Pg. 69: Naomi J. Williams's "Landfalls"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Landfalls by Naomi J. Williams.

About the book, from the publisher:

In her wildly inventive debut novel, Naomi J. Williams reimagines the historical Lapérouse expedition, a voyage of exploration that left Brest in 1785 with two frigates, more than two hundred men, and overblown Enlightenment ideals and expectations, in a brave attempt to circumnavigate the globe for science and the glory of France.

Deeply grounded in historical fact but refracted through a powerful imagination, Landfalls follows the exploits and heartbreaks not only of the men on the ships but also of the people affected by the voyage-indigenous people and other Europeans the explorers encountered, loved ones left waiting at home, and those who survived and remembered the expedition later. Each chapter is told from a different point of view and is set in a different part of the world, ranging from London to Tenerife, from Alaska to remote South Pacific islands to Siberia, and eventually back to France. The result is a beautifully written and absorbing tale of the high seas, scientific exploration, human tragedy, and the world on the cusp of the modern era.

By turns elegiac, profound, and comic, Landfalls reinvents the maritime adventure novel for the twenty-first century.

Visit Naomi J. Williams's website.

The Page 69 Test: Landfalls.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jonathan Freedland's "The 3rd Woman," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The 3rd Woman: A Thriller by Jonathan Freedland.

The entry begins:

Of course, I would say this – but I reckon any director would love to be handed the task of turning The 3rd Woman into a movie. I’d like to think that’s because it's a gripping story full of twists and turns, with a compelling central character. But, if I'm honest, what would surely prove irresistible to a moviemaker is something much more straightforward: the setting.

The 3rd Woman is set in a Los Angeles – and an America – that is a lot like today’s, but with a crucial difference. This America is getting used to the fact that it is no longer number one on the planet, having lost its place as the global superpower to China. In this LA, the slang, the food, the calendar, even the air people breathe is different. There are Mao-themed restaurants. Everyone covers their faces to keep out the smog. In late January, red lanterns hang from the trees to mark the Chinese new year. And looming over the city is a vast, secretive Chinese military base.

I suspect an imaginative director – whether Ridley Scott or Danny Boyle – could have great fun creating this new, subtly different LA. They needn’t go full Bladerunner. At first glance this city would look like the Los Angeles we all know. Only on closer inspection would it reveal itself as ever so slightly changed - if not warped.

What about the cast? At the centre of The 3rd Woman is Madison Webb, a dogged investigative reporter whose skill in the professional realm is matched only by the chaos in the personal one. She’s a brilliant and resourceful journalist, but a pretty hopeless girlfriend, daughter and sister. She’s also a chronic insomniac, kept awake by...[read on]

Visit Jonathan Freedland's website.

My Book, The Movie: The 3rd Woman.

--Marshal Zeringue

Coffee with a canine: Camille Griep & Dutchess Marie Siefker-Griep

Featured at Coffee with a Canine: Camille Griep and Dutchess Marie Siefker-Griep.

The author, on how she and Dutch were united:

My grandmother, who still lives in my hometown of Montana, had wanted a puppy and the one she picked out was very ill, so the breeders offered her one of their adults who hadn’t been successful as breeding dogs. However, my grandmother’s boxer, who is very much a one-person sort of dog , didn’t appreciate the arrival of another adult female and she and Dutch fought terribly, requiring stitches for them both more than once.

Last summer, while helping my grandmother move to a smaller house, complicating the situation for the dogs, I offered to take Dutchess home with me instead. She’s...[read on]

About Cammile Griep's new novel Letters to Zell, from the publisher:

Everything is going according to story for CeCi (Cinderella), Bianca (Snow White), and Rory (Sleeping Beauty)—until the day that Zell (Rapunzel) decides to leave Grimmland and pursue her life. Now, Zell’s best friends are left to wonder whether their own passions are worth risking their predetermined “happily ever afters,” regardless of the consequences. CeCi wonders whether she should become a professional chef, sharp-tongued and quick-witted Bianca wants to escape an engagement to her platonic friend, and Rory will do anything to make her boorish husband love her. But as Bianca’s wedding approaches, can they escape their fates—and is there enough wine in all of the Realm to help them?

In this hilarious modern interpretation of the fairy-tale stories we all know and love, Letters to Zell explores what happens when women abandon the stories they didn’t write for themselves and go completely off script to follow their dreams.

Visit Camille Griep's website.

The Page 69 Test: Letters to Zell.

Coffee with a Canine: Camille Griep and Dutchess Marie Siefker-Griep.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten novels with multiple narratives

Susan Barker is the author of the novels Sayonara Bar (2005), The Orientalist and the Ghost (2008), and The Incarnations (2014). One of her top ten novels with multiple narratives, as shared at Publishers Weekly:

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

Centered on the ill-fated de Leon family, blighted (according to the narrator, Yunior) by a multi-generational curse, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao moves back and forth between Oscar de Leon’s childhood in '70s and '80s New Jersey, to Oscar’s sister Lola’s teenage rebellion, to their mother Belico’s harsh life in Trujillo-era '50s and '60s Santo Domingo. Written by Yunior (a reluctant friend from Oscar’s student days at Rutgers) in energetic, idiosyncratically slangy prose, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is a tragicomic and exhilarating read.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao appears among BBC Culture's twelve greatest novels of the 21st century, Emily Temple's fifty greatest debut novels since 1950, Niall Williams's top ten bookworms' tales, Chrissie Gruebel's nine best last lines in literature, Alexia Nader's nine favorite books about unhappy families, Jami Attenberg's top six books with overweight protagonists, Brooke Hauser's six top books about immigrants, Sara Gruen's six favorite books, Paste magazine's list of the ten best debut novels of the decade (2000-2009), and The Millions' best books of fiction of the millenium. The novel is one of Matthew Kaminski's five favorite novels about immigrants in America and is a book that made a difference to Zoë Saldana.

The Page 99 Test: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

--Marshal Zeringue

Frank Rich's ten top books

Frank Rich joined New York magazine in June 2011 as Writer-at-Large, writing monthly on politics and culture, and editing a special monthly section anchored by his essay. His books include Ghost Light: A Memoir and, most recently, The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth From 9/11 to Katrina.

For One Grand he named ten books that influenced him before he finished high school (Woodrow Wilson High, Washington, D.C., class of ‘67). One title on the list:

Lord of the Flies
William Golding

The cruel politics of the schoolyard, and beyond.

Read about another book on the list.

Lord of the Flies is on Non Pratt's top ten list of toxic friendships in literature, Francesca Haig's top ten list of the greatest twins in children’s books, Shaun Byron Fitzpatrick list of thirteen favorite, occasionally-banned, YA novels, Matt Kraus's list of six famous books with extremely faithful film adaptations, Michael Hogan's list of the ten best fictional evil children, Danny Wallace's six best books list, Gemma Malley's top ten list of dystopian novels for teenagers, AbeBooks' list of 20 books of shattered childhoods and is one of the top ten works of literature according to Stephen King. It appears on John Mullan's lists of ten of the best pigs in literature, ten of the best pairs of glasses in literature, and ten of the best horrid children in literature, Katharine Quarmby's top ten list of disability stories, and William Skidelsky's list of ten of the best accounts of being marooned in literature. It is a book that made a difference to Isla Fisher and is one of Suzi Quatro's six best books.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Leslie Budewitz reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Leslie Budewitz, author of Butter Off Dead.

Her entry begins:

I’ve been doing a lot of driving around Montana this summer, with a big stack of audio books on the seat next to me. That raises the pesky question whether listening is reading. Yes, in my view, though it reading with my ears is a vastly different experience from reading with my eyes. I miss the ability to flip back and check a phrase I missed—or one I particularly liked. But there’s something wonderfully comforting about being read to. And I feel freer to choose books I might not pick up otherwise, because my sit-down-and-read time is limited. Audio books let me dip into other worlds beyond the light-hearted mysteries I write.

At the moment, I’m listening to The Husband’s Secret by Liane Moriarty. I can’t remember the last time I read a book set in Australia—something more recent than The Thorn Birds, I hope! From the brief prologue about Pandora of myth—did you know she was given a jar, not a box?—and the opening lines of Chapter 1, I knew this book was going to be...[read on]

About Butter Off Dead, from the publisher:

As the national bestselling Food Lovers’ Village Mysteries continue, the merchants of Jewel Bay, Montana, try to heat up chilly winter business with a new film festival. But their plans are sent reeling when a dangerous killer dims the lights on a local vendor…

In an attempt to woo tourists to Jewel Bay and cheer up the townies, Erin Murphy, manager of the specialty local foods market known as the Merc, is organizing the First Annual Food Lovers’ Film Festival, filled with classic foodie flicks and local twists on favorite movie treats. But when her partner in planning, painter Christine Vandeberg, is found dead only days before the curtain rises, Erin suspects someone is attempting to stop the films from rolling.

To make matters worse, Nick—Erin’s brother and Christine’s beau—has top billing on the suspect list. Convinced her brother is innocent and determined that the show must go on, Erin has to find who’s really to blame before Nick gets arrested or the festival gets shut down. But the closer she gets to the killer, the more likely it becomes that she’ll be the next person cut from the program…

Visit Leslie Budewitz's website, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.

The Page 69 Test: Butter Off Dead.

Writers Read: Leslie Budewitz.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Randy McBee's "Born to Be Wild"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Born to Be Wild: The Rise of the American Motorcyclist by Randy D. McBee.

About the book, from the publisher:

In 1947, 4,000 motorcycle hobbyists converged on Hollister, California. As images of dissolute bikers graced the pages of newspapers and magazines, the three-day gathering sparked the growth of a new subculture while also touching off national alarm. In the years that followed, the stereotypical leather-clad biker emerged in the American consciousness as a menace to law-abiding motorists and small towns. Yet a few short decades later, the motorcyclist, once menacing, became mainstream. To understand this shift, Randy D. McBee narrates the evolution of motorcycle culture since World War II. Along the way he examines the rebelliousness of early riders of the 1940s and 1950s, riders' increasing connection to violence and the counterculture in the 1960s and 1970s, the rich urban bikers of the 1990s and 2000s, and the factors that gave rise to a motorcycle rights movement. McBee's fascinating narrative of motorcycling's past and present reveals the biker as a crucial character in twentieth-century American life.

Learn more about Born to Be Wild at The University of North Carolina Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Born to Be Wild.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top stoners from the arts and culture

At the Guardian Tim Lewis tagged ten top stoners from the arts and entertainment. Only one poet made the list:

Charles Baudelaire
Poet

The 19th-century French poet is one of the great chroniclers of drug use and his memoir Artificial Paradises features a detailed analysis of hashish. He was a member, along with other influential Parisian authors Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo and Honoré de Balzac, of Club des Hachichins (Hashish-Eaters’ Club), which met regularly between 1844 and 1849. “At first, a certain absurd, irresistible hilarity overcomes you,” he noted of their experiments. But, surprisingly, although far from strait-laced – he smoked opium and drank very heavily – Baudelaire was unconvinced by the appeal of hashish. It boosted creativity, he found, but artists risked becoming too dependent on it.

Read about another entry on the list.

Also see Sam Munson's six best stoner novels.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Christopher Farnsworth's "The Eternal World"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Eternal World: A Novel by Christopher Farnsworth.

About the book, from the publisher:

If you could live forever, what would you die for?

Five hundred years ago, a group of Spanish conquistadors searching for gold, led by a young and brilliant commander named Simon De Oliveras, land in the New World. What they find in the sunny and humid swamps of this uncharted land is a treasure far more valuable: the Fountain of Youth. The Spaniards slaughter the Uzita, the Native American tribe who guard the precious waters that will keep the conquistadors young for centuries. But one escapes: Shako, the chief’s fierce and beautiful daughter, who swears to avenge her people—a blood oath that spans more than five centuries...

When the source of the fountain is destroyed in our own time, the loss threatens Simon and his men, and the powerful, shadowy empire of wealth and influence they have built. For help, they turn to David Robinton, a scientific prodigy who believes he is on the verge of the greatest medical breakthrough of all time. But as the centuries-old war between Shako and Simon reaches its final stages, David makes a horrifying discovery about his employers and the mysterious and exotic woman he loves. Now, the scientist must decide: is he a pawn in a game of immortals. . . or will he be its only winner?

Learn more about the book and author at Christopher Farnsworth's website.

Farnsworth is also the author of the bestselling Nathaniel Cade series, about a vampire who works for the President of the United States. Called “the best debut vampire novel in many years” and “dazzlingly clever” by critics, the books have been optioned by producer Lucas Foster (Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Man on Fire, Law-Abiding Citizen)

The Page 69 Test: Blood Oath.

The Page 69 Test: The Eternal World.

--Marshal Zeringue

Susan Campbell Bartoletti's "Terrible Typhoid Mary," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Terrible Typhoid Mary: A True Story of the Deadliest Cook in America by Susan Campbell Bartoletti.

From her entry:

As serious as the story of Terrible Typhoid Mary is, I’d cast comedic actors in the roles. (Mind you, I don’t know if these people can sing, but most of Audrey Hepburn’s singing in My Fair Lady was dubbed by Mami Nixon, according to IMDb.) Before you balk at this choice, consider how effective Will Ferrell was in Stranger than Fiction and Steve Carell as the sick and twisted du Pont in Foxcatcher.

In the role of 38-year-old Mary Mallon, aka Typhoid Mary, I’d cast Tina...[read on]

Visit Susan Campbell Bartoletti's website.

My Book, The Movie: Terrible Typhoid Mary.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five novels featuring runaway parents

Jeff Somers is the author of Lifers, the Avery Cates series from Orbit Books, Chum from Tyrus Books, and We Are Not Good People from Pocket/Gallery. He has published over thirty short stories as well.

At B & N Reads Somers tagged "five novels in which parents ran off and left their children to fend for themselves—with powerful consequences," including:

Where’d You Go, Bernadette?, by Maria Semple

After having suffered the sort of betrayal and professional setback that destroys people, Bernadette Fox is living (more or less as a recluse) in Seattle with her husband and her precocious, brilliant daughter, Bee. Bernadette’s decision to run away and leave her family behind is sparked by what can only be seen as a complete emotional breakdown, but this is communicated in such caustic, hilarious episodes that the gravity of Bernadette’s mental and emotional condition is obscured. Her flight to, of all places, Antarctica, and Bee’s detective work in tracking her down to bring her back (in more ways than one) is equally hilarious and heartwarming, as Bernadette grows and evolves into a better person, and her daughter Bee sees her mother in a more realistic if no less affectionate light, as the murky details of her past are brought into clarity.

Read about another entry on the list.

Where’d You Go, Bernadette is among Chrissie Gruebel's seven great books for people who love Modern Family, Charlotte Runcie's ten best bad mothers in literature, Joel Cunningham's seven notable epistolary novels and Chrissie Gruebel's five top books for readers inspired by Nora Ephron.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Nadia Hashimi reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Nadia Hashimi, author of When the Moon Is Low.

Her entry begins:

I've got a couple of books on my "nightstand" right now. In the last two or three years, I've forced myself to be more open to e-books and audio books which has allowed me to enjoy more stories than I would if I relied only on books I can flip through. I'm listening to State of Wonder by Ann Patchett. I thought I would identify with Marina Singh, the protagonist, since she's also a physician but the novel has her traveling through the Amazon in a quest to find out why the Lakashi women remain fertile well into their golden years. That's a far cry from my work as a pediatrician in a Washington DC hospital but that makes it...[read on]

About When the Moon Is Low, from the publisher:

Mahmoud's passion for his wife Fereiba, a schoolteacher, is greater than any love she's ever known. But their happy, middle-class world—a life of education, work, and comfort—implodes when their country is engulfed in war, and the Taliban rises to power.

Mahmoud, a civil engineer, becomes a target of the new fundamentalist regime and is murdered. Forced to flee Kabul with her three children, Fereiba has one hope to survive: she must find a way to cross Europe and reach her sister's family in England. With forged papers and help from kind strangers they meet along the way, Fereiba make a dangerous crossing into Iran under cover of darkness. Exhausted and brokenhearted but undefeated, Fereiba manages to smuggle them as far as Greece. But in a busy market square, their fate takes a frightening turn when her teenage son, Saleem, becomes separated from the rest of the family.

Faced with an impossible choice, Fereiba pushes on with her daughter and baby, while Saleem falls into the shadowy underground network of undocumented Afghans who haunt the streets of Europe's capitals. Across the continent Fereiba and Saleem struggle to reunite, and ultimately find a place where they can begin to reconstruct their lives.

Visit Nadia Hashimi's website.

The Page 69 Test: When the Moon Is Low.

Writers Read: Nadia Hashimi.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Leslie Budewitz's "Butter Off Dead"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Butter Off Dead by Leslie Budewitz.

About the book, from the publisher:

As the national bestselling Food Lovers’ Village Mysteries continue, the merchants of Jewel Bay, Montana, try to heat up chilly winter business with a new film festival. But their plans are sent reeling when a dangerous killer dims the lights on a local vendor…

In an attempt to woo tourists to Jewel Bay and cheer up the townies, Erin Murphy, manager of the specialty local foods market known as the Merc, is organizing the First Annual Food Lovers’ Film Festival, filled with classic foodie flicks and local twists on favorite movie treats. But when her partner in planning, painter Christine Vandeberg, is found dead only days before the curtain rises, Erin suspects someone is attempting to stop the films from rolling.

To make matters worse, Nick—Erin’s brother and Christine’s beau—has top billing on the suspect list. Convinced her brother is innocent and determined that the show must go on, Erin has to find who’s really to blame before Nick gets arrested or the festival gets shut down. But the closer she gets to the killer, the more likely it becomes that she’ll be the next person cut from the program…

Visit Leslie Budewitz's website, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.

The Page 69 Test: Butter Off Dead.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top psychological thrillers

Ruth Ware has worked as a waitress, a bookseller, a teacher of English as a foreign language and a press officer. She is married with two small children, and In a Dark, Dark Wood is her début thriller.

One of her top ten psychological thrillers, as shared at B & N Reads:

We Were Liars, by E. Lockhart

While it was published as young adult, readers of any age will be gripped by this slow, hypnotic tale of a monied, uptight New England family, and the weight of a secret that unfolds with shocking violence.

Learn about another book on the list.

We Were Liars is among Meredith Moore's five favorite YA thrillers.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Deanna Fei's"Girl in Glass"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Girl in Glass: How My "Distressed Baby" Defied the Odds, Shamed a CEO, and Taught Me the Essence of Love, Heartbreak, and Miracles by Deanna Fei.

About the book, from the publisher:

Deanna Fei was just five-and-a-half months pregnant when she inexplicably went into labor. Minutes later, she met her tiny baby who clung to life support inside a glass box. Fei was forced to confront terrifying questions: How to be the mother of a child she could lose at any moment. Whether her daughter would survive another day--and whether she should. But as she watched her daughter fight for her life, Fei discovered the power of the mother-child bond at its most elemental.

A year after she brought her daughter home from the hospital, the CEO of AOL--her husband's employer--blamed the beautiful, miraculously healthy little girl for a cut in employee benefits and attached a price tag to her life, using a phrase, "distressed babies," that set off a national firestorm.

Girl in Glass is the riveting story of one child's harrowing journey and a powerful distillation of parenthood. With incandescent prose and an unflinching eye, Fei explores the value of a human life: from the spreadsheets wielded by cost-cutting executives to the insidious notions of risk surrounding modern pregnancy; from the wondrous history of medical innovation in the care of premature infants to contemporary analyses of what their lives are worth; and finally, to the depths of her own struggle to make sense of her daughter's arrival in the world. Above all, Girl in Glass is a luminous testament to how love takes hold when a birth defies our fundamental beliefs about how life is supposed to begin.

Learn more about the book and author at Deanna Fei's website.

The Page 99 Test: Girl in Glass.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is David Hofmeyr reading?

Featured at Writers Read: David Hofmeyr, author of Stone Rider.

His entry begins:

Winter's Bone
Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell steeps you in a bleak and twisted landscape with prose that burns. I feasted on his words, reading slowly to prolong the joy. Every page has something to revel in. “Amid the harsh landscape of the Ozark Hills, sixteen-year-old Ree is taking care of her mother and two brothers. Her father has put their house up as bail and if he doesn't show up at court it'll be sold from under them. To save her family she needs to track him down but in a community riven with long-running feuds getting answers isn't easy.” This is a modern day fairy-tale. Ree heads into the woods on a primal quest to save her family and the ogres she encounters on the road are the in-bred redneck meth-burning criminals of the Ozarks. A brutal and gripping story. But there is beauty and majesty. Winter’s Bone throws you into an uncompromising world with...[read on]

About Stone Rider, from the publisher:

In the vein of The Outsiders and the early Western novels of Elmore Leonard, this inventive debut novel, a cross between the cult classic Mad Max movie series and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, blends adrenaline-fueled action with an improbable yet tender romance to offer a rich and vivid portrayal of misfits and loners forced together in their struggle for a better life.

Adam Stone wants freedom and peace. He wants a chance to escape Blackwater, the dust-bowl desert town he grew up in. Most of all, he wants the beautiful Sadie Blood. Alongside Sadie and the dangerous outsider Kane, Adam will ride the Blackwater Trail in a brutal race that will test them all, body and soul. Only the strongest will survive.

The prize? A one-way ticket to Sky-Base and unimaginable luxury.

And for a chance at this new life, Adam will risk everything.

Visit David Hofmeyr's website.

Stone Rider is one of Rachel Paxton-Gillilan's top five YA books for Mad Max fans.

My Book, the Movie: Stone Rider.

The Page 69 Test: Stone Rider.

Writers Read: David Hofmeyr.

--Marshal Zeringue

Lisa Moses Leff's "The Archive Thief," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Archive Thief: The Man Who Salvaged French Jewish History in the Wake of the Holocaust by Lisa Moses Leff.

The entry begins:

The Archive Thief is about a Jewish historian named Zosa Szajkowski (Shy-KOV-ski) who stole tens of thousands of documents from the archives in France between 1940 (during World War II) and 1961 (when he was caught red-handed). What interested Szajkowski in the archives was anything that could be used for writing the history of the Jews of Europe— government documents, synagogue records, Jewish charity organization record books, you name it. Some of the stuff dated back to the 18th century, most of it was from the 19th and 20th century. He took all his booty back to the U.S., where he used it as evidence in his books and articles, and when he was done, he sold the documents off to American Jewish research libraries, which still have them today.

Ever since I started writing this book, people have asked me who would play Szajkowski in a future movie version. It’s a strange question for an academic to consider, but this isn’t your typical academic book. Szajkowski’s a fascinating character and the story is full of drama— so perhaps a movie adaptation will indeed be in the cards. I’ve certainly given the casting enough thought! The bulk of the action takes place before and during World War II, when Szajkowski served as a soldier first in the French Foreign Legion and then later, for the U.S. Army.

--For Szajkowski: Joaquin Phoenix. Szajkowski was both a tough guy and an intellectual— self-made, determined, and smart. He was emotionally strong, solid to the point of being hard. He saw firsthand the...[read on]

Learn more about The Archive Thief at the Oxford University Press website.

My Book, The Movie: The Archive Thief.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Nadia Hashimi's "When the Moon Is Low"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: When the Moon Is Low: A Novel by Nadia Hashimi.

About the book, from the publisher:

Mahmoud's passion for his wife Fereiba, a schoolteacher, is greater than any love she's ever known. But their happy, middle-class world—a life of education, work, and comfort—implodes when their country is engulfed in war, and the Taliban rises to power.

Mahmoud, a civil engineer, becomes a target of the new fundamentalist regime and is murdered. Forced to flee Kabul with her three children, Fereiba has one hope to survive: she must find a way to cross Europe and reach her sister's family in England. With forged papers and help from kind strangers they meet along the way, Fereiba make a dangerous crossing into Iran under cover of darkness. Exhausted and brokenhearted but undefeated, Fereiba manages to smuggle them as far as Greece. But in a busy market square, their fate takes a frightening turn when her teenage son, Saleem, becomes separated from the rest of the family.

Faced with an impossible choice, Fereiba pushes on with her daughter and baby, while Saleem falls into the shadowy underground network of undocumented Afghans who haunt the streets of Europe's capitals. Across the continent Fereiba and Saleem struggle to reunite, and ultimately find a place where they can begin to reconstruct their lives.

Visit Nadia Hashimi's website.

The Page 69 Test: When the Moon Is Low.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten books about food

J. Ryan Stradal's new novel is Kitchens of the Great Midwest.

One of his ten top books about food, as shared at the Guardian:

Pow! by Mo Yan

“During the day they made meat-filled dumplings and rolled noodles to feed the Koreans; at night, after the restaurant closed, they cooked a pot of dog meat and opened a bowl of strong white liquor. Each of them held a dog’s leg – two legs out of the pot, and two more inside – with its bewitching aroma, waiting to be eaten.”

Nobel prize winner Mo both retells his childhood in post-Cultural Revolution rural China as burlesque and critiques his country’s modern-day government in this surreal, wonderful, visceral novel set in a meat-obsessed town called Slaughterhouse Village.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Nick Holdstock reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Nick Holdstock, author of The Casualties: A Novel.

His entry begins:

I’ve just finished reading William Vollmann’s new novel, The Dying Grass, a 1300 page novel about the Nez Perce Indian war in 1877. During this the US army pursued the Nez Perce Indians over three months, killing many of them in the process. Those that were captured were placed on reservations where they were further preyed on by missionaries and profiteers. I doubt I’ll read anything as good as this book for a while – it’s rich, formally daring and has consistently wonderful sentences. Like Vollmann’s other historical novels, it also has the virtue of being honest about what’s been made up, distorted, or lifted from historical sources, which actually makes the whole thing seem...[read on]

About The Casualties, from the publisher:

In Nick Holdstock's The Casualties, a man recounts the final weeks of his neighborhood before the apocalyptic event that only a few of the eccentric residents will survive.

Samuel Clark likes secrets. He wants to know the hidden stories of the bizarre characters on the little streets of Edinburgh, Scotland. He wants to know about a nymphomaniac, a man who lives under a bridge, a girl with a cracked face. He wants to uncover their histories because he has secrets of his own. He believes, as people do, that he is able to change. He believes, as the whole world does, that there is plenty of time to solve his problems. But Samuel Clark and the rest of the world are wrong. Change and tragedy are going to scream into his and everyone's lives. It will be a great transformation, a radical change; and it just might be worth the cost.

Written by a rising literary star whose work has been published in notoriously selective publications such as n+1 and The Southern Review, The Casualties is an ambitious debut novel that explores how we see ourselves, our past and our possible futures. It asks the biggest question: How can we be saved?

Visit Nick Holdstock's website.

Writers Read: Nick Holdstock.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Svetlana Stephenson's "Gangs of Russia"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Gangs of Russia: From the Streets to the Corridors of Power by Svetlana Stephenson.

About the book, from the publisher:

Since their spectacular rise in the 1990s, Russian gangs have remained entrenched in many parts of the country. Some gang members have perished in gang wars or ended up behind prison bars, while others have made spectacular careers off the streets and joined the Russian elite. But the rank and file of gangs remain substantially incorporated into their communities and society as a whole, with bonds and identities that bridge the worlds of illegal enterprise and legal respectability.

In Gangs of Russia, Svetlana Stephenson explores the secretive world of the gangs. Using in-depth interviews with gang members, law enforcers, and residents in the city of Kazan, together with analyses of historical and sociological accounts from across Russia, she presents the history of gangs both before and after the arrival of market capitalism.

Contrary to predominant notions of gangs as collections of maladjusted delinquents or illegal enterprises, Stephenson argues, Russian gangs should be seen as traditional, close-knit male groups with deep links to their communities. Stephenson shows that gangs have long been intricately involved with the police and other state structures in configurations that are both personal and economic. She also explains how the cultural orientations typical of gangs—emphasis on loyalty to one's own, showing toughness to outsiders, exacting revenge for perceived affronts and challenges—are not only found on the streets but are also present in the top echelons of today's Russian state.

Learn more about Gangs of Russia at the Cornell University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Gangs of Russia.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five creepy monsters from fantasy fiction

Aliette de Bodard has won two Nebula Awards, a Locus Award, and a BSFA Award, and has also been a finalist for the Hugo, Sturgeon, and Tiptree Awards. Her new novel is The House of Shattered Wings. For Tor.com she tagged her five creepiest monsters in fantasy, including:

The Other Mother—Coraline by Neil Gaiman

I hesitated a lot over picking this one, because Neil Gaiman has a knack for really scary creepy monsters and there were several others that I could have named. In the end, though… there’s little scarier than a thing that look like a dream mother—attentive, cooking better food and seemingly more loving—except that it turns out she steals eyes, keeps around the ghost-children she’s killed, and plans to do the same to Coraline….

Read about another entry on the list.

Coraline appears among Shaun Byron Fitzpatrick's top seven awesomely scary novels and Sam Leith's top ten alternative realities.

--Marshal Zeringue

James Abel's "Protocol Zero," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Protocol Zero by James Abel.

The entry begins:

I certainly would love for Protocol Zero to be a movie, but I don't really envision one actor or another in the part of Joe Rush. I think that's because the best actors always surprise us with their range. Once I sold a novel to Paramount because Jodie Foster wanted to play the lead. Unfortunately, the script was so late in coming in that Foster went on to other things, I was told. But the fascinating thing for me was that she'd wanted to play a part I wrote for a man. And she would have been perfect. That part was about strength through loneliness.

Joe Rush, my Marine doctor and bio-terror expert in Protocol Zero, is a strong, moral person but also someone who can't stop once he starts after something. Drive is his talent but also...[read on]

Visit James Abel's website.

The Page 69 Test: Protocol Zero.

Writers Read: James Abel.

My Book, The Movie: Protocol Zero.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Tom Harper reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Tom Harper, author of Zodiac Station: A Novel.

His entry begins:

I’ve been reading Maurice Druon’s The Iron King, the first book in his Accursed Kings series about the Capetian monarchs of France in the fourteenth century. I only needed one reason to pick it up: the cover quote from George RR Martin that said, ‘This is the original Game of Thrones’.

I’m a big fan of Game of Thrones, both the TV series and the books. As lots of people have commented, it’s really historical fiction about history that didn’t happen (with dragons) – with the advantage that as it’s made up, you live it forwards, rather than through the distorting lens of known historical outcomes. That gives it a shock value you don’t get with real history: it reminds you that at the time, no-one knew who was going to survive, let alone win. I never really felt...[read on]

About Zodiac Station, from the publisher:

For fans of Dan Brown and Michael Crichton—an eerie, evocative thriller set in the unforgiving Arctic from the author of The Orpheus Descent.

Deep in the Arctic, the US Coast Guard icebreaker Terra Nova batters its way through the frozen sea. A gaunt figure skis out of the fog on the pack ice. He says his name is Thomas Anderson, and that he’s the lone survivors of a terrible accident at the research outpost Zodiac Station, located on the ice-bound island of Utgard.

Ten days earlier, he’d arrived at Zodiac Station looking to resurrect a career destroyed by scientific scandal. But things quickly went wrong when the man who hired him, brilliant biochemist Martin Hagger, turned up dead, at the bottom of a crevasse. The base commander insisted he fell. But footprints in the snow told a much different story. As Anderson tells a tale of sabotage, suspicion, and paranoia, the mystery only deepens.

When other survivors are discovered and their stories cast doubt on Anderson’s reliability, it seems the grim fate of the scientists at Zodiac Station may involve human greed, jealousy, oil company trickery, Russian espionage, genetic experimentation, and global warming. But the truth is something no one on the Terra Nova could have imagined.

A fast-paced, gripping thriller that marries science and adventure, Zodiac Station is as chilling and unpredictable as the fierce Arctic landscape.

Visit Tom Harper's website.

My Book, The Movie: Zodiac Station.

The Page 69 Test: Zodiac Station.

Writers Read: Tom Harper.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: David Hofmeyr's "Stone Rider"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Stone Rider by David Hofmeyr.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the vein of The Outsiders and the early Western novels of Elmore Leonard, this inventive debut novel, a cross between the cult classic Mad Max movie series and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, blends adrenaline-fueled action with an improbable yet tender romance to offer a rich and vivid portrayal of misfits and loners forced together in their struggle for a better life.

Adam Stone wants freedom and peace. He wants a chance to escape Blackwater, the dust-bowl desert town he grew up in. Most of all, he wants the beautiful Sadie Blood. Alongside Sadie and the dangerous outsider Kane, Adam will ride the Blackwater Trail in a brutal race that will test them all, body and soul. Only the strongest will survive.

The prize? A one-way ticket to Sky-Base and unimaginable luxury.

And for a chance at this new life, Adam will risk everything.

Visit David Hofmeyr's website.

Stone Rider is one of Rachel Paxton-Gillilan's top five YA books for Mad Max fans.

My Book, the Movie: Stone Rider.

The Page 69 Test: Stone Rider.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Justin Gifford's "Street Poison"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Street Poison: The Biography of Iceberg Slim by Justin Gifford.

About Street Poison, from the publisher:

The first and definitive biography of one of America’s bestselling, notorious, and influential writers of the twentieth century: Iceberg Slim, né Robert Beck, author of the multimillion-copy memoir Pimp and such equally popular novels as Trick Baby and Mama Black Widow. From a career as a, yes, ruthless pimp in the ’40s and ’50s, Iceberg Slim refashioned himself as the first and still the greatest of “street lit” masters, whose vivid books have made him an icon to such rappers as Ice-T, Jay-Z, and Snoop Dogg and a presiding spirit of “blaxploitation” culture. You can’t understand contemporary black (and even American) culture without reckoning with Iceberg Slim and his many acolytes and imitators.

Literature professor Justin Gifford has been researching the life and work of Robert Beck for a decade, culminating in Street Poison, a colorful and compassionate biography of one of the most complicated figures in twentieth-century literature. Drawing on a wealth of archival material—including FBI files, prison records, and interviews with Beck, his wife, and his daughters—Gifford explores the sexual trauma and racial violence Beck endured that led to his reinvention as Iceberg Slim, one of America’s most infamous pimps of the 1940s and ’50s. From pimping to penning his profoundly influential confessional autobiography, Pimp, to his involvement in radical politics, Gifford’s biography illuminates the life and works of one of American literature’s most unique renegades.

Learn more about Street Poison at the publisher's website.

My Book, The Movie: Street Poison.

Writers Read: Justin Gifford.

The Page 99 Test: Street Poison.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten world-changing books

The Guardian asked ten authors to pick a book that changed the world. Rebecca Stott tagged:

The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin

Darwin wasn’t the first to propose that species have mutated through time; the idea of evolution has been around in some form or other since the ancient Greeks. But it was Darwin – and, simultaneously, Alfred Russel Wallace – who worked out natural selection as the mechanism by which evolution worked.

The Origin of Species put cats among pigeons and rattled clerical cages. Darwin knew it would; that’s why the book is so quiet and steady and reasonable, why it builds incrementally. This is “just one long argument”, made from ordinary things designed to appeal to the good sense of his readers: Darwin asks us to consider bees, pigeons, worms and hedgerows, to look around us and judge with our own eyes. “There is grandeur in this view of life,” he wrote, “from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”

It isn’t just zoologists and biologists who have explored and developed Darwin’s propositions. The work of political theorists, sociologists, anthropologists and philosophers has been shot through with Darwinian ideas, particularly the notion of competition for survival. “The history of all hitherto existing society,” the Communist Manifesto opens, “is the history of class struggles.” Charles Kingsley’s The Water Babies and Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland explored the comedy of the relationship between humans and their animal kin. By the end of the century, authors such as HG Wells were exploring the darker aspects of the Darwinian vision – the bestial underside of human nature.

The book changed the way we think about the world. It demonstrated that the diversity of the natural world could be explained without recourse to supernatural agency and proposed instead that it had been shaped by chance collisions and incremental changes through billions of years. It also showed us that the Earth is not preprogrammed to progress. Species that outgrow themselves risk extinction, not because they are being punished for their hubris but because they are making themselves unfit, destroying the means of their own survival. “We are all netted together,” Darwin wrote. In confronting the daunting challenges of the coming decades, this may be his most important lesson.

Read about another book on the list.

On the Origin of Species is among Daisy Hildyard's ten best poems, books, and plays about our human inheritance, Clive Finlayson's five best books on extinction, and Gerald Imber's five best books on cosmetic surgery.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Sara Nickerson reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Sara Nickerson, author of The Secrets of Blueberries, Brothers, Moose & Me.

Her entry begins:

Bad Feminist, by Roxane Gay, is a collection of essays about gender, race, culture, and politics. After reading, “I Was Once Miss America,” which broke my heart, I raced out to buy Book One of Sweet Valley High, the beloved series of Gay’s childhood. Gay’s essays can make a person do...[read on]

About The Secrets of Blueberries, Brothers, Moose & Me, from the publisher:

Determined to make some extra money, twelve-year-old Missy and her older brother Patrick get summer jobs picking blueberries at a local farm. For Missy, though, blueberry picking quickly becomes about more than just money— it’s the perfect distraction from the fact that her two best friends have gone off to summer camp without her and that her dad is getting remarried. Why can’t everything go back to the way it used to be? Back to normal? But, Missy soon discovers that the summer is full of secrets: the secrets to making her family feel whole again; the secrets to keeping her two best friends from changing and leaving her behind; the secrets of a local farm’s blood feud; and most importantly, the secrets of blueberries.

Author Sara Nickerson infuses warmth and emotion into this relatable story about finding something special within yourself and a place to call your own in even the most tumultuous of times.

Visit Sara Nickerson's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Sara Nickerson & Pico.

The Page 69 Test: The Secrets of Blueberries, Brothers, Moose & Me.

My Book, The Movie: The Secrets of Blueberries, Brothers, Moose & Me.

Writers Read: Sara Nickerson.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Camille Griep's "Letters to Zell"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Letters to Zell by Camille Griep.

About the book, from the publisher:

Everything is going according to story for CeCi (Cinderella), Bianca (Snow White), and Rory (Sleeping Beauty)—until the day that Zell (Rapunzel) decides to leave Grimmland and pursue her life. Now, Zell’s best friends are left to wonder whether their own passions are worth risking their predetermined “happily ever afters,” regardless of the consequences. CeCi wonders whether she should become a professional chef, sharp-tongued and quick-witted Bianca wants to escape an engagement to her platonic friend, and Rory will do anything to make her boorish husband love her. But as Bianca’s wedding approaches, can they escape their fates—and is there enough wine in all of the Realm to help them?

In this hilarious modern interpretation of the fairy-tale stories we all know and love, Letters to Zell explores what happens when women abandon the stories they didn’t write for themselves and go completely off script to follow their dreams.

Visit Camille Griep's website.

The Page 69 Test: Letters to Zell.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top classics to read before you're 10

Mary Sebag-Montefiore adapts adult classics for children and has rewritten everything from Wuthering Heights to War and Peace. At the Guardian she tagged ten classics every child should read before they are 10, including:

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

One of the best-loved children’s books of all time. Bad-tempered, ugly orphan Mary Lennox is sent to her uncle’s spooky house on the Yorkshire moors. She discovers a locked, forgotten garden, and, shut up in one of the bedrooms, her cousin Colin, a spoilt, hypochondriac invalid. As they restore the garden, Mary becomes a loving, giving girl; Colin an engaging, active boy. I don’t know of any child who doesn’t like this book.

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

David Hofmeyr's "Stone Rider," the movie

Featured at My Book, the Movie: Stone Rider by David Hofmeyr.

The entry begins:

I’m thrilled to say Working Title films have bought the option to make the film and they have already drafted in Dave Andron of Justified fame to pen the script.

If you’d have asked me to pick a screenwriter, I couldn’t have made a better choice. I love his writing. His dialogue is superb and he knows how to deliver a superb villain.

In terms of casting, it’s more difficult, because with YA books to film you’re often dealing with unknowns or kids with one or two films under their belt. But for the male characters I liked Theo James in Divergent. He’d be closest to...[read on]

Visit David Hofmeyr's website.

Stone Rider is one of Rachel Paxton-Gillilan's five YA books for Mad Max fans.

My Book, the Movie: Stone Rider.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is James Abel reading?

Featured at Writers Read: James Abel, author of Protocol Zero.

His entry begins:

Since James Abel wears two hats, thriller writer and serious journalist, my reading habits go in both directions and both feed my writing. On the international thriller end, I'm currently rereading two favorites: The Polish Officer by Alan Furst, and The Secret Speech by Tom Rob Smith. Both are wonderful books, evoking time and place and pitting a lone character against...[read on]

About Protocol Zero, from the publisher:

When authorities in Alaska receive a disturbing call from a teenage girl, their investigation leads them to discover an entire family of researchers dead. Joe Rush is called to help examine the bodies. On the surface, it looks like a brutal murder/suicide. But the situation is nowhere near that simple—nor is it over.

Upon closer investigation, Rush discovers the terrifying truth. The research team has fallen victim to something that seems impossible at first, yet the evidence looks undeniable in the lab. Now the danger may threaten thousands more.

Unfortunately, he’s not the only one with knowledge of the looming disaster. The army has cordoned off part of Alaska, and Rush soon finds himself the target of trained killers. Someone suspects Rush of betraying his country. To save countless lives—starting with his own—Rush must uncover the answers hidden in the Arctic. The question is—will he find them in time?

Visit James Abel's website.

The Page 69 Test: Protocol Zero.

Writers Read: James Abel.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: J. Matthew Gallman's "Defining Duty in the Civil War"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Defining Duty in the Civil War: Personal Choice, Popular Culture, and the Union Home Front by J. Matthew Gallman.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Civil War thrust Americans onto unfamiliar terrain, as two competing societies mobilized for four years of bloody conflict. Concerned Northerners turned to the print media for guidance on how to be good citizens in a war that hit close to home but was fought hundreds of miles away. They read novels, short stories, poems, songs, editorials, and newspaper stories. They laughed at cartoons and satirical essays. Their spirits were stirred in response to recruiting broadsides and patriotic envelopes. This massive cultural outpouring offered a path for ordinary Americans casting around for direction.

Examining the breadth of Northern popular culture, J. Matthew Gallman offers a dramatic reconsideration of how the Union's civilians understood the meaning of duty and citizenship in wartime. Although a huge percentage of military-aged men served in the Union army, a larger group chose to stay home, even while they supported the war. This pathbreaking study investigates how men and women, both white and black, understood their roles in the People's Conflict. Wartime culture created humorous and angry stereotypes ridiculing the nation's cowards, crooks, and fools, while wrestling with the challenges faced by ordinary Americans. Gallman shows how thousands of authors, artists, and readers together created a new set of rules for navigating life in a nation at war.

Learn more about Defining Duty in the Civil War at the University of North Carolina Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Defining Duty in the Civil War.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five of the strongest fictional single moms

At B & N Reads Jenny Shank tagged five of the strongest single mothers in fiction, including:

Lulu Nanapush (Love Medicine, by Louise Erdrich)

Lulu Nanapush, who appears in several of Louise Erdrich’s novels, including Love Medicine and Tracks, is the mother of eight boys and one girl by a variety of fathers. Although she has a busy romantic life, she manages to maintain an orderly home. “Even with eight boys her house was neat as a pin. The candy bowl on the table sat precisely on its doily,” Erdrich writes. “All her furniture was brushed and straightened.” Perhaps the best thing about Lulu is her confidence in her choices, and her lack of concern for those who judge her. She says, “When they tell you that I was heartless, a shameless man-chaser, don’t ever forget this: I loved what I saw. And yes, it is true that I’ve done all the things they say. That’s not what gets them. What aggravates them is I’ve never shed one solitary tear. I’m not sorry. That’s unnatural. As we all know, a woman is supposed to cry.”

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Helen Phillips's "The Beautiful Bureaucrat"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Beautiful Bureaucrat: A Novel by Helen Phillips.

About the book, from the publisher:

A young wife's new job in an enigmatic organization pits her against the unfeeling machinations of the universe in this inventive and compulsively page-turning first novel

In a windowless building in a remote part of town, the newly employed Josephine inputs an endless string of numbers into something known only as The Database. After a long period of joblessness, she's not inclined to question her fortune, but as the days inch by and the files stack up, Josephine feels increasingly anxious in her surroundings--the office's scarred pinkish walls take on a living quality, the drone of keyboards echoes eerily down the long halls. When one evening her husband Joseph disappears and then returns, offering no explanation as to his whereabouts, her creeping unease shifts decidedly to dread.

As other strange events build to a crescendo, the haunting truth about Josephine's work begins to take shape in her mind, even as something powerful is gathering its own form within her. She realizes that in order to save those she holds most dear, she must penetrate an institution whose tentacles seem to extend to every corner of the city and beyond. Both chilling and poignant, The Beautiful Bureaucrat is a novel of rare restraint and imagination. With it, Helen Phillips enters the company of Murakami, Bender, and Atwood as she twists the world we know and shows it back to us full of meaning and wonder--luminous and new.

Visit Helen Phillips's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Beautiful Bureaucrat.

--Marshal Zeringue