Five top horror novels driven by maternal instinct

Amanda Mactas is a freelance writer based in New York City. She’s on a mission to stay in as many haunted houses around the world as possible and is currently reading her way through the Encyclopedia of Serial Killers. Despite what it may seem, she’s pretty normal.

At Tor.com, Mactas tagged five novels in which maternal instinct helps to drive the plot, including:

The Need by Helen Phillips

This one may hit too close for some—especially parents—which is probably what makes it so terrifying. The Need follows Molly, a mother of two, who begins to hear and see things that may or may not be there in her home. But soon her nightmare is realized when she discovers an intruder in her house. This isn’t your typical “someone’s in my house who isn’t supposed to be here” thriller. Instead it plays on reality and forces readers to imagine worse-case scenarios, bringing with it all the kookiness of Stephen King’s The Outsiders and merging it with all the panic in the 2020 film adaptation of The Invisible Man. The story explores the lengths a mother would go to to save her children, the split second decisions that can change your life, how your identity changes once you have children and the immense grief that accompanies you if you lose them.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Need is among Michael J. Seidlinger's top ten terrifying home invasions in fiction.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Feisal G. Mohamed's "Sovereignty"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Sovereignty: Seventeenth-Century England and the Making of the Modern Political Imaginary by Feisal G. Mohamed.

About the book, from the publisher:

This book argues that sovereignty is the first-order question of political order, and that seventeenth-century England provides an important case study in the roots of its modern iterations. It offers fresh readings of Thomas Hobbes, John Milton, and Andrew Marvell, as well as lesser-known figures and literary texts. In addition to political philosophy and literary studies, it also takes account of the period's legal history, exploring the exercise of the crown's feudal rights in the Court of Wards and Liveries, debates over habeas rights, and contests of various courts over jurisdiction. Theorizing sovereignty in a way that points forward to later modernity, the book also offers a sustained critique of the writings of Carl Schmitt, the twentieth century's most influential, if also most controversial, thinker on this topic.

Learn more about Sovereignty at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Sovereignty.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Susann Cokal

From my Q&A with Susann Cokal:

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

I suppose the question could be generally philosophical: How much work should the title do? I always agonize over titles. For a long time, I called this book The Half-Made Moon, which I thought was a lovely title that pointed to a real moment of change—a half moon can wax or wane, and when it is half-made it is full of potential. The action takes place over four days when the moon over the Thirty-Seven Dark Islands cuts that half-slice in the sky.

But then I thought, This is a novel about a mermaid; shouldn’t there be some indication of that? You know, for people actively looking for books about mermaids (or trying to avoid books about mermaids, I suppose). So I decided that a half-made moon really looks like the flukes of a mermaid’s tail, and the people who are around for the action during a half-moon might name that shape after the person who brought about the events that...[read on]

Visit Susann Cokal's website.

The Page 69 Test: Mermaid Moon.

My Book, The Movie: Mermaid Moon.

Writers Read: Susann Cokal (March 2020).

Q&A with Susann Cokal.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Sarah Tomp's "The Easy Part of Impossible"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Easy Part of Impossible by Sarah Tomp.

About the book, from the publisher:

After an injury forces Ria off the diving team, an unexpected friendship with Cotton, a guy on the autism spectrum, helps her come to terms with the abusive relationship she’s been in with her former coach.

Ria Williams was an elite diver on track for the Olympics. As someone who struggled in school, largely due to her ADHD, diving was the one place Ria could shine.

But while her parents were focused on the trophies, no one noticed how Coach Benny’s strict rules and punishments controlled every aspect of Ria’s life. The harder he was on her, the sharper her focus. The bigger the bruise, the better the dive.

Until a freak accident at a meet changes everything. Just like that, Ria is handed back her life, free of Benny.

To fill her now empty and aimless days, Ria rekindles a friendship with Cotton, a guy she used to know back in elementary school. With Cotton, she’s able to open up about what Benny would do to her, and through Cotton’s eyes, Ria is able to see it for what it was: abuse.

Then Benny returns, offering Ria a second chance with a life-changing diving opportunity. But it’s not hers alone—Benny’s coaching comes with it. The thought of being back under his control seems impossible to bear, but so does walking away.

