What is Keith Dixon reading"

Keith Dixon is the current featured contibutor at Writers Read.

Ghostfires, his first novel, was named one of the five best first novels of 2004 by Poets & Writers magazine.

His new novel, The Art of Losing, was published in February.

I recently asked him what he was reading and part of his reply included:

I'm most of the way through Martin Amis's Money -- I'm beginning to think I have some sort of literary crush on Amis, as I can't stop reading (and rereading) his stuff and marveling at what he has going on on the page. I finished his House of Meetings about two days after it hit the shelves and was awestruck by how far his tone and style have advanced. I'd always had The Information pegged as his best but I think House of Meetings runs neck and neck with it.

There's more: read Dixon's write-up at Writers Read.

Visit Keith Dixon's website to learn more about his novels.

The Page 69 Test: The Art of Losing.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: "Accidents Waiting to Happen"

Today's feature at the Page 69 Test: Simon Wood's Accidents Waiting to Happen.

About the book, from the author's website:

Josh Michaels is worth more dead than alive. He just doesn’t know it yet. He has no idea why someone would try to kill him, clearly that’s exactly what happened. When an SUV forced Josh’s car off the road and into a river, it might have been an accident. But when Josh looked up at the road, expecting to see the SUV’s driver rushing to help him, all he saw was the driver watching him calmly…then giving him a “thumbs down” sign. That was merely the first attempt on Josh’s life, all of them designed to look like accidents, and all of them very nearly fatal. With his time — and maybe his luck — running out and no one willing to believe him, Josh had better figure out who wants him dead and why … before it’s too late.

Among the praise for the novel:

“Accidents Waiting to Happen is a briskly plotted thriller that uses point of view shifts better than any novel I’ve read in quite a while in his debut.”
— CrimeSpree Magazine

“One of the most riveting first chapters I have read in some time. The pacing is spectacular and gets progressively faster as the reader nears the finale. An unqualified recommendation.”
— Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine

“An impressive debut.”
— Mystery Scene Magazine

“Simon Wood...delivers a suspenseful, brisk tale in his debut.”
— South Florida Sun Sentinel

“What a thrill ride!”
— Literary Editor for the East Bay Express

Simon Wood is the author of a robust and expanding list of novels and stories.

Visit Wood's website, his MySpace page, and his contributions to Murderati.

The Page 69 Test: Accidents Waiting to Happen.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten satires

Poet/playwright/novelist Adam Thorpe selected a top ten list of satires for the Guardian.

He introduced his selections thus:

"I live in France, and as I write this, the newly-elected president, having declared himself committed to uniting the French and caring for the poor, is sailing on a huge luxury yacht around Malta. Is he satirising himself? One wonders. Sarkozy once declared that, to "paralyse" his enemies, he likes to use their own phrases. In our postmodern age, even satire can be anticipated and enrolled in the cause of power. George W Bush is his own satire: we need add nothing. Remember that time he couldn't find the stage exit after a lecture? And what modern Swift could ever have invented the moment he received the news that America was under attack, clutching The Pet Goat in front of the class, and then reading it out with the kids?

"Satirists have it hard, these days. They can barely match the truth. And shallow satire is no good at all; it is merely cynical, as husked of all value as the average TV chat show and its meaningless laughter. Good, deep satire has both rage and compassion behind it - along with the hope of something better."

One title from Thorpe's list:

Joseph Conrad: The Secret Agent

This damp, dark thriller dances about on satirical feet, from its opening paragraph to the very last, where it suddenly plunges like Chernobyl's core to our own apocalyptic times, seamed with petit-bourgeois envy and crazed fundamentalist dreams. Whether attacking the former or the latter, Conrad never lets go of his grim, twitchy smile.

Read about the only title on Thorpe's list written by a woman.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: "Around the Bloc"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Stephanie Elizondo Griest's Around the Bloc.

About the book, from the author's website:

As a high school senior desperate to escape South Texas, Stephanie Elizondo Griest listened up when a CNN correspondent offered the how-to-be-like-me advice of "Learn Russian." Though she barely knew enough of her mother's native Spanish to communicate with her Abuelita, Stephanie enrolled in Russian at the University of Texas, commencing what would become a four-year, 12-nation tour of the Communist Bloc that shattered her preconceived notions of the "Evil Empire."

In Around the Bloc, Stephanie relates her experiences as a volunteer at a children's shelter in Moscow, a propaganda polisher at the Chinese Communist Party's mouthpiece in Beijing, and a belly dancer among the rumba queens of Havana. She falls in love with an ex-soldier who avoided radiation clean-up duties at Chernobyl by slitting his wrists, fights to feature the Spice Girls in print, hangs out with Cuban hip-hop artists who rap about Revolution, and makes difficult realizations about the meaning of democracy and social justice. She also learns how to buy vodka for a Russian dinner party (one bottle per guest plus one), stumbles upon Beijing's underground gay scene, marches with 100,000 mothers demanding Elian's return to Cuba, and gains new appreciation for the Mexican culture she left behind.

Among the praise for Around the Bloc:

"Stephanie Elizondo Griest has the soul of an adventurer, the heart of a child, the wit of a jester, and the mind of a wise old woman. Lucky for us, she also has a pen."
-Deborah Copaken Kogan, author of Shutterbabe

"A must-read for every student traveling or studying abroad. Griest’s four-year journey through communist capitol cities is an absorbing tale of political, social and personal discovery."
-Marybeth Bond, author Travelers' Tales: Gutsy Women; editor Travelers' Tales: A Woman's World

“A Chicana in China y mas? Who wouldn’t want to partake in Stephanie Elizondo Griest’s ongoing love affair with adventure? Unlike some travel stories where a smug author painfully tries to convince themselves (and their readers) how well they can adapt to foreign soil, Miss Stephanie, my dear beige sister, confesses full frontal vulnerability. She is the awkward tourist, the savvy traveler and … one hell of a writer! As long as there are books like this, one never needs to redeem mom’s frequent flyer points to experience true adventure!”
-Michele Serros, author of How to be a Chicana Role Model and Chicana Falsa

"Forget about J-school. Stephanie Elizondo Griest practices journalism the way it should be practiced. I wish I could have been hiding in her suitcase at each stop along her remarkable journey."
-Tom Miller, author of Trading with the Enemy: A Yankee Travels Through Castro's Cuba and The Panama Hat Trail

"A stunning first. Stephanie Elizondo Griest's memoir is a coming of age odyssey every American should read. Around the Bloc does more than tell a story. It vibrates with humor, insight and honesty -- a rare gem."
-Anchee Min, author of Red Azalea and Becoming Madame Mao

"A delightful and saucy romp through strange places and even stranger states of mind. Griest is not only an inspiration as a traveler and observer – she is darn funny too."
–James O'Reilly, author of Travelers' Tales

"Opening Around the Bloc is rather like popping the cork off a champagne bottle. This book fairly brims over with a refreshing zest and sparkle, which, one imagines, is probably an apt description of its author, as well. Stephanie Elizondo Griest, who embarked on her own Pilgrim’s Progress around the world’s greatest former (and current) communist capital cities, has written a delightful account of her curious journey. Full of humour, compassion and a great degree of personal candour, Around the Bloc is clearly just the beginning for this gifted young writer.”
-Jon Lee Anderson, author of The Lion’s Grave

Stephanie Elizondo Griest spent much of 2005 traveling throughout Mexico, interviewing undocumented workers and rallying with Zapatistas: Atria/Simon & Schuster will publish her memoir about it in the spring of 2008. Travelers' Tales published her guidebook 100 Places Every Woman Should Go in March 2007.

Read an excerpt from Around the Bloc and visit Stephanie Elizondo Griest's website.

The Page 99 Test: Around the Bloc.

--Marshal Zeringue

Overlooked and underappreciated crime novels

The Rap Sheet is running yet another entertaining and enlightening feature about crime fiction.

Editor J. Kingston Pierce "invited scores of crime novelists, critics, and bloggers from all over the world to answer a not-so-simple question: What one crime, mystery, or thriller novel do you think has been most unjustly overlooked, criminally forgotten, or underappreciated over the years?"

Among those who responded: Michael Connelly, Laura Lippman, Ian Rankin, Michael Marshall, Rhys Bowen, Peter Temple, Zoë Sharp, Lee Child, Gary Phillips, Sarah Weinman, Barry Eisler, Sara Paretsky, and Declan Hughes. And there are many more.

Read the first round of responses.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Tom Gabbay's "The Lisbon Crossing"

Today's feature at the Page 69 Test: Tom Gabbay's The Lisbon Crossing.

