Roland Clark's "Holy Legionary Youth," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Holy Legionary Youth: Fascist Activism in Interwar Romania by Roland Clark.

The entry begins:

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu would have loved the idea of having a movie made about him. As the leader of a fascist movement named the Legion of the Archangel Michael, he filmed his own wedding in 1925 and arranged to have it broadcast in Bucharest before the censors confiscated it and destroyed the film. Incredibly proud, Codreanu was so tall and good looking that people referred to him as the “Hollywood Hitler.” He would have liked someone like Hugh Jackman or Scott Caan to portray him confronting crowds of angry workers, plotting to assassinate a series of public figures, or shooting a police chief on the steps of the courthouse. His followers talked about him in messianic terms and he even convinced them to build a holiday resort on the Black Sea entirely with donated goods and volunteer labor. Playing Codreanu wouldn’t be difficult, because he...[read on]

Learn more about Holy Legionary Youth at the Cornell University Press website.

My Book, The Movie: Holy Legionary Youth.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Stephen Macedo's "Just Married"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Just Married: Same-Sex Couples, Monogamy, and the Future of Marriage by Stephen Macedo.

About the book, from the publisher:

The institution of marriage stands at a critical juncture. As gay marriage equality gains acceptance in law and public opinion, questions abound regarding marriage’s future. Will same-sex marriage lead to more radical marriage reform? Should it? Antonin Scalia and many others on the right warn of a slippery slope from same-sex marriage toward polygamy, adult incest, and the dissolution of marriage as we know it. Equally, many academics, activists, and intellectuals on the left contend that there is no place for monogamous marriage as a special status defined by law. Just Married demonstrates that both sides are wrong: the same principles of democratic justice that demand marriage equality for same-sex couples also lend support to monogamous marriage.

Stephen Macedo displays the groundlessness of arguments against same-sex marriage and defends marriage as a public institution against those who would eliminate its special status or supplant it with private arrangements. Arguing that monogamy reflects and cultivates our most basic democratic values, Macedo opposes the legal recognition of polygamy, but agrees with progressives that public policies should do more to support nontraditional caring and caregiving relationships. Throughout, Macedo explores the meaning of contemporary marriage and the reasons for its fragility and its enduring significance. His defense of reformed marriage against slippery slope alarmists on the right, and radical critics of marriage on the left, vindicates the justice and common sense of the emerging consensus.

Casting new light on today’s debates over the future of marriage, Just Married lays the groundwork for a stronger institution.

Learn more about Just Married at the Princeton University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Just Married.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best fictional holidays

At the Guardian Kate Kellaway tagged the ten best fictional holidays, including:

Light Years
James Salter, 1975

This sensual, desolate masterpiece includes an unsatisfactory holiday taken by the middle-aged narrator, estranged from his wife, with a recently acquired Italian lover, Lia, on the Tuscan coast in April. “The country they were passing through was not what he had expected; it was bare, industrial seacoast.” Low-season holidays often suit fiction best because off-peak equals unpredictable. This is a barren non-honeymoon; the hotel is “isolated and expensive” and in a chilly, dark, mosquito-ridden room, two single beds are pushed together to form a double – a good symbol for two people not converging as they should.

Read about another entry on the list.

Light Years is one of Katie Roiphe's top three all-time best breakup books.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Brandon R. Brown reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Brandon R. Brown, author of Planck: Driven by Vision, Broken by War.

His entry begins:

I’m reading two books, one quickly and one very slowly. The faster book is The Voice of Dolphins and Other Stories, a mostly forgotten collection by the late physicist Leó Szilárd. A friend loaned this book to me after seeing my biography of Max Planck. Szilárd was one of the physicists who set up the first nuclear reactor and, fleeing Nazi Germany, contributed to America’s Manhattan Project during WWII. He advocated using the bomb in demonstration only and was horrified to see it dropped on cities. He wrote the Dolphins pieces of fiction circa 1960, and the main story casts a forward-looking history to 1985. He accurately foresees the cold war, many specific issues in the Middle East, and the formation of...[read on]

About Planck: Driven by Vision, Broken by War, from the publisher:

Max Planck is credited with being the father of quantum theory, and his work was described by his close friend Albert Einstein as "the basis of all twentieth-century physics." But Planck's story is not well known, especially in the United States. A German physicist working during the first half of the twentieth century, his library, personal journals, notebooks, and letters were all destroyed with his home in World War II. What remains, other than his contributions to science, are handwritten letters in German shorthand, and tributes from other scientists of the time.

In Planck: Driven by Vision, Broken by War, Brandon R. Brown interweaves the voices and writings of Planck, his family, and his contemporaries--with many passages appearing in English for the first time--to create a portrait of a groundbreaking physicist working in the midst of war. Planck spent much of his adult life grappling with the identity crisis of being an influential German with ideas that ran counter to his government. During the later part of his life, he survived bombings and battlefields, surgeries and blood transfusions, all the while performing his influential work amidst a violent and crumbling Nazi bureaucracy. When his son was accused of treason, Planck tried to use his standing as a German "national treasure," and wrote directly to Hitler to spare his son's life. Brown tells the story of Planck's friendship with the far more outspoken Albert Einstein, and shows how his work fits within the explosion of technology and science that occurred during his life.

This story of a brilliant man living in a dangerous time gives Max Planck his rightful place in the history of science, and it shows how war-torn Germany deeply impacted his life and work.

Visit Brandon Brown's website.

My Book, The Movie: Planck.

Writers Read: Brandon R. Brown.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Karin Salvalaggio's "Burnt River"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Burnt River by Karin Salvalaggio.

About the book, from the publisher:

When Detective Macy Greeley is called to Wilmington Creek, a sleepy ranching community in northern Montana, she expects an open-and-shut, if high-profile, murder case. What greets her is anything but. John Dalton, a soldier returned home from serving in Afghanistan, has been shot dead in an alleyway outside a local bar. Macy can't see any obvious motive for the attack, but John's closest friends and his twin sister, Jessie, have been keeping secrets.With a series of wildfires pushing the area's resources to the limit and Darby Lake's water level dropping to a record low, Jessie is becoming increasingly anxious about what may be uncovered if the rains don't return to the valley soon. Haunted by what's hidden beneath the still waters, she doesn't know whether to help or hinder Macy's investigation. And Macy herself is increasingly uneasy about what she discovers as she navigates the politics of a small town and the Dalton family clan, as well as her own complicated relationship with the father of her young son. Macy Greeley returns in another taut and intimate mystery from acclaimed Bone Dust White author Karin Salvalaggio.

Visit Karin Salvalaggio's website.

The Page 69 Test: Burnt River.

--Marshal Zeringue

Four books that changed Angelica Banks

Angelica Banks is not one writer but two. Heather Rose and Danielle Wood are old friends who live in Tasmania. Both are award-winning authors of adult fiction and together they write children's fantasy.

One of four books that changed the authors, as shared with the Sydney Morning Herald:

The Old Man and the Sea
Ernest Hemingway

This was my first book from the adult section of the State Library in Hobart. I was six years old. I didn't knew books could have sad endings, having been raised on a steady diet of Golden Books and rhyming poetry. My grandfather was also a fisherman – and I'd spent my short life until then with a fishing line in my hand – so the idea of a huge fish was vivid for me. Reading this book made me quite certain I wanted to be a writer. (Heather)

Read about another entry on the list.

The Old Man and the Sea is among Leo Benedictus's five best books for men who never read, Jung Chang's 6 favorite books, Kathryn Williams's thirteen best stories about pride, Scott Greenstone's twenty best books with fewer than 200 pages, Michael Palin's six favorite books, Robson Green's six best books, and Dave Boling's five best examples of how to structure a novel. N.M. Kelby has suggested that The Old Man and the Sea may be The Great Florida Novel.

--Marshal Zeringue

K. David Jackson's "Machado de Assis," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Machado de Assis: A Literary Life by K. David Jackson.

The entry begins:

Definitely this book/movie should be directed by Woody Allen, with any of his brilliant actors from Midnight in Paris or To Rome with Love removed to Rio de Janeiro.

On the other hand...[read on]

Learn more about Machado de Assis at the Yale University Press website.

Writers Read: K. David Jackson.

The Page 99 Test: Machado de Assis: A Literary Life.

My Book, The Movie: Machado de Assis.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Jax Miller reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Jax Miller, author of Freedom's Child: A Novel.

Her entry begins:

I’ve just started The Axeman’s Jazz by Ray Celestin. I was first attracted to its fabulous cover before reading the back. It’s a fiction that surrounds the real life crimes of the New Orleans serial killer, The Axeman, who butchered 6 people in 1919. From the get-go, the characters are written so incredibly well that you can feel them breathing next to you, not to mention...[read on]

About Freedom's Child, from the publisher:

Freedom Oliver has plenty of secrets. She lives in a small Oregon town and keeps mostly to herself. Her few friends and neighbors know she works at the local biker bar; they know she gets arrested for public drunkenness almost every night; they know she’s brash, funny, and fearless.

What they don’t know is that Freedom Oliver is a fake name. They don’t know that she was arrested for killing her husband, a cop, twenty years ago. They don’t know she put her two kids up for adoption. They don’t know that she’s now in witness protection, regretting ever making a deal with the Feds, and missing her children with a heartache so strong it makes her ill.

Then, she learns that her daughter has gone missing, possibly kidnapped. Determined to find out what happened, Freedom slips free of her handlers, gets on a motorcycle, and heads for Kentucky, where her daughter was raised. As she ventures out on her own, no longer protected by the government, her troubled past comes roaring back at her: her husband’s vengeful, sadistic family; her brief, terrifying stint in prison; and the family she chose to adopt her kids who are keeping dangerous secrets.

Written with a ferocious wit and a breakneck pace, Freedom’s Child is a thrilling, emotional portrait of a woman who risks everything to make amends for a past that haunts her still.

Visit Jax Miller's website.

My Book, The Movie: Freedom's Child.

The Page 69 Test: Freedom's Child.

Writers Read: Jax Miller.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Dirk Philipsen's "The Little Big Number"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Little Big Number: How GDP Came to Rule the World and What to Do about It by Dirk Philipsen.

About the book, from the publisher:

In one lifetime, GDP, or Gross Domestic Product, has ballooned from a narrow economic tool into a global article of faith. It is our universal yardstick of progress. As The Little Big Number demonstrates, this spells trouble. While economies and cultures measure their performance by it, GDP ignores central facts such as quality, costs, or purpose. It only measures output: more cars, more accidents; more lawyers, more trials; more extraction, more pollution—all count as success. Sustainability and quality of life are overlooked. Losses don’t count. GDP promotes a form of stupid growth and ignores real development.

How and why did we get to this point? Dirk Philipsen uncovers a submerged history dating back to the 1600s, climaxing with the Great Depression and World War II, when the first version of GDP arrived at the forefront of politics. Transcending ideologies and national differences, GDP was subsequently transformed from a narrow metric to the purpose of economic activity. Today, increasing GDP is the highest goal of politics. In accessible and compelling prose, Philipsen shows how it affects all of us.

But the world can no longer afford GDP rule. A finite planet cannot sustain blind and indefinite expansion. If we consider future generations equal to our own, replacing the GDP regime is the ethical imperative of our times. More is not better. As Philipsen demonstrates, the history of GDP reveals unique opportunities to fashion smarter goals and measures. The Little Big Number explores a possible roadmap for a future that advances quality of life rather than indiscriminate growth.

Learn more about The Little Big Number at the Princeton University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: The Little Big Number.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Brenda Bowen's "Enchanted August"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Enchanted August: A Novel by Brenda Bowen.

About the book, from the publisher:

Set on a picture-perfect island in Maine, a sparkling summer debut that offers readers a universal fantasy: one glorious month away from it all

On a dreary spring day in Brooklyn, Lottie Wilkinson and Rose Arbuthnot spot an ad on their children’s preschool bulletin board:

Hopewell Cottage
Little Lost Island, Maine.
Old, pretty cottage to rent on a small island.
Springwater, blueberries, sea glass.
August.

Neither can afford it, but they are smitten—Lottie could use a break from her overbearing husband and Rose from her relentless twins. On impulse, they decide to take the place and attract two others to share the steep rent: Caroline Dester, an indie movie star who’s getting over a very public humiliation, and elderly Beverly Fisher, who’s recovering from heartbreaking loss. If it’s not a perfect quartet, surely it will be fine for a month in the country.

When they arrive on the island, they are transformed by the salt air; the breathtaking views; the long, lazy days; and the happy routine of lobster, corn, and cocktails on the wraparound porch. By the time of the late-August blue moon, real life and its complications have finally fallen far, far away. For on this idyllic island they gradually begin to open up: to one another and to the possibilities of lives quite different from the ones they’ve been leading. Change can’t be that hard, can it?

With a cast of endearingly imperfect characters and set against the beauty of a gorgeous New England summer, Enchanted August brilliantly updates the beloved classic The Enchanted April in a novel of love and reawakening that is simply irresistible.

Visit Brenda Bowen's website.

Writers Read: Brenda Bowen.

My Book, The Movie: Enchanted August.

The Page 69 Test: Enchanted August.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight of the best, worst, and weirdest dad/child pairs in sci-fi & fantasy

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 the B & N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog Somers tagged eight good, bad, and weird dad/child pairs in science fiction and fantasy. One bad pairs:

Claudia, Louis, and Lestat (Interview with the Vampire, by Anne Rice)

Claudia, the orphaned 5-year old girl turned into a vampire by Lestat after Louis feeds on her, is not properly the pair’s daughter, though they essentially adopt her, raising her in a hideous mirror-image of a happy nuclear family. Of course, what they raise her to be is a murderous, angry, unhappy vampire who comes to hate and despise both her fathers for denying her the ability to physically grow up, dooming her to be a woman in a young child’s body. So awful is the parenting of these two supernatural beings, Claudia continues to attempt to assault and kill them long after she is dead, making whatever your surly teenage daughter is going through look like a walk in the park.

Read about another entry on the list.

Interview With The Vampire is among Jonathan Hatfull's ten best vampire novels, Ryan Menezes' top five movies that improved the book, Will Hill's top 10 vampires in fiction and popular culture, and Lynda Resnick's six best books.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Laura Dave reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Laura Dave, author of Eight Hundred Grapes: A Novel.

Her entry begins:

The Rocks, by Peter Nichols

Romantic, heartbreaking and generously told, Peter Nichols The Rocks is a love story that spans six decades, affecting not just the torn-apart lovers, but also their families and those they care about. And if the drama isn’t enough to get you digging in, the novel is set against the backdrop of a seaside community. I keep stealing time to read this novel, which reminds me of another of my favorite love stories...[read on]

About Eight Hundred Grapes, from the publisher:

A breakout novel from an author who “positively shines with wisdom and intelligence” (Jonathan Tropper, This Is Where I leave You). “Laura Dave writes with humor and insight about relationships in all their complexity, whether she's describing siblings or fiancés or a couple long-married. Eight Hundred Grapes is a captivating story about the power of family, the limitations of love, and what becomes of a life’s work” (J. Courtney Sullivan, Maine).

There are secrets you share, and secrets you hide…

Growing up on her family’s Sonoma vineyard, Georgia Ford learned some important secrets. The secret number of grapes it takes to make a bottle of wine: eight hundred. The secret ingredient in her mother’s lasagna: chocolate. The secret behind ending a fight: hold hands.

But just a week before her wedding, thirty-year-old Georgia discovers her beloved fiancé has been keeping a secret so explosive, it will change their lives forever.

Georgia does what she’s always done: she returns to the family vineyard, expecting the comfort of her long-married parents, and her brothers, and everything familiar. But it turns out her fiancé is not the only one who’s been keeping secrets…

Bestselling author Laura Dave has been dubbed “a wry observer of modern love” (USA TODAY), a “decadent storyteller” (Marie Claire), and “compulsively readable” (Woman’s Day). Set in the lush backdrop of Sonoma’s wine country, Eight Hundred Grapes is a heartbreaking, funny, and deeply evocative novel about love, marriage, family, wine, and the treacherous terrain in which they all intersect.

Visit Laura Dave's website.

Writers Read: Laura Dave.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: K. David Jackson's "Machado de Assis"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Machado de Assis: A Literary Life by K. David Jackson.

About the book, from the publisher:

Novelist, poet, playwright, and short story writer Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839–1908) is widely regarded as Brazil’s greatest writer, although his work is still too little read outside his native country. In this first comprehensive English-language examination of Machado since Helen Caldwell’s seminal 1970 study, K. David Jackson reveals Machado de Assis as an important world author, one of the inventors of literary modernism whose writings profoundly influenced some of the most celebrated authors of the twentieth century, including José Saramago, Carlos Fuentes, and Donald Barthelme. Jackson introduces a hitherto unknown Machado de Assis to readers, illuminating the remarkable life, work, and legacy of the genius whom Susan Sontag called “the greatest writer ever produced in Latin America” and whom Allen Ginsberg hailed as “another Kafka.” Philip Roth has said of him that “like Beckett, he is ironic about suffering.” And Harold Bloom has remarked of Machado that “he’s funny as hell.”

Learn more about Machado de Assis at the Yale University Press website.

Writers Read: K. David Jackson.

The Page 99 Test: Machado de Assis: A Literary Life.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top heroes in refugee fiction

Jon Walter is the author of Close To the Wind and My Name's Not Friday. One of his top ten heroes of refugee fiction, as shared at the Guardian:

Arthur Dent from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Arthur Dent is the least heroic of our heroes. Escaping Earth just before its destruction, he travels through the universe still wearing his dressing gown and wanting nothing more than to go home and have a cup of tea. He’s the refugee as eternal voyager, taking the reader with him on a journey to strange places so that we can glimpse the absurdity of our own world. See also, Odysseus, Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz and Gulliver’s Travels.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy appears on Becky Ferreira's list of the six most memorable robots in literature, Charlie Jane Anders's lists of the ten most unbelievable alien races in science fiction, eleven books that every aspiring television writer should read and ten satirical novels that could teach you to survive the future, Saci Lloyd's top ten list of political books for teenagers, Rob Reid's list of 6 favorite books, Esther Inglis-Arkell's list of ten of the best bars in science fiction, Don Calame's top ten list of funny teen boy books, and John Mullan's list of ten of the best instances of invisibility in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue

Brandon R. Brown's "Planck," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Planck: Driven by Vision, Broken by War by Brandon R. Brown.

The entry begins:

You might not think a biography of a staid Prussian physicist would be a candidate for a movie, but the story of Max Planck, full of amazing characters and extreme events, has all the elements one might want for historical drama. The narrative has definitely been called “cinematic.”

For Max Planck himself, I’d vote for the stony-faced intensity of Ben Kingsley. Kingsley has the gravitas and fiery eyes for the role. He even has the sharp facial angles for the brave and tragic professor from Berlin. For Planck’s younger friend Albert Einstein, I would try an offbeat angle and cast Mark...[read on]

Visit Brandon Brown's website.

My Book, The Movie: Planck.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Conevery Bolton Valencius reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Conevery Bolton Valencius, author of The Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes.

Her entry begins:

I read in the course of my research as an American historian, I read for my own pleasure and my own soul, and I read as part of a family. Now that we are through with a spring semester made grueling in Boston by seven feet of snow and nearly a month of missed school, I am having a great time with all three.

In my research, I’m interested in the history and technology of fracking. Right now I’m learning from the vivid writing and observation in Gregory Zuckerman’s The Frackers and the historical insights of Brian Frehner’s Finding Oil: The Nature of...[read on]

About The Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes, from the publisher:

From December 1811 to February 1812, massive earthquakes shook the middle Mississippi Valley, collapsing homes, snapping large trees midtrunk, and briefly but dramatically reversing the flow of the continent’s mightiest river. For decades, people puzzled over the causes of the quakes, but by the time the nation began to recover from the Civil War, the New Madrid earthquakes had been essentially forgotten.

In The Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes, Conevery Bolton Valencius remembers this major environmental disaster, demonstrating how events that have been long forgotten, even denied and ridiculed as tall tales, were in fact enormously important at the time of their occurrence, and continue to affect us today. Valencius weaves together scientific and historical evidence to demonstrate the vast role the New Madrid earthquakes played in the United States in the early nineteenth century, shaping the settlement patterns of early western Cherokees and other Indians, heightening the credibility of Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa for their Indian League in the War of 1812, giving force to frontier religious revival, and spreading scientific inquiry. Moving into the present, Valencius explores the intertwined reasons—environmental, scientific, social, and economic—why something as consequential as major earthquakes can be lost from public knowledge, offering a cautionary tale in a world struggling to respond to global climate change amid widespread willful denial.

Engagingly written and ambitiously researched—both in the scientific literature and the writings of the time—The Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes will be an important resource in environmental history, geology, and seismology, as well as history of science and medicine and early American and Native American history.

Writers Read: Conevery Bolton Valencius.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Jax Miller's "Freedom's Child"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Freedom's Child: A Novel by Jax Miller.

About the book, from the publisher:

Freedom Oliver has plenty of secrets. She lives in a small Oregon town and keeps mostly to herself. Her few friends and neighbors know she works at the local biker bar; they know she gets arrested for public drunkenness almost every night; they know she’s brash, funny, and fearless.

What they don’t know is that Freedom Oliver is a fake name. They don’t know that she was arrested for killing her husband, a cop, twenty years ago. They don’t know she put her two kids up for adoption. They don’t know that she’s now in witness protection, regretting ever making a deal with the Feds, and missing her children with a heartache so strong it makes her ill.

Then, she learns that her daughter has gone missing, possibly kidnapped. Determined to find out what happened, Freedom slips free of her handlers, gets on a motorcycle, and heads for Kentucky, where her daughter was raised. As she ventures out on her own, no longer protected by the government, her troubled past comes roaring back at her: her husband’s vengeful, sadistic family; her brief, terrifying stint in prison; and the family she chose to adopt her kids who are keeping dangerous secrets.

Written with a ferocious wit and a breakneck pace, Freedom’s Child is a thrilling, emotional portrait of a woman who risks everything to make amends for a past that haunts her still.

Visit Jax Miller's website.

My Book, The Movie: Freedom's Child.

The Page 69 Test: Freedom's Child.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Rebecca M. Herzig's "Plucked"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Plucked: A History of Hair Removal by Rebecca M. Herzig.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the clamshell razors and homemade lye depilatories used in colonial America to the diode lasers and prescription pharmaceuticals available today, Americans have used a staggering array of tools to remove hair deemed unsightly, unnatural, or excessive. This is true especially for women and girls; conservative estimates indicate that 99% of American women have tried hair removal, and at least 85% regularly remove hair from their faces, armpits, legs, and bikini lines. How and when does hair become a problem—what makes some growth “excessive”? Who or what separates the necessary from the superfluous?

In Plucked, historian Rebecca Herzig addresses these questions about hair removal. She shows how, over time, dominant American beliefs about visible hair changed: where once elective hair removal was considered a “mutilation” practiced primarily by “savage” men, by the turn of the twentieth century, hair-free faces and limbs were expected for women. Visible hair growth—particularly on young, white women—came to be perceived as a sign of political extremism, sexual deviance, or mental illness. By the turn of the twenty-first century, more and more Americans were waxing, threading, shaving, or lasering themselves smooth. Herzig’s extraordinary account also reveals some of the collateral damages of the intensifying pursuit of hair-free skin. Moving beyond the experiences of particular patients or clients, Herzig describes the surprising histories of race, science, industry, and medicine behind today's hair-removing tools. Plucked is an unsettling, gripping, and original tale of the lengths to which Americans will go to remove hair.

Learn more about Plucked at the New York University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Plucked.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five “superhero” characters found outside of sci-fi novels

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 characters that are basically superheroes, despite appearing in books that aren’t in any way speculative fiction," including:

Marathon Man, by William Goldman

Superpower: Endurance

Goldman’s classic 1970s thriller not only inspired one of Laurence Olivier’s most memorable film performances (the phrase “Is it safe?” is still a monumental buzzkill), it introduced the titular character, real name Tom Levy, into the cultural landscape. Through no fault of his own, Levy is caught up in a world of espionage and assassination, and makes it through only because of his superpower: superhuman endurance. He survives horrific torture and manages to triumph in the end only because he can keep going when his enemies have to slow down to catch their breath. If you’ve only seen the movie, the book is not only more tense and exciting than you might think, it’s also much less sweaty than you might expect (although still plenty sweaty).

Read about another entry on the list.

Marathon Man is on Paul McEuen's six favorite books list and Howard Gordon's list of the five best thriller plots with terror themes.

--Marshal Zeringue

Brenda Bowen's "Enchanted August," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Enchanted August by Brenda Bowen.

Her entry begins:

Enchanted August as a movie? Oh yes, please. It would be such a welcome respite from those gigantic, testosterone-driver blockbusters summer rains upon us. Don’t we all long for a sunny romance in the movies, especially if we’re not in the middle of such a romance in real life? I certainly do. And if the lighting is pretty and the moonlight is bewitching and the actors are clearly having a good time on screen, Enchanted August (the movie) could do decent box-office and have a long shelf-life as streaming video. Studio heads: are you listening?

The director comes first. Mike Newell did a grand job on the movie version of the book that inspired my own book (Enchanted April – see it!), and he is known for not only getting brilliant performances from his actors, but for making the set a happy place for cast and crew, and I believe in that.

If Mike Newell is busy, how about...[read on]

Visit Brenda Bowen's website.

Writers Read: Brenda Bowen.

My Book, The Movie: Enchanted August.

--Marshal Zeringue