Pg. 99: Sebastian Schmidt's "Armed Guests"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Armed Guests: Territorial Sovereignty and Foreign Military Basing by Sebastian Schmidt.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the wake of World War II, the United States and its allies developed a new type of security arrangement in which a state could maintain a long-term, peacetime military presence on the territory of another equally sovereign state that, unlike earlier practice, was not tied to occupational regimes or colonial rule. The impact of this development on international politics is hard to overstate, and it has become a constitutive feature of contemporary security dynamics.

Despite its significance, the origins of this basing practice have remained largely understudied and unexplained. In Armed Guests, Sebastian Schmidt develops a theory to explain the emergence of this phenomenon, which he calls "sovereign basing," and in doing so, shows how its development fundamentally transformed state sovereignty and the very nature of security politics. He applies concepts derived from pragmatist thought to a historical study of the relations between the United States and its wartime allies to explain how sovereign basing originated through the efforts of policymakers to come to grips with the unique security environment of the postwar era. As he argues, the tools offered by pragmatism provide needed analytical leverage over the emergence of novelty and offer valuable insight into the dynamics of stability and change.

Armed Guests is a wide-ranging account of the development of sovereign basing practices in the years before and after World War II. It is a book with significant implications for our understanding of contemporary security politics and the future of basing strategies as well as for broader issues in IR, including the sociological foundations of security strategies, the nature of norms, and the practice of sovereignty.

Learn more about Armed Guests at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Armed Guests.

--Marshal Zeringue

Layne Fargo's "They Never Learn," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: They Never Learn by Layne Fargo.

The entry begins:

I always “cast” every character in my novels before I start writing them, and I have secret Pinterest boards full of pictures of all my inspirations (like, so many pictures it’s creepy).

Here are some of the main actors I pictured while writing my latest novel, the feminist serial killer thriller They Never Learn:

Christina Hendricks as English professor/murderer of bad men Scarlett Clark. Scarlett is a bombshell redhead who will ruin your life, and Christina basically invented that archetype as Joan Holloway on Mad Men.

Morena Baccarin as Scarlett’s love interest, psychology professor Dr. Mina Pierce. I originally pictured...[read on]

Visit Layne Fargo's website.

My Book, The Movie: They Never Learn.

--Marshal Zeringue

Fifteen of the best zombie books

Kara Brand is a recent graduate of Lafayette College, where she studied Government and Law and worked for her college’s Writing Program and its Office of Sustainability. At The Lineup she tagged fifteen zombie books to satisfy your hunger for horror, including:

The Monster Island Trilogy by David Wellington

David Wellington, author of vampire novels like 99 Coffins and 23 Hours, stands out with this zombie trilogy. Akin to World War Z in scope and I Am Legend in its dramatic arc, The Monster Island Trilogy tells of humanity’s struggle against an ever-growing horde of flesh-eating zombies.

In Monster Island, a former UN weapons inspector searches zombie-infested New York City for the one thing that might save his family. In its prequel, Monster Nation, Wellington revisits the nightmare plague that gave rise to the zombie apocalypse in Monster Island. Nation follows a Colorado National Guardsman captivated by an exceptional zombie with the powers to reason, and possibly, the powers to save humanity. In the final book in the trilogy, Monster Planet, the world has reached its breaking point—an army of hungry zombies sweeps across the globe. A brave young woman, a wicked sorcerer, and a child commander of the zombies must all face off to determine whether humanity will persist or perish.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Caz Frear's "Shed No Tears"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Shed No Tears: A Novel by Caz Frear.

About the book, from the publisher:

Four victims. Killer caught. Case closed . . . or is it?

Growing up in a London family with ties to organized crime, Detective Constable Cat Kinsella knows the criminal world better than most cops do. As a member of the city’s Metropolitan Police, she’s made efforts to distinguish herself from her relatives. But leading an upstanding life isn’t always easy, and Cat has come close to crossing the line, a fact she keeps well hidden from her superiors.

Working their latest case, Cat and her partner Luigi Parnell discover a connection to a notorious criminal: serial killer Christopher Masters, who abducted and killed several women in 2012. Though the cops eventually apprehended him, his final victim, Holly Kemp, was never found and he never confessed to her murder, despite the solid eyewitness testimony against him. Now, six years later, the discovery of Holly’s remains near Cambridge seems to be the definitive proof needed to close the case.

Still, a few key items of evidence don’t quite line up. As Cat and Parnell look closer, they find discrepancies that raise troubling questions. But someone will do anything to keep past secrets hidden—and as they inch closer to the truth, they may be putting themselves in jeopardy...

Follow Caz Frear on Twitter.

The Page 69 Test: Sweet Little Lies.

The Page 69 Test: Stone Cold Heart.

The Page 69 Test: Shed No Tears.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten house parties in fiction

David Leavitt's fiction has been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Prize, the National Book Critics' Circle Award and the LA Times Fiction Prize, and shortlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Award. His writing has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Harper's and Vogue, among other publications. He lives in Gainesville, Florida, where he is Professor of English at the University of Florida and edits the literary magazine Subtropics.

Leavitt's latest novel is Shelter in Place.

At the Guardian he tagged ten great house parties in fiction, including:

Atonement by Ian McEwan (2001)

Entertainments gone awry are a common feature of house parties in fiction. Here, the entertainment is a play written by 13-year-old Briony Tallis but wrecked by the cousins she enlists to perform in it – a humiliation that will have lasting repercussions not just for Briony herself but for her sister and her sister’s lover, Robbie Turner. As the novel moves toward its heartbreaking and heart-stopping last chapter, McEwan nudges but doesn’t quite break through fiction’s famous fourth wall.

Read about another entry on the list.

Atonement also appears on Abbie Greaves's top ten list of books about silence, 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. 99: Jessica Pressman's "Bookishness"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Bookishness: Loving Books in a Digital Age (Literature Now) by Jessica Pressman.

About the book, from the publisher:

Twenty-first-century culture is obsessed with books. In a time when many voices have joined to predict the death of print, books continue to resurface in new and unexpected ways. From the proliferation of “shelfies” to Jane Austen–themed leggings and from decorative pillows printed with beloved book covers to bookwork sculptures exhibited in prestigious collections, books are everywhere and are not just for reading. Writers have caught up with this trend: many contemporary novels depict books as central characters or fetishize paper and print thematically and formally.

In Bookishness, Jessica Pressman examines the new status of the book as object and symbol. She explores the rise of “bookishness” as an identity and an aesthetic strategy that proliferates from store-window décor to experimental writing. Ranging from literature to kitsch objects, stop-motion animation films to book design, Pressman considers the multivalent meanings of books in contemporary culture. Books can represent shelter from—or a weapon against—the dangers of the digital; they can act as memorials and express a sense of loss. Examining the works of writers such as Jonathan Safran Foer, Jennifer Egan, Mark Z. Danielewski, and Leanne Shapton, Pressman illuminates the status of the book as a fetish object and its significance for understanding contemporary fakery. Bringing together media studies, book history, and literary criticism, Bookishness explains how books still give meaning to our lives in a digital age.

Visit Jessica Pressman's website.

The Page 99 Test: Bookishness.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Karen Brooks

From my Q&A with Karen Brooks, author of The Lady Brewer of London:

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

The title progresses readers into not only the heart of the story, but catapults them towards its conclusion. It’s indicative of the aspirations of the lead character, Anneke Sheldrake, who when the book opens, is forced, through family tragedy, to fall back on her Dutch mother’s craft of brewing ale to support her household. While women in medieval times were brewers, to make a business of it as Anneke does, a woman of good birth (hence “lady), is both unusual and dangerous – especially when she moves to the city. So, I like to think the title is evocative and the juxtaposition of “lady” and “brewer” raises questions in a reader. London, of course, gives us a place. The original title of the book (in Australia) was The Brewer’s Tale (which has a raft of meanings). The title...[read on]

Visit Karen Brooks's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Lady Brewer of London.

Q&A with Karen Brooks.

--Marshal Zeringue

Stephen Miller's favorite crime titles of 2020

Stephen Miller was a regular contributor to Mystery News, writing the “In the Beginning” column about new crime-fiction writers for several years. At The Rap Sheet he tagged his favorite crime fiction of 2020. One title on the list:

These Women, by Ivy Pochoda (Ecco):

Under normal circumstances, I avoid serial-killer novels. I often find them sacrificing any level of literary merit in favor of cheap thrills and high-gloss gore. But these days aren’t normal and Ivy Pochoda is not a writer plumbing the lowest common denominator. So, based on her track record, I reached for her fourth novel, These Women, after seeing rapturous reviews. Boy, were they right.

Pochoda’s twist on the serial-killer subgenre is to tell the story from the point of view of the killer’s prey, all found in the freeway-divided West Adams area of Los Angeles in 2014. It’s a quintessential transitional neighborhood, once containing upper-middle-class homes, but now home to strip malls and food trucks. It’s in this environment that someone was preying on sex workers years ago, went back underground after eluding detection, and now seems to be back on the scene, murdering again as though just awake from a long nap. The police aren’t connecting the dots and the victims are on the margins of society, not attracting much in the way of attention by anyone except the killer. This novel is structured as a series of interconnected stories, with characters from one narrative passing in the background of another. It is this technique that allows the reader to understand the ecosystem of the culture “these women” occupy. There are numerous ways this novel could have crashed, but under Pochoda’s steady hand, it seems natural and effortless.

Read about another entry on the list.

These Women is among Smith Henderson and Jon Marc Smith's ten American masterpieces that are actually crime fiction.

The Page 69 Test: These Women.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: William Ian Miller's "Outrageous Fortune"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Outrageous Fortune: Gloomy Reflections on Luck and Life by William Ian Miller.

About the book, from the publisher:

In this book, William Ian Miller offers his reflections on the perverse consequences, indeed often the opposite of intended effects, of so-called 'good things'. Noted for his remarkable erudition, wit, and playful pessimism, Miller here ranges over topics from personal disasters to literary and national ones. Drawing on a truly immense store of knowledge encompassing literature, philosophy, theology, and history, he excavates the evidence of human anxieties around scarcity in all its forms (from scarcity of food to luck to where we stand in the eyes of others caught in a game of musical chairs we often do not even know we are playing). With wit and sensitivity, along with a large measure of fearless self-scrutiny, he points to and invites us to recognize the gloomy, neurotic, despondent tendencies of reasonably sentient human life. The book is a careful examination of negative beliefs, inviting an experience of bleak fellow-feeling among the author, the reader and many a hapless soul across the centuries. Just what makes you more nervous, he asks, a run of good luck, or a run of bad?

Learn more about Outrageous Fortune at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Losing It.

The Page 99 Test: Outrageous Fortune.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Linda Keir's "The Three Mrs. Wrights"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Three Mrs. Wrights: A Novel by Linda Keir.

About the book, from the publisher:

Mr. Wright has everything. All that’s left to give him is what he deserves.

Lark has good things coming: a career as a board-game designer and a whirlwind romance with a handsome investor. Trip is so compassionate and supportive, he’s almost too good to be true.

Jessica has always been cautious, but she can’t resist Jonathan. The brilliant TED-talking visionary has big plans for his inspiring medical start-up. Now Jessica is invited to be part of the team—and to partner with the founder outside the office.

Holly has settled into a comfortable life with Jack, her husband of nearly twenty years. They’ve raised three children, they own a beautiful home, and they’ve founded a worthy charity. She’s proud of building a marriage that has endured—she just doesn’t want to look too closely at the cracks.

Lark, Jessica, and Holly are three strangers with so much in common it hurts. Their one and only is one and the same.

The charming Mr. Wright’s serial lies are about to catch up with him…

Linda Keir is the pen name for the writing team of Linda Joffe Hull and Keir Graff.

My Book, The Movie: The Three Mrs. Wrights.

The Page 69 Test: The Three Mrs. Wrights.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven books that prove you’re not the only weirdo

Kelly Conaboy is a writer living in Brooklyn. She was most recently a writer-at-large at New York Magazine’s The Cut. Before that she was a writer at the Hairpin, and before that Gawker, and before that Videogum. (None of those websites still exist.)

Conaboy also has a dog named Peter. They’ve written a book together. It’s called The Particulars of Peter: Dance Lessons, DNA Tests, and Other Excuses to Hang Out with My Perfect Dog.

At Electric Lit Conaboy tagged seven books that made her feel she was "not alone in an odd or seemingly 'dumb' question, or a peculiar way of thinking." One title on the list:

Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know by Alexandra Horowitz

I believe there is no way to share your life with a dog without thinking, multiple times per day, “why is my dog doing this and, if I knew why, would I be able to use that knowledge to give him a better life, please, oh god, all I want to do is make him happy?” Alexandra Horowitz knows why and, luckily, she has written several books to enlighten us. She also gives permission, and direction, for what might seem to some like indulgence. I often like to let my dog linger on walks, stopping at every spot he might want to sniff. This can be an annoyance to anyone walking with me, or behind me, but I have always felt it was better to let him enjoy the sniffing, as it seems to be his favorite activity. Horowitz agrees. “Since I’ve begun to appreciate Pump’s smelly world I sometimes take her out just to sit and sniff,” she writes. “We have smell-walks, stopping at every landmark along our routes in which she shows an interest. She is looking; being outside is the most smelly, wonderful part of her day.” So, there you have it. At the instruction of Alexandra Horowitz, everyone else just needs to wait.

Read about another entry on the list.

Inside of a Dog is among Miriam Parker's five indisputably best dogs in (contemporary) literature and Bernard Cornwell's six best books.

The Page 99 Test: Inside of a Dog.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Ben Wright's "Bonds of Salvation"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Bonds of Salvation: How Christianity Inspired and Limited American Abolitionism by Ben Wright.

About the book, from the publisher:

Ben Wright’s Bonds of Salvation demonstrates how religion structured the possibilities and limitations of American abolitionism during the early years of the republic. From the American Revolution through the eruption of schisms in the three largest Protestant denominations in the 1840s, this comprehensive work lays bare the social and religious divides that culminated in secession and civil war. Historians often emphasize status anxieties, market changes, biracial cooperation, and political maneuvering as primary forces in the evolution of slavery in the United States. Wright instead foregrounds the pivotal role religion played in shaping the ideological contours of the early abolitionist movement.

Wright first examines the ideological distinctions between religious conversion and purification in the aftermath of the Revolution, when a small number of white Christians contended that the nation must purify itself from slavery before it could fulfill its religious destiny. Most white Christians disagreed, focusing on visions of spiritual salvation over the practical goal of emancipation. To expand salvation to all, they created new denominations equipped to carry the gospel across the American continent and eventually all over the globe. These denominations established numerous reform organizations, collectively known as the “benevolent empire,” to reckon with the problem of slavery. One affiliated group, the American Colonization Society (ACS), worked to end slavery and secure white supremacy by promising salvation for Africa and redemption for the United States.

Yet the ACS and its efforts drew strong objections. Proslavery prophets transformed expectations of expanded salvation into a formidable antiabolitionist weapon, framing the ACS's proponents as enemies of national unity. Abolitionist assertions that enslavers could not serve as agents of salvation sapped the most potent force in American nationalism—Christianity—and led to schisms within the Presbyterian, Baptist, and Methodist churches. These divides exacerbated sectional hostilities and sent the nation farther down the path to secession and war. Wright’s provocative analysis reveals that visions of salvation both created and almost destroyed the American nation.

Visit Ben Wright's website.

The Page 99 Test: Bonds of Salvation.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Darcie Wilde

From my Q&A with Darcie Wilde, author of A Lady Compromised:

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

Like the cover, I think the title sets the tone for the entire book. It’s the first thing the reader sees, and it needs to tell them what they’re getting themselves into when they pick up the book. Classic mystery? Suspense? Romance? The title is the first clue. 

What's in a name? 

A name is like a title. It creates a first impression. It’s an indicator of gender, but also class, nationality and heritage. My main character is Rosalind Thorne because I wanted to give her a classic Englishwoman’s name with a hint of...[read on]

Visit Darcie Wilde's website.

My Book, The Movie: And Dangerous to Know.

The Page 69 Test: And Dangerous to Know.

The Page 69 Test: A Lady Compromised.

Q&A with Darcie Wilde.

--Marshal Zeringue

Tessa Wegert's "The Dead Season," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Dead Season by Tessa Wegert.

The entry begins:

I don’t typically pin photos of actors on my wall or picture celebrities while writing, but with The Dead Season, the sequel to Death in the Family, I did have a few in mind.

In The Dead Season, Thousand Islands-based Senior Investigator Shana Merchant returns to her hometown in Vermont upon learning that her estranged uncle has been murdered. Shana’s immediate and extended family both play a major role in her informal investigation of a homicide that hits close to home. When she receives word that a child has been abducted back in Upstate New York, her partner Tim Wellington and local Sheriff Maureen McIntyre factor in as well. Of course there’s also Blake Bram, the serial killer from Shana’s hometown whom she’s been hunting, and who she believes could be involved in both crimes.

That said, here’s the casting scenario that plays out in my mind.

Shana Merchant: Emma Stone. I know she’d portray Shana as the shrewd and plucky investigator that she is.

Tim Wellington: Adam Driver. Driver may be an unconventional choice to play small-town Tim, but I love the unexpectedness of having him depict an Everyman type.

Maureen “Mac” McIntyre: Jane...[read on]

Visit Tessa Wegert's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Dead Season.

--Marshal Zeringue

Twelve underrated pandemic books

Michael J. Seidlinger is a Filipino American author of My Pet Serial Killer, Dreams of Being, The Fun We’ve Had, and nine other books.

At The Lineup he tagged twelve underrated dark and extraordinary pandemic books, including:

The Companions by Katie M. Flynn

After an extremely contagious virus scares the American population into quarantine, not unlike the present situation with COVID-19, people are forced to get used to secluded, technology-centered lives. A random assortment of wealthy participants take part in a so-called “companionship” program in which they can upload their consciousness before death, effectively enabling them to stay alive indefinitely. If you’re not rich enough, your consciousness becomes a commodity, capable of being rented or sold to other people.

Flynn has taken the fear of physical contact to the next level, imagining a world where the only way to live is to do so via the confines of a technological vessel.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Page 69 Test: The Companions.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Ethan Porter's "The Consumer Citizen"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Consumer Citizen by Ethan Porter.

About the book, from the publisher:

Citizens are asked to buy, and asked to consider to buy, goods of all sizes and all prices, nearly all of the time. Appeals to political decision-making are less common. In The Consumer Citizen, Ethan Porter investigates how the techniques of everyday consumer experiences can shape political behavior. Drawing on more than a dozen original studies, he shows that the casual conflation of consumer and political decisions has profound implications for how Americans think about politics. Indeed, Porter explains that consumer habits can affect citizens' attitudes about their government, their taxes, their politicians, and even whether they purchase government-sponsored health insurance. The consumer citizen approaches government as if it were just an ordinary firm. Of course, government is not an ordinary firm---far from it---and the disjunction between what government is, and the consumer apparatus that citizens bring to bear on their evaluations of it, offers insight into several long-unanswered questions in political behavior and public opinion. How do many Americans make sense of the political world? The Consumer Citizen offers a novel answer: By relying on the habits and tools that they learn as consumers.

Visit Ethan Porter's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Consumer Citizen.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: C.S. Friedman's "This Virtual Night"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: This Virtual Night by C.S. Friedman.

About the book, from the publisher:

Returning to the universe of New York Times Notable book This Alien Shore comes a new space opera from an acknowledged master of science fiction.

When deep-space travel altered the genes of the first interstellar colonists, Earth abandoned them. But some of the colonies survived, and a new civilization of mental and physical “Variants” has been established, centered around clusters of space stations known as the outworlds.

Now the unthinkable has happened: a suicide assault has destroyed the life support system of a major waystation. All that is known about the young men responsible is that in their last living moments they were receiving messages from an uninhabited sector of space, and were playing a virtual reality game.

Two unlikely allies have joined forces to investigate the incident: Ru Gaya, a mercenary explorer with a taste for high risk ventures, and game designer Micah Bello, who must find the parties responsible for the attack in order to clear his name. From the corridors of a derelict station lost to madness to an outlaw stronghold in the depths of uncharted space, the two now follow the trail of an enemy who can twist human minds to his purpose, and whose plans could bring about the collapse of outworld civilization.

Visit C.S. Friedman's website.

The Page 69 Test: This Virtual Night.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top dark stories with hopeful endings

Les Edgerton is the author of more than twenty books including the newly released Hard Times, as well as numerous short stories and screenplays.

At CrimeReads he tagged six favorite dark stories with hopeful endings, including:

The next novel appears to miss the mark for books that are dark throughout and then end with hope, but it doesn’t. It just appears to at first glance. In Willy Vlautin’s Don’t Skip Out on Me, Horace Hopper is a half-Paiute, half-Irish ranch hand who wants to be somebody. He’s spent most of his life on the ranch of his kindly guardians, Mr. and Mrs. Reese, herding sheep alone in the mountains. But while the Reeses treat him like a son, Horace can’t shake the shame he feels from being abandoned by his parents. He decides to leave the only loving home he’s known to prove his worth by training to become a boxer. It’s a stark landscape he faces and bit by bit, he’s beaten down, physically and emotionally. Near death, Mr. Reese finds him, broken and suicidal, completely defeated by life, and tries to get him to come home to his ranch where he grew up. He wants nothing to do with the man or his ranch—he tells him, “Every night I’m here I hope I get run over or stabbed or thrown in prison. That’s how I feel.” He’s given up all hope. Then, Mr. Reese tells him a little white lie. He tells him he has cancer (he doesn’t), and needs him to help him with his ranch. Horace agrees to this and for the first time in a long time has hope for himself and his future. On the way back to the ranch, lying in the bed of Mr. Reese’s pickup, he dies. But, he dies with hope for himself he hadn’t had in a long time. He just ran out of time.

Read about another title on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: John Gooch's "Mussolini's War"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Mussolini's War: Fascist Italy from Triumph to Collapse: 1935-1943 by John Gooch.

About the book, from the publisher:

A remarkable new history evoking the centrality of Italy to World War II, outlining the brief rise and triumph of the Fascists, followed by the disastrous fall of the Italian military campaign.

While staying closely aligned with Hitler, Mussolini remained carefully neutral until the summer of 1940. At that moment, with the wholly unexpected and sudden collapse of the French and British armies, Mussolini declared war on the Allies in the hope of making territorial gains in southern France and Africa. This decision proved a horrifying miscalculation, dooming Italy to its own prolonged and unwinnable war, immense casualties, and an Allied invasion in 1943 that ushered in a terrible new era for the country.

John Gooch's new history is the definitive account of Italy's war experience. Beginning with the invasion of Abyssinia and ending with Mussolini's arrest, Gooch brilliantly portrays the nightmare of a country with too small an industrial sector, too incompetent a leadership and too many fronts on which to fight.

Everywhere—whether in the USSR, the Western Desert, or the Balkans—Italian troops found themselves against either better-equipped or more motivated enemies. The result was a war entirely at odds with the dreams of pre-war Italian planners—a series of desperate improvisations against an allied force who could draw on global resources, and against whom Italy proved helpless.

Learn more about Mussolini's War at the publisher's website.

The Page 99 Test: Mussolini's War.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Andrea J. Johnson

From my Q&A with Andrea J. Johnson, author of Poetic Justice:

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

The title Poetic Justice speaks more to an overall theme than one specific aspect of the story. Each character faces a dilemma that underscores the old adage “what goes around comes around.” This may not be apparent to readers from the first page, but the idea becomes quite clear once the book reaches its climax. In fact, the ending helped inspire the title. I knew how I wanted the novel to end long before I had the courage to sit down and write the first word. So when it came to publication, I was adamant about the name despite my mentor and critique partners insisting I change it. Their concern rested on...[read on]

Visit Andrea J. Johnson's website.

My Book, The Movie: Poetic Justice.

The Page 69 Test: Poetic Justice.

Q&A with Andrea J. Johnson.

--Marshal Zeringue