Allison Brennan's "Don't Open the Door," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Don't Open the Door: A Novel by Allison Brennan.

The entry begins:

Regan Merritt is a former US Marshal who left her job after the murder of her only child and her subsequent divorce from her attorney husband. Regan is in her mid-thirties, close to her father, a retired Sheriff living in Flagstaff, Arizona. She moved back home after her son’s death and is putting together the pieces, but when her best friend and former boss, US Marshal Tommy Granger, is shot and killed as he’s leaving his house — after he leaves a cryptic message on her voice mail that he may reopen her son’s murder investigation — she returns to Virginia to find out what he learned that got him killed. In the process, she has to confront her grief, her ex-husband, and seek the truth about her son’s murder, a truth she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

I rarely envision actors when I’m writing, though sometimes when I’m done with a book I’ll see an actor who would be perfect as one of my characters. For me, I have an image in my head and run with that, rarely based on a real person. With Don’t Open the Door, I immediately pictured Lauren...[read on]

Visit Allison Brennan's website.

My Book, The Movie: Don't Open the Door.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven novels with real estate and urban planning as the heroes & villains

Oindrila Mukherjee grew up in India, where she worked as a journalist for the country's oldest English language newspaper The Statesman. She has attended university on three continents and now lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where she teaches creative writing at Grand Valley State University.

Her debut novel is The Dream Builders.

At Electric Lit Mukherjee tagged seven city novels in which real estate and urban planning are the heroes and villains. One title on the list:

Dubai: The Dog by Joseph O’Neill

In this irreverent novel that was longlisted for the Booker Prize, O’Neill describes the life of the American expat in a city seldom represented in fiction. The narrator, an unnamed attorney, has fled New York to work in Dubai for the absurdly wealthy Batros Brothers. He lives in a luxury apartment complex called The Situation on an inlet of the world’s largest manmade lagoon. From his window, he can see the abandoned project that was supposed to be the tallest residential building in the world. The “desert metropolis,” he tells us, is a place where some massive structure or other is constantly being built. At work, his role is vague and includes supervision of the new intern—his boss’ young son. At home, he drafts imaginary emails to his bosses, ruminates on his failed marriage, and watches porn. Occasional forays out of his sterilized apartment involve international prostitutes and equally disillusioned fellow expats.

The narrator’s self-deprecating humor and rambling asides conceal a keen sense of empathy. This is a person who really wanted a dog and was perfectly content with living in a two-roomed rent-controlled apartment in Gramercy. He is aware of the many social issues in the Emirates, such as the classism that keeps immigrant workers like Bidoon the valet subservient. And above all else, he is aware of the reductive stereotypes of Dubai portrayed by the Western media. Dubai’s modernity and its vulgar display of wealth feel dystopian, but both the narrator and we are forced to consider whether the New York he has left is any better. This is a study in ethics and morality, and the existential crisis that haunts people when their lives are filled with material pursuits.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Russ Crawford's "Women's American Football"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Women's American Football: Breaking Barriers On and Off the Gridiron by Russ Crawford.

About the book, from the publisher:

Tackle football has been primarily viewed as a male sport, but at a time when men’s participation rates are decreasing, an increasing number of women are entering the gridiron—and they have a long history of doing so. Women’s American Football is a narrative history of girls and women participating in American football in the United States since the 1920s, when a women’s team played at halftime during an early NFL game. The women’s game became more organized in 1974, when the National Women’s Football League was established, with notable teams such as the Dallas Bluebonnets, Toledo Troopers, Oklahoma City Dolls, and Detroit Demons.

Today there are two main professional leagues in the United States: the Women’s Football Alliance, with nearly seventy teams, and the Women’s National Football Conference, with eighteen, in addition to a number of smaller leagues. The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics and the NFL have recently begun sponsoring flag football teams at the college level, and the game is growing for high school girls as well. In 2021 more than two thousand girls played on mostly boys’ teams, and there are currently four all-girls leagues in the United States and Canada, in Manitoba, Utah, Indiana, and New Brunswick.

In addition to the rapid growth of women playing football, there have been advancements in other areas of the game. Beginning with Jennifer Welter in 2015, several women have earned positions coaching the professional game. In 2020 ESPN aired Born to Play, a documentary on the Boston Renegades, the 2019 champion of the Women’s Football Alliance.

Based on extensive interviews with women players and focusing closely on leagues, teams, and athletes since the passage of Title IX in 1972, Russ Crawford illuminates the rich history of the women who have played football, breaking barriers on and off the field.

Visit Russ Crawford's website and follow him on Twitter.

The Page 99 Test: Women's American Football.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Iris Yamashita's "City Under One Roof"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: City Under One Roof by Iris Yamashita.

About the book, from the publisher:

A stranded detective tries to solve a murder in a tiny Alaskan town where everyone lives in a single high-rise building, in this gripping debut by an Academy Award–nominated screenwriter.

When a local teenager discovers a severed hand and foot washed up on the shore of the small town of Point Mettier, Alaska, Cara Kennedy is on the case. A detective from Anchorage, she has her own motives for investigating the possible murder in this isolated place, which can be accessed only by a tunnel.

After a blizzard causes the tunnel to close indefinitely, Cara is stuck among the odd and suspicious residents of the town—all 205 of whom live in the same high-rise building and are as icy as the weather. Cara teams up with Point Mettier police officer Joe Barkowski, but before long the investigation is upended by fearsome gang members from a nearby native village.

Haunted by her past, Cara soon discovers that everyone in this town has something to hide. Will she be able to unravel their secrets before she unravels?”

Visit Iris Yamashita's website.

Q&A with Iris Yamashita.

The Page 69 Test: City Under One Roof.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten books about family secrets

Jyoti Patel is the author of The Things That We Lost. Her debut novel is told from the perspectives of 18-year-old Nik and his British Indian mother Avani, flitting between the past and present as Nik searches for answers surrounding the circumstances of his father’s death.

Patel is a graduate of the University of East Anglia’s Creative Writing Prose Fiction MA and was selected as one of The Observer’s 10 Best New Novelists for 2023.

At the Guardian she tagged ten books that nicely capture "the negotiation that takes place between a narrator and reader when [family] secrets are involved, whether the two stand side by side in unearthing them, or the dramatic irony that charges through a story when truths are revealed to one but not the other." One title on the list:

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

Against the backdrop of the second world war, a 12-year-old girl flees Paris with her father to live with her great-uncle and his housekeeper. She is blind, so to help her navigate her new home, her father builds a miniature of it. Unknown to his daughter, he hides something in the model house. Then he goes missing and her world collides with Werner, a German orphan who is an expert at fixing radios, a highly coveted piece of technology. Rich with detail and intricately woven, it’s a story of resilience told in vivid prose.

Read about another entry on the list.

All the Light We Cannot See is among Kimi Cunningham Grant's top six books featuring father-daughter relationships, Liz Boulter's top ten novels about France, Emily Temple's fifty best contemporary novels over 500 pages, Jason Allen's seven top books with family secrets, Whitney Scharer's top ten books about Paris, David Baldacci's six favorite books with an element of mystery, Jason Flemyng's six best books, Sandra Howard's six best books, Caitlin Kleinschmidt's twelve moving novels of the Second World War and Maureen Corrigan's 12 favorite books of 2014.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Shiamin Kwa's "Perfect Copies"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Perfect Copies: Reproduction and the Contemporary Comic by Shiamin Kwa.

About the book, from the publisher:

Analyzing the way that recent works of graphic narrative use the comics form to engage with the “problem” of reproduction, Shiamin Kwa’s Perfect Copies reminds us that the mode of production and the manner in which we perceive comics are often quite similar to the stories they tell. Perfect Copies considers the dual notions of reproduction, mechanical as well as biological, and explores how comics are works of reproduction that embed questions about the nature of reproduction itself. Through close readings of the comics My Favorite Thing Is Monsters by Emil Ferris, The Black Project by Gareth Brookes, The Generous Bosom series by Conor Stechschulte, Sabrina by Nick Drnaso, and Panther by Brecht Evens, Perfect Copies shows how these comics makers push the limits of different ideas of “reproduction” in strikingly different ways. Kwa suggests that reading and thinking about books like these, that push us to engage with these complicated questions teaches us how to become better readers.

