Catriona McPherson

Catriona McPherson was born in Scotland and lived there until 2010, then immigrated to California where she lives on Patwin ancestral land. A former academic linguist, she now writes full-time. Her multi-award-winning and national best-selling work includes: the Dandy Gilver historical detective stories, the Last Ditch mysteries, set in California, and a strand of contemporary standalone novels including Edgar-finalist The Day She Died and Mary Higgins Clark finalist Strangers at the Gate. She is a member of Mystery Writers of America, The Crimewriters’ Association, The Society of Authors and Sisters in Crime, of which she is a former national president.

McPherson's new novel is The Witching Hour.

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

The brief for this assignment is very clear: do not simply list the books you’ve read. However, if anyone’s interested, everything I’ve read since December 2019 is on this page of my website.

But what have I been reading recently that I want to shout about?

Shannon Baker, a longtime resident of the Nebraska sandhills (although she now lives in Arizona), writes the Sheriff Kate Fox series of police procedurals. Or are they? Kate is one of a large family in a small town, where old feuds and fresh gossip confound every case she encounters. The landscape and lifestyle are brutal but the writing is lush and the stories are always absorbing, whether the background is the plight of migrant workers, the intricacies of policing the reservation or, as in the one I’ve just read, the big business of bucking bulls.

Still in the crime-fiction genre, but a different kettle of fish entirely, I thoroughly enjoyed Janice Hallett’s latest. Hallett writes her novels in the form of emails, texts, transcribed conversations, memos and the occasional news report. When I embarked on The Appeal (her debut), I didn’t expect there to be much characterisation. Shows what I know! The appalling cast of characters in the Fairway amateur dramatic society came rolling of the page and the two true-crime journalists in The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels are no different. Airtight plotting and car crash interpersonal drama – irresistible.

Right now I’m reading James McBride’s Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, seventy-five pages in to . . . a lot. It’s not in the crime genre, but like so much of the best literary fiction there is a puzzle about a crime right in its heart. Mind you, I reckon even if there was no plot whatsoever I’d read on, for McBride’s sharp but warm depiction of the Jewish and Black residents of Chicken Hill in Pottstown, Pa, who sometimes join hands and sometimes lock horns in their struggle to survive, thrive and prosper in the middle decades of the twentieth century. And I’ve fallen in love with Chona, who interrupts the Rabbi to point out mistakes, who will not give up her grocery store and take it easy, no matter that her husband Moshe could now afford to keep her, who is determined to stay on Chicken Hill where she was born. I have no idea what’s going to happen in this novel but I’m all in.

Visit Catriona McPherson's website.

The Page 69 Test: Go to My Grave.

Writers Read: Catriona McPherson (November 2018).

My Book, The Movie: The Turning Tide.

The Page 69 Test: The Turning Tide.

My Book, The Movie: A Gingerbread House.

The Page 69 Test: Hop Scot.

The Page 69 Test: Deep Beneath Us.

Q&A with Catriona McPherson.

The Page 69 Test: The Witching Hour.

--Marshal Zeringue

Laila Ibrahim

Laila Ibrahim is the bestselling author of After the Rain, Scarlet Carnation, Golden Poppies, Paper Wife, Mustard Seed, and Yellow Crocus. Before becoming a novelist, she worked as a preschool director, a birth doula, and a religious educator. Drawing from her experience in these positions, along with her education in developmental psychology and attachment theory, she finds rich inspiration for her novels. She’s a devout Unitarian Universalist, determined to do her part to add a little more love and justice to our beautiful and painful world. She lives with her wonderful wife, Rinda, and two other families in a small cohousing community in Berkeley, California. Her children and their families are her pride and joy. When she isn’t writing, she likes to cuddle with her dog Hazel, take walks with friends, study the Enneagram, do jigsaw puzzles, play games, work in the garden, travel, cook, and eat all kinds of delicious food.

Ibrahim's new novel is Falling Wisteria.

Recently I asked the author about what she was reading. Ibrahim's reply:

At the moment I'm reading The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. It's been on my 'check it out list' for a long time and I grabbed it when a friend put out a pile of books that included it.

In general I strive to live intentionally. I want to notice what brings me more in line with my values and keeps me in balance physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually.

I'm only two chapters into the book, however I already appreciate it very much. She lays out her goal clearly as well as her methodology, and then reports on how she did. Her writing is accessible and she is speaking for herself, not as an expert for all humans.

I could see it inspiring me to make my own list of values with measurable tasks that might enhance them. I love a good life hack and the idea that if I pay close attention I can make my already amazing life just a little better.

Visit Laila Ibrahim's website.

Q&A with Laila Ibrahim.

The Page 69 Test: Falling Wisteria.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ayelet Tsabari

Ayelet Tsabari is the author of the memoir in essays The Art of Leaving, finalist for the Writer’s Trust Hilary Weston Prize and The Vine Awards, winner of the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for memoir, and an Apple Books and Kirkus Review Best Book of 2019.

Her first book, the story collection The Best Place on Earth, won the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, and the Edward Lewis Wallant Award for Jewish Fiction.

The book was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, was nominated for The Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, and has been published internationally.

She’s the co-editor of the award-winning anthology Tongues: On Longing and Belonging Through Language. Tsabari teaches creative writing at The University of King’s College MFA and at Guelph MFA in Creative Writing. Her debut novel is Songs for the Brokenhearted.

