Five essential books about cults

Kate Robards is the author of two thriller novels. Her debut novel, The Three Deaths of Willa Stannard, was nominated for the 2024 Simon & Schuster Mary Higgins Clark Award and received a starred review from Kirkus Reviews. Her second novel, Only the Guilty Survive, has just hit the booskstores.

[My Book, The Movie: The Three Deaths of Willa Stannard; The Page 69 Test: The Three Deaths of Willa Stannard; Q&A with Kate Robards]

Robards studied journalism and advertising at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. Currently, she works in communications at a nonprofit organization.

When she isn’t writing her next book, Robards is spending time with her children, gardening, reading, or tackling a new sewing project. She lives outside Chicago with her family.

At CrimeReads the author tagged five books

shedding light on the spectrum of cult dynamics—from the seductive allure of communal living to the chilling influence of charismatic leaders. They explore the psychological mechanisms behind indoctrination, the haunting aftermath of cult experiences, and the enduring questions of guilt and blame that permeate such narratives.

One title on the list:

Seductive Poison: A Jonestown Survivor’s Story of Life and Death in the Peoples Temple – Deborah Layton

Seductive Poison is a firsthand account of what happened in Jonestown, written by survivor Deborah Layton. Layton takes the reader on a journey from her early years to her indoctrination into Jim Jones’s People’s Temple and her eventual defection from the community in Guyana. Layton was one of Jones’s high-level members, a trusted member of his inner circle. Her honest, vivid memoir is a fascinating exploration into the shadowy world he built and the lies he told his followers, but importantly, it’s relatable. You can understand how she was seduced by Jones; Layton breaks down the barrier between “that could never happen to me” and “I can see how that could happen to anyone.” She details her escape from the jungle commune, leaving her mother, brother, and friends, shortly before the infamous Jonestown massacre in 1978. I drew from Layton’s accounts of her experiences when crafting the character of Lollie in Only the Guilty Survive. Like Layton, Lollie has become disillusioned with the leader she has followed for years and must plot how she can safely escape her home and leave her found family behind.

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Reed Farrel Coleman's "Blind To Midnight"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Blind to Midnight: A Nick Ryan Novel by Reed Farrel Coleman.

About the book, from the publisher:

When you're in trouble, you call 911.

When cops are in trouble, they call Nick Ryan.

Every cop in the city knows his name, but no one says it out loud.

He doesn't wear a uniform, but he is the most powerful cop in New York.

Nick Ryan can find a criminal who's vanished. Or make a key witness disappear.

He has cars, safe houses, money, and weapons hidden all over the city.

Nearly three thousand New Yorkers died on 9/11. But in the entire city on that tragic day, only one murder actually took place. Now, over two decades later, Detective Nick Ryan must dig beneath the official report--and into his own past--to find the truth.

Working again for the mysterious power broker "Joe," Nick finds a link between an airman, a billionaire, a trove of Nazi gold, and a crew of killers, but gets sidetracked when his dear "uncle" Tony and Tony's wife are murdered in a professional hit.

Nick's investigations uncover a tangled web of corruption and blood money, and as the horrifying truth emerges, he finds himself outgunned, on the run, and trusting no one.

With professional killers on his trail, will Nick Ryan be able to end the violence before he loses everything that matters to him--including his own life?

Visit Reed Farrel Coleman's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Hollow Girl.

The Page 69 Test: Where It Hurts.

The Page 69 Test: What You Break.

Writers Read: Reed Farrel Coleman (March 2017).

My Book, The Movie: Sleepless City.

Q&A with Reed Farrel Coleman.

The Page 69 Test: Sleepless City.

Writers Read: Reed Farrel Coleman.

The Page 69 Test: Blind to Midnight.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five of the best books about classical music

Harriet Constable is a writer and filmmaker based in London. Her debut novel is The Instrumentalist. The book is inspired by the true story of Anna Maria della Pietà, who was an orphan, musical prodigy and student of Antonio Vivaldi. It has been named an Observer top 10 debut for 2024.

Constable’s journalism and documentary work is featured in outlets including The New York Times, BBC, The Guardian, The Times, Financial Times, NPR, The Economist. She produced for BBC News at Six and Ten during the pandemic, and is a Rough Guide to Kenya co-author. She was part of the team that made the BAFTA-award winning 9/11: Inside the President’s War Room.

Originally from London, Constable worked at the Financial Times before spending several years in Nairobi and then Johannesburg. She grew up playing the flute and piano and singing with her mother, a classically trained musician.

At the Guardian Constable tagged five of the best books about classical music, including:

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

Patchett’s novel explores what happens between captors and captives when they’re connected through music. Set amid a hostage situation in an unnamed country, our lead is the radiant Roxanne Cross, a world-famous opera singer. The abrupt terror of the context lies in stark contrast to the beauty of the music Roxanne performs. Patchett’s prose flows throughout the story like a melody.

Read about another book on the list.

Bel Canto is among Jamie Day's seven crime titles featuring special events going off the rails, Mark Skinner's twenty great contemporary love stories, Nicole Holofcener’s ten favorite books, Jenny Shank's top five fabulous works of fiction for musicians, Jeff Somers's top five novels set in a single pressure cooker location, Tatjana Soli's six favorite books that conjure exotic locales, Kathryn Williams's six top novels set in just one place, Dell Villa's top eight books to read when you’re in the mood to cry for days, John Mullen's ten best birthday parties in literature, and Joyce Hackett's top ten musical novels.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Susan C. I. Grunewald's "From Incarceration to Repatriation"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: From Incarceration to Repatriation: German Prisoners of War in the Soviet Union by Susan C. I. Grunewald.

About the book, from the publisher:

From Incarceration to Repatriation explores the lives and memories of the nearly 1.5 million German POWs who were held by the Soviet Union during and after World War II and released in phases through 1956, seven years longer than the prisoners of any other Allied nation. Susan C. I. Grunewald argues that Soviet leadership deliberately kept able-bodied German POWs to supplement their labor force after the end of the war. The Soviet Union lost 27 million citizens and a quarter of its physical assets during the war, motivating Soviet leadership to harness the labor of German POWs for as long as possible.

Engaging with recently declassified documents in former Soviet archives, archival material from multiple German governments, as well as innovative use of digital humanities methods and geographic information system (GIS) mapping, Grunewald demonstrates that Soviet authorities detained German POWs primarily for economic rather than punitive reasons. In fact, the GIS mapping of the historical materials makes it clear that most of the four thousand POW camps across the USSR were strategically located near industrial, infrastructure, and natural resource sites that were critical to postwar economic reconstruction.

From Incarceration to Repatriation is the first book to draw together the distinct fields of Soviet and German history to provide a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding of German POW captivity in the USSR during and after World War II. Attending to the ways that the memory of German POWs remains in circulation in both the former Soviet Union and Germany, Grunewald tracks the political repercussions of war commemoration.

Visit Susan C. I. Grunewald's website.

The Page 99 Test: From Incarceration to Repatriation.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Liz Alterman reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Liz Alterman, author of The House on Cold Creek Lane.

Her entry begins:

I love to jump back and forth between fiction and non-fiction and print and audiobooks.

I just finished reading Margot Harrison's intriguing The Midnight Club, which follows four adult friends who reunite in an attempt to gain a deeper understanding of their friend and classmate's death during their college days. Set in Vermont, it's very atmospheric and has a speculative element as the group uses a substance known as "sog" to travel back to the past to relive the moments right before their friend's death. I loved this unique premise and Harrison's smooth mix of pop culture and poetry references. Fans of The Secret History will enjoy this wild ride.

I also...[read on]

About The House on Cold Creek Lane, from the publisher:

An unflinching examination of motherhood and the dark side of domesticity set against a suburban backdrop that's anything but blissful. This twisty tale invites readers to a slow motion unravelling that culminates in a devastating finale!

Who was I? What had I become? Breathe, I commanded. You're doing this for your family.

When Laurel and Rob West move into their new home in New Jersey, it seems too good to be true. But Laurel can't shake off her old feelings of anxiety. The neighbor who pays far too much attention to the Wests' two young children . . . Rob watching her every misstep . . . and there's something people aren't telling her about this house...

I promised myself I wouldn't go to that neighborhood again. Not that street. Not so soon.
But I couldn't help it. They made it too easy.

Corey Sutton is trying to outrun her past. Recently divorced and reeling from a devastating loss, she moves into her widowed mother's retirement condo in Florida. Everyone says she just needs some time to recover and rebuild . . . but is Corey beyond saving? She wants answers. And there's very little she won't do to get them.

Though Laurel and Corey have never met, the women have something in common, and if they're not careful, it may just destroy them both . . .

Visit Liz Alterman's website.

Q&A with Liz Alterman.

My Book, The Movie: The Perfect Neighborhood.

The Page 69 Test: The Perfect Neighborhood.

The Page 69 Test: The House on Cold Creek Lane.

My Book, The Movie: The House on Cold Creek Lane.

Writers Read: Liz Alterman.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven of the funniest crime novels

Jamie Harrison has lived in Montana with her family for more than thirty-five years. She's worked as a caterer, a gardener, and an editor, and is the author of seven novels, including the Jules Clement series: The River View (August 2024) and four other novels set in the fictional town of Blue Deer, Montana: The Edge of the Crazies, Going Local, An Unfortunate Prairie Occurrence, and Blue Deer Thaw, all reissued in July 2024. The Center of Everything (2020) and the The Widow Nash (2017) share two key characters; The Widow Nash was awarded the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association Reading the West Book Award, and was a finalist for the High Plains Book Award.

At Electric Lit Harrison tagged seven books that "prove that wanting to kill someone can be funny." One title on the list:

Case Histories by Kate Atkinson

No one can can layer looping threads and tragedy and glee like Kate Atkinson—a plot can feel exuberant, almost out of control, and then it clicks into place like a final watch gear—and few writers are as empathetic and stylish as they torture their protagonist in amusing ways. I wrote four novels in the mid-nineties, and for a long time forgot the joy in reading mysteries. Case Histories and the four other novels in the series gave it back to me. Spending time with Jackson Brodie—sad, lustful, dented, and often very, very, wrong—is an undiluted pleasure.

Read about another entry on the list.

Case Histories is among Jaclyn Moriarty's top ten books about new beginnings, four books that changed Carmel Reilly, Fiona Barton's eight best cold-case mysteries, and Shirley Henderson's six best books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Edward Dolnick's "Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party: How an Eccentric Group of Victorians Discovered Prehistoric Creatures and Accidentally Upended the World by Edward Dolnick.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the bestselling author of The Clockwork Universe and The Writing of the Gods, a historical adventure story about the eccentric Victorians who discovered dinosaur bones, leading to a whole new understanding of human history.

In the early 1800s the world was a safe and cozy place. But then a twelve-year-old farm boy in Massachusetts stumbled on a row of fossilized three-toed footprints the size of dinner plates—the first dinosaur tracks ever found. Soon, in England, Victorians unearthed enormous bones—bones that reached as high as a man’s head. No one had ever seen such things. Outside of myths and fairy tales, no one had even imagined that creatures like three-toed giants had once lumbered across the land. And if anyone had somehow conjured up such a scene, they would never have imagined that all those animals could have vanished, hundreds of millions years ago. The thought of sudden, arbitrary disappearance from life was unnerving and forced the Victorians to rethink everything they knew about the world.

Now, in Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party, celebrated storyteller and historian Edward Dolnick leads us through a compelling true adventure as the paleontologists of the first half of the 19th century puzzled their way through the fossil record to create the story of dinosaurs we know today. The tale begins with Mary Anning, a poor, uneducated woman who had a sixth sense for finding fossils buried deep inside cliffs; and moves to a brilliant, eccentric geologist named William Buckland, a kind of Doctor Doolittle on a mission to eat his way through the entire animal kingdom; and then on to Richard Owen, the most respected and the most despised scientist of his generation.

Entertaining, erudite, and featuring an unconventional cast of characters, Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party tells the story of how the accidental discovery of prehistoric creatures upended humanity’s understanding of the world and their place in it, and how a group of paleontologists worked to bring it back into focus again.

Learn more about the book and author at Edward Dolnick's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Forger's Spell.

The Page 99 Test: The Clockwork Universe.

The Page 99 Test: The Rush.

The Page 99 Test: The Seeds of Life.

The Page 99 Test: Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Bart Yates's "The Very Long, Very Strange Life of Isaac Dahl"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Very Long, Very Strange Life of Isaac Dahl by Bart Yates.

About the book, from the publisher:

Both sweeping and exquisitely intimate, award-winning author Bart Yates blends historical fact and fiction in a surprising, thought-provoking saga spanning 12 significant days across nearly 100 years in the life of a single man, beginning in 1920s Utah.

“Each day is a story, whether or not that story makes any damn sense or is worth telling to anyone else.”

At the age of ninety-six, Isaac Dahl sits down to write his memoir. For Isaac, an accomplished journalist and historian, finding the right words to convey events is never a problem. But this book will be different from anything he has written before. Focusing on twelve different days, each encapsulated in a chapter, Isaac hopes to distill the very essence of his life.

There are days that begin like any other, only to morph through twists of fate. An avalanche strikes Bingham, Utah, and eight-year-old Isaac and his twin sister, Agnes, survive when they are trapped in an upside-down bathtub. Other days stand apart in history—including a day in 1942, when Isaac, stationed on the USS Houston in the Java Sea as a rookie correspondent, confronts the full horror of war. And there are days spent simply, with his lifelong friend, Bo, or with Danny, the younger man whose love transforms Isaac’s later years—precious days with significance that grows clear only in hindsight.

From the Oklahoma Dust Bowl to a Mississippi school at the apex of the civil rights movement, Isaac tells his story with insight, wisdom, and emotional depth. The Very Long, Very Strange Life of Isaac Dahl is a wonderful, singular narrative that will spark conversation and reflection—a reminder that there is no such thing as an ordinary life, and the greatest accomplishment of all is to live and love fully.

Visit Bart Yates's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Very Long, Very Strange Life of Isaac Dahl.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eleven Olympics books that deserve a gold medal

Lindsay Powers is a book lover, writer (bylines include The New York Times and The Washington Post), and author of You Can’t F*ck Up Your Kids: A Judgment-Free Guide to Stress-Free Parenting.

When not devouring narrative nonfiction, fiction, memoirs, and essays, Powers can be found out and about in Brooklyn, where she lives with her husband and two young sons.

At the Amazon Book Review she and her colleagues tagged eleven Olympics books that deserve a gold medal, including:

Courage to Soar: A Body in Motion, A Life in Balance by Simone Biles with Michelle Burford

Simone Biles is the most talented gymnast in history, and one of the greatest athletes alive. No pressure or anything! As excitement mounts about watching her gravity-defying moves, we recommend reading her deeply personal 2016 memoir, which is also suitable for teens. Biles describes her childhood spent in foster care, overcoming personal and athletic challenges, her journey to earning seven Olympic medals (and counting)—and also reveals behind-the-scenes details of high-stakes gymnastics competitions while sprinkling in quotes by people who inspired her (which range from Mother Teresa to The Cheetah Girls). As former Amazon contributor Marina Zarya has said, “This book reads just like a conversation with the then-19-year-old Biles: light, fun, and simultaneously profound.”
—Lindsay Powers, Amazon Editor

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Pascale Massot's "China's Vulnerability Paradox"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: China's Vulnerability Paradox: How the World's Largest Consumer Transformed Global Commodity Markets by Pascale Massot.

About the book, from the publisher:

China's Vulnerability Paradox explains the uneven transformations in global commodity markets resulting from China's contemporary, dramatic economic growth. At times, China displays vulnerabilities towards global commodity markets because of unequal positions of market power. Why is it that Chinese stakeholders are often unable to shape markets in their preferred direction? Why have some markets undergone fundamental changes while other similar ones did not? And how can we explain the uneven liberalization dynamics across markets? Through a series of case studies, Pascale Massot argues that the balance of market power between Chinese domestic and international market stakeholders explains their behavior as well as the likelihood of global institutional change. At a time of deepening US-China economic tensions, this book provides an alternative, granular understanding of the interacting dynamics between the political economy of Chinese and global markets.

Visit Pascale Massot's website.

The Page 99 Test: China's Vulnerability Paradox.

--Marshal Zeringue

Liz Alterman's "The House on Cold Creek Lane," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The House on Cold Creek Lane by Liz Alterman.

The entry begins:

The House on Cold Creek Lane is an unflinching examination of motherhood and the dark side of domesticity set against a suburban backdrop that’s anything but blissful. This twisty tale invites readers to a slow motion unravelling that culminates in a devastating finale

When Laurel and Rob West move into their new home in New Jersey, it seems too good to be true. But Laurel can’t shake off her old feelings of anxiety. The neighbor who pays far too much attention to the Wests’ two young children . . . Rob watching her every misstep . . . and there’s something people aren’t telling her about this house . . .

Corey Sutton is trying to outrun her past. Recently divorced and reeling from a devastating loss, she moves into her widowed mother’s retirement condo in Florida. Everyone says she just needs some time to recover and rebuild . . . but is Corey beyond saving? She wants answers. And there’s very little she won’t do to get them.

If The House on Cold Creek Lane were turned into a movie, I'd love to see Elizabeth Olsen as Laurel West. I was riveted by Elizabeth's performance in Love & Death. She has a quiet, understated strength but also the...[read on]

Visit Liz Alterman's website.

Q&A with Liz Alterman.

My Book, The Movie: The Perfect Neighborhood.

The Page 69 Test: The Perfect Neighborhood.

The Page 69 Test: The House on Cold Creek Lane.

My Book, The Movie: The House on Cold Creek Lane.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six of the best uncanny domestic thrillers

Maia Chance is the author of the thriller The Body Next Door as well as ten mystery novels. Originally from northern Idaho, she has a bachelor’s and master’s degree in violin performance and a Ph.D. in English Literature. She lives on a bucolic island in Puget Sound with her husband, two children, and her dog.

At CrimeReads Chance writes:

I love how magic, ghosts, robots, and demons inject domestic thrillers with fresh imagination. I especially love how uncanny elements open up new ways to write about marriage, family, and home. I mean, any domestic thriller can explore the idea that, say, a baby or a mother-in-law is monstrous, but why not go there and make the baby or the mother-in-law an actual monster?

The author tagged six favorite uncanny domestic thrillers. One title on the list:

Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinborough

Behind Her Eyes starts off with a Bridget Jones-like scenario—boozy single mom Louise, a stolen kiss with David who turns out to be her new boss, a voyeuristic obsession with David’s seemingly perfect marriage—only to arrive at a gasp-eliciting twist. When David looks at his wife and wonders, Who the heck ARE you?, Behind Her Eyes has the most uncanny answer.

Read about another entry on the list.

Behind Her Eyes is among L.K. Bowen's ten best marriage-gone-bad thrillers, Clare Whitfield's seven literary murderers hiding in plain sight, Alice Feeney's eight top novels featuring odd couples and unexpected partnerships, Leah Konen's seven dark thrillers about friendships gone wrong, and Camilla Bruce's eight novels to make you question reality.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Anastasia Todd's "Cripping Girlhood"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Cripping Girlhood by Anastasia Todd.

About the book, from the publisher:

Cripping Girlhood offers a new theorization of disabled girlhood, tracing how and why representations of disabled girls emerge with frequency in twenty-first century U.S. media culture. It uncovers how the exceptional figure of the disabled girl most often appears as a resource to work through post-Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) anxieties about the family, healthcare, labor, citizenship, and the precarity of the bodymind. In paying critical attention to disabled girlhood, the book uses feminist disability studies to rupture the unwitting assumption in girls’ studies that girlhood is necessarily non-disabled.

By closely examining the ways that disabled girls represent themselves, Anastasia Todd goes beyond a critique of the figure of the privileged, disabled girl subject in the national imagination to explore how disabled girls circulate their own capacious re-envisioning of what it means to be a disabled girl. In analyzing a range of cultural sites, including YouTube, TikTok, documentaries, and GoFundMe campaigns, Todd shows how disabled girls actively upend what we think we know about them and their experience, recasting the meanings ascribed to their bodyminds in their own terms. By analyzing disabled girls’ self-representational practices and cultural productions, Todd shows how disabled girls deftly theorize their experiences of ableism, sexism, racism, and ageism, and cultivate communities online, creating archives of disability knowledge and politicizing other disabled people in the process.

Visit Anastasia Todd's website.

The Page 99 Test: Cripping Girlhood.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Liz Alterman's "The House on Cold Creek Lane"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The House on Cold Creek Lane by Liz Alterman.

About the book, from the publisher:

An unflinching examination of motherhood and the dark side of domesticity set against a suburban backdrop that's anything but blissful. This twisty tale invites readers to a slow motion

unravelling that culminates in a devastating finale!

Who was I? What had I become?
Breathe, I c

ommanded. You're doing this for your family.

When Laurel and Rob West move into their new home in New Jersey, it seems too good to be true. But Laurel can't shake off her old feelings of anxiety. The neighbor who pays far too much attention to the Wests' two young children . . . Rob watching her every misstep . . . and there's something people aren't telling her about this house . . .

I promised myself I wouldn't go to that neighborhood again. Not that street. Not so soon.
But I couldn't help it. They made it too easy.

Corey Sutton is trying to outrun her past. Recently divorced and reeling from a devastating loss, she moves into her widowed mother's retirement condo in Florida. Everyone says she just needs some time to recover and rebuild . . . but is Corey beyond saving? She wants answers. And there's very little she won't do to get them.

