Catherine Reef's "Noah Webster: Man of Many Words," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Noah Webster: Man of Many Words by Catherine Reef.

The entry begins:

Biographies on the big screen—how we love them! What could be more enthralling than a famous person’s efforts to make it in a hostile world? He or she overcomes addiction, holds a nation together, or simply struggles to be understood, and we can’t tear our eyes away. It’s no wonder figures as diverse as Edith Piaf, Stephen Hawking, Lincoln, and Liberace have been given the cinematic treatment in recent years. So why not Noah Webster?

Imagine the appeal: thrilling panoramas of Revolutionary War battle, tense debates inside Independence Hall and the Connecticut State House, a glorious parade through eighteenth-century Manhattan with thousands of extras in period dress cheering and waving (are you paying attention, Martin Scorsese?); Webster at his desk, busily writing.

Now imagine the pivotal scene in which Webster comes ashore after crossing the Hudson River in 1782, at Newburgh, New York, the site of General George Washington’s headquarters. There he encounters the assembled American forces waiting to be disbanded. Picture him walking among...[read on]

Visit Catherine Reef's website.

The Page 69 Test: Frida & Diego.

Coffee with a Canine: Catherine Reef & Nandi.

My Book, The Movie: Noah Webster.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six of the creepiest YA stories that take place in the woods

At B & N Teen Blog, Shaun Byron Fitzpatrick tagged six YA stories that take place in the woods, including:

Crimson Bound, by Rosamund Hodge

Rachelle has very good reason to fear the forest: as a teenager she strayed from the path and was marked by a Forestborn, making her an agent of darkness. Though she devotes her life to protecting her kingdom from forest creatures intent on killing mankind, Rachelle knows it’s only a matter of time before the Devourer returns and the forest overtakes them. With the help of the King’s maimed illegitimate son, Rachelle must face the forest (and her own darkness) once and for all, and attempt to slay the creature that awaits her.

Read about another entry on the list.

Crimson Bound is one of Sona Charaipotra's seven top YA books for fans of Game of Thrones.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Catriona McPherson reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Catriona McPherson, author of The Child Garden.

Her entry begins:

I had to leave twenty unread pages of Sophie Hannah’s magnificent The Monogram Murders when I got up this morning. (Yes, I read novels in bed on Tuesday mornings. And I call it working too.) I picked it up at Bloody Scotland last September after hearing Sophie speak about the honour/pressure of writing the first book featuring one of Dame Agatha’s characters to have been sanctioned by the Christie estate. There’s much more to the book than just this but I do have to say – she nailed it. The plot is quintessentially Christie: clever, convincing despite being truly bonkers, and hugely satisfying. The tone is pure Christie too. Not the Christie of the vicarage and the library – nor even the Orient Express – but one of the slyly nasty ones like The ABC Murders or...[read on]

About The Child Garden, from the publisher:

Eden was its name. “An alternative school for happy children.” But it closed in disgrace after a student’s suicide. Now it’s a care home, the grounds neglected and overgrown. Gloria Harkness is its only neighbor, staying close to her son who lives in the home, lighting up her life and breaking her heart each day.

When a childhood friend turns up at her door, Gloria doesn’t hesitate before asking him in. He claims a girl from Eden is stalking him and has goaded him into meeting near the site of the suicide. Only then, the dead begin to speak—it was murder, they say.

Gloria is in over her head before she can help it. Her loneliness, her loyalty, and her all-consuming love for her son lead her into the heart of a dark secret that threatens everything she lives for.

Visit Catriona McPherson's website.

Writers Read: Catriona McPherson.

--Marshal Zeringue

Four books that changed Daniel Herborn

Daniel Herborn is a writer and lawyer who lives in Sydney, Australia. His first novel for young adults is You're the Kind of Girl I Write Songs About.

One of four books that changed Herborn, as shared at the Sydney Morning Herald:

A CHANGE IS GONNA COME: MUSIC, RACE & THE SOUL OF AMERICA
Craig Werner

I picked this up as some slightly off-topic reading when I was studying history and knew instantly I hadn't read anything like it before. It was sweeping and optimistic and covered music from Sam Cooke to Public Enemy and detailed how it both reflected and inspired the civil rights movement. Werner's enthusiasm influenced how I write about music; it makes you want to listen to all the songs you haven't heard and appreciate the ones you do know more deeply.

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Robin Constantine's "The Secrets of Attraction"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Secrets of Attraction by Robin Constantine.

About the book, from the publisher:

Set in the same world as The Promise of Amazing, this smart, surprising, and romantic follow-up to Robin Constantine's debut novel follows two New Jersey teens as they become friends and fall in love. Perfect for fans of Stephanie Perkins, Sarah Mlynowski, and Jennifer E. Smith.

Madison Pryce thinks she's got everything figured out—she's working on a portfolio for a summer art program and hanging with her friends. Plus she has her hot boyfriend, Zach. But then a visit from a family friend turns Maddie's life upside down.

Jesse McMann is still reeling from a breakup that shattered his heart and his band. Then pride (and some goading from his bass player and fellow barista) forces him to find a new drummer—and the inspiration to write music again.

Kismet arrives in the unlikely form of Grayson Barrett, who tries out for Jesse's band, and whose girlfriend is BFFs with the cute girl who orders a chai latte after yoga every Thursday: Maddie. What Jesse and Maddie thought they knew about the secrets of attraction and the rules of romance changes once they start falling for each other.

Visit Robin Constantine's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Promise of Amazing.

The Page 69 Test: The Secrets of Attraction.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten fictional teachers

At the Guardian Stuart Husband tagged his top ten fictional teachers. One of the literary educators:

Miss Jean Brodie from The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Muriel Spark’s Miss Brodie is the apotheosis of the teacher-as-charismatic-cult-leader strain in literature, from Socrates to Julian Morrow in Donna Tartt’s The Secret History. An enigmatic spinster at a conservative girls’ school in 1930s Edinburgh, she celebrates her “prime” by hand-picking a bunch of elect pupils to mould into the “crème de le crème”, via an appreciation of the rarefied delights of drama, art and incipient fascism (she’s an early admirer of Mussolini and Hitler). One of her charges compares her to a Calvinist deity (“she thinks she is Providence... the beginning and the end”), but Miss Brodie herself sounds more Jesuitical: “Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life!”

Read about another entry on the list.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is among Rachel Cooke's top ten spinsters, Karin Altenberg's top ten books about betrayal, Megan Abbott's five most dangerous mentors in fiction, the Barnes & Noble Review's list of five top books on teaching and learning and Ian Rankin's six best books. Miss Jean Brodie is one of John Mullan's ten best teachers in literature.

Also see Melissa Albert's six most notorious teachers in literature and John Mullan's ten best teachers in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Lillian Faderman's "The Gay Revolution"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Gay Revolution: The Story of the Struggle by Lillian Faderman.

About the book, from the publisher:

The sweeping story of the modern struggle for gay, lesbian, and trans rights—from the 1950s to the present—based on amazing interviews with politicians, military figures, legal activists, and members of the entire LGBT community who face these challenges every day.

The fight for gay, lesbian, and trans civil rights—the years of outrageous injustice, the early battles, the heart-breaking defeats, and the victories beyond the dreams of the gay rights pioneers—is the most important civil rights issue of the present day. Based on rigorous research and more than 150 interviews, The Gay Revolution tells this unfinished story not through dry facts but through dramatic accounts of passionate struggles, with all the sweep, depth, and intricacies only an award-winning activist, scholar, and novelist like Lillian Faderman can evoke.

The Gay Revolution begins in the 1950s, when law classified gays and lesbians as criminals, the psychiatric profession saw them as mentally ill, the churches saw them as sinners, and society victimized them with irrational hatred. Against this dark backdrop, a few brave people began to fight back, paving the way for the revolutionary changes of the 1960s and beyond. Faderman discusses the protests in the 1960s; the counter reaction of the 1970s and early eighties; the decimated but united community during the AIDS epidemic; and the current hurdles for the right to marriage equality.

In the words of the eyewitnesses who were there through the most critical events, The Gay Revolution paints a nuanced portrait of the LGBT civil rights movement. A defining account, this is the most complete and authoritative book of its kind.

Visit Lillian Faderman's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Gay Revolution.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Jay Atkinson reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Jay Atkinson, author of Massacre on the Merrimack: Hannah Duston's Captivity and Revenge in Colonial America.

His entry begins:

This time of year is re-reading season for me. Right now I am reading Maggie Cassidy by Jack Kerouac, since I will be teaching Jack Kerouac and the Beats this fall at Boston University. In this vastly underrated novel, Kerouac is able to capture the bittersweet feelings of first love, as well as the quicksilver of a young, shy, Franco-American football hero’s senior year in high school. He does this by matching the romanticism of Wolfe and Saroyan with his own investigation into what he called “spontaneous prose,” resulting in a book that makes me feel nostalgic for that time of life when I read it. That’s about a big a compliment as...[read on]

About Massacre on the Merrimack, from the publisher:

Early on March 15, 1697, a band of Abenaki warriors in service to the French raided the English frontier village of Haverhill, Massachusetts. Striking swiftly, the Abenaki killed twenty-seven men, women, and children, and took thirteen captives, including thirty-nine-year-old Hannah Duston and her week-old daughter, Martha. A short distance from the village, one of the warriors murdered the squalling infant by dashing her head against a tree. After a forced march of nearly one hundred miles, Duston and two companions were transferred to a smaller band of Abenaki, who camped on a tiny island located at the junction of the Merrimack and Contoocook Rivers, several miles north of present day Concord, New Hampshire.

This was the height of King William’s War, both a war of terror and a religious contest, with English Protestantism vying for control of the New World with French Catholicism. After witnessing her infant’s murder, Duston resolved to get even. Two weeks into their captivity, Duston and her companions, a fifty-one-year-old woman and a twelve-year-old boy, moved among the sleeping Abenaki with tomahawks and knives, killing two men, two women, and six children. After returning to the bloody scene alone to scalp their victims, Duston and the others escaped down the Merrimack River in a stolen canoe. They braved treacherous waters and the constant threat of attack and recapture, returning to tell their story and collect a bounty for the scalps.

Was Hannah Duston the prototypical feminist avenger, or the harbinger of the Native American genocide? In this meticulously researched and riveting narrative, bestselling author Jay Atkinson sheds new light on the early struggle for North America.

Visit Jay Atkinson's website.

My Book, The Movie: Massacre on the Merrimack.

Writers Read: Jay Atkinson.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five essential 9/11 books

David L. Ulin is the author of The Myth of Solid Ground: Earthquakes, Prediction and the Fault Line Between Reason and Faith and book critic at the Los Angeles Times.

One of five essential 9/11 books he tagged for the Los Angeles Times in 2011:

American Ground: Unbuilding the World Trade Center by William Langewiesche (2002).

Originally serialized in the Atlantic, Langewiesche's inside account of the dismantling of the Trade Center site is a masterpiece of compression, a sober look at an emotionally loaded operation and a subtle rendering of the territorial battles between police, fire fighters and construction crews that were only heightened by the tragedy. Langewiesche was on the rubble from the beginning, and his observations — understated, reflective and insightful — remind us of the power of work to root us amid horror, as well as the courage involved in doing what needs to be done.

Read about another book on Ulin's list.

Check out my review of American Ground.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Wallace Stroby's "The Devil's Share"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Devil's Share by Wallace Stroby.

About the book, from the publisher:

It's been a year since professional thief Crissa Stone last pulled a job, and she's spent that time under the radar, very carefully not drawing attention to herself. That kind of life is safe, but it's boring, and it's lonely, and it's not very lucrative. So when Crissa starts to get antsy--and low on funds--she agrees to act as a thief-for-hire, partnering with a wealthy art collector to steal a truckload of plundered Iraqi artifacts before they're repatriated to their native country. But what's supposed to be a "give-up" robbery with few complications quickly turns deadly. Soon Crissa is on the run again, with both an ex-military hit squad and her own partners-in-crime in pursuit. And what should be the easiest job of her career--robbing a man who wants to be robbed--might just turn out to be the most dangerous.

Learn more about the author and his novels at the official Wallace Stroby website and The Heartbreak Blog.

The Page 69 Test: Gone 'til November.

The Page 69 Test: Cold Shot to the Heart.

The Page 69 Test: Kings of Midnight.

Writers Read: Wallace Stroby.

The Page 69 Test: The Devil's Share.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best 9/11 novels

Porochista Khakpour is the author of Sons and Other Flammable Objects and The Last Illusion; both are 9/11 novels.

One of her top ten novels about 9/11, as shared at the Guardian in 2014:

Falling Man by Don DeLillo

DeLillo is one of my favorite authors, period, so it’s hard for me not to love everything he writes. This not my favourite DeLillo, but I still liked it. I love the simple premise of a lawyer who worked in the World Trade Centre surviving the attack and yet not quite surviving his life in the aftermath, intertwined with the narrative of a “falling man” performance artist.

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jay Atkinson's "Massacre on the Merrimack," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Massacre on the Merrimack: Hannah Duston's Captivity and Revenge in Colonial America by Jay Atkinson.

The entry begins:

Early on March 15, 1697, a band of Abenaki raided the English frontier village of Haverhill, Massachusetts. Striking swiftly, the Abenaki killed twenty-seven men, women, and children, and took thirteen captives, including 39-year old Hannah Duston and her week-old daughter, Martha. A short distance from the village, one of the warriors murdered the squalling infant by dashing her head against a tree. After a forced march of nearly one hundred miles, Duston and two companions were transferred to a smaller band of Abenaki, who camped on a tiny island located at the junction of the Merrimack and Contoocook Rivers, several miles north of present day Concord, New Hampshire. Later that first night, Duston and her two companions killed two warriors, two women, and six children. After stealing a canoe and departing the island, Duston returned briefly to scalp her victims.

In casting a movie made from this story, I would be interested, as I always am, in a strong woman. A Howard Hawks-style woman. As Hannah Duston, perhaps Jennifer Lawrence or Hilary Swank. As her fifty-one year-old nurse and companion, the widow Mary Neff, you’d have to go with Meryl Streep or perhaps...[read on]

Visit Jay Atkinson's website.

My Book, The Movie: Massacre on the Merrimack.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Jackie Lea Sommers reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Jackie Lea Sommers, author of Truest.

Her entry begins:

The Wrath and the Dawn by Renee Ahdieh

I picked up this debut novel, a retelling of A Thousand and One Nights, because the premise seemed impossible: that a feisty young girl could fall in love with a nineteen-year-old king who is murdering a new bride every morning, one of whom she is supposed to be. There’s so much inherent tension just in the idea of it that I knew I had to see how Ahdieh could manage it. She did more than manage it—she nailed it. This book is so lovely, so rich, so layered—and the characters so complicated and enchanting—that at my very first read, it became a new favorite. I’m beyond thrilled that...[read on]

About Truest, from the publisher:

A breathtaking debut brings us the unforgettable story of a small-town love, big dreams, and family drama.

Silas Hart has seriously shaken up Westlin Beck's small-town life. Brand-new to town, Silas is different from the guys in Green Lake. He's curious, poetic, philosophical, maddening—and really, really cute. But Silas has a sister—and she has a secret. And West has a boyfriend. And life in Green Lake is about to change forever.

Truest is a stunning, addictive debut. Romantic, fun, tender, and satisfying, it asks as many questions as it answers. Perfect for fans of The Fault in Our Stars and Ten Things We Did (and Probably Shouldn't Have).

Visit the official Jackie Lea Sommers website.

Writers Read: Jackie Lea Sommers.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Sara Donati's "The Gilded Hour"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Gilded Hour by Sara Donati.

About the book, from the publisher:

The international bestselling author of Into the Wilderness makes her highly anticipated return with a remarkable epic about two female doctors in nineteenth-century New York and the transcendent power of courage and love…

The year is 1883, and in New York City, it’s a time of dizzying splendor, crushing poverty, and tremendous change. With the gravity-defying Brooklyn Bridge nearly complete and New York in the grips of anti-vice crusader Anthony Comstock, Anna Savard and her cousin Sophie—both graduates of the Woman’s Medical School—treat the city’s most vulnerable, even if doing so may put everything they’ve strived for in jeopardy.

Anna’s work has placed her in the path of four children who have lost everything, just as she herself once had. Faced with their helplessness, Anna must make an unexpected choice between holding on to the pain of her past and letting love into her life.

For Sophie, an obstetrician and the orphaned daughter of free people of color, helping a desperate young mother forces her to grapple with the oath she took as a doctor—and thrusts her and Anna into the orbit of Anthony Comstock, a dangerous man who considers himself the enemy of everything indecent and of anyone who dares to defy him.

With its vivid depictions of old New York and its enormously appealing characters, The Gilded Hour is a captivating, emotionally gripping novel that proves Sara Donati is an author at the height of her powers.

Visit Sara Donati's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Gilded Hour.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top schoolchildren in fiction

Janet Davey’s latest novel is Another Mother’s Children. One of her top ten schoolchildren in fiction, as shared at the Guardian:

Piggy in Lord of the Flies by William Golding

“I don’t care what they call me, so long as they don’t call me what they used to call me in school.” Once confided, the dreaded name sticks all over again. Piggy: the fat, asthmatic boy with the glasses. Having been bullied all his life, he sees no glamour in being marooned on an island with a crowd of schoolboys, sole survivors of an air attack. “Nobody knows we’re here. Your dad don’t know, nobody don’t know,” he tells Ralph, the handsome leader-type whom he shrewdly latches on to. As the boys turn malevolent in the endless, unsupervised playtime, Piggy keeps a grip on reality that is far beyond his 12 years. His tragedy is that understanding can’t save him.

Read about another entry on the list.

Lord of the Flies is on Frank Rich's ten top books list, 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

Pg. 99: Kathryn Rudy's "Postcards on Parchment"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Postcards on Parchment: The Social Lives of Medieval Books by Kathryn M. Rudy.

About the book, from the publisher:

Medieval prayer books held not only the devotions and meditations of Christianity, but also housed, slipped between pages, sundry notes, reminders, and ephemera, such as pilgrims’ badges, sworn oaths, and small painted images. Many of these last items have been classified as manuscript illumination, but Kathryn M. Rudy argues that these pictures should be called, instead, parchment paintings, similar to postcards. In a delightful study identifying this group of images for the first time, Rudy delineates how these objects functioned apart from the books in which they were kept. Whereas manuscript illuminations were designed to provide a visual narrative to accompany a book’s text, parchment paintings offered a kind of autonomous currency for exchange between individuals—people who longed for saturated color in a gray world of wood, stone, and earth. These small, colorful pictures offered a brilliant reprieve, and Rudy shows how these intriguing and previously unfamiliar images were traded and cherished, shedding light into the everyday life and relationships of those in the medieval Low Countries.

Learn more about Postcards on Parchment at the Yale University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Postcards on Parchment.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Stephanie Gayle reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Stephanie Gayle, author of Idyll Threats.

Her entry begins:

The last book I read was Pointe by Brandy Colbert.

Pointe will be inextricably linked in my mind to staying in the hospital, by my mother’s bedside. She was recovering from heart surgery. I’d volunteered to relieve my dad from nurse duty. My mother has Alzheimer’s and she kept trying to get out of bed. So from 3:00 pm to 11:00 a.m. the next day, I read Pointe. I slept only one hour in ten-minute naps. By novel’s end my eyes felt like they’d been filled with sand, but I kept reading (and convincing my mother she was in the hospital, not home) during the long, terrible night. I’m not sure most books would’ve held my interest in that situation.

I wanted to read Pointe because it’s about an African-American teen pursing ballet while finishing high school - and there aren’t many books like that. The protagonist, Theo, is recovering from anorexia and a broken heart. Theo discovers the man who abducted her best friend Donovan, missing for four years and now returned, was...[read on]

About Idyll Threats, from the publisher:

In the summer of 1997, Thomas Lynch arrives as the new chief of police in Idyll, Connecticut—a town where serious crimes can be counted on one hand. So no one is prepared when Cecilia North is found murdered on a golf course. By chance, Chief Lynch met her mere hours before she was killed. With that lead, the case should be a slam dunk. But there’s a problem. If Lynch tells his detectives about meeting the victim, he’ll reveal his greatest secret—he’s gay.

So Lynch works angles of the case on his own. Meanwhile, he must contend with pressure from the mayor to solve the crime before the town’s biggest tourist event begins, all while coping with the suspicions of his men, casual homophobia, and difficult memories of his former NYPD partner’s recent death.

As the case unfolds, Lynch realizes that small-town Idyll isn’t safe, especially for a man with secrets that threaten the thing he loves most—his job.

Visit Stephanie Gayle's website.

My Book, The Movie: Idyll Threats.

The Page 69 Test: Idyll Threats.

Writers Read: Stephanie Gayle.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Rajia Hassib's "In the Language of Miracles"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: In the Language of Miracles: A Novel by Rajia Hassib.

About the book, from the publisher:

A mesmerizing debut novel of an Egyptian American family and the wrenching tragedy that tears their lives apart

Samir and Nagla Al-Menshawy appear to have attained the American dream. After immigrating to the United States from Egypt, Samir successfully works his way through a residency and launches his own medical practice as Nagla tends to their firstborn, Hosaam, in the cramped quarters of a small apartment. Soon the growing family moves into a big house in the manicured New Jersey suburb of Summerset, where their three children eventually attend school with Natalie Bradstreet, the daughter of their neighbors and best friends. More than a decade later, the family’s seemingly stable life is suddenly upended when a devastating turn of events leaves Hosaam and Natalie dead and turns the Al-Menshawys into outcasts in their own town.

Narrated a year after Hosaam and Natalie’s deaths, Rajia Hassib’s heartfelt novel follows the Al-Menshawys during the five days leading up to the memorial service that the Bradstreets have organized to mark the one-year anniversary of their daughter’s death. While Nagla strives to understand her role in the tragedy and Samir desperately seeks reconciliation with the community, Khaled, their surviving son, finds himself living in the shadow of his troubled brother. Struggling under the guilt and pressure of being the good son, Khaled turns to the city in hopes of finding happiness away from the painful memories home conjures. Yet he is repeatedly pulled back home to his grandmother, Ehsan, who arrives from Egypt armed with incense, prayers, and an unyielding determination to stop the unraveling of her daughter’s family. In Ehsan, Khaled finds either a true hope of salvation or the embodiment of everything he must flee if he is ever to find himself.

Writing with unflinchingly honest prose, Rajia Hassib tells the story of one family pushed to the brink by tragedy and mental illness, trying to salvage the life they worked so hard to achieve. The graceful, elegiac voice of In the Language of Miracles paints tender portraits of a family’s struggle to move on in the wake of heartbreak, to stay true to its traditions, and above all else, to find acceptance and reconciliation.

Visit Rajia Hassib's website.

Writers Read: Rajia Hassib.

The Page 69 Test: In the Language of Miracles.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top books that are great examples of cultural anthropology

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 recent books that use cultural anthropology to brilliant effect, including:

Primates of Park Avenue, by Wednesday Martin

The greatest trick Wednesday Martin ever pulled was obfuscating her own wealth and privilege, the wealth and privilege that gave her access to the Upper East Side Manhattan that she eviscerates with almost gleeful scientific rigor in this memoir. While readers outside of the ultra-rich Manhattan neighborhoods described in this witty, sometimes arch book might not have embraced her if they realized how much an outsider Martin really wasn’t, it doesn’t change the fact that her detailed examination of the strange, insular world of rich mommies and trophy wives is equal parts horrifying (for the average person with human emotions) and entertaining (for everyone who enjoys seeing smug people taken down a notch).

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Robin Constantine's "The Promise of Amazing," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Promise of Amazing by Robin Constantine.

The entry begins:

Casting questions always make me a little squirmy because the vision I have in my head might not match that of the reader and I wouldn’t want to spoil anyone else’s idea of what my characters look like! On the other hand, it’s great fun looking at pictures of actors – even though there’s never one person I think is the Grayson or Wren in my head, here are a few that come close…

Wren Caswell is someone you might not notice at first, but once you get to know her, you can’t help but be enchanted by her. She doesn’t like to draw attention to herself, but isn’t afraid of speaking out when the mood strikes. She’s more comfortable in jeans than a prom dress but she can pull off both looks and be a total knockout. Either Saorsie Ronan or Anna...[read on]

Visit Robin Constantine's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Promise of Amazing.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Sara Jaffe reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Sara Jaffe, author of Dryland.

Her entry begins:

Are all books about adolescents automatically coming-of-age stories? What happens when a teenaged character doesn’t necessarily “become” anything, but simply wades around the mire that is adolescence, accumulating experience if not learning from it? What does it look like to write about teenage characters for an adult audience? This is the sort of narrative of adolescence I tried to create in Dryland, and one that I’m consistently drawn to—but while I was writing the book, I didn’t want to let myself read other books that covered similar terrain (for fear I’d decide I was going about it all wrong). What a pleasure, then, to finally be able to read the various anti-bildungsromans I’ve accumulated over the last few years.

There’s Lucy Ives’ Nineties, which looks at adolescence (in this case in New York City in the titular decade) as a kind of performance, or a series of performances, sometimes contradictory, each acted out with equal insistence. Experiences are at once visceral and mediated through the distancing mechanism of...[read on]

About Dryland, from the publisher:

It’s 1992, and the world is caught up in the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the Balkan Wars, but for fifteen-year-old Julie Winter, the news is noise. In Portland, Oregon, Julie moves through her days in a series of negatives: the skaters she doesn’t think are cute, the trinkets she doesn’t buy at the craft fair, the umbrella she refuses to carry despite the incessant rain. Her family life is routine and restrained, and no one talks about Julie’s older brother, a one-time Olympic-hopeful swimmer who now lives in self-imposed exile in Berlin. Julie has never considered swimming herself, until Alexis, the girls’ swim team captain, tries to recruit her. It’s a dare, and a flirtation—and a chance for Julie to find her brother, or to finally let him go. Anything could happen when her body hits water.

Visit Sara Jaffe's website.

Writers Read: Sara Jaffe.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five books with an audacious premise

David Walton is the Philip K. Dick Award-winning author of the 2015 quantum physics thrillers Superposition and Supersymmetry, and other books. At Tor.com he tagged five "books [that] take their audacious premises seriously, and bit by bit, explore the consequences to the characters and to humanity at large," including:

The Flicker Men, Ted Kosmatka

There’s a common misconception about quantum physics that reality doesn’t actually exist until it is observed. It’s the stuff of quack pseudoscience, but Kosmatka uses it as his premise: If this were really true, then what would we find when we studied the phenomenon? Would all humans be able to collapse the wave? What about animals? Children? The unborn? It’s a simple premise that kicks off a whirlwind of implications and follows them to far-reaching conclusions.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Page 69 Test: The Flicker Men.

My Book, The Movie: The Flicker Men.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Eytan Bayme's "High Holiday Porn"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: High Holiday Porn: A Memoir by Eytan Bayme.

About the book, from the publisher:

Eytan Bayme went to Jewish day school and Jewish camp. He lived across the street from a synagogue in the Bronx, which he attended weekly, and ate strictly kosher food for most of his childhood. Yet even at the age of six, he wanted to know what the deal was with those Pizza Huts and Burger Kings that he wasn't allowed into "God wouldn't put them on earth if He didn't mean for us to try them," he thought. Wasn't that obvious? Also, why can't he stop thinking about his female classmates in bed, late at night, with his little brother not five feet away; and how come the starting line-up for the 1986 Mets keep creeping into those fantasies? Religious life is difficult enough without the urges of a typical adolescent boy, yet Eytan's urges develop well before his teens, and they just keep on developing and developing.

High Holiday Porn is a heartwarming and hilarious story about learning to become an adult. It chronicles how an anxious boy finally stops masturbating in public, gets the girl, grows up, and begrudgingly makes peace with the unfairness of life and love. It's a funny, fantasy-laden, usually embarrassing, sometimes raunchy and always outrageous look at coming of age that will resonate with anyone who ever felt awkward growing up.

Visit Eytan Bayme's website.

My Book, The Movie: High Holiday Porn.

Writers Read: Eytan Bayme.

The Page 99 Test: High Holiday Porn.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Stephanie Gayle's "Idyll Threats"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Idyll Threats: A Thomas Lynch Novel by Stephanie Gayle.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the summer of 1997, Thomas Lynch arrives as the new chief of police in Idyll, Connecticut—a town where serious crimes can be counted on one hand. So no one is prepared when Cecilia North is found murdered on a golf course. By chance, Chief Lynch met her mere hours before she was killed. With that lead, the case should be a slam dunk. But there’s a problem. If Lynch tells his detectives about meeting the victim, he’ll reveal his greatest secret—he’s gay.

So Lynch works angles of the case on his own. Meanwhile, he must contend with pressure from the mayor to solve the crime before the town’s biggest tourist event begins, all while coping with the suspicions of his men, casual homophobia, and difficult memories of his former NYPD partner’s recent death.

As the case unfolds, Lynch realizes that small-town Idyll isn’t safe, especially for a man with secrets that threaten the thing he loves most—his job.

Visit Stephanie Gayle's website.

My Book, The Movie: Idyll Threats.

The Page 69 Test: Idyll Threats.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Rajia Hassib reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Rajia Hassib, author of In the Language of Miracles.

Her entry begins:

I’m currently reading Ann Beattie’s new collection of short stories, The State We’re In: Maine Stories. Ann Beattie is one of my all-time favorite authors, mainly because she writes beautiful, humorous and simultaneously poignant prose while exploring human relationships in the most intricate ways. On the sentence level, her work truly is riveting—I can flip any page open and enjoy fresh, smart imagery, and her choice of details gives even the shortest of her stories the ability to evoke an entire universe. This particular collection features linked short stories, which makes me love it even more, just because it...[read on]

About In the Language of Miracles, from the publisher:

A mesmerizing debut novel of an Egyptian American family and the wrenching tragedy that tears their lives apart

Samir and Nagla Al-Menshawy appear to have attained the American dream. After immigrating to the United States from Egypt, Samir successfully works his way through a residency and launches his own medical practice as Nagla tends to their firstborn, Hosaam, in the cramped quarters of a small apartment. Soon the growing family moves into a big house in the manicured New Jersey suburb of Summerset, where their three children eventually attend school with Natalie Bradstreet, the daughter of their neighbors and best friends. More than a decade later, the family’s seemingly stable life is suddenly upended when a devastating turn of events leaves Hosaam and Natalie dead and turns the Al-Menshawys into outcasts in their own town.

Narrated a year after Hosaam and Natalie’s deaths, Rajia Hassib’s heartfelt novel follows the Al-Menshawys during the five days leading up to the memorial service that the Bradstreets have organized to mark the one-year anniversary of their daughter’s death. While Nagla strives to understand her role in the tragedy and Samir desperately seeks reconciliation with the community, Khaled, their surviving son, finds himself living in the shadow of his troubled brother. Struggling under the guilt and pressure of being the good son, Khaled turns to the city in hopes of finding happiness away from the painful memories home conjures. Yet he is repeatedly pulled back home to his grandmother, Ehsan, who arrives from Egypt armed with incense, prayers, and an unyielding determination to stop the unraveling of her daughter’s family. In Ehsan, Khaled finds either a true hope of salvation or the embodiment of everything he must flee if he is ever to find himself.

Writing with unflinchingly honest prose, Rajia Hassib tells the story of one family pushed to the brink by tragedy and mental illness, trying to salvage the life they worked so hard to achieve. The graceful, elegiac voice of In the Language of Miracles paints tender portraits of a family’s struggle to move on in the wake of heartbreak, to stay true to its traditions, and above all else, to find acceptance and reconciliation.

Visit Rajia Hassib's website.

Writers Read: Rajia Hassib.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six of the best books that deal with death

Erica Jong's new novel is Fear of Dying.

For The Week magazine she tagged six of her favorite books that deal with death, including:

Being Mortal by Atul Gawande

In his long essay on the way we treat the dying in contemporary America, surgeon Atul Gawande contrasts the experience of today's patients with his grandfather's decline in India two generations ago. He evokes the needs of the aging and suggests how society can make the end of life easier.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Stephanie Gayle’s "Idyll Threats," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Idyll Threats by Stephanie Gayle.

The entry begins:

I’m not an author who usually thinks about casting actors for the film adaptation of my books - mostly because the odds of the book getting optioned and made are very slim. Plus, I know how much say an author has in the casting process (zero). But I’m game to play this round of My Book, The Movie.

My Idyll Threats protagonist, Thomas Lynch, is 44, a cop, tall, with brown hair and eyes. Big but buff. My first thought was Tom Selleck but he’s too old. Damn you, time! So then I thought of Joe Manganiello. He’s a bit younger than the Chief, but with that salt and pepper beard of his, he could pass, and I think he could project the combination of moody/smart/sexy that the Chief embodies.

For the secretary, Mrs. Dusnmore, with whom the Chief often argues, I’d cast Kristin...[read on]

Visit Stephanie Gayle's website.

My Book, The Movie: Idyll Threats.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten most unfilmable books

At io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell tagged ten "books that we think can’t be put on film, but we’re hoping that someone will prove us wrong," including:

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K Le Guin

This book removes something so basic that we take it for granted: gender. The people on the planet of Gethen have no day-to-day gender. They go through phases during which they develop sexual organs and a sexual appetite, but they can impregnate a partner during one session, be impregnated the next, and not have any gender in between. Genly Ai is acting as an ambassador to Gethen from a federation of planets, and hopes that Gethen will join the fold.

Filming this means that not only do we need actors who have no visible gender, despite having many different body types, we need creators who can make a story in which the very concept of fixed gender is something that doesn’t even register as part of their experience. They will need to not only convince themselves of the absence of gender, but the audience as well, which probably means that high-profile actors probably shouldn’t be cast. A weird, high-concept fantasy world about interplanetary diplomacy with no stars to headline it? Impossible. But potentially amazing.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Left Hand of Darkness is among Jeff Somers's top five sci-fi novels that explore gender in unexpected and challenging ways, Joel Cunningham's top twelve books with the most irresistible titles, Damien Walter's top five science fiction novels for people who hate sci-fi and Ian Marchant's top 10 books of the night. Charlie Jane Anders included it on her list of ten science fiction novels that will never be movies.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: James R. Benn's "The White Ghost"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The White Ghost by James R. Benn.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the Pacific during WWII, Billy Boyle must discover if skipper, and future president, Jack Kennedy is a cold-blooded killer.

1943: In the midst of the brutal, hard-fought Solomon Islands campaign between the Allies and the Japanese forces, Lieutenant Billy Boyle receives an odd assignment: he’s sent by the powerful Kennedy family to investigate a murder in which PT skipper (and future president) Jack Kennedy has been implicated. The victim is a native coastwatcher, an allied intelligence operative, whom Kennedy discovered on the island of Tulagi with his head bashed in. That’s Kennedy’s story, anyhow.

Kennedy was recovering in the Navy hospital on the island after the sinking of his PT-109 motor torpedo boat. The military hasn’t decided yet whether to make him a hero for surviving the attack, or have him court-martialed for losing the boat, and the last thing the Kennedy clan wants is a murder charge hanging over his head. Billy knows firsthand that he shouldn’t trust Jack: the man is a charmer, a womanizer, and, when it suits his needs, a liar. But would he kill someone in cold blood? And if so, why? The first murder is followed by two more, and to find the killer, Billy must sort through a tangled, shifting web of motives and identities, even as combat rages all around him.

Learn more about the Billy Boyle WWII Mystery Series at James R. Benn's website.

The Page 99 Test: The First Wave.

The Page 69 Test: Evil for Evil.

The Page 69 Test: Rag and Bone.

My Book, The Movie: Death's Door.

Writers Read: James R. Benn.

The Page 69 Test: The White Ghost.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Nancy Marie Brown's "Ivory Vikings"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Ivory Vikings: The Mystery of the Most Famous Chessmen in the World and the Woman Who Made Them by Nancy Marie Brown.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the early 1800's, on a Hebridean beach in Scotland, the sea exposed an ancient treasure cache: 93 chessmen carved from walrus ivory. Norse netsuke, each face individual, each full of quirks, the Lewis Chessmen are probably the most famous chess pieces in the world. Harry played Wizard's Chess with them in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Housed at the British Museum, they are among its most visited and beloved objects.

Questions abounded: Who carved them? Where? Nancy Marie Brown's Ivory Vikings explores these mysteries by connecting medieval Icelandic sagas with modern archaeology, art history, forensics, and the history of board games. In the process, Ivory Vikings presents a vivid history of the 400 years when the Vikings ruled the North Atlantic, and the sea-road connected countries and islands we think of as far apart and culturally distinct: Norway and Scotland, Ireland and Iceland, and Greenland and North America. The story of the Lewis chessmen explains the economic lure behind the Viking voyages to the west in the 800s and 900s. And finally, it brings from the shadows an extraordinarily talented woman artist of the twelfth century: Margret the Adroit of Iceland.

Visit Nancy Marie Brown's website.

The Page 99 Test: Ivory Vikings.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five of the best books featuring heroic hackers

E(ugene). C. Myers is the author of the Andre Norton Award–winning young adult science fiction novels Fair Coin and Quantum Coin, and The Silence of Six, a young adult cyber thriller. At Tor.com he tagged five books featuring heroic hackers, including:

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

You’ve probably seen the Fincher movie, but the novel really drives home the amount of work and research that goes into hacking and solving decades-old mysteries—kind of like the difference between Gandalf popping into the library and learning about the One Ring in the film of The Fellowship of the Ring and him spending 17 years digging up the truth in the book. It should be dry reading, but it’s fascinating to follow Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander as they meticulously piece together the puzzle, even if most of the “action” happens at a desk with stacks of photos or company records. The rest of Larsson’s Millenium series is also worth checking out, and you should watch the Swedish films if you have the chance.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo made Fanny Blake's top five books about revenge, Kat Rosenfield's list of the eight most famous body parts in fiction, Rebecca Jane Stokes's top ten list of books about women in peril…who fought back, Maureen Corrigan's top five list of crime & mystery novels of 2008, Camilla Läckberg's top ten list of Swedish crime novels, and is one of Lynda Bellingham's six best books. The Millennium Trilogy is one of Ken Follett's five best trilogies, and Lisbeth Salander is among Panayiota Kuvetakis's top ten fictional female friends we'd like to have as anything close to real-life friends and Anne Holt's top ten female detectives.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Eytan Bayme reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Eytan Bayme, author of High Holiday Porn: A Memoir.

His entry begins:

Recently, I was devastated by Shulem Deen’s memoir All Who Go Do Not Return. He was raised as a Chasidic Jew in New York, with no real English education or understanding of the secular world outside his front door. As a teenager, he moves to New Square, New York and becomes a Skverer Chasid, one of the strictest sects within Chasidic Judaism. He marries, has children and immerses himself in the extreme religious beliefs of him community — at one point even trashing the dorm room of a fellow Chasid upon suspicion that he was keeping an inappropriate photograph. But when he starts questioning his way of life and stops believing in God, his community...[read on]

About High Holiday Porn, from the publisher:

Eytan Bayme went to Jewish day school and Jewish camp. He lived across the street from a synagogue in the Bronx, which he attended weekly, and ate strictly kosher food for most of his childhood. Yet even at the age of six, he wanted to know what the deal was with those Pizza Huts and Burger Kings that he wasn't allowed into "God wouldn't put them on earth if He didn't mean for us to try them," he thought. Wasn't that obvious? Also, why can't he stop thinking about his female classmates in bed, late at night, with his little brother not five feet away; and how come the starting line-up for the 1986 Mets keep creeping into those fantasies? Religious life is difficult enough without the urges of a typical adolescent boy, yet Eytan's urges develop well before his teens, and they just keep on developing and developing.

High Holiday Porn is a heartwarming and hilarious story about learning to become an adult. It chronicles how an anxious boy finally stops masturbating in public, gets the girl, grows up, and begrudgingly makes peace with the unfairness of life and love. It's a funny, fantasy-laden, usually embarrassing, sometimes raunchy and always outrageous look at coming of age that will resonate with anyone who ever felt awkward growing up.

Visit Eytan Bayme's website.

My Book, The Movie: High Holiday Porn. 

Writers Read: Eytan Bayme.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five of the best novels that subvert clichés

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 books that "cleverly explore long-running tropes, mining them to create a new reading experience," including:

Cliché: Mean Girls. Book: Luckiest Girl Alive, by Jessica Knoll

The “mean girl” trope has been a staple for a long time, even after it was punctured in the titular Lindsay Lohan film. It’s become a bit of lazy shorthand: rich, plastic pretty girls are horrible and cruel. Few books explore what makes Mean Girls so mean in the first place, and even fewer bother to wonder what happens to Mean Girls after high school. Luckiest Girl Alive does both, and performs a remarkable trick by presenting a protagonist who is mean and difficult to like at first, then slowly humanizes her as her twisty and surprising story (trust us, you will think you’ve hit the twist—and then there is another twist) unfolds.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ginger Adams Otis’ "Firefight," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Firefight: The Century-Long Battle to Integrate New York’s Bravest by Ginger Adams Otis.

The entry begins:

It’s hardly a leap for me to imagine my book as a movie because the firefighters I’m writing about -- flesh-and-blood smoke eaters here in New York City –are genuinely larger-than-life. Their drive and charisma would easily translate to the big screen, and firefighting itself is inherently dramatic. Firefight would also adapt well to a period piece, given what it reveals the earliest first black firefighters in NYC and around the country and the discrimination they encountered. Wesley Williams, one of the city’s original pioneers, was a tremendous individual and any actor who got to portray him would be very lucky indeed! Here’s my casting wish list for Firefight the movie:

Young Wesley Williams: this one is easy, it should be his great-grandson, Chris Myers! He’s a Juilliard-trained Broadway actor who could bring his family history to life.

Older Wesley Williams: the perfect man for this role is Hisham Tawfiq, a working (soon-to-be-retired) FDNY firefighter now, Hisham is also a working actor currently starring in Blacklist with James Spader.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg: this actor is a little young but he could bring a lot of the Bloombergian qualities to vivid life, Peter...[read on]

Read more about Firefight: The Century-Long Battle to Integrate New York’s Bravest at Ginger Adams Otis’ website.

My Book, The Movie: Firefight.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Peter Lefcourt reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Peter Lefcourt, author of Purgatory Gardens.

His entry begins:

At the moment, I am reading a book of stories by Alice Munro, entitled Runaway. Full disclosure: I am reading it because it was the choice of my reading group. I dove in reluctantly, but found myself gradually being seduced by the sheer originality of the author’s mind. Munro uses time in a most unconventional and effective manner, bouncing back and forth between present, past and future. Her characters are...[read on]

About Purgatory Gardens, from the publisher:

Sammy Dee is a mid-level Long Island mafioso in witness protection. Didier Onyekachukwu was the corrupt minister of finance of the former Upper Volta. Both men find themselves in middle age, living in the Southern California version of genteel poverty in a down-market condo complex called Paradise Gardens. Enter Marcy Gray, a “mature” actress barely getting by on a meager SAG pension. She is looking for a guy to help her through the duration and, frankly, at this point her standards are not as high as they should be; she’d settle for someone who doesn’t pick his teeth at the table and who drives at night. Occasional sex and some travel wouldn’t hurt. Her search has narrowed to two fellow residents: Sammy and Didier, who, being male, are mostly interested in getting into Marcy Gray’s pants. Though a little of the money they mistakenly think she has wouldn’t hurt either.

Once both men realize that the other is the primary obstacle to Marcy’s affections, each decides to put a hit on the other, and winds up unknowingly hiring the same father-son demolition squad.

As the contract killers play both of their clients against one another, Marcy manages to keep both men out of her bed until one or the other of her prospects passes muster. Poisoned pizza, blown-up cars, sex in the sauna, and media madness ensue. It’s Elmore Leonard meets Carl Hiaasen as directed by the Coen brothers.

With Purgatory Gardens, Lefcourt is back at the top of his game as one of America’s leading comedic writers.

Visit Peter Lefcourt's website.

My Book, The Movie: Purgatory Gardens.

The Page 69 Test: Purgatory Gardens.

Writers Read: Peter Lefcourt.

--Marshal Zeringue