Recently I asked the author about what she was reading. Tsabari's reply:

I have just finished two books since I always have at least two on the go, one in audio (for walking, driving, hanging laundry, etc.) and one to read in bed at the end of the day.

The audiobook was All Fours by Miranda July, read by her, which made it an extra treat. It's a bold, un-put-down-able book about being a woman in midlife, about sex and marriage and parenthood and art. I admit that it's only through this novel that I was introduced to July's brilliance and I can't believe it took me so long. I devoured it!

The second book was a memoir with the brilliant title, The Widow's Guide to Dead Bastards by Jessica Waite. It is the story of a woman whose beloved husband dies suddenly, leaving her to raise their 9-year-old child on her own. Over the following weeks, as she deals with the unpleasant formalities of death, she discovers shocking, unsettling secrets about her husband that make her question everything. It's beautiful, complex, honest memoir about grief and forgiveness. I found it both funny and deeply moving.

Visit Ayelet Tsabari's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Chris Nickson

Chris Nickson is the author of eleven Tom Harper mysteries, eight highly acclaimed novels in the Richard Nottingham series, and seven Simon Westow mysteries. He is also a well-known music journalist. He lives in his beloved Leeds.

Nickson's newest Simon Westow mystery is Them Without Pain.

Recently I asked the author about what he was reading. Nickson's reply:

I tend to keep two books on the go, a novel for my downstairs ready and something non-fiction on the bedside table. The other week I picked up a Henning Mankel Wallender novel at a free library, and that's sending me down a rabbit hole. I've read many of them before, but a long time ago. Currently I'm on Sidetracked, set around the Swedish midsummer, and a series of strange deaths - most of which are gruesome murders. As always, Wallender is appealing and repellent in equal amounts. I'm curious to see how he solves this one.

Upstairs it's A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages, by Anthony Bale. Travel became an industry then, with increasing numbers going to pilgrimages to Rome, Jerusalem, Compostella and more. I read plenty of English history, but this takes me farther afield. Bale weaves his scholarship lightly and easily, with fascinating details about the people making these voyages and the places they go. The section on Venice is quite detailed, with plenty of interesting asides - apparently the powers that be deemed prostitution necessary to the local economy - and a sense of the place and time, when travel was often interrupted by outbreaks of plague; the Black Death wasn't the only one. I read plenty of history, often as research for my own books. Sometimes, though, it's simply because a topic piques my curiosity, and this did that. So far, it's very satisfying.

Visit Chris Nickson's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Constant Lovers.

The Page 69 Test: The Constant Lovers.

The Page 69 Test: The Iron Water.

The Page 69 Test: The Hanging Psalm.

Q&A with Chris Nickson.

The Page 69 Test: The Molten City.

My Book, The Movie: Molten City.

The Page 69 Test: Brass Lives.

The Page 69 Test: The Blood Covenant.

The Page 69 Test: The Dead Will Rise.

The Page 69 Test: Rusted Souls.

The Page 69 Test: The Scream of Sins.

The Page 69 Test: Them Without Pain.

--Marshal Zeringue

Bryn Turnbull

Bryn Turnbull is an internationally bestselling author of historical fiction. Equipped with a Master of Letters in Creative Writing from the University of St. Andrews, a Master of Professional Communication from Toronto Metropolitan University and a Bachelor's degree in English Literature from McGill University, Turnbull focuses on finding stories of women lost within the cracks of the historical record.

Her debut novel, The Woman Before Wallis, was named one of the top ten bestselling works of Canadian fiction for 2020 and became an international bestseller. Her second, The Last Grand Duchess, came out in February 2022 and spent eight weeks on the Globe & Mail and Toronto Star bestseller lists. It was followed by The Paris Deception, which came out in May 2023.

Turnbull's new novel is The Berlin Apartment.

Recently I asked the author about what she was reading. Turnbull's reply:

Despite my enduring love for history, I find that my reading interests these days tend increasingly towards contemporary fiction: character studies of so-called ordinary people, living so-called ordinary lives. I'm not entirely sure what's driving the shift. Perhaps it's because I've lived so long in the past -- after four novels set between 1910 and 1960, the early 20th century feels quite domestic. Perhaps, too, it's the realization that I've reached the age and stage where the early days of my lifetime are officially historical fiction fodder: apparently, anything older than 30 years is fair game for historical fiction novelists, and I'm not sure how comfortable I am with that, definitionally.

My newest novel is also my youngest: set in Cold War East and West Germany, The Berlin Apartment follows a twenty-something couple separated by the Berlin Wall, who hatch a plan to smuggle Lise, our East German heroine, west. Not to put too fine a point on things, but it didn't escape my notice that my historical novel fishtails neatly with my own story: it came down a year and four months after I came squalling into the world. Historical indeed.

So: contemporary fiction. A few weeks back, I picked up David Nicholls's most recent novel, You Are Here: a really lovely story that hits slightly too close to home about a young-ish (okay, young middle aged) pair of unlikely romantic leads, flung together on a weekend jaunt over England's rolling hills. It's not quite a rom com - it's more poignant than that -- but it has the exact right amount of romance to warm even the chilliest (of elder-millennial hearts.

Visit Bryn Turnbull's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Paris Deception.

The Page 69 Test: The Paris Deception.

Q&A with Bryn Turnbull.

My Book, The Movie: The Berlin Apartment.

The Page 69 Test: The Berlin Apartment.

--Marshal Zeringue