How do you separate the impossible from possible when the one thing you love is so tangled up in the thing you fear most?

Visit Sarah Tomp's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Easy Part of Impossible.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten books about parents with secrets

Sarah Zettel is an award-winning author. She has written more than thirty novels and multiple short stories over the past twenty-five years, in addition to hiking, cooking, stitching all the things, marrying a rocket scientist, and raising a rapidly growing son.

Her new novel is A Mother's Lie, a "compulsive family drama about a mother’s desperate search to reclaim her daughter from the horrors of her own past.

At CrimeReads, Zettel tagged ten books "that contain that most emotional and involving of themes: a parent with a secret." One title on the list:

The Other Mother by Carol Goodman

Mothers keep secrets. Mothers have to. If a mother is not perfect, caring, strong and constantly emotionally available for her child, she’s a failure, right? And to be a failure as a mother is to be a failure at, well, everything. It’s the unforgivable sin. So every mother must keep her true feelings secret, especially if those feelings involve the urge to harm their own child. That’s the secret no one must ever learn. The only thing to be done is to hide those feelings and soldier on. Because that’s what mothers do, right? Except as we are shown in Carol Goodman’s rich, intense gothic (complete with a country house with a tower!) that cure can sometimes become very much worse than the disease.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: David Martin Jones's "History’s Fools"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: History's Fools: The Pursuit of Idealism and the Revenge of Politics by David Martin Jones.

About the book, from the publisher:

The end of the Cold War announced a new world order. Liberal democracy prevailed, ideological conflict abated, and world politics set off for the promised land of a secular, cosmopolitan, market-friendly end of history. Or so it seemed. Thirty years later, this unipolar worldview-- premised on shared values, open markets, open borders and abstract social justice--lies in tatters. What happened?

David Martin Jones examines the progressive ideas behind liberal Western practice since the end of the twentieth century, at home and abroad. This mentality, he argues, took an excessively long view of the future and a short view of the past, abandoning politics in favour of ideas, and failing to address or understand rejection of liberal norms by non-Western 'others'. He explores the inevitable consequences of this liberal hubris: political and economic confusion, with the chaotic results we have seen. Finally, he advocates a return to more sceptical political thinking-- with prudent statecraft abroad, and defence of political order at home--in order to rescue the West from its widely advertised demise.

History's Fools is a timely account of the failed project to shape the world in the West's image, and an incisive call for a return to 'true' politics.

Visit David Martin Jones's website.

The Page 99 Test: History's Fools.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Jennie Liu

From my Q&A with Jennie Liu:

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

I had a working title, Aging Out, that I wasn’t crazy about, but it essentially summed up that this was a novel about girls aging out of an orphanage. When an editor mentioned she didn’t like the title much either, my agent and I tossed ideas back and forth for a couple of weeks. She came up with On the Line, which I loved for the double entendre of the moral-socio-emotional lines that challenge the girls and the factory line where they go to work. I added Girls, and it wasn’t until the book came out, during an interview, that I remembered I had been reading other suspense novels, Girl on the Train and Gone Girl just before I had started writing. I suppose...[read on]

Visit Jennie Liu's website.

My Book, The Movie: Girls on the Line.

Writers Read: Jennie Liu (November 2018).

The Page 69 Test: Girls on the Line.

Q&A with Jennie Liu.

--Marshal Zeringue

Funny stories you may not have read

Geoff Dyer is the author of Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi and other novels and non-fiction books. Dyer has won the Somerset Maugham Prize, the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction, a Lannan Literary Award, the International Center of Photography’s 2006 Infinity Award for writing on photography and the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ E.M. Forster Award. In 2009 he was named GQ’s Writer of the Year. He won a National Book Critics Circle Award in 2012 and was a finalist in 1998. In 2015 he received a Windham Campbell Prize for non-fiction. His books have been translated into twenty-four languages. He currently lives in Los Angeles where he is Writer in Residence at the University of Southern California.

