Pg. 99: Tricia Jenkins's "The CIA in Hollywood"

Today's feature at the Page 99 Test: The CIA in Hollywood: How the Agency Shapes Film and Television by Tricia Jenkins.

About the book, from the publisher:

What’s your impression of the CIA? A bumbling agency that can’t protect its own spies? A rogue organization prone to covert operations and assassinations? Or a dedicated public service that advances the interests of the United States? Astute TV and movie viewers may have noticed that the CIA’s image in popular media has spanned this entire range, with a decided shift to more positive portrayals in recent years. But what very few people know is that the Central Intelligence Agency has been actively engaged in shaping the content of film and television, especially since it established an entertainment industry liaison program in the mid-1990s.

The CIA in Hollywood offers the first full-scale investigation of the relationship between the Agency and the film and television industries. Tricia Jenkins draws on numerous interviews with the CIA’s public affairs staff, operations officers, and historians, as well as with Hollywood technical consultants, producers, and screenwriters who have worked with the Agency, to uncover the nature of the CIA’s role in Hollywood. In particular, she delves into the Agency’s and its officers’ involvement in the production of The Agency, In the Company of Spies, Alias, The Recruit, The Sum of All Fears, Enemy of the State, Syriana, The Good Shepherd, and more. Her research reveals the significant influence that the CIA now wields in Hollywood and raises important and troubling questions about the ethics and legality of a government agency using popular media to manipulate its public image.

Learn more about The CIA in Hollywood at the University of Texas Press website.

Tricia Jenkins is an assistant professor in the Film, Television, and Digital Media Department at Texas Christian University.

The Page 99 Test: The CIA in Hollywood.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five notable books on Gilded Age New York

One title on the Barnes & Noble Review's list of five top books on Gilded Age New York:

The Gangs of New York
by Herbert Asbury

Don't mess with the Bowery Boys, the Plug Uglies, or the Dead Rabbits. Gangs with such colorful names (and folks like Hell-Cat Maggie and Bill the Butcher) dominated the criminal underworld of New York at the turn of last century and fill Asbury's 1928 guide through the city's nastiest spots. Pulled together from police reports and first-hand interviews with criminals (and embellished by Asbury's taste for drama), it inspired Martin Scorcese's film of the same name. A delightful rogue's gallery of ne'er-do-wells who were probably less appealing in the flesh.

Read about another novel on the list.

The Gangs of New York is on Russell Shorto's five best list of books on New York City history.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Nick Arvin's "The Reconstructionist"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: The Reconstructionist by Nick Arvin.

About the book, from the publisher:

One instant can change an entire lifetime.

As a boy, Ellis Barstow heard the sound of the collision that killed Christopher, his older half brother—an accident that would haunt him for years. A decade later, searching for purpose after college, Ellis takes a job as a forensic reconstructionist, investigating and re-creating the details of fatal car accidents—under the guidance of the irascible John Boggs, who married Christopher's girlfriend. Ellis takes naturally to the work, fascinated by the task of trying to find reason, and justice, within the seemingly random chaos of smashed glass and broken lives. But Ellis is harboring secrets of his own—not only his memory of the car crash that killed his brother but also his feelings for Boggs's wife, Heather, which soon lead to a full-blown affair. And when Boggs inexplicably disappears, Ellis sets out to find him ... and to try to make sense of the crash site his own life has become.

Raising a host of universal questions—Can science ever explain matters of the heart? Can we ever escape the gravitational pull of the past?—Nick Arvin's novel is at once deeply moving and compulsively readable.

Learn more about the book and author at Nick Arvin's website and blog.

Arvin is the award-winning author of the novel Articles of War, named one of the Best Books of the Year by Esquire, and the story collection In the Electric Eden.

The Page 69 Test: The Reconstructionist.

--Marshal Zeringue

Coffee with a canine: Valerie Easton & Bridget

This weekend's featured duo at Coffee with a Canine: Valerie Easton and Bridget.

