What is J. Albert Mann reading?

Featured at Writers Read: J. Albert Mann, author of The Degenerates.

Her entry begins:

Six Angry Girls by Adrienne Kisner

Millie, Veronica, Grace, Nakita, and Izzy are not living their best lives and the blame lies mostly with the Patriarchy. Dumped, cheated, overlooked, underestimated, ignored, and omitted these six girls fight back. The results are both heart-breaking and hilarious. This...[read on]

About The Degenerates, from the publisher:

In the tradition of Girl, Interrupted, this fiery historical novel follows four young women in the early 20th century whose lives intersect when they are locked up by a world that took the poor, the disabled, the marginalized—and institutionalized them for life.

The Massachusetts School for the Feeble-Minded is not a happy place. The young women who are already there certainly don’t think so. Not Maxine, who is doing everything she can to protect her younger sister Rose in an institution where vicious attendants and bullying older girls treat them as the morons, imbeciles, and idiots the doctors have deemed them to be. Not Alice, either, who was left there when her brother couldn’t bring himself to support a sister with a club foot. And not London, who has just been dragged there from the best foster situation she’s ever had, thanks to one unexpected, life altering moment. Each girl is determined to change her fate, no matter what it takes.

Visit J. Albert Mann's website.

The Page 69 Test: What Every Girl Should Know.

Writers Read: J. Albert Mann.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Erin Hatton's "Coerced: Work Under Threat of Punishment"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Coerced: Work Under Threat of Punishment by Erin Hatton.

About the book, from the publisher:

What do prisoner laborers, graduate students, welfare workers, and college athletes have in common? According to sociologist Erin Hatton, they are all part of a growing workforce of coerced laborers.

Coerced explores this world of coerced labor through an unexpected and compelling comparison of these four groups of workers, for whom a different definition of "employment" reigns supreme—one where workplace protections do not apply and employers wield expansive punitive power, far beyond the ability to hire and fire. Because such arrangements are common across the economy, Hatton argues that coercion—as well as precarity—is a defining feature of work in America today.

Theoretically forceful yet vivid and gripping to read, Coerced compels the reader to reevaluate contemporary dynamics of work, pushing beyond concepts like "career" and "gig work." Through this bold analysis, Hatton offers a trenchant window into this world of work from the perspective of those who toil within it—and who are developing the tools needed to push back against it.

Visit Erin Hatton's website.

The Page 99 Test: Coerced: Work Under Threat of Punishment.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five of the best books about female artists

Annalena McAfee was born in London to a Scottish mother and a Glasgow-Irish father. She founded the Guardian Review, which she edited for six years, and was Arts and Literary Editor of the Financial Times.

Her novels include The Spoiler, Hame, and Nightshade.

At the Guardian, McFee tagged five of the best books about female artists. Three of the books are non-fiction. One of the novels on the list:

In fiction, Tom Rachman’s novel The Italian Teacher is a splendid portrayal of the omnivorous demands of (male) artistic “genius”. Rachman’s rambunctious American painter, Bear Bavinsky, storms through life, heedless of anything or anyone but his work. Family and friends are collateral damage and Bear systematically crushes the artistic ambitions of his muse and their son until a delicious, posthumous revenge is exacted.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: David Hofmeyr's "The Between"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Between by David Hofmeyr.

About the book, from the publisher:

In this rip-roaring, world-bending adventure across the grand multiverse, one girl will stop at nothing to bring her best friend home.

Seventeen-year-old Ana Moon is having a rough week. It starts with a fight after school, then suspension, followed by mandatory psych visits. Still, Ana hopes therapy will help her with another problem–the disturbing feeling that someone, or something, is following her.

Then, during a shocking train crash, life goes from bad to bizarre. In the space of mere seconds, Ana’s best friend is gone—taken right in front of her eyes by an incredible, terrifying beast.

Seeking answers, Ana joins forces with the mysterious Malik and his covert clan to find her friend and return home. But there’s a larger war under way, and unimaginable evil lurks in the shadows. If they hope to make it home, Ana and her friends must gather the strength to fight—or face the collapse of the universe as they know it.

Visit David Hofmeyr's website.

My Book, the Movie: Stone Rider.

The Page 69 Test: Stone Rider.

My Book, The Movie: The Between.

Writers Read: David Hofmeyr.

The Page 69 Test: The Between.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Philip Mark Plotch's "Last Subway"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Last Subway: The Long Wait for the Next Train in New York City by Philip Mark Plotch.

About the book, from the publisher:

Last Subway is the fascinating and dramatic story behind New York City's struggle to build a new subway line under Second Avenue and improve transit services all across the city. With his extraordinary access to powerful players and internal documents, Philip Mark Plotch reveals why the city's subway system, once the best in the world, is now too often unreliable, overcrowded, and uncomfortable. He explains how a series of uninformed and self-serving elected officials have fostered false expectations about the city's ability to adequately maintain and significantly expand its transit system.

Since the 1920s, New Yorkers have been promised a Second Avenue subway. When the first of four planned phases opened on Manhattan's Upper East Side in 2017, subway service improved for tens of thousands of people. Riders have been delighted with the clean, quiet, and spacious new stations. Yet these types of accomplishments will not be repeated unless New Yorkers learn from their century-long struggle.

Last Subway offers valuable lessons in how governments can overcome political gridlock and enormous obstacles to build grand projects. However, it is also a cautionary tale for cities. Plotch reveals how false promises, redirected funds and political ambitions have derailed subway improvements. Given the ridiculously high cost of building new subways in New York and their lengthy construction period, the Second Avenue subway (if it is ever completed) will be the last subway built in New York for generations to come.

Visit Philip Mark Plotch's website.

The Page 99 Test: Last Subway.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six architecturally inspired novels

Suzanne Redfearn is the award-winning author of three novels: Hush Little Baby, No Ordinary Life, and In An Instant. Born and raised on the east coast, Redfearn moved to California when she was fifteen. She currently lives in Laguna Beach with her husband where they own two restaurants: Lumberyard and Slice Pizza & Beer.

In addition to being an author, Redfearn is an architect specializing in residential and commercial design.

At CrimeReads, Redfearn tagged "six current novels in which architecture plays an important role," including:

Christina Baker Kline, A Piece of the World

This wonderful ekphrastic work of fiction is an exploration into the life and times of the woman in the foreground of Andrew Wyeth’s haunting painting Christina’s World. Crippled at a young age by a neuromuscular disease, Christina Olson can no longer walk. She gets around by pulling herself along the ground in and around the family’s farmhouse near Rockland, Maine. Author Christina Baker Kline describes the farmhouse and Andrew Wyeth’s view of it in the third paragraph: “He did get one thing right: Sometimes a sanctuary, sometimes a prison, that house on the hill has always been my home. I’ve spent my life yearning toward it, wanting to escape it, paralyzed by its hold on me.” Much of the novel revolves around the limited world of this remarkable woman’s life.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Stephanie Wrobel's "Darling Rose Gold," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Darling Rose Gold by Stephanie Wrobel.

The entry begins:

The two main characters in Darling Rose Gold are Patty Watts, an overbearing mother with Munchausen syndrome by proxy, and Rose Gold Watts, a young woman who has grown up isolated from the rest of the world because of her mother.

For Patty, I’d choose Kathy Bates to play her. Bates has the same physical presence and brassiness. She moves effortlessly between spunky and vicious, just like Patty does.

For Rose Gold, I’d choose...[read on]

Visit Stephanie Wrobel's website.

The Page 69 Test: Darling Rose Gold.

My Book, The Movie: Darling Rose Gold.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Peter Levine's "Defense Management Reform"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Defense Management Reform: How to Make the Pentagon Work Better and Cost Less by Peter Levine.

About the book, from the publisher:

Pentagon spending has been the target of decades of criticism and reform efforts. Billions of dollars are spent on weapons programs that are later abandoned. State-of-the-art data centers are underutilized and overstaffed. New business systems are built at great expense but fail to meet the needs of their users. Every Secretary of Defense for the last five Administrations has made it a priority to address perceived bloat and inefficiency by making management reform a major priority. The congressional defense committees have been just as active, enacting hundreds of legislative provisions. Yet few of these initiatives produce significant results, and the Pentagon appears to go on, as wasteful as ever.

In this book, Peter Levine addresses why, despite a long history of attempted reform, the Pentagon continues to struggle to reduce waste and inefficiency. The heart of Defense Management Reform is three case studies covering civilian personnel, acquisitions, and financial management. Narrated with the insight of an insider, the result is a clear understanding of what went wrong in the past and a set of concrete guidelines to plot a better future.

Learn more about Defense Management Reform at the Stanford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Defense Management Reform.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine fictional bad mothers in fiction

Sarah Vaughan is a former Guardian journalist - news reporter and political correspondent - who always wanted to write fiction. Her latest novel, Little Disasters, is a psychological drama about the challenges of motherhood.

At the Waterstones blog Vaughan tagged nine of "her favourite malicious, malevolent and muddle-headed mothers in literature," including:

Mrs Bennet in Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen

While Mr Bennet is equally weak in contracting out the pursuit of his daughters’ suitors to his wife, Jane Austen is most savage in her caricature of Mrs Bennet. “A woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper” obsessed with the financial necessity of getting her five daughters married without a care for their future happiness. (How exactly would Mr Collins and Lizzy work out?) Snobbish and vulgar, she ensures Jane becomes ill by sending her out in the rain to snare Bingley. But it’s her indulgence of headstrong Lydia that is seen as the most reprehensible since it threatens to bring shame on the family and means the youngest Bennet sister is stuck with caddish Wickham forever.

Read about another entry on the list.

Pride and Prejudice also appears on Jessica Francis Kane's top ten list of houseguests in fiction, O: The Oprah Magazine's twenty greatest ever romance novels, Cristina Merrill's list of eight of the sexiest curmudgeons in romance, Sarah Ward's ten top list of brothers and sisters in fiction, Tara Sonin's lists of fifty must-read regency romances and seven sweet and swoony romances for wedding season, Grant Ginder's top ten list of book characters we love to hate, Katy Guest's list of six of the best depictions of shyness in fiction, Garry Trudeau's six favorite books list, Ross Johnson's list of seven of the greatest rivalries in fiction, Helen Dunmore's six best books list, Jenny Kawecki's list of eight fictional characters who would make the best travel companions, Peter James's top ten list of works of fiction set in or around Brighton, Ellen McCarthy's list of six favorite books about weddings and marriage, the Telegraph's list of the ten greatest put-downs in literature, Rebecca Jane Stokes' list of ten fictional families you might enjoy more than the one you'll actually spend the holidays with, Melissa Albert's lists of five fictional characters who deserved better, [fifteen of the] romantic leads (and wannabes) of Austen’s brilliant books and recommended reading for eight villains, Molly Schoemann-McCann's list of ten fictional men who have ruined real live romance, Emma Donoghue's list of five favorite unconventional fictional families, Amelia Schonbek's list of five approachable must-read classics, Jane Stokes's top ten list of the hottest men in required reading, Gwyneth Rees's top ten list of books about siblings, the Observer's list of the ten best fictional mothers, Paula Byrne's list of the ten best Jane Austen characters, Robert McCrum's list of the top ten opening lines of novels in the English language, a top ten list of literary lessons in love, Simon Mason's top ten list of fictional families, Cathy Cassidy's top ten list of stories about sisters, Paul Murray's top ten list of wicked clerics, John Mullan's lists of ten of the best housekeepers in fiction, ten great novels with terrible original titles, and ten of the best visits to Brighton in literature, Luke Leitch's top ten list of the most successful literary sequels ever, and is one of the top ten works of literature according to Norman Mailer. Richard Price has never read it, but it is the book Mary Gordon cares most about sharing with her children.

The Page 99 Test: Pride and Prejudice.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Stephanie Wrobel's "Darling Rose Gold"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Darling Rose Gold by Stephanie Wrobel.

About the book, from the publisher:

In her compulsive, sharply-drawn debut, Stephanie Wrobel peels back the layers of the most complicated of mother-daughter relationships.

For the first eighteen years of her life, Rose Gold Watts believed she was seriously ill. She was allergic to everything, used a wheelchair and practically lived at the hospital. Neighbors did all they could, holding fundraisers and offering shoulders to cry on, but no matter how many doctors, tests, or surgeries, no one could figure out what was wrong with Rose Gold.

Turns out her mom, Patty Watts, was just a really good liar.

After serving five years in prison, Patty gets out with nowhere to go and begs her daughter to take her in. The entire community is shocked when Rose Gold says yes.

Patty insists all she wants is to reconcile their differences. She says she’s forgiven Rose Gold for turning her in and testifying against her. But Rose Gold knows her mother. Patty Watts always settles a score.

Unfortunately for Patty, Rose Gold is no longer her weak little darling…

And she’s waited such a long time for her mother to come home.

Visit Stephanie Wrobel's website.

The Page 69 Test: Darling Rose Gold.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is David Hofmeyr reading?

Featured at Writers Read: David Hofmeyr, author of The Between.

His entry begins:

King is the master of storytelling. Accept no substitutes. I have long been a fan of his work. One of his most provocative early short stories, "The Long Walk" was inspiration for my first novel, Stone Rider. His writing is clever. Edgy. Familiar. And utterly compelling. The Institute is no exception. All his skills are on display here. King weaves friendship, resilience and terror into every sentence. Thrilling, chilling and fascinating in equal measure, The Institute tells the story of an unusual kidnapping. Twelve-year-old super smart Luke Ellis, who can move things with his mind, is abducted and taken to a facility deep in the woods of Maine. Here, alongside other kids with Telekinesis and Telepathic gifts, Luke is subjected to a host of weird experiments. This is...[read on]

About The Between, from the publisher:

In this rip-roaring, world-bending adventure across the grand multiverse, one girl will stop at nothing to bring her best friend home.

Seventeen-year-old Ana Moon is having a rough week. It starts with a fight after school, then suspension, followed by mandatory psych visits. Still, Ana hopes therapy will help her with another problem–the disturbing feeling that someone, or something, is following her.

Then, during a shocking train crash, life goes from bad to bizarre. In the space of mere seconds, Ana’s best friend is gone—taken right in front of her eyes by an incredible, terrifying beast.

Seeking answers, Ana joins forces with the mysterious Malik and his covert clan to find her friend and return home. But there’s a larger war under way, and unimaginable evil lurks in the shadows. If they hope to make it home, Ana and her friends must gather the strength to fight—or face the collapse of the universe as they know it.

Visit David Hofmeyr's website.

My Book, the Movie: Stone Rider.

The Page 69 Test: Stone Rider.

My Book, The Movie: The Between.

Writers Read: David Hofmeyr.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Alexander Bukh's "These Islands Are Ours"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: These Islands Are Ours: The Social Construction of Territorial Disputes in Northeast Asia by Alexander Bukh.

About the book, from the publisher:

Territorial disputes are one of the main sources of tension in Northeast Asia. Escalation in such conflicts often stems from a widely shared public perception that the territory in question is of the utmost importance to the nation. While that's frequently not true in economic, military, or political terms, citizens' groups and other domestic actors throughout the region have mounted sustained campaigns to protect or recover disputed islands. Quite often, these campaigns have wide-ranging domestic and international consequences.

Why and how do territorial disputes that at one point mattered little, become salient? Focusing on non-state actors rather than political elites, Alexander Bukh explains how and why apparently inconsequential territories become central to national discourse in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. These Islands Are Ours challenges the conventional wisdom that disputes-related campaigns originate in the desire to protect national territory and traces their roots to times of crisis in the respective societies. This book gives us a new way to understand the nature of territorial disputes and how they inform national identities by exploring the processes of their social construction, and amplification.

Learn more about These Islands Are Ours at the Stanford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: These Islands Are Ours.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten books about boarding school

James Scudamore is the author of the novels English Monsters, Wreaking, Heliopolis and The Amnesia Clinic. He has received the Somerset Maugham Award and been nominated for the Costa First Novel Award, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Man Booker Prize.

At the Guardian he tagged ten top books about boarding school, including:

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

One of Ishiguro’s great gifts is to take a very specific context, loaded with constraints, and extract from it a voice and a story that become powerfully universal. Here, the backdrop is Hailsham, a boarding school in the English countryside, where, it emerges, the pupils are clones created for the purpose of having their organs harvested. As the novel progresses, its surface calmness and simplicity are increasingly at odds with a mounting and devastating sense of loss as the novel evolves into a meditation on life’s compromises and squandered opportunities.

Read about another entry on the list.

Never Let Me Go is on Caroline Zancan's list of eight novels about students and teachers behaving badly, LitHub's list of the ten books that defined the 2000s, Meg Wolitzer's ten favorite books list, Jeff Somers's lists of nine science fiction novels that imagine the future of healthcare and "five pairs of books that have nothing to do with each other—and yet have everything to do with each other" and eight tales of technology run amok and top seven speculative works for those who think they hate speculative fiction, a list of five books that shaped Jason Gurley's Eleanor, Anne Charnock's list of five favorite books with fictitious works of art, Esther Inglis-Arkell's list of nine great science fiction books for people who don't like science fiction, Sabrina Rojas Weiss's list of ten favorite boarding school novels, Allegra Frazier's top four list of great dystopian novels that made it to the big screen, James Browning's top ten list of boarding school books, Jason Allen Ashlock and Mink Choi's top ten list of tragic love stories, Allegra Frazier's list of seven characters whose jobs are worse than yours, Shani Boianjiu's list of five top novels about coming of age, Karen Thompson Walker's list of five top "What If?" books, Lloyd Shepherd's top ten list of weird histories, and John Mullan's lists of ten of the best men writing as women in literature and ten of the best sentences as titles.

--Marshal Zeringue

Richard Fifield's "The Small Crimes Of Tiffany Templeton," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Small Crimes of Tiffany Templeton by Richard Fifield.

The entry begins:

The Small Crimes Of Tiffany Templeton is a very different take on a Young Adult novel, and a response to the lack of rural, red state representation amongst the genre. I wanted to write a book that gave a small town the dignity and idiosyncratic characters that I have witnessed in real life. Small towns are rich in drama, and in my book, the main character is a teenage girl who returns from reform school and attempts to find redemption. My favorite book of all time is Harriet The Spy, and my book is my homage, but updated to explore the real interior life of a fifteen year old girl. Tiffany has a hard-boiled exterior, but the soul of an artist. The book is a reminder to all young women that shame and past actions do not have to define the rest of your life—Tiffany finds her redemption in the most unexpected places.

If they make my book into a film, here’s who I’d like to play the lead roles:

Tiffany Templeton—Lili Reinhart (Riverdale)
Vy Templeton—Toni Collette (Hereditary)
Ronnie Templeton, Jr—Taron Egerton (Rocketman)
Bitsy—Nick...[read on]

Visit Richard Fifield's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Richard Fifield & Frank and Oscar.

The Page 69 Test: The Small Crimes of Tiffany Templeton.

My Book, The Movie: The Small Crimes of Tiffany Templeton.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Phillip Margolin's "A Reasonable Doubt"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: A Reasonable Doubt (Robin Lockwood Series #3) by Phillip Margolin.

About the book, from the publisher:

A magician linked to three murders and suspicious deaths years ago disappears in the middle of his new act in New York Times bestseller Phillip Margolin’s latest thriller featuring Robin Lockwood

Robin Lockwood is a young criminal defense attorney and partner in a prominent law firm in Portland, Oregon. A former MMA fighter and Yale Law graduate, she joined the firm of legal legend Regina Barrister not long before Regina was forced into retirement by early onset Alzheimer’s.

One of Regina’s former clients, Robert Chesterfield, shows up in the law office with an odd request—he’s seeking help from his old attorney in acquiring patent protection for an illusion. Chesterfield is a professional magician of some reknown and he has a major new trick he’s about to debut. This is out of the scope of the law firm’s expertise, but when Robin Lockwood looks into his previous relationship with the firm, she learns that twenty years ago he was arrested for two murders, one attempted murder, and was involved in the potentially suspicious death of his very rich wife. At the time, Regina Barrister defended him with ease, after which he resumed his career as a magician in Las Vegas.

Now, decades later, he debuts his new trick—only to disappear at the end. He’s a man with more than one dark past and many enemies—is his disappearance tied to one of the many people who have good reason to hate him? Was he killed and his body disposed of, or did he use his considerable skills to engineer his own disappearance?

Robin Lockwood must unravel the tangled skein of murder and bloody mischief to learn how it all ties together.

Visit Phillip Margolin's website and Facebook page.

My Book, The Movie: Woman with a Gun.

The Page 69 Test: Woman with a Gun.

The Page 69 Test: Violent Crimes.

My Book, The Movie: Violent Crimes.

My Book, The Movie: The Third Victim.

The Page 69 Test: The Third Victim.

The Page 69 Test: The Perfect Alibi.

The Page 69 Test: A Reasonable Doubt.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: William A. Callahan's "Sensible Politics"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Sensible Politics: Visualizing International Relations by William A. Callahan.

About the book, from the publisher:

Visual images are everywhere in international politics. But how are we to understand them? In Sensible Politics, William A. Callahan uses his expertise in theory and filmmaking to explore not only what visuals mean, but also how visuals can viscerally move and connect us in "affective communities of sense." The book's rich analysis of visual images (photographs, film, art) and visual artifacts (maps, veils, walls, gardens, cyberspace) shows how critical scholarship needs to push beyond issues of identity and security to appreciate the creative politics of social-ordering and world-ordering. Here "sensible politics" isn't just sensory, but looks beyond icons and ideology to the affective politics of everyday life. It challenges our Eurocentric understanding of international politics by exploring the meaning and impact of visuals from Asia and the Middle East. Sensible Politics offers a unique approach to politics that allows us to not only think visually, but also feel visually-and creatively act visually for a multisensory appreciation of politics.

Learn more about Sensible Politics at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: China: The Pessoptimist Nation.

The Page 99 Test: Sensible Politics.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten great titles of historical fiction for Hilary Mantel fans

At Lit Hub, Emily Temple tagged ten great historical novels that pick up on the themes or forms of Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy in some way, including:

Marguerite Yourcenar, trans. Grace Frick, Memoirs of Hadrian

If what you liked best about Mantel’s novels was their exquisite prose, I strongly recommend you pick up Yourcenar’s fictionalized autobiography of the Roman emperor Hadrian, which is also a book about time, a philosophical treatise, and a blazing evocation of ancient Rome. Also, not for nothing, but Yourcenar is extremely cool: for instance, even her close friends called her “Madame,” which is, let me tell you, the dream. We stan.

Read about another entry on the list.

Memoirs of Hadrian is among Will Eaves’s five top fictional takes on real lives, Rabih Alameddine's six favorite novels, Alix Christie's ten favorite historical novels, John Mullan's ten best emperors in literature, and Teju Cole's top 10 novels of solitude.

--Marshal Zeringue

Coffee with a canine: Richard Fifield & Frank and Oscar

Featured at Coffee with a Canine: Richard Fifield & Frank and Oscar.

The author, on his coffee date with Frank and Oscar:

I’ve taken my two dogs...on a walk to the gas station. Where I live, there are no coffee shops, and the streets are filled with feral rabbits, all black. We enjoy walking to the gas station, Frank and Oscar because of the rabbits, and me because of the gossip I get at the counter. Even though I keep both dogs on a tight leash, they pull in opposite directions, and the leads tangle around my legs so often that I’ve gotten used to stopping to unwind every block. There have been a few occasions where the tangle actually caused...[read on]

About Fifield's new novel, The Small Crimes of Tiffany Templeton, from the publisher:

The Serpent King meets Girl in Pieces in this moving and darkly funny story about a teenage girl coming of age and learning how to grieve in small-town Montana.

Tiffany Templeton is tough. She dresses exclusively in black, buys leather jackets that are several sizes too big, and never backs down from a fight. She’s known in her tiny Montana town as Tough Tiff, and after her shoplifting arrest and a stint in a reform school, the nickname is here to stay.

But when she comes back home, Tiffany may not be the same old Tough Tiff that everybody remembers. Her life is different now: her mother keeps her on an even shorter leash than before, she meets with a probation officer once a month, and she’s still grieving her father’s recent death.

As Tiffany navigates her new life and learns who she wants to be, she must also contend with an overbearing best friend, the geriatric cast of a high-maintenance drama production, her first boyfriend, and a town full of eccentric neighbors–not to mention a dark secret she’s been keeping about why the ex-football coach left town.

Visit Richard Fifield's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Small Crimes of Tiffany Templeton.

Coffee with a Canine: Richard Fifield & Frank and Oscar.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Bridget Tyler reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Bridget Tyler, author of The Survivor: A Pioneer Novel.

Her entry begins:

Reading is part of honing your creative skills as a writer - it's almost as important a part of my day as writing is. I'm just lucky I have a kindle, my TBR stack might bury my alive otherwise. I'm just starting The Night Country by Melissa Albert, which I'm been waiting anxiously for since I blew through The Hazel Wood in two days. I love how audacious Albert is about just diving into her story and parsing out refresher details about book one when they make sense. Having just finished...[read on]

About The Survivor, from the publisher:

Earth is uninhabitable. Tau is our home now.

With that terrifying message, Jo and her family learned the truth: They are trapped forever on Tau Ceti e.

But the planet’s current occupants—the Sorrow—are not interested in sharing. The fragile peace Jo negotiated abruptly shatters, and soon a bloody battle is raging between the Sorrow and the Pioneers. As tensions rise, the survival of everyone Jo cares for seems less likely by the second.

When a betrayal that shocks Jo to her core threatens to wipe out both Sorrow and human life, Jo must find the strength to speak up once more—and bridge the gaps between all the warring factions—or lose forever the only home left to her.

Visit Bridget Tyler's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Survivor.

The Page 69 Test: The Survivor.

Writers Read: Bridget Tyler.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Peter Fritzsche's "Hitler's First Hundred Days"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Hitler's First Hundred Days: When Germans Embraced the Third Reich by Peter Fritzsche.

About the book, from the publisher:

This unsettling and illuminating history reveals how Germany’s fractured republic gave way to the Third Reich, from the formation of the Nazi party to the rise of Hitler.

Amid the ravages of economic depression, Germans in the early 1930s were pulled to political extremes both left and right. Then, in the spring of 1933, Germany turned itself inside out, from a deeply divided republic into a one-party dictatorship. In Hitler’s First Hundred Days, award-winning historian Peter Fritzsche offers a probing account of the pivotal moments when the majority of Germans seemed, all at once, to join the Nazis to construct the Third Reich. Fritzsche examines the events of the period — the elections and mass arrests, the bonfires and gunfire, the patriotic rallies and anti-Jewish boycotts — to understand both the terrifying power the National Socialists exerted over ordinary Germans and the powerful appeal of the new era they promised.

Hitler’s First Hundred Days is the chilling story of the beginning of the end, when one hundred days inaugurated a new thousand-year Reich.

Learn more about Hitler's First Hundred Days at the Basic Books website.

The Page 99 Test: Hitler's First Hundred Days.

--Marshal Zeringue