About the book, from the publisher:

Teeming with Nazis, spies, and ambiguous loyalties, the early days of World War II come alive with dark intrigue and heart-stopping action in this brilliant second tale from the author of the hit thriller The Berlin Conspiracy.

It's the summer of 1940 and Europe is in the grip of the Nazi war machine. Jack Teller arrives in neutral Lisbon on the arm of international screen legend Lili Sterne, to help her search for her childhood friend, Eva Lange. Having escaped Germany, staying one step ahead of the Nazi terror, Eva is believed to be hiding among the thousands of desperate refugees who have descended upon Lisbon. But Jack isn't the first on her trail. Top Hollywood detective Eddie Grimes had been on the case — until he turned up dead.

Instead of answers, Jack uncovers a series of lies that leads from Estoril's glittering nightclubs — rubbing elbows with the likes of Edward, Duke of Windsor, and his scheming wife, Wallis Simpson — into Lisbon's dank and dangerous backstreets. Along the way, Jack makes a shocking discovery that takes him from Portugal to the perilous boulevards of Nazi-occupied Paris, where his actions could change the course of the war.

The Lisbon Crossing brilliantly evokes a time of terror and uncertainty, and establishes Tom Gabbay's place among the best of modern suspense novelists.

Among the early praise for The Lisbon Crossing:

"The year is 1940, and the war in Europe is building to a crescendo. Jack Teller is a former gangster, bit actor, stand-in and sometime lover and friend of beautiful Hollywood star Lili Sterne. Jack finds himself in Lisbon as Lili's escort as she attempts to find a lost childhood friend named Eva Lange, who may or may not be a German spy. A private eye in Lili's employ who had been searching for Eva has met a gruesome end. As stand-in gumshoe, Jack's going to need all the skills he can muster - and a heaping helping of luck - to stay alive and unravel the story of Eva Lange.... Gabbay has taken on the mantle of countless previous WWII thriller writers and has done them proud with a hairpin plot and believable suspense."
--Peter Mergendah, Rocky Mountain News

"Gabbay serves it all up with Raymond Chandler-esque dark humor, a rich sense of place and a fine feel for the yawning chasm between those privileged to float above the exigencies of that dark time and those who were engulfed in its horrors."
--ForbesLife

Tom Gabbay is also the author of The Berlin Conspiracy.

The Page 69 Test: Tom Gabbay's The Lisbon Crossing.

--Marshal Zeringue

Most important books: Alexander McCall Smith

Alexander McCall Smith told Newsweek about his five most important books.

And two books that are not so important to him:

A classic that, on rereading, disappointed:

Alan Paton's Cry, The Beloved Country. Still a great book, but it has not aged well.

A Certified Important Book that you haven't read:

A Brief History of Time, by Stephen Hawking. I tried; I really tried.

Read more about Alexander McCall Smith's five most important books.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is David Edgerton reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read is David Edgerton, author of The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History since 1900, and other works.

Part of his entry:

My current leisure reading is Robert Winder’s Bloody Foreigners, a passionate and to the point history of immigration into Britain. A key theme is the racism, hypocrisy and forgetfulness of the authorities and the people. At the same time it stresses that Britain has indeed become a richer society as a result of immigration.

Still in other respects things have got worse: for the last ten years Britain has had its most mendacious Prime Minister ever. Yet Tony Blair is so overrated by so many that they blind themselves to this, and to the disaster he contributed to in Iraq. As he leaves office it is good to have one’s critical faculties fortified by the splendid polemic of Geoffrey Wheatcroft’s short Yo, Blair! Like me he despises the man’s deep dishonesty and ignorance, particularly of history. Unfortunately, as Ken Alder’s The Lie Detectors: The History of an American Obsession tells us, even if we could have strapped him down and stuck electrodes on his head we would not either find out the truth, or get him to tell it. While not quite the page turner that was The Measure of All Things, this book is a wonderful example of how modern history of science can be brought to a wider public.

There is much more to Edgerton's entry: read on.

David Edgerton is the Hans Rausing Professor at Imperial College London where he was the Founding Director of its Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine.

The Page 69 Test: The Shock of the Old.

Writers Read: David Edgerton.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Thomas McCraw's "Prophet of Innovation"

Today's feature at the Page 69 Test: Thomas K. McCraw's Prophet of Innovation: Joseph Schumpeter and Creative Destruction.

About the book, from the publisher:

Pan Am, Gimbel's, Pullman, Douglas Aircraft, Digital Equipment Corporation, British Leyland -- all once as strong as dinosaurs, all now just as extinct. Destruction of businesses, fortunes, products, and careers is the price of progress toward a better material life. No one understood this bedrock economic principle better than Joseph A. Schumpeter. "Creative destruction," he said, is the driving force of capitalism.

Described by John Kenneth Galbraith as "the most sophisticated conservative" of the twentieth century, Schumpeter made his mark as the prophet of incessant change. His vision was stark: Nearly all businesses fail, victims of innovation by their competitors. Businesspeople ignore this lesson at their peril -- to survive, they must be entrepreneurial and think strategically. Yet in Schumpeter's view, the general prosperity produced by the "capitalist engine" far outweighs the wreckage it leaves behind.

During a tumultuous life spanning two world wars, the Great Depression, and the early Cold War, Schumpeter reinvented himself many times. From boy wonder in turn-of-the-century Vienna to captivating Harvard professor, he was stalked by tragedy and haunted by the specter of his rival, John Maynard Keynes. By 1983 -- the centennial of the birth of both men -- Forbes christened Schumpeter, not Keynes, the best navigator through the turbulent seas of globalization. Time has proved that assessment accurate.

Prophet of Innovation is also the private story of a man rescued repeatedly by women who loved him and put his well-being above their own. Without them, he would likely have perished, so fierce were the conflicts between his reason and his emotions. Drawing on all of Schumpeter's writings, including many intimate diaries and letters never before used, this biography paints the full portrait of a magnetic figure who aspired to become the world's greatest economist, lover, and horseman -- and admitted to failure only with the horses.

Among the praise for Prophet of Innovation:

Much honored as an economic prophet, Joseph Schumpeter has had to wait half a century after his death for this splendid full-dress biography covering his ideas, life, and times.... [This is] a fat, learned biography by Thomas McCraw, one of America's most respected business historians, the author of a Pulitzer prize-winning history of the rise of regulation. He has found the perfect subject in Schumpeter. He succeeds in getting inside the economist's head, explaining not just what he thought but why he thought it. Beyond this, he also succeeds in painting a portrait of his times. Fin de siécle Vienna, Weimar Germany, Harvard University before and after the first world war: all come to life on these pages.
--The Economist

[Schumpeter's] private life was no less fascinating than his public message. In Prophet of Innovation, Thomas McCraw -- emeritus professor of history at the Harvard Business School -- artfully weaves the two together.
--Dan Seligman, Wall Street Journal

In this biography, Pulitzer Prize winner McCraw neatly divides his emphasis between Schumpeter's professional and personal life. He portrays his subject as a somewhat self-absorbed insatiable scholar not entirely comfortable with his contemporaries, which might explain marriages and affairs with much older and younger women, as well as his affinity with students and often-strained relations with colleagues of his own generation. McGraw lucidly addresses Schumpeter's economic theories through an examination of his letters, lectures, addresses, articles, and major works.... [An] insightful and highly readable biography.
--Lawrence R. Maxted, Library Journal (starred review)

[A] persuasive and eloquent biography.
--Jay Hancock, Baltimore Sun

This well-paced and beautifully written book explains not only Schumpeter's work but also the fast-changing phenomenon of modern capitalism. McCraw brings out Schumpeter's energy and charisma as well as the power of his ideas, quite skillfully linking the economist's colorful and adventurous personal life with the development of his views. This book is a fine tribute to a great thinker.
--Harold James, Princeton University

Read the entire review in The Economist.

Thomas K. McCraw is the Isidor Straus Professor of Business History, Emeritus at the Harvard Business School. His other books include Creating Modern Capitalism: How Entrepreneurs, Companies, and Countries Triumphed in Three Industrial Revolutions and Prophets of Regulation, which won the Pulitzer Prize in history.

The Page 69 Test: Prophet of Innovation.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Lydia Millet's "My Happy Life"

The new feature at the Page 99 Test: Lydia Millet's My Happy Life.

About the novel, from the publisher:

At the opening of My Happy Life, the unnamed narrator of this bittersweet fictional memoir has been abandoned in a locked room of a defunct hospital for the mentally ill. She hasn't seen the nice man who brings her food in days; she's eaten the soap and the toothpaste; she tried to eat the plaster on her walls, a dietary adventure that ended none too well.

This woman's story — covering decades and spanning continents — is utterly tragic. And yet, curiously, the narrator is happy. Despite a lifetime of neglect, physical abuse, and loss, she's incapable of perceiving slight or injury. She has infinite faith in the goodwill of others, loves even her enemies, and finds grace and communion in places most people wouldn't dare to look. By stepping outside her meager circumstances, she's able to live each moment as though it were her last-with gratitude, longing, and delight.

With the utterly original and compelling narrative voice Millet has fashioned, this is a novel that hypnotizes the reader, that startles and keeps us reading and imbues us with the rich interior life of this woman.

Among the praise for My Happy Life:

"[S]trange, slender and incandescent ... sharp and frequently funny."
—Jennifer Reese, New York Times Book Review

"Occasionally a book comes along that is truly written (as writers are instructed books should be) as if it were the writer's last: Millet's sad and infinitely touching third novel (after the absurdist George Bush, Dark Prince of Love) is such an extraordinary work."
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Lydia Millet ... strips life down to its simplest components in her strange and lovely new novel, My Happy Life... in Millet's slim tale, deprivation enables transcendence and reverie."
—Joy Press, Village Voice

"Lydia Millet's 'fictional memoir' succeeds as a relentlessly dark novel about a heartbreakingly cheerful woman whose grim life has been marked by abuse and loss."
—Boston Herald

Read more about the novel at the publisher's website, and visit the author's website for an excerpt.

My Happy Life won the 2003 PEN-USA Award.

Lydia Millet's other novels include Oh Pure and Radiant Heart, Everyone's Pretty, George Bush, Dark Prince of Love, and Omnivores.

The Page 99 Test: My Happy Life.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Singled Out," the movie

At My Book, The Movie, Bella DePaulo shares some ideas about the casting for a film adaptation of her nonfiction book, Singled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After.

DePaulo's contribution opens:

When Geena Davis accepted the Golden Globe for her role as Commander in Chief, she told a touching story about the little girl who looked up at her and said that she, too, wants to be president when she grows up. As some in the crowd started aw-ing at the cuteness of it all, Davis admitted that the tender tale had never really happened. She was just mocking the kinds of sappy stories people tell at awards shows.

Singled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After is my book that takes aim at all the sentimentalized myths about marriage and coupling, and the scare stories about staying single, that are perpetuated ad nauseam in contemporary American society. You know the ones: Marry, and you will never be lonely again. Stay single, and your life will be miserable and tragic until you die alone in your tiny apartment, where someone finally discovers you weeks later, eaten by your cats. Singled Out says: Those things don’t really happen.

So who could best tell that story in a movie? Read on.

Visit Bella DePaulo's website.

My Book, The Movie: Singled Out.

The Page 69 Test: Singled Out.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ann Rule's 5 best true-crime books

Ann Rule, best-selling author of two dozen true-crime books, named a "five best" list of true-crime books for Opinion Journal.

The most recent title on Rule's list:

The Wrong Man" by James Neff

In 1954, an Ohio jury and much of America quickly accepted that Dr. Sam Sheppard had killed his pregnant wife, Marilyn. James Neff, revisiting the much-reported case almost 50 years later, presents another suspect and a new view in "The Wrong Man." The book is rich in forensic detail, and it taught me things I never knew, thanks to Neff's close attention to the way blood had been sprayed and dripped at the crime scene. Blood evidence didn't really come of age until the 1990s. That's why the forensic data available at any 1954 crime scene are horse-and-buggy stuff compared with what Neff had access to when he wrote on this case -- and he made the most of it. His research is monumental and a shining example for any true-crime writer.

Read about the book that is Number One on Rule's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: George Kateb's "Patriotism and Other Mistakes"

Today's feature at the Page 69 Test: George Kateb's Patriotism and Other Mistakes.

About the book, from the publisher:

George Kateb has been one of the most respected and influential political theorists of the last quarter century. His work stands apart from that of many of his contemporaries and resists easy summary. In these essays Kateb often admonishes himself, in Socratic fashion, to keep political argument as far as possible negative: to be willing to assert what we are not, and what we will not do, and to build modestly from there some account of what we are and what we ought to do.

Drawing attention to the non-rational character of many motives that drive people to construct and maintain a political order, he urges greater vigilance in political life and cautions against “mistakes” not usually acknowledged as such. Patriotism is one such mistake, too often resulting in terrible brutality and injustices. He asks us to consider how commitments to ideals of religion, nation, race, ethnicity, manliness, and courage find themselves in the service of immoral ends, and he exhorts us to remember the dignity of the individual.

The book is divided into three sections. In the first, Kateb discusses the expansion of state power (including such topics as surveillance) and the justifications for war recently made by American policy makers. The second section offers essays in moral psychology, and the third comprises fresh interpretations of major thinkers in the tradition of political thought, from Socrates to Arendt.

Among the praise for the book:

"George Kateb is simultaneously a profound intellectual and an agent provocateur whose voice is urgently needed today. Wary of those who say that politics is governed simply by self-interest, principle, or some combination thereof, Kateb uncovers the aesthetic sensibilities inhabiting political interpretation, public vision and state action. He seeks to chasten the aesthetic, rather than to eliminate it. His critical forays into patriotism, state surveillance, fear and judgment inspire me, though others will draw just as much sustenance from his explorations into the Constitution, morality, and ideology. An indispensable book for our time."
--William E. Connolly, author of Pluralism

"Intended to challenge common sense and conventional wisdom, Patriotism and Other Mistakes is, in turn, erudite and angry, ingenious and outrageous, sophisticated and shrill.... A penetrating analysis of the non-rational ideas that bind citizens to their government."
--Glenn C. Altschuler, New York Observer

George Kateb is William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Politics, Emeritus, at Princeton University. He is the author of articles on issues in the Bill of Rights and constitutional law, and his books include Hannah Arendt: Politics, Conscience, Evil; The Inner Ocean: Individualism and Democratic Culture; and Emerson and Self-Reliance. At Princeton, he was Director of the Program in Political Philosophy, Director of the Gauss Seminars, and Director of the University Center for Human Values.

The Page 69 Test: Patriotism and Other Mistakes.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is David Fulmer reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read is David Fulmer, author of the Shamus Award-winning Chasing the Devil's Tail, The Dying Crapshooter's Blues, and other books.

Fulmer is a producer, too. Among his production credits is the documentary "Blind Willie's Blues." In giving the documentary a four-star "Editor's Choice" rating, Video Librarian called it "nothing less than the economic, social, and historical evolution of America's indigenous music." It earned a nomination for the W.C. Handy Award in 1998. "Blind Willie's Blues - Atlanta Strut" broadcast on Public Broadcasting Atlanta in May, 2007.

Included in Fulmer's long list of newspaper and magazine credits are features on blues and jazz for the Atlanta Journal & Constitution, Atlanta Magazine, Southline, Blues Access, the All Music Guide, Il Giornale, and National Public Radio.

One of the books Fulmer mentions he was reading:

A Left Hand Like God, by Peter Silvester, which is a scholarly study of boogie-woogie piano. He's an academician, God help him, and it shows, but this is the kind of work that people like me slog through, sifting for diamonds. [read on]

Writers Read: David Fulmer.

Visit David Fulmer's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Dying Crapshooter's Blues.

--Marshal Zeringue

Lee Child's list

This week at The Week magazine, Lee Child named The List.

The only title in translation on it:

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

My private pick for the 20th–century novel that will live the longest. Read it now, and get a jump on history. And enjoy it along the way.

Read about an American classic that made Child's list.

Lee Child’s latest Reacher novel is Bad Luck and Trouble.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Cordelia Frances Biddle's "The Conjurer"

Today's feature at the Page 69 Test: Cordelia Frances Biddle's The Conjurer.

About the book, from The Conjurer website:

Intrigue, passion and murder surround the suspicious disappearance of Philadelphia financier, Lemuel Beale, in the winter of 1842. A victim of accidental drowning, according to the local constabulary, Beale’s legacy is a sinister web of political and financial machinations, and a troubling relationship with his daughter, his only child. Unmarried at twenty-six in an era when women were expected to become brides before turning twenty, Martha Beale’s conflicted search for her father eventually emboldens and frees her, bringing her love in the person of Thomas Kelman, an assistant to Philadelphia’s mayor - and a man whose business is homicide investigation.

