Pg. 69: Nicole Galland's "Boy"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Boy: A Novel by Nicole Galland.

About the book, from the publisher:

From critically acclaimed author Nicole Galland comes a vibrant and thought-provoking historical tale of love, political intrigue, and gender-swapping set in the theatre world of Elizabethan London.

Alexander “Sander” Cooke is the most celebrated “boy player” in the Chamberlain’s Men, William Shakespeare’s theatre company. Indeed, Sander’s androgynous beauty and deft portrayal of female roles have made him the toast of London, and his companionship is sought by noblewomen and -men alike. And yet, now at the height of his fame, he teeters on the cusp of adulthood, his future uncertain. Often, he wishes he could stop time and remain a boy forever.

Joan Buckler, Sander’s best friend, also has a dream. Though unschooled, she is whip-smart and fascinated by the snippets of natural philosophy to which she’s been exposed. And while she senses that Sander’s admiration for her is more than mere friendship, Joan’s true passion is knowledge, something that is nearly impossible for her to attain. As a woman, she has no place in the intellectual salons and cultural community of the day; only in disguise can she learn to her heart’s content.

Joan’s covert intellectual endeavors, coupled with Sander’s theatrical triumphs, attract the attention of none other than Francis Bacon: natural philosopher and trusted adviser to Queen Elizabeth. It is through their connection with Bacon—one of the greatest minds of their time—that their lives will be changed forever as they become embroiled in an intricate game of political intrigue that threatens their very survival.

Brimming with heart, curiosity, and rich historical detail, Boy offers an intimate glimpse of the moral complexities of a singular artistic era, and the roles we all choose to play on the world’s stage.

Visit Nicole Galland's website, Facebook page, and Threads page.

Coffee with a Canine: Nicole Galland & Leuco.

The Page 69 Test: Stepdog.

My Book, The Movie: Stepdog.

Writers Read: Nicole Galland (August 2015).

My Book, The Movie: Boy.

The Page 69 Test: Boy.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight top novels set in strange, unsettling towns

Jon Bassoff is the author of ten novels, several of which have been translated into French and German. His mountain-gothic novel, Corrosion, was nominated for the Grand Prix de Litterature Policiere, France’s biggest crime fiction award, and his debut novel, The Disassembled Man, was recently adapted for the big screen. For his day job, Bassoff teaches high school English in Longmont, Colorado.

His latest novel is The Memory Ward.

At Electric Lit Bassoff tagged eight "novels set in strange unsettling towns that will haunt you." One title on the list:

Pines by Blake Crouch

The town of Wayward Pines initially is presented as a picturesque small town nestled in the mountains of Idaho. However, it soon becomes evident that something ominous is happening. The people are friendly but refuse to talk about their pasts. Cameras and microphones are hidden everywhere. And, most importantly, the town is surrounded by a literal electrified fence. There is no doubt that something terrifying is happening behind the shiny veneers, but none of the townspeople seem to know what those dark secrets are. The novel has the menacing feel of 1984 meets The Stepford Wives.

Read about another novel on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Charles Hecker's "Zero Sum"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Zero Sum: The Arc of International Business in Russia by Charles Hecker.

About the book, from the publisher:

When the hammer and sickle came down in late 1991, Russia's feverish new market opened for business. From banking to breweries, sectors emerged out of nowhere, in a country that had never had a functioning economy. For the next three turbulent decades, a wild, proto-capitalist free-for-all transformed Russian society.

Then, in 2022, Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The market started to collapse; Western firms fled Moscow's skyscrapers. No country this large had ever transformed itself as dizzyingly as 1990s Russia--now, just as dramatically, it was over. The intervening decades had seen phenomenal successes and crushing failures; the creation and destruction of enormous fortunes. How did it all happen?

Zero Sum brings to life the complex, vivid color of one of the greatest experiments in the history of global commerce. What have businesses learnt--or failed to learn--from this adventure, both about Russia and about dynamics between countries and companies in the face of relentless change?

Visit Charles Hecker's website.

The Page 99 Test: Zero Sum.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Heather Levy

From my Q&A with Heather Levy, author of This Violent Heart:

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

My first love was poetry, and I've always connected with women poets with complex histories like Anne Sexton. The title for This Violent Heart was inspired by her poem "The Break," which includes a line with the phrase "violent heart." Those words always struck me, and they felt so appropriate for my character Devon Mayes in how she views her bisexuality and her complicated feelings for her best friend Summer. She truly sees her heart as violent in the way it pulls her in opposing directions.

How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your new novel?

I think my teenage self would've...[read on]

Visit Heather Levy's website.

My Book, The Movie: Walking Through Needles.

The Page 69 Test: Walking Through Needles.

The Page 69 Test: Hurt for Me.

Q&A with Heather Levy.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Marcie R. Rendon's "Broken Fields"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Broken Fields: A Novel by Marcie R. Rendon.

About the book, from the publisher:

Cash Blackbear, a young Ojibwe woman and occasional sleuth, is back on the case after a man is found dead on a rural Minnesota farm in the next installment of the acclaimed Native crime series.

Minnesota, 1970s: It’s spring in the Red River Valley and Cash Blackbear is doing fieldwork for a local farmer—until she finds him dead on the kitchen floor of the property’s rented farmhouse. The tenant, a Native field laborer, and his wife are nowhere to be found, but Cash discovers their young daughter, Shawnee, cowering under a bed. The girl, a possible witness to the killing, is too terrified to speak.

In the wake of the murder, Cash can’t deny her intuitive abilities: she is suspicious of the farmer’s grieving widow, who offers to take in Shawnee temporarily. While Cash is scouring White Earth Reservation for Shawnee’s missing mother—whom Cash wants to find before the girl is put in the foster system—another body turns up. Concerned by the escalating threat, Cash races against the clock to figure out the truth of what happened in the farmhouse.

Broken Fields is a compelling, atmospheric read woven with details of American Indian life in northern Minnesota, abusive farm labor practices and women’s liberation.

Visit Marcie R. Rendon's website.

The Page 69 Test: Sinister Graves.

Q&A with Marcie R. Rendon.

My Book, The Movie: Sinister Graves.

The Page 69 Test: Broken Fields.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven novels that explore the complexity of friendship

Jeremy Gordon's writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, Pitchfork, The Atlantic, and GQ. He was born in Chicago, and currently lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Jen.

See Friendship is his first novel.

At Lit Hub Gordon tagged "seven novels that explore friendship in all its messy, complex beauty." One title on the list:

Roberto Bolaño, The Savage Detectives

One cannot be too critical of “the scene”; it’s just unbecoming. While it may produce a sense of FOMO to see groups of young, beautiful, and potentially talented people palling about together, the arts are so culturally diminished across global society that you can’t fault any group of like-minded individuals for falling in with each other. Proximity to minor success is no guarantee of lasting value, anyway, and what seems like the most important thing at the start of The Savage Detectives—the mid-70s Latin American experimental poetry scene—quickly becomes irrelevant as the years go on. Bolaño is unsentimental about what happens to the writers of this world: some die, some disappear, some quit, some sputter out. Nobody becomes famous, nobody produces work of evergreen merit.

But the flip side is that Bolaño was fictionalizing the real poets of his mid-70s Latin American experimental poetry scene, essentially immortalizing them all as charming failures in a novel that now regularly makes its way onto “best ever” lists. I have never read a poem by Vera or Mara Larrosa, but their fictional analogues, the Font sisters, are etched in my memory forever—and if literature may be considered as an act of preservation, I do find it kind of beautiful and meaningful that Bolaño froze his friends on the page and turned them into minor legends. Sorry to be a little sentimental about it.

Read about another novel on the list.

The Savage Detectives appears among Joanna Kavenna's top ten absurd quests in fiction, Tim Lewis's top ten stoners from the arts and entertainment, Sam Munson's six best stoner novels, and Benjamin Obler's top ten fictional coffee scenes; it is one of Edmund White's five most important books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nicole Galland's "Boy," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Boy: A Novel by Nicole Galland.

The entry begins:

My two 19-year-old protagonists are largely described in contrast to each other. Alexander (Sander) is an actor: ethereally, delicately attractive, a bisexual man-boy desired by nearly everyone in London. A singer and dancer, he moves with androgynous grace. Black-haired, blue-eyed, marvelous bone structure that has been praised since childhood. In contrast, his best friend Joan is the living embodiment of nondescript. An unschooled intellectual, she pays little attention to her own appearance: blandly light brown hair, blandly hazel eyes, with an unremarkable physique, and a soft, forgettable face. Her sole distinctive feature: beautifully expressive lips, which live on her face without adding to its overall beauty. She spends a good chunk of the book disguised as a boy – a boy as nondescript as Joan herself.

In general, I never think about who would play my characters in a movie adaptation. I develop such specific mental images of them, an actor would strike me as a mere impersonator.

But…

…virtually every early reader of Boy cooed, “Ooo, based on your description, you’re obviously thinking of Sander as Timothée Chalamet.” Because I’m bad with names, I wasn’t sure who Timothée Chalamet was, so after the fifth time someone said it, I Googled him – and found myself staring at someone who looked remarkably like Sander! But once I’d been prompted to contemplate Sander portrayed by a not-Sander in the flesh, I realized a young...[read on]

Visit Nicole Galland's website, Facebook page, and Threads page.

Coffee with a Canine: Nicole Galland & Leuco.

The Page 69 Test: Stepdog.

My Book, The Movie: Stepdog.

Writers Read: Nicole Galland (August 2015).

My Book, The Movie: Boy.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven top domestic psychological thrillers

Susan Moore is an author and screenwriter whose creative journey has been fueled by the world of technology. Her work captures the essence of what it means to be human in a complex and ever-changing world. She has over three decades of experience working in the film, tech and media, most notably at Skywalker for Lucasfilm Ltd.

She has been successfully published worldwide for the Nat Walker Trilogy and Power Families series, and has an MA with distinction in Creative Writing from Kingston University, London. Her new thriller is The Widow’s Web.

At CrimeReads Moore tagged seven of the best domestic psychological thrillers, including:

The Last Mrs Parrish by Liv Constantine

Liv Constantine’s The Last Mrs Parrish is a riveting psychological thriller that burrows deep into the tangled webs of marriage and female rivalry. With its shifting perspectives and unsettling twists, the story unravels the dark secrets and hidden motives lurking beneath the surface of seemingly perfect lives.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Last Mrs. Parrish is among Trisha Sakhlecha's eleven thrillers that feature the mega-rich, Jaime Lynn Hendricks's seven best unlikeable characters in thrillers, Eliza Jane Brazier's nine books that pit the Have against the Have-Nots, Seraphina Nova Glass's seven top obsession thrillers, Allison Dickson's top ten thrillers featuring a dance of girlfriends and deception, Kristyn Kusek Lewis's eight shocking thrillers featuring scandals, Margot Hunt's top nine thrillers featuring duplicitous spouses, and Jennifer Hillier's eight crime novels of women starting over.

The Page 69 Test: The Last Mrs. Parrish.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Robin Derricourt's "Five Innovations That Changed Human History"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Five Innovations That Changed Human History: Transitions and Impacts by Robin Derricourt.

About the book, from the publisher:

We live in an era of major technological developments, post-pandemic social adjustment, and dramatic climate change arising from human activity. Considering these phenomena within the long span of human history, we might ask: which innovations brought about truly significant and long-lasting transformations? Drawing on both historical sources and archaeological discoveries, Robin Derricourt explores the origins and earliest development of five major achievements in our deep history, and their impacts on multiple aspects of human lives. The topics presented are the taming and control of fire, the domestication of the horse,and its later association with the wheeled vehicle, the invention of writing in early civilisations, the creation of the printing press and the printed book, and the revolution of wireless communication with the harnessing of radio waves. Written in an engaging and accessible style, Derricourt's survey of key innovations makes us consider what we mean by long-term change, and how the modern world fits into the human story.

