Adele Griffin

Adele Griffin is the acclaimed author of many books for young readers, including Sons of Liberty and Where I Want to Be, both National Book Award finalists. She is also the author of Picture the Dead, The Julian Game, and the Witch Twins and Vampire Island middle-grade series.

Her new novel is Tighter.

Recently I asked her what she was reading. Her reply:

I write Young Adult fiction, so I love to read what's new and cool in that genre. I just finished Once Was Lost by Sara Zarr, a riveting combination of a thriller, but it's also an unusual meditation on faith. Sara is a beautiful, balanced writer and I've read all of her work, and always look forward to her next book. I'm about one third of the way through Family by Micol Ostow, a novel in free verse that is a loose narrative of the the Manson killings. It's a risky but brilliant idea--high language, raw story. Very intense and I'm fascinated.

What else! I've been reading Louise Dean's The Old Romantic. It's hilarious in that very gallows humor, British tradition. The lines are served so cold, so sly. It's all about the dissolution of a couple of marriages, and fatherhood, and small town living, and a funeral home, but to me it's primarily these cut-glass character studies. In nonfiction I'm beginning Moonwalking With Einstein by Joshua Foer because it sounds intriguing, about the science and art and history of memory from ancient Greece through today, as well as about the author's experience trying to improve (with huge success) his own memory.

In audio, I've got Shirley Jackson We Have Always Lived in the Castle but my friend gave me a copy as a must-read, so I might switch over from audio. I get bad headaches so I like to have an audio around for when I'm forced to lie around like a corpse. Castle is deliciously creepy so far, as I might have expected.

As a mother to a three-year-old, I am always reading a number of picture books. My daughter and I are enjoying a bit of Maurice Sendak's Pierre and Chicken Soup, and someone gave her Adele & Simon by Barbara McClintock, which is beautiful and lots of fun as an illustrative hide-and-seek. And my editor just sent over Taking Care of Mama by Mitra Modarressi, which is adorable overload-- we read that one every night!

Visit the Tighter website, and Adele Griffin’s website and Facebook page.

Read--Coffee with a Canine: Adele Griffin and Edith.

--Marshal Zeringue