What is Tom Harper reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Tom Harper, author of Zodiac Station: A Novel.

His entry begins:

I’ve been reading Maurice Druon’s The Iron King, the first book in his Accursed Kings series about the Capetian monarchs of France in the fourteenth century. I only needed one reason to pick it up: the cover quote from George RR Martin that said, ‘This is the original Game of Thrones’.

I’m a big fan of Game of Thrones, both the TV series and the books. As lots of people have commented, it’s really historical fiction about history that didn’t happen (with dragons) – with the advantage that as it’s made up, you live it forwards, rather than through the distorting lens of known historical outcomes. That gives it a shock value you don’t get with real history: it reminds you that at the time, no-one knew who was going to survive, let alone win. I never really felt...[read on]

About Zodiac Station, from the publisher:

For fans of Dan Brown and Michael Crichton—an eerie, evocative thriller set in the unforgiving Arctic from the author of The Orpheus Descent.

Deep in the Arctic, the US Coast Guard icebreaker Terra Nova batters its way through the frozen sea. A gaunt figure skis out of the fog on the pack ice. He says his name is Thomas Anderson, and that he’s the lone survivors of a terrible accident at the research outpost Zodiac Station, located on the ice-bound island of Utgard.

Ten days earlier, he’d arrived at Zodiac Station looking to resurrect a career destroyed by scientific scandal. But things quickly went wrong when the man who hired him, brilliant biochemist Martin Hagger, turned up dead, at the bottom of a crevasse. The base commander insisted he fell. But footprints in the snow told a much different story. As Anderson tells a tale of sabotage, suspicion, and paranoia, the mystery only deepens.

When other survivors are discovered and their stories cast doubt on Anderson’s reliability, it seems the grim fate of the scientists at Zodiac Station may involve human greed, jealousy, oil company trickery, Russian espionage, genetic experimentation, and global warming. But the truth is something no one on the Terra Nova could have imagined.

A fast-paced, gripping thriller that marries science and adventure, Zodiac Station is as chilling and unpredictable as the fierce Arctic landscape.

Visit Tom Harper's website.

My Book, The Movie: Zodiac Station.

The Page 69 Test: Zodiac Station.

Writers Read: Tom Harper.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: David Hofmeyr's "Stone Rider"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Stone Rider by David Hofmeyr.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the vein of The Outsiders and the early Western novels of Elmore Leonard, this inventive debut novel, a cross between the cult classic Mad Max movie series and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, blends adrenaline-fueled action with an improbable yet tender romance to offer a rich and vivid portrayal of misfits and loners forced together in their struggle for a better life.

Adam Stone wants freedom and peace. He wants a chance to escape Blackwater, the dust-bowl desert town he grew up in. Most of all, he wants the beautiful Sadie Blood. Alongside Sadie and the dangerous outsider Kane, Adam will ride the Blackwater Trail in a brutal race that will test them all, body and soul. Only the strongest will survive.

The prize? A one-way ticket to Sky-Base and unimaginable luxury.

And for a chance at this new life, Adam will risk everything.

Visit David Hofmeyr's website.

Stone Rider is one of Rachel Paxton-Gillilan's top five YA books for Mad Max fans.

My Book, the Movie: Stone Rider.

The Page 69 Test: Stone Rider.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Justin Gifford's "Street Poison"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Street Poison: The Biography of Iceberg Slim by Justin Gifford.

About Street Poison, from the publisher:

The first and definitive biography of one of America’s bestselling, notorious, and influential writers of the twentieth century: Iceberg Slim, né Robert Beck, author of the multimillion-copy memoir Pimp and such equally popular novels as Trick Baby and Mama Black Widow. From a career as a, yes, ruthless pimp in the ’40s and ’50s, Iceberg Slim refashioned himself as the first and still the greatest of “street lit” masters, whose vivid books have made him an icon to such rappers as Ice-T, Jay-Z, and Snoop Dogg and a presiding spirit of “blaxploitation” culture. You can’t understand contemporary black (and even American) culture without reckoning with Iceberg Slim and his many acolytes and imitators.

Literature professor Justin Gifford has been researching the life and work of Robert Beck for a decade, culminating in Street Poison, a colorful and compassionate biography of one of the most complicated figures in twentieth-century literature. Drawing on a wealth of archival material—including FBI files, prison records, and interviews with Beck, his wife, and his daughters—Gifford explores the sexual trauma and racial violence Beck endured that led to his reinvention as Iceberg Slim, one of America’s most infamous pimps of the 1940s and ’50s. From pimping to penning his profoundly influential confessional autobiography, Pimp, to his involvement in radical politics, Gifford’s biography illuminates the life and works of one of American literature’s most unique renegades.

Learn more about Street Poison at the publisher's website.

My Book, The Movie: Street Poison.

Writers Read: Justin Gifford.

The Page 99 Test: Street Poison.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten world-changing books

The Guardian asked ten authors to pick a book that changed the world. Rebecca Stott tagged:

The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin

Darwin wasn’t the first to propose that species have mutated through time; the idea of evolution has been around in some form or other since the ancient Greeks. But it was Darwin – and, simultaneously, Alfred Russel Wallace – who worked out natural selection as the mechanism by which evolution worked.

The Origin of Species put cats among pigeons and rattled clerical cages. Darwin knew it would; that’s why the book is so quiet and steady and reasonable, why it builds incrementally. This is “just one long argument”, made from ordinary things designed to appeal to the good sense of his readers: Darwin asks us to consider bees, pigeons, worms and hedgerows, to look around us and judge with our own eyes. “There is grandeur in this view of life,” he wrote, “from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”

It isn’t just zoologists and biologists who have explored and developed Darwin’s propositions. The work of political theorists, sociologists, anthropologists and philosophers has been shot through with Darwinian ideas, particularly the notion of competition for survival. “The history of all hitherto existing society,” the Communist Manifesto opens, “is the history of class struggles.” Charles Kingsley’s The Water Babies and Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland explored the comedy of the relationship between humans and their animal kin. By the end of the century, authors such as HG Wells were exploring the darker aspects of the Darwinian vision – the bestial underside of human nature.

The book changed the way we think about the world. It demonstrated that the diversity of the natural world could be explained without recourse to supernatural agency and proposed instead that it had been shaped by chance collisions and incremental changes through billions of years. It also showed us that the Earth is not preprogrammed to progress. Species that outgrow themselves risk extinction, not because they are being punished for their hubris but because they are making themselves unfit, destroying the means of their own survival. “We are all netted together,” Darwin wrote. In confronting the daunting challenges of the coming decades, this may be his most important lesson.

Read about another book on the list.

On the Origin of Species is among Daisy Hildyard's ten best poems, books, and plays about our human inheritance, Clive Finlayson's five best books on extinction, and Gerald Imber's five best books on cosmetic surgery.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Sara Nickerson reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Sara Nickerson, author of The Secrets of Blueberries, Brothers, Moose & Me.

Her entry begins:

Bad Feminist, by Roxane Gay, is a collection of essays about gender, race, culture, and politics. After reading, “I Was Once Miss America,” which broke my heart, I raced out to buy Book One of Sweet Valley High, the beloved series of Gay’s childhood. Gay’s essays can make a person do...[read on]

About The Secrets of Blueberries, Brothers, Moose & Me, from the publisher:

Determined to make some extra money, twelve-year-old Missy and her older brother Patrick get summer jobs picking blueberries at a local farm. For Missy, though, blueberry picking quickly becomes about more than just money— it’s the perfect distraction from the fact that her two best friends have gone off to summer camp without her and that her dad is getting remarried. Why can’t everything go back to the way it used to be? Back to normal? But, Missy soon discovers that the summer is full of secrets: the secrets to making her family feel whole again; the secrets to keeping her two best friends from changing and leaving her behind; the secrets of a local farm’s blood feud; and most importantly, the secrets of blueberries.

Author Sara Nickerson infuses warmth and emotion into this relatable story about finding something special within yourself and a place to call your own in even the most tumultuous of times.

Visit Sara Nickerson's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Sara Nickerson & Pico.

The Page 69 Test: The Secrets of Blueberries, Brothers, Moose & Me.

My Book, The Movie: The Secrets of Blueberries, Brothers, Moose & Me.

Writers Read: Sara Nickerson.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Camille Griep's "Letters to Zell"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Letters to Zell by Camille Griep.

About the book, from the publisher:

Everything is going according to story for CeCi (Cinderella), Bianca (Snow White), and Rory (Sleeping Beauty)—until the day that Zell (Rapunzel) decides to leave Grimmland and pursue her life. Now, Zell’s best friends are left to wonder whether their own passions are worth risking their predetermined “happily ever afters,” regardless of the consequences. CeCi wonders whether she should become a professional chef, sharp-tongued and quick-witted Bianca wants to escape an engagement to her platonic friend, and Rory will do anything to make her boorish husband love her. But as Bianca’s wedding approaches, can they escape their fates—and is there enough wine in all of the Realm to help them?

In this hilarious modern interpretation of the fairy-tale stories we all know and love, Letters to Zell explores what happens when women abandon the stories they didn’t write for themselves and go completely off script to follow their dreams.

Visit Camille Griep's website.

The Page 69 Test: Letters to Zell.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top classics to read before you're 10

Mary Sebag-Montefiore adapts adult classics for children and has rewritten everything from Wuthering Heights to War and Peace. At the Guardian she tagged ten classics every child should read before they are 10, including:

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

One of the best-loved children’s books of all time. Bad-tempered, ugly orphan Mary Lennox is sent to her uncle’s spooky house on the Yorkshire moors. She discovers a locked, forgotten garden, and, shut up in one of the bedrooms, her cousin Colin, a spoilt, hypochondriac invalid. As they restore the garden, Mary becomes a loving, giving girl; Colin an engaging, active boy. I don’t know of any child who doesn’t like this book.

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

David Hofmeyr's "Stone Rider," the movie

Featured at My Book, the Movie: Stone Rider by David Hofmeyr.

The entry begins:

I’m thrilled to say Working Title films have bought the option to make the film and they have already drafted in Dave Andron of Justified fame to pen the script.

If you’d have asked me to pick a screenwriter, I couldn’t have made a better choice. I love his writing. His dialogue is superb and he knows how to deliver a superb villain.

In terms of casting, it’s more difficult, because with YA books to film you’re often dealing with unknowns or kids with one or two films under their belt. But for the male characters I liked Theo James in Divergent. He’d be closest to...[read on]

Visit David Hofmeyr's website.

Stone Rider is one of Rachel Paxton-Gillilan's five YA books for Mad Max fans.

My Book, the Movie: Stone Rider.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is James Abel reading?

Featured at Writers Read: James Abel, author of Protocol Zero.

His entry begins:

Since James Abel wears two hats, thriller writer and serious journalist, my reading habits go in both directions and both feed my writing. On the international thriller end, I'm currently rereading two favorites: The Polish Officer by Alan Furst, and The Secret Speech by Tom Rob Smith. Both are wonderful books, evoking time and place and pitting a lone character against...[read on]

About Protocol Zero, from the publisher:

When authorities in Alaska receive a disturbing call from a teenage girl, their investigation leads them to discover an entire family of researchers dead. Joe Rush is called to help examine the bodies. On the surface, it looks like a brutal murder/suicide. But the situation is nowhere near that simple—nor is it over.

Upon closer investigation, Rush discovers the terrifying truth. The research team has fallen victim to something that seems impossible at first, yet the evidence looks undeniable in the lab. Now the danger may threaten thousands more.

Unfortunately, he’s not the only one with knowledge of the looming disaster. The army has cordoned off part of Alaska, and Rush soon finds himself the target of trained killers. Someone suspects Rush of betraying his country. To save countless lives—starting with his own—Rush must uncover the answers hidden in the Arctic. The question is—will he find them in time?

Visit James Abel's website.

The Page 69 Test: Protocol Zero.

Writers Read: James Abel.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: J. Matthew Gallman's "Defining Duty in the Civil War"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Defining Duty in the Civil War: Personal Choice, Popular Culture, and the Union Home Front by J. Matthew Gallman.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Civil War thrust Americans onto unfamiliar terrain, as two competing societies mobilized for four years of bloody conflict. Concerned Northerners turned to the print media for guidance on how to be good citizens in a war that hit close to home but was fought hundreds of miles away. They read novels, short stories, poems, songs, editorials, and newspaper stories. They laughed at cartoons and satirical essays. Their spirits were stirred in response to recruiting broadsides and patriotic envelopes. This massive cultural outpouring offered a path for ordinary Americans casting around for direction.

Examining the breadth of Northern popular culture, J. Matthew Gallman offers a dramatic reconsideration of how the Union's civilians understood the meaning of duty and citizenship in wartime. Although a huge percentage of military-aged men served in the Union army, a larger group chose to stay home, even while they supported the war. This pathbreaking study investigates how men and women, both white and black, understood their roles in the People's Conflict. Wartime culture created humorous and angry stereotypes ridiculing the nation's cowards, crooks, and fools, while wrestling with the challenges faced by ordinary Americans. Gallman shows how thousands of authors, artists, and readers together created a new set of rules for navigating life in a nation at war.

Learn more about Defining Duty in the Civil War at the University of North Carolina Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Defining Duty in the Civil War.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five of the strongest fictional single moms

At B & N Reads Jenny Shank tagged five of the strongest single mothers in fiction, including:

Lulu Nanapush (Love Medicine, by Louise Erdrich)

Lulu Nanapush, who appears in several of Louise Erdrich’s novels, including Love Medicine and Tracks, is the mother of eight boys and one girl by a variety of fathers. Although she has a busy romantic life, she manages to maintain an orderly home. “Even with eight boys her house was neat as a pin. The candy bowl on the table sat precisely on its doily,” Erdrich writes. “All her furniture was brushed and straightened.” Perhaps the best thing about Lulu is her confidence in her choices, and her lack of concern for those who judge her. She says, “When they tell you that I was heartless, a shameless man-chaser, don’t ever forget this: I loved what I saw. And yes, it is true that I’ve done all the things they say. That’s not what gets them. What aggravates them is I’ve never shed one solitary tear. I’m not sorry. That’s unnatural. As we all know, a woman is supposed to cry.”

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Helen Phillips's "The Beautiful Bureaucrat"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Beautiful Bureaucrat: A Novel by Helen Phillips.

About the book, from the publisher:

A young wife's new job in an enigmatic organization pits her against the unfeeling machinations of the universe in this inventive and compulsively page-turning first novel

In a windowless building in a remote part of town, the newly employed Josephine inputs an endless string of numbers into something known only as The Database. After a long period of joblessness, she's not inclined to question her fortune, but as the days inch by and the files stack up, Josephine feels increasingly anxious in her surroundings--the office's scarred pinkish walls take on a living quality, the drone of keyboards echoes eerily down the long halls. When one evening her husband Joseph disappears and then returns, offering no explanation as to his whereabouts, her creeping unease shifts decidedly to dread.

As other strange events build to a crescendo, the haunting truth about Josephine's work begins to take shape in her mind, even as something powerful is gathering its own form within her. She realizes that in order to save those she holds most dear, she must penetrate an institution whose tentacles seem to extend to every corner of the city and beyond. Both chilling and poignant, The Beautiful Bureaucrat is a novel of rare restraint and imagination. With it, Helen Phillips enters the company of Murakami, Bender, and Atwood as she twists the world we know and shows it back to us full of meaning and wonder--luminous and new.

Visit Helen Phillips's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Beautiful Bureaucrat.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Justin Gifford reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Justin Gifford, author of Street Poison: The Biography of Iceberg Slim.

From his entry:

I recently began a new expedition to uncover the hidden life of another outlandish figure of African American culture, Frank Yerby. Though most people have never heard of Yerby, he is the bestselling black American author in history with 33 books and over 60 millions copies of his novels sold. A contradictory and colorful personality, Yerby started out as writer of political fiction alongside Richard Wright in the 1940s, but then baffled black critics when he abandoned his protest work and started writing Southern historical romances in the style of Gone With the Wind. He enraged them further when he...[read on]

About Street Poison, from the publisher:

The first and definitive biography of one of America’s bestselling, notorious, and influential writers of the twentieth century: Iceberg Slim, né Robert Beck, author of the multimillion-copy memoir Pimp and such equally popular novels as Trick Baby and Mama Black Widow. From a career as a, yes, ruthless pimp in the ’40s and ’50s, Iceberg Slim refashioned himself as the first and still the greatest of “street lit” masters, whose vivid books have made him an icon to such rappers as Ice-T, Jay-Z, and Snoop Dogg and a presiding spirit of “blaxploitation” culture. You can’t understand contemporary black (and even American) culture without reckoning with Iceberg Slim and his many acolytes and imitators.

Literature professor Justin Gifford has been researching the life and work of Robert Beck for a decade, culminating in Street Poison, a colorful and compassionate biography of one of the most complicated figures in twentieth-century literature. Drawing on a wealth of archival material—including FBI files, prison records, and interviews with Beck, his wife, and his daughters—Gifford explores the sexual trauma and racial violence Beck endured that led to his reinvention as Iceberg Slim, one of America’s most infamous pimps of the 1940s and ’50s. From pimping to penning his profoundly influential confessional autobiography, Pimp, to his involvement in radical politics, Gifford’s biography illuminates the life and works of one of American literature’s most unique renegades.

Learn more about Street Poison at the publisher's website.

My Book, The Movie: Street Poison.

Writers Read: Justin Gifford.

--Marshal Zeringue

Annie Baker's 6 favorite books

Annie Baker is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American playwright.

One of her six favorite books, as shared at The Week magazine:

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

Woolf's sentences are so beautiful in this novel that they made me give up writing prose forever. She can articulate a train of thought and the poetry of thinking better than anyone else.

Read about another book on the list.

To the Lighthouse appears among Meg Wolitzer's five favorite books by women writers, Laura Frost's top 10 best modernist books, the Barnes & Noble Review's list of five unforgettable fathers from fiction, Margaret Drabble's top ten literary landscapes, the American Book Review's 100 best last lines from novels, Amity Gaige's best books, and Adam Langer's best books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Sara Nickerson's "The Secrets of Blueberries, Brothers, Moose & Me," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Secrets of Blueberries, Brothers, Moose & Me by Sara Nickerson.

The entry begins:

I come from a TV/Film background, so you’d think this would be easy. My first novel, How To Disappear Completely and Never Be Found, was a story I’d originally written as a screenplay, and I was always casting it in my head. This one, though, was different, and I couldn’t quite envision it on the big screen. Then, a couple months ago I was walking my dog and it came to me: Hayao Miyazaki.

In Miyazaki’s hands, The Secrets of Blueberries, Brothers, Moose & Me would be a...[read on]

Visit Sara Nickerson's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Sara Nickerson & Pico.

The Page 69 Test: The Secrets of Blueberries, Brothers, Moose & Me.

My Book, The Movie: The Secrets of Blueberries, Brothers, Moose & Me.

--Marshal Zeringue

Four books that changed Jodi Picoult

Jodi Picoult's many books include the young-adult (YA) novel, Off The Page, which was co-written with her daughter, Samantha van Leer.

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

GONE WITH THE WIND
Margaret Mitchell

I read this book when I was 13; it was the story that made me want to be a writer. I used to act out sections as both Rhett AND Scarlett, which explains why I didn't have a boyfriend till I was 15. I was intrigued by the idea of how Mitchell had created an entire world out of words, so rich it felt as if I were immersed in it. I thought, maybe I could do that too.

Read about another novel on the list.

Gone With the Wind is among five books that changed Kimberley Freeman, Becky Ferreira's seven best comeuppances in literature, Emily Temple's ten greatest kisses in literature and Suzi Quatro's six best books, and was a book that made a difference to Pat Conroy. It is on the Christian Science Monitor's list of the ten best novels of the U.S. Civil War.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Linwood Barclay reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Linwood Barclay, author of Broken Promise: A Thriller.

His entry begins:

I’ve just finished Nick’s Trip, one of George Pelecanos’ earlier novels. I’m a big Pelecanos fan, particularly his recent books about Spero Lucas, but I realized Nick’s Trip was one that I’d missed. It’s a good, solid read. One of the early chapters, about a wild, reckless, drug- and alcohol-induced trip Nick takes with a friend, is practically a novel in itself.

Now I can dive back into...[read on]

About Broken Promise, from the publisher:

From the New York Times bestselling author of No Safe House comes an explosive novel about the disturbing secrets of a quiet small town.…

After his wife’s death and the collapse of his newspaper, David Harwood has no choice but to uproot his nine-year-old son and move back into his childhood home in Promise Falls, New York. David believes his life is in free fall, and he can’t find a way to stop his descent.

Then he comes across a family secret of epic proportions. A year after a devastating miscarriage, David’s cousin Marla has continued to struggle. But when David’s mother asks him to check on her, he’s horrified to discover that she’s been secretly raising a child who is not her own—a baby she claims was a gift from an “angel” left on her porch.

When the baby’s real mother is found murdered, David can’t help wanting to piece together what happened—even if it means proving his own cousin’s guilt. But as he uncovers each piece of evidence, David realizes that Marla’s mysterious child is just the tip of the iceberg.

Other strange things are happening. Animals are found ritually slaughtered. An ominous abandoned Ferris wheel seems to stand as a warning that something dark has infected Promise Falls. And someone has decided that the entire town must pay for the sins of its past…in blood.

Visit Linwood Barclay's website.

Writers Read: Linwood Barclay.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: James Abel's "Protocol Zero"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Protocol Zero by James Abel.

About the book, from the publisher:

When authorities in Alaska receive a disturbing call from a teenage girl, their investigation leads them to discover an entire family of researchers dead. Joe Rush is called to help examine the bodies. On the surface, it looks like a brutal murder/suicide. But the situation is nowhere near that simple—nor is it over.

Upon closer investigation, Rush discovers the terrifying truth. The research team has fallen victim to something that seems impossible at first, yet the evidence looks undeniable in the lab. Now the danger may threaten thousands more.

Unfortunately, he’s not the only one with knowledge of the looming disaster. The army has cordoned off part of Alaska, and Rush soon finds himself the target of trained killers. Someone suspects Rush of betraying his country. To save countless lives—starting with his own—Rush must uncover the answers hidden in the Arctic. The question is—will he find them in time?

Visit James Abel's website.

The Page 69 Test: Protocol Zero.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five of the best morons in literary history

Jeff Somers is the author of Lifers, the Avery Cates series from Orbit Books, Chum from Tyrus Books, and We Are Not Good People from Pocket/Gallery. He has published over thirty short stories as well.

At B & N Reads Somers tagged five of the greatest, dumbest characters in literary history, including:

Ignatius J. Reilly, A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole

The smartest, best-read moron in literary history, Ignatius J. Reilly is a comical figure of contrasts. He’s a man who disdains the modern world, yet enjoys many of its comforts. He’s completely incompetent in almost everything he tries (even selling hot dogs turns into an Epic Fail), yet looks down on almost everyone he encounters. He believes himself to be open-minded and worldly, despite never having left his home city of New Orleans—in fact, his one attempt to travel a modest distance remains a story of deep psychological horror he repeats often. Reilly’s attempts to wriggle free of society’s requirements only lead him to work far harder and live deeper in squalor than he otherwise would. He is a lesson to anyone who has railed against the fact that we all have to “fit in” somehow to society.

Read about another entry on the list.

Ignatius Reilly is on Ginni Chen's top six list of fictional mustaches, Chrissie Gruebel's top eleven list of books that will make you glad you're single, Melissa Albert's list of six of the worst fictional characters to sit next to on a plane and Jill Boyd's list of five of the worst fictional characters to invite to Thanksgiving. A Confederacy of Dunces is among the Telegraph's critics' fifty best cult books, Melissa Albert's eight favorite fictional misfits, Ken Jennings's eight notable books about parents and kids, Sarah Stodol's top ten lost-then-found novels, Hallie Ephron's top ten books for a good laugh, Stephen Kelman's top 10 outsiders' stories, John Mullan's ten best moustaches in literature, Michael Lewis's five favorite books, and Cracked magazine's classic funny novels.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Margarita Engle's "Enchanted Air"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Enchanted Air: Two Cultures, Two Wings: A Memoir by Margarita Engle.

About the book, from the publisher:

In this poetic memoir, Margarita Engle, the first Latina woman to receive a Newbery Honor, tells of growing up as a child of two cultures during the Cold War.

Margarita is a girl from two worlds. Her heart lies in Cuba, her mother’s tropical island country, a place so lush with vibrant life that it seems like a fairy tale kingdom. But most of the time she lives in Los Angeles, lonely in the noisy city and dreaming of the summers when she can take a plane through the enchanted air to her beloved island. Words and images are her constant companions, friendly and comforting when the children at school are not.

Then a revolution breaks out in Cuba. Margarita fears for her far-away family. When the hostility between Cuba and the United States erupts at the Bay of Pigs Invasion, Margarita’s worlds collide in the worst way possible. How can the two countries she loves hate each other so much? And will she ever get to visit her beautiful island again?

Visit Margarita Engle's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Margarita Engle & Maggi and Chance.

My Book, The Movie: The Lightning Dreamer.

My Book, The Movie: Mountain Dog.

The Page 69 Test: Silver People.

The Page 99 Test: Enchanted Air.

--Marshal Zeringue