD Adlyn's website.

Q&A with KD Aldyn.

The Page 69 Test: Sister, Butcher, Sister.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Steve L. Monroe's "Mirages of Reform"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Mirages of Reform: The Politics of Elite Protectionism in the Arab World by Steve L. Monroe.

About the book, from the publisher:

In Mirages of Reform, Steve L. Monroe argues that geopolitics and social connections between state and capital underpin the Arab world's uneven trade policies. Despite decades of international pressure, neoliberal trade policy reform in the Arab world has been varied, selective, and often ineffective. Neoliberal trade policies have not deepened international trade in many of the region's markets. This book explains why.

When the region's regimes have strong support from global powers and strong social connections to the industrial elite, they engage in extensive but deceptive trade policy reform. Behind an edifice of neoliberal trade policies, neopatrimonial forms of protectionism like tax evasion and noncompetitive procurement shield the socially connected from international competition and obstruct actual trade liberalization. Industrialists are less trustful of regime promises of neopatrimonial protectionism after reform when they have weak social connections to their regime and their regime has low support from global powers. They are more likely to defend existing protectionist policies under these conditions, resulting in less trade policy reform.

Drawing on interviews, firm- and industry-level data, and evidence from Jordan to Morocco, Mirages of Reform reveals how international and domestic factors interact to shape the Arab world's rugged trade policy terrain. Insightful and well researched, this book imparts important lessons and warnings about the repercussions of economic reform in the region.

Visit Steve L. Monroe's website.

The Page 99 Test: Mirages of Reform.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven top books about marital murder

Peter Swanson's novels include The Kind Worth Killing, winner of the New England Society Book Award, and finalist for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger; Her Every Fear, an NPR book of the year; Before She Knew Him, and Eight Perfect Murders.

[My Book, The Movie: The Kind Worth Killing; The Page 69 Test: The Kind Worth Killing; Writers Read: Peter Swanson (February 2015)]

His new novel is Kill Your Darlings.

At CrimeReads Swanson tagged "seven books and one play on the theme of marital homicide," including:

The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934) by James M. Cain

Cain wrote two classics of this particular genre, the other being the equally brilliant Double Indemnity. What sets this novel apart is its depression-era setting, and the seediness of the affair between drifter Frank Chambers and Cora Papadakis, the wife of the owner of the diner that Frank finds work at. Cain was great at digging into the psychology that would lead a pair of lovers to murder together, and then showing how that same psychology would eventually destroy any love that had ever been there in the first place.

Read about another novel on the list.

The Postman Always Rings Twice is among Bob Rivers's top ten noir novels for beginners, Emily Temple's fifty great classic novels under 200 pages, Douglas Kennedy's ten favorite "novels on the agonies and ecstasies of the extramarital adventure," Vincent Zandri's top ten doomed and deadly romances in noir fiction, and Benjamin Black/John Banville's five top works of noir.

--Marshal Zeringue

Mark Stevens's "No Lie Lasts Forever," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: No Lie Lasts Forever: A Thriller by Mark Stevens.

The entry begins:

Dear Hollywood,

Please consider casting the following actors in the main roles for the film version of No Lie Lasts Forever.

By the way, please cast these individuals only in close collaboration with director Stephen Soderbergh. Yes, he’s the perfect person to direct this movie, which will require all the gravitas and tension of his films Traffic and Contagion and The Informant with his sleek, tight storytelling of his latest film, Black Bag. He would be perfect. His work with Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich would be a great stylistic approach for how to roll out the Flynn Martin character, too.

For Flynn Martin, it’s a tough choice but I’d go with Charlize Theron. Charlize is clear-eyed and…[read on]

Visit Mark Stevens's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Fireballer.

Q&A with Mark Stevens.

My Book, The Movie: The Fireballer.

Writers Read: Mark Stevens.

The Page 69 Test: No Lie Lasts Forever.

My Book, The Movie: No Lie Lasts Forever.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Marcus Alexander Gadson's "Sedition"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Sedition: How America's Constitutional Order Emerged from Violent Crisis by Marcus Alexander Gadson.

About the book, from the publisher:

How Americans have weathered constitutional crises throughout our history

Since protestors ripped through the Capitol Building in 2021, the threat of constitutional crisis has loomed over our nation. The foundational tenets of American democracy seem to be endangered, and many citizens believe this danger is unprecedented in our history. But Americans have weathered many constitutional crises, often accompanied by the same violence and chaos experienced on January 6. However, these crises occurred on the state level. In Sedition, Marcus Alexander Gadson uncovers these episodes of civil unrest and examines how state governments handled them.

Sedition takes readers through six instances of constitutional crisis: The Buckshot War, Dorr’s Rebellion, Bleeding Kansas, the Brooks-Baxter War, a successful terrorist campaign to overthrow South Carolina’s government during Reconstruction, and the Wilmington Insurrection of 1898. He chronicles these turbulent periods of violent anti-government conflict on the state level, explaining what it was like to experience coup d’états, rival governments fighting in the streets, and disputed elections that gave way to violence. As he addresses constitutional breakdown, Gadson urges Americans to pay increased attention to the risk of constitutional instability in their home states. His sweeping historical analysis provides new insights on the fight to protect democracy today.

As Americans mobilize to prevent future crises, Sedition reminds us that our constitutional order can fail, that democratic collapse is possible, and offers us advice on how to save our constitutional system.

Learn more about Sedition at the NYU Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Sedition.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top modern vampire novels

V. E. Schwab was born in California, raised in Tennessee, and currently splits her time between Denver, Colorado and Edinburgh, Scotland. She got her undergraduate degree in book design at Washington University in St. Louis, and her masters in depictions of monstrosity in medieval art at the University of Edinburgh.

Schwab's new novel is Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil.

At the Waterstones blog the author tagged "five modern vampire novels with real bite." One title on the list:

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones

Stephen Graham Jones is known for folding his Native American heritage into his horror, carving narratives that blend the modern world with the layered history, trauma, and legends of his background. So it’s no surprise that his contribution to the vampire canon is both wildly original and deeply affecting, a gore-filled, multi-generational examination of monsters, both human and otherwise, and a fresh take on the idea that you are what you eat. I cannot stop thinking about this book.

Read about another novel on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue