Tiffany Reisz

Tiffany Reisz is the author of the internationally bestselling and award-winning Original Sinners series for Mira Books (Harlequin/Mills & Boon).

Her new novel is The Bourbon Thief.

Recently I asked Reisz about what she was reading. Her reply:

When I’m not writing books, I’m reading books. Here are a few of the fabulous books I’ve read so far this year.

While looking for a good Gothic romance, I stumbled across a review that recommended Dark Dance by Tanith Lee. It’s the first book in her Blood Opera series that features vampire-ish semi-immortal creatures and their bizarre subculture. In Dark Dance we not only get father-daughter incest but a demon baby to boot! I’m currently reading Darkness, I, the third in the series and it’s also delightfully bizarre.

I read two books in a row—Surfacing by Margaret Atwood and Hausfrau by Jill Alexander Essbaum—that left me thinking deeply about how women who buck society’s gender expectations are portrayed in fiction. Although both authors are women, they are very hard on their heroines. One succumbs to madness while trying to escape the pressures of marriage and relationship. The other succumbs to a fate even worse. Surely there’s room in this world for a woman to find a positive, healthy way to break away from society’s unreasonable expectations. I’ll keep reading until I find that book.

I adored LaRose by Louise Erdrich, a literary fiction author who writes about the Ojibwa people in the Dakotas. The book is both heartbreaking and heartwarming. While hunting a man named Landreaux accidentally shoots and kills the small son of one of his best friends. After much praying, soul-searching, and singing to their ancestors, Landreaux and his wife offer their own son to the grieving parents as an act of reconciliation and restitution. The two families blend together in their heartache and their healing. It’s a glorious novel.

The most fun I’ve read so far this year has to be How to Capture an Invisible Cat, a middle-grade novel by my friend Paul Tobin. It was laugh out loud funny and a wonderful antidote to all the dark and creepy books I read. I can’t recommend it enough.

And now…back to the books!

Visit Tiffany Reisz's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Bourbon Thief.

--Marshal Zeringue