Carla Malden

Raised in Los Angeles, Carla Malden began her career working in motion picture production and development before becoming a screenwriter. Along with her father, Academy Award winning actor Karl Malden, she co-authored his critically acclaimed memoir When Do I Start?

Carla Malden’s feature writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, highlighting the marvels and foibles of Southern California and Hollywood. She sits on the Board of the Geffen Playhouse. Her previous novels include Search Heartache, Shine Until Tomorrow, and My Two and Only.

Malden lives in Brentwood with her husband, ten minutes (depending on traffic) from her daughter.

Her new novel is Playback.

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

Like half the country (thanks, Oprah!), I’m currently reading Bruce Holsinger’s Culpability. Aside from absorbing the general buzz around the book, I felt compelled to read it because my husband – who does not tend to be an avid reader of fiction – zipped through it in a few days. Now that I’m halfway through the book, I understand what snared him: the theme of AI which happens to be a particular interest of his. Regardless, as someone more interested in interpersonal relationships and the landscape of the human heart than in the insidious perils of quasi-sentience, I am absorbed by the family dynamic illuminated in the book, particularly that of the couple at its core. The shining wife, the slightly less-than husband, and the tension that lies therein – these elements are holding me (although, currently at 70% in accordingly to my kindle) I’m wondering if the plot is teetering on melodrama.

Visit Carla Malden's website.

My Book, The Movie: Playback.

--Marshal Zeringue

Leigh Dunlap

Leigh Dunlap is the screenwriter of the hit Warner Bros. movie A Cinderella Story. A native of Los Angeles, she attended film school at the University of Southern California. She now splits time and personalities between South Carolina and South Kensington and dreams of one day giving it all up and searching for buried treasure. Until then, she writes movies and books. Including Bless Your Heart, her debut novel.

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

I’m a big reader of non-fiction. I love nothing more than a 900-page book on, say, Andrew Carnegie. Having written a murder/mystery, however, I’ve been playing catch up on all the current writers in that genre.

Such a Lovely Family - Aggie Blum Thompson

Spoiler alert – they really weren’t all that lovely. The members of the Calhoun family were complicated and devious and funny and awful and a wonderful family to spend a book with. The characters in this upper-crust Chevy Chase family spin around the murder of the family’s patriarch. I loved that the novel weaved so much humor into a not so humorous premise. Thompson is great with detail and brings richness to the pages as well as red herrings and fantastic plotting that kept me turning the pages and trying to guess who did it in this whodunnit.

Tell Me What You Did - Carter Wilson

This book has such a great premise. The host of a true crime podcast who interviews people about the terrible crimes they’ve committed has the tables turned on her. I won’t say more for fear of spoiling the fun – but what fun! I couldn’t help thinking what a great tv show it would be. I hope Hollywood is paying attention.

All the Colors of the Dark – Chris Whitaker

Whitaker beautifully takes the reader on a journey into darkness. It may be about a serial killer, but it’s about so much more. Imperfect parents and misfit children and the loss of innocence and the need for belonging and connection in a dark world. I felt like I went on a journey to a new place even though it takes place in Missouri, where I’m from.

Gothictown – Emily Carpenter

Like my novel, Gothictown takes place in Georgia, so it was definitely something I wanted to check out. Carpenter’s small-town North Georgia setting, however, is a world away from the upscale Atlanta of my book. An offer of $100 houses in a struggling southern town entices a New York chef in search of a simpler life to move her family to Juliana, a place that isn’t, of course, what it appears to be. One-hundred-dollar mansions usually come with strings attached. Let the buyer beware! This is a suspenseful page-turning thriller that had me believing this fictional town must be real. I had to check the map several times just to make sure it wasn’t!

When Cicadas Cry – Caroline Cleveland

I live in South Carolina, the location of the novel, so that was definitely an extra added reason to read the book. Cleveland is a native of the state and it shows on every page. This is the classic southern murder/mystery. You can almost feel the humidity on every page and see the Spanish moss on every branch of every oak tree. The main characters are a lawyer and his investigator girlfriend and the added element of the dynamics of a couple just trying to live their lives and find equilibrium in their relationship added so much to the story.

Visit Leigh Dunlap's website.

Q&A with Leigh Dunlap.

--Marshal Zeringue

Mara Williams

Mara Williams drafted her first novel in third grade on a spiral notebook—a love story about a golden retriever and the stray dog who admired her from beyond the picket fence. Now she writes about strong, messy women finding their way in the world. Williams has a BA in English Literature from the University of California at Berkeley, takes creative writing from Stanford Continuing Studies, and actively engages in writing groups and critique circles. Williams’s novel The Second Chance Playlist was a winner of the 2024 Emily Contest. When not writing or reading, Williams can be found enjoying California’s beaches, redwoods, and trails with her husband, three kids, and disobedient dog.

Her new novel is The Truth Is in the Detours.

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

These Summer Storms by Sarah MacLean. Sarah is the queen of historical romance, but in this book, she takes on a contemporary story about a dysfunctional billionaire family. After the patriarch’s death, they’re forced to spend a week on the family’s private island and undertake a twisted inheritance game. It’s messy, sharp, and full of all the high-drama and high-stakes I’ve come to expect of a MacLean novel. Her historicals take on issues of class, feminism, and power, and this contemporary one is no different. In this book, she shrewdly, subliminally draws parallels between the historical aristocracy and our current economy of the one percent. Plus, it’s a delicious summer beach read.

