Seven intense books about messy relationships

Anu Kandikuppa has worked as an engineer, a software developer, and an economics consultant, most recently as Principal. The social structures of Indian families among which she grew up inform the stories in her first book, The Confines. Kandikuppa’s fiction and essays have appeared in Colorado Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, New England Review, The Cincinnati Review, Story, and other journals. In 2024, Kandikuppa received a Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant for Creative Individuals. Her work has thrice received special mention in the Pushcart Prize anthologies and has also been recognized by fellowships and residencies by the Virginia Center for Creative Arts and The Ragdale Foundation. Kandikuppa holds a Ph.D. in Finance and an MFA in Writing from Warren Wilson College. She lives outside Boston.

At Electric Lit Kandikuppa tagged seven intense books featuring messy relationships. One entry on the list:

Getting Lost by Annie Ernaux, translated by Alison L. Strayer

Getting Lost is autobiographical, comprising diary entries from the late 1980s, written during the author’s affair with a Soviet diplomat—the journal becomes her “way of enduring the wait” until they see each other again. The affair is doomed from the start: the author is single, while her lover is married, and she has no control over the direction of their relationship. The diary entries obsessively chronicle their nights together, her frantic calculations about their next meeting, and her fear of losing him—their repetitiousness a clue to the author’s emotional decline.

Read about another title on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Bryan Gruley's "Bitterfrost," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Bryan Gruley's Bitterfrost (A Bitterfrost Thriller).

The enry begins:

Wouldn’t it be great if Bitterfrost were made into a movie? I’d be famous and rich and everyone would want to buy my books. Alas, I might also be dead because of how long it typically takes to get a book made into a movie.

But, please, bring it on!

Bitterfrost tells the tale of Jimmy Baker, a former minor-league hockey player who quit the game on the spot after he almost killed an opponent during a fight. Thirteen years later, he is the Zamboni driver for an elite amateur hockey team in the little northern Michigan town of Bitterfrost—and the prime suspect in a brutal double murder.

I don’t imagine actors as my fictional characters when I’m writing. But when someone asks who I might have play so-and-so, ideas jump to mind. I actually think Bitterfrost would work as well if not better as an episodic television series along the lines of The Night Of, Fargo, Slow Horses, or Mare of Easttown. I love those shows, which have influenced my writing, particularly my efforts to make every written scene as cinematic as possible. So, for Bitterfrost …

The actors:

Timothy Olyphant as Jimmy Baker. My wife, Pam, and I both fell in love with Olyphant’s portrayal of Raylan Givens in the TV series Justified. He can play tough and he can play vulnerable, exactly what’s needed for Jimmy’s flawed but likeable character. (Pam wondered if maybe Olyphant is “too pretty” to play Jimmy Baker; I told her viewers like pretty.)

Aimee Ffion-Edwards as Jimmy’s defense attorney, Devyn Payne. I’ve admired...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Bryan Gruley's website.

The Page 69 Test: Starvation Lake.

The Page 69 Test: The Hanging Tree.

The Page 69 Test: Bleak Harbor.

The Page 69 Test: Purgatory Bay.

The Page 69 Test: Bitterfrost.

Q&A with Bryan Gruley.

My Book, The Movie: Bitterfrost.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Mary G. Thompson's "One Level Down"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: One Level Down by Mary G. Thompson.

About the book, from the publisher:

Trapped in a child’s body, a resourceful woman risks death by deletion from a simulated world. With her debut novella for adults, Mary G. Thompson (Wuftoom) has crafted a taut, ultimately hopeful story that deftly explores identity and autonomy.

Ella is the oldest five-year-old in the universe. For fifty-eight years, the founder of a simulated colony-planet has forced her to pretend to be his daughter. Her “Daddy” has absolute power over all elements of reality, which keeps the colonists in line even when their needs are not met. But his failing experiments and despotic need for absolute control are increasingly dangerous.

Ella’s very life depends on her performance as a child. She has watched Daddy delete her stepmother and the loved ones of anyone who helps her.

But every sixty years, a Technician comes from the world above. Ella has been watching and working and biding her time. Because if she cannot get help, her only solution is a desperate measure that could lead to consequences for the entire universe.

Visit Mary G. Thompson's website.

The Page 69 Test: Amy Chelsea Stacie Dee.

The Page 69 Test: One Level Down.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five iconic preppy reads

Alyson Gerber is the bestselling author of The Liars Society, a middle grade mystery set at a New England prep school. The Liars Society is a USA Today bestseller, Barnes & Noble Bookseller Favorite, B&N Most Anticipated Book of the Month, and B&N Best Book of the Year (So Far), as well as an American Booksellers Association’s Best Books for Young Readers, Roku's Best Book of the Month, Bookshop's Favorite New Books. It's also a nominee for the Texas Bluebonnet Award and Indiana's Young Hoosier Award. The Liars Society #2: A Risky Game was published in April 2025.

At The Nerd Daily Gerber tagged five iconic preppy reads, including:

We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

E. Lockhart’s smart, twisty writing will pull you in and you’ll never want to leave Beechwood Island, just off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard. Luckily, We Were Liars, which centers around the Sinclair family and the summers spent on their private island, also has an incredible prequel—Family of Liars. And the TV show is coming soon. This clever, cunning story will make you even more curious about what these prep school kids are like the rest of the year.

Read about another entry on the list.

We Were Liars is among Sarah Porter's five top books featuring psychological hauntings, S. Jae-Jones's five top YA thrillers with a supernatural twist, Jeff Somers's six novels in which nothing is as it seems, Avery Hastings's five favorite books featuring unreliable narrators, Darren Croucher's five favorite YA novels featuring liars, Michael Waters's six must-read YA books for Mr. Robot fans, Lindsey Lewis Smithson's top seven sob-inducing books that deserve to be made into movies, Ruth Ware's top ten psychological thrillers, and Meredith Moore's five favorite YA thrillers.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Alison Brysk's "Abortion Rights Backlash"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Abortion Rights Backlash: The Struggle for Democracy in Europe and the Americas by Alison Brysk.

About the book, from the publisher:

Reproductive rights are fundamental for the life, freedom, health, and safety of over half the world's population. Yet reproductive freedoms are under attack worldwide, even where women have achieved political rights and workplace participation. According to the World Health Organization, about a third of pregnancies end in abortion--but about half of abortions are unsafe, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths each year. Why are abortion rights backsliding, even in developed democracies? Why do some modern societies progress toward reproductive freedoms, while others regress or stagnate? And what can the struggle for reproductive rights teach us about broader movements for human rights and gender justice?

In Abortion Rights Backlash, Alison Brysk shows how threats to reproductive rights stem from a gendered political struggle over declining democracy, national identity, and widening inequality due to globalization. Formerly dominant groups facing social and economic crisis promote reactionary nationalist ideologies built around patriarchy, race, and religion as they seek to control population politics. Brysk demonstrates that this is a global phenomenon, comparing the diverging experiences of the politics of abortion in Ireland, Poland, Argentina, Brazil, and the United States (California vs. Texas). Timely and pathbreaking in its global perspective and feminist analysis, Abortion Rights Backlash transforms our understanding of human rights, the future of democracy, and the struggle for gender justice worldwide.

Visit Alison Brysk's website.

The Page 99 Test: Speaking Rights to Power.

The Page 99 Test: Abortion Rights Backlash.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with KC Jones

From my Q&A with KC Jones, author of White Line Fever:

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

White line fever is a colloquialism for highway hypnosis, which is the primary tool with which this malevolent stretch of road confuses, frightens, and ultimately kills people who drive it. The main character, Livia, has also been going through adulthood in her own form of highway hypnosis—until an unexpected turn shocks her out of it, and she suddenly realizes she doesn't recognize her life. Not her husband, her house, even herself. Her journey is not just surviving a trip down a hellish highway, it's reclaiming control instead of just going where the road takes her. To me, though, "highway hypnosis" just didn't quite ring as a title, whereas "white line fever" has a nice punchy cadence, like broken road stripes flashing past, and it's a bit strange, a bit unsettling. I came across the term while researching the psychology behind highway hypnosis, and...[read on]

Visit KC Jones's website.

The Page 69 Test: White Line Fever.

Q&A with KC Jones.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Rosanne Limoncelli's "The Four Queens of Crime"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Four Queens of Crime by Rosanne Limoncelli.

About the book, from the publisher:

In this debut mystery, DCI Lilian Wyles, the first woman detective chief inspector in the CID, is determined to find a killer with the help of the four queens of crime, Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, and Margery Allingham, perfect for fans of Elly Griffiths and Claudia Gray.

1938, London. The four queens of British crime fiction, Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, and Margery Allingham, are hosting a gala to raise money for the Women’s Voluntary Service to help Britain prepare for war. Baronet Sir Henry Heathcote has loaned Hursley House for the event, and all the elites of London society are attending. The gala is a brilliant success, despite a few hiccups, but the next morning, Sir Henry is found dead in the library.

Detective Chief Inspectors Lilian Wyles and Richard Davidson from Scotland Yard are quickly summoned and discover a cluster of potential suspects among the guests, including an upset fiancée, a politically ambitious son, a reserved but protective brother, an irate son-in-law, a rebellious teenage daughter, and the deputy home secretary.

Quietly recruiting the four queens of crime, DCI Wyles must sort through the messy aftermath of Sir Henry’s death to solve the mystery and identify the killer.

Visit Rosanne Limoncelli's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Four Queens of Crime.

The Page 69 Test: The Four Queens of Crime.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top books featuring reporter sleuths who dig too deep

Olesya Lyuzna is a historical fiction writer with a passion for queer noir.

Her debut novel Glitter in the Dark was selected for a 2020 Pitch Wars mentorship by Layne Fargo and Halley Sutton.

She lives in Toronto and spends her free time hosting murder mystery parties and scouring the archives for unsolved crimes.

At CrimeReads Lyuzna tagged five works featuring favorite reporter sleuths, including:

Lady in the Lake by Laura Lippman

Maddie Schwartz has spent the last two decades playing by the rules as a wife, a mother, a well-behaved woman who fit neatly into the expectations of 1960s Baltimore. But now, she wants something more. Something bigger. She wants a story.

It starts with a missing girl who vanished without a trace. When Maddie’s intuition leads her to the child’s body, she sees her opening. The discovery earns her a foothold at The Star, and she reinvents herself as a reporter, chasing leads, pushing past locked doors, refusing to take no for an answer.

But one story isn’t enough. Soon, she’s digging into the disappearance of Cleo Sherwood, a young Black woman whose murder barely made the papers. Maddie isn’t just looking for the truth—she’s trying to find her place in the world, rewriting the roles assigned to her by the life she left behind.

Lippman’s kaleidoscopic noir unfolds like a newspaper—a shifting patchwork of voices, from Cleo’s grieving friends and family to the men who crossed paths with her, to Cleo herself, watching from beyond the grave as Maddie exposes secrets best left buried.

This is a book about power. Who gets to ask the questions? Who deserves the answers? Whose story is Maddie really telling—and at what cost?

Lippman builds a deeply researched, atmospheric portrait of 1960s Baltimore, steeped in its racial and gender politics, layered with ambition, guilt, and the uneasy truth that journalism doesn’t just report on the world—it changes it. Sometimes for the better. Sometimes not.

Read about another entry on the list.

Lady in the Lake is among Andrea Park's 36 best mystery thriller books of all time, Alice Blanchard's five top mysteries set in still waters, Brittany Bunzey's ten books that take you inside their characters’ heads, Kimberly Belle's six novels that show lakes are a perfect setting for a murder mystery, and CrimeReads' ten best crime novels of 2019.

The Page 69 Test: Lady in the Lake.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Andrew S. Berish's "Hating Jazz"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Hating Jazz: A History of Its Disparagement, Mockery, and Other Forms of Abuse by Andrew S. Berish.

About the book, from the publisher:

A deep dive into the meaning behind the hatred of jazz.

A rock guitarist plays four notes in front of one thousand people, while a jazz guitarist plays one thousand notes in front of four people. You might laugh or groan at this jazz joke, but what is it about jazz that makes people want to disparage it in the first place?

Andrew S. Berish’s Hating Jazz listens to the voices who have denounced, disparaged, and mocked the music. By focusing on the rejection of the music, Berish says, we see more holistically jazz’s complicated place in American cultural life. Jazz is a display of Black creativity and genius, an art form that is deeply embedded in African American life. Though the explicit racial tenor of jazz jokes has become muted over time, making fun of jazz, either in a lighthearted or aggressive way, is also an engagement with the place of Blackness in America. An individual’s taste in music may seem personal, but Berish’s analysis of jazz hatred demonstrates that musical preferences and trends are a social phenomenon. Criticism of jazz has become inextricable from the ways we understand race in America, past and present. In addition to this form of criticism, Berish also considers jazz hate as a form of taste discrimination and as a conflict over genre boundaries within different jazz cultures.

Both enlightening and original, Hating Jazz shows that our response to music can be a social act, unique to our historical moment and cultural context—we react to music in certain ways because of who we are, where we are, and when we are.

Visit Andrew S. Berish's website.

The Page 99 Test: Hating Jazz.

--Marshal Zeringue

Douglas Corleone's "Falls to Pieces," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Falls to Pieces by Douglas Corleone.

From the entry:

It’s hard to believe it’s been a decade since I wrote my last piece for “My Book, the Movie.” Of all the prompts on all the sites I’ve written for, this is my favorite. Why? Because we authors only write novels in the hopes that they’ll be adapted into screenplays, cast with megastars, and made into award-winning films. I’m kidding, of course. But the allure of Hollywood is undeniable. My storytelling skills come chiefly from movies and, let’s face it, not all of our friends read. (Even when we dedicate the book to them!)

Getting down to casting Falls to Pieces: For my main characters, Kati and Zoe, I needed a mother-daughter team, yet my mind went straight to sisters Vera and Taissa Farmiga (ca. 2014 in keeping with the character’s ages).

Kati’s lawyer Noah Walker was always...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Douglas Corleone's website.

The Page 69 Test: Good as Gone.

My Book, The Movie: Payoff.

The Page 69 Test: Gone Cold.

My Book, The Movie: Gone Cold.

Writers Read: Douglas Corleone (August 2015).

The Page 69 Test: Falls to Pieces.

Writers Read: Douglas Corleone.

My Book, The Movie: Falls to Pieces.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: KC Jones's "White Line Fever"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: White Line Fever by KC Jones.

About the book, from the publisher:

From Bram Stoker Award finalist KC Jones comes White Line Fever, a harrowing thrill ride about friendship, trauma, and learning how to take the wheel of your own life.

THEY'LL BREAK MORE THAN SPEED LIMITS ON THIS GIRLS' TRIP FROM HELL.

At a passing glance, County Road 951 is an entirely unremarkable stretch of blacktop, a two-lane scar across the Cascade foothills of Central Oregon.

But the road is known by another name, coined by locals who’ve had to clean up after all those scenic detours went horribly wrong: The Devil’s Driveway.

When Livia and her long-time friends take the Driveway as a shortcut to a much-needed weekend getaway, what begins as a morning joyride quickly becomes anything but. Soon, they’re driving for their lives, pursued by a horror beyond anything they ever imagined.

The Devil’s Driveway might be only 15 miles long, but with danger at every turn, it will take the four women to the very limits of their friendships and their sanity.

And there’s no telling what else lies in wait just beyond the bend.

Visit KC Jones's website.

The Page 69 Test: White Line Fever.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven books about women and food

Hannah Selinger is a James Beard Award-nominated lifestyle writer and mother of two based in Boxford, MA. Her print and digital work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, Travel + Leisure, Food & Wine, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and elsewhere. Her 2021 Bon Appétit essay, "In My Childhood Kitchen, I Learned Both Fear and Love," is anthologized in the 2022 Best American Food Writing collection.

Selinger's new book is Cellar Rat: My Life in the Restaurant Underbelly.

At Electric Lit she tagged seven titles about women and food, including:

Same As It Ever Was by Claire Lombardo

New York Times-bestselling author Claire Lombardo opens her fresh novel, Same As It Ever Was, in a grocery store; there, protagonist Julia Ames runs into an old friend, Helen Russo, while shopping for the ingredients to make crab cakes for her husband’s birthday. Russo, an older woman who had been, for a time, a motherly figure to Ames, comes alive in later chapters, and through acts of cooking. Food, in fact, punctuates the book’s main events. Crab cakes: celebratory for a 60th birthday. Later, an apricot galette will set an affair in motion. Both Ames and Russo have entrenched domestic roles, and their work in the kitchen is at once ancillary and important. They are making something, feeding someone, memorializing something. For these characters, who exist in a world where limits are drawn and bound by the more powerful people around them, there is a certain freedom here, in a place where the rules are theirs and theirs alone.

Read about another book on Selinger's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Amanda M. Greenwell's "The Child Gaze"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Child Gaze: Narrating Resistance in American Literature by Amanda M. Greenwell.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Child Gaze: Narrating Resistance in American Literature theorizes the child gaze as a narrative strategy for social critique in twentieth- and twenty-first-century US literature for children and adults. Through a range of texts, including James Baldwin’s Little Man, Little Man, Mildred D. Taylor’s Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Gene Luen Yang’s American Born Chinese, and more, Amanda M. Greenwell focuses on children and their literal acts of looking. Detailing how these acts of looking direct the reader, she posits that the sightlines of children serve as signals to renegotiate hegemonic ideologies of race, ethnicity, creed, class, and gender. In her analysis, Greenwell shows how acts of looking constitute a flexible and effective narrative strategy, capable of operating across multiple points of view, focalizations, audiences, and forms.

Weaving together scholarship on the US child, visual culture studies, narrative theory, and other critical traditions, The Child Gaze explores the ways in which child acts of looking compel readers to look at and with a child character, whose gaze encourages critiques of privileged visions of national identity. Chapters investigate how child acts of looking allow texts to redraw circles of inclusion around the locus of the child gaze and mobilize childhood as a site of resistance. The powerful child gaze can thus disrupt dominant scripts of power, widening the lens through which belonging in the US can be understood.

Learn more about The Child Gaze at the University Press of Mississippi website.

The Page 99 Test: The Child Gaze.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Lauren Stienstra's "The Beauty of the End"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Beauty of the End: A Novel by Lauren Stienstra.

About the book, from the publisher:

In this provocative work of speculative fiction, two sisters navigate the complex moral terrain of reproductive ethics, individual freedoms, and society’s duty to a future facing imminent extinction.

Charlie Tannehill and her twin sister, Maggie, are just eight years old when an unfortunate scientific discovery upends their world―and the world order. The revelation? Extinction, encoded in every creature’s DNA. The expiration date for humans? Only four generations away.

A decade later, unsure of what tomorrow holds, Charlie and Maggie enroll as counselors in a government-run human-husbandry program. By offering cash rewards for reproduction, they hope to forestall humanity’s decline and discover a genetic mutation that might defeat it. While Charlie struggles with the ethical implications of the work, Maggie makes unspeakable sacrifices to improve her odds of success―but such unchecked ambition could come at a greater cost than even she realizes.

Torn between her own morality, her love for her sister, and the pressures of a vanishing civilization, Charlie must search deep within to decide what she’s willing to sacrifice―for herself, for Maggie, and for society―to salvage hope for the whole of humankind.

Visit Lauren Stienstra's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Beauty of the End.

The Page 69 Test: The Beauty of the End.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Douglas Corleone reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Douglas Corleone, author of Falls to Pieces.

His entry begins:

Over the past few months, I’ve been digging back into the horror classics. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson is one of my favorite books of all time. The themes of duality and the repression of desires have always fascinated me. I’ve also read a couple modern takes on the story.

Mary Reilly by Valerie Martin tells the tale from the point of view of a housemaid, who thinks the world of her master Henry Jekyll but fears his new assistant, Edward Hyde. Both men have taken more than a passing interest in her. The 1990 novel was made into the 1996 movie with Julia Roberts and...[read on]

About Falls to Pieces, from the publisher:

A mother and daughter in hiding are threatened by more than secrets and lies in a twisting novel of paranoia, revenge, and psychological suspense by bestselling author Douglas Corleone.

For two years, Kati Dawes and her teenage daughter, Zoe, have lived off the grid in Hawaii, hiding from a past Kati must forget as if her life depends on it. New names. Anonymous online presence. So far, safe. Until Kati’s fiancé, attorney Eddie Akana, disappears along a popular hiking trail in a Maui national park. Now all eyes are on Kati. Exposure can make a woman with so many secrets very paranoid.

Eddie’s law partner, Noah Walker, is doing everything he can to protect his new client from the press that’s hovering like a vulture and the authorities whose suspicions about Kati―and the disappearance―are rising. Then suddenly, Zoe goes missing as well. Kati will risk anything to find her. But the worst is still to come. Because Kati’s not the only one with secrets. And buried among them is a twist she never saw coming.

Learn more about the book and author at Douglas Corleone's website.

The Page 69 Test: Good as Gone.

My Book, The Movie: Payoff.

The Page 69 Test: Gone Cold.

My Book, The Movie: Gone Cold.

Writers Read: Douglas Corleone (August 2015).

The Page 69 Test: Falls to Pieces.

Writers Read: Douglas Corleone.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top books set in the wilderness

In addition to being a writer, Alice Henderson is a dedicated wildlife researcher, geographic information systems specialist, and bioacoustician. She documents wildlife on specialized recording equipment, checks remote cameras, creates maps, and undertakes wildlife surveys to determine what species are present on preserves, while ensuring there are no signs of poaching. She’s surveyed for the presence of grizzlies, wolves, wolverines, jaguars, endangered bats, and more.

Henderson's new novel, The Vanishing Kind, is the fourth book in the Alex Carter series.

At The Strand Magazine the author tagged ten stirring reads set in the wilderness. One title on the list:

The Dark Place by Aaron Elkins

When a man is bizarrely murdered with an ancient weapon not used for the last ten thousand years, forensic anthropologist Gideon Oliver, as well as a forest ranger and FBI agent, are called in to investigate in the rainforest of Washington State’s Olympic Peninsula. Amidst tales of mysterious Sasquatch sightings, the trio must venture into the wilderness of the rainforest to uncover the truth. Vivid descriptions of the backcountry bring this setting to life, and after you read this book, camping in this area will never feel the same again.

Read about another entry on the list.

My Book, The Movie: Aaron Elkins's "Gideon Oliver" novels.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Bryan Gruley

From my Q&A with Bryan Gruley, author of Bitterfrost (A Bitterfrost Thriller):

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

Bitterfrost struck me as an arresting and descriptive word that would grab browsers’ attention. It’s the title of the book and the name of the fictional northern lower Michigan town where the story is set. I don’t recall precisely how I came up with it. I know I did some trolling through Finnish words (the river that runs through the middle of town is called Jako, which is Finnish for division). Somehow, I stumbled on Bitterfrost and immediately liked it, for the feeling of coldness it evokes, and the sharp three-syllable rhythm. I barely knew then what the book would be about, but I assumed it would be dark because my books are always dark, and Bitterfrost also evokes dark. The story is also about the town itself and how it divides against or for the protagonist, Zamboni driver and accused murderer Jimmy Baker, so Bitterfrost seemed...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Bryan Gruley's website.

The Page 69 Test: Starvation Lake.

The Page 69 Test: The Hanging Tree.

The Page 69 Test: Bleak Harbor.

The Page 69 Test: Purgatory Bay.

The Page 69 Test: Bitterfrost.

Q&A with Bryan Gruley.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Su Chang's "The Immortal Woman"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Su Chang's The Immortal Woman.

About the book, from the publisher:

A sweeping generational story of heartbreak, resilience, and yearning, revealing an insider’s view of the fractured lives of Chinese immigrants and those they leave behind.

Lemei, once a student Red Guard leader in 1960s Shanghai and a journalist at a state newspaper, was involved in a brutal act of violence during the Tiananmen Square protests and lost all hope for her country. Her daughter, Lin, is a student at an American university on a mission to become a true Westerner. She tirelessly erases her birth identity, abandons her Chinese suitor, and pursues a white lover, all the while haunted by the scars of her upbringing. Following China’s meteoric rise, Lemei is slowly dragged into a nationalistic perspective that stuns Lin. Their final confrontation results in tragic consequences, but ultimately, offers hope for a better future. By turns wry and lyrical, The Immortal Woman reminds us to hold tight to our humanity at any cost.

Learn more about the book and author at Su Chang's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Immortal Woman.

The Page 69 Test: The Immortal Woman.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Katie Rose Hejtmanek's "The Cult of CrossFit"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Cult of CrossFit: Christianity and the American Exercise Phenomenon by Katie Rose Hejtmanek.

About the book, from the publisher:

Reveals the Christian foundations of CrossFit

CrossFit in the United States has become increasingly popular, around which a fascinating culture has developed which shapes everyday life for the people devoted to it. CrossFit claims to be many things: a business, a brand, a tremendously difficult fitness regimen, a community, a way to gain salvation, and a method to survive the apocalypse. In The Cult of CrossFit, Katie Rose Hejtmanek examines how this exercise program is shaped by American Christian values and practices, connecting American religious ideologies to secular institutions in contemporary American culture.

Drawing upon years of immersing herself in CrossFit gyms in the United States and across six continents, this book illustrates how US CrossFit operates using distinctly American codes, ranging from its intensity and patriarchal militarism to its emphasis on (white) salvation and the adoration of the hero and vigilante. Despite presenting itself as a secular space, Hejtmanek argues that CrossFit is both heavily influenced by and deeply intertwined with American Christian values. She makes the case that the Christianity that shapes CrossFit is the Christianity that shapes much of America, usually in ways we do not even notice. Offering a new cross-cultural perspective for understanding a popular workout, The Cult of CrossFit provides a window into a particularly American rendition of a Christian plotline, lived out one workout at a time.

Visit Katie Rose Hejtmanek's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Cult of CrossFit.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight books about the complicated history of U.S. citizenship

Katie Moench is a librarian, runner, and lover of baked goods. A school librarian in the Upper Midwest, Moench lives with her husband and dog and spends her free time drinking coffee, trying new recipes, and adding to her TBR list.

At Book Riot she tagged eight books that show "the idea of citizenship was not something once defined in the early years of the U.S. as a country, but it is rather a nebulous concept that has been defined and redefined over and over since the nation’s beginnings." One title on the list:

Citizens of a Stolen Land: A Ho-Chunk History of the Nineteenth-Century United States by Stephen Kantrowitz

Kantrowitz looks at how the Reconstruction-era discussions of national birthright citizenship failed to consider or provide legal protections to the Indigenous people of the United States. Working from the perspective of a Wisconsin-based tribe of Ho-Chunk peoples, Kantrowitz offers a little-referenced perspective on the emergence of birthright citizenship.

Read about another title on the list.

The Page 99 Test: Citizens of a Stolen Land.

--Marshal Zeringue

Lauren Stienstra's "The Beauty of the End," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Beauty of the End: A Novel by Lauren Stienstra.

The entry begins:

Though it’s set against the backdrop of a species-ending catastrophe, at its core, The Beauty of the End is about the tension and contradiction between opposites: life and death, right and wrong, betrayal and justice, personal choice and collective duty—one cannot exist without the other.

The theme duality is also set up in the dynamic of the main characters, a set of genetically-identical-but-entirely-different twin sisters: Charlie and Maggie. Off the page, Charlie and Maggie are born to a Marshallese family and later adopted out to an unsuspecting white family in Pennsylvania via fraudulent proceedings. (This is based on a real life tragedy.) For the role, it would be important to me to cast someone with Pacific Island heritage, and Keisha Castle-Hughes quickly comes to mind. Not only does she have Māori heritage, she also has experience playing a twin—a major feature of her Oscar-winning film Whale Rider.

There is of course a bit of a love triangle in the story, with a male character named Nolan. One of Nolan’s most salient features is...[read on]

Visit Lauren Stienstra's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Beauty of the End.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Hayley Chewins's "I Am the Swarm"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: I Am the Swarm by Hayley Chewins.

About the book, from the publisher:

A propulsive YA novel in verse that blends the contemporary magic of Jandy Nelson with the simmering feminist rage of Laurie Halse Anderson’s Shout

As far back as anyone can remember, the women of the Strand family have been magical.

Their gifts manifest when they each turn fifteen, always in different ways. But Nell Strand knows that her family's magic is a curse. Her mother’s age changes every day; she's often too young to be the mother Nell needs. Her older sister bleeds music and will do anything to release the songs inside her. Nell sees the way magic rips her family apart again and again.

When Nell’s own magic arrives in the form of ladybugs alighting on the keys of her beloved piano, the first thing she feels is joy. The ladybugs are a piece of her, a harmless and delicate manifestation of her creativity. But soon enough, the rest come. Thick-shelled glossy beetles that creep along her collarbone when her piano teacher stares at her. Soft gray moths that appear and die alongside a rush of disappointment. Worst of all are the wasps. It doesn’t matter how deep she buries her rage, the wasps always come. Nell will have to decide just how much of herself she’s willing to lock away to stop them—or if she can find the strength to feel, no matter the consequences.

An intense, emotional read simmering with rage and magic, I Am the Swarm is a captivating YA novel in verse that beautifully speaks to the complicated nature of growing up as a girl.

Visit Hayley Chewins's website.

The Page 69 Test: I Am the Swarm.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top YA reads in stunning locations

Rachel Ekstrom Courage is the author of the Young Adult thriller Nothing Bad Happens Here and Murder By Cheesecake: A Golden Girls Cozy Mystery.

She lives in Pittsburgh, PA with her husband (the children’s book author Nick Courage) and their dog, Chaely.

At The Nerd Daily Courage tagged six "young adult thrillers and romances [that] will transport you to beautiful and unique locales from the comfort of your favorite reading nook." One title on the list:

It’s not necessarily a vacation destination, but who wouldn’t want to visit a posh New England boarding school to soak up some dark academia vibes? In A Darker Mischief by Derek Milman, initiation rituals can be downright dangerous as a disadvantaged queer teen works to fit in… and stay alive. Come for the stained glass and manicured lawns of the lush campus setting, stay for the thrilling mystery.

Read about another title on the list.

The Page 69 Test: A Darker Mischief.

My Book, The Movie: A Darker Mischief.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Arie W. Kruglanski and Sophia Moskalenko's "The Psychology of the Extreme"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Psychology of the Extreme by Arie W. Kruglanski and Sophia Moskalenko.

About the book, from the publisher:

What does extremism mean? How does it show up in our daily lives? What drives people to extreme behaviors, and how can we learn to live and thrive in the age of overdrive?

The Psychology of the Extreme provides an accessible introduction to extremism as a force that can affect all aspects of culture and people’s choices in everyday settings. It explores the underlying psychology behind what makes people act in extreme ways, whether this is in destructive ways (such as gambling, terrorism and political violence) or in constructive ways (such as successful creators and scientists). The book features an array of case studies that show how extremism can be both pro-social and anti-social and includes interventions to reduce extremism or redirect them toward more positive and constructive tendencies. Offering a new understanding of the individual psychology of extremism, the book will appeal to all those interested in how extremism plays out in people’s and cultures' day-to-day lives.

Learn more about The Psychology of the Extreme at the publisher's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Psychology of the Extreme.

--Marshal Zeringue