Visit Robin Derricourt's website.

The Page 99 Test: Creating God.

The Page 99 Test: Five Innovations That Changed Human History.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Catherine Con Morse

From my Q&A with Catherine Con Morse, author of The Notes:

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

The Notes is simple but evocative. It makes you wonder, What notes? Are these music notes or is someone writing a note? Maybe both?

The book takes place in the lively, high-stakes world of a prestigious performing arts boarding school, where Claire Wu is a pianist. When Dr. Li, a glamorous new piano teacher, shows up, Claire can’t help but want to become just like her. But when Claire starts receiving mysterious, handwritten notes about her teacher, she is forced to decide...[read on]

Visit Catherine Con Morse's website.

Q&A with Catherine Con Morse.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine twisted novels about theatrical performers

Jeanette Horn holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she received a Maytag Fellowship, a Teaching/Writing Fellowship, and was named a finalist for Poetry’s Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship.

Jeanette’s poetry has appeared in MARGIE, Poetry International, Stand, Washington Square, and other journals.

Horn's debut novel is Play, With Knives.

At Electric Lit the author tagged nine "novels set in the theatrical world [that] are all a little twisted in some way." One entry on the list:

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

You’ve likely heard of this speculative hit, which was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2014 and was recently named a “Best Book of the 21st Century” by The New York Times. The novel is about a Shakespearean theater troupe traveling the Great Lakes region 15 years after a flu pandemic decimated the world’s population and, with it, civilization. Their tour takes them to a town controlled by a dangerous prophet who they must overcome to save their lives and the lives of others. Along the way, they risk everything for art.

Read about another novel on the list.

Station Eleven is among Isabelle McConville's fifteen books for fans of the post-apocalyptic TV-drama Fallout, 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. 69: Clea Simon's "The Butterfly Trap"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Butterfly Trap by Clea Simon.

About the book, from the publisher:

Anya and Greg seem to be the golden couple, until dark secrets come to light and unleash inevitable devastation in this slow-burn he said/she said psychological suspense novel.

Greg has his life all planned out: become a doctor, buy a house, and have a wife and children – and when he meets Anya during his post-doc studies in Boston, all of his dreams seem to come true. It’s love at first sight, and Greg doesn’t shy away from changing his life to provide Anya, his beautiful butterfly, with everything she wants and needs.

Anya is a struggling artist, determined to make it as a painter in Boston’s art scene – but getting involved with shy and sweet Greg could thwart her lifelong ambition. Their relationship unfolds like a classic love story . . . except that Anya seems to be hiding something that unsuspecting Greg soon must face.

Are Greg and Anya truly the perfect couple, or will jealousy, uncertainty, and dangerous machinations break them apart in the most dreadful way imaginable?

Megan Abbott meets Paula Hawkins’s The Girl on the Train mixed with some Patricia Highsmith creepiness that will make you turn the pages! A psychological suspense novel “darkly inventive and full of grit” (New York Times bestselling author Caroline Leavitt).

Visit Clea Simon's website.

The Page 69 Test: To Conjure a Killer.

The Page 69 Test: Bad Boy Beat.

Writers Read: Clea Simon (May 2024).

Q&A with Clea Simon.

My Book, The Movie: The Butterfly Trap.

The Page 69 Test: The Butterfly Trap.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Diane Barnes reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Diane Barnes, author of The Mulligan Curse: A Novel.

Her entry begins:

I’m reading an ARC of Unclaimed Baggage by Katie O’Rourke. It’s a beautifully written book about a complicated family. The story is emotional and real. The protagonist is Jenna, a college student who is a twin. When her stepfather falls ill, neither Jenna’s mom nor sister step up to help care for him so Jenna does. She leaves school and moves back home. She discovers family secrets and learns to take care of herself instead of everyone else. Jenna is a relatable character, who is easy to root for her. O’Rourke’s writing style is engaging and...[read on]

About The Mulligan Curse, from the publisher:

From the author of All We Could Still Have comes a charming tale about one woman who embraces a family curse, laying bare the dreams we give up―and the chances we take to get them back.

Mary Mulligan has two problems: her wisdom teeth…and everything else. Her only daughter is moving overseas. Her husband would rather go golfing than spend time with her. And Mary’s left to wonder why she abandoned her career ambitions when loneliness is all she has to show for it.

Plus her teeth really, really hurt.

But that’s one problem she can fix―never mind the stories that say if she gets her wisdom teeth removed, the last thirty years of her life will be erased. In fact, Mary wouldn’t mind if the Mulligan curse were actually true.

Turns out, it is.

The world around her hasn’t changed, but Mary is suddenly twenty-four again, with the life she once dreamed of still ahead of her. As she embarks on this new beginning, Mary comes to realize that those dreams aren’t nearly as important as everything she once had. If only she knew how to get it all back.

Visit Diane Barnes's website.

Q&A with Diane Barnes.

The Page 69 Test: All We Could Still Have.

My Book, The Movie: All We Could Still Have.

The Page 69 Test: The Mulligan Curse.

My Book, The Movie: The Mulligan Curse.

Writers Read: Diane Barnes.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five nonfiction books that explain modern Russia

Charles Hecker has spent forty years travelling and working in the Soviet Union and Russia. He has worked as a journalist and a geopolitical risk consultant, and has lived in Miami, Moscow and London. A fluent Russian speaker, he holds degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University.

Hecker's new book is Zero Sum: The Arc of International Business in Russia.

At Lit Hub he tagged five nonfiction titles that explain modern Russia, with a "focus on the Soviet and Russian periods, and the seismic transition between the two." One title on the list:

Chrystia Freeland, Sale of the Century: The Inside Story of the Second Russian Revolution

Climb aboard an oligarch’s jet and float above a country whose most prized assets were sold for a song. Sit inside the room in Davos—capitalism’s highest altar—where one of the world’s greatest swindles was devised. Sup at one of Russia’s most exclusive dinner tables, where fierce business rivalries were discussed, defused and designed into spheres of influence in Russia’s emerging political and economic landscape.

Chrystia Freeland’s Sale of the Century—written when she was a Moscow-based journalistic superstar for The Financial Times—is the story of how 1990s Russia mislaid the cornerstones of a new nation. Boris Yeltsin’s failed stewardship of Russia’s transition from communism to capitalism birthed a country that epically failed its citizens, except for the equivalent of Russia’s 0.0001%.

That rarefied layer kept—and enhanced—its spoils by financing Yeltsin’s 1996 reelection campaign in exchange for the keys to the economy, and they never looked back. Until Putin came to town. Freeland, until recently deputy prime minister and finance minister of Canada, unflinchingly chronicled the free-for-all that was Russia’s early days. Experience that maniacal decade with her.

Read about another title on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Daniel J. Mallinson & A. Lee Hannah's "Green Rush"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Green Rush: The Rise of Medical Marijuana in the United States by Daniel J. Mallinson and A. Lee Hannah.

About the book, from the publisher:

A state-by-state analysis of the expansion of medical marijuana access in the United States

As of 2023, thirty-eight states and the District of Columbia have legalized the medical use of marijuana. Twenty-three have legalized recreational use, supporting what is now a flourishing multibillion-dollar industry. In Green Rush, Daniel J. Mallinson and A. Lee Hannah offer a fascinating history of cannabis legalization in America, highlighting the people, states, and policies that made these victories possible.

With sharp insight, Mallinson and Hannah explore the backdrop to this sea change in policy, including shifts in public opinion, growing opposition to the War on Drugs, the promise of new revenue streams, and more. They examine the complex web of state actors―and the steps they took―to chart a path forward for marijuana legalization, from grassroots activists and interest groups to elected officials and other key policymakers.

Mallinson and Hannah show us how states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia not only created, legitimized, and spread medical marijuana policy but also learned from each other’s successes and failures throughout the process. As marijuana legalization increasingly finds its way onto state ballots, Green Rush offers fresh insight into how we got here as a country and where we are going―one state at a time.

Learn more about Green Rush at the NYU Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Green Rush.

--Marshal Zeringue

Clea Simon's "The Butterfly Trap," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Clea Simon's The Butterfly Trap.

The entry begins:

If The Butterfly Trap is made into a movie, the main thing I’d be looking for is chemistry. On the surface, Greg and Anya are very different. He’s a science guy who ultimately decides to abandon research and go into surgery. She’s a painter, and her whole life revolves around the art world. Physically, he’s a nice-looking but somewhat beefy guy. Maybe a younger Ben Affleck, or even Chris Evans, if he put on a few pounds. Anya, on the other hand, is a stunner: a petite woman with arresting eyes. I wasn’t thinking of Anya Taylor Joy when I wrote her, but I am now.

But casting The Butterfly Trap should not about...[read on]

Visit Clea Simon's website.

The Page 69 Test: To Conjure a Killer.

The Page 69 Test: Bad Boy Beat.

Writers Read: Clea Simon (May 2024).

Q&A with Clea Simon.

My Book, The Movie: The Butterfly Trap.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six political thrillers where the good guys don’t necessarily win

Untouchable is the latest thriller from Edgar and Barry Award finalist Mike Lawson. It features Washington DC “troubleshooter” Joe DeMarco, and is the eighteenth title in the series.

At CrimeReads Lawson tagged some favorite books that share the "theme of Untouchable—that corrupt politicians, abetted by their underlings, escape conventional justice." One entry on the list:

In the Netflix series House of Cards, Kevin Spacey plays a corrupt congressman named Francis Underwood who’s willing to do anything to attain power. The television series is based on a book with the same title by another British author, Michael Dobbs. In Dobbs’ House of Cards, the corrupt politician is Francis Urquhart, whovanquishes one rival after another by leaking false stories to the press, blackmailing his colleagues, and ultimately killing a reporter who could have exposed him. I mention this book not only because it’s a good book, but because it was written in 1989, almost forty years ago. As Shakespeare said: What is past is prologue.

Read about another entry on the list.

House of Cards is among Mark Skinner's ten best British political novels, Peter Stone's twelve essential political scandal thrillers, Jeff Somers's ten best political thrillers, and Terry Stiastny’s ten top books about Westminster politics.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Edward Ashton's "The Fourth Consort"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Fourth Consort: A Novel by Edward Ashton.

About the book, from the publisher:

A new standalone sci-fi novel from Edward Ashton, author of Mickey7 (the inspiration for the major motion picture Mickey 17).

Dalton Greaves is a hero. He’s one of humankind’s first representatives to Unity, a pan-species confederation working to bring all sentient life into a single benevolent brotherhood.

That’s what they told him, anyway. The only actual members of Unity that he’s ever met are Boreau, a giant snail who seems more interested in plunder than spreading love and harmony, and Boreau’s human sidekick, Neera, who Dalton strongly suspects roped him into this gig so that she wouldn’t become the next one of Boreau’s crew to get eaten by locals while prospecting.

Funny thing, though―turns out there actually is a benevolent confederation out there, working for the good of all life. They call themselves the Assembly, and they really don’t like Unity. More to the point, they really, really don’t like Unity’s new human minions.

When an encounter between Boreau’s scout ship and an Assembly cruiser over a newly discovered world ends badly for both parties, Dalton finds himself marooned, caught between a stickman, one of the Assembly’s nightmarish shock troops, the planet’s natives, who aren’t winning any congeniality prizes themselves, and Neera, who might actually be the most dangerous of the three. To survive, he’ll need to navigate palace intrigue, alien morality, and a proposal that he literally cannot refuse, all while making sure Neera doesn’t come to the conclusion that he’s worth more to her dead than alive.

Part first contact story, part dark comedy, and part bizarre love triangle, The Fourth Consort asks an important question: how far would you go to survive? And more importantly, how many drinks would you need to go there?

Visit Edward Ashton's website.

The Page 69 Test: Mickey7.

Q&A with Edward Ashton.

The Page 69 Test: Antimatter Blues.

Writers Read: Edward Ashton (March 2023).

The Page 69 Test: Mal Goes to War.

Writers Read: Edward Ashton (April 2024).

The Page 69 Test: The Fourth Consort.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Jeff Macfee

Jeff Macfee is the author of the superhero noir Nine Tenths.

His latest crime novel is The Contest.

From my Q&A with the author:

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

The Contest wasn’t the first title I landed on, although it’s the title I’m happiest with. In earliest forms the book was called Wonka Crime, a handy shorthand given the concept of a widely known event run by an eccentric character. However that title, aside from legal problems, didn’t speak much to the protagonist. I considered Gillian Charles, but Gillian evolves throughout the book and is somewhat of a moving target. The Contest was the only title that spoke to me on multiple levels. It refers to both a literal contest and also the sense of competition within Gillian. The idea of Gillian competing against herself...[read on]

Visit Jeff Macfee's website.

Q&A with Jeff Macfee.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven titles that use the supernatural to focus on reality

Erin Crosby Eckstine is an author of speculative historical fiction, personal essays, and anything else she’s in the mood for. Born in Montgomery, Alabama, she grew up between the South and Los Angeles before moving to New York City to attend Barnard College. She earned a master’s in secondary English education from Stanford University and taught high school English for six years. Eckstine lives in Brooklyn with her partner and their cats. Junie is her debut novel.

At Electric Lit "seven works of speculative fiction [that] are a few of my favorite examples of the genre’s limitless possibilities to examine power, race, and oppression." One title on the list:

Boys of Alabama by Genevieve Hudson

This queer coming-of-age tale set in the heart of evangelical Alabama focuses on Max, a German immigrant with the ability to resurrect the dead. Hudson uses a Perks of Being a Wallflower-esque narrative to slice into the dark underbelly of Southern culture, from the cult-like football obsession to the charismatic politician/pastor known only as The Judge. The novel uses all the elements of Southern Gothic to great effect to explore identity, religion, queerness, and masculinity, all building to a compelling commentary on power and violence in religious communities.

Read about another entry on Eckstine's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Nicholas D. Anderson's "Inadvertent Expansion"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Inadvertent Expansion: How Peripheral Agents Shape World Politics by Nicholas D. Anderson.

About the book, from the publisher:

In Inadvertent Expansion, Nicholas D. Anderson investigates a surprisingly common yet overlooked phenomenon in the history of great power politics: territorial expansion that was neither intended nor initially authorized by state leaders.

Territorial expansion is typically understood as a centrally driven and often strategic activity. But as Anderson shows, nearly a quarter of great power coercive territorial acquisitions since the nineteenth century have in fact been instances of what he calls "inadvertent expansion." A two-step process, inadvertent expansion first involves agents on the periphery of a state or empire acquiring territory without the authorization or knowledge of higher-ups. Leaders in the capital must then decide whether to accept or reject the already-acquired territory.

Through cases ranging from those of the United States in Florida and Texas to Japan in Manchuria and Germany in East Africa, Anderson shows that inadvertent expansion is rooted in a principal-agent problem. When leaders in the capital fail to exert or have limited control over their agents on the periphery, unauthorized efforts to take territory are more likely to occur. Yet it is only when the geopolitical risks associated with keeping the acquired territory are perceived to be low that leaders are more likely to accept such expansion.

Accentuating the influence of small, seemingly insignificant actors over the foreign policy behavior of powerful states, Inadvertent Expansion offers new insights into how the boundaries of states and empires came to be and captures timeless dynamics between state leaders and their peripheral agents.

Learn more about Inadvertent Expansion at the Cornell University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Inadvertent Expansion.

--Marshal Zeringue