Never Been Shipped by Alicia Thompson, which tells the story of a disbanded, one-hit-wonder rock band that reunites for a themed cruise, uncovering old resentments and unfinished business. This book is romantic, nostalgic, and filled with tenderness and wit. While it is ultimately a joyful story of redemption and reconciliation, it leans into the emotional journey of the characters. They're kind and trying their best, but also messy and wounded. It's so satisfying to see them finally get it right. I devoured this book in one weekend and was so sad when it was over.

Sandwich by Catherine Newman, which tells the story of a week in the life of a family during their annual trip to Cape Cod. This book is a quiet tribute to family life and honors the particular moment when children are grown—but not yet independent—when life feels both like a wide-open door and one that’s been slammed shut. I fell in love with the subtlety of the writing and the rich prose.

Dear Writer by Maggie Smith. I will read anything Maggie Smith writes. I find myself highlighting every line of her poetry, memoirs, and in this case, love letter to creatives. This book breaks apart the components of writing into manageable parts, without losing the magic that holds the work together. It’s filled with gorgeous prose, vulnerable insights, and inspiration to pay attention, play, and remain hopeful in pursuit of faithful storytelling. It’s more than a handbook for writers. It’s solid advice on how to live an authentic life.

Visit Mara Williams's website.

Q&A with Mara Williams.

The Page 69 Test: The Truth Is in the Detours.

My Book, The Movie: The Truth Is in the Detours.

--Marshal Zeringue

Gabriella Buba

Gabriella Buba is a mixed Filipina-Czech author and chemical engineer based in Texas who likes to keep explosive pyrophoric materials safely contained in pressure vessels or between the covers of her books. She writes epic fantasy for bold, bi, brown women who deserve to see their stories centered. Her debut Saints of Storm and Sorrow is a Filipino-inspired epic fantasy out with Titan Books. Saints has been named one of Spotify’s Best Audiobooks of 2024, and Buba a Spotify Breakout Author of 2024, and Saints was one of Reactor’s Reviewer’s Choice: Best Books of 2024.

Buba's new novel is Daughters of Flood and Fury.

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

Right now I’m deeply into the research part of my writing process for 2 new works I can’t yet discuss in detail so for secret gothic novel I’m doing the following research readings.

I am studying the art history, and religious significance of a number of medieval manuscripts from France, Germany and the Czech Republic. To that end I have been studying the following books. One of my favorite, because it was clearly created by a 14th century French monk who should have been born a comic artist was, The Cloisters Apocalypse 1: An Early fourteen century manuscript in facsimile provided by the metropolitan Museum of Art New York, and The Cloisters Apocalypse 2: Commentaries on an early fourteen-century manuscript by Florens Deuchler, Jeffrey M Hoffeld, Helmut Nickel.

Another highlight has been my study of Liber viaticus Jana ze Stredy, Commentary by Pavel Brodsky, Katerina Spurna, Marta Vaculinova and a reproduction from Knihovny Narodniho Muzea. Although the majority of the work was in Czech and Latin as an example of Czech illuminated art it was an amazing resource.

I’ve also been delving into Slavic and Czech folklore, with a special focus on witches, demons, and seasonal myths and magic. To that end I am reading Panslavonic Folklore Volumes 1 & 2 by W.W. Strickland, translated from Karl Jaromir Erben’s A hundred genuine popular Slavonic fairy stories in the original dialects, my favorite part being a diagram which charted the alignment of different Slavic myths and folklore with the seasons, and Slavic Folklore a Symposium by Lord Albert Bates, which had wonderful drawings and photos of artifacts of early Slavic anthropological studies.

Then as research for secret historical novella I’m reading The Escape: World War 2 by Celedono A Ancheta, containing a firsthand account of survival during the war of a guerrilla fighter and his family. It was especially impactful as it echoed a number of family stories shared with me by my grandmother who grew up during Japanese Occupation. I also read Under Japanese Rule: Memories & Reflections by Angelito L. Santos, Joan Orendain, Helen N Mendoza, Bernard LM Karganilla, edited & with introduction by Renato Constantino. This was a much more academic text, however I found it especially valuable as it contained personal accounts and stories from the war from all ages and stations of life and across the Philippines, especially focusing on children which is often overlooked in war texts.

I’m also reading a number of books on Philippine folklore including: Philippine Folklore, translated from the spoken tagalog by Fletcher Gardner MD, which taught me that if Jack is the most common European folktale hero name, Juan came over from the Spanish and became the most common Filipino one. Girl Who Turned Into A Fish and Other Classic Philippine Water Tales as told by Maria Elena Patern was one of my favorite of the numerous folklore books picked up for this round of research mainly because of the gorgeously illustrated images that accompanied the stories. Huge shout out to the Library of Congress without which I would not have been able to access a tenth of these titles.

Outside of my current research deep dive, I read fiction for my authorial career, both blurbing for other authors and for market research.

Some current highlights include The Gryphon King by Sara Omer, which had man eating Pegasus and satisfied everything the horsegirl in me desired. Black Salt Queen by Samantha Bansil, I fell in love with the twisty complicated Sapphic tragedy playing out with the Queen, and A Spell for Change by Nicole Jarvis who brought the perfect southern gothic vibes for a steaming summer.

