What is Clea Simon reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Clea Simon, author of Bad Boy Beat.

Her entry begins:

This is such a great topic because, of course, writers are first and foremost readers first. The problem comes when I’m asked to name just one book. Like a lot of us (I suspect), I’ve always got a couple of books going.

I recently finished Caroline Leavitt’s new Days of Wonder and I’ve been dipping into Philippa Gregory’s Normal Women, a massive history of the half of humanity that’s been left out of 800 years of English history.

But the books I keep coming back to these days are...[read on]

About Bad Boy Beat, from the publisher:

When a rookie reporter for the Boston Standard is convinced a series of street crimes are connected, she is willing to go the extra mile to chase down the big story. The newest mystery by Clea Simon is a page-turning story featuring a female protagonist and set in Boston's underground.

Boston Standard journalist Emily - Em - Kelton is desperate for a big story. As a new reporter Em covers the police beat, which has her responding to every crime that comes across the newsroom scanner. Despite the drudgery and the largely nocturnal hours, it's a beat that suits her - especially with her affinity for the low-level criminals she regularly interacts with and what she considers a healthy scepticism for the rules.

But she's sick of filing short news briefs about random street murders that barely merit a byline, and when she sets out to cover yet another shooting of a low-level dealer, she begins to wonder if these crimes are somehow connected.

With not much to go on but her instincts, Em sets out to uncover the truth behind these sordid crimes. But the more she investigates and uncovers a pattern, the more she digs herself into a hole from which she might not come out of alive...

Clea Simon draws on her career as a journalist and delivers a fast-paced and intricate plot and intriguing characters with the city of Boston coming to life. This mystery will appeal to fans who love a strong female protagonist, unexpected twists and turns and a mind-blowing ending!

Visit Clea Simon's website.

The Page 69 Test: To Conjure a Killer.

The Page 69 Test: Bad Boy Beat.

Writers Read: Clea Simon.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Nolan Chase's "A Lonesome Place for Dying"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: A Lonesome Place for Dying: A Novel by Nolan Chase.

About the book, from the publisher:

Perfect for fans of C. J. Box and William Kent Krueger, a sleepy town is rocked to its core when a dead body is found in this debut novel.

In the quiet seaside town of Blaine, Washington, the most serious police work involves dealing with stray coyotes or ticketing speeders along the I-5. But on Ethan Brand's first day as the town's chief of police, he finds a threat on his porch, along with a gruesome souvenir, a bloody animal heart.

There are plenty of people who are upset about Ethan replacing the last Chief, but when a body shows up on the railroad tracks, Ethan has to turn his focus from the threats against him to the first homicide case the town has seen in years. Blaine's population is only five thousand, but eight million vehicles pass through its railroad crossing every year. It’s the perfect site for drug smuggling, human trafficking, larceny, and murder.

Ethan begins to realize that the small town has many more secrets than its quiet surface suggests. With no one to trust, his job already on the line, and the threats getting bolder and more reckless, Ethan Brand must find the killers and bring them to justice before anyone else winds up dead.

Visit Nolan Chase's website.

Writers Read: Nolan Chase.

The Page 69 Test: A Lonesome Place for Dying.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Grant Bollmer & Katherine Guinness's "The Influencer Factory"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Influencer Factory: A Marxist Theory of Corporate Personhood on YouTube by Grant Bollmer and Katherine Guinness.

About the book, from the publisher:

Influencers are more than social media personalities who attract attention for brands, argue Grant Bollmer and Katherine Guinness. They are figures of a new transformation in capitalism, in which the logic of the self is indistinguishable from the logic of the corporation. Influencers are emblematic of what Bollmer and Guinness call the "Corpocene": a moment in capitalism in which individuals achieve the status of living, breathing, talking corporations. Behind the veneer of leisure and indulgence, most influencers are laboring daily, usually for pittance wages, to manufacture a commodity called "the self"—a raw material for brands to use—with the dream of becoming corporations in human form by owning and investing in the products they sell. Refuting the theory that digital labor and economies are immaterial, Bollmer and Guinness search influencer content for evidence of the material infrastructure of capitalism. Each chapter looks to what literally appears in the backgrounds of videos and images: the houses, cars, warehouses, and spaces of the market that point back to the manufacturing and circulation of consumer goods. Demonstrating the material reality of producing the self as a commodity, The Influencer Factory makes a crucial contribution to our understanding of contemporary economic life.

Visit Grant Bollmer's website and Katherine Guinness's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Influencer Factory.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine top novels about women living alone

Amy Key is a poet and essayist based in London. She is the author of two collections of poetry, Luxe and Isn’t Forever.

Her new book, Arrangements in Blue: Notes on Loving and Living Alone, was inspired by her viral Granta essay, “A Bleed of Blue.”

At Electric Lit Key tagged nine "novels about women living alone." Her "list—by accident rather than intent—is formed of books where in solitude women contemplate their relationship to other women (in the main), rather than to men." One novel on the list:

Take What You Need by Idra Novey

Jean is an artist who doesn’t need anyone to confer the status of artist upon her. Her home, where she lives alone (other than an occasional, tacitly invited houseguest), is her studio and gallery. She longs to connect to her estranged stepdaughter Leah, and the novel is told in their alternating voices. Jean welds scrap metal together to create towers she embellishes with words and symbols and trinkets. The towers are imposing totems of Jean’s vitality, of all she’s learned from her experiences and from her beloved artists Louise Bourgeoise and Agnes Martin. The novel is uncomfortable and confronting at times, but it is invigorating too. An artist can create themselves at any stage of life and be aflame with artistic intent until the very end.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Julie Mae Cohen

From my Q&A with Julie Mae Cohen, author of Bad Men: A Novel:

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

My novel, Bad Men, is about a female serial killer who kills bad men who hurt women—rapists, murderers, abusers. The title is slightly misleading and ironic in that the novel isn’t about the bad men; it’s about the protagonist, Saffy, who is by all normal moral standards quite a bad woman, as she has murdered a lot of people. The novel is meant to be funny and highly satirical, and one of the fun parts about writing the story was the inversion of ‘bad’ and ‘good’—with almost all of the ‘bad’ men going unpunished and even abetted by normal society, and almost all of the ‘good’ characters, including Saffy and her love interest, Jon, doing lots of things that are extremely morally questionable. Suffice it to say that the serial killers in this book, while not necessarily cuddly, would be fun to have a drink with.

Of course, there’s a serious intent behind this story, which is to highlight the epidemic of male violence against women. So in that aspect...[read on]

Visit Julie Mae Cohen's website.

The Page 69 Test: Bad Men.

Q&A with Julie Mae Cohen.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Joshua O. Reno's "Home Signs"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Home Signs: An Ethnography of Life beyond and beside Language by Joshua O. Reno.

About the book, from the publisher:

An intimate account of an anthropologist’s relationship with his non-verbal son and how it has shaped and transformed his understanding of closeness and communication.

Home Signs grew out of the anthropologist Joshua Reno’s experience of caring for and trying to communicate with his teenage son, Charlie, who cannot speak. To manage interactions with others, Charlie uses what are known as “home signs,” gestures developed to meet his need for expression, ranging from the wiggle of a finger to a subtle sideways glance. Though he is nonverbal, he is far from silent: in fact, he is in constant communication with others.

In this intimate reflection on language, disability, and togetherness, the author invites us into his and Charlie’s shared world. Combining portraits of family life and interviews with other caregivers, Reno upends several assumptions, especially the idea that people who seem not to be able to speak for themselves need others to speak on their behalf. With its broad exploration of nonverbal communication in both human and nonhuman contexts, Home Signs challenges us to think harder about what it means to lead a “normal” life and to connect with another person.

Learn more about Home Signs at the University of Chicago Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Waste Away.

The Page 99 Test: Military Waste.

The Page 99 Test: Home Signs.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six novels whose crimes & mysteries grow out of place and manners

Peter Nichols is the author of the bestselling novel The Rocks, the nonfiction bestsellers A Voyage for Madmen, Evolution's Captain, and three other books of fiction, memoir, and non-fiction. His novel Voyage to the North Star was nominated for the Dublin IMPAC literary award. His journalism has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He has an MFA degree from Antioch University Los Angeles, and has taught creative writing there and at Georgetown University, Bowdoin College, and New York University in Paris.

Nichols's newest novel is Granite Harbor.

At CrimeReads he tagged six (plus) "novels whose crimes and mysteries grow out of place and manners," including:

Tana French, In the Woods

Tana French’s stories are set in Ireland. Like [Jane] Harper, she has a series of novels, The Dublin Murder Squad, beginning with her debut, In The Woods, that feature returning detective characters, with revolving points of view, and stand-alone novels with new characters. Like Harper, her stories are slow-burners: an inciting incident draws the reader in, and the long, deliberate development of her plots is sustained by the convincing details of place, characters, and the quality of French’s writing.

Read about another entry on the list.

In the Woods is among Amy Tintera's five top thrillers featuring amnesiacs, Emily Schultz's eight top novels about memory loss, Gabino Iglesias's fifty best mysteries of all time, Kate Robards's five thrillers unfolding in wooded seclusion, Paula Hawkins's five novels with criminal acts at their heart, Alafair Burke's top ten books about amnesia, Caz Frear's five top open-ended novels, Gabriel Bergmoser's top ten horror novels, Kate White's favorite thrillers with a main character who can’t remember what matters most, Kathleen Donohoe's ten top titles about missing persons, Jessica Knoll's ten top thrillers, Tara Sonin's twenty-five unhappy books for Valentine’s Day, Krysten Ritter's six favorite mysteries, Megan Reynolds's top ten books you must read if you loved Gone Girl, Emma Straub's ten top books that mimic the feeling of a summer vacation, the Barnes & Noble Review's five top books from Ireland's newer voices, and Judy Berman's ten fantastic novels with disappointing endings.

The Page 69 Test: In the Woods.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Julie Mae Cohen's "Bad Men"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Bad Men: A Novel by Julie Mae Cohen.

About the book, from the publisher:

Meet the most irresistible serial killer of the year . . . Award-winning author Julie Mae Cohen’s twisty feminist thriller is lethal and wickedly fun.

Saffy Huntley-Oliver is an intelligent and glamorous socialite; she also happens to be a proficient serial killer. For the past fifteen years, she’s hunted down and dispatched rapists, murderers, domestic abusers—bad men all. But leading a double life has left her lonely—dating’s tough when your boyfriend might turn out to be your next victim. Saffy thinks she’s finally found a truly good man in Jonathan Desrosiers, a true-crime podcaster who’s amassed legions of die-hard fans for cracking cold cases and bringing justice to victims.

When a decapitated body shows up on Jon’s doorstep the morning after his wife leaves him, he becomes the chief suspect for a murder he insists he didn’t commit. Saffy’s crush becomes an obsession as she orchestrates a meet-cute and volunteers to help Jon clear his name, using every trick up her sleeve to find the real killer and get her man—no matter the cost.

Darkly comic and addictively readable, Bad Men is a wild romp of a feminist thriller that asks if even a serial killer can have a happily ever after.

Visit Julie Mae Cohen's website.

The Page 69 Test: Bad Men.

--Marshal Zeringue

Fifteen top books for fans of "Fallout"

At B&N Reads Isabelle McConville tagged fifteen books for fans of the post-apocalyptic TV-drama Fallout, including:

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

When a pandemic ravages the world and pushes civilization to the edge, National Book Award-winning author Emily St. John Mandel paints a hopeful portrait of humanity that Fallout fans may appreciate: through it all, life persists.

Read about another entry on the list.

Station Eleven is among Joanna Quinn's six best books set in & around the theatrical world, Carolyn Quimby's 38 best dystopian novels, Tara Sonin's seven books for fans of Margaret Atwood's The Testaments, Maggie Stiefvater's five fantasy books about artists & the magic of creativity, Mark Skinner's five top literary dystopias, Claudia Gray's five essential books about plagues and pandemics, K Chess's five top fictional books inside of real books, Rebecca Kauffman's ten top musical novels, Nathan Englander’s ten favorite books, M.L. Rio’s five top novels inspired by Shakespeare, Anne Corlett's five top books with different takes on the apocalypse, Christopher Priest’s five top sci-fi books that make use of music, and Anne Charnock's five favorite books with fictitious works of art.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Núria Silleras-Fernández's "The Politics of Emotion"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Politics of Emotion: Love, Grief, and Madness in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia by Núria Silleras-Fernández.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Politics of Emotion explores the intersection of powerful emotional states―love, melancholy, grief, and madness―with gender and political power on the Iberian Peninsula from the Middle Ages to the early modern period. Using an array of sources―literary texts, medical treatises, and archival documents―Nuria Silleras-Fernandez focuses on three royal women: Isabel of Portugal (1428–1496), queen-consort of Castile; Isabel of Aragon (1470–1498), queen-consort of Portugal; and Juana of Castile (1479–1555), queen of Castile and its empire. Each of these women was perceived by their contemporaries as having gone "mad" as a result of excessive grief, and all three were related to Isabel the Catholic (1451–1504), queen of Castile and a woman lauded in her time as a paragon of reason.

Through the lives and experiences of these royal women and the observations, judgments, and machinations of their families, entourages, and circles of writers, chronicles, courtiers, moralists, and physicians in their orbits, Silleras-Fernandez addresses critical questions about how royal women in Iberia were expected to behave, the affective standards to which they were held, and how perceptions about their emotional states influenced the way they were able to exercise power. More broadly, The Politics of Emotion details how the court cultures in medieval and early modern Castile and Portugal contributed to the development of new notions of emotional excess and mental illness.

Learn more about The Politics of Emotion at the Cornell University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: The Politics of Emotion.

--Marshal Zeringue

Peter Colt's "The Judge," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Judge (An Andy Roark mystery, 5) by Peter Colt.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the winter of 1986 Boston based Private Eye, Andy Roark is hired by Judge Ambrose Messer because he is being blackmailed by people who want him to throw case in which industrial waste has poisoned a community. The Judge is paying for a romantic indiscretion and hires Roark to handle it. Roark’s case brings him into contact with Messer’s beautiful and loyal clerk, Angela Estrella, Detective Sergeant Billy Devaney, and Criminal Defense Attorney Johny O’Day.

The Andy Roark that I envision is a guy with life experience, and a weathered look. He’s tough, he’s got skills, but he’s not built like something out of the MCU. I think that Scoot McNairy (Narcos Mexico, Speak No Evil, Killing Them Softly) embodies all of that. McNairy has delivered solid performances and brings an honesty to his roles that allow them to transcend the tropes of their respective genres.

Ambrose Messer, who is the pivotal character in the book, is in his sixties, well to do, and a man with a secret. I would want an actor who can portray the turmoil created by trying to do the noble thing and also realize that his indiscretion can potentially harm the people who are counting on him. I see...[read on]

Visit Peter Colt's website.

My Book, The Movie: Back Bay Blues.

The Page 69 Test: Back Bay Blues.

Q&A with Peter Colt.

The Page 69 Test: Death at Fort Devens.

My Book, The Movie: Death at Fort Devens.

Writers Read: Peter Colt (June 2022).

My Book, The Movie: The Ambassador.

The Page 69 Test: The Ambassador.

The Page 69 Test: The Judge.

My Book, The Movie: The Judge.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Nolan Chase reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Nolan Chase, author of A Lonesome Place for Dying: A Novel.

His entry begins:

Post Captain by Patrick O’Brian

The Aubrey-Maturin novels great fun, and O’Brian evokes the period with knowledge, wit, and a violence which is both startling and entirely appropriate to the setting. They’re not easy reads, relying on a knowledge of nautical and medical jargon, Latin and Greek, geography and natural history and classical music. But they’re worth the effort for the camaraderie of the characters and the author’s...[read on]

About A Lonesome Place for Dying, from the publisher:

Perfect for fans of C. J. Box and William Kent Krueger, a sleepy town is rocked to its core when a dead body is found in this debut novel.

In the quiet seaside town of Blaine, Washington, the most serious police work involves dealing with stray coyotes or ticketing speeders along the I-5. But on Ethan Brand's first day as the town's chief of police, he finds a threat on his porch, along with a gruesome souvenir, a bloody animal heart.

There are plenty of people who are upset about Ethan replacing the last Chief, but when a body shows up on the railroad tracks, Ethan has to turn his focus from the threats against him to the first homicide case the town has seen in years. Blaine's population is only five thousand, but eight million vehicles pass through its railroad crossing every year. It’s the perfect site for drug smuggling, human trafficking, larceny, and murder.

Ethan begins to realize that the small town has many more secrets than its quiet surface suggests. With no one to trust, his job already on the line, and the threats getting bolder and more reckless, Ethan Brand must find the killers and bring them to justice before anyone else winds up dead.

Visit Nolan Chase's website.

Writers Read: Nolan Chase.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Sten Rynning's "NATO"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: NATO: From Cold War to Ukraine, a History of the World’s Most Powerful Alliance by Sten Rynning.

About the book, from the publisher:

A wide-ranging new history of NATO, from its origins to the present day—published for the alliance’s seventy-fifth anniversary

For seven decades, NATO’s stated aim has been the achievement of world peace—but playing great power politics always involves conflict. Russia’s war on Ukraine and on Europe’s security order puts the alliance under threat, but also demonstrates why transatlantic cooperation is so necessary. But how did NATO get to where it is today, and what does its future hold?

In this incisive new account, Sten Rynning traces the full history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation from its origins to the present. Across its seventy-five years, NATO has navigated the twists and turns of Cold War diplomacy and nuclear deterrence, and has grown its membership. The alliance has become a guarantor of peace, but Rynning explores how its complex inner workings alongside Russian and Chinese opposition are now shaping its direction.

At a time of strategic competition and geopolitical upheaval, Rynning offers us a clear-sighted account of the alliance’s intriguing history—and asks what its ambitions might be for the future.

Learn more about NATO at the Yale University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: NATO in Afghanistan.

The Page 99 Test: NATO: From Cold War to Ukraine, a History of the World’s Most Powerful Alliance.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven novels about women chasing love abroad

Juli Min is a Korean-American writer based in Shanghai. She holds an MFA in fiction from Warren Wilson, and she studied Russian and comparative literature at Harvard University.

Her new novel is Shanghailanders.

At Electric Lit Min tagged seven books:

[all are] narratives about women pursuing love in foreign countries (and, in one case, foreign universes). All these novels follow characters experiencing literal and emotional displacement. They are met with the challenge of redefining their relationships, and themselves, on new grounds.

One title on the list:

The Expatriates by Janice Y. K. Lee

The Expatriates rotates perspectives between several women expats living in Hong Kong who are forced to redefine what love means in their changing lives. One is grieving from the disappearance of her youngest child; one is closing the last chapter on an unhappy marriage; one is suffering from guilt and shame from a set of disastrous actions. Hong Kong, with its particular brand of wealth and privilege and cosmopolitanism, provides both the structure and the seductions for the dramatic events of the novel. Ultimately, the book lands on an exploration of what motherhood means across cultures, and what it teaches us about how to handle life’s slings and arrows: with grace and forgiveness.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Peter Colt's "The Judge"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Judge (An Andy Roark mystery, 5) by Peter Colt.

About the book, from the publisher:

When a Boston judge is being blackmailed, Andy Roark must find out who is behind the threat before lives get ruined in this thrilling mystery featuring the Vietnam veteran turned private investigator.

Boston, 1985. With the late December cold comes a new job for ex-military operative turned private investigator Andy Roark. Boston judge Ambrose Messer is being blackmailed, and he needs Roark's help to stop the culprit.

Messer is judging the bench trial of a chemical company accused of knowingly dumping chemical waste in an unsafe manner, causing birth defects and cancer. The evidence against them is overwhelming, but the message from the blackmailer is clear: If you don't want the world to know your secret, the chemical company wins. Messer doesn't want to let a threat corrupt his judgement . . . but then again, he could lose everything if his secret comes out!

Judging his client to be a man with morals, Roark plunges into action, determined to find the blackmailer before it's too late. But the disturbing, unexpected revelations he uncovers make him a target of some very dangerous people, who soon seem determined not only to wreck the life of his client, but to destroy Roark's too . . .

Written by a US Army veteran and New England police officer, this new instalment in the Andy Roark mystery series will appeal to fans who love a hard-boiled protagonist with a complex backstory and a plot filled with unexpected twists and action-packed scenes.

Visit Peter Colt's website.

My Book, The Movie: Back Bay Blues.

The Page 69 Test: Back Bay Blues.

Q&A with Peter Colt.

The Page 69 Test: Death at Fort Devens.

My Book, The Movie: Death at Fort Devens.

Writers Read: Peter Colt (June 2022).

My Book, The Movie: The Ambassador.

The Page 69 Test: The Ambassador.

The Page 69 Test: The Judge.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Lisa A. Kirschenbaum's "Soviet Adventures in the Land of the Capitalists"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Soviet Adventures in the Land of the Capitalists: Ilf and Petrov's American Road Trip by Lisa A. Kirschenbaum.

About the book, from the publisher:

In 1935, two Soviet satirists, Ilia Ilf and Evgeny Petrov, undertook a 10,000 mile American road trip from New York to Hollywood and back accompanied only by their guide and chauffeur, a gregarious Russian Jewish immigrant and his American-born, Russian-speaking wife. They immortalized their journey in a popular travelogue that condemned American inequality and racism even as it marvelled at American modernity and efficiency. Lisa Kirschenbaum reconstructs the epic journey of the two Soviet funnymen and their encounters with a vast cast of characters, ranging from famous authors, artists, poets and filmmakers to unemployed hitchhikers and revolutionaries. Using the authors' notes, US and Russian archives, and even FBI files, she reveals the role of ordinary individuals in shaping foreign relations as Ilf, Petrov and the immigrants, communists, and fellow travelers who served as their hosts, guides, and translators became creative actors in cultural exchange between the two countries.

Learn more about Soviet Adventures in the Land of the Capitalists at the Cambridge University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Soviet Adventures in the Land of the Capitalists.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five books that are also love-letters to American cities

At The Amazon Book Review editor Erin Kodicek tagged five "great reads that also serve as love letters to the US cities in which they take place," including:

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

New Orleans

One of the greatest comic novels of all time, A Confederacy of Dunces finds its delightful antihero, Ignatius J. Reilly, the “Don Quixote of the French Quarter,” wandering the streets of New Orleans and pontificating on the profound, but mostly the inane. And looking for a job. A fittingly offbeat, and occasionally melancholy, love letter to the Big Easy.

Read about another entry on the list.

Ignatius Reilly is on Jeff Somers's list of five of the greatest, dumbest characters in literary history, Ginni Chen's top six list of fictional mustaches, 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 Peter Mann's six titles with charming, workshy anti-heroes, Nicole Holofcener’s ten desert island books, Chrissie Gruebel's top eleven books that will make you glad you're single, Christian Rudder's six favorite books, 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

Q&A with Ishi Robinson

From my Q&A with Ishi Robinson, author of Sweetness in the Skin: A Novel:

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

There’s a lot of meaning behind the title: I’m telling the story of a young girl who is searching for family, identity and belonging; one who’s using her talent for baking to reach what seems to be an unreachable goal. As she tries to figure out who she is, she’s bucking up against the expectations her family have set for her, which are a direct result of the colorism and legacy of colonialism that exist in Jamaica still. So we’re talking about being comfortable in your own skin, about sweet foods, about which skin color is beautiful and more deserving than another – for me, that all culminates in Sweetness in the Skin.  

What's in a name?  

My two characters with the most unusual names are Pumkin and Boots...[read on]

Visit Ishi Robinson's website.

Q&A with Ishi Robinson.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: David Alff's "The Northeast Corridor"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Northeast Corridor: The Trains, the People, the History, the Region by David Alff.

About the book, from the publisher:

All aboard for the first comprehensive history of the hard-working and wildly influential Northeast Corridor.

Traversed by thousands of trains and millions of riders, the Northeast Corridor might be America’s most famous railway, but its influence goes far beyond the right-of-way. David Alff welcomes readers aboard to see how nineteenth-century train tracks did more than connect Boston to Washington, DC. They transformed hundreds of miles of Atlantic shoreline into a political capital, a global financial hub, and home to fifty million people. The Northeast Corridor reveals how freight trains, commuter rail, and Amtrak influenced—and in turn were shaped by—centuries of American industrial expansion, metropolitan growth, downtown decline, and revitalization.

Paying as much attention to Aberdeen, Trenton, New Rochelle, and Providence as to New York City, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, Alff provides narrative thrills for history buffs, train enthusiasts, and adventurers alike. What’s more, he offers a glimpse into the future of the corridor. New infrastructural plans—supported by President Joe Biden, famously Amtrak’s biggest fan—envision ever-faster trains zipping along technologically advanced rails. Yet those tracks will literally sit atop a history that links the life of Frederick Douglass, who fled to freedom by boarding a train in Baltimore, to the Frederick Douglass Tunnel, which is expected to be the newest link in the corridor by 2032.

Trains have long made the places that make America, and they still do.

Learn more about The Northeast Corridor at the University of Chicago Press website.

The Page 99 Test: The Northeast Corridor.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five of the best books about eating

Sophie Ratcliffe is professor of literature and creative criticism at the University of Oxford and a fellow and tutor at Lady Margaret Hall. In addition to her scholarly books, including On Sympathy, she has published commentary pieces and book reviews for the Guardian, the New Statesman, and the Times Literary Supplement, among other outlets, and has served a judge for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction and the Wellcome Book Prize.

Ratcliffe's forthcoming book is Loss, A Love Story: Imagined Histories and Brief Encounters.

At the Guardian she tagged five of the best books about eating, including:

The Debt to Pleasure by John Lanchester

“This is not a conventional cookbook,” writes Lanchester’s hero Tarquin Winot in this thriller-masquerading-as-foodie memoir. Over a variety of “seasonal” chapters, Winot weighs in about his various relatives and friends, “the many extant batter, waffle and pancake dishes” from “Swedish krumkaker” to “Polish naleśniki” and his convictions in relation to fish (“lemon sole is a very underrated fish, much closer in quality to its more highly regarded Dover cousin than wisdom normally permits”). Lanchester crafts Winot-as-author to be infuriating – he’s pompous, tricksy and pedantic – but a fancy prose style soon turns out to be the most innocent of his vices. A dark, funny and exquisitely crafted book.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jeff Zentner's "Colton Gentry's Third Act," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Colton Gentry's Third Act: A Novel by Jeff Zentner.

The entry begins:

Colton Gentry’s Third Act is the story of Colton Gentry, a country musician approaching middle age and for whom some things are going very well. He has a hit song climbing the country music charts and he’s married to Maisy Martin, one of country’s hottest acts who’s preparing to make the jump to pop music. But other things are not so good in his life. He recently lost his best friend in a mass shooting at a country music festival. His wife has been in the tabloids with rumors of infidelity. And he’s always sought comfort from heartache in the bottle. So one night, he takes the stage, drunk, before an arena ground, and offers up his opinion on guns. And it goes over...poorly. His career and marriage implode and he moves back home to his small town in Kentucky, where he begins his third act in life, part of which involves taking on a new vocation and reconnecting with a high school flame.

I love book to movie adaptations and the Hulu adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Normal People was one of the inspirations for Colton Gentry’s Third Act. So, if I were able to pick a director to adapt it, I’d want Lennie Abrahamson and Hettie MacDonald, who did that adaptation. I’d also be a big fan of Ray McKinnon, who did Rectify, which was another one of the inspirations for Colton.

As for who to play the leads? I’d love to see Rachel Brosnahan playing older Luann (the story has two timelines⏤high school and present day). I think she’d bring steel, wit, and intelligence to the part. I could see her giving orders in the kitchen (she runs a restaurant). As for older Colton? I’d love to see...[read on]

Visit Jeff Zentner's website.

Writers Read: Jeff Zentner (March 2016).

My Book, The Movie: The Serpent King.

The Page 69 Test: The Serpent King.

The Page 69 Test: Goodbye Days.

My Book, The Movie: Colton Gentry's Third Act.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Clea Simon's "Bad Boy Beat"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Bad Boy Beat by Clea Simon.

About the book, from the publisher:

When a rookie reporter for the Boston Standard is convinced a series of street crimes are connected, she is willing to go the extra mile to chase down the big story. The newest mystery by Clea Simon is a page-turning story featuring a female protagonist and set in Boston's underground.

Boston Standard journalist Emily - Em - Kelton is desperate for a big story. As a new reporter Em covers the police beat, which has her responding to every crime that comes across the newsroom scanner. Despite the drudgery and the largely nocturnal hours, it's a beat that suits her - especially with her affinity for the low-level criminals she regularly interacts with and what she considers a healthy scepticism for the rules.

But she's sick of filing short news briefs about random street murders that barely merit a byline, and when she sets out to cover yet another shooting of a low-level dealer, she begins to wonder if these crimes are somehow connected.

With not much to go on but her instincts, Em sets out to uncover the truth behind these sordid crimes. But the more she investigates and uncovers a pattern, the more she digs herself into a hole from which she might not come out of alive . . .

Clea Simon draws on her career as a journalist and delivers a fast-paced and intricate plot and intriguing characters with the city of Boston coming to life. This mystery will appeal to fans who love a strong female protagonist, unexpected twists and turns and a mind-blowing ending!

Visit Clea Simon's website.

The Page 69 Test: To Conjure a Killer.

The Page 69 Test: Bad Boy Beat.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Jane Webster's "Materializing the Middle Passage"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Materializing the Middle Passage: A Historical Archaeology of British Slave Shipping, 1680-1807 by Jane Webster.

About the book, from the publisher:

An estimated 2.7 million Africans made an enforced crossing of the Atlantic on British slave ships between c.1680 and 1807--a journey that has become known as the 'Middle Passage'. This book focuses on the slave ship itself. The slave ship is the largest artefact of the Transatlantic slave trade, but because so few examples of wrecked slaving vessels have been located at sea, it is rarely studied by archaeologists. Materializing the Middle Passage: A Historical Archaeology of British Slave Shipping,1680-1807 argues that there are other ways for archaeologists to materialize the slave ship. It employs a pioneering interdisciplinary methodology combining primary documentary sources, maritime and terrestrial archaeology, paintings, maritime and ethnographic museum collections, and many other sources to 'rebuild' British slaving vessels and to identify changes to them over time.

The book then goes on to consider the reception of the slave ship and its trade goods in coastal West Africa, and details the range, and uses, of the many African resources (including ivory, gold, and live animals) entering Britain on returning slave ships. The third section of the book focuses on the Middle Passage experiences of both captives and crews and argues that greater attention needs to be paid to the coping mechanisms through which Africans survived, yet also challenged, their captive passage.

Finally, Jane Webster asks why the African Middle Passage experience remains so elusive, even after decades of scholarship dedicated to uncovering it. She considers when, how, and why the crossing was remembered by 'saltwater' captives in the Caribbean and North America. The marriage of words and things attempted in this richly illustrated book is underpinned throughout by a theoretical perspective combining creolization and postcolonial theory, and by a central focus on the materiality of the slave ship and its regimes.

Learn more about Materializing the Middle Passage at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Materializing the Middle Passage.

--Marshal Zeringue

The five best novels about hauntings

Jen Williams lives in London with her partner and their small ridiculous cat. A fan of pirates and dark folklore from an early age, these days she writes horror-tinged crime thrillers with strong female leads as well as character-driven fantasy novels with plenty of banter and magic. In 2015 she was nominated for Best Newcomer in the British Fantasy Awards.

[My Book, The Movie: Games for Dead Girls]

Williams's new novel is The Hungry Dark.

At CrimeReads she tagged her "five favourite books about Hauntings (which are really books about Bad Places, and Terrible People)." One title on the list:

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

It is probably illegal to have a list about hauntings without including the grandmother of the modern horror novel. Shirley Jackson was the undisputed queen of the unsettling undercurrent, and by the time Eleanor arrives at Hill House with all her mental baggage, we already know that something is terribly wrong, and that the house is going to draw it out of her like a poison. Except it won’t be a healing experience. The Haunting of Hill House also contains probably the greatest opening lines in a novel ever:

‘No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more.’

Please read that and tell me you are not terrified of Hill House. I still wake up in a sweat sometimes with the words ‘Hill House, not sane’ bouncing around my head.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Haunting of Hill House also appears on Sara Flannery Murphy's five top thriller and horror books with “House” in the title, Lisa Unger's list of five great horror novels that explore the darkest corners of our minds, Dell Villa's list of seven of the best haunted houses in literature, Kat Rosenfield's list of seven scary October reads, Michael Marshall Smith's top ten list of horror books, Carlos Ruiz Zafón's top ten list of 20th-century gothic novels,  and Brad Leithauser's five best list of ghost tales.

--Marshal Zeringue