Pg. 99: Steve Luxenberg’s "Separate"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Separate: The Story of Plessy v. Ferguson, and America's Journey from Slavery to Segregation by Steve Luxenberg.

About the book, from the publisher:

A myth-shattering narrative of how a nation embraced "separation" and its pernicious consequences.

Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court case synonymous with “separate but equal,” created remarkably little stir when the justices announced their near-unanimous decision on May 18, 1896. Yet it is one of the most compelling and dramatic stories of the nineteenth century, whose outcome embraced and protected segregation, and whose reverberations are still felt into the twenty-first.

Separate spans a striking range of characters and landscapes, bound together by the defining issue of their time and ours—race and equality. Wending its way through a half-century of American history, the narrative begins at the dawn of the railroad age, in the North, home to the nation’s first separate railroad car, then moves briskly through slavery and the Civil War to Reconstruction and its aftermath, as separation took root in nearly every aspect of American life.

Award-winning author Steve Luxenberg draws from letters, diaries, and archival collections to tell the story of Plessy v. Ferguson through the eyes of the people caught up in the case. Separate depicts indelible figures such as the resisters from the mixed-race community of French New Orleans, led by Louis Martinet, a lawyer and crusading newspaper editor; Homer Plessy’s lawyer, Albion Tourgée, a best-selling author and the country’s best-known white advocate for civil rights; Justice Henry Billings Brown, from antislavery New England, whose majority ruling endorsed separation; and Justice John Harlan, the Southerner from a slaveholding family whose singular dissent cemented his reputation as a steadfast voice for justice.

Sweeping, swiftly paced, and richly detailed, Separate provides a fresh and urgently-needed exploration of our nation’s most devastating divide.

Visit Steve Luxenberg’s website.

The Page 99 Test: Annie's Ghosts.

The Page 99 Test: Separate.

--Marshal Zeringue

Laurie Halse Anderson's six favorite books

Laurie Halse Anderson is the New York Times-bestselling author who writes for kids of all ages. Known for tackling tough subjects with humor and sensitivity, her work has earned numerous international, national, and state awards. She has been nominated three times for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award. Two of her books, Speak and Chains, were National Book Award finalists, and Chains was also short-listed for the Carnegie medal.

Shout is Anderson's new memoir-in-verse.

One of Anderson's six favorite books, as shared at The Week magazine:

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson (2014)

Woodson is the master of evoking place and time with just a few words. In Brown Girl Dreaming, winner of the 2014 National Book Award for Young People's Literature, she brings the South Carolina and New York City of her childhood to life vividly and uses them as the backdrops of her coming of age during the 1960s and '70s.

Read about another entry on the list.

Brown Girl Dreaming is among Sona Charaipotra's ten YA books that will change your life.

--Marshal Zeringue

Joy Fielding's "All the Wrong Places," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: All the Wrong Places: A Novel by Joy Fielding.

The entry begins:

There are strong roles for four women in this book, and any number of fine actresses who could play any of the younger women roles: Emma Stone, Jennifer Lawrence, Brie Larson, Lucy Boynton, Amy Adams, to name a few.

As for Joan, the oldest of the women at 70, I'd suggest Jane...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Joy Fielding's website.

The Page 69 Test: Shadow Creek.

My Book, The Movie: Shadow Creek.

The Page 69 Test: Someone Is Watching.

My Book, The Movie: Someone Is Watching.

My Book, The Movie: The Bad Daughter.

The Page 69 Test: The Bad Daughter.

My Book, The Movie: All the Wrong Places.

--Marshal Zeringue

Four books that changed Fiona McCallum

Fiona McCallum was raised on a farm in South Australia. She now lives in suburban Adelaide, but remains a country girl at heart. McCallum writes "heart-warming journey of self-discovery stories" that draw on her life experiences, love of animals and fascination with the human condition. She is the author of ten Australian bestsellers. A Life of Her Own will be her eleventh novel.

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

PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK
Joan Lindsay

This is the book that got me back into reading as a young adult after finishing school and starting my working life. I think subliminally it also instilled in me the importance of the right setting and how it can be a character in its own right. My copy is a beautifully illustrated edition, which adds further weight to the fabulous intrigue about whether the story is fact or fiction. It's such a clever device.

Read about another entry on the list.

Picnic at Hanging Rock is among Jeff Somers's six famous novels without an ending.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Kartik Hosanagar's "A Human's Guide to Machine Intelligence"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: A Human’s Guide to Machine Intelligence: How Algorithms Are Shaping Our Lives and How We Can Stay in Control by Kartik Hosanagar.

About the book, from the publisher:

A Wharton professor and tech entrepreneur examines how algorithms and artificial intelligence are starting to run every aspect of our lives, and how we can shape the way they impact us

Through the technology embedded in almost every major tech platform and every web-enabled device, algorithms and the artificial intelligence that underlies them make a staggering number of everyday decisions for us, from what products we buy, to where we decide to eat, to how we consume our news, to whom we date, and how we find a job. We’ve even delegated life-and-death decisions to algorithms–decisions once made by doctors, pilots, and judges. In his new book, Kartik Hosanagar surveys the brave new world of algorithmic decision-making and reveals the potentially dangerous biases they can give rise to as they increasingly run our lives. He makes the compelling case that we need to arm ourselves with a better, deeper, more nuanced understanding of the phenomenon of algorithmic thinking. And he gives us a route in, pointing out that algorithms often think a lot like their creators–that is, like you and me.

Hosanagar draws on his experiences designing algorithms professionally–as well as on history, computer science, and psychology–to explore how algorithms work and why they occasionally go rogue, what drives our trust in them, and the many ramifications of algorithmic decision-making. He examines episodes like Microsoft’s chatbot Tay, which was designed to converse on social media like a teenage girl, but instead turned sexist and racist; the fatal accidents of self-driving cars; and even our own common, and often frustrating, experiences on services like Netflix and Amazon. A Human’s Guide to Machine Intelligence is an entertaining and provocative look at one of the most important developments of our time and a practical user’s guide to this first wave of practical artificial intelligence.

Visit Kartik Hosanagar's website.

The Page 99 Test: A Human’s Guide to Machine Intelligence.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Alyssa Wees's "The Waking Forest"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Waking Forest by Alyssa Wees.

About the book, from the publisher:

Pan’s Labyrinth meets The Hazel Wood in this novel about a girl with terrifying visions and a wish-granting witch whose lives collide in the most unexpected of ways.

The waking forest has secrets. To Rhea, it appears like a mirage, dark and dense, at the very edge of her backyard. But when she reaches out to touch it, the forest vanishes. She’s desperate to know more–until she finds a peculiar boy who offers to reveal its secrets. If she plays a game.

To the Witch, the forest is her home, where she sits on her throne of carved bone, waiting for dreaming children to beg her to grant their wishes. One night, a mysterious visitor arrives and asks her what she wishes for, but the Witch sends him away. And then the uninvited guest returns.

The strangers are just the beginning. Something is stirring in the forest, and when Rhea’s and the Witch’s paths collide, a truth more treacherous and deadly than either could ever imagine surfaces. But how much are they willing to risk to survive?

Visit Alyssa Wees's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Waking Forest.

The Page 69 Test: The Waking Forest.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five titles featuring complex mother/daughter relationships

Leanna Renee Hieber is an actress, playwright, ghost tour guide and award-winning, bestselling author. Her new book is Miss Violet and the Great War.

At Tor.com she tagged five books featuring complex mother/daughter relationships, including:

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

The most formative early fiction in my life is Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time. I love that Meg is a thorny, imperfect character. We see her mother and family grapple with that fact, and all the “Mrs.” characters wrestle with it too and try to meet her where she is, encouraging her individuality and the ways in which she is uniquely suited to the task of saving her loved ones, especially her little brother. An extended array of maternal and mentor figures in each of the “Mrs.” allows for many iterations of a mother/daughter dynamic that I found to be profoundly entertaining, each with their own gift to share. This is a likely source of my insistence on writing team stories with quirky, enigmatic supporting casts.

Read about another entry on the list.

Visit Leanna Renee Hieber's website, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.

--Marshal Zeringue

St. Patrick's Day

In observance of St. Patrick's Day, an excerpt from Thomas Cahill's How the Irish Saved Civilization:

Ireland, a little island at the edge of Europe that has known neither Renaissance nor Enlightenment--in some ways, a Third World country with, as John Betjeman claimed, a Stone Age culture had one moment of unblemished glory. For, as the Roman Empire fell, as all through Europe matted, unwashed barbarians descended on the Roman cities, looting artifacts and burning books, the Irish, who were just learning to read and write, took up the great labor of copying all of western literature--everything they could lay their hands on. These scribes then served as conduits through which the Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian cultures were transmitted to the tribes of Europe, newly settled amid the rubble and ruined vineyards of the civilization they had overwhelmed. Without this Service of the Scribes, everything that happened subsequently would have been unthinkable. Without the Mission of the Irish Monks, who single-handedly refounded European civilization throughout the continent in the bays and valleys of their exile, the world that came after them would have been an entirely different one--a world without books. And our own world would never have come to be.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Keith Laybourn's "Going to the Dogs"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Going to the Dogs: A history of greyhound racing in Britain 1926-2017 by Keith Laybourn.

About the book, from the publisher:

Greyhound racing emerged rapidly in Britain in 1926 but in its early years was subject to rabid institutional middle-class opposition largely because of the legal gambling opportunities it offered to the working class. Though condemned as a dissipate and impoverishing activity, it was, in fact, a significant leisure opportunity for the working class, which cost little for the minority of bettors involved in what was clearly little more than a 'bit of the flutter'.

This book is the first national study of greyhound racing in Britain from its beginnings, to its heyday in the 1930s and 1940s, and up its long slow decline of the late twentieth century. Much of the study will be defined by the dominating issue of working-class gambling and the bitter opposition to both it and greyhound racing, although the attractions of this 'American Night Out' will also be examined.

Learn more about Going to the Dogs at the Manchester University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Going to the Dogs.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight top books set in prisons

International bestselling author Brad Parks is the only writer to have won the Shamus, Nero, and Lefty Awards, three of American crime fiction’s most prestigious prizes. His novels have been translated into 15 languages and have won critical acclaim across the globe, including stars from every major pre-publication review outlet. A graduate of Dartmouth College, Parks is a former journalist with The Washington Post and The (Newark, N.J.) Star-Ledger. He is now a full-time novelist living in Virginia with his wife and two school-aged children.

Parks's new novel is The Last Act.

At CrimeReads he tagged eight great books set in prisons, including:

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

Roy and Celestial are the upside of the New South—a young African-American couple on the rise. Yet just as they seem to be reaching escape velocity from the racial oppression that defined their parents’ generation, Roy is sentenced to twelve years for a rape he did not commit. Much of the book is letters between the couple while he’s incarcerated, and while Roy doesn’t really delve into the nitty gritty of prison life, it’s a gripping reminder that for every person sitting in prison, there’s usually someone outside who is serving a different kind of sentence.

Read about another entry on the list.

An American Marriage is among Sara Shepard's six top stories of deception and Julia Dahl's ten top books about miscarriages of justice.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Devin Murphy reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Devin Murphy, author of Tiny Americans: A Novel.

His entry begins:

The last few novels I’ve read were all wonderful.

The Vegetarian, by Han Kang, was certainly the most unsettling book I’ve read in a long time. My wife read it first and handed it over when she finished with this sort of concerned expression. The book is broken into three sections that each take a different path into a character’s extreme mental illness. At the start of the story, the focal character can’t get enough sunlight, and is constantly bearing herself to the sky, which was such a strong image that I think of her every time I...[read on]

About Tiny Americans, from the publisher:

From the National Bestselling author of The Boat Runner comes a poignant, luminous novel that follows one family over decades and across the world—perfect for fans of the film Boyhood.

Western New York, 1978: Jamie, Lewis, and Connor Thurber watch their parents’ destructive dance of loving, hating, and drinking. Terrance Thurber spends this year teaching his children about the natural world: they listen to the heartbeat of trees, track animal footprints, sleep under the star-filled sky. Despite these lessons, he doesn’t show them how to survive without him. And when these seasons of trying and failing to quit booze and be a better man are over, Terrance is gone.

Alone with their artist mother, Catrin, the Thurber children are left to grapple with the anger they feel for the one parent who deserted them and a growing resentment for the one who didn’t. As Catrin withdraws into her own world, Jamie throws herself into painting while her brothers smash out their rage in brutal, no-holds-barred football games with neighborhood kids. Once they can leave—Jamie for college, Lewis for the navy, and Connor for work—they don’t look back.

But Terrance does. Crossing the country, sobering up, and starting over has left him with razor-sharp regret. Terrance doesn’t know that Jamie, now an academic, inhabits an ever-shrinking circle of loneliness; that Lewis, a merchant marine, fears life on dry land; that Connor struggles to connect with the son he sees teetering on an all-too-familiar edge. He only knows that he has one last try to build a bridge, through the years, to his family.

Composed of a series of touchstone moments, Tiny Americans is a thrilling and bittersweet rendering of a family that, much like the tides, continues to come together and drift apart.

Visit Devin Murphy's website.

My Book, The Movie: Tiny Americans.

Writers Read: Devin Murphy.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top genre-bending YA novels

Astrid Scholte's new novel is Four Dead Queens.

At Tor.com she tagged five favorite genre-bending YA novels, including:

The Dark Days Club (A Lady Helen Novel) by Alison Goodman

Genres: Paranormal and Historical. Goodman’s research into the Regency era is absolutely exquisite in its detail. You can see, touch, and taste the world—it’s a fully transformative experience. There is no other book I’ve read where I’ve felt so completely swept into the past. The prim and proper Regency era setting of Goodman’s Lady Helen novels provides a contrast to the vicious paranormal elements of the ghastly, soul-sucking Deceivers, and only the Reclaimers—including the titular Lady Helen—stand in the way of their total domination. The blend between the details of the Regency era and the brashness of the paranormal creates a wonderfully otherworldly reading experience. I’m currently reading the final book in the trilogy and I never want it to end…

Read about another entry on the list.

The Dark Days Club is among Jenny Kawecki's top five YA novels in which every action has an equal but opposite reaction—especially magic.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Vanessa McGrady's "Rock Needs River"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Rock Needs River: A Memoir About a Very Open Adoption by Vanessa McGrady.

About the book, from the publisher:

From a story first told in the popular New York Times parenting blog comes a funny, touching memoir about a mother who welcomes more than a new daughter into her home.

After two years of waiting to adopt—slogging through paperwork and bouncing between hope and despair—a miracle finally happened for Vanessa McGrady. Her sweet baby, Grace, was a dream come true. Then Vanessa made a highly uncommon gesture: when Grace’s biological parents became homeless, Vanessa invited them to stay.

Without a blueprint for navigating the practical basics of an open adoption or any discussion of expectations or boundaries, the unusual living arrangement became a bottomless well of conflicting emotions and increasingly difficult decisions complicated by missed opportunities, regret, social chaos, and broken hearts.

Written with wit, candor, and compassion, Rock Needs River is, ultimately, Vanessa’s love letter to her daughter, one that illuminates the universal need for connection and the heroine’s journey to find her tribe.

Visit Vanessa McGrady's website.

My Book, The Movie: Rock Needs River.

The Page 99 Test: Rock Needs River.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Karen Ellis's "Last Night"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Last Night by Karen Ellis.

About the book, from the publisher:

NYPD detective Lex Cole tracks a missing Brooklyn teen whose bright future is endangered by the ghosts of his unknown father’s past, in this highly anticipated sequel to A Map of the Dark.

One of the few black kids on his Brighton Beach block, Titus “Crisp” Crespo was raised by his white mother and his Russian grandparents. He has two legacies from his absent father, Mo: his weird name and his brown skin. Crisp has always been the odd kid out, but a fundamentally good kid, with a bright future.

But one impulsive decision triggers a horrible domino effect–an arrest, no reason not to accompany his richer, whiter friend Glynnie on a visit to her weed dealer, and a trip onto his father’s old home turf where he’ll face certain choices he’s always strived to avoid.

As Detective Lex Cole tries to unravel the clues from Crisp’s night out, they both find that what you don’t know about your past can still come back to haunt you.

Visit Karen Ellis's website.

The Page 69 Test: Last Night.

--Marshal Zeringue

Karen Odden's "A Dangerous Duet," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: A Dangerous Duet by Karen Odden.

The entry begins:

I’d tap Emma Watson for any one of my heroines. She has such a mobile, expressive face; she can light up with joy, but she also displays a quiet fierceness and a capacity for insight in many of her roles. My heroine Nell Hallam is passionate about her piano but reflective—and well aware of the danger of her mother’s legacy of mental illness.

Ben Barnes for Jack. I had him in mind as I wrote; his face is dark, pensive, watchful, expressive. In the film Prince Caspian, he suggests a searing pain stemming from a father-figure’s betrayal quite similar to...[read on]

Visit Karen Odden's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Karen Odden and Rosy.

The Page 69 Test: A Lady in the Smoke.

My Book, The Movie: A Lady in the Smoke.

My Book, The Movie: A Dangerous Duet.

--Marshal Zeringue

Coffee with a canine: Elisabeth Elo & Freddie

Featured at Coffee with a Canine: Elisabeth Elo & Freddie.

The author, on how she and Freddie were united:

I was allergic to the last dog we had and spent twelve years sniffling and feeling scratchy whenever I got too close to him. It was OK because that dog was really my kids’ dog and he got lots of attention from them. I knew that our next dog would be mostly mine, and I couldn’t risk feeling uncomfortable around him, so I figured he would have to be a poodle or poodle mix. I did a lot of research and visited a number of breeders. In the end the search was...[read on]

About Elo's new novel, Finding Katarina M., from the publisher:

Natalie March is a respected surgeon enjoying a busy, productive life in Washington DC. As her demanding career has left little time for friends or romance, her deepest relationship is with her mother, Vera March, a Russian immigrant and MS patient confined to a rehabilitation center. Vera is still haunted by the fact that her Ukrainian parents, innocent of any wrongdoing, were sent to the gulag, Stalin’s notorious network of labor camps, when she was just a baby. All her life she has presumed that they perished there along with millions of other Russian citizens. Natalie would do anything to heal her mother’s psychic pain: it’s the one wound that she, a doctor, cannot mend.

When a young Russian dancer named Saldana Tarasova comes to Natalie’s office claiming to be her cousin, and providing details about her grandmother that no stranger could know, Natalie must face a surprising truth: her grandmother, Katarina Melnikova, is still very much alive. She escaped from the labor camp, married a native Siberian, and had another child, Saldana’s mother. Natalie is thrilled to think that her Russian family is reaching out and that Vera may be able to reunite with her mother after so many years. In fact, Saldana has a darker motive for making contact. Suggesting that her family is in grave danger from Putin’s government, she pleads for Natalie’s help to defect. Unwilling to break the law, Natalie puts her off. Then the unthinkable happens, and Natalie is drawn step by step into a web of family secrets that will ultimately pit her against Russian security forces and even her own government.

How far will Natalie go to find Katerina M. and satisfy her mother’s deepest wish? How much will she risk to protect her Russian family―and her own country―from a dangerous international threat? Masterfully plotted and beautifully written, FINDING KATARINA M. takes the reader on an extraordinary journey across Siberia―to reindeer herding camps, Russian prisons, Sakha villages, and parties with endless vodka toasts―while it explores what it means to be loyal to one’s family, one’s country, and ultimately to oneself.

Visit Elisabeth Elo's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Elisabeth Elo & Freddie.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Jay Howard Geller's "The Scholems"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Scholems: A Story of the German-Jewish Bourgeoisie from Emancipation to Destruction by Jay Howard Geller.

About the book, from the publisher:

The evocative and riveting stories of four brothers—Gershom the Zionist, Werner the Communist, Reinhold the nationalist, and Erich the liberal—weave together in The Scholems, a biography of an eminent middle-class Jewish Berlin family and a social history of the Jews in Germany in the decades leading up to World War II.

Across four generations, Jay Howard Geller illuminates the transformation of traditional Jews into modern German citizens, the challenges they faced, and the ways that they shaped the German-Jewish century, beginning with Prussia's emancipation of the Jews in 1812 and ending with exclusion and disenfranchisement under the Nazis. Focusing on the renowned philosopher and Kabbalah scholar Gershom Scholem and his family, their story beautifully draws out the rise and fall of bourgeois life in the unique subculture that was Jewish Berlin. Geller portrays the family within a much larger context of economic advancement, the adoption of German culture and debates on Jewish identity, struggles for integration into society, and varying political choices during the German Empire, World War I, the Weimar Republic, and the Nazi era. What Geller discovers, and unveils for the reader, is a fascinating portal through which to view the experience of the Jewish middle class in Germany.

Learn more about The Scholems at the Cornell University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: The Scholems.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Margaret Verble reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Margaret Verble, author of Cherokee America.

Her entry begins:

I tend to buy a whole bunch of wildly different kinds of books in a one or two day period. Then I stack them on my bedside table, and select them for reading according to how I’m feeling at a particular moment, usually in the evening. If I’m writing on the early drafts of a novel, I go lightly on fiction, more heavily on background sources for my work, biographies, histories, or true crimes. Of the books I’ve read in the past two months, my favorites are these:

Lincoln in the Bardo, by George Sanders, is the best novel I’ve read in a couple of years. It’s innovative in style, evocative of deep emotion, historically grounded, and spiritually intriguing. I will read it again. And again. Once is...[read on]

About Cherokee America, from the publisher:

From the author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist Maud’s Line, an epic novel that follows a web of complex family alliances and culture clashes in the Cherokee Nation during the aftermath of the Civil War, and the unforgettable woman at its center.

It’s the early spring of 1875 in the Cherokee Nation West. A baby, a black hired hand, a bay horse, a gun, a gold stash, and a preacher have all gone missing. Cherokee America Singer, known as “Check,” a wealthy farmer, mother of five boys, and soon-to-be widow, is not amused.

In this epic of the American frontier, several plots intertwine around the heroic and resolute Check: her son is caught in a compromising position that results in murder; a neighbor disappears; another man is killed. The tension mounts and the violence escalates as Check’s mixed race family, friends, and neighbors come together to protect their community—and painfully expel one of their own.

Cherokee America vividly, and often with humor, explores the bonds—of blood and place, of buried histories and half-told tales, of past grief and present injury—that connect a colorful, eclectic cast of characters, anchored by the clever, determined, and unforgettable Check.

Visit Margaret Verble's website.

My Book, The Movie: Maud's Line.

Writers Read: Margaret Verble.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten books about building cities

Jonathan Carr first visited Chicago in 1983 in between periods spent living in the UK, Kenya, Gambia, Greece and Louisiana. A graduate of Cambridge University, he has worked as a travel correspondent, a book reviewer and a teacher of English. He holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University. Make Me a City is his first novel. He currently lives in Bologna, Italy.

At the Guardian Carr tagged ten of the best books about building cities, including:

SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome by Mary Beard

It’s only right to start with Rome. I was fascinated by Beard’s exploration of why and how an unpromising location should have spawned such a remarkable city. Her account is scholarly but accessible, a serious and seriously entertaining read. One factor crucial to the city’s success was the role played by immigrants. Whether they liked it or not, foreigners were turned into citizens, required to share in both the responsibilities and the benefits of life in a multicultural world.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Crystal King's "The Chef's Secret"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Chef's Secret: A Novel by Crystal King.

About the book, from the publisher:

A captivating novel of Renaissance Italy detailing the mysterious life of Bartolomeo Scappi, the legendary chef to several popes and author of one of the bestselling cookbooks of all time, and the nephew who sets out to discover his late uncle’s secrets—including the identity of the noblewoman Bartolomeo loved until he died.

When Bartolomeo Scappi dies in 1577, he leaves his vast estate—properties, money, and his position—to his nephew and apprentice Giovanni. He also gives Giovanni the keys to two strongboxes and strict instructions to burn their contents. Despite Scappi’s dire warning that the information concealed in those boxes could put Giovanni’s life and others at risk, Giovanni is compelled to learn his uncle’s secrets. He undertakes the arduous task of decoding Scappi’s journals and uncovers a history of deception, betrayal, and murder—all to protect an illicit love affair.

As Giovanni pieces together the details of Scappi’s past, he must contend with two rivals who have joined forces—his brother Cesare and Scappi’s former protégé, Domenico Romoli, who will do anything to get his hands on the late chef’s recipes.

With luscious prose that captures the full scale of the sumptuous feasts for which Scappi was known, The Chef’s Secret serves up power, intrigue, and passion, bringing Renaissance Italy to life in a delectable fashion.

Visit Crystal King's website.

The Page 69 Test: Feast of Sorrow.

Writers Read: Crystal King.

The Page 69 Test: The Chef's Secret.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: W. Ian Bourland's "Bloodflowers"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Bloodflowers: Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Photography, and the 1980s by W. Ian Bourland.

About the book, from the publisher:

In Bloodflowers W. Ian Bourland examines the photography of Rotimi Fani-Kayode (1955–1989), whose art is a touchstone for cultural debates surrounding questions of gender and queerness, race and diaspora, aesthetics and politics, and the enduring legacy of slavery and colonialism. Born in Nigeria, Fani-Kayode moved between artistic and cultural worlds in Washington, DC, New York, and London, where he produced the bulk of his provocative and often surrealist and homoerotic photographs of black men. Bourland situates Fani-Kayode's work in a time of global transition and traces how it exemplified and responded to profound social, cultural, and political change. In addition to his formal analyses of Fani-Kayode's portraiture, Bourland outlines the important influence that surrealism, neo-Romanticism, Yoruban religion, the AIDS crisis, experimental film, loft culture, and house and punk music had on Fani-Kayode's work. In so doing, Bourland offers new perspectives on a pivotal artist whose brief career continues to resonate with deep aesthetic and social meaning.

Visit W. Ian Bourland's website.

The Page 99 Test: Bloodflowers.

--Marshal Zeringue

Amber Royer's "Pure Chocolate," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Pure Chocolate by Amber Royer.

The entry begins:

My friends and I did a book trailer for Pure Chocolate. You can see the Chocoverse books have potential for visual appeal. It is after all meant to be a telenovela-on-the-page, crossed with a space opera, so there’s tons of drama – and a goodly amount of action. (New to the Chocoverse? Here’s a trailer for the first book, Free Chocolate).

When we did the trailers, we intentionally kept faces fuzzed, so that the reader could imagine these characters any way they wanted. Which makes this whole “dreamcast your book” exercise feel a little counterintuitive. But you asked, so I brainstormed.

There would need to be a goodly bit of CGI because the cast of my books includes a cop who’s a 7-foot tall venomous reptilian humanoid, and a number of named characters who are lemon-yellow giants with double-rows of shark teeth and oversized whale-like eyes. But if you focus on the characters who are human (or human-ish) who are important to both books:

Bo’s an ex-actress in her mid twenties who has fled across the galaxy to get away from the paparazzi after scandal ruined her career. She’s enrolled in a culinary academy on a backwater planet at the beginning of the first book, but she’ll be traveling the galaxy before all this is over. In my mind Bo looks a lot like...[read on]

Visit Amber Royer's website.

The Page 69 Test: Free Chocolate.

My Book, The Movie: Pure Chocolate.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten thrillers featuring all-consuming obsession

K.L. Slater is the bestselling author of psychological crime thrillers Safe With Me, Blink, Liar, The Mistake, and The Visitor.

At CrimeReads she tagged ten thrillers that "plumb the uneasy depths of obsession, navigating deep, dark waters to fully explore the minds of both the obsessed and the obsession." One title on the list:

Disclaimer, Renée Knight

When Catherine discovers a novel on her bedside table, she begins to read. Soon, she is horrified to discover that she is a key character in a story where the obsessive mystery author threatens to reveal her darkest secret. This book is a real page-turner that has the reader shifting sympathy and suspicions with a number of characters.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Page 69 Test: Disclaimer.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Claire Booth reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Claire Booth, author of A Deadly Turn: A Sheriff Hank Worth Mystery.

Her entry begins:

I usually have both a fiction and a nonfiction book going at the same time. I’ve tried, but I just can’t read two novels simultaneously. If I do one of each, I find I get the most out of both.

Right now, I’m immersed in the absolutely delightful Dreyer’s English. It’s by Benjamin Dreyer, the copy chief of Big 5 publisher Random House, and it’s a word geek’s dream. You might think it would be a dry lecture on grammar and usage, but it’s not. It’s a witty takedown of pretentious rules and an affirmation of the important ones, like the error of...[read on]

About A Deadly Turn, from the publisher:

Branson county sheriff Hank Worth struggles to uncover the truth behind a fatal car crash in this absorbing mystery.

Hank Worth thinks he’s performed a good deed when he pulls over the car of six teens caught speeding on a Saturday night and lets them off with a warning and instructions to go home. When he responds to an urgent call minutes later, he realises he made a fatal error of judgement – every teen is dead.

Struggling to come to terms with his role in the crash, Hank begins to suspect foul play. While notifying the parents of the children involved, his suspicions grow when an unidentified body is discovered in one of their homes and a teenage girl is found after apparently attempting to commit suicide. Hank believes the incidents are connected, but those around him disagree.

Is Hank right, or is his guilt making him search for answers where there are none?

Visit Claire Booth's website.

My Book, The Movie: Another Man's Ground.

The Page 69 Test: Another Man's Ground.

My Book, The Movie: A Deadly Turn.

The Page 69 Test: A Deadly Turn. 

Writers Read: Claire Booth.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Christina Thompson's "Sea People"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia by Christina Thompson.

About the book, from the publisher:

A blend of Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel and Simon Winchester’s Pacific, a thrilling intellectual detective story that looks deep into the past to uncover who first settled the islands of the remote Pacific, where they came from, how they got there, and how we know.

For more than a millennium, Polynesians have occupied the remotest islands in the Pacific Ocean, a vast triangle stretching from Hawaii to New Zealand to Easter Island. Until the arrival of European explorers they were the only people to have ever lived there. Both the most closely related and the most widely dispersed people in the world before the era of mass migration, Polynesians can trace their roots to a group of epic voyagers who ventured out into the unknown in one of the greatest adventures in human history.

How did the earliest Polynesians find and colonize these far-flung islands? How did a people without writing or metal tools conquer the largest ocean in the world? This conundrum, which came to be known as the Problem of Polynesian Origins, emerged in the eighteenth century as one of the great geographical mysteries of mankind.

For Christina Thompson, this mystery is personal: her Maori husband and their sons descend directly from these ancient navigators. In Sea People, Thompson explores the fascinating story of these ancestors, as well as those of the many sailors, linguists, archaeologists, folklorists, biologists, and geographers who have puzzled over this history for three hundred years. A masterful mix of history, geography, anthropology, and the science of navigation, Sea People combines the thrill of exploration with the drama of discovery in a vivid tour of one of the most captivating regions in the world.

Visit Christina Thompson's website.

The Page 99 Test: Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All.

The Page 99 Test: Sea People.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Rebecca Ross's "The Queen's Resistance"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Queen's Resistance by Rebecca Ross.

About the book, from the publisher:

For fans of Red Queen and Grave Mercy comes the captivating sequel to the Renaissance France-inspired epic fantasy The Queen’s Rising.

Brienna is a mistress of knowledge and is beginning to settle into her role as the daughter of the once disgraced lord, Davin MacQuinn. Though she’d just survived a revolution that will return a queen to the throne, she faces yet another challenge: acceptance by the MacQuinns.

But as Queen Isolde Kavanagh’s closest confidant, she’ll have to balance serving her father’s House as well as her country.

Then there’s Aodhan Morgan, formerly known as Cartier Évariste, who is adjusting to the stark contrast between his pre-rebellion life in Valenia and his current one as lord of a fallen House. As he attempts to restore the Morgane name, he let his mind wander—what if he doesn’t have to raise his House alone? What if Brienna could stand by his side?

But Brienna and Cartier must put their feelings aside, as there are more vital tasks at hand—the Lannons' trial, forging alliances, and ensuring that no one halts the queen’s coronation. Resistance is rumbling among the old regime’s supporters, who are desperate to find a weakness in the rebels’ forces.

And what makes one more vulnerable than love?

Visit Rebecca Ross's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Rebecca Ross & Sierra.

The Page 69 Test: The Queen's Rising.

The Page 69 Test: The Queen's Resistance.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top books for exposing gender myths

Gina Rippon is a professor of cognitive neuroimaging at the Aston Brain Centre, Aston University, Birmingham. Her new book is Gender and Our Brains: How New Neuroscience Explodes the Myths of the Male and Female Minds.

At the Guardian she tagged five of the best books exposing gender myths, including:

Do men and women have different brains? Could this be the cause of just about any gender gap you care to name, from pay inequalities to the vast imbalance in Nobel laureates? It’s an argument in which we all have an interest. The psychologist Cordelia Fine separates the neuronews from the neurotrash in Delusions of Gender, an eye-opening, forensic filleting of decades of research that has contributed to the various psychological gender myths. Women are good at words because both sides of their brain process language? Afraid not. Men are good at spatial tasks such as map reading because the right side of their brain is highly specialised? Nice idea that has certainly caught on, but a clear-eyed review of the research shows that it is yet another myth. This is a rigorous and highly readable book and in parts laugh-out-loud funny.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Crystal King reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Crystal King, author of The Chef's Secret: A Novel.

Her entry begins:

Time travel has been on my mind lately, it seems. A desire to escape the things of this world? I’m not sure, but I’ve been fortunate to find a bookish escape in several time travel books in recent months.

An Ocean of Minutes by Thea Lim was one of my favorite reads last year. In the midst of a deadly flu pandemic, time travel has been developed as a way to thwart the virus. The cost of the cure is prohibitive for most, so the solution is to jump people ahead to the time when the virus has run its course. Sounds great, right? Except that there is a catch. If you can’t pay for the cure for your loved one in this time frame (interestingly, the 1980s), you can...[read on]

About The Chef's Secret, from the publisher:

A captivating novel of Renaissance Italy detailing the mysterious life of Bartolomeo Scappi, the legendary chef to several popes and author of one of the bestselling cookbooks of all time, and the nephew who sets out to discover his late uncle’s secrets—including the identity of the noblewoman Bartolomeo loved until he died.

When Bartolomeo Scappi dies in 1577, he leaves his vast estate—properties, money, and his position—to his nephew and apprentice Giovanni. He also gives Giovanni the keys to two strongboxes and strict instructions to burn their contents. Despite Scappi’s dire warning that the information concealed in those boxes could put Giovanni’s life and others at risk, Giovanni is compelled to learn his uncle’s secrets. He undertakes the arduous task of decoding Scappi’s journals and uncovers a history of deception, betrayal, and murder—all to protect an illicit love affair.

As Giovanni pieces together the details of Scappi’s past, he must contend with two rivals who have joined forces—his brother Cesare and Scappi’s former protégé, Domenico Romoli, who will do anything to get his hands on the late chef’s recipes.

With luscious prose that captures the full scale of the sumptuous feasts for which Scappi was known, The Chef’s Secret serves up power, intrigue, and passion, bringing Renaissance Italy to life in a delectable fashion.

Visit Crystal King's website.

The Page 69 Test: Feast of Sorrow.

Writers Read: Crystal King.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Adom Getachew's "Worldmaking after Empire"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Worldmaking after Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination by Adom Getachew.

About the book, from the publisher:

Decolonization revolutionized the international order during the twentieth century. Yet standard histories that present the end of colonialism as an inevitable transition from a world of empires to one of nations—a world in which self-determination was synonymous with nation-building—obscure just how radical this change was. Drawing on the political thought of anticolonial intellectuals and statesmen such as Nnamdi Azikiwe, W.E.B Du Bois, George Padmore, Kwame Nkrumah, Eric Williams, Michael Manley, and Julius Nyerere, this important new account of decolonization reveals the full extent of their unprecedented ambition to remake not only nations but the world.

Adom Getachew shows that African, African American, and Caribbean anticolonial nationalists were not solely or even primarily nation-builders. Responding to the experience of racialized sovereign inequality, dramatized by interwar Ethiopia and Liberia, Black Atlantic thinkers and politicians challenged international racial hierarchy and articulated alternative visions of worldmaking. Seeking to create an egalitarian postimperial world, they attempted to transcend legal, political, and economic hierarchies by securing a right to self-determination within the newly founded United Nations, constituting regional federations in Africa and the Caribbean, and creating the New International Economic Order.