At the Guardian, Dyer tagged a few titles (that you may not have read) for dark times, including:

One of the funniest books of the past 10 years is by the eminent critic Terry Castle. The Professor and Other Writings includes the scandalous memoir of her friend Susan Sontag, whose unremitting seriousness led Castle to perceive her as a great comic character. The long title piece is a side-splitting account of a tragic affair with a professor when Castle was a student in the 1970s, back in the days when the application process for a fellowship included getting catatonically stoned.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Dan Stout's "Titan’s Day," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Titan's Day by Dan Stout.

The entry begins:

I admit that I'm not one for knowing actors and casting, but if there was going to be a Titan's Day movie, there is one element that I definitely have a feel for: the cinematography. Titan's Day (and the Carter Archives series) is a blend of noir fantasy, set in a world with 1970s-era technology. That means disco glam and narrow, cobblestone streets, contrasts of dark and light, and a feeling that the killers lurking in the shadows might only be matched by the secrets held in people's hearts. I try to put that feeling on each page, entwined inextricably with the story itself. A great source of inspiration are the directors of photography who helped shape classic noir.

The visual language of film doesn't translate directly to the page, but...[read on]

Visit Dan Stout's website.

My Book, The Movie: Titanshade.

Writers Read: Dan Stout (April 2019).

The Page 69 Test: Titanshade.

The Page 69 Test: Titan's Day.

My Book, The Movie: Titan's Day.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Martha Waters reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Martha Waters, author of To Have and to Hoax: A Novel.

Her entry begins:

I tend to bounce around a lot in my reading – I’m a children’s librarian, so I read a lot of kids’ and teen books to stay on top of my job, but I write historical romantic comedies for adults, so I also read a lot of contemporary rom-coms and historical romance. I also dabble some in adult literary fiction and nonfiction. Recently, I’ve been immersed in:

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel – a book about the aftermath of an apocalyptic global pandemic might seem like an odd reading choice as we live through a global pandemic, but...[read on]

About To Have and to Hoax, from the publisher:

In this fresh and hilarious historical rom-com, an estranged husband and wife in Regency England feign accidents and illness in an attempt to gain attention—and maybe just win each other back in the process.

Five years ago, Lady Violet Grey and Lord James Audley met, fell in love, and got married. Four years ago, they had a fight to end all fights, and have barely spoken since.

Their once-passionate love match has been reduced to one of cold, detached politeness. But when Violet receives a letter that James has been thrown from his horse and rendered unconscious at their country estate, she races to be by his side—only to discover him alive and well at a tavern, and completely unaware of her concern. She’s outraged. He’s confused. And the distance between them has never been more apparent.

Wanting to teach her estranged husband a lesson, Violet decides to feign an illness of her own. James quickly sees through it, but he decides to play along in an ever-escalating game of manipulation, featuring actors masquerading as doctors, threats of Swiss sanitariums, faux mistresses—and a lot of flirtation between a husband and wife who might not hate each other as much as they thought. Will the two be able to overcome four years of hurt or will they continue to deny the spark between them?

With charm, wit, and heart in spades, To Have and to Hoax is a fresh and eminently entertaining romantic comedy—perfect for fans of Jasmine Guillory and Julia Quinn.

Visit Martha Waters's website.

Writers Read: Martha Waters.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Scott Newstok's "How to Think like Shakespeare"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: How to Think like Shakespeare: Lessons from a Renaissance Education by Scott Newstok.

About the book, from the publisher:

How to Think like Shakespeare offers an enlightening and entertaining guide to the craft of thought—one that demonstrates what we’ve lost in education today, and how we might begin to recover it. In fourteen brief, lively chapters that draw from Shakespeare’s world and works, and from other writers past and present, Scott Newstok distills vital habits of mind that can help you think more deeply, write more effectively, and learn more joyfully, in school or beyond.

Challenging a host of today’s questionable notions about education, Newstok shows how mental play emerges through work, creativity through imitation, autonomy through tradition, innovation through constraint, and freedom through discipline. It was these practices, and a conversation with the past—not a fruitless obsession with assessment—that nurtured a mind like Shakespeare’s. And while few of us can hope to approach the genius of the Bard, we can all learn from the exercises that shaped him.

Written in a friendly, conversational tone and brimming with insights, How to Think like Shakespeare enacts the thrill of thinking on every page, reviving timeless—and timely—ways to stretch your mind and hone your words.

Visit Scott Newstok's website and learn more about How to Think like Shakespeare at the Princeton University Press website.

The Page 69 Test: Kenneth Burke on Shakespeare.

The Page 99 Test: How to Think like Shakespeare.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six stunning fantasies for nature lovers

Emily B. Martin splits her time between working as a park ranger and an author/illustrator, resulting in her characteristic eco-fantasy adventures. An avid hiker and explorer, her experiences as a ranger help inform the characters and worlds she creates on paper.

When not patrolling places like Yellowstone, the Great Smoky Mountains, or Philmont Scout Ranch, she lives in South Carolina with her husband, Will, and two daughters, Lucy and Amelia.

Martin's new novel, due out in May 2020, is Sunshield.

At Tor.com she tagged six stunning eco-fantasies for nature lovers, including:

Circe by Madeline Miller

Circe is the companion to The Song of Achilles, but it’s easily read as a standalone (although… you should totally read Achilles too). Not only are Miller’s two Greek mythology novels wrenching, vivid works, but they’re thick with elemental spirits and deities. Follow Circe, disgraced daughter of Helios, god of the sun, as she hones her skills in herbalism and witchcraft among the beasts and wilderness of Aeaea. Venture with her as she shapes the fates of gods and men with her draughts and spells. Lovers of the classics will appreciate all the entwining threads of familiar deities and heroes, while tired climate crusaders can fulfill their dreams of running away to a remote island and becoming a fearsome witch.

Great for: Fans of myths, monsters, and the ability to turn enemies into swine.

Read about another entry on the list.

Circe is among Allison Pataki's top six books that feature strong female voices, Pam Grossman's thirteen stories about strong women with magical powers, Kris Waldherr's nine top books inspired by mythology, Katharine Duckett's eight novels that reexamine literature from the margins, and Steph Posts' thirteen top novels set in the world of myth.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Brigit Young's "The Prettiest"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Prettiest by Brigit Young.

About the book, from the publisher:

A must-read for young feminists, The Prettiest is an incisive, empowering novel by Brigit Young about fighting back against sexism and objectification.

THE PRETTIEST: It’s the last thing Eve Hoffmann expected to be, the only thing Sophie Kane wants to be, and something Nessa Flores-Brady knows she’ll never be ... until a list appears online, ranking the top fifty prettiest girls in the eighth grade.

Eve is disgusted by the way her body is suddenly being objectified by everyone around her.

Sophie is sick of the bullying she’s endured after being relegated to number two.

And Nessa is tired of everyone else trying to tell her who she is.

It’s time for a takedown. As the three girls band together, they begin to stand up not just for themselves, but for one another, too.

Visit Brigit Young's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Prettiest.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with William Boyle

From my Q&A with William Boyle:

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

In this case, I started with the title. I wrote down City of Margins in my notebook and I lived with the idea of what and how it might mean for a little while. It was the title that pulled me into the story.

I mostly write about the neighborhoods in Southern Brooklyn where I’m from, Gravesend and Bensonhurst, so I knew I’d start there, but something about that title opened up the idea of exploring the way all these different lives were connected. And something about the title dictated that it be set in the early 1990s—I think it was the end of an era, pre-internet, where a neighborhood, even in New York City, could feel so small, distant, removed.

I think there’s also a double action to the title that will...[read on]

Visit William Boyle's website.

My Book, The Movie: Gravesend and The Lonely Witness.

The Page 69 Test: Gravesend and The Lonely Witness.

Writers Read: William Boyle.

The Page 69 Test: City of Margins.

My Book, The Movie: City of Margins.

Q&A with William Boyle.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven darkly fascinating books about cults

Joanna Hershon is the author of five novels: St. Ivo, Swimming, The Outside of August, The German Bride and A Dual Inheritance.

[See: The Page 69 Test: St. Ivo.]

Her writing has appeared in Granta, The New York Times, One Story, Virginia Quarterly Review, and two literary anthologies, Brooklyn Was Mine and Freud’s Blind Spot.

At Electric Lit, Hershon tagged seven darkly fascinating books about charismatic sects, including:

The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai

This compassionate and razor-sharp novel seamlessly merges the 1980’s AIDS crisis with a 2015 mother in search of her daughter who’s been lost to a cult. As these separate stories unfold, populated by an admirably large cast of soulful and often funny characters, they merge into one deep investigation of humanity and simultaneously create indelible love letters to both Chicago and Paris.

Read about another entry on the list.

My Book, The Movie: The Great Believers.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Morris Ardoin's "Stone Motel"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Stone Motel: Memoirs of a Cajun Boy by Morris Ardoin.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the summers of the early 1970s, Morris Ardoin and his siblings helped run their family's roadside motel in a hot, buggy, bayou town in Cajun Louisiana. The stifling, sticky heat inspired them to find creative ways to stay cool and out of trouble. When they were not doing their chores—handling a colorful cast of customers, scrubbing motel-room toilets, plucking chicken bones and used condoms from under the beds—they played canasta, an old ladies’ game that provided them with a refuge from the sun and helped them avoid their violent, troubled father.

Morris was successful at occupying his time with his siblings and the children of families staying in the motel’s kitchenette apartments but was not so successful at keeping clear of his father, a man unable to shake the horrors he had experienced as a child and, later, as a soldier. The preteen would learn as he matured that his father had reserved his most ferocious attacks for him because of an inability to accept a gay or, to his mind, broken, son. It became his dad’s mission to “fix” his son, and Morris’s mission to resist—and survive intact. He was aided in his struggle immeasurably by the love and encouragement of a selfless and generous grandmother, who provides his story with much of its warmth, wisdom, and humor. There’s also suspense, awkward romance, naughty French lessons, and an insider’s take on a truly remarkable, not-yet-homogenized pocket of American culture.

Visit Morris Ardoin's website.

The Page 99 Test: Stone Motel.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Tessa Arlen

From my Q&A with Tessa Arlen:

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

People made a great effort during the horrors of their war to enjoy themselves when they could. Going to the pictures (movies), dancing at nightclubs, or gathering around the radio in the evening to listen to ITMA (It’s That Man Again) a favorite wartime satire and wonderfully funny to this day. Village life in England in the 1940s was insular and centered around the community: church bazaars, village fetes, and cricket matches. But the heartbeat of the village was, and still is, the pub.

I watched the movies made during the war years, rather than the ones popular after it. Mrs. Miniver, with Greer Garson, was immensely helpful in showing the subtlety of wartime propaganda, and I love the stagey acting and the cut glass accents of the time. Did people of that generation really talk in that clipped, back-of-the-throat way?

The music of the 1940s was helpful, especially the American big band sound—there was such energy and intensity to American music then. But I think the...[read on]

Visit Tessa Arlen's website.

See Tessa Arlen’s top five historical novels.

Coffee with a Canine: Tessa Arlen & Daphne.

The Page 69 Test: Death of a Dishonorable Gentleman.

My Book, The Movie: Death of a Dishonorable Gentleman.

The Page 69 Test: Death Sits Down to Dinner.

My Book, The Movie: Death Sits Down to Dinner.

The Page 69 Test: A Death by Any Other Name.

The Page 69 Test: Death of an Unsung Hero.

Writers Read: Tessa Arlen.

The Page 69 Test: Poppy Redfern and the Midnight Murders.

Q&A with Tessa Arlen.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Amy Sue Nathan's "The Last Bathing Beauty"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Last Bathing Beauty by Amy Sue Nathan.

About the book, from the publisher:

A former beauty queen faces the secrets of her past—for herself and the sake of her family’s future—in a heartfelt novel about fate, choices, and second chances.

Everything seemed possible in the summer of 1951. Back then Betty Stern was an eighteen-year-old knockout working at her grandparents’ lakeside resort. The “Catskills of the Midwest” was the perfect place for Betty to prepare for bigger things. She’d head to college in New York City. Her career as a fashion editor would flourish. But first, she’d enjoy a wondrous last summer at the beach falling deeply in love with an irresistible college boy and competing in the annual Miss South Haven pageant. On the precipice of a well-planned life, Betty’s future was limitless.

Decades later, the choices of that long-ago season still reverberate for Betty, now known as Boop. Especially when her granddaughter comes to her with a dilemma that echoes Boop’s memories of first love, broken hearts, and faraway dreams. It’s time to finally face the past—for the sake of her family and her own happiness. Maybe in reconciling the life she once imagined with the life she’s lived, Boop will discover it’s never too late for a second chance.

Learn more about the book and author at Amy Sue Nathan's website, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.

Coffee with a Canine: Amy Sue Nathan & Mitzi and Lizzie.

My Book, The Movie: The Glass Wives.

The Page 69 Test: The Glass Wives.

The Page 69 Test: The Good Neighbor.

My Book, The Movie: The Good Neighbor.

Writers Read: Amy Sue Nathan (October 2015).

The Page 69 Test: The Last Bathing Beauty.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten novels about unconventional families

Born in Trinidad, Ingrid Persaud won the Commonwealth Short Story Prize in 2017 and the BBC Short Story Award in 2018. She studied law at the London School of Economics and was a legal academic before earning degrees in fine art at Goldsmiths College and Central Saint Martins. Her writing has appeared in Granta, Prospect, and Pree magazines. Persaud lives in London and Barbados.

Her new novel is Love After Love.

At the Guardian, Persaud tagged ten of her favorite "books with families that make you laugh and cry same time," including:

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

People told me to read this book, but I left it for years. Now I am the one telling everyone else to hurry up and read it. Check this out: a missionary takes his wife and daughters from Georgia to the Belgian Congo, and within months the family tragically unravels. Told in multiple voices over three decades, we chart their reconstruction, as individuals and as a family, against the backdrop of a changing Africa. I tell you, this book burn my heart. Plus, the writing is glorious.

Read about another book on the list.

The Poisonwood Bible appears on Elise Hooper's list of eleven books inspired by Little Women, a list of four books that changed Alison Lester, Lucy Inglis's top ten list of books that explore pioneer life, Allegra Frazier's top five list of books to remind you of warmer climes, Segun Afolabi's top ten list of "on the move" books, and John Mullan's list of ten of the best snakes in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Mark T. Mulder & Gerardo Martí's "The Glass Church"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Glass Church: Robert H. Schuller, the Crystal Cathedral, and the Strain of Megachurch Ministry by Mark T. Mulder and Gerardo Martí.

About the book, from the publisher:

Robert H. Schuller’s ministry—including the architectural wonder of the Crystal Cathedral and the polished television broadcast of Hour of Power—cast a broad shadow over American Christianity. Pastors flocked to Southern California to learn Schuller’s techniques. The President of United States invited him sit prominently next to the First Lady at the State of the Union Address. Muhammad Ali asked for the pastor’s autograph. It seemed as if Schuller may have started a second Reformation. And then it all went away. As Schuller’s ministry wrestled with internal turmoil and bankruptcy, his emulators—including Rick Warren, Bill Hybels, and Joel Osteen— nurtured megachurches that seemed to sweep away the Crystal Cathedral as a relic of the twentieth century. How did it come to this?

Certainly, all churches depend on a mix of constituents, charisma, and capital, yet the size and ambition of large churches like Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral exert enormous organizational pressures to continue the flow of people committed to the congregation, to reinforce the spark of charismatic excitement generated by high-profile pastors, and to develop fresh flows of capital funding for maintenance of old projects and launching new initiatives. The constant attention to expand constituencies, boost charisma, and stimulate capital among megachurches produces an especially burdensome strain on their leaders. By orienting an approach to the collapse of the Crystal Cathedral on these three core elements—constituency, charisma, and capital—The Glass Church demonstrates how congregational fragility is greatly accentuated in larger churches, a notion we label megachurch strain, such that the threat of implosion is significantly accentuated by any failures to properly calibrate the inter-relationship among these elements.

Learn more about The Glass Church at the Rutgers University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: The Glass Church.

--Marshal Zeringue