Though Laurel and Corey have never met, the women have something in common, and if they're not careful, it may just destroy them both . . .

Visit Liz Alterman's website.

Q&A with Liz Alterman.

My Book, The Movie: The Perfect Neighborhood.

The Page 69 Test: The Perfect Neighborhood.

The Page 69 Test: The House on Cold Creek Lane.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven thrilling titles that upturn what we know about Black history

Susanna Ashton teaches at Clemson University in South Carolina. A former Fellow at both Yale and Harvard as well as a Fulbright scholar, her work has appeared in both scholarly and popular venues, usually chewing on ideas about paperwork, archives, and 19th-century freedoms. Her series on fugitivity and runaways can be found at The Runaway Chronicles.

Ashton is the author of A Plausible Man: The True Story of the Escaped Slave Who Inspired Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

At Electric Lit Ashton tagged seven "books that model new ways to see Black history and American history, with all of its beauty and cruelty, afresh." One title on the list:

Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America by W. Caleb McDaniel

From the title of this winner of the Pulitzer Prize in History, you’d think you’re going to read a powerful story about reparations of some sort. And for sure, that’s what it is. But be ready: it lands in places you won’t see coming. Henrietta Wood was born enslaved but in 1848, in Ohio, she was legally freed and thought her days of bondage were over. In 1853, after a few brief sweet years of freedom, though, she was kidnapped by a Sheriff named Zubulon Ward, dragged over the border into Kentucky, and sold back into bondage. She wasn’t free again until after the Civil War. This kind of tale could have been buried forever and no one would have remembered her particular tragedy. But Wood wasn’t going to let this injustice go by. She didn’t forget, and she didn’t forgive. With a sharp eye for detail and a rich historical framing that highlights the compassion and dignity of the remarkable woman at the core of the story, McDaniel tells how Wood went on to sue Ward for damages and won not only a moral victory but also a substantial financial one and one which was to set the stage and standard of restitution thereafter. That standard has rarely been upheld, but thanks to McDaniel’s resurrection of the story, we can see how reparations, no matter how meager meant something powerful to the survivors.

Read about another book on the list.

The Page 99 Test: Sweet Taste of Liberty.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Hendrik Hartog's "Nobody's Boy and His Pals"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Nobody's Boy and His Pals: The Story of Jack Robbins and the Boys’ Brotherhood Republic by Hendrik Hartog.

About the book, from the publisher:

An engaging account of social reformer Jack Robbins, the Boys’ Brotherhood Republic, and their legacy.

In 1914, social reformer Jack Robbins and a group of adolescent boys in Chicago founded the Boys’ Brotherhood Republic, an unconventional and unusual institution. During a moral panic about delinquent boys, Robbins did not seek to rehabilitate and/or punish wayward youths. Instead, the boys governed themselves, democratically and with compassion for one another, and lived by their mantra “So long as there are boys in trouble, we too are in trouble.” For nearly thirty years, Robbins was their “supervisor,” and the will he drafted in the late 1950s suggests that he continued to care about forgotten boys, even as the political and legal contexts that shaped children’s lives changed dramatically.

Nobody’s Boy and His Pals is a lively investigation that challenges our ideas about the history of American childhood and the law. Scouring the archives for traces of the elusive Jack Robbins, Hendrik Hartog examines the legal histories of Progressive reform, childhood, criminality, repression, and free speech. The curiosity of Robbins’s story is compounded by the legal challenges to his will, which wound up establishing the extent to which last wishes must conform to dominant social values. Filled with persistent mysteries and surprising connections, Nobody’s Boy and His Pals illuminates themes of childhood and adolescence, race and ethnicity, sexuality, wealth and poverty, and civil liberties, across the American Century.

Learn more about Nobody's Boy and His Pals at the University of Chicago Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Someday All This Will Be Yours.

The Page 99 Test: Nobody's Boy and His Pals.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Elena Taylor

From my Q&A with Elena Taylor, author of A Cold, Cold World:

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

The title, A Cold Cold World, came to me very quickly. There were a few different reasons why it fit the book so well and was on my mind. There is a song by Blaze Foley with the same title. (Titles are not covered by copyright). I love the simplicity of the lyrics and the tune. It’s about regrets and the challenges of living.

Further, Blaze Foley was murdered, making him an apt figure to inspire a mystery novel. The first novel in the Bet Rivers series focuses a lot on music, the protagonist, Bet, and her father and friends are musicians and singers, and would often sing together. I feel it’s a song they would have performed.

I also wanted to pit Bet against a monster storm. When I lived in North Bend, Washington, we usually got a few inches of snow at a time, which might linger for a week. One winter we had several feet that stuck around for eight weeks. That’s the storm I recreated here. It was definitely a cold, cold world. I’m...[read on]

Visit Elena Taylor's website.

Q&A with Elena Taylor.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight top novels to experience Paris from home

At B&N Reads Isabelle McConville tagged eight top novelsthrough which you may experience Paris. One title on the list:

Three Hours in Paris by Cara Black

A thriller from the past that keeps us quite present. Cara Black takes us through three hours in Paris — three hours where the tension never lets up, and we never want to book our trip back home.

Read about another novel on the list.

Three Hours in Paris is among William Martin's seven best attempted assassination thrillers.

The Page 69 Test: Three Hours in Paris.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Sonya E. Pritzker's "Learning to Love"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Learning to Love: Intimacy and the Discourse of Development in China by Sonya E. Pritzker.

About the book, from the publisher:

Learning to Love offers a range of perspectives on the embodied, relational, affective, and sociopolitical project of “learning to love” at the New Life Center for Holistic Growth, a popular “mind-body-spirit” bookstore and practice space in northeast China, in the early part of the 21st century. This intimate form of self-care exists alongside the fast-moving, growing capitalist society of contemporary China and has emerged as an understandable response to the pressures of Chinese industrialized life in the early 21st century. Opening with an investigation of the complex ways newcomers to the center suffered a sense of being “off,” both in and with the world at multiple scales, Learning to Love then examines how new horizons of possibility are opened as people interact with one another as well as with a range of aesthetic objects at New Life.

Author Sonya Pritzker draws upon the core concepts of scalar intimacy—a participatory, discursive process in which people position themselves in relation to others as well as dominant ideologies, concepts, and ideals—and scalar inquiry—the process through which speakers interrogate these forms, their relationship with them, and their participation in reproducing them. In demonstrating the collaborative interrogation of culture, history, and memory, she examines how these exercises in physical, mental, and spiritual self-care allow participants to grapple with past social harms and forms of injustice, how historical systems of power—including both patriarchal and governance structures—continue in the present, and how they might be transformed in the future. By examining the interactions and relational experiences from New Life, Learning to Love offers a range of novel theoretical interventions into political subjectivity, temporality, and intergenerational trauma/healing.

Discover more about Learning to Love at the University of Michigan Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Learning to Love.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Spencer Quinn's "A Farewell to Arfs"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: A Farewell to Arfs: A Chet & Bernie Mystery by Spencer Quinn.

About the book, from the publisher:

Chet the dog, "the most lovable narrator in all of crime fiction" (Boston Globe) and his human partner PI Bernie Little are on to a new case, and this time they're entangled in a web of crime unlike anything they've ever seen before.

Their elderly next door neighbor, Mr. Parsons, thought he was doing the right thing by loaning his ne'er do well son, Billy, some money to help get himself settled. But soon, Mr. Parsons discovers that his entire life savings is gone. A run-of-the-mill scam? Bernie isn’t so sure that the case is that simple, but it's Chet who senses what they're really up against.

Only Billy knows the truth, but he's disappeared. Can Chet and Bernie track him down before it's too late? Someone else is also in the hunt, an enemy with a mysterious, cutting-edge power who will test Chet and Bernie to their limit—or maybe beyond. Even poker, not the kind of game they're good at, plays a role.

Spencer Quinn's A Farewell to Arfs ups the ante in the action-packed and witty New York Times and USA Today bestselling series that Stephen King calls "without a doubt the most original mystery series currently available."

Visit Spencer Quinn's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Peter Abrahams and Audrey (September 2011).

Coffee with a Canine: Peter Abrahams and Pearl (August 2012).

The Page 69 Test: The Dog Who Knew Too Much.

The Page 69 Test: Paw and Order.

The Page 69 Test: Scents and Sensibility.

The Page 69 Test: Bow Wow.

The Page 69 Test: Heart of Barkness.

Q&A with Spencer Quinn.

The Page 69 Test: A Farewell to Arfs.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five thrillers about charged mother-daughter relationships

Kimberly McCreight is a New York Times bestselling author. Her novels include Reconstructing Amelia, which was nominated for the Edgar, Anthony, and Alex Awards and was called Entertainment Weekly’s Favorite Book of the Year. Reconstructing Amelia has been optioned for TV by HBO, Nicole Kidman’s Blossom Films, and David E. Kelley. A Good Marriage was named a Best Book of the Summer by the New York Times, People, and Publishers Weekly. It was also an Amazon Best Mystery of the Month. A TV adaptation of A Good Marriage is coming soon from Amazon and Nicole Kidman’s Blossom Films. McCreight’s Friends Like These was named a Good Morning America Buzz Pick and an Amazon Best Book of the Month. It will be adapted for TV by Amblin Television.

Her new novel is Like Mother, Like Daughter.

[The Page 69 Test: Reconstructing Amelia; The Page 69 Test: The Scattering; The Page 69 Test: The Collide; Q&A with Kimberly McCreight]

At CrimeReads McCreight tagged five "favorite suspense novels about charged mother-daughter relationships," including:

Pieces of Her by Karin Slaughter

Andrea Oliver’s birthday doesn’t quite go as planned. After a man opens fire in a diner, it’s Andy’s mother Laura who successfully, and violently, intervenes. A clip of Laura dealing the final (professional) blow goes viral, compromising Laura’s cover and drawing some dodgy characters to the small beach town of Belle Isle. As Andy begins to frantically piece together her mother’s past, she is left with one looming question: who is this dangerous woman, her mother? A heart-pounding look at the costs of one mother’s secrets and the high price of the truth.

Read about another novel on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Lily E. Hirsch's "Taking Funny Music Seriously"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Taking Funny Music Seriously by Lily E. Hirsch.

About the book, from the publisher:

Take funny music seriously! Though often dismissed as silly or derivative, funny music, Lily E. Hirsch argues, is incredibly creative and dynamic, serving multiple aims from the celebratory to the rebellious, the entertaining to the mentally uplifting.

Music can be a rich site for humor, with so many opportunities that are ripe for a comedic left turn. Taking Funny Music Seriously includes original interviews with some of the best musical humorists, such as Tom Lehrer, "the J. D. Salinger of musical satire"; Peter Schickele, who performed as the invented composer P. D. Q. Bach, the supposed lost son of the great J. S. Bach; Kate Micucci and Riki Lindhome of the funny music duo Garfunkel and Oates; comedic film composer Theodore Shapiro; Too Slim of the country group Riders in the Sky; and musical comedian Jessica McKenna, from the podcast Off Book, part of a long line of "funny girls." With their help, Taking Funny Music Seriously examines comedy from a variety of genres and musical contexts―from bad singing to rap, classical music to country, Broadway music to film music, and even love songs and songs about death.

In its coverage of comedic musical media, Taking Funny Music Seriously is an accessible and lively look at funny music. It offers us a chance to appreciate more fully the joke in music and the benefits of getting that joke―especially in times of crisis―including comfort, catharsis, and connection.

Visit Lily E. Hirsch's website.

The Page 99 Test: Taking Funny Music Seriously.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Reed Farrel Coleman reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Reed Farrel Coleman, author of Blind to Midnight: A Nick Ryan Novel.

His entry begins:

Currently, I’m reading The Murder of Mr. Ma by SJ Rozan and John Shen Yen Nee. SJ’s always been a favorite and the setting is 1920s London. It is a fascinating Sherlock Holmes-ian style novel that shines a light on ugly anti-Asian racism. And any book that begins with Bertrand Russell playing a big part’s got me.

New on my list...[read on]

About Blind to Midnight, from the publisher:

When you're in trouble, you call 911.

When cops are in trouble, they call Nick Ryan.

Every cop in the city knows his name, but no one says it out loud.

He doesn't wear a uniform, but he is the most powerful cop in New York.

Nick Ryan can find a criminal who's vanished. Or make a key witness disappear.

He has cars, safe houses, money, and weapons hidden all over the city.

Nearly three thousand New Yorkers died on 9/11. But in the entire city on that tragic day, only one murder actually took place. Now, over two decades later, Detective Nick Ryan must dig beneath the official report--and into his own past--to find the truth.

Working again for the mysterious power broker "Joe," Nick finds a link between an airman, a billionaire, a trove of Nazi gold, and a crew of killers, but gets sidetracked when his dear "uncle" Tony and Tony's wife are murdered in a professional hit.

Nick's investigations uncover a tangled web of corruption and blood money, and as the horrifying truth emerges, he finds himself outgunned, on the run, and trusting no one.

With professional killers on his trail, will Nick Ryan be able to end the violence before he loses everything that matters to him--including his own life?

Visit Reed Farrel Coleman's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Hollow Girl.

The Page 69 Test: Where It Hurts.

The Page 69 Test: What You Break.

Writers Read: Reed Farrel Coleman (March 2017).

My Book, The Movie: Sleepless City.

Q&A with Reed Farrel Coleman.

The Page 69 Test: Sleepless City.

Writers Read: Reed Farrel Coleman.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five of the best novels about art

C. Michelle Lindley’s work can be found in Conjunctions, The Georgia Review, and elsewhere. She is a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow for 2024 and has an MFA in Creative Writing from Cornell University and a BA in English and Art History from the University of California at Berkeley.

The Nude is her first novel.

At the Guardian Lindley tagged five "novels about art – and also about so much more." One title on the list:

Luster by Raven Leilani

Luster revolves around Edie, a 23-year-old Black woman navigating adulthood, racism at her dead-end corporate job, and a new relationship with a white man named Eric. When she meets Eric, Edie becomes unwittingly enmeshed in the complicated dynamics of his quasi-open marriage and relationship with his adopted Black daughter, Akila. All the while, her ambitions as a painter loom. Artfully rendered and featuring humorous, incisive prose, Luster is a call to arms on a Black woman’s right to pleasure and belonging, and a searing indictment of what it means to be creative in the treacherous world of American capitalism.

Read about another novel on the list.

Luster is among Alana B. Lytle's eight top novels about destructive women and Forsyth Harmon's five top obsessive female relationships in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Colin Flint's "Near and Far Waters"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Near and Far Waters: The Geopolitics of Seapower by Colin Flint.

About the book, from the publisher:

Seapower has been a constant in world politics, a tool through which powerful countries have policed the seas for commercial advantage. Political geographer Colin Flint highlights the geography of seapower as a dynamic, continual struggle to gain control of near waters―those parts of the oceans close to a country's shoreline―and far waters―parts of the oceans beyond the horizon and that neighbor the shorelines of other countries. A forceful and clarifying challenge to conventional accounts of geopolitics, Near and Far Waters offers an accessible introduction to the combination of economic and political relations that are the reason behind, and the result of, the development of seapower to control near waters and project force into far waters.

Examining the histories of three naval powers (the Netherlands, Britain, and the United States), this book distills the past and present patterns of seapower and their tendency to trigger repercussive conflict and war. Readers will gain an appreciation for how geopolitics works, the importance of seapower in economic competition, the motivations behind China's desire to become a global naval force, and the risks of current and future wars. Drawing on decades of experience, Flint urges readers to take seriously the dilemma of near/far waters as a context for an alternative understanding of global politics.

Learn more about Near and Far Waters at the Stanford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Near and Far Waters.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Sofia Robleda's "Daughter of Fire"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Daughter of Fire: A Novel by Sofia Robleda.

About the book, from the publisher:

For a young woman coming of age in sixteenth-century Guatemala, safeguarding her people’s legacy is a dangerous pursuit in a mystical, empowering, and richly imagined historical novel.

Catalina de Cerrato is being raised by her widowed father, Don Alonso, in 1551 Guatemala, scarcely thirty years since the Spanish invasion. A ruling member of the oppressive Spanish hierarchy, Don Alonso holds sway over the newly relegated lower class of Indigenous communities. Fiercely independent, Catalina struggles to honor her father and her late mother, a Maya noblewoman to whom Catalina made a vow that only she can keep: preserve the lost sacred text of the Popol Vuh, the treasured and now forbidden history of the K’iche’ people.

Urged on by her mother’s spirit voice, and possessing the gift of committing the invaluable stories to memory, Catalina embarks on a secret and transcendent quest to rewrite them. Through ancient pyramids, Spanish villas, and caves of masked devils, she finds an ally in the captivating Juan de Rojas, a lord whose rule was compromised by the invasion. But as their love and trust unfold, and Don Alonso’s tyranny escalates, Catalina must confront her conflicted blood heritage―and its secrets―once and for all if she’s to follow her dangerous quest to its historic end.

Visit Sofia Robleda's website.

The Page 69 Test: Daughter of Fire.

--Marshal Zeringue

Melanie Sumrow's "Girls Like Her," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Girls Like Her by Melanie Sumrow.

The entry begins:

Girls Like Her is the story of a 15-year-old girl who is in jail awaiting trial for the murder of a wealthy businessman. But as you read Ruby’s story, you realize there is so much more to her than that. With the help of her assigned social worker, the layers of truth are peeled away to reveal what really happened the day Ruby met the man who would end up dead.

I relied heavily upon my experience as a lawyer to craft Ruby’s story and when I’m writing a new book, I often try to think of the stories that already exist in the space I’m working. In this case, if you liked books-turned-film series such as Defending Jacob, Orange is the New Black, Anatomy of a Scandal, and Monster, you will probably also enjoy Girls Like Her, which explores the truths so often lost in the American justice system and one girl’s fight to be heard.

I was recently asked who my dream casting would be if Ruby’s story was translated into film, which was something new for me. Typically as I’m writing, I think more of what’s on the inside of a character rather than their physical appearance. But after initially drawing a blank, I started to have fun with imagining what real people could play the characters that had lived in my head for so long.

Because Ruby is a teenager with an edge, an unreliable narrator who also has an unmistakable vulnerability, I would love to see what actors like Jenny Ortega, Abby Ryder Fortson or Sadie Sink could do to bring out...[read on]

Visit Melanie Sumrow's website.

My Book, The Movie: Girls Like Her.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Tara Smith's "Egoism without Permission"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Egoism without Permission: The Moral Psychology of Ayn Rand's Ethics by Tara Smith.

About the book, from the publisher:

Ayn Rand controversially defended rational egoism, the idea that people should regard their own happiness as their highest goal. Given that numerous scholars in philosophy and psychology alike are examining the nature of human flourishing and an ethics of well-being, the time is ripe for a close examination of Rand’s theory. Egoism without Permission illuminates Rand’s thinking about how to practice egoism by exploring some of its crucial psychological dimensions. Tara Smith examines the dynamics among four partially subconscious factors in an individual’s well-being: a person’s foundational motivation for being concerned with morality; their attitude toward their desires; their independence; and their self-esteem. A clearer grasp of each, Smith argues, sheds light on the others, and a better understanding of the set, in turn, enriches our understanding of self-interest and its sensible pursuit. Smith then traces the implications for a broader understanding of what a person’s self-interest genuinely is, and, correspondingly, of what its pursuit through rational egoism involves. By highlighting these previously underexplored features of Rand’s conceptions of self-interest and egoism, Smith betters our understanding of how vital these psychological levers are to a person’s genuine flourishing.

Learn more about Egoism without Permission at the University of Pittsburgh Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Egoism without Permission.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top books with (very) bad mentors in fiction

Jean Marc Ah-Sen is the author of Grand Menteur and In the Beggarly Style of Imitation. His writing has appeared in Literary Hub, Catapult, The Comics Journal, Maclean's, Hazlitt, The Globe and Mail, The Walrus, and The Toronto Star. The National Post has hailed his writing as "an inventive escape from the conventional."

Ah-Sen's latest novel is Kilworthy Tanner.

At Lit Hub the author tagged five works of fiction with (very) bad mentors, including:

Paige Cooper, Zolitude

The women in Paige Cooper’s speculative collection Zolitude find themselves at the mercy of imbalanced power arrangements. Whether they are wriggling under the thumb of imperious handlers or exercising their wills in arenas of romantic destiny, Cooper’s characters endure the inflexibility of their situations.

A child prodigy under the eye of Henry Kissinger develops a time machine, meeting multiple versions of herself along the way to imperialist world domination. A call girl falls in love with a police officer who rides a cryptozoological winged gelding and delights in breaking up protest assemblies. The driver of a bookmobile providing succor to a secluded community of convicts begins a relationship with a registered sex offender.

The thorny complications surrounding mentorship rear their head most explicitly in a story called “Ryan & Irene, Irene & Ryan,” where an injured publicist named Mad must intercede in her pop star client’s doomed relationship with a producer who sends mail bombs to anyone preventing a reunion with his protege. “He deletes truth like weather deletes history, imperfectly,” Mad thinks to herself. “He says Irene has victimized herself, twisted everything her way….Forgiveness is the temptation she’s damned to.”

Cooper’s stories depict the fluctuating emotional frequencies between people in times of duress, and the beauty of such an artistic project lies not only in the wide field of action entailed by such interpersonal dynamics, but in the moral trajectory suggested by its consideration of feminist principles.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue