Five tense books that blend sci-fi & horror

A.K. Larkwood studied English at St John’s College, Cambridge, and now lives in Oxford with her wife and a cat. The Unspoken Name is her debut novel.

At Tor.com, Larkwood tagged five "books are all scary in their own way, but what they also have in common is absolutely blistering pacing, combined with a creeping tension that cranks higher and higher as you turn the pages." One title on the list:

The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling

Cave-diving is the worst thing I can imagine voluntarily doing so GOOD NEWS this book is about cave-diving solo on an alien planet where you may be attacked by monsters at any time. And also, ghosts??? In fact, for me the scariest part of this book was the slipperiness of both the main character and her handler: both of them are lying to you at one time or another and there is a pervasive sense that either of them will do just about anything to achieve their goals. The whole book is about two characters having a series of remote conversations while one of them is down in a cave, and on this restricted canvas Starling manages to pull off some rich SF worldbuilding, a properly thorny, weird, tense f/f relationship, a wonderful monster, and some truly gruesome and terrifying moments.

Bonus points: you will never feel the same way again about your phone battery running out.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Luminous Dead is among Jeff Somers's seven scariest science fiction horror novels ever written.

The Page 69 Test: The Luminous Dead.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Vanessa Freije's "Citizens of Scandal"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Citizens of Scandal: Journalism, Secrecy, and the Politics of Reckoning in Mexico by Vanessa Freije.

About the book, from the publisher:

In Citizens of Scandal, Vanessa Freije explores the causes and consequences of political scandals in Mexico from the 1960s through the 1980s. Tracing the process by which Mexico City reporters denounced official wrongdoing, she shows that by the 1980s political scandals were a common feature of the national media diet. News stories of state embezzlement, torture, police violence, and electoral fraud provided collective opportunities to voice dissent and offered an important, though unpredictable and inequitable, mechanism for political representation. The publicity of wrongdoing also disrupted top-down attempts by the ruling Partido Revolucionario Institucional to manage public discourse, exposing divisions within the party and forcing government officials to grapple with popular discontent. While critical reporters denounced corruption, they also withheld many secrets from public discussion, sometimes out of concern for their safety. Freije highlights the tensions-between free speech and censorship, representation and exclusion, and transparency and secrecy-that defined the Mexican public sphere in the late twentieth century.

Learn more about Citizens of Scandal at the Duke University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Citizens of Scandal.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Darcie Wilde's "A Lady Compromised"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: A Lady Compromised by Darcie Wilde.

About the book, from the publisher:

Fans of Jane Austen have fallen in love with Darcie Wilde's mystery series featuring Rosalind Thorne, a young woman adept at helping ladies of the ton navigate the darker corners of Regency England—while revealing Society's most shocking secrets...

Rosalind is pleased when she's invited to Cassel House to help her friend, Louisa, prepare for her upcoming wedding. But that's not the only event on her agenda. The trip will also afford Rosalind the chance to see Devon Winterbourne, the newly minted Duke of Casselmaine. Devon and Rosalind were on the verge of betrothal before the infamous Thorne family scandal derailed their courtship. Now Rosalind wonders if there's a chance their love might reignite.

Devon is as handsome as Rosalind remembers and it's clear the attraction they once shared hasn't waned. But their time together is interrupted by one crisis after another—not the least of which is an awkwardly timed request for help from Louisa's friend, Helen Corbyn.

Not long ago, the untimely death of Helen's brother, William, was ruled a suicide, but few people truly believe he took his own life. Helen needs to know what really happened—especially since she's engaged to the man some suspect of secretly killing William.

While Rosalind desperately wants to help, she fears her efforts might cast a pall over Louisa's nuptials, not to mention her reunion with Devon. But when another untimely death rocks the ton, Rosalind has no choice but to uncover the truth before more people die...even if her actions threaten her future with Devon.

Visit Darcie Wilde's website.

My Book, The Movie: And Dangerous to Know.

The Page 69 Test: And Dangerous to Know.

The Page 69 Test: A Lady Compromised.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top vigilante thrillers

Molly Odintz is the Senior Editor for CrimeReads. She grew up in Austin and worked as a bookseller at BookPeople for years before her recent move up to New York City for a life in crime. She likes cats, crime novels, and coffee.

At CrimeReads, Odintz tagged six favorite titles from the "new wave of thrillers where the oppressed get some well-earned revenge." One title on the list:

David Heska Wanbli Weiden, Winter Counts

This one’s noir to the bone, even moreso because the need for a vigilante is based in real life circumstances. David Heska Wanbli Weiden’s stunning debut, Winter Counts, follows Virgil Wounded Horse, who acts as kind of enforcer for those who are caught in a legal no-man’s-land on their tribal reservation, and need some major ass-kicking on their behalf. He usually spends his days delivering beatings to pedophiles and wife-beaters and caring for his orphaned nephew, but when he reconnects with a old flame and is hired by her father to investigate an uptick of youth drug use, he finds himself tested to protect his community in a whole new way.

Read about another entry on the list.

Winter Counts is among Jennifer Baker's top twelve mystery novels featuring BIPOC protagonists.

The Page 69 Test: Winter Counts.

My Book, The Movie: Winter Counts.

Q&A with David Heska Wanbli Weiden.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Rachel Hope Cleves's "Unspeakable"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Unspeakable: A Life Beyond Sexual Morality by Rachel Hope Cleves.

About the book, from the publisher:

The sexual exploitation of children by adults has a long, fraught history. Yet how cultures have reacted to it is shaped by a range of forces, beliefs, and norms, like any other social phenomenon. Changes in how Anglo-American culture has understood intergenerational sex can be seen with startling clarity in the life of British writer Norman Douglas (1868–1952), who was a beloved and popular author, a friend of luminaries like Graham Greene, Aldous Huxley, and D.H. Lawrence, and an unrepentant and uncloseted pederast. Rachel Hope Cleves’s careful study opens a window onto the social history of intergenerational sex in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, revealing how charisma, celebrity, and contemporary standards protected Douglas from punishment—until they didn’t.

Unspeakable approaches Douglas as neither monster nor literary hero, but as a man who participated in an exploitative sexual subculture that was tolerated in ways we may find hard to understand. Using letters, diaries, memoirs, police records, novels, and photographs—including sources by the children Douglas encountered—Cleves identifies the cultural practices that structured pedophilic behaviors in England, Italy, and other places Douglas favored. Her book delineates how approaches to adult-child sex have changed over time and offers insight into how society can confront similar scandals today, celebrity and otherwise.

Visit Rachel Hope Cleves's website.

The Page 99 Test: Unspeakable: A Life Beyond Sexual Morality.

--Marshal Zeirngue

Q&A with Rachel Mans McKenny

From my Q&A with Rachel Mans McKenny, author of The Butterfly Effect: A Novel:

What's in a name?

This is the only novel I've ever written where the character's name came first. While reading about butterflies, I came across a beautiful insect called the glasswing with the scientific name Greta oto. "That sounds like a person's name," I thought. And now it is.

How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your new novel?

Teenage me would be surprised that my debut novel centered around science, when that was objectively not 'my thing' in high school. My oldest brother is a particle physicist, and my other brother dissected computers for fun, so I always liked to set myself apart by...[read on]

Visit Rachel Mans McKenny's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Butterfly Effect.

Q&A with Rachel Mans McKenny.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Catherine Ryan Hyde's "My Name is Anton"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: My Name is Anton: A Novel by Catherine Ryan Hyde.

About the book, from the publisher:

New York Times bestselling author Catherine Ryan Hyde returns with a hopeful novel of sacrifice, two lost souls, and enduring love.

New York Times bestselling author Catherine Ryan Hyde returns with a hopeful novel of sacrifice, two lost souls, and enduring love.

It’s 1965, and life has taken a turn for eighteen-year-old Anton Addison-Rice. Nearly a year after his brother died in a tragic accident, Anton is still wounded—physically and emotionally. Alone for the holidays, he catches a glimpse of his neighbor Edith across the street one evening and realizes that she’s in danger.

Anton is determined to help Edith leave her abusive marriage. Frightened and fifteen years Anton’s senior, Edith is slow to trust. But when she needs a safe place to stay, she lets down her guard, and over the course of ten days an unlikely friendship grows. As Anton falls hopelessly and selflessly in love, Edith fears both her husband finding her and Anton getting hurt. She must disappear without telling anyone where she’s going—even Anton.

If keeping Edith safe means letting her go, Anton will say goodbye forever. Or so he believes. What would happen, though, if one day their paths should cross again?

Visit Catherine Ryan Hyde's website.

Q&A with Catherine Ryan Hyde.

The Page 69 Test: Brave Girl, Quiet Girl.

The Page 69 Test: My Name is Anton.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten books about mermaids

Monique Roffey is a London-based novelist who teaches creative writing in the UK, Trinidad, Cuba and Greece. Her novel The White Woman on the Green Bicycle (Simon and Schuster UK) was shortlisted for the Orange Prize in 2010.

Roffey's latest novel, The Mermaid of Black Conch, is nominated for the Costa novel of the year award.

At the Guardian she tagged ten mermaid books she's admired and been inspired by, including:

The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar

Written by a debut writer, this is the real deal mermaid mystery – the hybrid creature captured and living a melancholy existence as some man’s love object. It’s a love story, fish story and rollicking historical drama all rolled into one, set in Georgian England. Buy it for the gorgeous language and descriptions of the tragically doubly entrapped fish-woman herself. Probably my favourite book on the list.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: T. K. Wilson's "Killing Strangers"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Killing Strangers: How Political Violence Became Modern by T. K. Wilson.

About the book, from the publisher:

A bewildering feature of so much contemporary political violence is its stunning impersonality. Every major city centre becomes a potential shooting gallery; and every metro system a potential bomb alley. Victims just happen, as the saying goes, to 'be in the wrong place at the wrong time'.

We accept this contemporary reality - at least to some degree. But we rarely ask: where has it come from historically? Killing Strangers tackles this question head on. It examines how such violence became 'unchained' from inter-personal relationships. It traces the rise of such impersonal violence by examining violence in conjunction with changing social and political realities. In particular, it traces both 'push' and 'pull' - the ability of modern states to force the violence of their challengers into niche forms: and the disturbing new opportunities that technological changes offer to cause mayhem in fresh and original ways.

Killing Strangers therefore aims to highlight the very strangeness of contemporary experience when it is viewed against a long-term perspective. Atrocities regularly capture media attention - and just as quickly fade from public view. That is both tragic - and utterly predictable. Deep down we expect no different. And that is why such atrocities must be repeated if our attention is to be re-engaged. Deep down we expect that, too.

So Killing Strangers deliberately asks the very simplest of questions. How on earth did we get here?

Follow Tim Wilson on Twitter; learn more about Killing Strangers at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Killing Strangers.

--Marshal Zeringue

Karen Brooks's "The Lady Brewer of London," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Lady Brewer of London: A Novel by Karen Brooks.

The entry begins:

If The Lady Brewer of London was made into a movie, I know exactly who I’d like to play Anneke Sheldrake. When I first started writing, I imagined a young Ann Margaret. She looks so right for the part with her gorgeous red hair, the shape of her eyes and height. Anneke is eighteen when the book opens, and is immediately put in a situation where she has to shoulder incredible responsibilities for someone so young. Basically, make a living in order to support her younger siblings and family servants and not be evicted from their home. Undaunted (except to those who really know her), she makes what some in that time would have considered an indecent proposal to her landlord to help her family not only survive, but thrive. She pays the price for her chutzpah, but at the same time refuses to be beaten. I could see Ann Margaret filling the role beautifully. 

But then I saw...[read on]

Visit Karen Brooks's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Lady Brewer of London.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Tessa Arlen

From my Q&A with Tessa Arlen, author of Poppy Redfern and the Fatal Flyers:

Your title refers to two Attagirls, female civilians who pilot planes from factories to military airfields all over Britain, who die in suspicious circumstances. Are these incidents wholly a product of your imagination, or did something like that actually happen during the war? 

Complete fiction on my part! But I read that one ATA volunteer in ten suffered fatal accidents delivering planes during WWII. Seasonal fog, ice storms, and the hazard of barrage balloons were very real dangers, especially as ATA pilots flew without radios to prevent them from blocking RAF communications. They also flew no higher than 1,000 feet above ground level so they could recognize the landmarks: railways lines, bridges, and rivers, shown on their maps. Not all new planes were reliable either. The Ministry of Transport was churning out aircraft like kitchen appliances, sometimes with very few test pilot hours on a new mark before production, which made flying in wartime doubly dangerous. So, I thought...[read on]

Visit Tessa Arlen's website.

See Tessa Arlen’s top five historical novels.

Coffee with a Canine: Tessa Arlen & Daphne.

The Page 69 Test: Death of a Dishonorable Gentleman.

My Book, The Movie: Death of a Dishonorable Gentleman.

The Page 69 Test: Death Sits Down to Dinner.

My Book, The Movie: Death Sits Down to Dinner.

The Page 69 Test: A Death by Any Other Name.

The Page 69 Test: Death of an Unsung Hero.

Writers Read: Tessa Arlen (November 2019).

The Page 69 Test: Poppy Redfern and the Midnight Murders.

Q&A with Tessa Arlen (April 2020).

The Page 69 Test: Poppy Redfern and the Fatal Flyers.

Q&A with Tessa Arlen.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Noelle Molé Liston's "The Truth Society"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Truth Society: Science, Disinformation, and Politics in Berlusconi's Italy by Noelle Molé Liston.

About the book, from the publisher:

Noelle Molé Liston's The Truth Society seeks to understand how a period of Italian political spectacle, which regularly blurred fact and fiction, has shaped how people understand truth, mass-mediated information, scientific knowledge, and forms of governance. Liston scrutinizes Italy's late twentieth-century political culture, particularly the impact of the former prime minister and media mogul Silvio Berlusconi. By doing so, she examines how this truth-bending political era made science, logic, and rationality into ideas that needed saving.

With the prevalence of fake news and our seeming lack of shared reality in the "post-truth" world, many people struggle to figure out where this new normal came from. Liston argues that seemingly disparate events and practices that have unfolded in Italy are historical reactions to mediatized political forms and particular, cultivated ways of knowing. Politics, then, is always sutured to how knowledge is structured, circulated, and processed. The Truth Society offers Italy as a case study for understanding the remaking of politics in an era of disinformation.

Learn more about The Truth Society at the Cornell University Press website. Follow Noelle Molé Liston on Intagram.

The Page 99 Test: The Truth Society.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight novels featuring group misdeeds

Kia Abdullah is an author from London. Her novel Take It Back was named one of the best thrillers of the year by The Guardian and The Telegraph.

At CrimeReads she tagged eight novels featuring co-conspirators, including:

Blacktop Wasteland, S. A. Cosby

“Like Breaking Bad in a high-speed collision with Drive” reads the pitch for Blacktop Wasteland—and it doesn’t disappoint. Beauregard “Bug” Montage, once the sharpest wheelman on the east coast, has given up a life of crime to set up shop as a mechanic in rural Virginia. When a competitor poaches all his customers, Bug finds himself on a financial precipice and agrees to a one-time job: a diamond heist with a get-rich payout. Unluckily for Bug, his hapless co-conspirators bungle the robbery, raising the stakes to life or death. As well as blistering action scenes and full-throttle car chases, Cosby serves up an explosive mix of racial tension, small-town deprivation and destructive masculinity.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Rachel Mans McKenny's "The Butterfly Effect"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Butterfly Effect: A Novel by Rachel Mans McKenny.

About the book, from the publisher:

Is there such a thing as an anti-social butterfly? If there were, Greta Oto would know about it–and totally relate. An entomologist, Greta far prefers the company of bugs to humans, and that’s okay, because people don’t seem to like her all that much anyway, with the exception of her twin brother, Danny, though they’ve recently had a falling out. So when she lands a research gig in the rainforest, she leaves it all behind.

But when Greta learns that Danny has suffered an aneurysm and is now hospitalized, she abandons her research and hurries home to the middle of nowhere America to be there for her brother. But there’s only so much she can do, and unfortunately just like insects, humans don’t stay cooped up in their hives either–they buzz about and… socialize. Coming home means confronting all that she left behind, including her lousy soon-to-be sister-in-law, her estranged mother, and her ex-boyfriend Brandon who has conveniently found a new non-lab-exclusive partner with shiny hair, perfect teeth, and can actually remember the names of the people she meets right away. Being that Brandon runs the only butterfly conservatory in town, and her dissertation is now in jeopardy, taking that job, being back home, it’s all creating chaos of Greta’s perfectly catalogued and compartmentalized world. But real life is messy, and Greta will have to ask herself if she has the courage to open up for the people she loves, and for those who want to love her.

The Butterfly Effect is an unconventional tale of self-discovery, navigating relationships, and how sometimes it takes stepping outside of our comfort zone to find what we need the most.

Visit Rachel Mans McKenny's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Butterfly Effect.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Meredith F. Small's "Inventing the World"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Inventing the World: Venice and the Transformation of Western Civilization by Meredith F. Small.

About the book, from the publisher:

An epic cultural journey that reveals how Venetian ingenuity and inventions—from sunglasses and forks to bonds and currency—shaped modernity.

How did a small, isolated city—with a population that never exceeded 100,000, even in its heyday—come to transform western civilization? Acclaimed anthropologist Meredith Small, the author of the groundbreaking Our Babies, Ourselves examines the the unique Venetian social structure that was key to their explosion of creativity and invention that ranged from the material to social.

Whether it was boats or money, medicine or face cream, opera, semicolons, tiramisu or child-labor laws, these all originated in Venice and have shaped contemporary notions of institutions and conventions ever since. The foundation of how we now think about community, health care, money, consumerism, and globalization all sprung forth from the Laguna Veneta.

But Venice is far from a historic relic or a life-sized museum. It is a living city that still embraces its innovative roots. As climate change effects sea-level rises, Venice is on the front lines of preserving its legacy and cultural history to inspire a new generation of innovators.

Visit Meredith F. Small's website.

The Page 99 Test: Inventing the World.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight books where things don't go that well

Simon Han was born in Tianjin, China, and raised in various cities in Texas. His stories and essays have appeared in The Atlantic, The Texas Observer, Guernica, The Iowa Review, Electric Literature, and LitHub. The recipient of several fiction awards and arts fellowships, he lives in Carrollton, Texas.

Han's new novel is Nights When Nothing Happened.

At Lit Hub he tagged eight books where things don't go that well, that "give space for more fraught experiences of the season." One title on the list:

Zadie Smith, White Teeth

New Year’s Day, 1975 and New Year’s Eve, 1992 bookend Smith’s much-celebrated first novel, as a butcher’s reluctant saving of Archie Jones’s life sets into motion a sprawling intergenerational tale of religious tradition and the modern world, accidents and destinies, “split people” and “inside and outside” histories. The final New Year’s Eve of the book somehow brings all the characters’ threads together in a simmering moment of violence, but even after all the breathless prose, one gets the sense that, “like the signing of peace treaties or the docking of passenger boats, the end is simply the beginning of an even longer story.”

Read about another book on the list.

White Teeth is on Panikos Panayi's top ten list of books about Londoners, Ellie Kemper's ten favorite books list, Jeff Somers's list of five notable books set on New Year’s Eve (and Day), Michael Gibney's top ten list of restaurants and bars in modern literature, Mary Beard's six best books list, John Mullan's list of the ten most notable New Years in literature, Melissa Albert's list of five notable--and ambitious--debut novels and Nigel Williams's list of ten of the best books about suburbia.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Kristy Dallas Alley

From my Q&A with Kristy Dallas Alley, author of The Ballad of Ami Miles:

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

Figuring out the title of this book was a huge turning point for me. A ballad tells a story, often tragic but occasionally happy, and ballads are an enduring form of oral tradition and entertainment across cultures and time. The Ballad of Ami Miles is set in a future that feels like the past in some ways, and it's about a girl who has to process tragedy and trauma before she can become the owner of her own story. And actual ballads play a part in the story as well. So I think the title does a good bit of the work of setting the tone for what readers can expect from this story.

What's in a name?

Ami is raised on a religious compound so I wanted her to...[read on]

Follow Kristy Dallas Alley on Facebook and Twitter.

My Book, The Movie: The Ballad of Ami Miles.

The Page 69 Test: The Ballad of Ami Miles.

Q&A with Kristy Dallas Alley.

--Marshal Zeringue

Linda Keir's "The Three Mrs. Wrights," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Three Mrs. Wrights: A Novel by Linda Keir.

The entry begins:

As coauthors writing under the pen name Linda Keir, our entire process—from idea generation to outlining to drafting—is collaborative. When it comes to characters, we divide and conquer, with each one of us tackling different points of view. Whoever is writing a character decides what he or she looks like and then describes them well enough that we can both visualize age, appearance, and identifying characteristics. So far, we’ve operated on the perhaps mistaken belief that our conversations and descriptive abilities leave us picturing our characters in exactly the same way.

With a few notable exceptions (such as Andi Bloom in Drowning with Others, for whom we jointly chose a photo of a representative brunette) we’ve rarely discussed celebrity counterparts for our characters. Because of this, we thought it would be fun to compare our dream casts for our latest novel, The Three Mrs. Wrights, which is the story of three smart, successful women who discover they’ve been taken in by the very same successful entrepreneur and serial womanizer.

Lark Robinson

Biracial Lark is beautiful, bright, and unconventional. In her mid-twenties and every bit the Millennial, she’s determined to succeed with the board game she has designed for budding girl scientists.

Linda: Definitely Zoe Kravitz or Gugu Mbatha-Raw. They are both exceptionally striking and sexy in the same way I picture Lark to be.

Keir: I never had anybody in mind, but I have to say that Vanessa Hudgens comes closest to the person I imagined.

Jessica Meyers

Jessica is a newly minted pediatric oncologist in her early thirties. She is slim and attractive with long brown hair. She defines herself much more by her intelligence than looks.

Linda: From the very start, I pictured her as…[read on]

Linda Keir is the pen name for the writing team of Linda Joffe Hull and Keir Graff.

My Book, The Movie: The Three Mrs. Wrights.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Golan Y. Moskowitz's "Wild Visionary"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Wild Visionary: Maurice Sendak in Queer Jewish Context by Golan Y. Moskowitz.

About the book, from the publisher:

Wild Visionary reconsiders Maurice Sendak's life and work in the context of his experience as a Jewish gay man. Maurice (Moishe) Bernard Sendak (1928–2012) was a fierce, romantic, and shockingly funny truth seeker who intervened in modern literature and culture. Raising the stakes of children's books, Sendak painted childhood with the dark realism and wild imagination of his own sensitive "inner child," drawing on the queer and Yiddish sensibilities that shaped his singular voice.

Interweaving literary biography and cultural history, Golan Y. Moskowitz follows Sendak from his parents' Brooklyn home to spaces of creative growth and artistic vision—from neighborhood movie palaces to Hell's Kitchen, Greenwich Village, Fire Island, and the Connecticut country home he shared with Eugene Glynn, his partner of more than fifty years. Further, he analyzes Sendak's investment in the figure of the endangered child in symbolic relation to collective touchstones that impacted the artist's perspective—the Great Depression, the Holocaust, and the AIDS crisis. Through a deep exploration of Sendak's picture books, interviews, and previously unstudied personal correspondence, Wild Visionary offers a sensitive portrait of the most beloved and enchanting picture-book artist of our time.

Learn more about Wild Visionary at the Stanford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Wild Visionary.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine top books set in very cold places

At Book Riot Laura Sackton tagged nine of her favorite wintery reads, including:

MOON OF THE CRUSTED SNOW BY WAUBGESHIG RICE

This one of those books where the setting is so vivid and alive that it feels like a central character. It’s set in a small, remote Anishinaabe community in northern Canada. The story begins when suddenly all contact to the outside world is cut off: phones go dead, power goes out, the internet disappears. Not knowing what is happening, the people in the community struggle to make sense of their new reality as the coming winter looms closer and closer. This is a thoughtful, deliciously slow-moving, and often chilling post-apocalyptic novel about what holds a community together and what can tear it apart.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Andrea J. Johnson's "Poetic Justice"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Poetic Justice by Andrea J. Johnson.

About the book, from the publisher:

Twenty-five year old Victoria Justice has never really gotten over a near drowning at the hands of a high school bully, but has attempted to build her confidence and career as a court stenographer under the mentorship of The Honorable Frederica Scott Wannamaker, the county's first African-American Superior Court judge.

But when her old nemesis appears on the court docket, Victoria's carefully crafted world implodes—evidence goes missing, a potential mistrial abounds, and the judge winds up drowned in the courthouse bathroom. Victoria realizes her transcript of the proceedings unlocks everyone's secrets...including the murderer's.

Plagued with guilt for failing to protect her mentor, Victoria teams up with Ashton North, the handsome state trooper accused of mishandling trial evidence, and starts to untangle the conspiracy surrounding the case.

Meanwhile, the deputy attorney general hangs himself during the Post-Election Festival. Everyone is quick to accept his suicide note as a sign of guilt, but Victoria is convinced the truth behind her mentor's death lies in the trial transcript. Can she suppress her fears long enough to crack the code, find her voice, and avoid the crosshairs of the killer?

Visit Andrea J. Johnson's website.

My Book, The Movie: Poetic Justice.

The Page 69 Test: Poetic Justice.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: J.R. Oldfield's "The Ties that Bind"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Ties that Bind: Transatlantic Abolitionism in the Age of Reform, c. 1820-1866 by J.R. Oldfield.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Ties that Bind explores in depth the close affinities that bound together anti-slavery activists in Britain and the USA during the middle decades of the nineteenth century, years that witnessed the overthrow of slavery in both the British Caribbean and the American South. Drawing on a wide variety of sources, the book sheds important new light on the dynamics of abolitionist opinion building during the Age of Reform, from books and artefacts to anti-slavery songs, lectures and placards. Building an anti-slavery public required patience and perseverance. It also involved an engagement with politics, even if anti-slavery activists disagreed about what form that engagement should take. This is a book about the importance of transatlantic co-operation and the transmission of ideas and practices. Yet, at the same time, it is also alert to the tensions that underlay these 'Atlantic affinities', particularly when it came to what was sometimes perceived as the increasing Americanization of anti-slavery protest culture. Above all, The Ties that Bind stresses the importance of personality, perhaps best exemplified in the enduring transatlantic friendship between George Thompson and William Lloyd Garrison.

Learn more about The Ties that Bind at the Liverpool University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: The Ties that Bind.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six crime novels that prove you can’t go home again

Tessa Wegert is the author of Death in the Family and The Dead Season, part of the Shana Merchant series of mysteries.

At CrimeReads, Wegert tagged six "crime fiction novels that rely on home as a major theme," including:

The Homecoming by Andrew Pyper

Most homecomings have as much to do with family as with place. When that family is highly dysfunctional and the place is straight out of The Twilight Zone, you know things are bound to be interesting.

In The Homecoming, a forced family reunion incited by the death of an absentee father catches the Quinlans completely off guard. Raymond Quinlan’s last will and testament states that his family must remain on the property of his secluded estate for thirty days in order to reap his unexpected wealth.

It’s an opportunity for the Quinlans to learn more about the mysterious man and his life beyond his family. Trouble is, the secrets he’s been harboring are hazardous and put his family into twisted situations the likes of which they could never have imagined.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with S. J. Rozan

From my Q&A with S. J. Rozan, author of The Art of Violence: A Lydia Chin/Bill Smith Novel:

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

A lot. Right away you know that art and violence are tangled together in this book. On page 1 you see the threat of violence. The art follows very quickly. (Side note: When we signed the contract the book had no title yet, so the contract refers to it as "UNTITLED #2." Any painter would use that for a canvas so I thought it would be a great title for the book. My publisher threw cold water all over that idea.)

What's in a name? 

As opposed to a book title...[read on]

Visit S.J. Rozan's website.

The Page 69 Test: Paper Son.

The Page 69 Test: The Art of Violence.

Q&A with S. J. Rozan.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight fictional housewives who snapped (in a fun way)

Katie Yee is a Brooklyn-based writer and the Book Marks associate editor at Lit Hub. If you follow @bookmarksreads on Instagram, you'll see lots of photos of her rescue dog, Oliver.

At Lit Hub she tagged eight novels featuring women who have had enough. One title on the list:

Natsuki of Sayaka Murata’s Earthlings

Natsuki doesn’t quite fit in to the society she calls “a baby-making factory.” She doesn’t want to be a cog in this machine. Looking at the world through her eyes is a fascinating exercise in defamiliarization. (Apartment complexes are “nests.”) Eventually, pressured by her family and cultural expectations, she enters into a platonic marriage with a man who shares her disinterest in romance and the roles they’re supposed to play in society. So, not your typical housewife, but on the surface and to all of her friends and family, she has finally become a part of the baby-making factory. Right? Wrong. Eventually, Natsuki and her husband flee society and, well, in the epitome of straight-up snapping, let’s just say there’s cannibalism.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Kristy Dallas Alley's "The Ballad of Ami Miles"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Ballad of Ami Miles by Kristy Dallas Alley.

About the book, from the publisher:

A teen girl on a quest to find her long-lost mother finds herself on a journey of self-discovery in Kristy Dallas Alley's moving YA debut, The Ballad of Ami Miles.

Raised in isolation at Heavenly Shepherd, her family’s trailer-dealership-turned-survival compound, Ami Miles knows that she was lucky to be born into a place of safety after the old world ended and the chaos began. But when her grandfather brings home a cold-eyed stranger, she realizes that her “destiny” as one of the few females capable of still bearing children isn’t something she’s ready to face.

With the help of one of her aunts, she flees the only life she’s ever known and sets off on a quest to find her long-lost mother (and hopefully a mate of her own choosing). But as she journeys, Ami discovers many new things about the world...and about herself.

Follow Kristy Dallas Alley on Facebook and Twitter.

My Book, The Movie: The Ballad of Ami Miles.

The Page 69 Test: The Ballad of Ami Miles.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five books about the horror of winter

Evie Green is a pseudonym for a British author who has written professionally for her entire adult life. She lives by the sea in England with her husband, children, and guinea pigs, and loves writing in the very early morning, fueled by coffee.

Her new novel is We Hear Voices.

At Tor.com, Green tagged five favorite horror books set in snow, including:

Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist

Blood looks incredible against snow. This vampire story is set in Blackeberg, a suburb of Stockholm, in the winter, and the aesthetics are amazing. Oskar is horrifically bullied at school. He makes friends with a girl who lives in the next apartment, though oddly he can only meet her outside after dark. Of course, as he finds out, there is a reason for that. This book is utterly gripping, and mixes the reality of life in a recently constructed Swedish suburb (settings include the lackluster playground, municipal swimming pool, a local Chinese restaurant) with vampiric horror in a darkly funny way, with a vivid ensemble cast. Without any spoilers, let’s just say Oskar’s bullies get their comeuppance.

Read about another entry on the list.

Let the Right One In is among Kevin Jackson's top ten vampire novels.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Peter Salmon's "An Event, Perhaps"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: An Event, Perhaps: A Biography of Jacques Derrida by Peter Salmon.

About the book, from the publisher:

Philosopher, film star, father of “post truth”—the real story of Jacques Derrida

Who is Jacques Derrida? For some, he is the originator of a relativist philosophy responsible for the contemporary crisis of truth. For the far right, he is one of the architects of Cultural Marxism. To his academic critics, he reduced French philosophy to “little more than an object of ridicule.” For his fans, he is an intellectual rock star who ranged across literature, politics, and linguistics. In An Event, Perhaps, Peter Salmon presents this misunderstood and misappropriated figure as a deeply humane and urgent thinker for our times.

Born in Algiers, the young Jackie was always an outsider. Despite his best efforts, he found it difficult to establish himself among the Paris intellectual milieu of the 1960s. However, in 1967, he changed the whole course of philosophy: outlining the central concepts of deconstruction. Immediately, his reputation as a complex and confounding thinker was established. Feted by some, abhorred by others, Derrida had an exhaustive breadth of interests but, as Salmon shows, was moved by a profound desire to understand how we engage with each other. It is a theme explored through Derrida’s intimate relationships with writers sucheven as Althusser, Genet, Lacan, Foucault, Cixous, and Kristeva.

Accessible, provocative and beautifully written, An Event, Perhaps will introduce a new readership to the life and work of a philosopher whose influence over the way we think will continue long into the twenty-first century.

Visit Peter Salmon's website.

The Page 99 Test: An Event, Perhaps.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top open-ended novels

Caz Frear grew up in Coventry, England, and spent her teenage years dreaming of moving to London and writing a novel. After fulfilling her first dream, it wasn’t until she moved back to Coventry thirteen years later that the second finally came true. She has a degree in History & Politics, and when she’s not agonizing over snappy dialogue or incisive prose, she can be found shouting at Arsenal football matches or holding court in the pub on topics she knows nothing about. She is the author of three Cat Kinsella novels: Sweet Little Lies, Stone Cold Heart, and Shed No Tears.

[The Page 69 Test: Sweet Little Lies; The Page 69 Test: Stone Cold Heart.]

At CrimeReads, Frear tagged five of her favorite novels with ambiguous endings, including:

In The Woods, Tana French

Oh, the arguments I’ve had over this ending! No list would be complete without Tana French’s sublime debut, focusing on the woodland murder of twelve-year-old Katy Devlin and the efforts of Detectives Rob Ryan and Cassie Maddox to bring her killer to justice. Of course, in the great procedural tradition, Rob has his own demons. Twenty-two years ago, an adolescent Rob went into those same woods with two friends who subsequently vanished, never to be seen again. Could the cases be linked? Does Rob know more than he’s letting on?

While it’s important to note that the central mystery is solved here, the beautifully hazy ending—the final punch, if you like—has been described as both ‘near poetry’ and ‘infuriating beyond words.’ In truth, both descriptions are completely valid.

Or at least that’s my opinion. You may well form a different one. And that’s the beauty of the ambiguous ending. There is no right or wrong.

Read about another entry on the list.

In the Woods is among Gabriel Bergmoser's top ten horror novels, Kate White's favorite thrillers with a main character who can’t remember what matters most, Kathleen Donohoe's ten top titles about missing persons, Jessica Knoll's ten top thrillers, Tara Sonin's twenty-five unhappy books for Valentine’s Day, Krysten Ritter's six favorite mysteries, Megan Reynolds's top ten books you must read if you loved Gone Girl, Emma Straub's ten top books that mimic the feeling of a summer vacation, the Barnes & Noble Review's five top books from Ireland's newer voices, and Judy Berman's ten fantastic novels with disappointing endings.

The Page 69 Test: In the Woods.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: S.J. Rozan's "The Art of Violence"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Art of Violence: A Lydia Chin/Bill Smith Novel by S. J. Rozan.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the latest mystery from S. J. Rozan, Bill Smith and Lydia Chin must track down a serial killer stalking women in New York's contemporary art scene.

Former client Sam Tabor, just out of Greenhaven after a five-year homicide stint, comes to Bill Smith with a strange request. A colossally talented painter whose parole was orchestrated by art world movers and shakers, Sam's convinced that since he's been out he's killed two women. He doesn't remember the killings but he wants Smith, one of the few people he trusts, to investigate and prove him either innocent or guilty.

NYPD detective Angela Grimaldi thinks Sam's "a weirdo." Smith has no argument with that: diagnosed with a number of mental disorders over the years, Sam self-medicates with alcohol, loses focus (except when he's painting), and has few friends. But Smith doesn't think that adds up to serial killer. He enlists Lydia Chin to help prove it.

Smith and Chin delve into the world surrounding Sam Tabor, including his brother, two NYPD detectives, and various other artists, dealers, collectors, curators, and art connoisseurs. No answers appear. Evidence is found and lost again. And more bodies turn up.

Sam Tabor might be just a crazy artist. But someone is killing people in his orbit. If not Sam, who? Why? And who will be next?

Visit S.J. Rozan's website.

The Page 69 Test: Paper Son.

The Page 69 Test: The Art of Violence.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Caroline Kim

From my Q&A with Caroline Kim, author of The Prince of Mournful Thoughts and Other Stories:

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

Choosing a title for my collection of short stories was challenging because there was no one story title that could entirely represent all of the disparate stories, which take place in different countries and in very different time periods. The one I chose ultimately came closest because the idea of mournful thoughts reflects the Korean concept of han. Han is difficult to define and has no direct translation into English but comes out of a feeling of hardship that the Korean people have suffered historically. I’ve seen it described variously as resentment, regret, and even hatred. But I think of it more as an emotion that encompasses grief, resignation, endurance, and sorrow. Humor can come from sorrow too — just ask any comedian — so I chose the title because...[read on]

Visit Caroline Kim's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Prince of Mournful Thoughts and Other Stories.

Q&A with Caroline Kim.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten Shakespearean books

Robert McCrum was born and educated in Cambridge. For nearly 20 years he was editor-in-chief of the publishers Faber & Faber, and then literary editor of the Observer from 1996 to 2008. He is now an associate editor of the Observer. He is the author of Every Third Thought, My Year Off, Wodehouse: A Life (2004), six novels, and the co-author of the international bestseller, The Story of English (1986). His new book is Shakespearean: On Life & Language in Times of Disruption.

At the Guardian, McCrum tagged his ten top Shakespearean books, including:

Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

Melville did not just want to identify with Shakespeare – he wanted to compete with him, as an American. “If Shakespeare has not [yet] been equalled,” he wrote, “he is sure to be surpassed by an American born now, or yet to be born.” Melville’s edition of the complete works has about 500 passages marked for special study;

and the writing of Moby-Dick became an extraordinary effort of literary oneupmanship.

Read about another entry on the list.

Moby-Dick appears among Bridget Collins's top ten Quakers in fiction, John Boyne's six best books, Kate Christensen's best food scenes in fiction, Emily Temple's ten literary classics we're supposed to like...but don't, Sara Flannery Murphy ten top stories of obsession, Harold Bloom's six favorite books that helped shape "the American Sublime,"  Charlotte Seager's five well-known literary monomaniacs who take things too far, Ann Leary's top ten books set in New England, Martin Seay's ten best long books, Ian McGuire's ten best adventure novels, Jeff Somers's five top books that will expand your vocabulary and entertain, Four books that changed Mary Norris, Tim Dee's ten best nature books, the Telegraph's fifteen best North American novels of all time, Nicole Hill's top ten best names in literature to give your dog, Horatio Clare's five favorite maritime novels, the Telegraph's ten great meals in literature, Brenda Wineapple's six favorite books, Scott Greenstone's top seven allegorical novels, Paul Wilson's top ten books about disability, Lynn Shepherd's ten top fictional drownings, Peter Murphy's top ten literary preachers, Penn Jillette's six favorite books, Peter F. Stevens's top ten nautical books, Katharine Quarmby's top ten disability stories, Jonathan Evison's six favorite books, Bella Bathurst's top 10 books on the sea, John Mullan's lists of ten of the best nightmares in literature and ten of the best tattoos in literature, Susan Cheever's five best books about obsession, Christopher Buckley's best books, Jane Yolen's five most important books, Chris Dodd's best books, Augusten Burroughs' five most important books, Norman Mailer's top ten works of literature, David Wroblewski's five most important books, Russell Banks' five most important books, and Philip Hoare's top ten books about whales.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Danilo Mandić's "Gangsters and Other Statesmen"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Gangsters and Other Statesmen: Mafias, Separatists, and Torn States in a Globalized World by Danilo Mandic.

About the book, from the publisher:

How global organized crime shapes the politics of borders in modern conflicts

Separatism has been on the rise across the world since the end of the Cold War, dividing countries through political strife, ethnic conflict, and civil war, and redrawing the political map. Gangsters and Other Statesmen examines the role transnational mafias play in the success and failure of separatist movements, challenging conventional wisdom about the interrelation of organized crime with peacebuilding, nationalism, and state making.

Danilo Mandić conducted fieldwork in the disputed territories of Kosovo and South Ossetia, talking to mobsters, separatists, and policymakers in war zones and along major smuggling routes. In this timely and provocative book, he demonstrates how globalized mafias shape the politics of borders in torn states, shedding critical light on an autonomous nonstate actor that has been largely sidelined by considerations of geopolitics, state-centered agency, and ethnonationalism. Blending extensive archival sleuthing and original ethnographic data with insights from sociology and other disciplines, Mandić argues that organized crime can be a fateful determinant of state capacity, separatist success, and ethnic conflict.

Putting mafias at the center of global processes of separatism and territorial consolidation, Gangsters and Other Statesmen raises vital questions and urges reconsideration of a host of separatist cases in West Africa, the Middle East, and East Europe.

Learn more about Gangsters and Other Statesmen at the Princeton University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Gangsters and Other Statesmen.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten chilling thrillers to get you through the winter storms

Alice Blanchard is an award-winning author.

Her latest novel is The Wicked Hour.

At CrimeReads, Blanchard tagged ten chilling tales to get you through a winter storm, including:

Jar of Hearts by Jennifer Hillier

Does one terrible mistake make you a terrible person? This is the disturbing question behind Jennifer Hillier’s grisly, harrowing thriller “Jar of Hearts.” When 16-year-old Geo’s best friend Angela goes missing, only Geo knows what really happened. Fourteen years later, when Angela’s body is found, Geo must testify against her former boyfriend, the Sweetbay Strangler. When he escapes from prison and new bodies start showing up, Geo’s life is in jeopardy—but what really happened back then? That’s the accelerant behind this dark twisty story of flawed characters, turbulent relationships, betrayal, obsession and self-delusion. The ending blew me away.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue