Florence Gonsalves's "Dear Universe," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Dear Universe by Florence Gonsalves.

The entry begins:

Seeing my baby on screen would be a dream.

I love Perks of Being a Wallflower, both the book and movie, for how it handles heavy topics alongside the beautiful flings and flirtations that come with being a teen. I'm in awe that the author, Stephen Chbosky, also directed the movie. It’d be my ideal scenario to be involved in every part of the process, from the screenwriting to the casting. As exciting as a movie deal would be though, I know it'd be hard to put my story in the hands of other people, as Dear Universe is very personal for me and my family. If somehow Chloë Sevigny circa 2001 could play Cham, I would lose my mind. Since time travel isn’t yet possible, I’d love to see...[read on]

Visit Florence Gonsalves's website.

Q&A with Florence Gonsalves.

The Page 69 Test: Dear Universe.

My Book, The Movie: Dear Universe.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven top revenge thrillers featuring women who have had enough

Pip Drysdale is a writer, actor and musician who grew up in Africa and Australia. At 20 she moved to New York to study acting, worked in indie films and off-off Broadway theater, started writing songs and made four records. After graduating with a BA in English, Drysdale moved to London where she dated some interesting men and played shows across Europe.

Her first novel, The Sunday Girl, a bestseller in Australia, is newly released in the US.

At CrimeReads, Drysdale tagged seven revenge thrillers featuring women who have officially had enough. One title on the list:

My Lovely Wife by Samantha Downing.

They’ve been married for fifteen years, they have two children and the live in the suburbs… it sounds perfect and vanilla, doesn’t it? Still, perhaps every couple seems a bit flavorless
until you scratch the surface. I don’t want to ruin this for you if you haven’t read it, but let’s just say all hobbies are not created equal and there are some people you absolutely shouldn’t upset.

Read about another entry on the list.

My Lovely Wife is among Christina McDonald's seven top thrillers with flawed characters, C.J. Tudor's seven crime novels where murder is a group activity, Lisa Levy's top seven psychological thrillers with manipulative male narrators, Kaira Rouda's top seven literary couples whose relationships are deeply disturbing in the most fascinating ways possible, and Margot Hunt's top five villains who have had about enough of domestic life.

The Page 69 Test: My Lovely Wife.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Catherine Ryan Hyde's "Brave Girl, Quiet Girl"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Brave Girl, Quiet Girl: A Novel by Catherine Ryan Hyde.

About the book, from the publisher:

From New York Times bestselling author Catherine Ryan Hyde comes a gripping and emotional novel about friendship, motherhood, and the journey toward finding a place to call home.

Brooke is a divorced single mom, financially strapped, living with her mother, and holding tight to the one thing that matters most: her two-year-old daughter, Etta. Then, in a matter of seconds, Brooke’s life is shattered when she’s carjacked. Helpless and terrified, all Brooke can do is watch as Etta, still strapped in her seat, disappears into the Los Angeles night.

Miles away, Etta is found by Molly, a homeless teen who is all too used to darkness. Thrown away by her parents, and with a future as stable as the wooden crate she calls home, Molly survives day to day by her wits. As unpredictable as her life is, she’s stunned to find Etta, abandoned and alone. Shielding the little girl from more than the elements, Molly must put herself in harm’s way to protect a child as lost as she is.

Out of one terrible moment, Brooke’s and Molly’s desperate paths converge and an unlikely friendship across generations and circumstances is formed. With it, Brooke and Molly will come to discover that what’s lost—and what’s found—can change in a heartbeat.

Visit Catherine Ryan Hyde's website.

Q&A with Catherine Ryan Hyde.

The Page 69 Test: Brave Girl, Quiet Girl.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Allison Margaret Bigelow's "Mining Language"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Mining Language: Racial Thinking, Indigenous Knowledge, and Colonial Metallurgy in the Early Modern Iberian World by Allison Margaret Bigelow.

About the book, from the publisher:

Mineral wealth from the Americas underwrote and undergirded European colonization of the New World; American gold and silver enriched Spain, funded the slave trade, and spurred Spain's northern European competitors to become Atlantic powers. Building upon works that have narrated this global history of American mining in economic and labor terms, Mining Language is the first book-length study of the technical and scientific vocabularies that miners developed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as they engaged with metallic materials. This language-centric focus enables Allison Bigelow to document the crucial intellectual contributions Indigenous and African miners made to the very engine of European colonialism.

By carefully parsing the writings of well-known figures such as Cristóbal Colón and Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés and lesser-known writers such Álvaro Alonso Barba, a Spanish priest who spent most of his life in the Andes, Bigelow uncovers the ways in which Indigenous and African metallurgists aided or resisted imperial mining endeavors, shaped critical scientific practices, and offered imaginative visions of metalwork. Her creative linguistic and visual analyses of archival fragments, images, and texts in languages as diverse as Spanish and Quechua also allow her to reconstruct the processes that led to the silencing of these voices in European print culture.

Learn more about Mining Language at the University of North Carolina Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Mining Language.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Nancy Star

My Q&A with Nancy Star, author of Rules for Moving:

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

Rules for Moving was the title of the novel when I submitted it to my editor and I was delighted that she loved it as much as I did. We both thought it worked on multiple levels. For one thing, the main character, advice columnist Lane Meckler, grew up in a family that moved so often, her mother made up a list Lane had to memorize, called Rules For Moving (Rule Number 1: Take Only What You Love). As for why Lane’s family moved so much, that’s a mystery to her—which she will eventually figure out! There’s another layer to the title, which speaks to a feeling Lane has, that everyone around her seems to effortlessly follow agreed upon rules for how to move through life, rules she somehow never...[read on]

Visit Nancy Star's website.

Q&A with Nancy Star.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten books about silence

Abbie Greaves studied English Literature at Cambridge University. She worked in publishing for three years before leaving to focus on her writing. She now lives in Edinburgh, Scotland.

The Silent Treatment is her first novel.

At the Guardian, Greaves tagged ten books with "one unifying feature:...the way in which readers themselves are made to work harder when confronted with an impenetrable quiet." One title on the list:

Atonement by Ian McEwan

To keep shtum, or not to keep shtum – that’s one of the big questions in play in this Booker prize-shortlisted novel. From Paul and Lola’s silence over Robbie’s wrongful imprisonment to Briony’s attempt at repentance through voicing her version of the truth, it’s a story that shows just how compelling silence can be as a narrative device.

Read about another entry on the list.

Atonement also appears on Eliza Casey's list of ten favorite stories--from film, fiction, and television--from the early 20th century, Nicci French's top ten list of dinner parties in fiction, Mark Skinner's list of ten of the best country house novels, Julia Dahl's top ten list of books about miscarriages of justice, Tim Lott's top ten list of summers in fiction, Ellen McCarthy's list of six favorite books about weddings and marriage, David Treuer's six favorite books list, Kirkus Reviews's list of eleven books whose final pages will shock you, Nicole Hill's list of eleven books in which the main character dies, Isla Blair's six best books list, Jessica Soffer's top ten list of book endings, Jane Ciabattari's list of five masterpieces of fiction that also worked as films, and on John Mullan's lists of ten of the best birthday parties in literature, ten of the best misdirected messages in literature, ten of the best scenes on London Underground, ten of the best breakages in literature, ten of the best weddings in literature, and ten of the best identical twins in fiction. It is one of Stephanie Beacham's six best books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: John Marrs's "What Lies Between Us"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: What Lies Between Us by John Marrs.

About the book, from the publisher:

Nina can never forgive Maggie for what she did. And she can never let her leave.

They say every house has its secrets, and the house that Maggie and Nina have shared for so long is no different. Except that these secrets are not buried in the past.

Every other night, Maggie and Nina have dinner together. When they are finished, Nina helps Maggie back to her room in the attic, and into the heavy chain that keeps her there. Because Maggie has done things to Nina that can’t ever be forgiven, and now she is paying the price.

But there are many things about the past that Nina doesn’t know, and Maggie is going to keep it that way—even if it kills her.

Because in this house, the truth is more dangerous than lies.

Visit John Marrs's website, and follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

My Book, The Movie: The One.

The Page 69 Test: The One.

The Page 69 Test: What Lies Between Us.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Rebekah Farrugia & Kellie D. Hay's "Women Rapping Revolution"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Women Rapping Revolution: Hip Hop and Community Building in Detroit by Rebekah Farrugia and Kellie D. Hay.

About the book, from the publisher:

Detroit, MIchigan, has long been recognized as a center of musical innovation and social change. Rebekah Farrugia and Kellie D. Hay draw on seven years of fieldwork to illuminate the important role that women have played in mobilizing a grassroots response to political and social pressures at the heart of Detroit’s ongoing renewal and development project. Focusing on the Foundation, a women-centered hip hop collective, Women Rapping Revolution argues that the hip hop underground is a crucial site where Black women shape subjectivity and claim self-care as a principle of community organizing. Through interviews and sustained critical engagement with artists and activists, this study also articulates the substantial role of cultural production in social, racial, and economic justice efforts.

Learn more about Women Rapping Revolution at the University of California Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Women Rapping Revolution.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Jordan Farmer

From my Q&A with Jordan Farmer, author of The Poison Flood:

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Music is a big influence, particularly on this novel. My tastes are vast. Essentially if it’s good, I wanna hear it, but I was thinking of the narrative quality and confessional nature of many country songs. The way a song like “He Stopped Loving Her Today” hides the details of a death until deeper into the track. I wanted similar layers in the novel. To show Hollis in his present state, then evaluate his past in subsequent chapters to inform how he came to be in these situations.

Biographies or interviews with artists fascinate me. I really crave the opportunity to hear any sort of artist talk about their process. There’s a TV show sponsored by Ernie Ball guitar strings where they talk to musicians like Buddy Guy, Mike Ness from Social Distortion and Billy Duffy from The Cult about their songwriting process and how they achieve a certain guitar tone. I’m not a professional musician, I play some bad acoustic guitar, but I love that show. I think it’s really useful to hear about how anyone creates regardless of the artform. Something about just understanding the...[read on]

Learn more about The Poison Flood.

Q&A with Jordan Farmer.

--Marshal Zeringue

My Book, The Movie: Liv Constantine's "The Wife Stalker"

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Wife Stalker: A Novel by Liv Constantine.

The entry begins:

Every author has more than likely imagined sitting in a darkened movie theatre and seeing the characters they’ve created walk off the page and onto the screen. To hear them speak and watch them interact would be a thrilling experience, and so it is an amusing game the author plays––the game of choosing the actors who would be perfect for each role. Because our stories are equally plot and character driven, our process involves simultaneously fleshing out our characters and loosely outlining the plot, and so from the very beginning we have fun identifying an actor we feel has the qualities and appearance of that character.

The three main characters in The Wife Stalker are: Piper, a young and beautiful mystery woman who moves to Westport, Connecticut after leaving California and a past she wishes to hide; Joanna, a woman committed to caring for her family, and Leo, a high-powered criminal attorney with whom both women are in love. Piper is young, hip, west coast, into yoga, meditation and all things new age. The actor who seems to fit the bill for her is Margot Robbie. Joanna is little older than Piper, settled, down to earth, and fiercely devoted to Leo and children Evie and Stelli. Maggie Gyllenhaal is our choice for Joanna. Leo is smart, decent and going through a rough patch. He’s a character we have warm feelings for, and so the actor we chose needed to be someone we felt the same way about. As we went down the list of possible candidates, we both smiled and nodded when we got to...[read on]

Visit Liv Constantine's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Valerie Constantine & Zorba.

Coffee with a Canine: Lynne Constantine & Greyson.

The Page 69 Test: The Last Mrs. Parrish.

The Page 69 Test: The Last Time I Saw You.

My Book, The Movie: The Wife Stalker.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Dete Meserve's "The Good Stranger"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Good Stranger (A Kate Bradley Mystery) by Dete Meserve.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the bestselling author of Good Sam—now a Netflix feature film—comes another Kate Bradley story about the nature of generosity and finding unexpected connections with strangers.

TV reporter Kate Bradley arrives in Manhattan ready to take on a challenging new position as a national news correspondent. When a massive power outage plunges New York City into darkness, the disaster she expected to cover takes an unexpected turn. Someone is leaving thousands of mysterious gifts throughout the city, and the only clue to the giver’s identity is the occasional note from “A Stranger.”

Together with handsome TV series host Scott Jameson, Kate must make sense of these random generous acts, which quickly escalate in scale and capture the attention of viewers across the country. In early-morning stakeouts and late-night surveillance, they crisscross the city hunting down leads, but the elusive Stranger is always one step ahead.

Menacing letters and videos addressed to Kate threaten to derail the investigation, but she’s determined to uncover the identity of the benefactor. The closer Kate gets to the truth, the more clearly she sees that even the smallest act of generosity can bring about powerful change. And it just may take her own selfless act of kindness to solve the feel-good mystery of the year.

Visit Dete Meserve's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Good Stranger.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best books set in Greece

Andrew Bostock first traveled to Greece over 25 years ago, and has lived in the country. He is the author of the Bradt Guide to the Peloponnese region.

At the Guardian, Bostock tagged ten "books will take you [to Greece] and lead you on to other things," including:

The Names by Don DeLillo

Talking of dark undercurrents, this little-known book by a famous author gets beneath the skin of Greece magnificently. It is partly set in the Mani, a rocky and often barren part of the southern mainland where my family lived for several years. It is a starkly beautiful area, dotted with tower house fortifications and small Byzantine chapels, but there is always something lurking in the landscape. Imagine a breeze through olive trees for a moment, and then see what DeLillo does with it: “Wind blew across the olive groves, causing a wild tremor, a kind of panic, treetops going silver.” Anyone who has visited this part of the world outside of the somnambulant summer will instantly know this.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Matthew C. Klein & Michael Pettis's "Trade Wars Are Class Wars"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Trade Wars Are Class Wars: How Rising Inequality Distorts the Global Economy and Threatens International Peace by Matthew C. Klein and Michael Pettis.

About the book, from the publisher:

A provocative look at how today’s trade conflicts are caused by governments promoting the interests of elites at the expense of workers

Trade disputes are usually understood as conflicts between countries with competing national interests, but as Matthew C. Klein and Michael Pettis show, they are often the unexpected result of domestic political choices to serve the interests of the rich at the expense of workers and ordinary retirees. Klein and Pettis trace the origins of today’s trade wars to decisions made by politicians and business leaders in China, Europe, and the United States over the past thirty years. Across the world, the rich have prospered while workers can no longer afford to buy what they produce, have lost their jobs, or have been forced into higher levels of debt. In this thought-provoking challenge to mainstream views, the authors provide a cohesive narrative that shows how the class wars of rising inequality are a threat to the global economy and international peace—and what we can do about it.

Learn more about Trade Wars Are Class Wars at the Yale University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Trade Wars Are Class Wars.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Susan Allott

From my Q&A with Susan Allott, author of The Silence:

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

The Silence is a mysterious title, deliberately so, hinting at its genre. It’s the kind of title that asks the reader to figure out what it means, but at the same time it’s not so obscure that it can’t be guessed at. I think it hints at the kinds of secrets that are hidden in plain sight, that remain secret because they are too shameful to speak of, that require an unspoken complicity. Which is precisely what The Silence is about: a woman goes missing and it takes 30 years for anyone to report it, or to talk about what happened.

When I was writing, I had in mind The Great Silence as a potential title, which comes from a phrase used by the anthropologist W.E.H. Stanner to describe the way Aboriginal history was obscured by white Australian historians. My agent wasn’t keen on it at the time, and when the novel was submitted to publishers we used the working title Blind Spot. Nobody liked it much, and throughout the editing process we kicked around dozens of ideas for a new title, but we couldn’t reach a consensus. We really wanted a title that everyone loved, so it could have the same title in the UK, Australia and the U.S.