Learn more about Perfect Copies at the Rutgers University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Perfect Copies.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Vicki Delany reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Vicki Delany, author of The Game is a Footnote.

Her entry begins:

I do most of my best reading on airplanes. I love the isolation of being on a plane, just me and my book. I find that it’s about the only time anymore I have the time and space to simply immerse myself in a book, with none of those pesky distractions like Twitter, Facebook, and household chores.

Over the Christmas holidays this year, I went to Nelson, British Columbia to visit my daughter and her family. Not a lot of reading got done during the visit (the kids being 4 and 13 months doesn’t lead to much free time) but I did take several books with me for the long flights.

Prior to a recent trip to Italy, I read The Color Storm by Damian Dibben specifically because it’s set in 16th century Venice. I enjoyed that book enough to see what else he’d written and was delighted to find Tomorrow. The book is told entirely from the POV of a dog. And not just any dog. In the year 1815 a dog is in Venice, waiting for his master to return. He’s been waiting for two hundred years. And so begins a story of loyalty, friendship, love. And the price of...[read on]

About The Game is a Footnote, from the publisher:

Gemma Doyle and Jayne Wilson are back on the case when a body is discovered in a haunted museum in bestselling author Vicki Delany’s eighth Sherlock Holmes Bookshop mystery.

Scarlet House, now a historical re-enactment museum, is the oldest building in West London, Massachusetts. When things start moving around on their own, board members suggest that Gemma Doyle, owner of the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop and Emporium, might be able to get to the bottom of it. Gemma doesn’t believe in ghosts, but she agrees to ‘eliminate the impossible’. But when Gemma and Jayne stumble across a dead body on the property, they’re forced to consider an all too physical threat.

Gemma and Jayne suspect foul play as they start to uncover more secrets about the museum. With the museum being a revolving door for potential killers, they have plenty of options for who might be the actual culprit.

Despite Gemma’s determination not to get further involved, it would appear that once again, and much to the displeasure of Detective Ryan Ashburton, the game is afoot.

Will Gemma and Jayne be able to solve the mystery behind the haunted museum, or will they be the next to haunt it?

Visit Vicki Delany's website, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.

The Page 69 Test: Rest Ye Murdered Gentlemen.

The Page 69 Test: A Scandal in Scarlet.

The Page 69 Test: Murder in a Teacup.

Writers Read: Vicki Delany (September 2021).

The Page 69 Test: Deadly Summer Nights.

The Page 69 Test: The Game is a Footnote.

Writers Read: Vicki Delany.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five fabulous thrillers about secrets between spouses

Leah Konen is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she studied journalism and English literature. She is the author of the new thriller, You Should Have Told Me. Her debut thriller, All the Broken People was a Rolling Stone, Marie Claire, She Reads, and Charlotte Observer best summer book pick.

At CrimeReads, Konen tagged "five nail-biting thrillers that revolve around the secrets we keep from those we’re supposed to love the most." One title on the list:

Watch Me Disappear by Janelle Brown

One weekend, Billie Flanagan heads out on a solo hike, leaving her husband, Jonathan, and her daughter, Olive, behind. It was supposed to be just a quick trip, but Billie never returns, leaving Jonathan and Olive to pick up the pieces. But when Olive begins having seizures and mysterious visions of her mother, she begins to believe that her mother may still be alive, in trouble, and in need of help. As much as Jonathan wants to put the past behind him, he has no choice but to delve into the details of Billie’s disappearance if he wants to help his daughter—and the truth is that his marriage to Billie was nothing like he thought it was—and there’s a chance that Billie’s hiking accident was no accident at all.

Read about another entry on the list.

Watch Me Disappear is among Julie Clark's six crime titles for those in need of a fresh start.

The Page 69 Test: Watch Me Disappear.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Coretta M. Pittman's "Literacy in a Long Blues Note"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Literacy in a Long Blues Note: Black Women's Literature and Music in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries by Coretta M. Pittman.

About the book, from the publisher:

Literacy in a Long Blues Note: Black Women's Literature and Music in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries traces the evolution of Black women's literacy practices from 1892 to 1934. A dynamic chronological study, the book explores how Black women public intellectuals, creative writers, and classic blues singers sometimes utilize singular but other times overlapping forms of literacies to engage in debates on race.

The book begins with Anna J. Cooper's philosophy on race literature as one method for social advancement. From there, author Coretta M. Pittman discusses women from the Woman's and New Negro Eras, including but not limited to Angelina Weld Grimké, Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, and Zora Neale Hurston. The volume closes with an exploration of Victoria Spivey's blues philosophy. The women examined in this book employ forms of transformational, transactional, or specular literacy to challenge systems of racial oppression.

However, Literacy in a Long Blues Note argues against prevalent myths that a singular vision for racial uplift dominated the public sphere in the latter decade of the nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth century. Instead, by including Black women from various social classes and ideological positions, Pittman reveals alternative visions. Contrary to more moderate predecessors of the Woman's Era and contemporaries in the New Negro Era, classic blues singers like Mamie Smith advanced new solutions against racism. Early twentieth-century writer Angelina Weld Grimké criticized traditional methods for racial advancement as Jim Crow laws tightened restrictions against Black progress. Ultimately, the volume details the agency and literacy practices of these influential women.

Follow Coretta M. Pittman on Twitter.

The Page 99 Test: Literacy in a Long Blues Note.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Iris Yamashita

From my Q&A with Iris Yamashita, author of City Under One Roof:

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

Titles are always difficult, whether they are for film or books. City Under One Roof references the most unique feature about the setting, which is that all the residents live in a single high-rise building. The setting is inspired by a real city in Alaska that was originally constructed as a secret military base and it was given the nickname “the city under one roof” back then. The publishers had thought City of Ice and Lies would be a good title because it references cold and hints of intrigue, but there are actually a number of books titled City of Ice out there and I thought my book would get lost in the mix, so...[read on]

Visit Iris Yamashita's website.

Q&A with Iris Yamashita.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten books about combating far-right white nationalism through activism

Shane Burley is a journalist and filmmaker based in Portland, Oregon. He is the author of Fascism Today: What It Is and How to End it (2017) and Why We Fight: Essays on Fascism, Resistance, and Surviving the Apocalypse (2021), and the editor of the forthcoming anthology No Pasaran: Antifascist Dispatches from a World in Crisis (2022). His work has been featured in places such as NBC News, The Daily Beast, The Baffler, Full Stop, Al Jazeera, The Independent, Xtra, and Bandcamp Daily.

At Electric Lit Burley tagged "ten books to add to your own antifascist reading list to help counter the despair that white nationalists hope to impart with a heavy dose of rebellion." One title on the list:

V for Vendetta by Alan Moore

While famous in part for its film adaptation of the same name, Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta is one of the most challenging and bleak fictional projections of an increasingly possible future. Exploring a fascistic British society, the story centers on V, a revolutionary who does not simply want to restore the balance of liberal democracy, but instead presents anarchism as the only true solution to fascism. The graphic novel’s “battles of extremes” reflects the real-world contest of radical politics, demonstrating that (to use the fascism scholar Robert Paxton’s term) “mobilizing passions” run underneath revolutionary politics of all stripes. In Moore’s formulation, fascism is the inevitable result of the unstable and vastly unequal world we currently live in, and the only way to stop it is to tear our society from its roots and build a completely new, liberated civilization.

Read about another entry on the list.

V for Vendetta is among Nicole Hill's eleven books in which the main character dies, the Barnes & Noble Review's five top books on uprisings in pursuit of freedom, Lauren Davis's ten most depressing futuristic retirement scenarios in science fiction, and Malorie Blackman's top 10 graphic novels for teenagers.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Robert Dover's "Hacker, Influencer, Faker, Spy"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Hacker, Influencer, Faker, Spy: Intelligence Agencies in the Digital Age by Robert Dover.

About the book, from the publisher:

Intelligence agencies are reflections of the societies they serve. No surprise, then, that modern spies and the agencies they work for are fixated on the internet and electronic communications. These same officials also struggle with notions of privacy, appropriateness, national boundaries and the problem of disinformation. They are citizens of both somewhere and nowhere, serving a national public yet confronting spies who operate across borders. These adversaries are utilizing new technologies that offer a transnational anonymity. Meanwhile, ordinary people are keen to be protected from threats, but equally keen - basing their understanding of intelligence on news and popular culture - to avoid over-reach by authorities believed to have near-God-like powers. This is the new operating environment for spies: a heady mix of rapid technological development, identity politics, plausible deniability, uncertainty and distrust of authority. Hacker, Influencer, Faker, Spy explores both the challenges spies face from these digital horizons, and the challenges citizens face in understanding what spies do and how it impacts on them. Rob Dover makes a radical case for overhauling intelligence to capitalize on open-source information: shrinking the secret state, whilst still supporting the functioning of modern governments in the post-COVID age.

Learn more about Hacker, Influencer, Faker, Spy at the publisher's website.

The Page 99 Test: Hacker, Influencer, Faker, Spy.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Thomas Perry's "The Murder Book"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Murder Book: A Novel by Thomas Perry.

About the book, from the publisher:

An ex-cop takes on a widespread criminal organization targeting midwestern towns in this new thriller from the author of The Old Man

When a sudden crime wave hits several small midwestern towns, the U.S. Attorney for the region calls on Harry Duncan to investigate. An ex-cop known for his unorthodox methods, Duncan is reluctant to go up against a widespread criminal organization―but the attorney in question is Ellen Leicester, the wife who left him fifteen years earlier, and to her, he can’t say no.

Initially brought in as a consultant to determine if the racketeering is severe enough to require an all-out investigation by the FBI, Duncan quickly finds himself in conflict with a syndicate far more violent than first suspected. As the investigation develops, he begins compiling a “murder book,” the notebook in which a detective keeps records, interviews, photos―everything he needs to build his case. But his scrutiny of the gang soon makes Duncan a target. And Ellen, too.

A thrilling and suspenseful tour of crime-addled midwestern towns, Murder Book is signature Thomas Perry, with characters you won’t soon forget, crisply-described action sequences, and breathlessly-tense plotting that will keep you racing through the pages.

Learn more about the book and author at Thomas Perry's website and Facebook page.

The Page 69 Test: Silence.

The Page 99 Test: Nightlife.

The Page 69/99 Test: Fidelity.

The Page 69/99 Test: Runner.

The Page 69 Test: Strip.

The Page 69 Test: The Informant.

The Page 69 Test: The Boyfriend.

The Page 69 Test: A String of Beads.

The Page 69 Test: Forty Thieves.

The Page 69 Test: The Old Man.

The Page 69 Test: The Bomb Maker.

The Page 69 Test: The Burglar.

The Page 69 Test: A Small Town.

Writers Read: Thomas Perry (December 2019).

Q&A with Thomas Perry.

The Page 69 Test: Eddie's Boy.

The Page 69 Test: The Left-Handed Twin.

The Page 69 Test: Murder Book.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Ellen O'Clover

From my Q&A with Ellen O'Clover, author of Seven Percent of Ro Devereux:

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

Seven Percent of Ro Devereux’s original title was, simply, MASH — in homage to the classic game, Mansion Apartment Shack House, that Ro builds her future-predicting app around. But when it came down to it, my editor and I both felt that MASH wasn’t doing the work it could be doing as a title: Ro’s app is a major character in the book, but it’s not the heart of it.

This story is about discovering who you are, and grasping at control over what comes next, and figuring out whether the person you’ve been in the past will follow you into the future. Ro’s app, MASH, is predicated on a human behavioral theory that people are 93 percent predictable. So, in turn, her app’s predictions are 93 percent predictable. I won’t say any more than that, but I think readers can fill in the blanks! I love the book’s final title and how it captures the story's emotional core.

What's in a name?

Ro’s mom named her and then...[read on]

Visit Ellen O'Clover's website.

Q&A with Ellen O'Clover.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Alexander Laban Hinton's "Anthropological Witness"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Anthropological Witness: Lessons from the Khmer Rouge Tribunal by Alexander Laban Hinton.

About the book, from the publisher:

Anthropological Witness tells the story of Alexander Laban Hinton's encounter with an accused architect of genocide and, more broadly, Hinton's attempt to navigate the promises and perils of expert testimony. In March 2016, Hinton served as an expert witness at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, an international tribunal established to try senior Khmer Rouge leaders for crimes committed during the 1975–79 Cambodian genocide. His testimony culminated in a direct exchange with Pol Pot's notorious right-hand man, Nuon Chea, who was engaged in genocide denial.

Anthropological Witness looks at big questions about the ethical imperatives and epistemological assumptions involved in explanation and the role of the public scholar in addressing issues relating to truth, justice, social repair, and genocide. Hinton asks: Can scholars who serve as expert witnesses effectively contribute to international atrocity crimes tribunals where the focus is on legal guilt as opposed to academic explanation? What does the answer to this question say more generally about academia and the public sphere? At a time when the world faces a multitude of challenges, the answers Hinton provides to such questions about public scholarship are urgent.

Follow Alex Hinton on Twitter and Facebook.

The Page 99 Test: Anthropological Witness.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top crime books by writers of color

Tracy Clark is the author of the highly acclaimed Cass Raines Chicago Mystery series, featuring Cassandra Raines, a hard-driving African American PI who works the mean streets of the Windy City dodging cops, cons, and killers. Clark received Anthony Award and Lefty Award nominations for her series debut, Broken Places, which was shortlisted for the American Library Association’s RUSA Reading List and named a CrimeReads Best New PI Book of 2018, a Midwest Connections Pick, and a Library Journal Best Book of the Year. Broken Places has since been optioned by Sony Pictures Television. Clark’s short story “For Services Rendered” appears in the anthology Shades of Black: Crime and Mystery Stories by African-American Authors. She is the winner of the 2020 and 2022 G.P. Putnam’s Sons Sue Grafton Memorial Award, also receiving a 2022 nomination for the Edgar Award for best short story for “Lucky Thirteen,” which appears in the crime fiction anthology Midnight Hour.

Clark's new novel is Hide.

[Q&A with Tracy Clark; My Book, The Movie: What You Don’t See; Writers Read: Tracy Clark (July 2021); The Page 69 Test: Runner; The Page 69 Test: Hide]

At CrimeReads she tagged "a few of the crime books by writers of color readers should not miss out on. I say a few because this list doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface. The bench is deep." One title on the list:

Winter Counts, by David Heska Wanbli Weiden

Weiden, a citizen of the Sicangu Lakota nation, brings us a heart-thumping story of vigilantism on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota. When Virgil Wounded Horse’s nephew nearly dies of a heroin overdose, Virgil sets out to find who’s bringing the drug into his community to save his family and his people, and he doesn’t do it pretty. Tough, visceral, unapologetic, Weiden pulls no punches here, and it’s a wild ride.

Read about another entry on the list.

Winter Counts is among Erin E. Adams's seven novels that use mystery to examine race, S.F. Kosa's top ten psychological thrillers, Stephen Miller's favorite crime fiction of 2020, Molly Odintz's six favorite titles from the "new wave of thrillers where the oppressed get some well-earned revenge," and Jennifer Baker's top twelve mystery novels featuring BIPOC protagonists.

The Page 69 Test: Winter Counts.

My Book, The Movie: Winter Counts.

Q&A with David Heska Wanbli Weiden.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: J.H. Markert's "The Nightmare Man"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Nightmare Man: A Novel by J.H. Markert.

About the book, from the publisher:

T. Kingfisher meets Cassandra Khaw in a chilling horror novel that illustrates the fine line between humanity and monstrosity.

Blackwood mansion looms, surrounded by nightmare pines, atop the hill over the small town of Crooked Tree. Ben Bookman, bestselling novelist and heir to the Blackwood estate, spent a weekend at the ancestral home to finish writing his latest horror novel, The Scarecrow. Now, on the eve of the book’s release, the terrible story within begins to unfold in real life.

Detective Mills arrives at the scene of a gruesome murder: a family butchered and bundled inside cocoons stitched from corn husks, and hung from the rafters of a barn, eerily mirroring the opening of Bookman’s latest novel. When another family is killed in a similar manner, Mills, along with his daughter, rookie detective Samantha Blue, is determined to find the link to the book—and the killer—before the story reaches its chilling climax.

As the series of “Scarecrow crimes” continues to mirror the book, Ben quickly becomes the prime suspect. He can’t remember much from the night he finished writing the novel, but he knows he wrote it in The Atrium, his grandfather’s forbidden room full of numbered books. Thousands of books. Books without words.

As Ben digs deep into Blackwood’s history he learns he may have triggered a release of something trapped long ago—and it won’t stop with the horrors buried within the pages of his book.

Visit J.H. Markert's website.

Q&A with J. H. Markert.

My Book, The Movie: The Nightmare Man.

The Page 69 Test: The Nightmare Man.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Verlan Lewis & Hyrum Lewis's "The Myth of Left and Right"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Myth of Left and Right: How the Political Spectrum Misleads and Harms America by Verlan Lewis and Hyrum Lewis.

About the book, from the publisher:

A groundbreaking argument that the political spectrum today is inadequate to twenty-first century America and a major source of the confusion and hostility that characterize contemporary political discourse.

As American politics descends into a battle of anger and hostility between two groups called "left" and "right," people increasingly ask: What is the essential difference between these two ideological groups? In The Myth of Left and Right, Hyrum Lewis and Verlan Lewis provide the surprising answer: nothing. As the authors argue, there is no enduring philosophy, disposition, or essence uniting the various positions associated with the liberal and conservative ideologies of today. Far from being an eternal dividing line of American politics, the political spectrum came to the United States in the 1920s and, since then, left and right have evolved in so many unpredictable and even contradictory ways that there is currently nothing other than tribal loyalty holding together the many disparate positions that fly under the banners of "liberal" and "conservative." Powerfully argued and cutting against the grain of most scholarship on polarization in America, this book shows why the idea that the political spectrum measures deeply held worldviews is the central political myth of our time and a major cause of the confusion and vitriol that characterize public discourse.

Learn more about The Myth of Left and Right at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: The Myth of Left and Right.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top winter mysteries

B.P. Walter is the author of A Version of the Truth (published in the US as The Couple's Secret) and Hold Your Breath.

He was born and raised in Essex and after spending his childhood and teenage years reading compulsively, he worked in bookshops then went to the University of Southampton to study Film and English followed by an MA in Film & Cultural Management.

Walter's new novel is The Locked Attic.

At the Waterstones blog he tagged five favorite page-turners for the winter season. One title on the list:

Shiver by Allie Reynolds

A reunion of friends in the French Alps leads to emotional upheaval, buried resentments and, of course, murder in Allie Reynold’s page-turning debut Shiver. Like [Jo Nesbø's] The Snowman, there’s a terrific sense of place at the heart of this novel and the final third is almost unbearably tense as it zooms towards an impactful conclusion.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Kate Manning

From my Q&A with Kate Manning, author of Gilded Mountain: A Novel:

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

Gilded Mountain is about the stark divide between rich and poor in a Colorado marble-mining town in the 1900s. The word ‘gilded’ implies wealth, as in the Gilded Age, but also hints at a superficial beauty: sometimes a shiny gold object is actually made of gold-painted tin. One contender for the title was Avalanche Days, because avalanches--real and metaphorical--feature in the story. But Gilded Mountain won out because the word ‘gilded’ carried hints of beauty and intrigue while ‘avalanche’ spoke only to disaster. In this novel, the young protagonist is tempted by luxury and must choose between a life of ease—and a daring adventure. I hope the title helps conjure a mountaintop outlined by the sunset in a rind of gold, while underneath that beautiful gilding of light is something hard, sometimes dangerous or...[read on]

Visit Kate Manning's website.

The Page 69 Test: My Notorious Life.

Q&A with Kate Manning.

--Marshal Zeringue