And lastly some reading I’m doing just for me, I’ve been slowly making my way through recipes from Filipinx: Heritage recipes from the diaspora by Angela Dimayuga and Ligaya Mishan, an absolutely gorgeous and fascinating cookbook full of diaspora stories about family and food. This week I made sawsawan and a mung bean stew I loved growing up.

Then just for comfort reading, because I can’t read in the genre I’m actively drafting, I’m reading The Sapphire Heiress by Ella Leon, a historical romance with a Filipina lead, that is feeding the void Brigerton being on hiatus left in my soul.

Visit Gabriella Buba's website.

My Book, The Movie: Daughters of Flood and Fury.

--Marshal Zeringue

Amy Rossi

Amy Rossi received her MFA from Louisiana State University, and she lives in North Carolina, by way of Massachusetts, with her partner and two dogs. The Cover Girl is her first novel.

Recently I asked Rossi about what she was reading. The author's reply:

I just finished the audiobook of The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Audiobooks are new for me, but it’s a nice way to get to read more books, especially nonfiction. The fact that Coates does his own narration added an extra layer of intimacy that made me really glad I chose this format; I felt like I was experiencing it as he intended, as he takes the reader to his classroom, then to Senegal, South Carolina, and Palestine. It’s a short book – an introduction and three essays – but it’s a powerful one. This is a book about reading, writing, and storytelling and how those inform the way we walk around in the world – and what our responsibilities are. I’m not sure a title has been more apt.

I’ve also been reading Old School Indian by Aaron John Curtis. A lot of what I’ve read this year has been fellow debut books, including this one. I’ve been reading a bit at night before bed, and while I could easily stay up for hours because it’s really excellent, I’m glad to stick around with Abe and his family for a while. A slower read works well with the way the narrator (no spoilers but the use of a narrator here is fantastic) moves back and forth through time, telling stories that enrich the present action. It’s poignant and funny and enlightening – all the things I want in a book.

A couple things that I’m excited to read next include Beasts of Carnaval by Rosália Rodrigo and Matchmaking for Psychopaths by Tasha Coryell. The former is a Caribbean + Latine adult fantasy from another 2025 debut, and the latter is the latest thriller from a writer I very much admire. This really has been such a great year for books.

Visit Amy Rossi's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Mia Tsai

Mia Tsai is a Taiwanese American author of speculative fiction. Her debut novel, a xianxia-inspired contemporary fantasy titled Bitter Medicine, was published in 2023. Her new novel, The Memory Hunters, is an adult science fantasy.

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

Aside from books by my colleagues and friends in the industry, which I am always happy to read (Gabriella Buba's Daughters of Flood and Fury; JR Dawson's The Lighthouse at the Edge of the World; LD Lewis's The Dead Withheld; Yume Kitasei's Saltcrop; AD Sui's The Iron Garden Sutra; Jared Poon's City of Others; EM Anderson's The Keeper of Lonely Spirits), I try to keep a mix of personal interest nonfiction and fiction on the desk. Since I work in genre and am basically always reading something speculative or romantic, nonfiction has truly become my escape. I've been collecting books about horses for the next project's research (Susanna Forrest's The Age of the Horse) as well as some architectural books (Chris van Uffelen's Bricks - Now & Then). I also have Lynne Boddy and Ali Ashby's Fungi on the desk in preparation for book two of the Consecrated series. I'm happiest, though, in medical nonfiction, so I am looking forward to reading Carl Zimmer's Air-Borne, though I might need to prepare myself. The last book of his I read, She Has Her Mother's Laugh, was deeply informative but also profoundly upsetting, and I mean profoundly upsetting in the sense of how upset I was to learn, truly, the history of eugenics and heredity. It's ugly truth but still truth we need to face, especially in America.

A younger version of me from twenty years ago had already been exposed to the eugenicist language floating around in the dark corners of the internet. Innocent me had no idea what Stormfront or incels were, or calipers, or the racist and dated language of the West when it came to describing skull shapes and body types. Reading She Has Her Mother's Laugh brought me right back to that time, and it saddened and disturbed me to know there can be a line drawn directly from Henry Goddard's horrific work in the early 1900s to people arguing that marginalized people, whether disabled, queer, of color, or intersections of those categories, don't deserve help and don't deserve to live. I liked the book. I thought it was excellent. I also thought it must have been incredibly difficult to research and write for Carl Zimmer.

That's a really depressing note to end things on, so for levity, I'll also say that I keep up with new chapters of Spy × Family every two weeks, provided Tatsuya Endo's health is okay and he isn't overworked and stressed, as well as the infrequent but always welcome chapters of Inoue Takehiko's Real.

Visit Mia Tsai's website.

Q&A with Mia Tsai.

--Marshal Zeringue

Carolyn Dasher

Carolyn Dasher grew up in a military family, which meant she lived in ten different places before she graduated from high school. It also meant that every 4th of July she got to climb around on tanks and helicopters and watch the Blue Angels buzz overhead in tight formation. When she learned about the WASP—amazing women who stepped up during World War II to serve their country, and, as soon as the war was over, were told to step right back down again and transfer their talent and energy to home and family life—she knew she had to write about them.

Dasher's new novel, her first, is American Sky.

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

I lean toward fiction that tells a great story while also digging into the essential truths of what it means to be human. But no soapboxing, please!

I recently finished Martyr, a moving, gorgeous book by Kaveh Akbar that explores the immigrant experience, addiction, death and loss, finding true love, the power of dreams and art—I could go on. And the ending! Absolute apocalyptic brilliance.

Periodically, I try to fill the gaps in my “classics” education. (However anyone defines "classics," Lucy, by Jamaica Kincaid, deserves a place on the list.) In this novel about a young West Indian woman who comes to the US to study and work as a nanny, Kincaid takes on colonialism, race, mother-daughter relationships, employer-employee dynamics and, of course, sex. All in under 200 perfectly paced pages.

Next up on my to-read list is Nancy Townsley’s Sunshine Girl, a story about a reporter investigating her own family secrets, set against the backdrop of the threats and violence faced by journalists today.

Visit Carolyn Dasher's website.

Q&A with Carolyn Dasher.

The Page 69 Test: American Sky.

--Marshal Zeringue

Camilla Trinchieri

Camilla Trinchieri worked for many years dubbing films in Rome with directors including Federico Fellini, Pietro Germi, Franco Rossi, Lina Wertmüller and Luchino Visconti. She immigrated to the US in 1980 and received her MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University. Under the pseudonym Camilla Crespi, she has published eight mysteries. As Camilla Trinchieri, she has published The Price of Silence and Seeking Alice, a fictionalized account of her mother’s life in Europe during WWII.

Trinchieri's new novel isMurder in Pitigliano, the fifth title in her Tuscan mystery series.

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

After devouring Philip Miller’s The Goldenacre I am reading The Hollow Tree, the second book of his Shona Sandison Investigation series which takes place in Scotland, Miller’s home. Shona, a journalist whose newspaper has folded, attends a wedding where a guest commits. Shona wants to know why and investigates. The story is gripping but what adds to the pleasure of reading Miller is the strength of his writing. He immerses me in his world, lets me see and feel the characters and paints their surroundings with his poet’s eye. I am there with Shona. The third one in the Shona series is coming out soon. I will read that one as soon as I finish The Hollow Tree.

Visit Camilla Trinchieri's website.

Q&A with Camilla Trinchieri.

The Page 69 Test: Murder in Pitigliano.

Writers Read: Camilla Trinchieri (July 2025).

--Marshal Zeringue

Vicki Delany

Vicki Delany is one of Canada’s most prolific and varied crime writers and a national bestseller in the U.S. She has written more than forty books: clever cozies to Gothic thrillers to gritty police procedurals, to historical fiction and novellas for adult literacy. She is currently writing four cozy mystery series: the Tea by the Sea mysteries for Kensington, the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop series for Crooked Lane Books, the Catskill Resort mysteries for Penguin Random House, and the Lighthouse Library series (as Eva Gates) for Crooked Lane.

Delany is a past president of the Crime Writers of Canada and co-founder and organizer of the Women Killing It Crime Writing Festival. Her work has been nominated for the Derringer, the Bony Blithe, the Ontario Library Association Golden Oak, and the Arthur Ellis Awards. She is the recipient of the 2019 Derrick Murdoch Award for contributions to Canadian crime writing. Delany lives in Prince Edward County, Ontario.

Tea with Jam & Dread is her newest Tea by the Sea mystery.

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

I’m a summertime reader. I get far more reading done in the summer than any other time of year, except when I’m on vacation. I love nothing more than sitting in the sun by the pool, reading reading reading. And my house looks it, but I can tidy it in September.

What have I been enjoying this summer?

Shipwrecked Souls by Barbara Fradkin. Full disclaimer here, Barbara is a very close friend of mine. But that shouldn’t prevent me from enjoying her books and I do. This is the 12th of her popular Inspector Green series, set in Canada’s capital city of Ottawa. The books are gritty and tough, with difficult themes handled sensitively and well. In Shipwrecked Souls, the death of a woman recently arrived from Ukraine unravels secrets stretching back to the Holocaust.

A completely different read is In Winter I get up at Night by Jane Urquhart. Not a mystery or crime novel, but the memoires of a Saskatchewan woman stretching from her family’s arrival in the 20s as settlers on the northern Great Plains, the one-room schoolhouse she was educated in, the entire year of her girlhood she spent in hospital, her teaching career, and the long, long secret affair she had with a famous man in the 1950s and 60s. Throw in some Dukaboors, Jewish radical socialists, medical procedures, rabid racists when the object of racism was people from Eastern Europe, and wonderful evocative descriptions of Saskatchewan. The book is a novel, but a beautiful rendition of one woman’s life in times not so far from our own.

For sheer fun, nothing beats the Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes books by Laurie R. King. I’ve been reading this series since the first book, The Beekeeper’s Apprentice came out thirty years ago, and still love them. As I reader I wasn’t entirely happy when Sherlock Holmes married a woman something like 40 years younger than him, but I’m coming around to enjoying their relationship. Particularly, as Russell (as he calls her) is Holmes (as she calls him) equal (or better?) in every way. The most recent book is Knave of Diamonds. Russell’s long lost uncle appears, and he might have something to do with the disappearance of some famous jewels many years ago.

Visit Vicki Delany's website, and follow her on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.

The Page 69 Test: Rest Ye Murdered Gentlemen.

The Page 69 Test: A Scandal in Scarlet.

The Page 69 Test: Murder in a Teacup.

Writers Read: Vicki Delany (September 2021).