It was getting a bit desperate as we reached the final editing stage without a title, and I thought I was going to have to accept a mediocre title that nobody loved. I looked back through my list of working titles and found The Great Silence. I was sitting at a bus stop emailing my editors and agent, and...[read on]

Visit Susan Allott's website.

Q&A with Susan Allott.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven novels about crimes in communes, cults, & other alternative communities

Melanie Abrams is the author of a new novel Meadowlark (Little A). Her novel Playing (Grove Atlantic) has been acquired in Italy, France, Germany, India, and Israel. She teaches writing at UC Berkeley and is married to the writer Vikram Chandra. They live with their children in Oakland, CA.

At CrimeReads she tagged seven novels about crimes in communes, cults, and other alternative communities, including:

The Illness Lesson by Clare Beams

This dark edgy novel is a triple threat: part historical fiction, part feminist thriller, part supernatural fable. Samuel Hood is the founder of a school devoted to teaching girls that they are capable of more than just domesticity. His daughter, Caroline, a teacher at the school, is skeptical of the experiment, and her unease only grows when Eliza shows up. Not only is Eliza the daughter of a man who fictionalized Samuel’s original utopian experiment in a popular novel, but she’s also the first to develop strange physical symptoms. Then Caroline falls ill. There are three utopian communities at play here, each creepier than the last.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Illness Lesson is among Molly Odintz's fourteen top crime novels in the time of plague.

The Page 69 Test: The Illness Lesson.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Amanda Sellet's "By the Book"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: By the Book by Amanda Sellet.

About the book, from the publisher:

In this clever YA rom-com debut perfect for fans of Kasie West and Ashley Poston, a teen obsessed with nineteenth-century literature tries to cull advice on life and love from her favorite classic heroines to disastrous results—especially when she falls for the school’s resident Lothario.

Mary Porter-Malcolm has prepared for high school in the one way she knows how: an extensive review of classic literature to help navigate the friendships, romantic liaisons, and overall drama she has come to expect from such an “esteemed” institution. When some new friends seem in danger of falling for the same tricks employed since the days of Austen and Tolstoy, Mary swoops in to create the Scoundrel Survival Guide, using archetypes of literature’s debonair bad boys to signal red flags. But despite her best efforts, she soon finds herself unable to listen to her own good advice and falling for a supposed cad—the same one she warned her friends away from. Without a convenient rain-swept moor to flee to, Mary is forced to admit that real life doesn’t follow the same rules as fiction and that if she wants a happy ending, she’s going to have to write it herself.

Visit Amanda Sellet's website.

Q&A with Amanda Sellet.

The Page 69 Test: By the Book.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Anya P. Foxen's "Inhaling Spirit"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Inhaling Spirit: Harmonialism, Orientalism, and the Western Roots of Modern Yoga by Anya P. Foxen.

About the book, from the publisher:

Recent scholarship has shown that modern postural yoga is the outcome of a complex process of transcultural exchange and syncretism. This book doubles down on those claims and digs even deeper, looking to uncover the disparate but entangled roots of modern yoga practice. Anya Foxen shows that some of what we call yoga, especially in North America and Europe, is genealogically only slightly related to pre-modern Indian yoga traditions. Rather, it is equally, if not more so, grounded in Hellenistic theories of the subtle body, Western esotericism and magic, pre-modern European medicine, and late-nineteenth-century women's wellness programs. The book begins by examining concepts arising out of Greek philosophy and religion, including Pythagoreanism, Stoicism, Neo-Platonism, Galenic medicine, theurgy, and other cultural currents that have traditionally been categorized as "Western esotericism," as well as the more recent examples which scholars of American traditions have labeled "metaphysical religion." Marshaling these under the umbrella category of "harmonialism," Foxen argues that they represent a history of practices that were gradually subsumed into the language of yoga.

Orientalism and gender become important categories of analysis as this narrative moves into the nineteenth century. Women considerably outnumber men in all studies of yoga except those conducted in India, and modern anglophone yoga exhibits important continuities with women's physical culture, feminist reform, and white women's engagement with Orientalism. Foxen's study allows us to recontextualize the peculiarities of American yoga--its focus on aesthetic representation, its privileging of bodily posture and unsystematic incorporation of breathwork, and above all its overwhelmingly white female demographic. In this context it addresses the ongoing conversation about cultural appropriation within the yoga community.

Visit Anya P. Foxen's website.

The Page 99 Test: Inhaling Spirit.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Nancy Wayson Dinan

From my Q&A with Nancy Wayson Dinan, author of Things You Would Know if You Grew Up Around Here:

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

The title Things You Would Know If You Grew Up Around Here is actually really important to the novel – it refers to sections of exposition throughout the story. These “Things You Would Know” are bits of trivia and facts about the Texas Hill Country, and they work into the story in a larger way. For example, one of the things that you would know if you grew up in central Texas is what purple paint blazes on a fencepost mean. They are a universal warning sign against trespassers, and it is actually against the law to cross a boundary marked with purple blazes. We get this bit of trivia through the “Things You Would Know” exposition sections, and then a few pages later, we see the main character enter a property marked with purple blazes, knowing that there are consequences for doing so. Other “Things You Would Know” sections talk about the legend of treasure in San Saba County, and...[read on]

Visit Nancy Wayson Dinan's website.

My Book, The Movie: Things You Would Know if You Grew Up Around Here.

Q&A with Nancy Wayson Dinan.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight novels about being haunted by the past

John Elizabeth Stintzi is the recipient of the 2019 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers, and their work has appeared in the Malahat Review, Kenyon Review, and Ploughshares. They are the author of the novel Vanishing Monuments as well as the poetry collection Junebat.

At Electric Lit Stintzi tagged eight books about characters trying to escape their history, including:

Jonny Appleseed by Joshua Whitehead

Winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction in 2019, Jonny Appleseed is an almost picaresque novel that slowly tells the story of Jonny—a Two-Spirit Indigiqueer sex worker currently living in Winnipeg. The plot of the novel is built around Jonny trying to find a way to get back to the rez, which is a few hours north of the city, to attend the funeral of his stepfather. As he tries to catch a ride, we are bombarded with stories of Jonny’s life, stories about his sexwork, about his kokum, about his growing up the only Two-Spirit kid on the rez. For as much pain and trauma there is in this book, particularly in Jonny’s complicatedly intimate relationship with his childhood friend Tias, there’s also so much love and beauty. Laugh and cry, Jonny’s perseverance is as infectious as the liveliness (and sexiness!) of his voice.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Brady Hammes's "The Resolutions"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Resolutions: A Novel by Brady Hammes.

About the book, from the publisher:

The three Brennan siblings are well on their way in the world. Samantha, the youngest, is a ballerina who recently joined the ranks of a Russian dance company; her brother Jonah is a grad student studying elephants in the rainforest of Gabon; and the eldest, Gavin, has stayed closer to home, living in Los Angeles and acting in a television series.

But as the holidays draw near, all three find themselves in profoundly troubling, though distinctly different, predicaments. Samantha is losing the battle to keep her drug addiction from ruining her career; Jonah, in his attempts to protect his elephants, gets in way too deep with a gang of ivory poachers; and Gavin’s TV show is canceled the same day his girlfriend moves out.

With their lives run aground, they reunite in their parents’ home for the holidays, where they discover that the bonds between siblings are unshakable. But with their personal problems threatening to derail their nascent careers and possibly their very survival, the three embark on a trip to West Africa in a perilous attempt to right their crooked paths.

The Resolutions is a contemporary look at three young people in the defining moments of their lives, by a talented author just getting started on a promising literary career.

Visit Brady Hammes's website.

Q&A with Brady Hammes.

The Page 69 Test: The Resolutions.

--Marshal Zeringue