Where to start with Australian crime fiction

Karen of the "AustCrime Fiction" weblog has some suggestions for where to start with Australian crime fiction.

A couple of the entries:

Peter Corris is the master of the hard-bitten PI style here.

For a bit of a switch on the crime scene viewpoint (and the victim's for that matter) Katherine Howell has a second book in the works - and her first Frantic was a great book.

Read the complete post.

Also see:

Writers Read: Peter Corris

The Page 99 Test: Peter Corris' Appeal Denied

The Page 69 Test: Katherine Howell's Frantic

Visit Peter Corris' website.

Learn more about Katherine Howell and her writing at her website.

(h/t to Matilda)

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Jay Bonansinga's "Shattered"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Jay Bonansinga's Shattered.

About the novel, from the publisher:

FBI profiler Ulysses Grove is sure he’s this close to trapping a serial killer ... but the killer is planning a gruesome surprise that will come far too close to home…

The Image Of Murder

The Mississippi Ripper likes to work in pairs—of victims. For every dead body laid to waste, a second one faces it, a grotesque mirror image of terror and torment. Special Agent Ulysses Grove thinks he knows the method to the killer’s madness. But grasping the twisted logic behind the brutal slayings propels him onto a path of danger—to him and to everything he holds dear.

Pushed to the limit, Grove’s only hope is to dig deep into his own past. But this is one serial killer with powerful resources—and Grove’s worst fears are already one step ahead of him...

Among the praise for Shattered:

"Bonansinga's third outing with FBI profiler Ulysses Grove is a first-rate suspense thriller, as compelling as it is frightening. Grove is living with his wife, Maura, and their infant son, Aaron, in northern Virginia when he receives his latest assignment, tracking down a serial killer who offs his victims in pairs before systematically eviscerating them. As he continues his brutal rampage, with Grove doggedly in pursuit, the killer turns his sights on Grove's family—and the villain's preternatural powers may just lead him to their front door. Fortunately for Grove, he's got supernatural aid of his own in his mother's psychic visions; even more fortunate is the way Bonansinga never lets the intensity flag while balancing believable characters, forensic science, hard-nosed detective work and paranormal flourishes. Grove proves to be one of the most genuine, flesh-and-blood suspense-thriller protagonists out there, and the foe Bonansinga pits against him is truly chilling."
--Publishers Weekly

"M. Night Shyamalan, meet Harlan Coben."
--David Ellis

Read an excerpt from Shattered, and learn more about the author and his work at Jay Bonansinga's website.

Watch the video for Shattered.

Shattered is a finalist for ITW's 2008 Thriller Award in Best Paperback Original.

Jay Bonansinga is the author of several acclaimed suspense novels, as well as three original screenplays currently in development in Hollywood.

The Page 69 Test: Shattered.

--Marshal Zeringue

Interview: Emma Anderson

In the latest of the blog's original interviews, the political scientist Ray Taras, whose scholarship includes many publications on ethnic conflict and belonging, interviewed historian and religionist Emma Anderson about her new book, The Betrayal of Faith: The Tragic Journey of a Colonial Native Convert (Harvard University Press, 2007).

One exchange from the interview:

Taras: You explain on page 49 that all-night torture sessions of prisoners carried out by both Innu and Mohawk were an affirmation of key cultural values shared by these antagonistic groups. Torture was understood as a mark of respect for the victim. Elsewhere you seem to regard physical privations (as in the winter trip of the protagonists made in 1633-34) as less severe than psychological traumas. Can you elaborate on why you are more concerned with psychological than corporal scars?

Anderson: I’m not sure that the pain explored in this book can be separated into neat categories of “physical suffering” and “psychological suffering” in quite the way in which you suggest, or that the amount of attention given to each can be neatly tallied. As you point out, suffering is a prominent theme in this book, be it the abstract analysis of the religious and sociological rationale behind indigenous post-war practices that you mention, or in its examination of the experiences of the young man who is the primary subject of this book.

Take, for instance, my presentation of Pastedechouan’s death. By any measure, to die alone of starvation and exposure would represent a terrifying ordeal. In the pages devoted to Pastedechouan’s death, I try to evoke what such an experience would likely have been like – the panic, the attempts to re-establish contact with potential rescuers, the attempt to construct shelter and create fire – and to chart the physiological symptoms of death from exposure – first pain, then numbness, then the illusion of warmth and the overwhelming desire to sleep. After evoking Pastedechouan’s likely actions and somatic experiences, however, I also address his likely state of mind. How would Pastedechouan have interpreted his apparent abandonment by his human kin? by the Innu pantheon? by the Christian God? How would he have interpreted the world which awaited him after death? How would these musings have inflected his experiences during his last hours? My assumption in posing these questions is that the two forms of suffering cannot be separated, as “physical” experiences are always inflected by psychological perceptions, and vice versa.

Another brief example from the book makes the same point. In Chapter Four, Paul Le Jeune’s experiences on the winter hunt are examined. In this case, too, physical and psychological torment are prominent, and, arguably, inescapably intertwined. In the middle of his winter with Pastedechouan’s kin, Le Jeune falls seriously ill, displaying a range of symptoms from vomiting to dizzy spells. Le Jeune’s own analysis of his sickness combines prosaic causations (the dried meat did not agree with his stomach) to a much more complex religious explanation in which he contrasts his spiritual health in a time of dearth to his spiritual sickness in a time of plenty. My analysis of Le Jeune’s ailment explores its physical, psychological, and spiritual dimensions, as well as exploring how his ill-health was explained by the Innu community in which he was embedded.

There is one sense, however, in which I am, as you suggest “more concerned with psychological than corporal scars.” If I were forced at gunpoint to admit a distinction between physical and psychological suffering, and to indicate which is the more painful, I would indeed hold that psychological suffering is the more severe, simply because one’s psychological outlook regarding the meaning or meaninglessness of one’s physical suffering seems to affect how this suffering is perceived and experienced (for good or for ill). For example, Pastedechouan`s documented obsession with hellfire in the last years of his life would doubtless have sharpened rather than blunted the agony (both physical and psychological) of his final hours.

Read the complete Taras-Anderson interview.

Read about The Betrayal of Faith at the Harvard University Press website. Learn more about Emma Anderson's teaching, research, and other publications at her faculty webpage.

The Page 69 Test: The Betrayal of Faith.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Matthew Stanley's "Practical Mystic"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Matthew Stanley's Practical Mystic: Religion, Science, and A. S. Eddington.

About the book, from the publisher:

Science and religion have long been thought incompatible. But nowhere has this apparent contradiction been more fully resolved than in the figure of A. S. Eddington (1882–1944), a pioneer in astrophysics, relativity, and the popularization of science, and a devout Quaker. Practical Mystic uses the figure of Eddington to shows how religious and scientific values can interact and overlap without compromising the integrity of either.

Eddington was a world-class scientist who not only maintained his religious belief throughout his scientific career but also defended the interrelation of science and religion while drawing inspiration from both for his practices. For instance, at a time when a strict adherence to deductive principles of physics had proved fruitless for understanding the nature of stars, insights from Quaker mysticism led Eddington to argue that an outlook less concerned with certainty and more concerned with further exploration was necessary to overcome the obstacles of incomplete and uncertain knowledge.

By examining this intersection between liberal religion and astrophysics, Practical Mystic questions many common assumptions about the relationship between science and spirituality. Matthew Stanley’s analysis of Eddington’s personal convictions also reveals much about the practice, production, and dissemination of scientific knowledge at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Among the acclaim for Practical Mystic:

"In this extraordinary book about the life of the distinguished English astrophysicist Sir Arthur Eddington, Matthew Stanley examines the entangled roles of science and religion in his work.... Practical Mystic is not a biography but a biographical study—a fascinating one."
—Owen Gingerich, Nature

"In this fascinating study of Eddington and his worldviews, author Stanley offers glimpses of the conflicts between science and the religious spirit more than six decades ago. He also gives the reader insights into Eddington's astrophysics and the gist of some of his more popular books. This very interesting and well-researched work is enormously relevant in the context of current confrontations. Though very little seems to have changed in the debates, in actuality, there are no scientists of Eddington's stature today who dare to speak about their religious convictions as openly as Eddington did without risking their professional reputation."
—Choice

Learn more about Practical Mystic at the University of Chicago Press website.

Matthew Stanley is Assistant Professor in the Lyman Briggs College of Science and Department of History at Michigan State University.

The Page 99 Test: Practical Mystic.

--Marshal Zeringue

L. E. Modesitt, Jr.'s "Flash," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: L. E. Modesitt, Jr.'s Flash.

Modesitt's entry opens:

I normally don’t consider who might star if one of my books were made into a movie, because, based on an experience some ten years ago, when a most notable Hollywood director showed an interest in one of my books – and then decided against going further because, despite a high level of destruction, the underlying story was “too complex,” i.e., it actually had significant moral dimensions and questions – it became apparent that whether a book gets to the screen is a form of creative lottery.

Most likely, the book of mine most structurally conducive to being made into a movie, thus far, at least, is Flash, a PI/consultant thriller set three centuries in the future, which features one Jonat deVrai, a former Marine officer who has turned his hand to consulting and analysis of media influence and who is asked to investigate and analyze the use of a new high-tech approach to media in political campaigns. Needless to say, once he discovers what is really happening, everything in his life becomes a target – his occupation, his family, and himself.

Personally, I’d like to see....[read on]

L. E. Modesitt, Jr. is the bestselling author of over forty novels encompassing two science fiction series and three fantasy series, as well as several other novels in the science fiction genre.

Learn more about the author and his many books at L. E. Modesitt, Jr.'s website and his blog.

My Book, The Movie: L. E. Modesitt, Jr.'s Flash.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Jim DeRogatis reading?

The latest contributor to Writers Read: Jim DeRogatis, the pop music critic at the Chicago Sun-Times, the co-host of Public Radio’s “Sound Opinions,” the world’s only rock ’n’ roll talk show, and the author of several books about music, including Let It Blurt: The Life and Times of Lester Bangs, America’s Greatest Rock Critic and Staring at Sound: The True Story of Oklahoma’s Fabulous Flaming Lips.

His entry begins:

By necessity, as part of the music beat, I read almost all of the major pop-music books published in a given year, often because I have to review them; these can range from the ridiculous (one recent assignment was to tackle Everybody Wants Some: The Van Halen Saga by Ian Christe) to the, um, if not exactly sublime (the four greatest rock books ever: Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung by Lester Bangs; Hellfire: The Jerry Lee Lewis Story by Nick Tosches; The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones by Stanley Booth, and The Night (Alone: a novel) by Richard Meltzer), than at least the slightly less ridiculous (Clapton: The Autobiography or Chronicles: Volume One by Bob Dylan).

When it comes to reading for sheer pleasure, however, along with sucking up every issue of The New Yorker, I devour almost anything I can get my hands on in the totally unrelated realm of military campaigns and the politics and social movements behind them, ranging from almost-current affairs... [read on]

Visit the website of Jim DeRogatis to read his Chicago Sun-Times blog and recent articles (including album reviews of R.E.M.'s Accelerate and Gnarls Barkley's Odd Couple), and to learn more about his books and other projects.

Writers Read: Jim DeRogatis.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Fiona Maazel's "Last Last Chance"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Fiona Maazel's Last Last Chance.

About the novel, from the publisher:

Last Last Chance, Fiona Maazel’s first novel, is one of the most distinctive debuts of recent years: a rollicking comic tale about (in no particular order) plague, narcotics recovery, and reincarnation.

A lethal strain of virus vanishes from a lab in Washington, D.C., unleashing an epidemic—and the world thinks Lucy Clark’s dead father is to blame. The plague may be the least of Lucy’s problems. There’s her mother, Isifrid, a peddler of high-end hatwear who’s also a crackhead and pagan theologist. There’s her twelve-year-old half sister, Hannah, obsessed with disease and Christian fundamentalism; and Lucy’s lover, Stanley, who’s hell-bent on finding a womb for his dead wife’s frozen eggs. Lastly, there’s her grandmother Agneth, who believes in reincarnation (and who turns out to be right). And then there is Lucy herself, whose wise, warped approach to life makes her an ideal guide to love among the ruins. Romping across the country, from Southern California to the Texas desert to rural Pennsylvania and New York City, Lucy tries to surmount her drug addiction and to keep her family intact—and tells us, uproariously, all about it.

Last Last Chance is a novel about survival and recovery, opportunity and despair, and, finally, love and faith in an age of anxiety. It introduces Maazel as a new writer of phenomenal gifts.

Among the praise for Last Last Chance:

"Read this book now for the sentence-by-sentence brilliance of Maazel's inimitable voice, and enjoy it to the finish for its sophisticated and vulnerable portrayal of survival -- of the individual and the world-at-large, despite so much stacked against both. Maazel was born in 1975, but her imagination has been on fire for 1000 years."
—Joshua Ferris, author of Then We Came to the End

"Somehow Fiona Maazel has made plague funny and the drug recovery narrative, ossified by predictable writers and their wounds, fresh and moving again. Last Last Chance is a stylish first wonder."
—Sam Lipsyte

"Last Last Chance is not for the faint of heart or dim of humour. It's wicked, witty, a little whacked and surprisingly warm: what more did you want?"
—Wesley Stace, author of Misfortune and By George

"You have to look to Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son for a narrative voice as darkly funny and drug-inflected as Maazel's. This sprawling, wonderfully digressive novel is up to the task at hand: love at the end of the world as we know it."
—Amy Hempel

"Fiona Maazel’s novel Last Last Chance turns heartsickness, family dysfunction, substance abuse and a superplague into the sharpest — and most forgiving — comedy you will find between two covers. It is an absurdist generational saga that ranges widely for its wisdom, shows no mercy in its satire, and stakes out hopeful truths to dwell in during troubling times."
—Benjamin Anastas

"Vigor in every line and a wit about bodies, drugs and plague that forms a positively original voice of our day."
—Barry Hannah, author of Yonder Stands Your Orphan

Learn more about Last Last Chance and its author at Fiona Maazel's website.

Maazel is a writer and freelance editor. Her work has appeared in Bomb, The Boston Book Review, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, The Mississippi Review, Pierogi Press, Salon.com, Tin House, The Village Voice, and The Yale Review.

The Page 69 Test: Last Last Chance.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Lisa Appignanesi's "Mad, Bad and Sad"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Lisa Appignanesi's, Mad, Bad, and Sad: Women and the Mind Doctors.

About the book, from the publisher:

A brave and brilliantly researched intellectual history of the relationship between women and mental illness since 1800.

This is the story of how we have understood extreme states of mind over the last two hundred years and how we conceive of them today, from the depression suffered by Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath to the mental anguish and addictions of iconic beauties Zelda Fitzgerald and Marilyn Monroe. From Mary Lamb, sister of Charles, who in the throes of a nervous breakdown turned on her mother with a kitchen knife, to Freud, Jung, and Lacan, who developed the new women-centered therapies, Lisa Appignanesi’s research traces how more and more of the inner lives and emotions of women have become a matter for medics and therapists. Here too is the story of how over the years symptoms and diagnoses have developed together to create fashions in illness and how treatments have succeeded or sometimes failed. Mad, Bad, and Sad takes us on a fascinating journey through the fragile, extraordinary human mind.

Among the praise for the book:

"The triumph of Mad, Bad and Sad is to mix ... evocative case studies with potted histories of the great and good of psychology and psychiatry. Without wanting to sound too glib about an intelligent and academically rigorous study, this book is an excellent one-stop shop for those wanting to find Freud, Lacan and Melanie Klein among the same pages as Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Wurtzel. There is an attractive mix of the everyday and the clinical."
--Viv Groskop, Guardian

"There is some wonderful writing here and plenty of sharp insights.... Lisa Appignanesi has said it is the book she has been writing all her life. It is also, in many ways, the book we have been waiting for."
--New Statesman

"Endlessly fascinating"
--Independent on Sunday

"Informative in startling ways, and never dull in the academic way, Appignanesi's genuinely new History of the Mind Doctors is a subtle and accessible account of that perhaps most daunting of modern relationships, the one between the Mind Doctor and his female patient. Because Appignanesi has a complex story to tell there is no blaming at work in this wonderful book, but a shrewd and sympathetic apprehension of what is at stake in the difficult histories of both the Mind Doctors and those they seek to help. It is a remarkable achievement."
--Adam Phillips

"Marvellous. At last! A serious, well-researched book on this important subject."
--Pamela Stephenson

"[A]n intelligent and academically rigorous study."
--Observer

Read more about Mad, Bad, and Sad at the publisher's webpage, and visit Lisa Appignanesi's official website.

Lisa Appignanesi is a novelist and writer who has been made a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in recognition of her contribution to literature. She is president of English PEN.

The Page 99 Test: Mad, Bad, and Sad.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Robert Bateman reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Robert L. Bateman, an infantryman, historian, and prolific writer. He is the author of two books -- Digital War, A View from the Front Lines (Presidio: 1999) and No Gun Ri, A Military History of the Korean War Incident (Stackpole, 2002) -- and has contributed to or co-authored seven others.

Bateman was a Military Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and has taught Military History at the U.S. Military Academy.

One paragraph from his entry:

Sitting on my desk is one book that I just now completed, and about which I wrote a review for the US Army War College journal Parameters, Muhammad, Islam's First Great General by military historian Richard Gabriel. The second book resting open here is Vietnam Awakening, My Journey from Combat to the Citizens' Commission of Inquiry on U.S. War Crimes in Vietnam, by Michael Uhl. I'll be doing a review of that one for Vietnam magazine. Finally, one book through which I am selectively fishing, The Interagency and Counterinsurgency Warfare: Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction Roles, published by the Strategic Studies institute of the Army War College and edited by Joseph Cerami and Jay Boggs. [read on]

Read many of Bateman's recent articles at the Committee of Concerned Journalists website and visit Robert L. Bateman's website.

Writers Read: Robert L. Bateman.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Katie Crouch's "Girls in Trucks"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Katie Crouch's Girls in Trucks.

About the book, from the publisher:

Sarah Walters is a less-than-perfect debutante. She tries hard to follow the time-honored customs of the Charleston Camellia Society, as her mother and grandmother did, standing up straight in Cotillion class and attending lectures about all the things that Camellias don't do (like ride with boys in pickup trucks).

But Sarah can't quite ignore the barbarism just beneath all that propriety, and as soon as she can she leaves South Carolina for a life in New York City. Th ere, she and her fellow displaced Southern friends try to make sense of city sophistication, to understand how much of their training applies to real life and how much to the strange and rarefied world they've left behind.

When life's complications become overwhelming, Sarah returns home to confront with matured eyes the motto "Once a Camellia, always a Camellia"—and to see how much fuller life can be, for good and for ill, among those who know you best.

Girls in Trucks introduces a narrative voice that is astonishing and irresistible—a true, sweet, and wise voice that heralds the arrival of an exciting new talent.

Among the early praise for Girls in Trucks:

“Wise, wry and heartbreaking.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Gentle humor and sharp observation couched in straightforward prose with none of the preening preciosity so often seen in Southern fiction.”
—Kirkus

“There are more gasps, sobs, laughs and surprises in these pages than in most people's entire bookshelves. Love never felt so sharp or real as in Katie Crouch's debut.”
—Andrew Sean Greer, author of The Story of a Marriage and The Confessions of Max Tivoli

“Katie Crouch's hip and saucy debut is exquisite, the best kind of book out there: It seduces you into inhaling it while at the same time begging to be savored. Perfect for beach, bus or rehab.”
—Karen Karbo, author of How to Hepburn: Lessons on Living From Kate the Great

“Girls in Trucks is an extraordinary first novel, one that I'm betting will win the hearts of every reader who has ever sought love or dodged it, and anyone who just plain likes to read a book that's savvy, funny-and-sad, wise, and beautifully written. Katie Crouch has the best ear for dialogue I've come across in years; and she knows how to tell a story that catches us up and spirits us into a world that's achingly familiar but full of surprises. Wow.”
—Josephine Humphreys, author of Rich in Love and Nowhere Else on Earth

"Sarah Walters, the heroine of Katie Crouch's Girls in Trucks, is one of those people who never quite fits in—not with her Southern gothic family, not with her comically flawed lovers, not with her for-better-or-worse society sisters. The question is, at what cost? In spare, confident prose, Crouch perfectly captures the peculiar joys and pain of a life lived mostly alone. She is an author who knows the hunger, and resilience, of the human heart. She's also damn funny.”
—Will Allison, author of What You Have Left

“It’s always exciting to hear a new voice – and Katie Crouch speaks in a funny, spiky, highly original voice that carries a reader happily along through this charming novel. Her “Camellia Girls” carry the sweet scent of Charleston, but they’ve got a lot more going on in their heads than most ladies of Southern fiction. I enjoyed this book from beginning to end.”
—Mark Childress, author of One Mississippi and Crazy in Alabama

“In Girls in Trucks everything is cockeyed and wonderful--white-gloved drunks and stoned debutantes, the social rules of hot Charleston and icy New York. And at the center of it all Katie Crouch has brought us Sarah Walters, a devastatingly funny character trying to figure out not just how to manage the waltz, the cha-cha and various dances of heartbreak—but how to stay alive.”
—Victoria Redel, author of Loverboy

Read an excerpt from Girls in Trucks, and learn more about the author and her work at Katie Crouch's website and her blog.

Watch a video of Katie Crouch talking about her novel.

The Page 69 Test: Girls in Trucks.

--Marshal Zeringue

Louis Ferrante's "Unlocked," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: Louis Ferrante's Unlocked: A Journey from Prison to Proust.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the freewheeling rush of hijacking trucks to the brutal race wars that marked his decade-long stint in jail, former Mafia insider Louis Ferrante describes his remarkable journey from rising mobster to federal prison inmate to full-time writer.

As Louis Ferrante tells it, the bottom line was money—and his word was good. During his teenage years, Ferrante and his crew members hijacked delivery trucks and drove them to drop-offs all over New York, reselling the merchandise and pocketing thousands of dollars per load. For a seventeen-year-old who liked fist fighting and fast cars, it was the quickest money on the street, and it soon earned Ferrante the attention of the infamous Gambino crime family, led by late Mob boss John Gotti. In the early nineties, Ferrante's growing Mafia connections enabled him to pull off some of the most lucrative heists in American history—all by the age of twenty-one.

But the same handshakes that once sealed deals soon could no longer be trusted, and the betrayal by several of his close friends brought the feds banging down Ferrante's door. Symptomatic of the nation's larger crackdown on organized crime, indictments came from the Secret Service, the Nassau County Organized Crime Force, and the FBI. By 1994, Ferrante faced a life sentence in prison. He pleaded guilty and would serve nearly a decade in some of the most notorious penitentiaries in America. With raucous violence teeming around him, Ferrante relied on his Mob connections and street smarts to keep him alive—until an unexpected exchange with a guard propelled him to a painful self-reckoning: Who am I? What is it that makes me this way? Do I have a purpose?

Desperate to escape from his bleak surroundings, Ferrante immersed himself in the study of history and literature. Over the term of his incarceration, each book became a much-needed sanctuary from the brutal chaos of his everyday existence, each page a challenge to his rapidly expanding knowledge of the world. Ferrante read voraciously—a journey of the mind that took him from philosophy and ancient classics to nineteenth-century fiction. He also learned the art of writing and studied the major world religions, eventually deciding to become an Orthodox Jew. And with only limited access to legal texts, Ferrante taught himself enough about the American justice system to successfully appeal his own conviction, in a case that is now cited in courtrooms across the country.

Gritty and hard-hitting, Ferrante's memoir recounts his rapid rise to the upper echelons of the Mafia hierarchy, his time in prison, and his struggle to turn his life around. Unlocked is an astonishing journey—a true story of personal transformation that is both shocking and unforgettable.

Read more about Unlocked at the publisher's webpage and at Louis Ferrante's website.

My Book, The Movie: Unlocked.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Louise Penny's "The Cruelest Month"

The latest feature at the Page 99 Test: Louise Penny's The Cruelest Month.

About the book, from the author's website:

Easter in Three Pines is a time of church services, egg hunts and seances to raise the dead.

A group of friends trudges up to the Old Hadley House, the horror on the hill, to finally rid it of the evil spirits that have so obviously plagued it, and the village, for decades. But instead of freeing a spirit, they create a new one. One of their numbers dies of fright. Or was it murder? Enter Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his team from the Surete du Quebec. As they peel back the layers of flilth and artiface that have covered the haunted old home, they discover the evil isn't confined there. Some evil is guiding the actions of one of the seemingly kindly villagers.

But Gamache has a horror all his own to confront. A very personal demon is about to strike.

Easter in Three Pines. A time of rebirth, when nature comes alive. But something very unpleasant has also come alive. And it become clear - for there to be a rebirth, there first must be a death.

Among the acclaim for The Cruelest Month:

"If I thought for one minute this place really existed, I would be packing the car. As it was, on finishing "The Cruelest Month," I grabbed the first two books, "Still Life" and "A Fatal Grace," and spent a lovely weekend in the village. The mouthwatering food, the beautiful gardens, the quirky and literate villagers -- Three Pines is a charming oasis for the spirit....it's more about the journey than the destination in these wonderful books full of poetry, and weather, and a brooding manor house, and people who read and think and laugh and eat a lot of really excellent food.
Move over, Mitford."
--Salem Macknee, Charlotte Observor

“Many mystery buffs have credited Louise Penny with the revival of the type of traditional murder mystery made famous by Agatha Christie.... The book’s title is a metaphor not only for the month of April but also for Gamache’s personal and professional challenges--making this the series standout so far.”
--Sarah Weinman

"Chief Insp. Armand Gamache and his team investigate another bizarre crime in the tiny Québec village of Three Pines in Penny's expertly plotted third cozy (after 2007's A Fatal Grace). As the townspeople gather in the abandoned and perhaps haunted Hadley house for a séance with a visiting psychic, Madeleine Favreau collapses, apparently dead of fright. No one has a harsh word to say about Madeleine, but Gamache knows there's more to the case than meets the eye. Complicating his inquiry are the repercussions of Gamache having accused his popular superior at the Sûreté du Québec of heinous crimes in a previous case. Fearing there might be a mole on his team, Gamache works not only to solve the murder but to clear his name. Arthur Ellis Award–winner Penny paints a vivid picture of the French-Canadian village, its inhabitants and a determined detective who will strike many Agatha Christie fans as a 21st-century version of Hercule Poirot."
--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Gamache is a prodigiously complicated and engaging hero, destined to become one of the classic detectives.”
--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Gamache is an engaging, modern-day Poirot who gently teases out information from his suspects while enjoying marvelous bistro meals and cozy walks on the village common…Penny is an award-winning writer whose cozies go beyond traditional boundaries, providing entertaining characters, a picturesque locale, and thought-provoking plots. Highly recommended."
--Library Journal (starred review)

Read an excerpt from The Cruelest Month, and learn more about the book and its author at Louise Penny's website and her blog.

Penny's first Three Pines mystery, Still Life, won the Arthur Ellis Award from the Crime Writers of Canada and the New Blood Dagger from the British Crime Writers' Association. In the United States, it received the Dilys Award for the book that the members of the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association most enjoyed selling over the past year.

The Page 69 Test: Still Life.

My Book, The Movie: A Fatal Grace.

The Page 99 Test: The Cruelest Month.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five best: books about journalism

Roger Mudd, a former correspondent for CBS, NBC, the PBS "NewsHour" and the History Channel, is the author of The Place to Be: Washington, CBS and the Glory Days of Television News.

He selected a list of the five best books about journalism for the Wall Street Journal.

One title on his list:

Reporting From Washington
By Donald A. Ritchie
Oxford, 2005

Not until I read Donald Ritchie's superb book did I learn why Dan Rather and Fred Graham and Bob Schieffer and Marvin Kalb and I had to report while standing in front of the buildings we covered, even in the rain. It was because CBS News management declared that only Walter Cronkite and Eric Sevareid could be filmed indoors and sitting down. This engrossing, finely written book covers the past 75 years of news coverage from the nation's capital. The chapters on the press are rich in detail, but I'm in awe of the account of television, the field I know best. Yet I did not know that R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, which underwrote NBC's entire news operation in the late 1940s, would not allow "Camel News Caravan" to show pictures of anyone holding a cigar except Winston Churchill (cigarettes were fine, of course) and that on the desk of the show's anchor, the nonsmoking John Cameron Swayze, was a prominently placed ashtray.

Read about another title on Mudd's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Libby Fischer Hellmann's "Easy Innocence"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Libby Fischer Hellmann's Easy Innocence.

About the book, from the publisher:

When pretty, smart Sara Long is found bludgeoned to death, it’s easy to blame the man with the bat.

But Georgia Davis — former cop and newly-minted PI — is hired to look into the incident at the behest of the accused’s sister, and what she finds hints at a much different, much darker answer. It seems the privileged, preppy schoolgirls on Chicago’s North Shore have learned just how much their innocence is worth to hot-under-the-collar businessmen. But while these girls can pay for Prada pricetags, they don’t realize that their new business venture may end up costing them more than they can afford.

Among the early praise for Easy Innocence:

"Libby Hellmann can get into the mind of a character, whether the character is a mentally ill man or a teenage girl. I kept reading after the first brutal and fascinating pages because I... wanted to know what would happen to the good, the bad, the beautiful and the ugly people. PI Georgia Davis, the no-nonsense heart of this tale, is an original who cuts through the surface of the wealthy Chicago suburban North Shore and finds a darkness I didn't see coming. This is good stuff, very good stuff."
—Stuart M. Kaminsky, Grand Master, Mystery Writers of America

"Hellmann's done her homework here and it shows: the writing is assured, the voices authentic, and the understanding both of criminal investigations and relationships among cops, lawyers and prosecutors come to life with great urgency. Her PI, Georgia Davis, works the affluent suburbs north of Chicago, fertile territory for crime that's lain fallow far too long. Davis' arrival on the mean streets is long overdue."
—Sara Paretsky, author of the V.I. Warshawski series and Bleeding Kansas

"Easy Innocence grabs you and doesn't let go. Hellmann's cool style and sleight-of-hand plotting draw you in deep before you know what's happened. This one will keep you up at night."
—SJ Rozan, author of In This Rain

"Hellmann brings to life the reality of hazing and bullying among teenage girls in a story with enough twists and turns to keep you reading to the end. Highly recommended."
—Library Journal (starred review)

"Just what's needed in a mystery... Depth of characterization sets this new entry apart from a crowded field."
—Kirkus Reviews

Read an excerpt from Easy Innocence, and learn more about the author and her work at Libby Fischer Hellmann's website.

Hellmann has edited the acclaimed crime fiction anthology, Chicago Blues, and published over a dozen short stories. Her four novels featuring Chicago video producer and amateur sleuth Ellie Foreman have won numerous awards. Easy Innocence is a spin-off from the Ellie Foreman series. It grew out of Hellmann's experience with her own daughter, and what she imagined as "every mother's nightmare."

The Page 69 Test: A Shot To Die For.

My Book, The Movie: A Shot To Die For.

The Page 69 Test: Easy Innocence.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Paul Berman reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Paul Berman, a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University whose articles and reviews on politics and literature have appeared in The New York Times, the New Republic, the New Yorker, Slate, the Village Voice, Dissent, and various other American, European and Latin American journals.

He has written or edited eight books, including, most recently, Power and the Idealists: Or, the Passion of Joschka Fischer and Its Aftermath, with a new preface by Richard Holbrooke for the 2007 paperback edition; Carl Sandburg: Selected Poems, edited with an introduction, published in 2006 by the American Poets Project of the Library of America; and Terror and Liberalism, a New York Times best-seller in 2003.

The opening paragraph from Berman's Writers Read entry:

I have just finished reading an excellent study of Nazi influences on Islamist radicalism called Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11 by Matthias Küntzel, translated from the German by Colin Meade, with a preface by Jeffrey Herf (Telos Press Publishing). This is quite an eye-opening book. [read on]

Learn more about Paul Berman at his NYU profile webpage.

Writers Read: Paul Berman.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top books on time from the London Times

Iain Finlayson, who reviews nonfiction for the Times (London), named his top six books on time for the newspaper.

One title on his list:

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...” French Republicans devised a “rational” calendar reckoned from September 22, 1792.

Read about the book that topped Finlayson's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Gene Wilder reading?

The actor and comedian Gene Wilder is the author of several books including the memoir, Kiss Me Like a Stranger: My Search for Love and Art.

His first novel, set in France during World War I, is My French Whore.

Wilder has just published a new novella, The Woman Who Wouldn't.

He talked to the Christian Science Monitor about what he was listening to and watching on DVD and on the stage. And about what he was reading:

Anton Chekhov, Short Stories; two volumes. He's my favorite author. He was very influential, actually, in the writing of my new book, The Woman Who Wouldn't, because it was one of his short stories that set something stirring in me. I knew his plays, but then I was asked to do something at the Westport Country Playhouse [in Connecticut], and I said, 'I've always wanted to do a play by Chekhov, a one-act comedy called The Marriage Proposal.' I got so intrigued with Chekhov from that, it set me off on me off on wanting to read short stories. He said he felt that the short stories were better than his plays.

Read more about Gene Wilder's taste in music and movies.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Walter A. McDougall's "Throes of Democracy"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Throes of Democracy: The American Civil War Era 1829-1877 by Walter A. McDougall.

About the book, from the publisher:

"And then there came a day of fire!" From its shocking curtain-raiser—the conflagration that consumed Lower Manhattan in 1835—to the climactic centennial year of 1876, when Americans staged a corrupt, deadlocked presidential campaign (fought out in Florida), Walter A. McDougall's Throes of Democracy: The American Civil War Era, 1829-1877 throws off sparks like a flywheel. This eagerly awaited sequel to Freedom Just Around the Corner: A New American History, 1585-1828 carries the saga of the American people's continuous self-reinvention from the inauguration of President Andrew Jackson through the eras of Manifest Destiny, Civil War, and Reconstruction, America's first failed crusade to put "freedom on the march" through regime change and nation building.

But Throes of Democracy is much more than a political history. Here, for the first time, is the American epic as lived by Germans and Irish, Catholics and Jews, as well as people of British Protestant and African American stock; an epic defined as much by folks in Wisconsin, Kansas, and Texas as by those in Massachusetts, New York, and Virginia; an epic in which Mormon prophet Joseph Smith, showman P. T. Barnum, and circus clown Dan Rice figure as prominently as Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, and Henry Ward Beecher; an epic in which railroad management and land speculation prove as gripping as Indian wars. Walter A. McDougall's zesty, irreverent narrative says something new, shrewd, ironic, or funny about almost everything as it reveals our national penchant for pretense—a predilection that explains both the periodic throes of democracy and the perennial resilience of the United States.

Among the early acclaim for Throes of Democracy:

"A broad-ranging portrait of America in a time of torment.... McDougall ventures that in the Civil War era something of the nation’s essential nature came through: progressive yet conservative, pious yet sanguinary. Provocative and richly detailed--a welcome contribution to popular history."
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"History buffs will definitely gravitate to this thick book. The second in a projected multivolume history of the U.S., it proves as boisterous as the busy, mid-nineteenth-century Americans whose expanding, industrializing, and warring McDougall chronicles.... A provocative survey from a premier historian."
—Booklist (starred review)

Read an excerpt from Throes of Democracy and learn more about the book at the publisher's website.

Walter A. McDougall is Professor of History and the Alloy-Ansin Professor of International Relations at the University of Pennsylvania. His many books include the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age and Freedom Just Around the Corner: A New American History, 1585-1828.

The Page 99 Test: Throes of Democracy.

--Marshal Zeringue

The Rap Sheet’s “Crime Life List”

Time is running out to contribute to The Rap Sheet's survey of "mystery and thriller novels that you think every fan of this genre ought to read before he or she dies."

Here's the latest reminder from J. Kingston Pierce, editor of The Rap Sheet:

Don’t forget that we’re still looking for nominations to The Rap Sheet’s “Crime Life List” of mystery and thriller novels that you think every fan of this genre ought to read before he or she dies. Simply e-mail the title and author of the book you’d like to nominate, plus two or three sentences explaining why you think it deserves a place on our roster, to jpwrites@sprynet.com. And in the subject line, please type “Book List.”

The deadline for submissions is this coming Friday, April 4.

See Pierce's original post for more details.

My own nomination:

James Ellroy, American Tabloid

Ellroy made the Telegraph's list, singled out for The Black Dahlia and the rest of the L.A. Quartet. Those are great crime novels, yet Ellroy's finest work is American Tabloid, perhaps the best American novel of 1995 ... and not measured against only crime novels. Superbly written, it's packed with more crimes than any other novel I can think of--and, outrageous as it seems, many of crimes are based on actual events.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Elizabeth Crane reading?

The latest featured contributor to Writers Read: Elizabeth Crane, author of three collections of short stories -- When The Messenger is Hot, All This Heavenly Glory, and You Must Be This Happy to Enter.

From her entry:

The thing about this book [I've been reading] is that there was so much hype about it, even more by the time I finally cracked it, that for me it was almost destined to fail in some way. I'm always suspicious when there's that much attention on a book, you know, that isn't mine. You think - there's no way that all these people could be right about this. [read on]

About You Must Be This Happy to Enter, from the publisher:

Whether breathlessly enthusiastic serenely calm, or really concentrating on their personal zombie issues, Crane's happy cast explore the complexities behind personal satisfaction. You Must Be This Happy to Enter exists in a world very much like our own but infused with more joy and magic. It's a place where the happy are jailed, the sincere cause confusion, and pop culture so seamlessly melds with real life that characters can walk right out of the television and come live with you.

Crane's third collection, aims to convey something fresh in literature: utter sincerity. With a trademark mix of hyperreality, humor, and heartfelt emotion, You Must Be This Happy to Enter asks readers to connect with the loopy ways of her characters. Because even though they're occasionally severed from reality, they still seem to know something you don't about keeping upbeat in a strange and crumbling environment.

The opening story features a woman who can speak only in exclamations. Betty may be a zombie on a reality TV show, but she's a woman willing to work on herself. Sally is just plain old freaking happy. (You shouldn't even read this story.) Another woman gives birth to a baby who turns into Ethan Hawke, but by golly, she's not going to let that stop her from being a good parent. What happens when a town turns transparent overnight? Do people run away just because they're basically naked? No. What would you do if your perfect man was jailed for being happy? What would you do if you had words on your forehead? You'd use it to your advantage, that's what! How does a couple manage their differences over bananas? They freak out, and then they laugh. Do you have a better idea?

Visit Crane's website and her blog.

Writers Read: Elizabeth Crane.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: "Modern China: A Very Short Introduction"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Rana Mitter's Modern China: A Very Short Introduction.

About the book, from the Oxford University Press:

China today is never out of the news: from human rights controversies and the continued legacy of Tiananmen Square, to global coverage of the Beijing Olympics, and the Chinese "economic miracle." It is a country of contradictions and transitions: a peasant society with some of the world's most futuristic cities, an ancient civilization that is modernizing as rapidly as possible, a walled-off nation that is increasingly at the center of world trade. This Very Short Introduction offers an indispensable starting point for anyone who needs to quickly know the themes and controversies that have shaped modern China. Prize-winning author and scholar Rana Mitter examines the modern history, politics, economy, and thriving cultural scene of contemporary China, and its relations with the wider world. This lively guide covers a range of social issues from the decline of footbinding and the position of women in society, to the influence of television and film, and the role of the overseas Chinese diaspora. It covers many prominent figures as well, such as the Communist leaders, the last emperors, and prominent writers and artists throughout China's history.

Among the early praise for the book:

"[A]s historian Rana Mitter argues, modern China has become a bewildering mix of nationalism, communism, Confucian values and what Mao condemned as "economism" - the pursuit of ever higher living standards. Above all, says Mitter memorably, "China is a plural noun." He neatly surveys the last 200 years of its history with a view to defining China's unique brand of modernity."
--PD Smith, Guardian

"[C]overs a great deal of ground in a consistently engaging fashion and manages to remain accessible even when tackling complex issues."
--Jeff Wasserstrom

Watch a video of Mitter introducing his book.

Read more about Modern China: A Very Short Introduction at the Oxford University Press website.

Learn more about Rana Mitter's research and publications at his faculty webpage.

Rana Mitter is University Lecturer in the History and Politics of Modern China and Fellow of St Cross College, University of Oxford. His previous publications include The Manchurian Myth: Nationalism, Resistance, and Collaboration in Modern China. (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2000)
and A Bitter Revolution: China's Struggle with the Modern World. (Oxford, 2004).

The Page 69 Test: Modern China: A Very Short Introduction.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Susan Levine's "School Lunch Politics"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Susan Levine's School Lunch Politics: The Surprising History of America's Favorite Welfare Program.

About the book, from the publisher:

Whether kids love or hate the food served there, the American school lunchroom is the stage for one of the most popular yet flawed social welfare programs in our nation's history. School Lunch Politics covers this complex and fascinating part of American culture, from its origins in early twentieth-century nutrition science, through the establishment of the National School Lunch Program in 1946, to the transformation of school meals into a poverty program during the 1970s and 1980s. Susan Levine investigates the politics and culture of food; most specifically, who decides what American children should be eating, what policies develop from those decisions, and how these policies might be better implemented.

Even now, the school lunch program remains problematic, a juggling act between modern beliefs about food, nutrition science, and public welfare. Levine points to the program menus' dependence on agricultural surplus commodities more than on children's nutritional needs, and she discusses the political policy barriers that have limited the number of children receiving meals and which children were served. But she also shows why the school lunch program has outlasted almost every other twentieth-century federal welfare initiative. In the midst of privatization, federal budget cuts, and suspect nutritional guidelines where even ketchup might be categorized as a vegetable, the program remains popular and feeds children who would otherwise go hungry.

As politicians and the media talk about a national obesity epidemic, School Lunch Politics is a timely arrival to the food policy debates shaping American health, welfare, and equality.

Among the early praise for School Lunch Politics:

"With School Lunch Politics, Sue Levine has served up a rich plate on which the histories of food, public policy, childhood, and social reform come together in complicated, intermingling ways. The result is a capacious and balanced book about the elusive quest for an equitable society and a balanced meal."
--Daniel Horowitz, author of The Anxieties of Affluence

"School Lunch Politics tells the fascinating history of the National School Lunch Program, which officially began in 1946 and continues to this day. This is an important book and will be valuable for many audiences. It should receive attention not only from historians (especially historians of twentieth-century social policy) but also a broader audience interested in the current obesity crisis and the commercialization of public life. Any reader of Fast Food Nation will love this book."
--Robyn Muncy, University of Maryland

Read the introduction and learn more about the book at the Princeton University Press website.

Susan Levine is professor of history at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her previous books include Labor’s True Woman: Carpet Weavers, Industrialization, Labor Reform in the Gilded Age and Degrees of Equality: The American Association of University Women and the Challenge of Twentieth Century Feminism.

The Page 99 Test: School Lunch Politics.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Ann Cleeves reading?

The latest contributor to Writers Read: Ann Cleeves, winner of the Duncan Lawrie Dagger Award for best crime novel of 2006 for Raven Black, the first volume of her Shetland Quartet.

Her entry begins:

Well, I love European crime in translation. I've been asked to interview the Norwegian writer Karin Fossum at Crime Fest in Bristol in June, so I've been re-reading her backlist and catching up on her most recent titles. Her new book Broken isn't really crime fiction, but it is very creepy. It's about the process of imagination, I think. About how writers write. [read on]

The follow-up to Raven Black, White Nights, will be released this week in the UK and in September in the US.

Among the early praise for White Nights:

"In true Agatha Christie style, Cleeves once again pulls the wool over our eyes with cunning and conviction."
--Colin Dexter

"A most satisfying mystery set in an isolated and intriguing location."
--Peter Robinson

Visit Cleeves's website and read her online diary.

The Page 99 Test: Raven Black.

Writers Read: Ann Cleeves.

--Marshal Zeringue

Interview: Steve Hockensmith

Today at Author Interviews: the second of a two-part Q&A in which award-winning mystery writers, both with new novels in bookstores, quiz each other about their writing.

In part one, Steve Hockensmith (of the “Holmes on the Range” mystery series) interviewed Bill Crider (of the Dan Rhodes mystery series) about Crider’s new book, Of All Sad Words, and related subjects. In part two, Crider questions Hockensmith about his new book, The Black Dove.

Check out Big Red's blog to learn more about Steve Hockensmith and his writing.

Hockensmith's previous novels include Holmes on the Range and On the Wrong Track.

The Page 69 Test: On the Wrong Track.

My Book, The Movie: Holmes on the Range.

The Page 99 Test: The Black Dove.

* * *

Visit Bill Crider's website and his blog.

Read the Page 69 Test entries for Crider's A Mammoth Murder and Murder Among the OWLS as well as an excellent write-up about Dan Rhodes on the big screen at "My Book, The Movie."

The Page 69 Test: Of All Sad Words.

Author Interviews: Bill Crider.

Author Interviews: Steve Hockensmith.

--Marshal Zeringue