Ten of the best disguises in literature

At the Guardian, John Mullan named a list of ten of the best disguises in literature.

One entry on the list:

Measure for Measure, by William Shakespeare

The Duke who governs Vienna wants to see what his underlings will get up to in his absence. So he asks his friend Friar Thomas for some monkish garb: "Supply me with the habit and instruct me / How I may formally in person bear me / Like a true friar". It works, and not even his most devoted courtiers recognise him until he finally unveils himself.

Read about another title on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Coffee with a canine: Randi Hutter Epstein & Ellie and Dexter

Today's featured trio at Coffee with a Canine: Randi Hutter Epstein, Ellie and Dexter.

The writer, on how the dogs joined her household:

We picked up Dexter from a breeder upstate on the day that I found out I was pregnant with Eliza, my fourth child. We got him en route to our summer vacation in the Adirondacks. It was absolutely bucketing out, and we put this soggy puppy in our car, along with three other children and a four-year-old Golden Retriever. (The Golden is no longer “with us.”) I never wanted a toy dog, but for the past three years, my daughter Martha has been begging and pleading for a little dog that she could hold and cuddle. She promised she would walk the dog every morning and that she would be happy for the rest of her life. I believed every word. I thought it would be really helpful to have my teenage daughter walking the dog before school and then gliding merrily through adolescence. So I got the puppy. We’ve had Ellie for about a year and a half. Martha has yet to wake up to walk her in the morning and while she is basically a happy kid, but I wouldn’t say there...[read on]

Randi Hutter Epstein, MD, is a medical journalist who has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Daily Telegraph, and several national magazines. She is the author of Get Me Out: A History of Childbirth from the Garden of Eden to the Sperm Bank.

Among the praise for the book:

“[A] sharp, sassy history of childbirth.... The author’s engaging sarcasm, evident even in a caption of an illustration of an absurd obstetric contraption—'Nineteenth-century Italian do-it-yourself forceps. The fad never took off'—lends this chronicle a welcome punch and vitality often absent from medical histories. Roll over, Dr. Lamaze, and make room for Epstein’s eyebrow-raising history.”
—Kirkus Reviews

Learn more about Get Me Out at the publisher's website, and visit Randi Hutter Epstein's Psychology Today blog, Birth, Babies, and Beyond. Read an excerpt from Get Me Out and listen to the NPR story about the book.

Writers Read: Randi Hutter Epstein.

Read--Coffee with a Canine: Randi Hutter Epstein, Ellie and Dexter.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Joan Frances Turner's "Dust"

Today's feature at the Page 69 Test: Dust by Joan Frances Turner.

About the book, from the publisher:

What happens between death and life can change a girl. Jessie is a zombie. And this is her story...

Nine years ago, Jessie was in a car crash and died. After she was buried, she awoke and tore through the earth to arise, reborn, as a zombie. Now Jessie's part of a gang. They fight, hunt, and dance together as one-something humans can never understand. There are darkplaces humans have learned to avoid, lest they run into zombie gangs. But when a mysterious illness threatens the existence of both zombies and humans, Jessie must choose between looking away or staring down the madness-and hanging on to everything she now knows as life...

Read an excerpt from Dust, and learn more about the book and author at Joan Frances Turner's website and blog.

Writers Read: Joan Frances Turner.

The Page 69 Test: Dust.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Lisa Black reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Lisa Black, author of the recently released Trail of Blood, which involves the real-life Torso Killer who terrorized Cleveland during the dark days of the Great Depression.

Her entry begins:

Believe it or not, since getting my own books published my own reading dropped off. I have not yet quit the day job at the police department, so time is always at a premium. Then last year I was randomly chosen from the International Thriller Writers ranks to be a judge for the best novel category. I had to read 22 books in the last quarter of 2009 and another 18 in the first quarter of 2010. In other words I had to make time. (I did that by pointing out to myself that much of the stuff on TV is not worth that hour of my life and by switching from the treadmill to the exercise bike at lunchtime. Helped my knees, too.)

This helped me to re-discover...[read on]

Among the early praise for Trail of Blood:

“Fans of the forensic mysteries 'CSI' TV series and Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta novels will enjoy the emphasis on evidence. An amazing read that rivals…the best of the genre.”
—Associated Press

"Lisa Black wows us with another tense and unputdownable thriller. She is, quite simply, one of the best storytellers around."
—Tess Gerritsen

"Lisa Black writes with immediacy and unmatched authenticity, and Trail of Blood is a terrific story, too -- her best yet!"
—Jeff Lindsay, NYT bestselling author of Dexter is Delicious

View the video trailer for Trail of Blood, learn more about the book and author at Lisa Black's website.

My Book, The Movie: Trail of Blood.

The Page 69 Test: Trail of Blood.

Writers Read: Lisa Black.

--Marshal Zeringue

Val McDermid's top 10 Oxford novels

Val McDermid won the Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger Award for The Mermaids Singing (1995).

Her latest novel released in the US is Fever of the Bone.

For the Guardian, she named her top ten Oxford novels. One title on her list:

An Instance of the Fingerpost by Ian Pears

Set just after the Restoration, when conspiracies were rife, this epistolary novel features a quartet of unreliable narrators giving their versions of the same series of events. Cleverly constructed and completely fascinating, it's loosely based on historical happenings and is crammed with fascinating period detail. It's as much a novel of ideas as it is of character, but none the less compelling for that.

Read about another title on the list.

Learn about McDermid's hero from outside literature.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Carolyn de la Peña's "Empty Pleasures"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Empty Pleasures: The Story of Artificial Sweeteners from Saccharin to Splenda by Carolyn de la Peña.

About the book, from the publisher:

Sugar substitutes have been a part of American life since saccharin was introduced at the 1893 World's Fair. In Empty Pleasures, the first history of artificial sweeteners in the United States, Carolyn de la Peña blends popular culture with business and women's history, examining the invention, production, marketing, regulation, and consumption of sugar substitutes such as saccharin, Sucaryl, NutraSweet, and Splenda. She describes how saccharin, an accidental laboratory by-product, was transformed from a perceived adulterant into a healthy ingredient. As food producers and pharmaceutical companies worked together to create diet products, savvy women's magazine writers and editors promoted artificially sweetened foods as ideal, modern weight-loss aids, and early diet-plan entrepreneurs built menus and fortunes around pleasurable dieting made possible by artificial sweeteners.

NutraSweet, Splenda, and their predecessors have enjoyed enormous success by promising that Americans, especially women, can "have their cake and eat it too," but Empty Pleasures argues that these "sweet cheats" have fostered troubling and unsustainable eating habits and that the promises of artificial sweeteners are ultimately too good to be true.

Learn more about Empty Pleasures at the publisher's website.

The Page 99 Test: Empty Pleasures.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five groundbreaking memoirs

Gail Caldwell is the author of Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship. The former chief book critic of the Boston Globe, she was in 2001 awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Criticism.

For the Wall Street Journal, she named a five best list of memoirs. One book on the list:

Survival in Auschwitzby Primo Levi (1958)

From the opening sentence—"I was captured by the Fascist Militia on 13 December 1943"—this searingly quiet account by Primo Levi, an Italian chemist, of his 10 months in Auschwitz is a monument of dignity. First published in Italy in 1947 with a title that translates as "If This Is a Man," the book became a blueprint for every such story that followed, not only as a portrait of the camp's atrocities but also as a testament to the moments when humanity prevailed. On a mile-long trip with a fellow prisoner to retrieve a 100-pound soup ration, Levi begins to teach his friend "The Canto of Ulysses" from Dante. Completing the lesson becomes urgent, then vital: "It is late, it is late," Levi realizes, "we have reached the kitchen, I must finish." No candle has ever shown more brilliantly from within the caverns of evil.

Read about another memoir on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Mike Shevdon's "Sixty-One Nails"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Sixty-One Nails: Courts of the Feyre, Book 1 by Mike Shevdon.

About the book, from the publisher:

THERE IS A SECRET WAR GROWING BENEATH THE STREETS OF LONDON.

A dark magic will be unleashed by the Untainted...Unless a new hero can be found. The smarter, faster brother to Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere has arrived.

The immense Sixty-One Nails follows Niall Petersen, victim of a suspected heart attack on the London Underground, into the hidden world of the Feyre, an uncanny place of legend that lurks just beyond the surface of everyday life. The Untainted, the darkest of the Seven Courts, have made their play for power, and unless Niall can recreate the ritual of the Sixty-One Nails, their dark dominion will enslave all of the Feyre, and all of humankind too.

Read an excerpt from Sixty-One Nails, and learn more about the book and author at Mike Shevdon's website.

Shevdon draws his inspiration from the richness of English folklore and from the history and rituals of the UK. His Courts of the Feyre series follows the adventures of Niall and Blackbird as Niall discovers a world of dark magic and strange creatures hidden in plain sight.

Sixty-One Nails, is now available everywhere. It will be followed by a sequel, The Road to Bedlam, available now in the UK and Australasia, and in North America on 26th October 2010.

The Page 69 Test: Sixty-One Nails.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Don Bogen reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Don Bogen, author of four books of poetry, most recently An Algebra.

His entry begins:

I find myself reading big books right now. In fiction, Anna Karenina, in the Louise and Aylmer Maude translation from 1918--part of my "classics I've never gotten around to reading" list, but not for long, I hope. Also, One Hundred Years of Solitude in the original Spanish. I read the brilliant Rabassa translation what seems like a hundred years ago (My Bard/Avon paperback cost $1.95) and loved it. My distant memories of that are helping to guide me now, at least a little--what a beautifully dense, interwoven world it presents.

I much prefer reading...[read on]

Among the praise for An Algebra:

“An Algebra registers a series of unrelenting impingements upon a sensibility that may in more guarded moments find ways to deflect them. What comes through are only the essentials, pared down to the force with which they insist on being taken account of. The movement from poem to poem is headlong but strangely not rushed. The lines are short, the diction a model of clarity, and the rhythms impeccable. It’s one of the most compelling books I’ve read in years.”
—James McMichael

"Don Bogen is a wise and playful poet who manages the political and the personal with equal aplomb. He takes hold of poetry, the shape-shifting god, and in his hands it twists, morphs, relinquishes. Bogen reinvigorates the art by defining its limits, then pushing bravely past."
—D. A. Powell

"A private, clarifying testimony refracted by sensuous moments and clawed reflections of a speaker shedding everything that isn't wanted or needed—everything except the intoxicating pull of the past bound to the deep desire to be 'always becoming.' The subtle operation of these skillfully interset lyrics makes for a consummate reunion of broken parts, an algebra."
—C.D. Wright

Learn more about An Algebra at the University of Chicago Press website.

Don Bogen is the author of four books of poetry, most recently An Algebra (University of Chicago Press, 2009). He teaches at the University of Cincinnati and serves as Poetry Editor of The Cincinnati Review.

Writers Read: Don Bogen.

--Marshal Zeringue

Coffee with a canine: Kelly Creagh & Annabel

This weekend's featured duo at Coffee with a Canine: Kelly Creagh and Annabel.

Creagh, on how she was united with Annabel:

After my first Poe-related research trip to Baltimore, I returned with the hopes of finding a dog. I searched a lot of rescue websites and no-kill shelters. Although I really wanted to take every dog home with me, I had a hard time finding just the right pooch for my small yardless downtown apartment. Finally, on a whim, I decided to visit the city pound. In one of the cages, I found a tiny puppy pinned with several larger dogs. Needless to say that she was very very excited to see me. I knew right away that, not only was she the smallest dog in the entire pound, but she also had to come home with me. I made arrangements to adopt her, but the pound would not release her to me without spaying her first. So I had to wait. When I picked her up a few days later, I was so excited! However, it quickly became evident that there was something wrong. The first night that I had her, Anna would not eat. I thought this might have been...[read on]

Among the early praise for Nevermore:

"Tender, and engrossing, so richly textured and acutely rendered.... The chemistry between Varen and Isobel is positively simmering and as necessary as breathing.... Creagh totally “gets it”, the whole painful and traumatic high school experience.... An unforgettable and graceful story.”
–FiendishlyBookish.com

"Verses from Poe's poems and synopses of his stories are woven seamlessly into the story, and the ghoulish spirit Pinfeathers is memorably menacing and gory.... a creepy, otherworldly climax."
--Kirkus

"This Gothic Romeo/Juliet story is an English teacher's jewel box, with high appeal for readers who might ignore classic literature. Veiled and overt allusions to Poe, Shakespeare, and Frost will support discussion about love, loyalty, popularity, and independence beyond the trendy, dramatic, supernatural action."
--VOYA

Kelly Creagh holds an undergraduate degree in Theatre Arts and Master of Fine Arts in Writing for Children and Young Adults. When not writing or curled up with a good book, she can be found teaching, learning and performing the ancient art of Bellydance.

Browse inside Nevermore, and visit Kelly Creagh's website.

Read--Coffee with a Canine: Kelly Creagh and Annabel.

--Marshal Zeringue

Stephen King's 5 best books on globalization

Stephen King is HSBC’s Group Chief Economist and the global head of economics and asset allocation research at the bank, where he has worked since 1988. He is the author of Losing Control: The Emerging Threats to Western Prosperity, and since 2001 has written a weekly column in The Independent.

For FiveBooks, he discussed five books on globalization with Tom Dannet. One novel he mentioned:

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

This was first published in 1939 while the US was still grappling with the Depression, and what is brilliant about it – it’s a very harrowing read, of course – is that it reveals that economic problems can’t just be dealt with through some wave of the free-market magic wand. The sufferings that the family in this book go through you wouldn’t wish upon anybody, but their sufferings in part come about through a mixture of misfortune, misjudgment and bad luck. I think that this sense of people finding themselves hugely disadvantaged is something that has a modern-day connotation – the whole debate about immigration today is tied up with this. In both cases it’s about migrant labour. In The Grapes of Wrath it’s migrant labour from within the US, and it’s those people who are often the most vulnerable. This is the human aspect of that story, and I think that Steinbeck summarised much of what happened in the Great Depression far better than many economists did, because he really dealt with the true losses that came through for people who just happened to be down on their luck. It may still be possible to argue that free markets are the best option, but it’s important to realise that even if they’re the best option, they may not give you a perfect result. The danger people fall into is thinking it does.

Read about another book on King's list.

The Grapes of Wrath also appears on John Mullan's list of ten of the best pieces of fruit in literature and among Honor Blackman's six best books. It is one of Frederic Raphael's top ten talkative novels.

Also see Moisés Naím's top ten books on globalization.

--Marshal Zeringue

Mary Jane Maffini's "Closet Confidential," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: Closet Confidential by Mary Jane Maffini.
 
The entry begins:

A main character is like a beloved child. I think this is especially true in a mystery series where author and sleuth are yoked together for years. And as if writers didn’t have enough responsibility, we have to worry about our protagonist’s well-being too. We want the best for them: love interests, loyal friends, excellent instincts, speedy recoveries and, of course, not getting killed anytime soon. The usual. In short, we want everything to work out all the time. So I’m thinking big in considering who would play my amateur detective Charlotte Adams, currently sleuthing her obsessive little heart out in Closet Confidential, the fourth Charlotte mystery.

A little background on Charlotte: she’s just turned thirty and is running a professional organizing business in Woodbridge, NY, a historic town on the Hudson River. She’s pretty well over that lying dog of an ex-fiance and has fun hanging out with ‘the misfits’, her lifelong wisecracking buddies – think Friends with murder. That’s good because people are always getting bumped off in Woodbridge, and Charlotte always finds herself trying to unmask one villain after another. Nice work if you can get it.

A professional organizer sees into people’s homes and lives. And as Charlotte likes to say: “Show me your closets and you show me your secrets”.

All this build-up to say...[read on]

View the book trailer for Closet Confidential, and learn more about the author and her work at Mary Jane Maffini's website.

Read--Coffee with a Canine: Mary Jane Maffini & Daisy and Lily.

My Book, The Movie: Closet Confidential.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Zoë Ferraris' "City of Veils"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: City of Veils by Zoë Ferraris.

About the book, from the publisher:

Women in Saudi Arabia are expected to lead quiet lives circumscribed by Islamic law and tradition. But Katya, one of the few women in the medical examiner's office, is determined to make her work mean something.

When the body of a brutally beaten woman is found on the beach in Jeddah, the city's detectives are ready to dismiss the case as another unsolvable murder-chillingly common in a city where the veils of conservative Islam keep women as anonymous in life as the victim is in death. If this is another housemaid killed by her employer, finding the culprit will be all but impossible.

Only Katya is convinced that the victim can be identified and her killer found. She calls upon her friend Nayir for help, and soon discovers that the dead girl was a young filmmaker named Leila, whose controversial documentaries earned her many enemies.

With only the woman's clandestine footage as a guide, Katya and Nayir must confront the dark side of Jeddah that Leila struggled to expose: an underworld of prostitution, violence, exploitation, and jealously guarded secrets. Along the way, they form an unlikely alliance with an American woman whose husband has disappeared. Their growing search takes them from the city's car-clogged streets to the deadly vastness of the desert beyond.

In City of Veils, award-winning author Zoë Ferraris combines a thrilling, fast-paced mystery with a rare and intimate look into women's lives in the Middle East.

Read an excerpt from City of Veils, and learn more about the book and author at Zoë Ferraris' website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: Finding Nouf.

The Page 69 Test: City of Veils.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Koren Zailckas' "Fury"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Fury: A Memoir by Koren Zailckas.

About the book, from the publisher:

The author of the iconic New York Times bestseller Smashed undertakes a quest to confront her own anger.

In the years following the publication of her landmark memoir, Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood, Koren Zailckas stays sober and relegates binge drinking to her past. But a psychological legacy of repression lingers-her sobriety is a loose surface layer atop a hard- packed, unacknowledged rage that wreaks havoc on Koren emotionally and professionally. When a failed relationship leads Koren back to her childhood home, she sinks into emotional crisis-writer's block, depression, anxiety. Only when she begins to apply her research on a book about anger to the turmoil of her own life does she learn what denial has cost her. The result is a blisteringly honest chronicle of the consequences of anger displaced and the balm of anger discovered. Readers who recognized themselves or someone they love in the pages of Smashed will identify with Koren's life-altering exploration and the necessity of exposing anger's origins in order to flourish in love and life as an adult. Combining sophisticated sociological research with a dramatic and deeply personal story that grapples boldly with identity and family, Fury is a dazzling work by a young writer at the height of her powers that is certain to touch a cultural nerve.

Learn more about the book and author at Koren Zailckas' website and blog.

Koren Zailckas is the author of the memoir Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood, which appeared on ten national bestseller lists and spent twenty weeks on the the New York Times bestseller list.

The Page 99 Test: Fury.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top five historical true-crime books of the last decade

For the Christian Science Monitor, Randy Dotinga named five favorite historical true-crime books from the last decade.

One title on his list:

"For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb and the Murder That Shocked Chicago," by Simon Baatz (2008)

Back in 1924, two super-intelligent young men killed a young boy in Chicago for fun. Their story, of upper-class depravity and the limits of justice, is as riveting today as ever.

The author masterfully weaves together many threads: upper-class ennui, anti-Semitism, the death penalty, the influence of psychology, the sensationalistic media, and the most masterful attorney of the time. Just as interesting is what happens to the two murderers after the Trial of the Century.

Read about another book on the list.

The Page 99 Test: For the Thrill of It.

Also see Ann Rule's five best true-crime books and Sarah Weinman's seven best true crime books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: James R. Benn's "Rag and Bone"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Rag and Bone by James R. Benn.

About the book, from the publisher:

Billy is sent to London in the midst of a Luftwaffe bombing offensive to investigate the murder of a Soviet official. There's reason to believe that the crime could be connected to the recent discovery of mass graves in the Katyn Forest, where thousands of Polish officers were executed. If a killer is out there, targeting Soviet officials in revenge for the Katyn Massacre, the diplomatic stakes couldn't be higher with the uneasy alliance against Germany between the Soviets and the other allied powers in the balance. Further complicating matters, Scotland Yard names Billy's friend Kaz, now working for the Polish government in exile, as the prime suspect. Billy must track the killer through London's criminal underworld and save his friend.

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

The Billy Boyle World War II historical mystery series began with Billy Boyle, which takes place in England and Norway in 1942. The second, The First Wave, carries on a few months later during the Allied invasion of French Northwest Africa. The third volume, Blood Alone, continues the story through the Allied invasion of Sicily; and Evil for Evil, the fourth volume, follows Billy Boyle to Northern Ireland where he is sent at the request of the British government to investigate links between the Irish Republican Army and the Germans.

The Page 99 Test: The First Wave.

The Page 69 Test: Evil for Evil.

The Page 69 Test: Rag and Bone.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Chad L. Williams' "Torchbearers of Democracy"

Today's feature at the Page 99 Test: Torchbearers of Democracy: African American Soldiers in the World War I Era by Chad L. Williams.

About the book, from the publisher:

On April 2, 1917, Woodrow Wilson thrust the United States into World War I by declaring, "The world must be made safe for democracy." For the 380,000 African American soldiers who fought and labored in the global conflict, these words carried life or death meaning. Relating stories bridging the war and postwar years, spanning the streets of Chicago and the streets of Harlem, from the battlefields of the American South to the battlefields of the Western Front, Chad L. Williams reveals the central role of African American soldiers in World War I and how they, along with race activists and ordinary citizens alike, committed to fighting for democracy at home and beyond.

Using a diverse range of sources, Williams connects the history of African American soldiers and veterans to issues such as the obligations of citizenship, combat and labor, diaspora and internationalism, homecoming and racial violence, "New Negro" militancy, and African American historical memories of the war. Democracy may have been distant from the everyday lives of African Americans at the dawn of the war, but it nevertheless remained a powerful ideal that sparked the hopes of black people throughout the country for societal change. Torchbearers of Democracy reclaims the legacy of black soldiers and establishes the World War I era as a defining moment in the history of African Americans and peoples of African descent more broadly.

Learn more about the book and author at the Torchbearers of Democracy website and Facebook page.

Chad L. Williams is associate professor of history at Hamilton College.

The Page 99 Test: Torchbearers of Democracy.

--Marshal Zeringue

Coffee with a canine: Elizabeth Cody Kimmel & Henry

The current featured couple at Coffee with a Canine: Elizabeth Cody Kimmel and Henry.

Kimmel, on how Henry joined her household and he possibility of telepathically communicating with canine:

The universe brought us to Henry a year after our beloved beagle Milo died. We got a call about a breeder with a whole brood of gorgeous, show-winning beagles, who had decided to part with a few 6-month-old pups. We went to have a look, and were instantly smitten.

Only someone who works at home alone all day would engage in this activity. I will swear up and down that I used to be able to get Milo up from a sound sleep downstairs and trotting up to my bedroom by mentally calling his name. Henry has not yet responded to my thought beams. I can't make him ...[read on]

Beth Kimmel's books include The Reinvention of Moxie Roosevelt (for readers age 10 and up).

Visit Elizabeth Cody Kimmel's website.

Read--Coffee with a Canine: Elizabeth Cody Kimmel and Henry.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten stories about sisters

Bestselling children's author Cathy Cassidy's books include Dizzy, Driftwood, Indigo Blue, Scarlett, Sundae Girl, Lucky Star, Gingersnaps, and Angel Cake. Her latest novel available in the UK is Cherry Crush, about five very different sisters.

For the Guardian, she named a ten best list of stories about sisters.

One title on the list:

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

I read many of the classics as a teenager, but this is one of the few I have returned to over the years. Five sparky sisters, but in another world – a world where manners, society and social standing dictate everything. Not just romantic but wonderfully real and believable, even now.

Read about another title on the list.

Pride and Prejudice also appears on Paul Murray's top ten list of wicked clerics, John Mullan's list of ten great novels with terrible original titles, Luke Leitch's top ten list of the most successful literary sequels ever, and is one of the top ten works of literature according to Norman Mailer. Richard Price has never read it, but it is the book Mary Gordon cares most about sharing with her children.

The Page 99 Test: Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Trish J. MacGregor reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Trish J. MacGregor, author of the new novel, Esperanza.

One book she tagged:

[Biocentrism, by physician Robert Lanza and Bob Berman], a fascinating perspective about how everything in reality originates in the mind, in consciousness. Without consciousness, Lanza contends, there’s nothing. Just a void. He makes a convincing case for his argument, beginning with one of the great Zen koans: “If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there, does it make a sound?” From here, he takes us through various theories in quantum physics – what is time? What is space? The mysteries of consciousness – and then all the way to death and beyond. The book is infinitely readable and Lanza has a quirky sense of humor. But more than that, this book has such a human side to it that I just...[read on]

Among the early praise for Esperanza:

"Every time I start reading a scary novel, I tell myself that it can't possibly scare me. Usually, I'm right. But this time I was treated to a deliciously scary, original and just plain wonderful story. I was swept away into a world that I keep telling myself couldn't exist. Or could it?"
--Whitley Streiber, NYT bestselling author of Critical Mass

"Riveting! This book will possess you!"
--Jeff Lindsay, NYT bestselling author of Dexter

"This engrossing thriller is escapist fantasy at its best. MacGregor's visual style immerses readers in the landscape as her characters come alive. The suspense is palpable and the pace relentless as the dread grows. Even those who don't scare easily will find this bone chilling."
--Romantic Times, 4 and 1/2 stars TopPick

"I love a good ghost story, I always have. There’s something about the idea of another world full of spirits and souls watching and wanting to interact with the living that always appeals. The ghosts in ESPERANZA fill the void."
--Bookreporter.com

Trish J. MacGregor was born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela. She has always been interested in the hidden, the mysterious, the unseen, and in Esperanza was able to combine this interest with her love of Ecuador.

Visit Trish J. MacGregor's website and blog.

Writers Read: Trish J. MacGregor.

--Marshal Zeringue