Six top Jewish crime thrillers

Lee Matthew Goldberg is the author and screenwriter of over one dozen novels including The Ancestor, Slow Down, The Mentor, Stalker Stalked, Orange City, the five-book Desire Card series, and the young adult trilogy Runaway Train, Grenade Bouquets, and Vanish Me, currently with actress Raegan Revord from TV's Young Sheldon attached to develop.

His new novel is The Great Gimmelmans.

At CrimeReads Goldberg tagged six favorite Jewish crime thrillers, including:

Josh Weiss, Beat the Devils

Beat the Devils by Josh Weiss is another alternate history novel, imagining Joseph McCarthy becoming president, elected by xenophobia and barely-concealed antisemitism. Holocaust survivor Morris Baker is tasked to solve a double-homicide of a young John Huston and Walter Cronkite before they were able to reach their full potential. Baker sets out to achieve justice in an era where free speech is a sin and uncovers a deep conspiracy. A frightening tale with an anti-hero to root for that reads as a classic noir, setting up a sequel Sunset Empire that follows Morris Baker during the Korean War.

Read about another entry on the list.

My Book, The Movie: Beat the Devils.

The Page 69 Test: Beat the Devils.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Constance Sayers

From my Q&A with Constance Sayers, author of The Star and the Strange Moon:

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

Usually, my agent or my editor take my original title and improve upon it, but this is the first book title that came from me. The novel is about an actress who, in 1968, goes missing on the set of a French horror film and is never seen again. The film’s title is L’Étrange Lune which translates into The Strange Moon. Since the book focuses on her disappearance and one man’s obsession to find her (the star), I think it is an elegant and provocative title that nails the mysteriousness of the story.

What's in a name?

Naming my characters is...[read on]

Visit Constance Sayers's website.

My Book, The Movie: A Witch in Time.

The Page 69 Test: A Witch in Time.

Writers Read: Constance Sayers (February 2020).

Q&A with Constance Sayers.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top winter thrillers

C. J. Tudor is the author of A Sliver of Darkness, The Burning Girls, The Other People, The Hiding Place, and The Chalk Man, which won the International Thriller Writers Award for Best First Novel and the Strand Critics Award for Best Debut Novel.

Tudor's newest novel is The Drift.

At the Waterstones blog she tagged "five unputdownable wintry thrillers to curl up with as the nights get colder." One title on the list:

The Hunger by Alma Katsu

Alma Katsu’s novel is based upon the true story of the Donner party, a group of 90 pioneers who found themselves snowbound in the Sierra Nevada mountains in 1846 (also referenced in Kubrick’s movie adaptation of The Shining ).

However, in Katsu’s hands, fact and fiction mix to take the story in an even more eerie and terrifying direction.

After having travelled west for weeks, the party of pioneers comes to a crossroads. They face two diverging paths which lead to the same destination. One is well-documented - the other untested but rumoured to be shorter.

Their decision will be devastating. The group find themselves caught in an early blizzard of snow, biting winds and bitter cold. Starving and desperate, minor disagreements turn into violent confrontations. Then the children begin to disappear.

Soon, the group begin to realise that, beyond the threat from the natural elements and each other, something far more primal and deadly lurks in the icy wilderness.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Hunger is among Brittany Bunzey's twenty-five "must-read, truly bone-chilling" horror books, Deborah E. Kennedy's seven hot mysteries set in the Midwestern winter, Meagan Navarro top ten scary good horror novels, Jac Jemc's top ten haunting ghost stories and Mallory O'Meara's top thirteen spine-chilling books written by female authors.

My Book, The Movie: The Hunger.

The Page 69 Test: The Hunger.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Jared McDonald's "Feeling Their Pain"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Feeling Their Pain: Why Voters Want Leaders Who Care by Jared McDonald.

About the book, from the publisher:

The 2020 Presidential Election in the United States marked, for many, a return to "compassionate politics." Joe Biden had run on a platform of empathy, emphasizing his personal history as a means of connecting with everyone from American workers who had lost jobs to military families who had lost loved ones. Although perceptions of candidate compassion are broadly understood to influence vote choice, less understood is the question of how candidates convince voters they truly "care about people like them." In Feeling their Pain: Why Voters want Leaders who Care, Jared McDonald provides a framework for understanding why voters view some politicians as more compassionate than others.

McDonald shows that perceptions of compassion in candidates for public office are based on the number and intensity of commonalities that bind citizens to political leaders. Commonalities can come in many forms, such as a shared experience ("I've been through what you've been through"), a shared emotion ("I feel the way you feel"), or a shared identity ("I am who you are"). Compassion is conceptualized through the lens of self-interest. Compassion may be universal, such as when candidates convey empathy to all individuals who are struggling. Or compassion may be exclusionary, such as when candidates express a preference for some groups over others. Thus, the way campaigns choose to wield compassion in their messaging strategies has important implications not only for election outcomes, but for American political polarization as well.

Learn more about Feeling Their Pain at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Feeling Their Pain.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven novels about characters driven by their cravings

Garnett Cohen is the author of Cravings and three previous collections of short stories. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker online, Rumpus, The Gettysburg Review, StoryQuarterly, The Antioch Review and elsewhere, and she has been the recipient of many awards including a 2022 award from December magazine, the Crazyhorse National Fiction Prize, and four Illinois Arts Council Awards, as well as two Notable Essay citations from Best American Essays. She taught creative writing at Columbia College Chicago for more than thirty years and now works as a writer and an author consultant.

At Electric Lit Cohen tagged seven books that "exemplify what it means for complex characters to be defined by their cravings, and how their yearnings help establish relatable plots for all of us who have ever intensely wanted something." One title on the list:

Yellowface by R. F. Kuang

The main character in this engrossing narrative is fledgling author June Hayward, an ordinary white girl, who craves fame and fortune (mostly fame) for her literary prowess. She publishes one book to no acclaim, while at the same time her college friend, Athena Ling En Liu gets a multi-book deal right out of college, and then soars in the literary world. She earns so many accolades that even a “…Netflix deal was not a life changing event.” Who could begrudge June a bit of envy? But then Athena dies unexpectedly, giving June the opportunity to steal Athena’s most recent unpublished manuscript and, with a little revision, submit it to her agent as her own. From that moment on I could not turn pages fast enough to see what June would do to get what she wanted—plagiarize, lie, rationalize, even change her name to sound more ethnic. Amazingly, I didn’t dislike her—Kuang does a brilliant job of making June marginally sympathetic; her family has no interest or faith in what she does and at one point she considers changing agents to find one “who might make her feel like more of a person.” But I was continually astounded by her desperation and unwillingness to recognize her dishonesty even as it is bringing her down.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Jon Clinch's "The General and Julia"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The General and Julia: A Novel by Jon Clinch.

About the book, from the publisher:

Ulysses S. Grant reflects on the crucial moments of his life as a husband, a father, a general, and a president while writing his memoirs and reckoning with his complicated legacy in this epic and intimate work of “superb historical fiction” (Booklist, starred review).

Barely able to walk and rendered mute by the cancer metastasizing in his throat, Ulysses S. Grant is scratching out words, hour after hour, day after day. Desperate to complete his memoirs before his death so his family might have some financial security and he some redemption, Grant journeys back in time.

He had once been the savior of the Union, the general to whom Lee surrendered at Appomattox, a twice-elected president who fought for the civil rights of Black Americans and against the rising Ku Klux Klan, a plain farmer-turned-business magnate who lost everything to a Wall Street swindler, a devoted husband to his wife Julia, and a loving father to four children. In this gorgeously rendered and moving novel, Grant rises from the page in all of his contradictions and foibles, his failures and triumphs.

Moving from blood-stained battlefields to Gilded Age New York, the novel explores how Grant’s own views on race and Reconstruction changed over time. “A graceful, moving narrative” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) from historical fiction master Jon Clinch, this evocatively crafted novel breathes fresh life into an American icon.

Visit Jon Clinch's website.

The Page 69 Test: Finn.

The Page 69 Test: The General and Julia.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top thrillers where natural disasters loom large

Gwen Florio grew up in a farmhouse filled with books and a ban on television. After studying English at the University of Delaware, she began a decades-long career in journalism that has taken her around the country and to more than a dozen other countries, including several conflict zones. Her first novel in the Lola Wicks mystery series, Montana, won the Pinckley Prize for Crime Fiction and the High Plains Book Award, and was a finalist for the Shamus Award, an International Thriller Award and a Silver Falchion Award. She has since released four other books in the Lola Wicks series and three standalone novels.

Her new novel is Best Be Prepared, the fourth book in the Nora Best series.

[Coffee with a Canine: Gwen Florio & Nell; My Book, the Movie: Silent Hearts; Writers Read: Gwen Florio (August 2018); The Page 69 Test: Silent Hearts; My Book, The Movie: Best Laid Plans; The Page 69 Test: Best Laid Plans; Q&A with Gwen Florio; My Book, The Movie: The Truth of it All; The Page 69 Test: The Truth of it All; The Page 69 Test: Best Be Prepared; My Book, The Movie: Best Be Prepared]

At CrimeReads Florio tagged six thrillers where natural disasters loom large, including:

The Southwest still has water in Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Water Knife. But after years of catastrophic drought, the region balances on a tipping point. The very real threat that entire cities will run out of water sets up credible fights to the death. This one is often touted as futuristic. It might be time to retire that description. Fact: A community outside Scottsdale, Arizona, has already hit “tap-out.”

Read about another book Florio tagged.

The Water Knife is among Julie Carrick Dalton's top ten works of fiction about climate disaster and Jeff Somers's six top sci-fi books about the changing climate.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Zahra Hankir's "Eyeliner: A Cultural History"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Eyeliner: A Cultural History by Zahra Hankir.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the acclaimed editor of Our Women on the Ground comes a dazzling exploration of the intersections of beauty and power around the globe, told through the lens of an iconic cosmetic

From the distant past to the present, with fingers and felt-tipped pens, metallic powders and gel pots, humans have been drawn to lining their eyes. The aesthetic trademark of figures ranging from Nefertiti to Amy Winehouse, eyeliner is one of our most enduring cosmetic tools; ancient royals and Gen Z beauty influencers alike would attest to its uniquely transformative power. It is undeniably fun—yet it is also far from frivolous.

Seen through Zahra Hankir’s (kohl-lined) eyes, this ubiquitous but seldom-examined product becomes a portal to history, proof both of the stunning variety among cultures across time and space and of our shared humanity. Through intimate reporting and conversations—with nomads in Chad, geishas in Japan, dancers in India, drag queens in New York, and more—Eyeliner embraces the rich history and significance of its namesake, especially among communities of color. What emerges is an unexpectedly moving portrait of a tool that, in various corners of the globe, can signal religious devotion, attract potential partners, ward off evil forces, shield eyes from the sun, transform faces into fantasies, and communicate volumes without saying a word.

Delightful, surprising, and utterly absorbing, Eyeliner is a fascinating tour through streets, stages, and bedrooms around the world, and a thought-provoking reclamation of a key piece of our collective history.

Visit Zahra Hankir's website.

The Page 99 Test: Eyeliner.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jacquelyn Mitchard's "A Very Inconvenient Scandal," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: A Very Inconvenient Scandal: A novel by Jacquelyn Mitchard.

The entry begins:

A Very Inconvenient Scandal is the story of powerful people in a powerful seaside family who clash when 60-year-old Mack Attleboro, a famed marine biologist widowed for one year, announces his marriage to his daughter Frankie’s lifelong best friend, Ariel: they’re expecting a baby and Mack couldn’t be happier. But his news fractures the family. Frankie, an acclaimed young underwater photographer, feels undermined not only because she, too, is getting married and expecting a baby, but because no one, not even Frankie’s brother Penn, confided in her. It was easy for the home crowd to keep the secret because Frankie is usually in some far-flung destination required by her work. Grieving for her mother, Beatrice, and feeling alone in the world except for her fiancé, Gil, Frankie is further unsettled when Ariel’s reprobate mother, Carlotta, returns after a ten-year absence, claiming to have turned over a new leaf – a claim everyone except Frankie seems to believe. Things only get worse when Mack and Ariel’s baby is born, the labor deliberately induced on Frankie’s wedding day. Although Frankie and her new husband planned to live near her family on Cape Cod (another surprise that went flat) they instead be estranged from her all of them forever.

If there were a movie version of this novel, I would love for Greta Gerwig (who directed the latest and best version of Little Women in 2019) to direct it. I think Greta Gerwig should direct every movie because she is so intelligent and sensitive to personalities and nuance and doesn’t fear real drama. She would be just the right person for this story about tangled family relationships.

If I could cast the roles, I would choose Saoirse Ronan as Frankie. Frankie … she’s so wonderful and has...[read on]

Visit Jacquelyn Mitchard's website.

My Book, the Movie: Two If by Sea.

Writers Read: Jacquelyn Mitchard (March 2016).

The Page 69 Test: Two If by Sea.

The Page 69 Test: The Good Son.

Q&A with Jacquelyn Mitchard.

My Book, The Movie: The Good Son.

Writers Read: Jacquelyn Mitchard.

The Page 69 Test: A Very Inconvenient Scandal.

My Book, The Movie: A Very Inconvenient Scandal.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top books about nonhuman consciousness

Bennett Sims was born and raised in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He is the author of the novel A Questionable Shape (2013), which received the Bard Fiction Prize and was a finalist for The Believer Book Award, and the story collection White Dialogues (2017), winner of the Rome Prize for Literature 2018–19 and named a best book of 2017 by Bookforum.

Sims's newest book is the story collection, Other Minds and Other Stories (2023).

At Electric Lit he tagged ten books that "take the imaginability of other minds as their explicit subject." One title on the list:

The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore by Benjamin Hale

Narrated by a hyperintelligent, hyperverbal chimpanzee who has taught himself human language, fallen into forbidden love with his primatologist, and committed murder, The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore reads like Lolita by way of Lincoln Park Zoo. Bruno’s preening erudition, his murderer’s fancy prose style, and his insights into “anthropo-chauvinism” all mark him as the hybrid of Humbert Humbert and Rotpeter, the ape narrator of Kafka’s “A Report To An Academy” (Bruno actually claims Rotpeter as his father, making this novel a semi-sequel to Kafka’s story). Like them, Bruno is at his most charismatic when he’s serving as a funhouse mirror test, reflecting humanity back to his reader all defamiliarized and distorted, and reminding us “how feebly you people know yourselves.” In his autodidactically omnivorous riffs on history and art—touching on everything from Shakespeare to Sesame Street, from Paradise Lost to Pinocchio—he proves that he knows us better: “I am an animal with a human tongue, a human brain, and human desires,” he writes, “the most human among them to be more than what I am.”

Read about another entry on the list.

The Page 69 Test: The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Jacquelyn Mitchard's "A Very Inconvenient Scandal"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: A Very Inconvenient Scandal: A novel by Jacquelyn Mitchard.

About the book, from the publisher:

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Jacquelyn Mitchard comes a page-turning family drama that explores the emotional consequences of loyalty, deception and jealousy.

Stunned by her recently widowed father’s reckless behavior, a young woman must learn to navigate a new world—where the people she should trust the most have become strangers she cannot trust at all.

Frankie Attleboro returns home to Cape Cod with thrilling news. She’s met the love of her life, and they’re getting married with a baby on the way. That’s the moment her father makes his own jaw-dropping announcement: at sixty, he’s getting married as well, to Frankie’s best friend, Ariel, who is also pregnant, and due soon.

As Frankie and Ariel struggle to adjust to their new relationship, Ariel’s estranged mother, Carlotta, returns after a decade-long absence. She claims to be a changed woman—but is she really? And where has she been all these years? Frankie is suspicious, and as Carlotta’s unpredictable behavior intensifies, Frankie must untangle the threads of the past to protect Ariel’s future—and her own.

"The characters and relationships are all smartly drawn, and the narrative is shot through with plenty of humor and scandal. Mitchard fans will lap this up."—Publishers Weekly

Visit Jacquelyn Mitchard's website.

My Book, the Movie: Two If by Sea.

Writers Read: Jacquelyn Mitchard (March 2016).

The Page 69 Test: Two If by Sea.

The Page 69 Test: The Good Son.

Q&A with Jacquelyn Mitchard.

My Book, The Movie: The Good Son.

Writers Read: Jacquelyn Mitchard.

The Page 69 Test: A Very Inconvenient Scandal.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Stephen J. Rockwell's "The Presidency and the American State"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Presidency and the American State: Leadership and Decision Making in the Adams, Grant, and Taft Administrations by Stephen J. Rockwell.

About the book, from the publisher:

Although many associate Franklin D. Roosevelt with the inauguration of the robust, dominant American presidency, the roots of his executive leadership style go much deeper. Examining the presidencies of John Quincy Adams, Ulysses S. Grant, and William Howard Taft, Stephen Rockwell traces emerging connections between presidential action and a robust state over the course of the nineteenth century and the Progressive Era.

By analyzing these three undervalued presidents’ savvy deployment of state authority and their use of administrative leadership, legislative initiatives, direct executive action, and public communication, Rockwell makes a compelling case that the nineteenth-century presidency was significantly more developed and interventionist than previously thought. As he shows for a significant number of policy arenas, the actions of Adams, Grant, and Taft touched the lives of millions of Americans and laid the foundations of what would become the American century.

Learn more about The Presidency and the American State at the University of Virginia Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Indian Affairs and the Administrative State in the Nineteenth Century.

The Page 99 Test: The Presidency and the American State.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five difficult women in historical fiction

Shelley Blanton-Stroud grew up in California’s Central Valley, the daughter of Dust Bowl immigrants who made good on their ambition to get out of the field. She recently retired from teaching writing at Sacramento State University and still consults with writers in the energy industry. She serves as President of the Board of 916 Ink, an arts-based creative writing nonprofit for children, and serves on the Board of Advisors for the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies at Claremont McKenna College. She recently stepped down from co-directing Stories on Stage Sacramento, where actors perform the stories of established and emerging authors. Copy Boy was her first Jane Benjamin Novel, Tomboy her second. The third, Poster Girl, is new in bookstores. Blanton-Stroud and her husband live in Sacramento, California, surrounded by photos of their sons, their partners, and their nearly perfect grandchild.

At CrimeReads she tagged five favorite difficult women in historical fiction, including:

Grace Marks, in Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace

(Published in 1996, set in 1843.) Based on a true story, Grace is a domestic servant and convicted murderer. A young doctor researches her case, trying to figure out whether she’s innocent or guilty. Grace’s life revolves around survival, not conventional goals of power or status. But, again, she’s an unreliable narrator, making the reader second-guess the truth of her motivations and their own empathy.

Read about another entry on the list.

Alias Grace is among Paraic O'Donnell's seven top contemporary novels about the Victorian era, L.S. Hilton's top ten female-fronted thrillers, Rebecca Jane Stokes's top seven books for fans of Orange Is The New Black and Tracy Chevalier's six best books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Lisa Gornick

From my Q&A with Lisa Gornick, author of Ana Turns:

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

Writers often go through hell with their titles—with the process sometimes devolving into a focus group with editors, publishers, marketing departments, and publicists all weighing in. For my first two novels, dozens of options were considered, and the title was changed at many stages. Since then, I’ve had the title as an anchor early on—though with this novel, I did waver between Ana Turns and Ana Turns Sixty before recognizing that the sixty made the title too “on the nose.” It was only after I had the finished book in my hands that I more deeply understood how Ana Turns encapsulates the central theme: a moment in a woman’s life, her sixtieth birthday, when she turns away from ossified views, turns back to what she cherishes, and turns towards a vision of...[read on]

Visit Lisa Gornick's website.

Q&A with Lisa Gornick.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Jacquelyn Mitchard reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of A Very Inconvenient Scandal: A novel.

Her entry begins:

I like to read several different kinds of things, especially while I’m writing a novel. It once was true that I couldn’t let myself read any fiction for fear that I might steal from the author or fall into despair, but I can manage now (I hope). The books I’m reading now really span the globe of styles and topics and, while I never get bored with any of them, I switch back and forth among them because I’m such a fast reader I’m afraid I’ll gobble them up too quickly if I don’t.

At this point, I’m reading:

The Child 44 trilogy by Tom Rob Smith … it’s a cracking good historical mystery series about a disgraced military detective who chases a serial killer of children in the early days of the Soviet Union, when the official position of the state was that crime could not exist in a society in which people were emotionally fulfilled and happy because all their needs were met – which was...[read on]

About A Very Inconvenient Scandal, from the publisher:

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Jacquelyn Mitchard comes a page-turning family drama that explores the emotional consequences of loyalty, deception and jealousy.

Stunned by her recently widowed father’s reckless behavior, a young woman must learn to navigate a new world—where the people she should trust the most have become strangers she cannot trust at all.

Frankie Attleboro returns home to Cape Cod with thrilling news. She’s met the love of her life, and they’re getting married with a baby on the way. That’s the moment her father makes his own jaw-dropping announcement: at sixty, he’s getting married as well, to Frankie’s best friend, Ariel, who is also pregnant, and due soon.

As Frankie and Ariel struggle to adjust to their new relationship, Ariel’s estranged mother, Carlotta, returns after a decade-long absence. She claims to be a changed woman—but is she really? And where has she been all these years? Frankie is suspicious, and as Carlotta’s unpredictable behavior intensifies, Frankie must untangle the threads of the past to protect Ariel’s future—and her own.

"The characters and relationships are all smartly drawn, and the narrative is shot through with plenty of humor and scandal. Mitchard fans will lap this up."—Publishers Weekly

Visit Jacquelyn Mitchard's website.

My Book, the Movie: Two If by Sea.

Writers Read: Jacquelyn Mitchard (March 2016).

The Page 69 Test: Two If by Sea.

The Page 69 Test: The Good Son.

Q&A with Jacquelyn Mitchard.

My Book, The Movie: The Good Son.

Writers Read: Jacquelyn Mitchard.

--Marshal Zeringue

Twenty-five cookbooks that everyone should own

The editors at Vogue came up with a list of twenty-five cookbooks that everyone should own, including:

Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat

The best cookbook for… understanding kitchen fundamentals.

Less a cookbook than a full-blown gastronomical movement, Samin Nosrat’s bestseller introduces readers to the most basic culinary principals on which all good food depends—distilling her years in the kitchen at Chez Panisse into elegant chapters on salt, fat, acid, and heat. It’s one of those rare volumes that genuinely lives up to the hype, and will fundamentally transform the way that you cook even the most basic of dishes. Case in point: her buttermilk roast chicken.— H.M.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Kathleen M. Willett's "Anything for a Friend"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Anything for a Friend: A Novel by Kathleen M. Willett.

About the book, from the publisher:

For two old friends with so much to hide, playing catch-up is a dangerous game in a propulsive novel of suspense by the author of Mother of All Secrets.

Writer Carrie Colts hopes a move to Montauk will be a rejuvenating change of pace for her family. The last thing she expects to see is her former college roommate on her doorstep. Newly widowed, and with a daughter of her own, Maya would love to reconnect. As a gesture to an old friend in mourning, Carrie extends an invitation to stay. Just for a few days. After all, there are reasons that Carrie and Maya are estranged.

Carrie soon regrets her impulsive offer. Someone has taken a pair of scissors to her college yearbook. Her herb garden is destroyed. She’s starting to receive sinister texts. And Maya is making herself a little too much at home. What does Maya really want? What is she hiding? Carrie’s afraid to ask. Because Maya knows all her secrets, and exposing them comes with a price Carrie can’t afford to pay.

Visit Kathleen M. Willett's website.

Q&A with Kathleen M. Willett.

The Page 69 Test: Mother of All Secrets.

My Book, The Movie: Mother of All Secrets.

My Book, The Movie: Anything for a Friend.

The Page 69 Test: Anything for a Friend.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Kelley Fong's "Investigating Families"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Investigating Families: Motherhood in the Shadow of Child Protective Services by Kelley Fong.

About the book, from the publisher:

How our reliance on Child Protective Services makes motherhood precarious for those already marginalized

It’s the knock on the door that many mothers fear: a visit from Child Protective Services (CPS), the state agency with the power to take their children away. Over the last half-century, these encounters have become an all-too-common way of trying to address family poverty and adversity. One in three children nationwide—and half of Black children—now encounter CPS during childhood.

