Tess Callahan's "Dawnland," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Dawnland: A Novel by Tess Callahan.

The entry begins:

Because Dawnland is about love of all kinds—romantic, doomed, familial, fatalistic, erotic—it requires actors with a wide range and a director with an eye for subtlety. Set it in the spectacularly dynamic landscape of Cape Cod’s outermost beaches, the setting mirrors the inner life of the characters, who teeter on cliffs both literal and metaphorical. April and Oliver are in- laws with a tangled past. As their family reunion unfolds, their buried secret threatens to erupt like a rogue wave. Fault lines appear between spouses, siblings, parents and children in what becomes a summer of reckoning. Will the truth force deeper, more authentic relationships or destroy them irreparably? Anne Hathaway is a dead ringer for April, both physically and in terms of her personal zest and emotional range. In Dawnland, April’s husband Al says she has “Anne Hathaway eyes,”—dark, boundless, and full of mystery. From Brokeback Mountain to The Devil Wears Prada, Hathaway demonstrates the depth and versatility needed for a vibrant and often unpredictable character like April.

Although he is not (yet) an actor, the...[read on]

Learn more about the novel and author at Tess Callahan's website.

The Page 69 Test: April and Oliver.

The Page 69 Test: Dawnland.

My Book, The Movie: Dawnland.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five of the best books shaped by lists

Sophie Ratcliffe is professor of literature and creative criticism at the University of Oxford and a fellow and tutor at Lady Margaret Hall. In addition to her scholarly books, including On Sympathy, she has published commentary pieces and book reviews for the Guardian, the New Statesman, and the Times Literary Supplement, among other outlets, and has served a judge for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction and the Wellcome Book Prize.

Ratcliffe's latest book is Loss, A Love Story: Imagined Histories and Brief Encounters.

At the Guardian she tagged five of the best books shaped by lists, including:

High Fidelity by Nick Hornby

If Eliot’s Prufrock measured things in coffee-spoons, then record-shop owner Rob does his in Top 10s. For him, “conversation is simply enumeration”. Others “have opinions. I have lists”. This cult 90s novel traces Rob’s breakup and his realisation that some things escape the catalogue. High Fidelity may not be the most likable of that long tradition of tragicomic account-keepers (Pepys and Pooter, Adrian Mole and Bridget Jones), but, for better or worse, it captured, and shaped, an era of lad mags and listicles.

Read about another entry on the list.

High Fidelity also made Genevieve Wheeler's list of seven novels about falling in (& out) love in London, Amazon Book Review's list of ten titles for fans of Daisy Jones & the Six, Glenn Dixon's top ten list of novels about fictional bands, Robert Haller's list of six top novels referencing pop music, Brian Boone's list of five classic books Hollywood should adapt into corny sitcoms, Lisa Jewell's six best books list, Jen Harper's list of seven top books to help you get through your divorce, Chris Moss's top 19 list of books on "how to be a man," Jeff Somers's lists of five of the best novels in which music is a character and six books that’ll make you glad you’re single, Chrissie Gruebel's top ten list of books set in London, Ted Gioia's list of ten of the best novels on music, Melissa Albert's top five list of books that inspire great mix tapes, Rob Reid's six favorite books list, Ashley Hamilton's list of 8 books to read with a broken heart, Tiffany Murray's top 10 list of rock'n'roll novels, Mark Hodkinson's critic's chart of rock music in fiction, and John Sutherland's list of the best books about listing.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Asha Greyling

From my Q&A with Asha Greyling, author of The Vampire of Kings Street: A Mystery:

The entry begins:

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

I think The Vampire of Kings Street is a very posh, elegant title with a bit of punch. It’s the kind of title that screams elite society – and then throws in a vampire. I think it does a great job setting up the historical vibe of the book, while suggesting darker undertones.

What's in a name?

One of my favorite characters in this book is Evelyn More, the vampire. I remember...[read on]

Visit Asha Greyling's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Vampire of Kings Street.

My Book, The Movie: The Vampire of Kings Street.

Q&A with Asha Greyling.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Steven Fesmire's "Beyond Moral Fundamentalism"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Beyond Moral Fundamentalism: Toward a Pragmatic Pluralism by Steven Fesmire.

About the book, from the publisher:

While complex global problems cry out for solutions devised with moral sensitivity and responsibility, a more common mentality tends to prevail, one that assumes those going the right way (“us”) are endangered by others (“them”) going the wrong way. Philosopher Steven Fesmire calls this approach “moral fundamentalism,” the idea that only we have access to the right diagnosis and prescription to our problems. Moral fundamentalism causes us to oversimplify, neglect broader context, take refuge in dogmatic absolutes, ignore possibilities for common ground, assume privileged access to the right way to proceed, and shut off honest inquiry. Moral fundamentalism--exacerbated by social media silos--also makes the worst of native impulses toward social bonding and antagonism. This depletes social capital and makes it impossible to debate and achieve superordinate goals, such as public health, justice, security, sustainability, peace, and democracy.

Drawing from John Dewey's pluralistic and pragmatic approach, Fesmire develops an alternative to the oversimplification of moral fundamentalism and the arbitrariness of relativism. He proposes a “pragmatic pluralism” that can be applied to complex ethical, political, educational, and policy problems--without flattening variability among values or presuming that abstract theories determine what we ought to do. He argues that the single-right-way premise that logically underlies moral fundamentalism is both unwarranted and constrictive, and that grand philosophical quests for unifying principles can still be accommodated within a wider pluralistic approach. In an engaging style, Fesmire shows the reader a new perspective on the challenges and promises of democratic decision-making in societies that are struggling to grow beyond moral fundamentalism.

Learn more about Beyond Moral Fundamentalism at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Beyond Moral Fundamentalism.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten books for understanding the “Constitutional Sheriff” movement

Jessica Pishko is a journalist and lawyer with a JD from Harvard Law School and an MFA from Columbia University. She has been reporting on the criminal legal system for a decade, with a focus on the political power of sheriffs since 2016. In addition to her newsletter, Posse Comitatus, her writings have been featured in The New York Times, Politico, Rolling Stone, The Atlantic, The Appeal, Slate, and Democracy Docket. She has been awarded journalism fellowships from the Pulitzer Center and Type Investigations and was a 2022 New America Fellow. A longtime Texas resident, she currently lives with her family in North Carolina.

Pishko's new book is The Highest Law in the Land: How the Unchecked Power of Sheriffs Threatens Democracy.

At Lit Hub she tagged ten books for understanding the far right “Constitutional Sheriff” movement, including:

Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America

While Barkun’s book was published in 2003, it is one of the first books to examine conspiracy theories and why they appeal to their adherents. Barkun defines two qualities of conspiracy theories: “millennialism,” or a belief in a final encounter between good and evil, and “stigmatized knowledge,” which we might now describe as “alternative facts” and includes vaccine skepticism and beliefs in UFOs.

What happens when democracy is replaced by conspiracy theories that question the very essence of expertise? Well, Barkun might say, we get Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. endorsing Donald Trump for president.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Tess Callahan's "Dawnland"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Dawnland: A Novel by Tess Callahan.

About the book, from the publisher:

On a fated summer getaway in Cape Cod, two families on the verge of fracture contend with the secrets of the past in a powerful and moving novel by the author of April & Oliver.

April, her brother-in-law Oliver, and their families reunite in Cape Cod on an exquisite stretch of beach called Dawnland. After eleven summers of building traditions―kayaking, whale watching, bonfires, and ocean swims―this year comes with new threats both on and off the coastline.

Before their marriages, April and Oliver had an intense but disastrous fling that they kept hidden. Although they moved on with their lives, their more recent fiery encounter is getting harder to keep secret―especially as the week unravels, revealing fault lines not only between husbands and wives but between brothers, fathers and sons, and children growing up amid discord and lies. Ground zero for conflict is April’s volatile teenage son, Lochlann.

The family structure begins to teeter. Secrets are surfacing. As everyone faces the consequences of their choices, the truth could finally forge them together or tear them apart forever.

Learn more about the novel and author at Tess Callahan's website.

The Page 69 Test: April and Oliver.

The Page 69 Test: Dawnland.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Simon Bittmann's "Working for Debt"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Working for Debt: Banks, Loan Sharks, and the Origins of Financial Exploitation in the United States by Simon Bittmann.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the early twentieth century, wage loans became a major source of cash for workers all over the United States. From Black washerwomen to white foremen, Illinois roomers to Georgia railroad men, workers turned to labor income as collateral for borrowing capital. Networks of companies started profiting from payday and property advances, exposing debtors to the grim prospects of garnishments of their wages and possessions in order to mitigate the risk of default. Progressive and later New Deal reformers sought to eradicate these practices, denouncing “loan sharks” and “financial slavery” as major threats to a new credit democracy. They proposed fair credit as a universal solution to move past industrial poverty and boost consumer freedom―but in doing so, reformers, lenders, and bankers limited credit access to the white middle-class constituencies seen as worthy of protection against extortion.

Working for Debt explores how the fight against wage loans divided the American credit market along class, race, and gender lines. Simon Bittmann argues that the moral and political crusades of Progressive Era reformers helped create the exclusionary credit markets that favored white male breadwinners. The politics of credit expansion served to obscure the failures of U.S. capitalism, using the “loan shark” as a scapegoat for larger, deeper depredations. As credit became a core feature of U.S. capitalism, the association of legitimate borrowing with white middle-class households and the financial exclusion of others was entrenched. Blending economic sociology with business, labor, and social history, this book shows how social stratification shaped credit markets, with enduring consequences for class, race, and gender inequalities.

Learn more about Working for Debt at the Columbia University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Working for Debt.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten great books about the sea by writers of color

Richard J. King lives in Santa Cruz, California and is a visiting professor in Maritime Literature and History with the Sea Education Association in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. He is the author of five books of nonfiction about our relationship to the ocean, including most recently Sailing Alone: A Surprising History of Isolation and Survival at Sea.

[The Page 99 Test: Ahab's Rolling Sea]

At Electric Lit King tagged "ten great works of sea literature in English by people of color." One title on the list:

The Deep by Rivers Solomon

“She couldn’t determine which was worse: the pain of the ancestors or the pain of the living. Both fed off her.” So thinks Yetu, the young protagonist of The Deep, who is charged with the weighty task of holding the horrific memories of her entire underwater society, to archive their history yet not burden all the other individuals with the daily sufferings of the remembrance. Author Rivers Solomon, in collaboration with hip-hop musicians Daveed Diggs, William Hutson, and Jonathan Snipes (who had composed music riffed off the work and mythologies of previous multi-media artists), crafted a novel of a submarine world after the Middle Passage. This world of wajinru beings with Yetu as historian is composed of descendants of the thousands of pregnant human women who died and were cast overboard, as well as those women who were forced or chose to jump into the waters instead of living and subjecting their children to the terrors and inhumanity of enslavement. The Deep has a fantasy façade, but like all profound science fiction, or any sea literature for that matter, its message and struggle are crucial for our navigation of today’s world on land.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is J. H. Markert reading?

Featured at Writers Read: J. H. Markert, author of Sleep Tight: A Novel.

The entry begins:

This prompt caught me in between books, one author I’m quite familiar with and another I’m admittedly getting a late start on. I just finished Stephen King’s newest collection, You Like It Darker (yes I do, thank you very much), and thought it was vintage King, the reason I ever started writing in the first place. But onward now to a novel I’ve been wanting to read since finishing the mind-blowing The Cabin at the End of the World, and that is...[read on]

About Sleep Tight, from the publisher:

The sole survivor of a serial killer might hold the key to stopping a new spree of murders in this propulsive horror thriller in the vein of The Black Phone and The Whisper Man.

Dark and twisting at every turn, fans of Catriona Ward will love this chilling new tale from the deviously inventive horror author that Peter Farris calls the "clear heir to Stephen King.”

Beware the one who got away . . .

Father Silence once terrorized the rural town of Twisted Tree, disguising himself as a priest to prey on the most vulnerable members of society. When the police finally found his "House of Horrors," they uncovered nineteen bodies and one survivor–a boy now locked away in a hospital for the criminally insane.

Nearly two decades later, Father Silence is finally put to death, but by the next morning, the detective who made the original arrest is found dead. A new serial killer is taking credit for the murder and calling himself the Outcast.

The detective’s daughter, Tess Claibourne, is a detective herself, haunted by childhood trauma and horrified by the death of her father and the resurgence of Father Silence’s legacy.

When Tess’s daughter is kidnapped by the Outcast, Tess is forced to face her worst fears and long-buried memories. With no leads to follow, she travels back to Twisted Tree to visit the boy who survived and see what secrets might be buried in the tangled web of his broken mind.

With captivating prose and an old-school horror flair, Sleep Tight is a must-read, haunting tale from a true master of the genre.

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.

My Book, The Movie: Sleep Tight.

The Page 69 Test: Sleep Tight.

Writers Read: J. H. Markert.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Caroline Wolff

From my Q&A with Caroline Wolff, author of The Wayside:

How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your novel?

She wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest. Teenage Caroline was drawn to anything darkly beautiful. (For context, the summer I was 15 I listened to Elliott Smith every night before bed and cried, just to evoke an intense emotional response and so have more fodder to draw from in my writing.) When I was creating the moody atmosphere of The Wayside, I also drew on a few of the books I loved as a teenager, like the campus vibe of The Rules of Attraction by Bret Easton Ellis and the gothic overtones of Night Film by Marisha Pessl. And she would definitely approve of Jake’s taste in music.

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?

It’s harder for me to write...[read on]

Visit Caroline Wolff's website.

Q&A with Caroline Wolff.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Julie E. Czerneda's "A Change of Place"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: A Change of Place by Julie E. Czerneda.

About the book, from the publisher:

Return to the Aurora Award-winning, cozy romantic fantasy Night's Edge series and the rich and atmospheric world of Marrowdell

Spring in Marrowdell is a time to celebrate. Life stirs, the air warms, and Jenn Nalynn and Bannan Larmensu couldn't be happier. But spring is also fraught with change, and nowhere is this truer than the edge, where the Verge, the magical realm of dragons and sei, touches that of snow and roads. The spring equinox marks the final turn before Marrowdell’s sun starts to dominate the sky and Jenn, turn-born and sei, feels the pull to cross to the Verge.

Marrowdell’s river floods, and Jenn knows she is needed at home, but deep within the Verge a perilous force is calling her away from all she loves. For the house toad’s mighty queen has waited for the first equinox with the powers of a turn-born in the edge, and now she is ready to make her move against it.

Caught up in plots they cannot understand, Jenn and Bannan find themselves separated, and to reunite they will have to outsmart the queen herself. But even if they can foil her plan, will Marrowdell still be there when they return?

Visit Julie E. Czerneda's website.

The Page 69 Test: To Guard Against the Dark.

The Page 69 Test: The Gossamer Mage.

The Page 69 Test: Mirage.

Q&A with Julie E. Czerneda.

The Page 69 Test: To Each This World.

My Book, The Movie: To Each This World.

My Book, The Movie: A Change of Place.

The Page 69 Test: A Change of Place.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top thrillers where the victim’s body is hidden

Barbara Gayle Austin writes crime fiction. She grew up in Houston, Texas, but has spent most of her adult life in the Netherlands and the UK. She now lives in Amsterdam with her two children and her dog.

What You Made Me Do is Austin’s debut novel, a thriller set in Amsterdam and a Dutch island in the Wadden Sea. The novel was longlisted for the esteemed Crime Writers’ Association Debut Dagger award (under the title Lowlands). Her short stories have been longlisted in the Margery Allingham short mystery competition and in the Aestas 2022 competition.

At CrimeReads Austin tagged six "favorite thrillers where the victim’s body is hidden, only to be uncovered later… moved to a new spot… or never found at all." One title on the list:

The Family Plot by Megan Collins

Dahlia has spent a decade searching for her missing twin brother. When her estranged father dies, she reluctantly returns home for the funeral. But her world shatters when Andy’s skeletal remains are discovered in their father’s burial plot. This story has all the ingredients for a spine-tingling read. A creepy island, a family home nicknamed The Murder Mansion, Dahlia’s true-crime-obsessed mom, and a serial killer on the prowl. As Dahlia digs into the mystery, she uncovers shocking secrets about her brother—and the truth is more chilling than she ever imagined.

Read about another title on the list.

The Family Plot is among Megan Cooley Peterson's eight books exploring real life crimes, Lisa M. Matlin's six creepy novels featuring murder houses, and Steph Mullin's ten top novels inspired by true crimes.

The Page 69 Test: The Family Plot.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Melissa Reynolds's "Reading Practice"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Reading Practice: The Pursuit of Natural Knowledge from Manuscript to Print by Melissa Reynolds.

About the book, from the publisher:

Through portraits of readers and their responses to texts, Reading Practice reconstructs the contours of the knowledge economy that shaped medicine and science in early modern England.

Reading Practice tells the story of how ordinary people grew comfortable learning from commonplace manuscripts and printed books, such as almanacs, medical recipe collections, and herbals. From the turn of the fifteenth century to the close of the sixteenth century, these were the books English people read when they wanted to attend to their health or understand their place in the universe. Before then, these works had largely been the purview of those who could read Latin. Around 1400, however, medical and scientific texts became available in Middle English while manuscripts became less expensive. These vernacular manuscripts invited their readers into a very old and learned conversation: Hippocrates and Galen weren’t distant authorities whose word was law, they were trusted guides, whose advice could be excerpted, rearranged, recombined, and even altered to suit a manuscript compiler’s needs. This conversation continued even after the printing press arrived in England in 1476. Printers mined manuscripts for medical and scientific texts that they would publish throughout the sixteenth century, though the pressures of a commercial printing market encouraged printers to package these old texts in new ways. Without the weight of authority conditioning their reactions and responses to very old knowledge, and with so many editions of practical books to choose from, English readers grew into confident critics and purveyors of natural knowledge in their own right.

Melissa Reynolds reconstructs shifting attitudes toward medicine and science over two centuries of seismic change within English culture, attending especially to the effects of the Reformation on attitudes toward nature and the human body. Her study shows how readers learned to be discerning and selective consumers of knowledge gradually, through everyday interactions with utilitarian books.

Visit Melissa Reynolds's website.

The Page 99 Test: Reading Practice.

--Marshal Zeringue

Asha Greyling's "The Vampire of Kings Street," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Vampire of Kings Street: A Mystery by Asha Greyling.

The entry begins:

When I write, I visualize everything. It helps me set up a scene if I can see it in my mind’s eye as a movie. Sometimes I’m describing what I see, not at all what I’ve planned!

My dreamcast for The Vampire of Kings Street would be the following:

Simone Ashley – Simone Ashley has just the kind of flair, style, and attitude that I would imagine for Radhika Dhingra. Radhika is the descent of South Indian immigrants and now an aspiring lawyer in 19th century New York. There is a lot of colorism in India (and the world as a whole), so I deliberately made Radhika darker skinned than most of the Indian actresses you see in film, like Simone Ashley herself. I'd...[read on]

Visit Asha Greyling's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Vampire of Kings Street.

My Book, The Movie: The Vampire of Kings Street.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top spy novels

David McCloskey is the author of The Seventh Floor, Moscow X, and Damascus Station. He is a former CIA analyst and former consultant at McKinsey & Company.

While at the CIA, he wrote regularly for the President’s Daily Brief, delivered classified testimony to Congressional oversight committees, and briefed senior White House officials, Ambassadors, military officials, and Arab royalty.

McCloskey worked in CIA field stations across the Middle East throughout the Arab Spring and conducted a rotation in the Counterterrorism Center focused on the jihad in Syria and Iraq. During his time at McKinsey, he advised national security, aerospace, and transportation clients on a range of strategic and operational issues.

For the Waterstones blog McCloskey tagged five favorite spy novels, including:

The Peacock and the Sparrow by I.S. Berry

This espionage tale is set in Bahrain during the heart of the Arab Awakening and is for my money one of the best characterizations of a CIA case officer in print, in no small part because the author, I.S. Berry was one herself. The Bahrain of this novel is deeply atmospheric; the Gulf humidity practically seeps off the pages. The ins and outs of asset handling, Agency lingo, and the often-tense relations between the State Department and a CIA Station are perfectly captured. For all its authenticity, though, in the end I love this book for its depiction of case officer Shane Collins and his intimate, conflicted, and deeply flawed relationship with Almaisa, a Bahraini woman who is not at all what she seems.

Read about another novel on the list.

Q&A with I.S. Berry.

The Page 69 Test: The Peacock and the Sparrow.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Cynthia Swanson's "Anyone But Her"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Anyone But Her by Cynthia Swanson.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Bookseller and The Glass Forest comes a new novel of psychological suspense!

KNOWLEDGE HAS A PRICE...

It's 1979, and 14-year-old Suzanne, who should be enjoying her first year at Denver East High, is instead reckoning with the aftermath of her mother Alex's shooting death during a robbery at Alex's store, Zoe's Records. A clairvoyant since childhood, Suzanne is unsurprised when Alex's ghost appears. But when Alex raises alarm bells about Suzanne's father's new girlfriend, what Suzanne can't foresee is the lifelong repercussions as she heeds Alex's warning.

In 2004, Suzanne returns to Denver with her husband and their children, a defiant teenage daughter and a 9-year-old son with unspecified cognitive disabilities. When the opportunity arises to turn the old Zoe's Records space into a gallery, Suzanne jumps at the chance. While ecstatic to honor Alex's legacy, Suzanne nonetheless can't shake the sensation that she's being watched-while at the same time tackling a clandestine investigation of her own, searching for genetic clues into her family's hidden past that might lead to a diagnosis for her son.

What if she knows too little? What if she discovers too much?

Visit Cynthia Swanson's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Bookseller.

The Page 69 Test: The Glass Forest.

Writers Read: Cynthia Swanson (February 2018).

Q&A with Cynthia Swanson.

The Page 69 Test: Anyone But Her.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Catriona McPherson reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Catriona McPherson, author of The Witching Hour.

The entry begins:

The brief for this assignment is very clear: do not simply list the books you’ve read. However, if anyone’s interested, everything I’ve read since December 2019 is on this page of my website.

But what have I been reading recently that I want to shout about?

Shannon Baker, a longtime resident of the Nebraska sandhills (although she now lives in Arizona), writes the Sheriff Kate Fox series of police procedurals. Or are they? Kate is one of a large family in a small town, where old feuds and fresh gossip confound every case she encounters. The landscape and lifestyle are brutal but the writing is lush and the stories are always absorbing, whether the background is the plight of migrant workers, the intricacies of policing the reservation or, as in the one I’ve just read, the big business of bucking bulls.

Still in the crime-fiction genre, but a different kettle of fish entirely, I thoroughly enjoyed...[read on]

About The Witching Hour, from the publisher:

War is hovering on the horizon, and Dandy Gilver wants nothing more than to keep her friends and family close. But then a call in the night places her oldest friend Daisy at the centre of a murder investigation. With her friend's future on the line, Dandy and her fellow sleuth Alec Osbourne must race to prove her innocence.

But when they reach the idyllic Scottish village of Dirleton, residents confirm a woman was seen at the crime scene - an ancient stone called the louping stane, still spattered with the victim's blood. And the longer the detectives spend in the village the more they question Daisy's involvement. They're not getting the answers they need, but are they asking the right questions?...

Visit Catriona McPherson's website.

The Page 69 Test: Go to My Grave.

Writers Read: Catriona McPherson (November 2018).

My Book, The Movie: The Turning Tide.

The Page 69 Test: The Turning Tide.

My Book, The Movie: A Gingerbread House.

The Page 69 Test: Hop Scot.

The Page 69 Test: Deep Beneath Us.

Q&A with Catriona McPherson.

The Page 69 Test: The Witching Hour.

Writers Read: Catriona McPherson.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten thrilling books about women on the verge

Holly Baxter is an executive editor and staff writer at the Independent in New York. She has experience in generating clicks on both sides of the Atlantic, having worked in the Independent’s London office as a reporter for three years. Her work was shortlisted for a Press Award for Feature of the Year in 2019 and she often appears on British radio and television.

Baxter lives in Brooklyn, New York. Clickbait is her debut novel.

At Electric Lit she tagged ten thrilling books about women on the verge. One title on the list:

Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams

Queenie isn’t just a deep-dive into one woman’s psychological tics but also a beautiful portrait of London in all its diversity and its downfalls. Carty-Williams, in a very Zadie Smith-esque way, is able to draw attention to a plethora of social issues—gentrification, racism, misogyny, the cruelties of capitalism and the generation effects of immigration—within a few short scenes (the first chapter somehow manages to draw attention to every one of these, while remaining readable and at times heartrending).

Queenie is a protagonist who makes a lot of bad decisions, but you keep rooting for her. Carty-Williams does a good job of showing how unfairly society reacts to her even as she demands Queenie take responsibility for her own “stuff” (as Queenie continually calls it). And she also does a good job of portraying how no one truly comes back together on their own—Queenie’s imperfectly perfect support system often takes center-stage, too.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Queenie is among Lisa Zhuang's eight novels with characters who go to therapy.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Kerry Brown's "The Great Reversal"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Great Reversal: Britain, China and the 400-Year Contest for Power by Kerry Brown.

About the book, from the publisher:

A vivid history of the relationship between Britain and China, from 1600 to the present

The relationship between Britain and China has shaped the modern world. Chinese art, philosophy and science have had a profound effect upon British culture, while the long history of British exploitation is still bitterly remembered in China today. But how has their interaction changed over time?

From the early days of the East India Company through the violence of the Opium Wars to present-day disputes over Hong Kong, Kerry Brown charts this turbulent and intriguing relationship in full. Britain has always sought to dominate China economically and politically, while China’s ideas and exports—from tea and Chinoiserie to porcelain and silk—have continued to fascinate in the west. But by the later twentieth century, the balance of power began to shift in China’s favour, with global consequences. Brown shows how these interactions changed the world order—and argues that an understanding of Britain’s relationship with China is now more vital than ever.

Learn more about The Great Reversal at the Yale University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: The Great Reversal.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Asha Greyling's "The Vampire of Kings Street"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Vampire of Kings Street: A Mystery by Asha Greyling.

About the book, from the publisher:

In this gothic debut novel, perfect for fans of Tread of Angels and Gail Carriger’s Soulless, Miss Radhika Dhingra, a newly minted lawyer in 19th century New York, never expected that her first client would be a vampire accused of murder.

Having a resident vampire is just the thing for upper-class New Yorkers–besides being a status symbol, they make excellent butlers or housekeepers. The only thing they require in return is a drop or two of blood and a casket to shut out the dawn’s early light.

Tolerated by society only if they follow a strict set of rules, vampires are seen as “less than”–and as the daughter of immigrants, Radhika knows firsthand how this feels. Accused of murder, her undead client Mr. Evelyn More, knows that the cards are stacked against him.

With the help of a journalist friend and a diminutive detective inspector, Miss Dhingra sets out to prove her client’s innocence and win his freedom. Failure will mean Mr. More’s death, the end of her dreams of becoming a successful attorney, and the loss of the vampire Miss Dhingra has begun to call her friend.

Offering an alternative paranormal history, delightful characters, and insightful social commentary, The Vampire of Kings Street will thrill readers of Deanna Rayburn and Rebecca Roanhorse.

Visit Asha Greyling's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Vampire of Kings Street.

--Marshal Zeringue