Pg. 69: Michelle Huneven's "Blame"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Blame by Michelle Huneven.

About the book, from the publisher:

Michelle Huneven, Richard Russo once wrote, is “a writer of extraordinary and thrilling talent.” That talent explodes with her third book, Blame, a spellbinding novel of guilt and love, family and shame, sobriety and the lack of it, and the moral ambiguities that ensnare us all.

The story: Patsy MacLemoore, a history professor in her late twenties with a brand-new Ph.D. from Berkeley and a wild streak, wakes up in jail—yet again—after another epic alcoholic blackout. “Okay, what’d I do?” she asks her lawyer and jailers. “I really don’t remember.” She adds, jokingly: “Did I kill someone?”

In fact, two Jehovah’s Witnesses, a mother and daughter, are dead, run over in Patsy’s driveway. Patsy, who was driving with a revoked license, will spend the rest of her life—in prison, getting sober, finding a new community (and a husband) in AA—trying to atone for this unpardonable act.

Then, decades later, another unimaginable piece of information turns up.

For the reader, it is an electrifying moment, a joyous, fall-off-the-couch-with-surprise moment. For Patsy, it is more complicated. Blame must be reapportioned, her life reassessed. What does it mean that her life has been based on wrong assumptions? What can she cleave to? What must be relinquished?

When Huneven’s first novel, Round Rock, was published, Valerie Miner, in the Los Angeles Times Book Review, celebrated Huneven’s “moral nerve, sharp wit and uncommon generosity.” The same spirit electrifies Blame. The novel crackles with life—and, like life, can leave you breathless.

Read an excerpt from Blame, and learn more about the author and her work at Michelle Huneven's website.

The Page 69 Test: Blame.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten books about Poland during World War II

Ruth Franklin, a senior editor at The New Republic, is writing a book about Holocaust literature. For Newsweek, she named a ten best list of books about Poland during World War II.

One title on the list:

Ashes and Diamonds, by Jerzy Andrzejewski

This novel by one of Poland's major postwar writers takes place in 1945, as the country was still reeling amid devastation. A young former soldier in the underground Home Army accepts a final assignment: to murder a local Communist Party official, himself a survivor of the camps. There are no heroes here, just two men caught in the trap of history. A great film by Andrzej Wajda was based on this book.

Read about another book on Franklin's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Steve Pincus' "1688: The First Modern Revolution"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: 1688: The First Modern Revolution by Steve Pincus.

About the book, from the publisher:

For two hundred years historians have viewed England’s Glorious Revolution of 1688–1689 as an un-revolutionary revolution—bloodless, consensual, aristocratic, and above all, sensible. In this brilliant new interpretation Steve Pincus refutes this traditional view.

By expanding the interpretive lens to include a broader geographical and chronological frame, Pincus demonstrates that England’s revolution was a European event, that it took place over a number of years, not months, and that it had repercussions in India, North America, the West Indies, and throughout continental Europe. His rich historical narrative, based on masses of new archival research, traces the transformation of English foreign policy, religious culture, and political economy that, he argues, was the intended consequence of the revolutionaries of 1688–1689.

James II developed a modernization program that emphasized centralized control, repression of dissidents, and territorial empire. The revolutionaries, by contrast, took advantage of the new economic possibilities to create a bureaucratic but participatory state. The postrevolutionary English state emphasized its ideological break with the past and envisioned itself as continuing to evolve. All of this, argues Pincus, makes the Glorious Revolution—not the French Revolution—the first truly modern revolution. This wide-ranging book reenvisions the nature of the Glorious Revolution and of revolutions in general, the causes and consequences of commercialization, the nature of liberalism, and ultimately the origins and contours of modernity itself.

Read more about the book at the publisher's website.

The Page 99 Test: 1688: The First Modern Revolution.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Sarah Wendell reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Sarah Wendell, co-author (with Candy Tan) of Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches’ Guide to Romance Novels.

Her entry begins:

My reading cravings right now are for shorter-length, character-driven romance narratives with strong, autonomous protagonists and emotion-based tension in a contemporary setting. In one word: Harlequin.

People sniff at Harlequin as "dime store throwaway novels," or "bodice rippers" - both of which are such inaccurate representations I can't even begin to argue without my bosoms heaving in indignation. Harlequin, also known as category romance, is an art when it's done well, and an exercise in abdominal-exercising-hilarity when it's done silly and awful. Nora Roberts likened it to performing Swan Lake in a phone booth - and she's bang on as usual. The short length and structure of a category romance force the author to employ words that represent a lot in only a few letters. Sometimes, that's an overladen cliche that makes me giggle. Other times, it's a turn of phrase so evocative and simple, I have to read it again.

I'm craving category romances right now because...[read on]

Sarah Wendell is also known as Smart Bitch Sarah of Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. The site specializes in reviewing romance novels, examining the history and future of the genre, and bemoaning the enormous prevalence of bodacious pectorals adorning male cover models.

Among the praise for Beyond Heaving Bosoms:

“Funny, irreverent, insightful and thorough, this guide zeros in on the joys and the woes of the Romance genre. Like a pair of strong heroines, Sarah and Lay Ping celebrate the virtues of their beloved, and recognize the flaws. They give the genre a passionate kiss and a kick in the ass, delivering both in delightful, readable style.”
—New York Times bestselling author Nora Roberts

Visit Sarah Wendell at her website and the Smart Bitches, Trashy Books website.

Writers Read: Sarah Wendell.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jordan Christy's "How to Be a Hepburn in a Hilton World," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: How to Be a Hepburn in a Hilton World: The Art of Living with Style, Class, and Grace by Jordan Christy.

The entry begins:

I would be lying if I said I hadn't imagined How to Be a Hepburn in a Hilton World making it's debut on the big screen. I would also be lying if I said I hadn't already picked out my dress for the premiere, and carefully arranged the track numbers for the movie's corresponding soundtrack (floor-length Reem Acra; Sara Bareilles kicks off the album). Since the book is a non-fiction guidebook, it would have to be cleverly adapted by an excellent screenwriter in the vein of He's Just Not That Into You. We basically need to get Nora Ephron on the phone, asap. If she's too swamped, I'd like to have a chat with Tracey Jackson and see what she'd do with the storyline.

Anne Hathaway is the obvious choice for the leading role, given her Audrey-like features and real-life role model qualities. There would be a gaggle of...[read on]

Writers Read: Jordan Christy.

My Book, The Movie: How to Be a Hepburn in a Hilton World.

--Marshal Zeringue

The 10 best books written in prison

At the Guardian, John Mullan named ten of the best books written in prison.

One book on his list:

Justine, by the Marquis de Sade

The infamous libertine spent much of his adult life in prison and wrote most of his novels there. His sexually explicit narratives - including this account of a virtuous girl in a wicked world of sexual predators - were composed to fill the tedious hours and compensate for the absence of women. The first draft was written in the Bastille.

Read about another book on Mullan's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Coffee with a canine: Carola Dunn & Trillian

Today's featured duo at Coffee with a Canine: Carola Dunn & Trillian.

Dunn is the author of 51 books (with another in production) and is about to start on the 53rd.

They include her Daisy Dalrymple mysteries (Sheer Folly, the 18th, is just out) and Cornish mysteries (Manna from Hades). Her dog is "Trillian, a bitch, around 4 years old (guesstimate), mostly border collie with a bit of lab (another guesstimate) mixed in."

Trillian's name has a literary pedigree, according to Dunn:

I'd been rereading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Trillian is the only completely sane, intelligent, competent and practical character in all 5 books of the series. Quite coincidentally, the shelter staff called her Brilliance--so it wasn't a big change when she came home with me.

Visit Carola Dunn's website and blog. She also blogs at Poe's Deadly Daughters about such subjects as the difficulty of changing periods, having just finished writing a book set in the 1960s (sequel to Manna from Hades) and being about to start another set in the 1920s (the 19th in the Daisy Dalrymple series).

The Page 69 Test: Black Ship.

The Page 69 Test: Manna from Hades.

Writers Read: Carola Dunn.

Read--Coffee with a Canine: Carola Dunn & Trillian.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Paul LaRosa & Maria Cramer's "Seven Days of Rage"

Today's feature at the Page 69 Test: Seven Days of Rage: The Deadly Crime Spree of the Craigslist Killer by Paul LaRosa and Maria Cramer.

About the book, from the publisher:

SEVEN DAYS OF RAGE

The Deadly Crime Spree of the Craigslist Killer

A producer from 48 Hours Mystery teams with a Boston Globe reporter to reveal the secret life of the young man known as the "Craigslist Killer"

Compressed into a seven-day time span, the story of the Craigslist Killer just kept unfolding: three vulnerable women, each cornered in a hotel room, one of them murdered when she resisted. Who would be next? The images of the suspect are jarring: an all- American handsome young man who could be the guy next door, clean-cut and casually dressed. Using hightech investigative tools and old-fashioned shoe leather, detectives from the Boston Police Department track down their man and arrest the unlikeliest of suspects: twenty-three-year-old Philip Markoff, a brilliant, wellregarded medical student at Boston University who is engaged to be married on the beach at sunset to a beautiful and trusting fiancée. If guilty, what is his motivation? Why did he allegedly use Craigslist, the online bulletin board, to pick out his victims? The arrest of Markoff, a man with no criminal record, seems incomprehensible, but the evidence against him seems overwhelming. Police match his gun and fingerprints to the crimes, and use a trail of digital bread crumbs to lead to Markoff's doorstep.

When Manhattan model and masseuse Julissa Brisman agreed to meet a client at the Boston Marriott Copley Place Hotel, she thought it would be just one more day on her road to recovering from an alcohol addiction. Instead, she was discovered lying facedown in a pool of blood on a hallway carpet, her head battered, a bullet through her heart. The hotel's surveillance cameras captured the image of a tall, blond, clean-cut man, texting on his BlackBerry. As police moved in, pieces of an astonishing puzzle emerged: investigators revealed that the Boston University medical student was linked to several incidents across the Northeast, all involving women with whom he connected on Craigslist -- including the armed robbery of a prostitute at another Boston hotel, and the assault of an exotic dancer in Rhode Island. The Craigslist Killer was arrested by Boston police barely a week after Julissa Brisman's murder. As the public tried to understand why someone with everything to live for would be so reckless, the double life of Philip Markoff began to materialize, and he appeared to be an out-of-control thrill seeker hiding a secret sexual life.

With the in-depth analysis that distinguishes TV's 48 Hours Mystery, this penetrating profile of Markoff and his crimes goes well beyond newspaper headlines to reveal how a young man described as "a beautiful person inside and out" hid his dark obsessions from the world -- and how the Internet can make any one of us the next victim of the most unlikely killer.

Read an excerpt from Seven Days of Rage, and learn more about the book at Paul LaRosa's website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: Seven Days of Rage.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Ron E. Hassner's "War on Sacred Grounds"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: War on Sacred Grounds by Ron E. Hassner.

About the book, from the publisher:

Sacred sites offer believers the possibility of communing with the divine and achieving deeper insight into their faith. Yet their spiritual and cultural importance can lead to competition as religious groups seek to exclude rivals from practicing potentially sacrilegious rituals in the hallowed space and wish to assert their own claims. Holy places thus create the potential for military, theological, or political clashes, not only between competing religious groups but also between religious groups and secular actors.

