Eight stories that are filled with suspense & dread

Megan Staffel splits her time between Brooklyn, New York and a farm in western New York State. Her new novel, The Causative Factor, is her sixth book of fiction. Her previous work includes two collections of short fiction, The Exit Coach and Lessons in Another Language, and the novels, The Notebook of Lost Things and She Wanted Something Else.

At Electric Lit Staffel tagged eight ominous short stories and novels that will leave you on the edge of your seat. One title on the list:

Take What You Need by Idra Novey

In this novel about caretaking relationships and the making of art, the source of unease is the fledgling friendship between Jean, a retired office worker who spends her time welding metal sculptures in her living room, and Elliot, the 19-year-old unemployed kid next door who helps her with the physically demanding tasks her art requires. Elliot is always on the verge of sliding back into his old life with a shiftless crowd of users and trouble-makers while Jean negotiates her own risky desires, sometimes managing to alienate her new friend and sometimes managing to give him exactly what he needs, but always walking a tightrope through his unpredictable moods.

Read about another entry on the list.

Take What You Need is among Amy Key's nine top novels about women living alone.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Natalie A. Zacek's "Thoroughbred Nation"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Thoroughbred Nation: Making America at the Racetrack, 1791-1900 by Natalie A. Zacek.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the colonial era to the beginning of the twentieth century, horse racing was by far the most popular sport in America. Great numbers of Americans and overseas visitors flocked to the nation’s tracks, and others avidly followed the sport in both general-interest newspapers and specialized periodicals.

Thoroughbred Nation offers a detailed yet panoramic view of thoroughbred racing in the United States, following the sport from its origins in colonial Virginia and South Carolina to its boom in the Lower Mississippi Valley, and then from its post–Civil War rebirth in New York City and Saratoga Springs to its opulent mythologization of the “Old South” at Louisville’s Churchill Downs, home of the Kentucky Derby. Natalie A. Zacek introduces readers to an unforgettable cast of characters, from “plungers” such as Virginia plantation owner William Ransom Johnson (known as the “Napoleon of the Turf”) and Wall Street financier James R. Keene (who would wager a fortune on the outcome of a single competition) to the jockeys, trainers, and grooms, most of whom were African American. While their names are no longer known, their work was essential to the sport. Zacek also details the careers of remarkable, though scarcely remembered, horses, whose achievements made them as famous in their day as more recent equine celebrities such as Seabiscuit or Secretariat.

Based upon exhaustive research in print and visual sources from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States, Thoroughbred Nation will be of interest both to those who love the sport of horse racing for its own sake and to those who are fascinated by how this pastime reflects and influences American identities.

Learn more about Thoroughbred Nation at the LSU Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Thoroughbred Nation.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Sung J. Woo's "Lines"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Lines by Sung J. Woo.

About the book, from the publisher:

On a foggy morning in New York City, a man and a woman are about to run into each other, literally. Upon impact, they fall to the ground in an instinctively protective hug. The fog dissipates, and they stare into each other's eyes in disbelief, at the sheer magnitude of their bodily collision and their subsequent, spontaneous coupling. They laugh. The man, a writer, invites the woman, an artist, for coffee and they talk until lunch. They date. They fall in love, hard. They marry just two months later. And four years later, their marriage is on the precipice of disaster.

On a foggy morning in New York City, the same man and woman pass through the fog, oblivious of each other's existence. Until five years later, when the writer finds an oval-shaped locket no bigger than his thumbnail, a tiny white dress painted within the boundary of its golden border.

Lines is about possibilities, about the choices we make - or fail to make. It's a star-crossed love story; it's a bitter tragedy. It's about Josh and Abby and their intertwined lives, together and apart, through births and deaths and the beautiful mess in between.

Visit Sung J. Woo's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Sung J. Woo & Koda.

The Page 69 Test: Everything Asian.

My Book, The Movie: Skin Deep.

Q&A with Sung J. Woo.

The Page 69 Test: Skin Deep.

My Book, The Movie: Deep Roots.

The Page 69 Test: Deep Roots.

Writers Read: Sung J. Woo (September 2023).

The Page 69 Test: Lines.

--Marshal Zeringue

Robert Dugoni's "Beyond Reasonable Doubt," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Beyond Reasonable Doubt (Keera Duggan) by Robert Dugoni.

The entry begins:

One of the problems with getting older is I just don’t know actors and actresses as I once did. However, if they make my book into a film I can think of some great actors to play the lead roles. Here’s my dream team.

Emma Stone comes to mind to play the lead, Keera Duggan.

Brie Larson or Caitriona Balfe as Ella, Keera’s oldest sisters.

I actually thought of...[read on]

Visit Robert Dugoni's website and Facebook page.

The Page 69 Test: Wrongful Death.

The Page 69 Test: Bodily Harm.

My Book, The Movie: Bodily Harm.

The Page 69 Test: Murder One.

My Book, The Movie: Murder One.

My Book, The Movie: The Eighth Sister.

The Page 69 Test: The Eighth Sister.

My Book, The Movie: A Cold Trail.

The Page 69 Test: A Cold Trail.

The Page 69 Test: The Last Agent.

My Book, The Movie: The Last Agent.

Q&A with Robert Dugoni.

The Page 69 Test: In Her Tracks.

Writers Read: Robert Dugoni (March 2024).

The Page 69 Test: A Killing on the Hill.

My Book, The Movie: A Killing on the Hill.

The Page 69 Test: Beyond Reasonable Doubt.

My Book, The Movie: Beyond Reasonable Doubt.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven of the best literary horror novels

Alena Bruzas grew up in Seattle and currently lives in Lincoln, Nebraska, with her family. She is the author of the acclaimed novel Ever Since, and she hopes her writing will find the people who need it most. When she's not writing, Bruzas serves on the board for Ten Thousand Villages, Lincoln. She also occasionally cooks dinner, worries about commas, and wanders the prairie.

Bruzas's new novel is To the Bone.

At CrimeReads the author tagged seven favorite literary horror novels, including:

Stephen Graham Jones, The Only Good Indians

The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones deserves top billing on this list. As a reader it enthralled me. As a writer it gave me the kind of despair an artist feels when they behold a true master and know they will never measure up. Jones is well known enough that he needs no introduction, so let me just tell you why I love this book. First, the writing; so good, weird yet gorgeous, realistic but reflective and deep. The book follows four friends, men of the Blackfeet nation, who ten years prior killed an elk, unaware that it was pregnant. Lewis is my favorite narrator, although it switches point of view often and with intention. Lewis’s descent into madness is *chef’s kiss* as he is consumed by guilt and grief for the mother elk and her fetus, and is convinced a woman with the head of an elk is hunting him. The story grapples with what it is to be an indigenous person in America today, and the contradictions inherent to individual identity and tradition. Jones also gives space to the point of view of the elk woman who actually is hunting the four friends and manages, despite the violence and visceral anger of her perspective, to have me rooting for her until it comes to a showdown between the elk woman and Denorah, the teenage daughter of one of the four, and an exceptional final girl.

Read about another title on the list.

The Only Good Indians is among Samsun Knight's seven top horror novels about mysticism, B.R. Myers's ten quietly effective suspense novels, and Gus Moreno's top ten groundbreaking horror novels.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Grace Kessler Overbeke's "First Lady of Laughs"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: First Lady of Laughs: The Forgotten Story of Jean Carroll, America's First Jewish Woman Stand-Up Comedian by Grace Kessler Overbeke.

About the book, from the publisher:

Before Hacks and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, there was the comedienne who started it all

First Lady of Laughs tells the story of Jean Carroll, the first Jewish woman to become a star in the field we now call stand-up comedy. Though rarely mentioned among the pantheon of early stand-up comics such as Henny Youngman and Lenny Bruce, Jean Carroll rivaled or even outshone the male counterparts of her heyday, playing more major theaters than any other comedian of her period. In addition to releasing a hit comedy album, Girl in a Hot Steam Bath, and briefly starring in her own sitcom on ABC, she also made twenty-nine appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show.

Carroll made enduring changes to the genre of stand-up comedy, carving space for women and modeling a new form of Jewish femininity with her glamorous, acculturated, but still recognizably Jewish persona. She innovated a newly conversational, intimate style of stand-up, which is now recognized in comics like Joan Rivers, Sarah Silverman, and Tiffany Haddish. When Carroll was ninety-five she was honored at the Friars Club in New York City, where celebrities like Joy Behar and Lily Tomlin praised her influence on their craft. But her celebrated career began as an impoverished immigrant child, scrounging for talent show prize money to support her family.

Drawing on archival footage, press clippings, and Jean Carroll’s personal scrapbook, First Lady of Laughs restores Jean Carroll’s remarkable story to its rightful place in the lineage of comedy history and Jewish American performance.

Learn more about First Lady of Laughs at the NYU Press website.

The Page 99 Test: First Lady of Laughs.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Robert Dugoni's "Beyond Reasonable Doubt"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Beyond Reasonable Doubt (Keera Duggan) by Robert Dugoni.

About the book, from the publisher:

A master manipulator accused of murder. An attorney sworn to defend her. Keera Duggan returns in a riveting novel of suspense by New York Times bestselling author Robert Dugoni.

When Jenna Bernstein, disgraced wunderkind CEO of a controversial biotech company, is accused of murdering her former partner and lover, she turns to Seattle attorney Keera Duggan to defend her. Keera is more than a master chess player who brings her intuitive moves into court―she’s Jenna’s childhood friend. But considering their history, Keera knows that where Jenna goes, trouble follows.

Five years earlier, Keera’s father successfully defended Jenna when she was tried for the killing of her company’s chief scientist who threatened to go public with allegations of corporate fraud. Keera knows Jenna too well. When she was a kid, Keera saw Jenna for what she was: a manipulative and frighteningly controlling sociopath. Now, with only circumstantial evidence against Jenna, Keera is willing to bury any trepidation she might have to defend a woman she believes, this time, to be innocent.

As the investigation gets underway and disturbing questions arise, Keera puts her trust in a client who swears that this time she's telling nothing but the truth. If this is all just another devious game, Keera might be working to set a murderer free.

Visit Robert Dugoni's website and Facebook page.

The Page 69 Test: Wrongful Death.

The Page 69 Test: Bodily Harm.

My Book, The Movie: Bodily Harm.

The Page 69 Test: Murder One.

My Book, The Movie: Murder One.

My Book, The Movie: The Eighth Sister.

The Page 69 Test: The Eighth Sister.

My Book, The Movie: A Cold Trail.

The Page 69 Test: A Cold Trail.

The Page 69 Test: The Last Agent.

My Book, The Movie: The Last Agent.

Q&A with Robert Dugoni.

The Page 69 Test: In Her Tracks.

Writers Read: Robert Dugoni (March 2024).

The Page 69 Test: A Killing on the Hill.

My Book, The Movie: A Killing on the Hill.

The Page 69 Test: Beyond Reasonable Doubt.

--Marshal Zeringue

The ten best books for understanding the opioid crisis

One title from Lit Hub's list of the ten best books for understanding the opioid crisis:

Patrick Radden Keefe, Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty (2021)

From investigative journalist, staff writer at the New Yorker, and author of bestselling and award-winning Say Nothing, Patrick Radden Keefe’s Empire of Pain tells the history of the family behind Purdue Pharma, painting “a devastating portrait of a family consumed by greed and unwilling to take the slightest responsibility or show the least sympathy for what it wrought” that is “all the more damning for its stark lucidity” (NYT). Empire of Pain is the history of the perpetrators, the Sackler Family.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Timothy Jay Smith reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Timothy Jay Smith, author of Istanbul Crossing.

His entry begins:

Hall of Mirrors by John Copenhaver.

In Hall of Mirrors, the second novel in his Nightingale Trilogy, John Copenhaver once again seduces his readers with false but believable leads, characters uncertain about their own motives, and a surprise ending that makes perfect sense when the clouds lift enough to reveal it. If ‘tricky mysteries’ were a genre, Copenhaver would be its king.

When the novel opens, two lesbian amateur sleuths, Judy and Philippa, stand on the street with their new friend, Lionel, as they watch his upper floor apartment belch fire and smoke. Where is his lover, Roger, if they dare even use that word? It’s the early 1950s, McCarthyism is at its peak, as is the nation’s tolerance for homophobia and racism.

Roger had recently lost his job at the State Department when...[read on]

About Istanbul Crossing, from the publisher:

In this coming-of-age literary thriller, Ahdaf, a gay Syrian refugee, after watching his cousin executed by ISIS for being homosexual, flees to Istanbul for safety.

He becomes a smuggler of refugees to Greece and develops such a good reputation that he’s approached by both the CIA and ISIS to smuggle high-profile individuals in both directions between Turkey and Greece.

In the process of juggling their two operations, he falls in love with, and must decide between, two men who offer different futures.

Visit Timothy Jay Smith's website.

Writers Read: Timothy Jay Smith (May 2019).

My Book, The Movie: The Fourth Courier.

The Page 69 Test: The Fourth Courier.

Q&A with Timothy Jay Smith.

The Page 69 Test: Fire on the Island.

The Page 69 Test: Istanbul Crossing.

Writers Read: Timothy Jay Smith.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Matt Wilde's "A Blessing and a Curse"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: A Blessing and a Curse: Oil, Politics, and Morality in Bolivarian Venezuela by Matt Wilde.

About the book, from the publisher:

A Blessing and a Curse examines the lived experience of political change, moral uncertainty, and economic crisis amid Venezuela's controversial Bolivarian Revolution. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in an urban barrio over the course of a decade, Matt Wilde argues that everyday life in this period was intimately shaped by a critical contradiction: that in their efforts to capture a larger portion of oil money and distribute it more widely among the population, the governments of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro pursued policies that ultimately entrenched Venezuela in the very position of dependency they sought to overcome. Offering a new synthesis between anthropological work on energy, politics, and morality, the book explores how the use of oil money to fund the revolution's social programs and political reforms produced profound cultural anxieties about the contaminating effects of petroleum revenues in everyday settings. Tracing how these anxieties rippled out into community life, family networks, and local politics, Wilde shows how questions about how to live a good life came to be intimately shaped by Venezuela's contradictory relationship with oil. In doing so, he brings a vital perspective to contemporary debates about energy transitions by proposing a new way of thinking about the political and moral economies of natural resources in postcolonial settings.

Learn more about A Blessing and a Curse at the Stanford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: A Blessing and a Curse.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight biographies to upend your perception of famous writers

Iris Jamahl Dunkle is an Emerita Poet Laureate of Sonoma County and a faculty member at UC Davis. She has authored two biographies: Charmian Kittredge London: Trailblazer, Author, Adventurer (2020) and Riding Like the Wind: The Life of Sanora Babb (2024). Her fourth poetry collection, West : Fire : Archive, was recently published by The Center for Literary Publishing. Dunkle writes a weekly blog called Finding Lost Voices, which revives the voices of women who have been forgotten or misremembered and serves as the Poetry and Translation Director at the Napa Valley Writers' Conference. She’s on the board of the National Book Critics Circle.

At Electric Lit Dunkle tagged eight books in which "you’ll find a different take on literary history, where you’ll not only see the literary elite you thought you knew differently, but you’ll also discover new figures." One title on the list:

A Wilder Shore: The Romantic Odyssey of Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson by Camille Peri

In this new biography about Robert Lewis Stevenson and his wife Fanny Van de Grift by Camille Peri, we get to know the woman who helped shape one of the world’s most beloved writers. We learn that Fanny was a tomboy who after leaving her home Indiana for the Silver mine boom towns in Nevada, traveled to Europe with her daughter and two sons to escape her cheating husband. It was at an artist retreat in France in 1876 that Fanny and Robert first met. A meeting that according to Peri fueled both of their lives and sent the two on adventures around the world. Fanny, who was also a writer, short stories and colorful accounts about their life together, even contributed to helping her husband write the novels he is famous for. It’s about time that someone took on telling the story of this unique, and powerful literary partnership.

Read about another title on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Sydney Graves

From my Q&A with Sydney Graves, author of The Arizona Triangle: A Jo Bailen Detective Novel:

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

The word Arizona tells the reader where the book is set. It's an economical way to invite her into the book's world, and it's also a lovely state name. Arizona carries metaphorical implications too, the romance of the west, the visual of dramatic mountains against deep blue sky and saguaro silhouettes, so it instantly gives the reader so much of the atmosphere the book is imbued with.

The word Triangle does double duty, as a play on the Bermuda Triangle, a place of danger and mystery, as well as a reference to the love triangle at the heart of the mystery.

What's in a name?

I wanted Jo Bailen's name to...[read on]

Visit Sydney Graves's website.

Q&A with Sydney Graves.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight top works informed by "The Odyssey"

Paula Munier is the USA TODAY bestselling author of the Mercy Carr mysteries. A Borrowing of Bones, the first in the series, was nominated for the Mary Higgins Clark Award and named the Dogwise Book of the Year. Blind Search also won a Dogwise Award. The Hiding Place and The Wedding Plot both appeared on several “Best Of” lists. Home at Night, the fifth book in the series, was inspired by her volunteer work as a Natural Resources Steward of New Hampshire. Along with her love of nature, Munier credits the hero dogs of Mission K9 Rescue, her own rescue dogs, and a deep affection for New England as her series’ major influences. A literary agent by day, she’s also written three popular books on writing: Plot Perfect, The Writer’s Guide to Beginnings, and Writing with Quiet Hands, as well as Happier Every Day and the memoir Fixing Freddie: The True Story of a Boy, a Mom, and a Very, Very Bad Beagle.

[Coffee with a Canine: Paula Munier & Bear; My Book, The Movie: A Borrowing of Bones; The Page 69 Test: A Borrowing of Bones; Writers Read: Paula Munier (October 2019); My Book, The Movie: Blind Search; The Page 69 Test: Blind Search; My Book, The Movie: The Hiding Place; The Page 69 Test: The Hiding Place; Q&A with Paula Munier; My Book, The Movie: The Wedding Plot; The Page 69 Test: The Wedding Plot; Writers Read: Paula Munier (July 2022); Writers Read: Paula Munier (October 2023); My Book, The Movie: Home at Night; The Page 69 Test: Home at Night; My Book, The Movie: The Night Woods; The Page 69 Test: The Night Woods; Writers Read: Paula Munier (October 2024)]

Munier's new Mercy Carr mystery is The Night Woods.

At CrimeReads Munier tagged eight favorite "books and films and TV shows also informed by The Odyssey," including:

The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood, Circe by Madeline Miller, Ithaka by Adele Geras

A trio of retellings of The Odyssey retold from the perspective of other people in Odysseus’s life: his long-suffering and resourceful wife Penelope; his lover and captor, sorcerer and minor goddess Circe; and his family waiting back home in Ithaca. All are creative and compelling stories in their own right.

Read about another entry on Munier's list.

Circe is among J. Nicole Jones's seven books about people accused of being witches, Diana Helmuth's seven top books about modern witchcraft, Megan Barnard's eleven books about misunderstood women in history & mythology, Rita Chang-Eppig's ten top books with irresistible anti-heroines, Emilia Hart's five novels featuring witchcraft, Brittany Bunzey's top ten books centering women in mythology, Mark Skinner's twenty top books in witch lit, Hannah Kaner's five best novels featuring gods, the B&N Reads editors' twenty-four best mythological retellings, Ashleigh Bell Pedersen's eight novels of wonder and darkness by women writers, Kelly Barnhill's eight books about women's rage, Sascha Rothchild's most captivating literary antiheroes, Rachel Kapelke-Dale's eleven top unexpected thrillers about female rage, Kat Sarfas's thirteen enchanted reads for spooky season, Fire Lyte's nine current classics in magic and covens and spells, Elodie Harper's six top novels set in the ancient world, Kiran Millwood Hargrave's seven best books about islands, Zen Cho's six SFF titles about gods and pantheons, Jennifer Saint's ten top books inspired by Greek myth, Adrienne Westenfeld's fifteen feminist books that will inspire, enrage, & educate you, Ali Benjamin's top ten classic stories retold, Lucile Scott's eight books about hexing the patriarchy, E. Foley and B. Coates's top ten goddesses in fiction, Jordan Ifueko's five fantasy titles driven by traumatic family bonds, Eleanor Porter's top ten books about witch-hunts, Emily B. Martin's six stunning fantasies for nature lovers, Allison Pataki's top six books that feature strong female voices, Pam Grossman's thirteen stories about strong women with magical powers, Kris Waldherr's nine top books inspired by mythology, Katharine Duckett's eight novels that reexamine literature from the margins, and Steph Posts's thirteen top novels set in the world of myth.

--Marshal Zeringue

Galina Vromen's "Hill of Secrets," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Hill of Secrets: A Novel by Galina Vromen.

About the book, from the publisher:

If they make my movie into a book, I would like the lead, Christine, to be someone who has the steely character and look of a young Katharine Hepburn, a woman who follows her own path, regardless of convention and who is attractive and lithe without being pretty. Gertie, the teenage hero of the book, might be portrayed by a young Zoe Kazan, a character who exudes vivaciousness and curiousity, with Kazan's big, inquisitive eyes.

I don't have specific actors in mind for the male roles. I have imagined Andre Aciman, the author of Call Me By Your Name, whose writing I admire a lot, as a model Kurt Koppel, Gertie's father, a German Jewish refugee, and a leading physicist on the atomic bomb project. Asiman (who in fact hails from Egypt's Jewish community) is short, and bald but has a magnetic energy about him in interviews and an intellectual breadth in common with Kurt in my book. I don't have anyone in mind for the other main male characters in Hill of Secrets. I'm happy to leave that to the future casting director to decide!!!

As for the director, I would love to see...[read on]

Visit Galina Vromen's website.

The Page 69 Test: Hill of Secrets.

My Book, The Movie: Hill of Secrets.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Carlos Alberto Sánchez's "Blooming in the Ruins"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Blooming in the Ruins: How Mexican Philosophy Can Guide Us toward the Good Life by Carlos Alberto Sánchez.

About the book, from the publisher:

An introduction to major themes in 20th century Mexican philosophy, offering an array of fascinating concepts, from recommending cultivating a rival as a source of motivation to reminding us to respect other people on their own terms.

When we think of philosophy that can guide us in our everyday lives, we are more likely to think of Ancient Greece or Rome than we are 20th-century Mexico. But Mexican philosophy, which came into focus in the last century, following the Mexican Revolution, is a rich and wide-ranging tradition with much to offer readers today. Emerging in defiance of the Western philosophy bound up with colonial power―first brought to Mexico with the Augustinians in the 16th century, and, like so much else, imposed on Mexicans for centuries after that―it boasts a range of powerful ideas and advice for modern-day life. A tradition deeply tied to Mexico's history of colonization, revolution, resistance, and persistence through hardship, this philosophy has much to teach us.

Mexican philosophers had to grapple with questions particular to Mexico that have implications that anyone can and should learn from. Given the way we all must contend with life's unexpected twists and turns, how can we preserve a sense of ourselves, and a coherent way of thinking about the world? How can we deal with emotions that conflict with one another? How can we keep our spirits up when we feel like we are always on our way to a far-off goal? Mexican philosophy offers a specific, historically- and culturally-rooted way to think about these universal questions. We can appreciate the way its ideas followed from the accidents of history that created modern-day Mexico, while also appreciating that they are as universally profound as those passed down in the Western tradition.

Mexican philosophy is a varied, dynamic, and deeply modern resource for meaningful, distinctive wisdom to guide us through our lives. Incorporating stories from his family's and his ancestors' Mexican and Mexican-American experiences, Carlos Alberto Sánchez provides an intriguing guide for readers of all backgrounds, including those who will be learning about philosophy (or Mexico) for the first time.

Visit Carlos Alberto Sánchez's website.

The Page 99 Test: Blooming in the Ruins.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight books about complicated desire

Kate Hamilton is a Professor of English at a university where she teaches literature, literary theory, and women’s writing. She has published numerous books and dozens of academic articles and chapters on a wide array of authors, and she has given talks and keynote speeches about literature, pedagogy, and sexual violence at conferences and workshops throughout the U.S. and in Europe. Her first trade publication, Mad Wife uses these decades of work on literature and sexual violence to clarify her own dark past and illuminate clearer paths forward for other women.

At Lit Hub Hamilton tagged eight books "concerning women’s desire, consent, and autonomy, especially as distorted by marriage." One title on the list:

Han Kang, The Vegetarian (trans. Deborah Smith)

The Vegetarian has gotten a lot of attention as a Man Booker winner whose English translation differs dramatically from its Korean original (and now as the best-known work by our newest Nobel Prize laureate in literature). But little attention has been paid to the novel’s serious treatment of the role unwanted marital sex plays in a husband’s socially sanctioned disregard of his wife’s personhood and in her profound suffering.

Yeong-hye never tells her own story. First, her callous husband describes her mystifying disobedience; then her brother-in-law transforms her into an object for his own creative and sexual pursuits. Finally her sister, In-hye, understands the rationale and bravery of Yeong-hye’s efforts to “shuck off the human” by attempting to transform—Daphne-like—into a tree, first refusing to eat animal flesh and then to ingest anything but sunlight.

This manifestation of Yeong-hye’s attempt to elude male objectification is a version of the anorexia that often accompanies sexual or domestic abuse, which I describe experiencing in Mad Wife. If Yeong-hye can’t be saved, her example can inspire In-hye, and all of us, to “wake up” from the trance of patriarchy that renders women as subhuman from the start.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Vegetarian is among Monika Kim's five best body horror novels, Adam Biles's top ten allegories, M. S. Coe's eleven titles about women on the brink, and Amy Sackville's ten top novels about painters.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Jenny Milchman reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Jenny Milchman, author of The Usual Silence (Arles Shepherd Thriller).

Her entry begins:

Getting lost in a book with nothing else to do besides read it is a unique joy that got me through childhood, but is now pretty much relegated to taking a rare—like, as in a hundred year storm rare—vacation, my birthday, and those fleeting bits of summer when time suddenly and fleetingly expands.

So I am juggling three books right now.

One is a novel called You Will Never Be Me by Jesse Q. Sutanto. I’m reading this as research to inform an aspect of my forthcoming novel, which has a subplot concerning influencer culture. Sultano captures the more outrageous details of being an influencer—purchasing organic carrots at a farmers market, then burying them in your own fallow garden so you can dig them up for a TikTok—which she wraps in a novel that’s less of a whodunnit than a...[read on]

About The Usual Silence, from the publisher:

A psychologist haunted by childhood trauma must unearth all that is buried in her past in this twisting, lyrical novel of suspense by Mary Higgins Clark Award–winning author Jenny Milchman.

Psychologist Arles Shepherd treats troubled children, struggling with each case to recover from her own traumatic past, much of which she’s lost to the shadows of memory. Having just set up a new kind of treatment center in the remote Adirondack wilderness, Arles longs to heal one patient in particular: a ten-year-old boy who has never spoken a word―or so his mother, Louise, believes.

Hundreds of miles away, Cass Monroe is living a parent’s worst nightmare. His twelve-year-old daughter has vanished on her way home from school. With no clues, no witnesses, and no trail, the police are at a dead end. Fighting a heart that was already ailing, and struggling to keep both his marriage and himself alive, Cass turns to a pair of true-crime podcasters for help.

Arles, Louise, and Cass will soon find their lives entangled in ways none of them could have anticipated. And when the collision occurs, a quarter-century-old secret will be forced out of hiding. Because nothing screams louder than silence.

Learn more about the book and author at Jenny Milchman's website.

My Book, The Movie: Cover of Snow.

The Page 69 Test: Cover of Snow.

The Page 69 Test: Ruin Falls.

My Book, The Movie: Ruin Falls.

My Book, The Movie: The Second Mother.

The Page 69 Test: The Second Mother.

Q&A with Jenny Milchman.

My Book, The Movie: The Usual Silence.

The Page 69 Test: The Usual Silence.

Writers Read: Jenny Milchman.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight books about finding magic in the domestic

Cameron Walker is a writer whose work often focuses on the connections between people and the world around them. She is the author of three books, including the award-winning children’s book National Monuments of the U.S.A. and the debut short story collection How to Capture Carbon.

At Electric Lit Walker tagged eight books of

Kitchen Surrealism or perhaps Domestic Fantastic for the charming consonance. Stories of this type can interweave fairytale with fixing a broken faucet, or find the uncanny in untangling the box of charger cords (one of my least favorite tasks), or tell a ghost story in which the haunting is less about horror and more of a way to understand the world of the living.

One title on Walker's list:

Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson

“Ordinary things have always seemed numinous to me,” Marilynne Robinson said in an interview with the Paris Review. In her first novel, Housekeeping, the numinous shines through the ironing, tidying, sewing, and scrubbing that several generations of a family of women do to hold on to their home and to each other after a series of losses in the town of Fingerbone. The rhythm of daily tasks feels like a charm that two sisters, Ruth and Lucille, use to ward off further disaster, and run counterpoint to Ruth’s growing connection to the more dream-like world of her unusual aunt. For me, the novel is less about whether the choice to lean into routine or into the unknown is the right one, but about the courage to continue living, day by day.

Read about another entry on the list.

Housekeeping is among four books that changed Karen Foxlee, Yiyun Li's six favorite novels, Claire Cameron's five favorite stories about unlikely survivors, Sara Zarr's top ten family dramas, Philip Connors's top 10 wilderness books, Kate Walbert's best books, and Aryn Kyle's favorite books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Galina Vromen's "Hill of Secrets"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Hill of Secrets: A Novel by Galina Vromen.

About the book, from the publisher:

In a desert outpost, nuclear scientists and their families face the toll of the secrets they keep from the world and from each other in this gripping wartime novel from debut author Galina Vromen.

Los Alamos, 1943. The US Army has gathered scientists to create the world’s first nuclear weapon. Their families, abruptly moved to the secret desert base with no explanation, have simple orders: Stand by. Make do. Above all, don’t ask questions.

Christine, forced to abandon her art restoration business in New York for her husband’s career, struggles to reinvent herself and cope with his increasing aloofness.

Gertie, the inquisitive teenage daughter of a German Jewish refugee physicist enlists Christine to help her unravel hidden truths and deal with parents haunted by their past.

Gertie’s father, Kurt, anguished by what the Nazis have done to his family and bent on defeating them, carries burdens he longs to share but cannot confide in his wife―leading him to find comfort elsewhere.

And Jimmy, a young army technician, falls for Gertie but is unsure if even her deep affection can overcome his agonizing self-doubts.

Will so much secrecy save them or destroy them?

Visit Galina Vromen's website.

The Page 69 Test: Hill of Secrets.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Stephanie Booth

From my Q&A with Stephanie Booth, author of Libby Lost and Found: A Novel:

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

My original title was The Falling Children Find Their Way Home, which is a nod to the mega-best-selling fantasy book series, The Falling Children, that the main character, Libby Weeks, writes. It took a lot of soul-searching to admit that while I was fond of the title, it wasn't the best entrance into the story.

Libby Lost and Found kinda says it all: Libby has been recently diagnosed with early-onset dementia and feels absolutely adrift in her life. But as she enlists her biggest superfan, an 11-year-old girl named Peanut Bixton, to help her finish her last book in the Falling Children series, they both find parts of themselves they didn't know existed.

So...some heartbreak, but not...[read on]

Visit Stephanie Booth's website.

Q&A with Stephanie Booth.

--Marshal Zeringue