The Page 69 Test: Deadly Summer Nights.

The Page 69 Test: The Game is a Footnote.

Writers Read: Vicki Delany (January 2023).

Writers Read: Vicki Delany (January 2024).

The Page 69 Test: The Sign of Four Spirits.

The Page 69 Test: A Slay Ride Together With You.

Writers Read: Vicki Delany (December 2024).

The Page 69 Test: The Incident of the Book in the Nighttime.

--Marshal Zeringue

D.W. Buffa

The Dark Backward is among D.W. Buffa's more recent novels to be released. The story revolves around not just the strangest case William Darnell had ever tried;

it was the strangest case ever tried by any lawyer anywhere. It was impossible to explain; or rather, impossible to believe. The defendant, who did not speak English or any other language anyone could identify, had been found on an island no one knew existed, and charged with murder, rape and incest. He was given the name Adam, and Adam, as Darnell comes to learn, is more intelligent, quicker to learn, than anyone he has ever met. Adam, he learns to his astonishment, is a member of an ancient civilization that has remained undiscovered for more than three thousand years.

Buffa is also the author of ten legal thrillers involving the defense attorney Joseph Antonelli. He has also published a series that attempts to trace the movement of western thought from ancient Athens, in Helen; the end of the Roman Empire, in Julian's Laughter; the Renaissance, in The Autobiography of Niccolo Machiavelli; and America in the twentieth century, in Neumann's Last Concert.

Here is Buffa's take on the Novels of W.H. Hudson:

Ford Madox Ford, who knew every great writer of his time, and helped more than one of them with his writing, thought W.H. Hudson, not Henry James, or D.H. Lawrence, or Thomas Hardy, or even his close friend Joseph Conrad, “the greatest prose writer of his day.” Ford was not alone in this judgment. In London, before the Great War, the First World War, the war that changed everything, including, Ford would have argued, the way the world, especially the English speaking world, looked upon literature and those who spent their lives trying to make a serious contribution to what was worth reading, there was a “French restaurant called the Mont Blanc where, on Tuesdays, the elect of the city’s intelligentsia lunched and discussed with grave sobriety the social problems of the day.” Ford was there, of course; and so also were Joseph Conrad, John Galsworthy, Hilaire Belloc and W.B. Yeats.

The conversation followed a predictable pattern: talk about “Flaubert and Maupassant and Huysman and Mendes and Monet and Maeterlinck and Turgenev. And if Belloc came bustling in and Conrad was there, the noise would grow to exceed the noise of Irish fairs when shillelaghs were in use.” And that because “Belloc with his rich brogue and burr would loudly assert that his ambition was to make by writing four thousand pounds a year and to order a monthly ten dozen of Clos Vougeot or Chateau Brane Cantenac…and this to Conrad who would go rigid with fury if you suggested that anyone, not merely himself, but any writer of position, could possibly write for money.”

And then, suddenly, Hudson would walk in and the room would go silent, the immediate tribute of those who understood the nature, and the extent, of his achievement, “the greatest prose writer of his day.” Hudson would try to deny it, insisting that, “I’m not one of you damned writers: I’m a naturalist from LaPlata.” And then he would laugh, because he did not really mind at all that they held him in such high regard. It had taken him long enough to earn it.

Hudson was born in Argentina of American parents in 1841, and until he moved to London when he was forty had never, other than a few visits to Buenos Aires, been off the pampas. He never spent a day in a forest, or an hour in a jungle, and had never so much as stepped on the soil of Venezuela, but Green Mansions, one of the two great novels he wrote, is set in the jungle, and the other one, The Purple Land, is set in and around Venezuela. If Hudson was the “greatest living writer of English,” it was, at least in part, because the world he described was the world he invented, the world he watched form and reform inside his mind. It must have been this, or something like it, that drew the attention, and earned the respect, of the other great writers of his time.

“He was, at any rate in England, a writer’s writer,” Ford insisted. “I never heard a lay person speak of Hudson in London, at least with any enthusiasm. I never heard a writer speak of him with anything but a reverence that was given to no other human being. For as a writer he was a magician.” Green Mansions and The Purple Land are not just two great novels. All the writers Ford Madox Ford writes about in his Portraits From Life, including especially Conrad, believed that The Purple Land “is the supreme - is the only - rendering of Romance in the English language,” while Green Mansions “is Anglo-Saxondom’s only rendering of hopeless, of aching passion.”

Whatever else it is, The Purple Land is a marvelous tale of consecutive impossibilities, the chronicled adventures of Richard Lamb who marries a girl against her father’s wishes and then, as they try to escape his wrath, he is separated from her as gets caught up in one of the country’s frequent civil conflicts. The leader of the rebellion, the hero Santa Coloma, known for “his dauntless courage and patience in defeat,” is saved from death when Lamb, quite by accident, helps him escape from prison. Then, later, when Lamb is taken prisoner by the revolutionaries and brought before their general to decide his punishment, which means in fact the method of his execution, the general turns out to be Coloma, who recognizes him as the man who had saved his life and, instead of a sentence of death, sets him free.

This is only the beginning of a series of adventures that mark Lamb’s struggle to get back to the young wife he has left waiting for him in Montevideo, a struggle that bears a certain resemblance to that Greek classic, The Odyssey. The resemblance seems acknowledged when we are told that Montevideo is called Modern Troy. Among the other things that happen to him, Lamb encounters an old man, insane with grief, his only son killed in the war, who thinks his new visitor is his son returned to life. Then he saves a woman who lost her father and her brothers in the war and is being forced to marry a feckless fraud who has taken her father’s place and wants to take her home. Every woman Lamb meets - and he meets a lot of them - is a different kind of problem. A young woman only six months married, but already bored with her husband, tries to tempt him, but without success. Another woman, Dolores, is more successful. She intoxicates him with a kiss, and with that kiss becomes intoxicated herself. Forced to admit that he is already married, she calls him a disgrace, but because “they love each other madly,” they spend their last few hours together, sitting hand in hand, waiting for the dawn, when he must leave, thinking, as only a true romantic could do, that their “separation would be an eternal one.” Like Odysseus, Lamb finally reaches home, and not only finds his wife still waiting, but, an even greater miracle, manages one last time to help Santa Coloma, the hero of the failed revolution, make his escape so he can, with the patience he has so often been taught by defeat, begin again the always difficult preparation for the next rebellion.

Lamb’s adventures are the surface of the story, the story told by countless authors since it was first told by Homer. Beneath the surface, however, the reader discovers more than a gifted storyteller, a rare intelligence that leads us to places we had not known existed. How many other writers could declare, without the slightest reservation, that civilization is a mistake, with its “million conventions…vain education…striving after comforts that bring no comfort to the heart.” We had happiness once, but “we went away from it in search of another grander kind of happiness which some dreamer - a Bacon or another - assured us we should find. We had only to conquer Nature, find out her secrets, make her our obedient slave, then the earth would be Eden, and every man Adam and every woman Eve. We are still marching bravely on, conquering Nature, but how weary and sad we are getting ! The old joy in life and gaiety of heart have vanished….”

It is another, if perhaps a stranger, indication of Hudson’s ability to see into the nature of things, that he could write a line that, a generation later, would be written by another writer born and raised in Argentina, Jorge Borges, who may have remembered when he wrote it a line he once wrote about a mathematical theory he did not understand but hoped one day to plagiarize: “I have often begun the study of metaphysics, but have always been interrupted by happiness.” Hudson, nearly half a century earlier, had written: “I have not read many books of philosophy, because when I tried to be a philosopher ‘happiness was always breaking in,’ as someone says….”

The Purple Land sold almost no copies when it was first published in l885; Green Mansions became an enormous commercial success when it was published in America near the end of Hudson’s long life in 1922. The story is told by Abel who, “a young man of unblemished character, not a soldier by profession…allowed myself to be drawn very readily by friends and family into a conspiracy to overthrow the government of the moment, to the object of replacing it by more worthy me - ourselves, to wit.” The attempt failed, and Abel has to flee for his life. He goes to the Orinoco because “to visit this primitive wilderness had been a cherished dream.”

From his boyhood on the Argentine pampas, Hudson loved nothing so much as the study of birds. They were God’s perfect creatures, their movements and their voices more graceful, more rhythmic, than any other living thing. Rima, the girl in Green Mansions, is the most birdlike creature in all of English literature. Abel meets Rima, or rather they gradually discover each other, as he becomes aware of her presence, the music he hears among the trees, the sense that someone, or something, is following him, watching from a distance during his long walks through the thick green forest. Rima becomes everything to him, “Because nothing so exquisite had ever been created. All the separate and fragmentary beauty and melody are graceful motion found scattered throughout nature were concentrated and harmoniously combined in her.” She spoke a language “without words, suggesting more than word to the soul.”

Rima lives in the forest, that part of it where the natives never go because they think her a demon there to bring them death and destruction. They find their courage and burn her to death in a gigantic tree where she tried to hide. Abel swears vengeance. In Heart of Darkness, which some would argue is the finest work of ninety pages in the English language, Joseph Conrad describes how Kurtz, a European sent to Africa to bring civilization to the natives, becomes more savage than any native ever was. In Green Mansions, Hudson’s character, Abel, becomes just like Kurtz, the only difference that Abel is driven, not by a failed idea, but by a lost love.

It is all quite deliberate, each step planned carefully in advance. After Rima is killed, he goes to a tribe the enemy of the tribe that killed her. His mind is clear; he knows precisely what he wants to do. It is a rebellion against God, his hatred a rebellion against all morality: “there was nothing evil, nothing cruel and contrary to nature, that I would not be guilty of, glorying in my guilt.” Nor was this the temper of a few days: “I remained for close upon two months at Managa’s village, never repenting nor desisting in my efforts to induce the Indians to join me in that barbarous adventure on which my heart was set.” Everyone does what they are supposed to do: everyone is killed “who had lighted the fire round that great green tree on which Rima had taken refuge, who’d danced around the blaze, shouting ‘Burn! burn!’”

When he leaves, making his way out of the forest, Abel has a vision of being with Rima again. “No longer the old vexing doubt now! ‘You are you and I am I - why is it?’ - the question asked when our souls were near together, like two raindrops side by side, drawing irresistibly nearer, ever nearer: for now they had touched and were not two, but one inseparable drop, crystallized beyond change, not to be disintegrated by time, nor shattered by death’s blow, nor resolved by alchemy.”

W.H. Hudson draws the reader as close to what he has written as Abel was drawn to Rima, that strange being in whom everything beautiful and wonderful were combined in a way never seen before. No one had written anything like The Purple Land and Green Mansions before Hudson; and no one will ever write anything like them again. They stand apart, equal and alone, something Hudson, and only Hudson, could do.

Visit D.W. Buffa's website.

Buffa's previous third reading essays: The Great Gatsby; Brave New World; Lord Jim; Death in the Afternoon; Parade's End; The Idiot; The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; The Scarlet Letter; Justine; Patriotic Gore; Anna Karenina; The Charterhouse of Parma; Emile; War and Peace; The Sorrows of Young Werther; Bread and Wine; “The Crisis of the Mind” and A Man Without Qualities; Eugene Onegin; The Collected Works of Thomas Babington Macaulay; The Europeans; The House of Mirth and The Writing of Fiction; Doctor Faustus; the reading list of John F. Kennedy; Jorge Luis Borges; History of the Peloponnesian War; Mansfield Park; To Each His Own; A Passage To India; Seven Pillars of Wisdom; The Letters of T.E. Lawrence; All The King’s Men; The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus; Naguib Mahfouz’s novels of ancient Egypt; Main Street; Theodore H. White's The Making of the President series, part I; Theodore H. White's The Making of the President series, part II; Thus Spoke Zarathustra; Fiction's Failure; Hermann Hesse's Demian; Frederick Douglass, Slavery, and The Fourth of July; Caesar’s Ghost; The American Constitution; A Tale of Two Cities; The Leopard; Madame Bovary; The Sheltering Sky; Tocqueville’s America and Ours; American Statesmen; Ancient and Modern Writers Reconsidered; Père Goriot; Edmund Burke.

--Marshal Zeringue

Kashana Cauley

Kashana Cauley is the author of the newly released The Payback, a student loan industry heist novel.

She is also the author of The Survivalists, which was published in January 2023 and named a best book of 2023 by the BBC, the Today Show, Vogue, and many other outlets. She’s a TV writer who has written for The Great North, Pod Save America on HBO, and The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, and a former contributing opinion writer for the New York Times. She has also written for The Atlantic, Esquire, The New Yorker, Pitchfork, and Rolling Stone, among other publications.

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

I just finished Great Black Hope, by Rob Franklin, and loved it. It’s paced how the most relaxing part of summer feels, languid as our narrator drifts into more and more situations that cause him trouble. I also loved the book because it asks the fundamental question of how Black people deal with the fact that our Americanness is often conditional, and dependent on how much we subsume ourselves into the dominant culture, and how unsatisfying it can be to shoehorn ourselves into the sort of respectability politics that we think might save us, but really don’t.

Visit Kashana Cauley's website.

Q&A with Kashana Cauley.

--Marshal Zeringue

Alie Dumas-Heidt

Alie Dumas-Heidt lives in the Puget Sound with her husband, adult kids, and two Goldendoodles – Astrid and Torvi. Growing up she wanted to be a detective and a writer and spent a few years working as a police dispatcher. Now, working is writing in her home office with the dogs at her feet. When she’s not writing she enjoys being in the forest, creating glass art, yarn crafts, and watching baseball.

Dumas-Heidt's new novel is The Myth Maker.

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

I am currently reading two very different books right now, which I do to myself often. I have an older cozy mystery called The Quiche of Death by M.C. Beaton, and Evil Eye by Etaf Rum.

The Quiche of Death is the first in the Agatha Raisin cozy series that started in the 90's. I jumped into the books after watching the show on the BBC. It's a fun read with a spirited leading lady, Agatha Raisin, who leaves a successful PR career and unwittingly becomes a super sleuth in the Cotswolds. It is a little sassier than other cozy reads, but the sass feels true to the characters. I love how the side characters and the town itself add to the story and it's been my escape place before bed.

Evil Eye by Etaf Rum is one I just bought and it was because of my mom's recent obsession with the image of the evil eye. The cover art caught me from across the bookstore and then I got pulled in by the details of the story. The writing is so clean and easy to fall into. Right now I'm getting to know the main character, Yara Murad, and feel the suffocation she's enduring from a life that isn't quite her own. I'm only few chapters in but I'm invested in Yara and I'm pretty sure she will eventually make me cry.

Visit Alie Dumas-Heidt's website.

Q&A with Alie Dumas-Heidt.

--Marshal Zeringue

Turner Gable Kahn

Turner Gable Kahn is the author of the debut novel The Dirty Version, a feminist contemporary romance about a novelist and an intimacy coordinator who are forced to collaborate on new steamy scenes for the TV adaptation of her book. Set between South Florida and Hollywood, it’s a slow-burn love story that explores power, creative control, and emotional intimacy.

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

One of the books I keep returning to—mentally and emotionally—is Everything’s Fine by Cecilia Rabess. On the surface, it’s a workplace romance between two people on opposite ends of the political spectrum: Jess, a young Black analyst starting out at a finance firm, and Josh, her smug, conservative coworker. But of course, it’s not really a romance in the traditional sense. It’s a razor-sharp exploration of power, identity, race, and the emotional gymnastics involved in navigating proximity to someone who can’t—or won’t—see the world the way you do.

What struck me most is how Rabess lets the emotional tension simmer under the surface of everyday interactions. The love story feels both impossible and deeply believable, which is what makes the book so haunting. She writes the desperation between them so well—the push and pull, the longing, the ache of two people who can’t seem to stay away. It reminded me of the magnetic attraction between the two main characters in Sally Rooney’s Normal People, but filtered through a lens of cultural tension and emotional realism that’s entirely Rabess’s own.

I admire how unflinching it is—how it refuses to resolve itself neatly. It reminded me that the most provocative fiction doesn’t always shout; sometimes it just sits with the discomfort and lets you feel it long after you’ve turned the last page.

Visit Turner Gable Kahn's website.

Q&A with Turner Gable Kahn.

My Book, The Movie: The Dirty Version.

--Marshal Zeringue

Miriam Gershow

Miriam Gershow is the author of Closer, Survival Tips: Stories and The Local News. Her writing is featured in The Georgia Review, Gulf Coast, and Black Warrior Review, among other journals. She is the recipient of a Fiction Fellowship from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, an Oregon Literary Fellowship, and is a two-time finalist for the Oregon Book Award. Gershow is the organizer of “100 Notable Small Press Books,” a curated list of the year’s recommended books from independent publishers.

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

I found a copy of Gin Phillip’s Fierce Kingdom at the library book sale this year. I’d been interested when this first came out eight years ago, but I was too early into parenting to be able to stomach the story of a woman trapped with her four-year-old son at the zoo during an active shooter situation. I’m so glad I came back to it: it was harrowing, propulsive, and so well-rendered up to the very last note. It’s a story of motherhood at its most desperate, though the writing is so sharp and lively, you’re never entirely cowed by the desperation. Phillip’s keeps the story aloft in unimaginable circumstances.

I’m also in the middle of spearheading 100 Notable Small Press Books 2025, a project of 50+ volunteer reviewers reading and recommending titles across genres and presses. The final list will be published in LitHub in November. In the meantime, I’m on a small press reading kick. Currently I’m rereading Scott Nadelson’s Trust Me (Forest Avenue Press) for an event we’re doing together on how we imagine Oregon in our work. Scott’s version of Oregon is so tender and mossy and mushroom-capped, you can see it and smell it in every page. His work makes you want to snug your fleece cap tighter around your head and pull up your smart wool socks. It’s pretty close to the opposite of how I write about place - I mostly approach it through the people and the sociological updrafts and winds.

And finally I’m reading my friend Heather Ryan’s essay collection in progress. Bookmark Heather’s name; her essay, "Ballistic Trajectory," which anchors her collection, is one of the most affecting essays I’ve read in years: unflinching and heartbreaking about so many things, including institutional failures of academia, the limits of teaching, and how, years later, the progress of MeToo is no progress at all. It’s going to blow everyone’s ears back when it’s published.

Visit Miriam Gershow's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Local News.

Q&A with Miriam Gershow.

--Marshal Zeringue

Molly MacRae

Molly MacRae spent twenty years in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Upper East Tennessee, where she managed The Book Place, an independent bookstore; may it rest in peace. Before the lure of books hooked her, she was curator of the history museum in Jonesborough, Tennessee’s oldest town.

MacRae lives with her family in Champaign, Illinois, where she recently retired from connecting children with books at the public library.

Her latest novel is There'll Be Shell to Pay.

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

Shirley Rousseau Murphy’s Joe Gray books have been on my radar since the first one, Cat on the Edge, came out in 1996. I finally started reading them this spring and I’m up to book ten, Cat Cross Their Graves. The books are cozy with dashes of police procedure and fantasy. The three main characters are Joe Gray, Dulcie, and Kit, sentient house cats able to understand, speak, and read English. The mysteries are good and twisty and they aren’t told for the laughs one might expect from the set up. Except for their unusual talents, the cats act like cats. They’re also serious and successful amateur sleuths. There’s great situational humor, though. Not laughing at the cats, but at the issues they have using human technology, like computers and cell phones, and their very reasonable reactions to some of the things the humans around them do.

I love short stories and have had a subscription to Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine for at least forty years. I’m reading the most recent issue with stories by some of my favorite authors including John M. Floyd, G. Miki Hayden, Janice Law, and R.T. Lawton. You can’t beat Hitchcock or Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine for great mystery shorts.

We don’t eat a lot of desserts at my house, but we like drooling over them in cookbooks. I’m reading a perfect cookbook right now—Malai: Frozen Desserts Inspired by South Asian Flavors, by Pooja Bavishi. Just leafing through for the gorgeous photographs is getting me through the heat wave we’re having. There are recipes for dairy and non-dairy ice creams, milkshakes, sundaes, ice cream pies, bars, frozen icebox cakes, toppings and sauces, as well as baked goods to go with the frozen treats. Sprinkled throughout the recipes are cardamom, ginger, black pepper, turmeric, and other warm spices. I have my eye on Bavishi’s Salted Brown Butter Pecan Ice Cream with Chocolate Cardamom Sauce.

Visit Molly MacRae's website.

My Book, The Movie: Plaid and Plagiarism.

The Page 69 Test: Plaid and Plagiarism.

The Page 69 Test: Scones and Scoundrels.

My Book, The Movie: Scones and Scoundrels.

The Page 69 Test: Crewel and Unusual.

The Page 69 Test: Heather and Homicide.

Q&A with Molly MacRae.

Writers Read: Molly MacRae (July 2024).

The Page 69 Test: Come Shell or High Water.

My Book, The Movie: Come Shell or High Water.

--Marshal Zeringue