The inquiry into Beale’s disappearance uncovers connections between the city’s most affluent and its most destitute: an escaped inmate from the infamous Eastern State Penitentiary; the freed African-American prisoner, Ruth; the ritual slayings of several young girl prostitutes; and Eusapio Paladino, a conjurer and necromancer who claims to communicate with the dead.

Among the praise for The Conjurer:

"...juggling multiple plot lines and narrators, this debut entry in a new historical crime series is a feast for those fans who enjoy engaging characters and historical periods that have not been done to death. This may also attract readers who loved Caleb Carr's attention to detail in The Alienist and Jacqueline Winspeare's appealing sleuth, Maisie Dobbs."
- Library Journal

"... disparate yet interrelated story threads combine in an intricately orchestrated narrative that implicates the Brahmin class and the corruption that comes with their absolute power. Biddle wonderfully evokes the color and culture of the time."
– Publishers Weekly

...appealing characters... a wealth of intriguing period detail
– Kirkus

A first-rate mystery featuring rich period authenticity and beguiling characters, The Conjurer succeeds on all levels –as top-flight historical fiction, and as a classic whodunnit. Biddle’s voice is uniquely suited to pre-Civil-War Philadelphia. This one goes on my keeper shelf!
– Julia Spencer-Fleming, author of All Mortal Flesh

Visit Cordelia Frances Biddle's website and read an excerpt from The Conjurer.

The Page 69 Test: The Conjurer.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Wilbur Smith reading?

Wilbur Smith, author of The Quest and thirty other African adventure novels, talked to the Christian Science Monitor about what he was watching and listening to.

And reading:

I receive a great number of proof copies of soon-to-be published books ... asking for quotes [for] the dust jackets. I bin most of them, but two caught my fancy recently. One was The Accident Man, a first novel by Tom Cain. It is a cracking thriller woven around the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. Another one that I liked was Tip and Run by Edward Paice, which is a history of the campaign of the German General Von Lettow-Vorbeck in East Africa during World War II. It is a scholarly work, but totally fascinating.

Read about Smith's taste in movies and music.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Paul Schneider's "Brutal Journey"

The new feature at the Page 99 Test: Paul Schneider's Brutal Journey: The Epic Story of the First Crossing of North America.

About the book, from the publisher:

A gripping survival epic, Brutal Journey tells the story of an army of would-be conquerors, bound for glory, who landed in Florida in 1528. But only four of the four hundred would survive: eight years and some five thousand miles later, three Spaniards and a black Moroccan wandered out of the wilderness to the north of the Rio Grande and into Cortes’s gold-drenched Mexico. The survivors brought nothing back other than their story, but what a tale it was. They had become killers and cannibals, torturers and torture victims, slavers and enslaved. They became faith healers, arms dealers, canoe thieves, spider eaters. They became, in other words, whatever it took to stay alive.

Among the praise for Brutal Journey:

"A fast-paced, moving story, one that is difficult to believe and impossible to forget."
--New York Times

"A riveting tale of courage, cruelty, and ultimately survival, Schneider does for Cabeza de Vaca and his comrades what the late Stephen Ambrose did (with ''Undaunted Courage") for Lewis and Clark."
--Boston Globe

"[R]iveting... incorporates historical and archaeological research without stalling the story's epic sweep."
--Entertainment Weekly

"[A] delicious mix of the horrifying and the cheering."
--Washington Post

Paul Schneider is also the author of The Adirondacks: A History of America's First Wilderness and The Enduring Shore: A History of Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard, and Nantucket.

Visit Schneider's website and read the Introduction and Chapter One from Brutal Journey.

The Page 99 Test: Brutal Journey.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Harold Cook's "Matters of Exchange"

Today's feature at the Page 69 Test: Matters of Exchange: Commerce, Medicine, and Science in the Dutch Golden Age by Harold J. Cook.

About the book, from the publisher:

In this wide-ranging and stimulating book, a leading authority on the history of medicine and science presents convincing evidence that Dutch commerce — not religion — inspired the rise of science in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Harold J. Cook scrutinizes a wealth of historical documents relating to the study of medicine and natural history in the Netherlands and elsewhere in Europe, Brazil, South Africa, and Asia during this era, and his conclusions are fresh and exciting. He uncovers direct links between the rise of trade and commerce in the Dutch Empire and the flourishing of scientific investigation.

Cook argues that engaging in commerce changed the thinking of Dutch citizens, leading to a new emphasis on such values as objectivity, accumulation, and description. The preference for accurate information that accompanied the rise of commerce also laid the groundwork for the rise of science globally, wherever the Dutch engaged in trade. Medicine and natural history were fundamental aspects of this new science, as reflected in the development of gardens for both pleasure and botanical study, anatomical theaters, curiosity cabinets, and richly illustrated books about nature. Sweeping in scope and original in its insights, this book revises previous understandings of the history of science and ideas.

Among the early praise for Matters of Exchange:

"Cook challenges existing interpretations of the rise of science during the early modern period and provides an immensely informative overview of science and medicine in the Dutch Golden Age."
—Mark Harrison, University of Oxford

"Matters of Exchange is a magisterial book linking science and commerce. From now on, 'the Scientific Revolution' has a Dutch accent."
—Mary E. Fissell, Johns Hopkins University

"In this ground-breaking book, Professor Cook investigates the way in which the unprecedented growth in global knowledge in the Netherlands in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries accompanied, and reflected the rapid expansion of the Dutch global commercial empire. Meticulously tracking the relations between these two areas of activity, Cook argues vividly and convincingly that in the case of medicine, commerce and the rise of a recognisable modern practice went hand in hand, and that, in general, across Europe, a new global economy marked the beginnings of science as we know it. A book of real importance for all cultural historians and historians of science of the early modern period."
—Lisa Jardine, Director of the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters, and Centenary Professor of Renaissance Studies, Queen Mary, University of London

Click here to listen to an interview with Harold Cook on the Yale Press Podcast.

Hal Cook is the Director of The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London, which is "helping to promote the discipline throughout the world as making fundamental contributions to the understanding of the human condition." His other scholarly publications include The Decline of the Old Medical Regime in Stuart London (Cornell University Press, 1986) and Trials of an Ordinary Doctor: Joannes Groenevelt in Seventeenth-Century London (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994).

Read "Medicine, Materialism, Globalism: The Example of the Dutch Golden Age," Cook's Professorial inaugural lecture, UCL (2003).

The Page 69 Test: Matters of Exchange.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Rhythm of the Road," the movie

At My Book, The Movie, Albyn Leah Hall shares some ideas about the casting for a film adaptation of her latest novel, The Rhythm of the Road.

The story is a "road novel and psychological thriller," according to the author:

The Rhythm of the Road is the story of Josephine, an English truck driver’s daughter, who spends her childhood in her father’s truck. Together with her Irish father, the sweetly depressive Bobby Pickering, Josephine lives out an ersatz version of the American dream, obsessively listening to country music while traveling the English motorways. Josephine and Bobby can’t believe their luck when Cosima Stewart, a beautiful country singer from Texas, hitches a lift with them. As Cosima’s career begins to rise, they become her biggest fans. This is harmless enough until Bobby, already a tormented and fragile soul, disappears on an overnight ferry to Dublin. Josephine, now a teenager and in denial about her father’s disappearance, manically pursues Cosima, conjuring a friendship that does not exist and even following her to California.

Read on to see who the author would have portraying her characters.

Among the praise for the novel:

"One of those rare literary novels-a fascinating story that keeps you gripped to the end, written in some of the finest prose I have read in a long time. It explores the themes of love, loss, grief, and eventual redemption with sparkling prose that is often funny and sometimes frighteningly chilling. A tender and compelling read!"
--Andrea Levy, author of the Orange Prize-winning novel, Small Island

"A stunning novel, a story of obsession and loss played out in the consciousness of a desperate and engaging young woman who was born on the move. Hall has powerful gifts of observation and sensitivity. She renders complex characters in sudden, deft strokes and unfolds with marvelous authority a vivid, funny, touching, and suspenseful world of wonders. I couldn't put this book down."
--Valerie Martin, author of the Orange Prize-winning novel Property, Italian Fever, and The Unfinished Novel and Other Stories

"I have not stopped thinking about Hall's beautiful and engrossing novel. Her chronicle of a young woman's descent into madness is so rich in compassion and so believable, it should be required reading."
--Arthur Golden, author of Memoirs of a Geisha

Read an excerpt from The Rhythm of the Road and learn more about Albyn Leah Hall's writing at her website.

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

--Marshal Zeringue