In Investigating Families, Kelley Fong provides an unprecedented look at the inner workings of CPS and the experiences of families pulled into its orbit. Drawing on firsthand observations of CPS investigations and hundreds of interviews with those involved, Fong traces the implications of invoking CPS as a “first responder” to family misfortune and hardship. She shows how relying on CPS—an entity fundamentally oriented around parental wrongdoing and empowered to separate families—organizes the response to adversity around surveilling, assessing, and correcting marginalized mothers. The agency’s far-reaching investigative apparatus undermines mothers’ sense of security and shapes how they marshal resources for their families, reinforcing existing inequalities. And even before CPS comes knocking, mothers feel vulnerable to a system that jeopardizes their parenthood. Countering the usual narratives of punitive villains and hapless victims, Fong’s unique, behind-the-scenes account tells a revealing story of how we try to protect children by threatening mothers—and points the way to a more productive path for families facing adversity.

Visit Kelley Fong's website.

The Page 99 Test: Investigating Families.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine retellings and reinventions of Noah’s Ark

Jeffrey J. Cohen is Dean of Humanities at Arizona State University. He is author or editor of several books including Stone: An Ecology of the Inhuman (winner of the René Wellek Prize of the ACLA) as well as Veer Ecology: A Companion for Environmental Thinking and Elemental Ecocriticism: Thinking with Earth, Air, Water, and Fire.

Julian Yates is H. Fletcher Brown Professor of English and Material Culture Studies at the University of Delaware. He is author or editor of several books, including Error, Misuse, Failure: Object Lessons from the English Renaissance (finalist for the MLA Best First Book Prize) and Of Sheep, Oranges, and Yeast: A Multispecies Impression (winner of the Michelle Kendrick Memorial Book Prize of the SLSA).

Their new book is Noah's Arkive.

At Lit Hub they tagged nine "books about arks and the price of being saved during ecological catastrophe," including:

Rebecca Solnit, Paradise Built in Hell

Rebecca Solnit coins the phrase “disaster utopias” and shows us that what environmental upheaval reveals is that the true disaster was the preceding social arrangement. Solnit alerts us to the insufficiency of our accustomed ways of modeling disaster and the disastrous results of stories insufficient to the task. With its emphasis on hope, care and collaboration during times of challenge, Solnit provides an optimistic view of how communities react in a catastrophe’s wake.

Read about another entry on the list.

A Paradise Built in Hell is among John Drury's six top books about the allure of crowds and community and Edward Platt's six books that explore the devastating impact of flooding.

--Marshal Zeringue

Kathleen M. Willett's "Anything for a Friend," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Anything for a Friend: A Novel by Kathleen M. Willett.

The entry begins:

Anything For A Friend features Carrie, a woman who has just moved with her family from New York City to Montauk, hoping for a change of pace and a fresh start. She's shocked when her former college roommate calls her and tells her she's passing through the area-- they haven't seen each other in nearly twenty years. Maya and her teenage daughter are in a difficult position, and Carrie offers to help by having them stay for a few days. But Carrie soon regrets her impulsive offer. There are reasons she and Maya are estranged, and having her in such close proximity is dredging up unsettling memories. Plus, strange things are happening in the house: Carrie's manuscript is deleted, her herb garden is destroyed, and she starts to fear that a piece of the past she'd hoped was buried may soon resurface and throw her world off course.

It would be a dream to see this story play out on screen! It's brimming with quiet, mounting tension and nonverbal communication and I think that would translate really well visually. I think the flashback scenes when Maya and Carrie are in college would also be a great aspect of a screen adaptation!

When I write, I tend to imagine actors as characters, to try to make describing them with detail easier and more consistent. For Carrie, I imagined Naomi Watts. She was in The Watcher, which, while different from Anything For A Friend, does share the trait of being about a situation where strange things are happening inside a house. Naomi Watts has a lot of depth and crevices as an actor and so does Carrie-- she's a fundamentally good person, but with lots of flaws and secrets. I think Naomi Watts also plays "stressed out" very well!

For Maya, I imagined...[read on]

Visit Kathleen M. Willett's website.

Q&A with Kathleen M. Willett.

The Page 69 Test: Mother of All Secrets.

My Book, The Movie: Mother of All Secrets.

My Book, The Movie: Anything for a Friend.

--Marshal Zeringue