Using archival sources from Barbados, Trinidad, Ghana, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, Worldmaking after Empire recasts the history of decolonization, reconsiders the failure of anticolonial nationalism, and offers a new perspective on debates about today’s international order.

Learn more about Worldmaking after Empire at the Princeton University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Worldmaking after Empire.

--Marshal Zeringue

Devin Murphy's "Tiny Americans," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Tiny Americans: A Novel by Devin Murphy.

The entry begins:

This is fun to think about. Tiny Americans is about one family over thirty years, really focusing on their adult lives, so I will cast the adult versions here.

The father, is an outdoors type who has not taken great care of himself, so would need to be a bit weathered. I love everything Ed Harris and Will Patton, so I’d put in a call to those guys.

The German, artist mother, Catrin, is loving and volatile, and hits some real emotional depths in the book, so let’s dream big for her: Meryl Streep, or Susan Sarandon.

Jamie, the philosopher, mother, and truth teller of the family is both beautiful and smart despite shouldering the weight of deep dysfunctions. Can we cast...[read on]

Visit Devin Murphy's website.

My Book, The Movie: Tiny Americans.

--Marshal Zeringue

Kenny Scharf’s ten favorite books

Kenny Scharf is a Los Angeles-based artist. One of his ten favorite books, as shared at Vulture.com:

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

This classic is my favorite book by Murakami. This is about love, longing, and regret. It’s kind of sad, but at the same time, it makes you feel alive. It’s the emotional reality of loss.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Soraya M. Lane reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Soraya M. Lane, author of The Spitfire Girls.

Her entry begins:

I have just finished reading The Beantown Girls by Jane Healey. Jane and I are both published by Lake Union (Amazon Publishing), and this book is fantastic, a really great historical women’s fiction read. I liked that it explored something very unique that women were part of during WWII, and I particularly loved the ending.

Right now I’m finishing judging...[read on]

About The Spitfire Girls, from the publisher:

Three skilled aviators determined to help win the war. Three brave women who know their place is not at home.

At the height of World War II, the British Air Transport Auxiliary need help. A group of young women volunteer for action, but the perils of their new job don’t end on the tarmac. Things are tough in the air, but on the ground their abilities as pilots are constantly questioned.

There is friction from the start between the new recruits. Spirited American Lizzie turns heads with her audacity, but few can deny her flying skills. She couldn’t be more different from shy, petite Ruby, who is far from diminutive in the sky. It falls to pragmatic pilot May to bring the women together and create a formidable team capable of bringing the aircraft home.

As these very different women fight to prove themselves up to the task at hand, they are faced with challenges and tragedies at every turn. They must fight for equal pay and respect while handling aircraft that are dangerously ill-equipped; meanwhile, lives continue to be lost in the tumult of war.

Determined to assist the war effort doing what they love, can May, Lizzie and Ruby put aside their differences to overcome adversity, and will they find love in the skies?

Visit Soraya Lane's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Spitfire Girls.

The Page 69 Test: The Spitfire Girls.

Writers Read: Soraya M. Lane.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Andrew Warnes's "How the Shopping Cart Explains Global Consumerism"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: How the Shopping Cart Explains Global Consumerism by Andrew Warnes.

About the book, from the publisher:

Picture a familiar scene: long lines of shoppers waiting to check out at the grocery store, carts filled to the brim with the week’s food. While many might wonder what is in each cart, Andrew Warnes implores us to consider the symbolism of the cart itself. In his inventive new book, Warnes examines how the everyday shopping cart is connected to a complex web of food production and consumption that has spread from the United States throughout the world. Today, shopping carts represent choice and autonomy for consumers, a recognizable American way of life that has become a global phenomenon. This succinct and and accessible book provides an excellent overview of consumerism and the globalization of American culture.

Learn more about How the Shopping Cart Explains Global Consumerism at the University of California Press website.

Andrew Warnes is a Professor in American Studies at the University of Leeds. He is the author of American Tantalus: Horizons, Happiness, and the Impossible Pursuits of US Literature and Culture and Savage Barbecue: Race, Culture, and the Invention of America's First Food.

The Page 99 Test: Savage Barbecue.

The Page 99 Test: How the Shopping Cart Explains Global Consumerism.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Claire Booth's "A Deadly Turn"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: A Deadly Turn: Sheriff Hank Worth Mysteries (Volume 3) by Claire Booth.

About the book, from the publisher:

Branson county sheriff Hank Worth struggles to uncover the truth behind a fatal car crash in this absorbing mystery.

Hank Worth thinks he’s performed a good deed when he pulls over the car of six teens caught speeding on a Saturday night and lets them off with a warning and instructions to go home. When he responds to an urgent call minutes later, he realises he made a fatal error of judgement – every teen is dead.

Struggling to come to terms with his role in the crash, Hank begins to suspect foul play. While notifying the parents of the children involved, his suspicions grow when an unidentified body is discovered in one of their homes and a teenage girl is found after apparently attempting to commit suicide. Hank believes the incidents are connected, but those around him disagree.

Is Hank right, or is his guilt making him search for answers where there are none?

Visit Claire Booth's website.

My Book, The Movie: Another Man's Ground.

The Page 69 Test: Another Man's Ground.

My Book, The Movie: A Deadly Turn.

The Page 69 Test: A Deadly Turn.

--Marshal Zeringue