Six top YA stories about life-changing summers

At the BN Teen blog Natalie Zutter tagged six YA books about life-changing summers, including:

Just One Day, by Gayle Forman

Forman’s swooningly romantic Just One Day throws type-A traveler Allyson Healey a curveball on her first European trip, in the form of relaxed, confident actor Willem De Ruiter. When they meet at a performance of Twelfth Night in Paris, he offers to show her the city…and she abandons her carefully planned trip to say yes. But then he disappears the next day, the final day of her three-week trip. He’s already changed her, but it’s the next few months that truly form her into a new person, as she grapples with who he was and what their day together meant to her.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Helene Stapinski reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Helene Stapinski, author of Murder In Matera: A True Story of Passion, Family, and Forgiveness in Southern Italy.

Her entry begins:

I'm about a quarter of the way through The Sellout by Paul Beatty, a social satire about an African American man's unorthodox upbringing and his appeal before the Supreme Court after his attempt to reintroduce slavery to a Los Angeles neighborhood.

The book is simultaneously incredibly sad and laugh out loud funny, no easy feat. I have a problem with self-serious, pretentious writers who are afraid -- or maybe are just incapable -- of making people laugh. You can tell a moving story and still manage to entertain your reader. Beatty, so far, has managed to tell a painful, contemporary tale, while using wicked, biting humor. His...[read on]

About Murder In Matera, from the publisher:

A writer goes deep into the heart of Italy to unravel a century-old family mystery in this spellbinding memoir that blends the suspenseful twists of Making a Murderer and the emotional insight of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels.

Since childhood, Helene Stapinski heard lurid tales about her great-great-grandmother, Vita. In Southern Italy, she was a loose woman who had murdered someone. Immigrating to America with three children, she lost one along the way. Helene’s youthful obsession with Vita deepened as she grew up, eventually propelling the journalist to Italy, where, with her own children in tow, she pursued the story, determined to set the record straight.

Finding answers would take Helene ten years and numerous trips to Basilicata, the rural "instep" of Italy’s boot—a mountainous land rife with criminals, superstitions, old-world customs, and desperate poverty. Though false leads sent her down blind alleys, Helene’s dogged search, aided by a few lucky—even miraculous—breaks and a group of colorful local characters, led her to the truth.

Yes, the family tales she’d heard were true: There had been a murder in Helene’s family, a killing that roiled 1870s Italy. But the identities of the killer and victim weren’t who she thought they were. In revisiting events that happened more than a century before, Helene came to another stunning realization—she wasn’t who she thought she was, either.

Weaving Helene’s own story of discovery with the tragic tale of Vita’s life, Murder in Matera is a literary whodunit and a moving tale of self-discovery that brings into focus a long ago tragedy in a little-known region remarkable for its stunning sunny beauty and dark buried secrets.

Visit Helene Stapinski's website.

Writers Read: Helene Stapinski.

--Marshal Zeringue

Wendy Webb's "The End of Temperance Dare," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The End of Temperance Dare by Wendy Webb.

The entry begins:

Oh, this is fun. I imagine how my characters look when I’m writing my books, sometimes imagining real life actors. So here goes, for the main characters from The End of Temperance Dare.

Miss Penny: Maggie Smith
Miss Penny is the departing director of Cliffside Manor, daughter of Chester Dare, the philanthropist who build Cliffside as a tuberculosis sanatorium back in the day and turned it into a retreat for artists and writers when TB was cured. She hires Eleanor and sets in motion the events of the story.

Eleanor (Norrie): Sandra Bullock or...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Wendy Webb's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Tale of Halcyon Crane.

My Book, The Movie: The End of Temperance Dare.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Lucinda Riley's "The Shadow Sister"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Shadow Sister by Lucinda Riley.

About The Shadow Sister, from the publisher:

Star D'Aplièse is at a crossroads in her life after the sudden death of her beloved father - the elusive billionaire, named Pa Salt by his six daughters, all adopted by him from the four corners of the world. He has left each of them a clue to their true heritage, but Star - the most enigmatic of the sisters - is hesitant to step out of the safety of the close relationship she shares with her sister CeCe. In desperation, she decides to follow the first clue she has been left, which leads her to an antiquarian bookshop in London, and the start of a whole new world...

A hundred years earlier, headstrong and independent Flora MacNichol vows she will never marry. She is happy and secure in her home in the Lake District, living close to her idol, Beatrix Potter, when machinations outside her control lead her to London, and the home of one of Edwardian society's most notorious players, Alice Keppel. Flora is pulled between passionate love and duty to her family, but finds herself a pawn in a game - the rules of which are only known to others, until a meeting with a mysterious gentleman unveils the answers that Flora has been searching for her whole life...

As Star learns more of Flora's incredible journey, she too goes on a voyage of discovery, finally stepping out of the shadow of her sister and opening herself up to the possibility of love. Following on from the bestselling The Seven Sisters and The Storm Sister, The Shadow Sister is the third book in Lucinda Riley's spellbinding series, loosely based on the mythology of the Seven Sisters star cluster.

Visit Lucinda Riley's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Storm Sister.

My Book, The Movie: The Storm Sister.

My Book, The Movie: The Shadow Sister.

Writers Read: Lucinda Riley.

The Page 69 Test: The Shadow Sister.

--Marshal Zeringue

Congratulations, Charlie Jane Anders

The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, Inc. has announced the recipients of the Nebula Awards® for works published in 2016.

The winner in the Novel category:

All The Birds In the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders

Congratulations!

My Book, The Movie: All the Birds in the Sky.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Wayne Franklin's "James Fenimore Cooper: The Later Years"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: James Fenimore Cooper: The Later Years by Wayne Franklin.

About the book, from the publisher:

A definitive new biography of James Fenimore Cooper, early nineteenth century master of American popular fiction

American author James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) has been credited with inventing and popularizing a wide variety of genre fiction, including the Western, the spy novel, the high seas adventure tale, and the Revolutionary War romance. America’s first crusading novelist, Cooper reminds us that literature is not a cloistered art; rather, it ought to be intimately engaged with the world.

In this second volume of his definitive biography, Wayne Franklin concentrates on the latter half of Cooper’s life, detailing a period of personal and political controversy, far-ranging international travel, and prolific literary creation. We hear of Cooper’s progressive views on race and slavery, his doubts about American expansionism, and his concern about the future prospects of the American Republic, while observing how his groundbreaking career management paved the way for later novelists to make a living through their writing. Franklin offers readers the most comprehensive portrait to date of this underappreciated American literary icon.

Learn more about James Fenimore Cooper: The Later Years at the Yale University Press website.

Writers Read: Wayne Franklin.

The Page 99 Test: James Fenimore Cooper: The Later Years.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top books on Southeast Asian travel literature

Cat Barton is a correspondent for the Agence France Presse in Hong Kong. At Five Books she tagged five top titles on Southeast Asian travel literature, including:

The Beach by Alex Garland.

This is a great book to read on the beach, and it’s much better than the film. It’s an interesting pop-culture musing on the idea of backpackers travelling around in search of unspoilt beaches. It deals with themes many people are likely to think about when travelling around the region. For example, is it possible to find an unspoilt beach? And what do backpackers do to the societies we visit? For example, how much good has it done the locals to have areas with thriving sex industries? Yes, the money flowing in is good, but how much has it really benefited the area?

The Beach deals with what happens if backpackers go militantly in the other direction. This particular group of travellers find a secluded cove and set up a kind of kibbutz. But the book suggests that the idea of trying to find a perfect, secluded island is pretty stupid. The group experiences a Lord of the Flies style meltdown – they all start turning on each other and I think it’s quite dystopian. That said, it is of course nice to get off the beaten track – but this novel deals with how far you can really do that as a backpacker.

Read about another entry from the Five Books list.

The Beach also appears on 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

What is Jason M. Hough reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Jason M. Hough, author of Zero World.

His entry begins:

As usual I'm devouring two books at once, because I'll do one in print when I have genuine reading time and the other as an audiobook when I'm driving or doing chores.

Right now in print I'm reading an advance copy of Scott Reintgen's Nyxia, which is a wonderful YA sci-fi novel about a planet with a unique and powerful element that the locals will only allow children to mine. It's extremely good and sports a great...[read on]

About Zero World, from the publisher:

Technologically enhanced superspy Peter Caswell has been dispatched on a top-secret assignment unlike anything he’s ever faced. A spaceship that vanished years ago has been found, along with the bodies of its murdered crew—save one. Peter’s mission is to find the missing crew member, who fled through what appears to be a tear in the very fabric of space. Beyond this mysterious doorway lies an even more confounding reality: a world that appears to be Earth’s twin.

Visit Jason M. Hough's website.

Writers Read: Jason M. Hough.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top true crime books

Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich is the author of The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir. One of her ten favorite true crime books, as shared at Publishers Weekly:

Columbine by Dave Cullen

That journalistic challenge is one David Cullen faced head-on in the days after the devastating school shooting at Columbine. After the murders, the question of why Klebold and Harris had carried out their horrific plan was haunting—and the media quickly tried to put it to rest with too-simple, made-for-the-headlines answers: the Trenchcoat Mafia, bullying, the music of Marilyn Manson. Cullen spent 10years of investigation in Aurora, Colorado, digging through these answers to the complexity below, and the result is a page-turning, complex, disturbingly readable book of incredible ambition and scope.

Read about another book on the list.

Columbine is among Charles Graeber's top ten true crime books and Lauren Passell's top nine books for the true-crime obsessed.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Claire Cameron's "The Last Neanderthal"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Last Neanderthal: A Novel by Claire Cameron.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the author of The Bear, the enthralling story of two women separated by millennia, but linked by an epic journey that will transform them both

Forty thousand years in the past, the last family of Neanderthals roams the earth. After a crushingly hard winter, their numbers are low, but Girl, the oldest daughter, is just coming of age and her family is determined to travel to the annual meeting place and find her a mate.

But the unforgiving landscape takes its toll, and Girl is left alone to care for Runt, a foundling of unknown origin. As Girl and Runt face the coming winter storms, Girl realizes she has one final chance to save her people, even if it means sacrificing part of herself.

In the modern day, archaeologist Rosamund Gale works well into her pregnancy, racing to excavate newly found Neanderthal artifacts before her baby comes. Linked across the ages by the shared experience of early motherhood, both stories examine the often taboo corners of women's lives.

Haunting, suspenseful, and profoundly moving, THE LAST NEANDERTHAL asks us to reconsider all we think we know about what it means to be human.

Visit Claire Cameron's website and Facebook page.

See Cameron's five notable stories about unlikely survivors.

My Book, The Movie: The Line Painter.

The Page 69 Test: The Last Neanderthal.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Daniel Brückenhaus's "Policing Transnational Protest"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Policing Transnational Protest: Liberal Imperialism and the Surveillance of Anticolonialists in Europe, 1905-1945 by Daniel Brückenhaus.

About the book, from the publisher:

Policing Transnational Protest offers an original perspective on the history of police surveillance of anticolonial activists in France, Britain, and Germany in the first half of the twentieth century. Tracing the undertakings of anticolonial activists from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East in Europe and reconstructing the reaction of European governments, it illuminates the increasing cooperation of the police and secret services to monitor the activities of the "oriental revolutionaries" and curb their room to maneuver. But those efforts had an unintended inflammatory effect, provoking both supporters and opponents of colonial rule to understand the conflict in increasingly global and trans-imperial terms. The surveillance also exacerbated tensions between Europeans friendly to the anticolonial cause, and those who prioritized imperial security over civil liberties and national sovereignty. Tracking growing levels of transnational government cooperation against anticolonialists, this book pays special attention to Germany, where many activists were able to carry out their political work in relative safety after escaping surveillance in Britain and France.

By analyzing the emergence of ever more sophisticated counter-terrorism schemes and surveillance apparatuses, Brückenhaus also contributes a pre-history of similar phenomena characterizing the post-9/11 world. He shows how, then as now, an intensification of a "war on terror" went hand in hand with concerns about encroachments on civil liberties, often expressed in open protest against such governance measures. Policing Transnational Protest informs current debates about intelligence gathering and surveillance in several European countries as well as their new cooperative partner, the United States.

Learn more about Policing Transnational Protest at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Policing Transnational Protest.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top YA novels about dangerous games

At the BN Teen Blog Eric Smith tagged five great YA novels about dangerous games, including:

Genius: The Game, by Leopoldo Gout

Told in shifting points of view with a cast of wonderfully diverse characters, Gout’s surprising debut is one of the most underrated books of 2016. If you slept on this one…well, I’d like to fix that. The youngest and wealthiest tech CEO in the world invites geniuses from all over the planet to compete in a massive competition, and Rex (a Mexican American hacker), Tunde (an prodigal inventor from Nigeria), and Painted Wolf (a high-profile activist from China, a la Anonymous), team up to win the biggest prize: a way out of their current lives, and access to the most advanced technology that exists. But the game is far more complicated than any of them can imagine. This book is loaded with sharp wit, major thrills, and twists and betrayals at every turn. If you missed out, be sure to pick it up.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Lucinda Riley reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Lucinda Riley, author of The Shadow Sister.

Her entry begins:

I’m currently tackling the beast that is James Joyce’s Ulysses, as I promised a friend I would attempt it again for the third time to try and make sense out of the book! Having just moved back home to Ireland, it's a fitting time. I’m always fascinated by the background story of the author when he/she was writing a novel and I was told that Joyce was taking medicine prescribed by his doctor while working on Ulysses, which may have contained...[read on]

About The Shadow Sister, from the publisher:

Star D'Aplièse is at a crossroads in her life after the sudden death of her beloved father - the elusive billionaire, named Pa Salt by his six daughters, all adopted by him from the four corners of the world. He has left each of them a clue to their true heritage, but Star - the most enigmatic of the sisters - is hesitant to step out of the safety of the close relationship she shares with her sister CeCe. In desperation, she decides to follow the first clue she has been left, which leads her to an antiquarian bookshop in London, and the start of a whole new world...

A hundred years earlier, headstrong and independent Flora MacNichol vows she will never marry. She is happy and secure in her home in the Lake District, living close to her idol, Beatrix Potter, when machinations outside her control lead her to London, and the home of one of Edwardian society's most notorious players, Alice Keppel. Flora is pulled between passionate love and duty to her family, but finds herself a pawn in a game - the rules of which are only known to others, until a meeting with a mysterious gentleman unveils the answers that Flora has been searching for her whole life...

As Star learns more of Flora's incredible journey, she too goes on a voyage of discovery, finally stepping out of the shadow of her sister and opening herself up to the possibility of love. Following on from the bestselling The Seven Sisters and The Storm Sister, The Shadow Sister is the third book in Lucinda Riley's spellbinding series, loosely based on the mythology of the Seven Sisters star cluster.

Visit Lucinda Riley's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Storm Sister.

My Book, The Movie: The Storm Sister.

My Book, The Movie: The Shadow Sister.

Writers Read: Lucinda Riley.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top books about bad girls

Ellen Klages's books include The Green Glass Sea, White Sands, Red Menace, and the story collection Wicked Wonders. One of her five favorite books about bad girls who dance where they want to, as shared at Tor.com:

The Paying Guests
Sarah Waters
2014

A confession: I have not actually read this book. I listened to it as an audio book—all 21 hours and 28 minutes of it—the autumn after I hurt my back and had to spend many, many hours lying supine in a cool, darkened room.

(I have since read the print versions of several other Sarah Waters’s books, and am in awe of her talent and skill and mastery of prose. And story-telling.)

But I’m really glad that I listened to this one, because my American eye would not have caught the nuances of class difference in written dialogue nearly as well as the British narrator delivered those subtleties of speech and accent to my ears.

After WWI, Frances Wray and her mother find themselves with a large house, but reduced circumstances. They have let the servants go, one by one, and are finally forced to take in boarders—Len and Lillian Barber, a married couple. For the first part of the book, everyone is rather formal, then Lillian and Frances begin to teeter on the edge of a forbidden attraction. Eventually, they fall, dramatically, disastrously, irrevocably.

These two strong women defy their (very different) upbringings, cultural assumptions, gender roles, societal norms, and even laws in order to be together. The book turns from a novel-of-manners to a page-turning thriller in the space of a few chapters. I stayed up way past my bedtime to keep listening, the aural equivalent of “I couldn’t put it down.”

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ryan Lobo's "Mr. Iyer Goes to War," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Mr. Iyer Goes to War by Ryan Lobo.

The entry begins:

I initially wrote this book as a screenplay.

When I wrote the book I had in mind an actor like Sir Ben Kingsley as Lalgudi Iyer . His gangster character in the movie Sexy Beast was inspiring in some regards, especially the intensity.

I imagined Bencho to be played by...[read on]

Visit Ryan Lobo's website.

My Book, The Movie: Mr. Iyer Goes to War.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight of the best cold-case mysteries

Fiona Barton's latest thriller is The Child. One of her eight favorite cold-case mysteries, as shared at B&N Reads:

Case Histories, by Kate Atkinson

This is the novel that introduced me to Jackson Brodie, Atkinson’s troubled private investigator (are there any other kind?). As the title suggests, he deals with more than one cold case—there are three family tragedies, including the disappearance of a child from a tent in a back garden thirty years earlier, an axe murder by a new mother, and the stabbing to death of a solicitor’s daughter. Now, don’t say you are not getting good value… The stories intertwine expertly and unexpectedly, leaving you desperate to read the next one.

Read about another entry on the list.

Case Histories is among Shirley Henderson's six best books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Sam Wiebe's "Invisible Dead"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Invisible Dead by Sam Wiebe.

About the book, from the publisher:

An ex-cop who navigates by a moral compass stubbornly jammed at true north, Dave Wakeland is a talented private investigator with next to zero business sense. And even though he finds himself with a fancy new office and a corporate-minded partner, he continues to be drawn to cases that are usually impossible to solve and frequently don't pay.

When Wakeland is hired by a terminally ill woman to discover the whereabouts of her adopted child-who disappeared as an adult more than a decade earlier-it seems like just another in a string of poor career decisions. But it turns out this case is worse than usual, even by his standards. With only an anonymous and vaguely worded tip to guide him, Wakeland interviews an imprisoned serial killer who seems to know nothing about the case, but who nonetheless steers him toward Vancouver's terrifying criminal underworld.

And it all goes downhill from there.

Whatever ghosts drive Wakeland, they seem to drive him inexorably toward danger-a journey he's content to take so long as it means finding out what happened to someone the rest of the world seems happy enough to forget. With nothing to protect him but his wit and his empathy for the downtrodden and disenfranchised, Wakeland is on the case.

Visit Sam Wiebe's website.

Writers Read: Sam Wiebe.

My Book, The Movie: Invisible Dead.

The Page 69 Test: Invisible Dead.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Peter S. Ungar's "Evolution’s Bite"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Evolution's Bite: A Story of Teeth, Diet, and Human Origins by Peter S. Ungar.

About the book, from the publisher:

What teeth can teach us about the evolution of the human species

Whether we realize it or not, we carry in our mouths the legacy of our evolution. Our teeth are like living fossils that can be studied and compared to those of our ancestors to teach us how we became human. In Evolution's Bite, noted paleoanthropologist Peter Ungar brings together for the first time cutting-edge advances in understanding human evolution and climate change with new approaches to uncovering dietary clues from fossil teeth to present a remarkable investigation into the ways that teeth—their shape, chemistry, and wear—reveal how we came to be.

Ungar describes how a tooth's "foodprints"—distinctive patterns of microscopic wear and tear—provide telltale details about what an animal actually ate in the past. These clues, combined with groundbreaking research in paleoclimatology, demonstrate how a changing climate altered the food options available to our ancestors, what Ungar calls the biospheric buffet. When diets change, species change, and Ungar traces how diet and an unpredictable climate determined who among our ancestors was winnowed out and who survived, as well as why we transitioned from the role of forager to farmer. By sifting through the evidence—and the scars on our teeth—Ungar makes the important case for what might or might not be the most natural diet for humans.

Traveling the four corners of the globe and combining scientific breakthroughs with vivid narrative, Evolution's Bite presents a unique dental perspective on our astonishing human development.

Learn more about Evolution's Bite at the Princeton University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Evolution's Bite.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten novels about Pakistan

The Pakistani writer Moni Mohsin's books include the novel The End of Innocence and a collection of her satirical columns, The Diary of a Social Butterfly. One of her ten top novels about Pakistan, as shared at the Guardian:

Mottled Dawn By Saadat Hasan Manto

When, in August 1947, the subcontinent was partitioned, millions of Hindus and Sikhs left their ancestral homes in what had become Pakistan and trudged toward India, while Muslims made the opposite journey. The partition was scarred by an eruption of unspeakable sectarian violence. Hindus and Muslims, amicable neighbours for centuries, fell upon each other in an orgy of rape and bloodletting. Manto, then an urbane scriptwriter in cosmopolitan Bombay, saw the savagery up close. Migrating to Lahore in 1948, he channelled his rage and despair into a stream of Urdu short stories that are among the finest ever written in any language. On the 70th anniversary of Pakistan’s cataclysmic birth, there can be no more important or sobering read.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Bryn Chancellor's "Sycamore"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Sycamore: A Novel by Bryn Chancellor.

About the book, from the publisher:

Out for a hike one scorching afternoon in Sycamore, Arizona, a newcomer to town stumbles across what appear to be human remains embedded in the wall of a dry desert ravine. As news of the discovery makes its way around town, Sycamore’s longtime residents fear the bones may belong to Jess Winters, the teenage girl who disappeared suddenly some eighteen years earlier, an unsolved mystery that has soaked into the porous rock of the town and haunted it ever since. In the days it takes the authorities to make an identification, the residents rekindle stories, rumors, and recollections both painful and poignant as they revisit Jess’s troubled history. In resurrecting the past, the people of Sycamore will find clarity, unexpected possibility, and a way forward for their lives.

Skillfully interweaving multiple points of view, Bryn Chancellor knowingly maps the bloodlines of a community and the indelible characters at its heart—most notably Jess Winters, a thoughtful, promising adolescent poised on the threshold of adulthood. Evocative and atmospheric, Sycamore is a coming-of-age story, a mystery, and a moving exploration of the elemental forces that drive human nature—desire, loneliness, grief, love, forgiveness, and hope—as witnessed through the inhabitants of one small Arizona town.

Visit Bryn Chancellor's website.

Writers Read: Bryn Chancellor.

The Page 69 Test: Sycamore.

--Marshal Zeringue