The author, on Bridget's role in her writing:

Writing a weekly column can be a slog, and I’d get lonesome if I didn’t have Bridget’s company. When I say “Time to go to work” she runs into my study and puts her paws up on the desk, asking for a hoist up. She always wants to lie right on the desk where I work; my laptop and I get a little squeezed, but she’s content to lie there and keep me company for hours, looking out the window at...[read on]

Among the early praise for Easton's latest book, Petal & Twig, from Publishers Weekly:

Open your eyes and keep it simple: those are two lessons Easton passes on from her own 40 years in the garden. When selecting and arranging flowers for bouquets, you needn’t spend a bundle buying a bundle of imported flowers.....The result will be unique, local, imaginative, and inexpensive. Color photos throughout illustrate and inspire.

Learn more about the book and author at Valerie Easton's "Plant Talk" blog.

Easton is professional librarian and a garden columnist for the Sunday magazine of the Seattle Times. She writes about gardens and the people who make them for numerous publications, including Garden Design and Organic Gardening magazines.

Writers Read: Valerie Easton.

Read--Coffee with a Canine: Valerie Easton and Bridget.

--Marshal Zeringue

Larry D. Sweazy's "The Devil's Bones," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: The Devils’ Bones by Larry D. Sweazy.

The entry begins:

Casting this book would be interesting. It’s a small town murder mystery that jumps back in forth in time from the present to nineteen years in the past. The narrative follows two characters, Jordan McManus, a young deputy implicated in a murder investigation, and Tito Cordova, an abducted half-white, half-Mexican, trying to find his way home to Indiana from Mexico to find out what happened to his mother, and to settle the score—so the actors would have to reflect each other in both time periods. I have always seen this as a stark, independent movie where character counts more than plot. Not that there’s not plot, there’s plenty, but first and foremost, for me anyway, this is a character novel.

So, the actors would have to be able to play to the range, I think, reflected in the novel. There are four characters that come immediately to mind, that I would love to have a say in casting: Jordan, his brother, Spider, Jordan’s ex-girlfriend, Ginny Coggins, and Tito. For Jordan, I’d could see Mark Walhberg being capable of pulling off the anger and vulnerability that he would need to inhabit Jordan’s skin. Spider would be a great role for Paul...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Larry D. Sweazy's website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: The Badger’s Revenge.

Read--Coffee with a Canine: Larry D. Sweazy and Brodi and Sunny.

Writers Read: Larry D. Sweazy (April 2011).

Writers Read: Larry D. Sweazy (March 2012).

The Page 69 Test: The Devil's Bones.

My Book, The Movie: The Devil’s Bones.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Charles A. Kupchan's "No One’s World"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: No One's World: The West, the Rising Rest, and the Coming Global Turn by Charles A. Kupchan.

About the book, from the publisher:

The world is on the cusp of a global turn. Between 1500 and 1800, the West sprinted ahead of other centers of power in Asia and the Middle East. Europe and the United States have dominated the world since. But today the West's preeminence is slipping away as China, India, Brazil and other emerging powers rise. Although most strategists recognize that the dominance of the West is on the wane, they are confident that its founding ideas--democracy, capitalism, and secular nationalism--will continue to spread, ensuring that the Western order will outlast its primacy.

In No One's World, Charles A. Kupchan boldly challenges this view, arguing that the world is headed for political and ideological diversity; emerging powers will neither defer to the West's lead nor converge toward the Western way. The ascent of the West was the product of social and economic conditions unique to Europe and the United States. As other regions now rise, they are following their own paths to modernity and embracing their own conceptions of domestic and international order.

Kupchan contends that the Western order will not be displaced by a new great power or dominant political model. The twenty-first century will not belong to America, China, Asia, or anyone else. It will be no one's world. For the first time in history, the world will be interdependent--but without a center of gravity or global guardian.

More than simply diagnosing what lies ahead, Kupchan provides a detailed strategy for striking a bargain between the West and the rising rest by fashioning a new consensus on issues of legitimacy, sovereignty, and governance. Thoughtful, provocative, sweeping in scope, this work is nothing less than a global guidebook for the 21st century.

Learn more about No One's World at the Oxford University Press website.

Kupchan is Professor of International Affairs at Georgetown University and Whitney Shepardson Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

The Page 99 Test: Kupchan's How Enemies Become Friends.

The Page 99 Test: No One's World.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Julie Berebitsky reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Julie Berebitsky, author of Sex and the Office: A History of Gender, Power, and Desire.

Her entry begins:

My scholarly research interests have always centered on the question of how changing cultural understandings of gender affect everyday life, so I spend a lot of time reading about gender! I mostly focus on historical accounts, but I’ve really enjoyed two recent books that speak to our moment in time.

Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation, edited by Kate Bornstein and S. Bear Bergman, left my head spinning—and not just because of the wonderfully mix of poetry, comic strips, and even a recipe that keeps company with more traditional essays. My head was turning round and round by the sheer variety of gender identities the authors described. The internet has opened up a space for creating communities that would have been impossible even a decade or so ago which has been wonderfully freeing for countless individuals. I was especially moved by Julia Serano’s “Performance Piece,” which takes on gender scholars like me who...[read on]

About Sex and the Office, from the publisher:

In this engaging book—the first to historicize our understanding of sexual harassment in the workplace—Julie Berebitsky explores how Americans’ attitudes toward sexuality and gender in the office have changed since the 1860s, when women first took jobs as clerks in the U.S. Treasury office.

Berebitsky recounts the actual experiences of female and male office workers; draws on archival sources ranging from the records of investigators looking for waste in government offices during World War II to the personal papers of Cosmopolitan editor Helen Gurley Brown and Ms. magazine founder Gloria Steinem; and explores how popular sources—including cartoons, advertisements, advice guides, and a wide array of fictional accounts—have represented wanted and unwelcome romantic and sexual advances. This range of evidence and the study’s long scope expose both notable transformations and startling continuities in the interplay of gender, power and desire at work.

Learn more about Sex and the Office: A History of Gender, Power, and Desire at the Yale University Press website.

Berebitsky is professor of history and director of the Women’s Studies Program at Sewanee: The University of the South. She is the author of Like Our Very Own: Adoption and the Changing Culture of Motherhood.

Writers Read: Julie Berebitsky.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five dark YA novels set in post-climate-change worlds

At Slate, Torie Bosch has an interesting essay about how dystopian young-adult fiction is tackling the social consequences of global warming. Her starting point is The Hunger Games story, and she tags a few other similarly themed novels, including:

Birthmarked by Caragh O’Brien. About the novel:

After climate change, on the north shore of Unlake Superior, a dystopian world is divided between those who live inside the wall, and those, like sixteen-year-old midwife Gaia Stone, who live outside. It’s Gaia’s job to “advance” a quota of infants from poverty into the walled Enclave, until the night one agonized mother objects, and Gaia’s parents disappear.

As Gaia’s efforts to save her parents take her within the wall, she faces the brutal injustice of the Enclave and discovers she alone holds the key to a secret code, a code of “birthmarked” babies and genetic merit.

Fraught with difficult moral choices and rich with intricate layers of codes, Birthmarked explores a colorful, cruel, eerily familiar world where a criminal is defined by her genes, and one girl can make all the difference.

Read--Caragh O'Brien's Birthmarked, the movie.

Delirium by Lauren Oliver. About the novel:

Before scientists found the cure, people thought love was a good thing.

They didn’t understand that once love -- the deliria -- blooms in your blood, there is no escaping its hold. Things are different now. Scientists are able to eradicate love, and the government demands that all citizens receive the cure upon turning eighteen. Lena Holoway has always looked forward to the day when she’ll be cured. A life without love is a life without pain: safe, measured, predictable, and happy.

But with ninety-five days left until her treatment, Lena does the unthinkable: She falls in love.

Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi. About the novel:

A gritty, high-stakes adventure set in a futuristic world where oil is scarce, but loyalty is scarcer.

In America's Gulf Coast region, grounded oil tankers are being broken down for parts by crews of young people. Nailer, a teenage boy, works the light crew, scavenging for copper wiring just to make quota-and hopefully live to see another day. But when, by luck or by chance, he discovers an exquisite clipper ship beached during a recent hurricane, Nailer faces the most important decision of his life: Strip the ship for all it's worth or rescue its lone survivor, a beautiful and wealthy girl who could lead him to a better life....

Dark Life by Kat Falls.  About the novel:

Dark Life is set in the near future when global warming has caused the oceans to rise and reduced America to half its former size. Fifteen-year-old Ty and his family live on an ocean floor homestead. When outlaws attack the pioneer settlement, Ty teams up with a girl from the “Topside” who’s come subsea to search for her brother. Together they face dangerous sea creatures and venture into the frontier town’s rough underworld to discover the secret behind the outlaws’ eerie abilities.

Exodus by Julie Bertagna. About the novel:

In a drowned world, the search for a future is a terrifying fight for survival The mighty ice caps at the poles are in meltdown. The seas have risen. And land has disappeared forever beneath storm-tossed waves....

Exodus tells the incredible story of young people with the will to make their own new beginnings in the harshest of worlds.

Read Bosch's essay.

Writers Read: Paolo Bacigalupi.

Caragh O'Brien's Birthmarked, the movie.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Lauren Groff's "Arcadia"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Arcadia by Lauren Groff.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the bestselling author of The Monsters of Templeton comes a lyrical and gripping story of a great American dream.

In the fields of western New York State in the 1970s, a few dozen idealists set out to live off the land, founding what would become a commune centered on the grounds of a decaying mansion called Arcadia House. Arcadia follows this romantic, rollicking, and tragic utopian dream from its hopeful start through its heyday and after.

Arcadia’s inhabitants include Handy, a musician and the group’s charismatic leader; Astrid, a midwife; Abe, a master carpenter; Hannah, a baker and historian; and Abe and Hannah’s only child, the book’s protagonist, Bit, who is born soon after the commune is created.

While Arcadia rises and falls, Bit, too, ages and changes. If he remains in love with the peaceful agrarian life in Arcadia and deeply attached to its residents—including Handy and Astrid’s lithe and deeply troubled daughter, Helle—how can Bit become his own man? How will he make his way through life and the world outside of Arcadia where he must eventually live?

With Arcadia, her first novel since her lauded debut, The Monsters of Templeton, Lauren Groff establishes herself not only as one of the most gifted young fiction writers at work today but also as one of our most accomplished literary artists.

Learn more about the book and author at Lauren Groff's website and blog.

The Page 99 Test: The Monsters of Templeton.

The Page 69 Test: Arcadia.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Daniel B. Schwartz's "The First Modern Jew"

Today's feature at the Page 99 Test: The First Modern Jew: Spinoza and the History of an Image by Daniel B. Schwartz.

About the book, from the publisher:

Pioneering biblical critic, theorist of democracy, and legendary conflater of God and nature, Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) was excommunicated by the Sephardic Jews of Amsterdam in 1656 for his "horrible heresies" and "monstrous deeds." Yet, over the past three centuries, Spinoza's rupture with traditional Jewish beliefs and practices has elevated him to a prominent place in genealogies of Jewish modernity. The First Modern Jew provides a riveting look at how Spinoza went from being one of Judaism's most notorious outcasts to one of its most celebrated, if still highly controversial, cultural icons, and a powerful and protean symbol of the first modern secular Jew.

Ranging from Amsterdam to Palestine and back again to Europe, the book chronicles Spinoza's posthumous odyssey from marginalized heretic to hero, the exemplar of a whole host of Jewish identities, including cosmopolitan, nationalist, reformist, and rejectionist. Daniel Schwartz shows that in fashioning Spinoza into "the first modern Jew," generations of Jewish intellectuals--German liberals, East European maskilim, secular Zionists, and Yiddishists--have projected their own dilemmas of identity onto him, reshaping the Amsterdam thinker in their own image. The many afterlives of Spinoza are a kind of looking glass into the struggles of Jewish writers over where to draw the boundaries of Jewishness and whether a secular Jewish identity is indeed possible. Cumulatively, these afterlives offer a kaleidoscopic view of modern Jewish culture and a vivid history of an obsession with Spinoza that continues to this day.

Learn more about The First Modern Jew at the Princeton University Press website.

Daniel B. Schwartz is assistant professor of history at George Washington University.

The Page 99 Test: The First Modern Jew.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five best books about hysteria

Asti Hustvedt is the author of Medical Muses: Hysteria in Nineteenth-Century Paris. An independent scholar who has written extensively on hysteria and literature, she has a Ph.D in French literature from New York University, is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including a Phi Betta Kapa Fellowship. Hustvedt is the editor of The Decadent Reader: Fiction, Fantasy and Perversion from Fin-de-Siècle France and has published many translations. She lives in New York City.

For the Wall Street Journal, she named a five best list of books on hysteria. One title on the list:

Mad Men and Medusas
by Juliet Mitchell (2000)

Psychoanalyst Juliet Mitchell asks in this book: Why does the medical community insist that hysteria no longer exists when she knows, "beyond a shadow of a doubt," that it does? She traces hysteria's disappearance as a medical diagnosis to the early part of the 20th century, when it was divided into smaller parts. Anorexia and multiple personality disorder, for example, were originally symptoms of hysteria but are now classified separately. She also shows how hysteria's identification as a female affliction ultimately contributed to its demise: When soldiers returned from the trenches of World War I suffering from hysterical paralyses, limps and nightmares, doctors hesitated to label these battle-scarred men hysterics, and thus the euphemism "shell shock" was born. Mitchell, however, argues that hysteria is inherent to the human condition. It may have been dismantled, renamed and discarded as a diagnosis, but to claim that it has disappeared is, she insists, as nonsensical as saying that love and hate have vanished.

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Cara Black's "Murder at the Lanterne Rouge," the movie

Now showing at My Book, the Movie: Murder at the Lanterne Rouge by Cara Black.

The entry begins:

I'm not sure who I'd like to play Aimée Leduc because there are so many stickthin, big-eyed, androgynous French actresses it would be hard to chose. But I definitely see the late, great actor Philippe...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Cara Black's website.

The Page 69 Test: Murder at the Lanterne Rouge.

My Book, the Movie: Murder at the Lanterne Rouge.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Larry D. Sweazy's "The Devil's Bones"

Today's feature at the Page 69 Test: The Devil's Bones by Larry D. Sweazy.

About the book, from the publisher:

Even if Jordan McManus survives‚ nothing in Dukaine will ever be the same…

When a late-summer drought drains a pond outside of the small town of Dukaine‚ Indiana‚ old secrets quickly come to the surface. A small skeleton is revealed in the mud‚ and everyone in town is convinced the bones belong to Tito Cordova‚ an eight-year-old boy who disappeared nineteen years earlier. Dukaine is home to the SunRipe plant‚ a tomato processing plant that relies on migrant workers to work the fields surrounding the town. Tito’s mother‚ Esperanza‚ was a year-round resident. Both mother and son were just a bad memory‚ and Tito’s disappearance was thought to be best forgotten by most of the town’s residents. When the marshal of Dukaine is lured to the pond and shot‚ the investigation falls to deputy Jordan McManus. Racing against time‚ and under the threat of his own arrest as a suspect in the shooting‚ Jordan must dig deep into the past‚ and face the possibility that Tito Cordova might still be alive. After another murder occurs‚ Jordan McManus finds himself squarely in the crosshairs of the law and a cold-blooded killer…

Learn more about the book and author at Larry D. Sweazy's website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: The Badger’s Revenge.

Read--Coffee with a Canine: Larry D. Sweazy and Brodi and Sunny.

Writers Read: Larry D. Sweazy (April 2011).

Writers Read: Larry D. Sweazy (March 2012).

The Page 69 Test: The Devil's Bones.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Michael Northrop reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Michael Northrop, author of Plunked, his first middle grade novel.

His entry begins:

I just finished up a red-hot, 10-book roll. I'm a slow reader, so it was a slow roll, but still: I read ten books in a row that were all at least excellent. A few were downright amazing, and at least one was nearly perfect. Here's a quick look at each:

We the Animals by Justin Torres: I read this for book club and was blown away. It’s a fierce, poetic debut that punches way above its 125-page weight class.

Townie by Andre Dubus III: Speaking of punching, there’s quite a bit of it in this one. Fighting, writing, family, and place are all major subjects, and they add up to one of the best memoirs I've...[read on]

About Plunked, from the publisher:

When a young slugger gets hit by a pitch, he needs more than practice to get back his game.Sixth grader Jack Mogens has it all figured out: He's got his batting routine down, and his outfielding earns him a starting spot alongside his best friend Andy on their Little League team, the Tall Pines Braves. He even manages to have a not-totally-embarrassing conversation with Katie, the team's killer shortstop. But in the first game of the season, a powerful stray pitch brings everything Jack's worked so hard for crashing down around his ears. How can he explain to his parents and friends why he won't be playing? Readers will root for Jack as he finds the courage to step back up to the plate.

Learn more about the book and author at Michael Northrop's website.

Writers Read: Michael Northrop (March 2011).

Writers Read: Michael Northrop.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten super-weird science fiction books that are required reading

At io9, MaryKate Jasper and Charlie Jane Anders came up with a list of ten super-weird books that are considered part of the science fiction canon.

One item on the list:

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein

Why It's Weird: The novel follows Valentine Michael Smith, son of the first astronauts to explore Mars, as he is reintegrated into human society after being raised as a Martian. Valentine believes a bunch of strange things, Valentine believes in a bunch of strange things, including the rightness and sacredness of consuming your friend's flesh after he/she dies, the superfluity of clothing, and the obvious self-evidence of an afterlife, based on his experiences on Mars. He founds the Church of All Worlds, in which sexual liberation blends with psychokinesis.

Why It's Required: In addition to winning the 1962 Hugo Award for Best Novel, Stranger in a Strange Land is considered a bona fide classic, frequently mentioned on the lists of the best science fiction books of all time. One of its invented Martian words, "grok" has even entered the Oxford English Dictionary. You can also see it on Pearson's Recommended High School Reading List.

Read about another novel on the list.

Stranger in a Strange Land is one of Battlestar Galactica creator Ron Moore's favorite sci-fi novels.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Erik Gellman's "Death Blow to Jim Crow"

Today's feature at the Page 99 Test: Death Blow to Jim Crow: The National Negro Congress and the Rise of Militant Civil Rights by Erik S. Gellman.

About the book, from the publisher:

During the Great Depression, black intellectuals, labor organizers, and artists formed the National Negro Congress (NNC) to demand a "second emancipation" in America. Over the next decade, the NNC and its offshoot, the Southern Negro Youth Congress, sought to coordinate and catalyze local antiracist activism into a national movement to undermine the Jim Crow system of racial and economic exploitation. In this pioneering study, Erik S. Gellman shows how the NNC agitated for the first-class citizenship of African Americans and all members of the working class, establishing civil rights as necessary for reinvigorating American democracy.

Much more than just a precursor to the 1960s civil rights movement, this activism created the most militant interracial freedom movement since Reconstruction, one that sought to empower the American labor movement to make demands on industrialists, white supremacists, and the state as never before. By focusing on the complex alliances between unions, civic groups, and the Communist Party in five geographic regions, Gellman explains how the NNC and its allies developed and implemented creative grassroots strategies to weaken Jim Crow, if not deal it the "death blow" they sought.

Learn more about Death Blow to Jim Crow at the publisher's website, and read an excerpt.

Erik S. Gellman is assistant professor of history at Roosevelt University.

The Page 99 Test: Death Blow to Jim Crow.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Cara Black's "Murder at the Lanterne Rouge"

Today's feature at the Page 69 Test: Murder at the Lanterne Rouge by Cara Black.

About the book, from the publisher:

Aimée Leduc is happy her long-time business partner René has found a girlfriend. Really, she is. It's not her fault if she can't suppress her doubts about the relationship; René is moving way too fast, and Aimée's instincts tell her Meizi, this supposed love of René's life, isn't trustworthy. Aimée can't kick the feeling that René doesn't know his lady as well as he thinks he does, and is being led on--maybe for a visa. Meizi's very traditional Chinese parents insist on chaperoning every date, and René never gets time alone with her. And now, at her birthday party in a Chinatown restaurant in the Arts et Metier quarter of Paris, he is even giving her a ring!

As it turns out, Aimée's misgivings about Meizi might not be far off the mark. Meizi disappears during dinner to take a phone call and never comes back to the restaurant. Minutes later, the body of a young man, a science prodigy and volunteer at the nearby Musée, is found shrinkwrapped in an alleyway--with Meizi's photo in his wallet.

Aimée does not like this scenario one bit, but she can't figure out how the murder is connected to Meizi's disappearance--there is no way tiny Meizi could have suffocated and shrinkwrapped the dead man. Aimée is determined to protect René, to find Meizi, and discover the truth. It turns out the dead genius was sitting on something huge--a secret project that has France's secret service keeping tabs on him. Now they're keeping tabs on Aimée. A missing young woman, an illegal immigrant raid in progress, botched affairs fo the heart, dirty policemen, the French secret service, cutting-edge science secrets and a murderer on the loose--what has she gotten herself into? And can she get herself--and her friends--back out of it all alive?

Learn more about the book and author at Cara Black's website.

The Page 69 Test: Murder at the Lanterne Rouge.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best thunderstorms in literature

At the Guardian, John Mullan named ten of the best thunderstorms in literature.

One novel on the list:

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

There is a thunderstorm on the night Heathcliff overhears Cathy telling Nelly Dean she is planning to marry Edgar Linton. In despair, Heathcliff leaves Wuthering Heights, and the elements supply their descant. "About midnight, while we still sat up, the storm came rattling over the Heights in full fury."

Read about another storm on the list.

Wuthering Heights appears on Mullan's lists of ten of the worst nightmares in literature and ten of the best foundlings in literature, Valerie Martin's list of novels about doomed marriages, Susan Cheever's list of the five best books about obsession, and Melissa Katsoulis' top 25 list of book to film adaptations. It is one of John Inverdale's six best books and Sheila Hancock's six best books.

The Page 99 Test: Wuthering Heights.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Larry Sweazy reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Larry Sweazy, author of The Devil's Bones.

His entry begins:

I just finished reading Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor. I have just recently finished judging a literary awards competition where I had to read a lot of books in the same genre in a short amount of time, so this book was a huge departure from my normal realm of reading, and that’s one of the reasons why I chose it. I typically don’t read YA books, but something about this one jumped out at me. Maybe it was the cover, or I saw a review somewhere, I can’t really remember. It just jumped out, and one day it showed up in my hands, and took me on a marvelous, much-needed, magical journey. This book is an adventure, a love story, a tragedy in three acts, and it...[read on]

About The Devil's Bones, from the publisher:

Even if Jordan McManus survives‚ nothing in Dukaine will ever be the same…

When a late-summer drought drains a pond outside of the small town of Dukaine‚ Indiana‚ old secrets quickly come to the surface. A small skeleton is revealed in the mud‚ and everyone in town is convinced the bones belong to Tito Cordova‚ an eight-year-old boy who disappeared nineteen years earlier. Dukaine is home to the SunRipe plant‚ a tomato processing plant that relies on migrant workers to work the fields surrounding the town. Tito’s mother‚ Esperanza‚ was a year-round resident. Both mother and son were just a bad memory‚ and Tito’s disappearance was thought to be best forgotten by most of the town’s residents. When the marshal of Dukaine is lured to the pond and shot‚ the investigation falls to deputy Jordan McManus. Racing against time‚ and under the threat of his own arrest as a suspect in the shooting‚ Jordan must dig deep into the past‚ and face the possibility that Tito Cordova might still be alive. After another murder occurs‚ Jordan McManus finds himself squarely in the crosshairs of the law and a cold-blooded killer…

Learn more about the book and author at Larry D. Sweazy's website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: The Badger’s Revenge.

Read--Coffee with a Canine: Larry D. Sweazy and Brodi and Sunny.

Writers Read: Larry D. Sweazy (April 2011).

Writers Read: Larry D. Sweazy.

--Marshal Zeringue

Madeline Miller's "The Song of Achilles," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller.

The entry begins:

The Song of Achilles is a retelling of the life of Achilles from the point of view of his lover and best friend Patroclus. The novel follows the two from boyhood through the events of the Trojan War.

I never imagine actors as any of my characters when I’m writing, so trying to dream-cast my book turned out to be surprisingly hard. Also, since these characters are famous and beloved, I knew people would have strong feelings about them, as they did about Brad Pitt’s Troy. But here goes….

The only person I can imagine as Achilles is Heath Ledger. I know what you’re thinking—that I’m just saying that because of the association with Brokeback Mountain. But actually, if I’m being honest, it’s because of 10 Things I Hate About You. In that movie, Ledger shows the enigmatic self-possession, the surprising warmth and depth, and the playful mischief of Achilles as I imagine him. Also, he looks golden.

I found it almost impossible to choose an actor to play his lover Patroclus—the closest I got was...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Madeline Miller's website.

See Madeline Miller's top ten classical books.

My Book, The Movie: The Song of Achilles.

--Marshal Zeringue