In War on Sacred Grounds, Ron E. Hassner investigates the causes and properties of conflicts over sites that are both venerated and contested; he also proposes potential means for managing these disputes. Hassner illustrates a complex and poorly understood political dilemma with accounts of the failures to reach settlement at Temple Mount/Haram el-Sharif, leading to the clashes of 2000, and the competing claims of Hindus and Muslims at Ayodhya, which resulted in the destruction of the mosque there in 1992. He also addresses more successful compromises in Jerusalem in 1967 and Mecca in 1979. Sacred sites, he contends, are particularly prone to conflict because they provide valuable resources for both religious and political actors yet cannot be divided.

The management of conflicts over sacred sites requires cooperation, Hassner suggests, between political leaders interested in promoting conflict resolution and religious leaders who can shape the meaning and value that sacred places hold for believers. Because a reconfiguration of sacred space requires a confluence of political will, religious authority, and a window of opportunity, it is relatively rare. Drawing on the study of religion and the study of politics in equal measure, Hassner's account offers insight into the often-violent dynamics that come into play at the places where religion and politics collide.

Read an excerpt from War on Sacred Grounds, and learn more about the book and author at Ron E. Hassner's website.

The Page 99 Test: War on Sacred Grounds.

--Marshal Zeringue

Best book to film adaptations

Melissa Katsoulis named "twenty-five films that made it from the book shelf to the box office with credibility intact" for the Daily Telegraph.

Number One on the list:

GREAT EXPECTATIONS by CHARLES DICKENS

Published: 1860-1861

Film adaptation: 1946

Director: DAVID LEAN

No film version of Dickens has ever matched Lean’s superlative realisation of Great Expectations. From the jumpy graveyard scene to the weirdness of Satis House, and with actors such as John Mills and Alec Guinness giving their all, there is no level at which this utterly brilliant film doesn’t deliver.

Read about another book/movie on the list.

The adaptation is Erica Wagner's "best film of the book I’ve seen."

Great Expectations also made John Mullan's ten best list of fights in fiction, David Nicholls' top ten list of literary tear jerkers, and numbers among Kurt Anderson's five most essential books.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Christopher S. Mackay reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Christopher S. Mackay, author of the recently released Breakdown of the Roman Republic: From Oligarchy to Empire.

His other books include The Hammer of Witches: A Complete Translation of the Malleus Maleficarum. The Malleus Maleficarum, first published in 1486-7, is the standard medieval text on witchcraft and it remained in print throughout the early modern period. Its descriptions of the evil acts of witches and the ways to exterminate them continue to contribute to our knowledge of early modern law, religion and society.

One book in Mackay's Writers Read entry:

A Tale of Two Subs: An Untold Story of World War II, Two Sister Ships, and Extraordinary Heroism by Jonathan McCullough (picked up on a lark at the opening of a nearby big-box bookstore). The two ships in question were the submarines Sculpin and Sailfish, which at various times had a number of prominent US submarine captains serve onboard as officers of various ranks. For those who don't know, the US submarine offensive against Japan was (unlike its German counterpart) phenomenally successful, sinking a large part of the Japanese fleet and pretty much obliterating the merchant marine. In the book, the overall narrative arc at times gets a bit obscured, but the details of what it was like to serve on such a ship are riveting. You'd never catch me doing that! (The submarine service had the highest casualty rate in the US navy, and it must have been awful to go down with one of the ships lost with all hands.) When the Sculpin is lost at the end, there are survivors, so we can experience what it was like to go through such an event. Grim...[read on]

Christopher S. Mackay is a Professor in the Department of History and Classics at the University of Alberta.

Visit Christopher S. Mackay's website.

Writers Read: Christopher S. Mackay.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Stephen Jay Schwartz's "Boulevard"

This weekend's feature at the Page 69 Test: Boulevard by Stephen Jay Schwartz.

About the book, from the publisher:

Hayden Glass never had it easy. After losing his father at a young age, he fought hard for everything he got, haunted by a shame that he could never define or conquer. Now a Los Angeles Police Robbery and Homicide detective, Glass is still haunted by the scars that formed in his childhood and left a permanent void in his soul. He deals with it in a very defeating way ... he strolls Sunset Boulevard, picking up prostitutes. Hayden Glass is a sex addict.

Called to investigate a heinous crime scene involving the daughter of prominent LA politician, Glass is quickly overwhelmed by the spotlight. When new murders arise, Glass sees a link where no one else does--this is the work of a vicious, sadistic sexual predator. Forced to use the support rooms that keep him from acting out as an investigative tool, Glass finds himself alienated by everyone he needs: his ex-wife, his sponsor, even his fellow detectives. Glass must call on the services of ex-FBI profiler, turned private investigator Kennedy Reynard, who is as tempting as she is helpful. But the tide turns quickly when Glass discovers that his quarry has his sights set on an ultimate target---Glass himself.

Read an excerpt from Boulevard, and learn more about the author and his work at Stephen Jay Schwartz's website.

The Page 69 Test: Boulevard.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five best books about obsession

Susan Cheever's books include five novels and the memoirs Note Found in a Bottle and Home Before Dark. Her work has been nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award and won the Boston Globe Winship Medal. She applied the "page 69 test" to her 2006 book, American Bloomsbury: Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau: Their Lives, Their Loves, Their Work.

In 2008's Desire: Where Sex Meets Addiction, she "explores the shifting boundaries between the feelings of passion and addiction, desire and need, and she raises provocative and important questions about who we love and why."

For the Wall Street Journal, she named a five best list of books about obsession. One book on her list:

Moby-Dick
by Herman Melville
1851

Obsession can masquerade as a quest for revenge, and Captain Ahab's search for the white sperm whale that had bitten off his leg in an earlier encounter has become an archetype of retributive obsession. "I'll chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn and around the Norway Maelstrom, and round perdition's flames before I give him up," Ahab says in a speech that Catherine Earnshaw might well have made about Heathcliff [in Wuthering Heights]. Despite protests from the crew aboard the Pequod that the ship should be pursuing whales for profit, not chasing vengeance, Ahab descends into the dark reaches of insanity, his men held in thrall to his obsession. In writing the story, Melville was inspired by stories of two real sperm whales, one that sank the whaling ship Essex in 1820 and another, known as Mocha Dick, that was reputed to have sunk dozens of the Nantucket whalers that pursued him in the Pacific early in the 19th century. Are animals, like humans, capable of being driven by obsession?

Read about another title on Cheever's list.

Moby-Dick also appears among Christopher Buckley's best books, Jane Yolen's five most important books, Chris Dodd's best books, Augusten Burroughs' five most important books, Norman Mailer's top ten works of literature, David Wroblewski's five most important books, Russell Banks' five most important books, and Philip Hoare's top ten books about whales.

Visit Susan Cheever's official website and read the Page 69 Test results for American Bloomsbury.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Wendy Walker's "Social Lives"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Social Lives by Wendy Walker.

About the book, from the publisher:

Step into picture-perfect Wilshire, home to some of the most privileged people in the world, where one woman’s desperate act could bring the precariously balanced social order crashing down…

Wilshire, Connecticut, the gilded enclave of Manhattan’s prosperous elite, appears to be a vision of suburban tranquility: the mansions are tastefully designed, the lawns are expertly manicured, and the streets are as hushed as the complexities in the residents’ lives. While Wilshire's husbands battle each other in the financial world, their wives manage their estates and raise the next elite generation. Some women are envied, some respected, and others simply tolerated. But regardless of where they stand, each woman is defined by the world she inhabits and bound by the unyielding social structure that surrounds her.

Rosalyn Barlow, the most envied woman in Wilshire, is waging a battle of social manipulation to silence the scandalous gossip that threatens her daughter's reputation while her self-made billionaire husband grows more and more distant in his young retirement. But for fourteen year-old Caitlin Barlow, navigating life as a teenager in a culture of wealth and sexual promiscuity has become far more perilous than either of her parents knows. Newcomer Sarah Livingston has nothing but disdain for everyone and everything around her and a growing terror at having another child in a world she's come to resent. As she is pulled into the Barlow family's storm, the walls begin to close in around her marriage and the life she once thought she wanted. And for Jacqueline Halstead, who's just discovered her husband is under investigation for fraud surrounding his hedge fund, saving her family from total ruin means doing the unthinkable - and shaking the Barlow family, Wilshire's insular community, and herself to the core.

Watch the video trailer for Social Lives and read an excerpt. Learn more about the author and her books at Wendy Walker's website.

Walker is a former commercial litigator turned stay-at-home-mom turned fiction writer. Four Wives is her first novel.

The Page 69 Test: Four Wives.

The Page 99 Test: Social Lives.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Carola Dunn reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Carola Dunn, author of fifty-plus novels including Manna from Hades and Sheer Folly.

Her entry begins:

At present I have a great pile of library books, mostly published in the 1920s. You can find out why at Poe's Deadly Daughters, where I blog about the difficulty of changing periods, having just finished writing a book set in the 1960s (sequel to Manna from Hades) and being about to start another set in the 1920s (19th in the Daisy Dalrymple series: the 18th, Sheer Folly, is just out).

Among my library finds:

John Buchan, The Dancing Floor. This is one I haven't read, by the author of the famous Thirty-Nine Steps. I own and enjoy rereading that as well as The Three Hostages, Greenmantle and a couple of others, all great adventure stories. I'm interested to find out what goes on...[read on]

Visit Carola Dunn's website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: Black Ship.

The Page 69 Test: Manna from Hades.

Writers Read: Carola Dunn.

--Marshal Zeringue

Yoko Ono's best books

Yoko Ono is a musician and performance-art pioneer. Her new album is Between My Head and the Sky.

For The Week magazine, she named a best books list. One title on the list:

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins (Plume, $15).

This book gives you a true picture of American world politics that we have not been told. While at consulting firm Chas T. Main, Perkins claims to have worked as an “economic hit man,” cheating developing nations out of trillions by convincing their leaders to accept development loans that ultimately turned into massive debts.

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Coffee with a canine: Louise Penny & Trudy

This weekend's featured couple at Coffee with a Canine: Louise Penny & Trudy.

The story of how Trudy came to the household:

We had just lost our first Golden, Bonnie. She was our wedding gift to each other, and a beloved family member. We were inconsolable, as was our surviving dog, Maggie. Now, Maggie adored Bonnie, but Bonnie until the day she died kept expecting Maggie to go back to her real home.

It was so strange having just one dog and we decided we would try to get another in about a year. But knowing how rare it was to have our breeder with a puppy ready when we wanted it, we decided to call and see if they had any plans. They didn't, but a friend of theirs had just had a litter and there was one left. A little girl. We called - knowing in our hearts what that would mean. We went to visit ... still kidding ourselves that we could 'just look'. And, of course, we came home with tiny little eight week old Trudy.

Maggie - a very competitive, alpha dog - adored Trudy from day one. They played and Maggie even let Trudy, who was the size of one of Maggie's ears, knock her down, stand on her chest and have a go at her throat.

Ironically about a week later old Seamus lumbered up our dirt road and into our lives. He was lost - having run away from an abusive and neglectful home. And he was a Golden as well. We took him in and our home was suddenly filled with them. It was a riot. We have since lost Seamus and Maggie. But Trudy remains.[read on]

Louise Penny is an award-winning journalist who worked for many years for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Her bestselling first mystery, Still Life, was the winner of the New Blood Dagger, Arthur Ellis, Barry, Anthony, and Dilys awards; her second, A Fatal Grace, won the 2007 Agatha Award for Best Novel; her fourth, A Rule Against Murder, was a New York Times bestseller.

The Brutal Telling, her fifth Armand Gamache novel, releases this month.

Visit Louise Penny's website and blog.

Read--Coffee with a Canine: Louise Penny & Trudy.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Christina Baker Kline's "Bird in Hand"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Bird in Hand by Christina Baker Kline.

About the book, from the publisher:

Four people, two marriages, one lifelong friendship: everything is about to change

It was an accident. It was dark, it was raining, Alison had only had two drinks. And the other car ran the stop sign. But Alison finds herself trapped under the crushing weight of grief and guilt, feeling increasingly estranged from her husband...

Charlie, who has his own burdens. He's in a job he doesn't love so that Alison can stay at home with the kids (and why isn't she more grateful for that?); he has a house in the suburbs and a long commute to and from the city. And the only thing he can focus on these days is his secret, sudden affair with...

Claire, Alison's best friend. Bold where Alison is reserved, vibrant where Alison is cautious, Claire has just had her first novel published, a thinly veiled retelling of her childhood in North Carolina. But even in the whirlwind of publication, Claire can't stop wondering if she should leave her husband...

Ben, an ambitious architect who is brilliant, kind, and meticulous. And who wants nothing more than a baby, or two—exactly the kind of life that Charlie and Alison seem to have....

In each of her novels, Christina Baker Kline has explored how people tell the stories of their lives and what those stories reveal about who they are. As they set out on their individual journeys, Alison, Charlie, Claire, and Ben explore the idea—each in his or her own way—that every moment of loss contains within it the possibility of a new life. Alternating through these four intertwined perspectives, Bird in Hand is a searing novel about friendship, love, marriage, loss, and the choices we make that irrevocably alter everything we believe to be true.

Browse inside Bird in Hand, and learn more about the author and her work at Christina Baker Kline's website and her blog on writing and the creative process.

Christina Baker Kline is the author of three other novels: The Way Life Should Be, Desire Lines, and Sweet Water. She is Writer-in-Residence at Fordham University, and lives outside of New York City.

The Page 69 Test: Bird in Hand.

--Marshal Zeringue

Randa Jarrar's "A Map of Home," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: A Map of Home by Randa Jarrar.

The entry begins:

I've been told my novel is cinematic. The characters are all larger-than-life crazies who move big, talk big, and live big.

In the role of Nidali, the sassy talking main character, I see Alia Shawkat, who was Maeby in Arrested Development. She has perfect comic timing, is absolutely stunning, and I can see her swearing left and right.

Baba would be played by- who else?- Tony...[read on]

Randa Jarrar is a novelist, short story writer, and translator. She grew up in Kuwait and Egypt, and moved to the US after the first Gulf War. At the age of 13, she enrolled in 10th grade, and went on to attend Sarah Lawrence College at 16. Two years later, Jarrar became a single mom, and by the age of 22, she had a Masters’ degree and a four- year-old. She began A Map of Home at the age of 23, writing the bulk of it in a trailer in small-town Texas.

Learn more about the author and her work at Randa Jarrar's website.

My Book, The Movie: A Map of Home.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five best books on depression

In 2005 Mike Wallace, correspondent for CBS's 60 Minutes, named a five best list of books on depression for the Wall Street Journal.

One title on the list:

"How You Can Survive When They're Depressed" by Anne Sheffield (Harmony Books, 1998).

I was first hit with depression more than 20 years ago during the time of a highly publicized libel trial against CBS, which happily ended in our favor. (I was hit again about 12 years ago, when I turned 75 and figured that I didn't really need the Zoloft I'd been told to stay on for the rest of my life.) One of the first books I read back in the 1980s was Ann Sheffield's, aimed at helping the friends and family of depressives. I was lower than a snake's belly, and my wife, Mary, was suffering because of it. Ms. Sheffield describes, stage by stage, how depressives affect others around them. The wife of one depressed man told her: "At night I take my book into another room so as not to have to look at him reading the same Tom Clancy thriller over and over.... I hate being home with him because I really hate looking at him."

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue