Eric Jay Dolin

Eric Jay Dolin is the best-selling author of Leviathan and Brilliant Beacons. His new book is Black Flags, Blue Waters: The Epic History of America's Most Notorious Pirates. Dolin and his family live in Marblehead, Massachusetts, from which the pirate John Quelch departed in 1703, and returned to in 1704, only to be hanged in Boston.

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

I always pick book topics that I know little about. That is because, I want to stay interested and engaged in the researching and writing process, which takes roughly 18 months to 2 years from start to finish. By not knowing much about a topic, you are guaranteed to find surprises virtually every day, and that keeps it exciting, and, hopefully, that excitement translates to the written page.

Since I know little about my topics, almost all of my reading is focused on books related to the topic I am working on at the moment. That leaves me hardly any time for pleasure reading. But, there is one way in which I get outside of my bubble. I am often asked to write blurbs for upcoming history and natural history publications. This introduces me to some great books (at least the ones I blurb; there are quite a few books I am asked to blurb, but don’t because I didn’t find the books very appealing).

Three of the most recent books I blurbed are Thor Hanson’s, Buzz: The Nature and Necessity of Honey Bees (2018); Ben Goldfarb’s, Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter (2018); and Brian Murphy and Toula Vlahou’s, Adrift: A True Story of Tragedy on the Icy Atlantic and the One Who Lived to Tell about It (2018). The blurbs are below, and I think (or hope) they give you a flavor of the books.

Buzz: "As he did for feathers and seeds, Thor Hanson has written a wonderfully engaging work of natural history that will delight readers with its elegant prose, surprising stories, and deep humanity. Bees, so important to life on earth, are fortunate to have someone as passionate and knowledgeable as Hanson tell the tale of their evolutionary past, turbulent present, and precarious future. After reading Buzz, you will look at bees with a profound mixture of awe and gratitude.”

Eager: “In this beautifully written tribute to beavers, Ben Goldfarb paints a vivid and captivating portrait of two of nature's most fascinating species. Seamlessly combining history, ecology, biology, politics, and compelling stories of those battling over the proper role of beavers in today's anthropocentric world, Eager resoundingly proves that these magnificent rodents do indeed matter a great deal. In so doing, this gem of a book offers hope not only for the beavers' future, but also our own.”

Adrift: “The dramatic story of Thomas W. Nye, the sole survivor of the John Rutledge's tragic encounter with an iceberg in 1856, is beautifully rendered, gripping, and emotionally engaging from beginning to end. Murphy and Vlahou perform a literary magic trick of sorts, transporting readers into another era and enabling them to see and feel what it was like to travel across the ice-choked north Atlantic in the depths of winter, and confront the ultimate nightmare scenario -- a sinking ship in the middle of the ocean with no help in sight. Adrift is a chilling and searingly memorable tale of unimaginable suffering and one man's bittersweet triumph over the odds.”

So, that’s what I have been reading lately.

Visit Eric Jay Dolin's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Lisa Black

Lisa Black spent the five happiest years of her life in a morgue. As a forensic scientist at the Cuyahoga County Coroner’s Office she analyzed many forms of trace evidence as well as crime scenes. Now she’s a certified latent print examiner and CSI in Florida and is the author of thirteen traditionally published novels. Some of which have been translated into six other languages, one has been optioned for film and one reached the New York Times bestseller’s list. The latest is Suffer the Children, which involves forensic scientist Maggie Gardiner and homicide detective Jack Renner in a series of deaths inside a center for violent children.

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

My most recent release, Suffer the Children, has my forensic scientist Maggie and homicide detective Jack investigating a series of murders at a juvenile detention facility. This facility is trying very hard to be forward-thinking and progressive in providing the best programs for the children in its care, mostly teenagers, most of whom have committed violent acts including murder. So not having any children of my own I had to do a great deal of research in violent children, the treatment of violent children, dysfunctional families, foster programs and juvenile detention facilities--but one book that stuck in my head the most was called One Small Boat. This memoir of a foster mother was written by Kathy Harrison. She and her husband had a daughter of their own but took in a lot of foster girls over the years. They stuck with girls because it just made things easier in terms of sleeping arrangements, clothing, toys etc. This book convinced me that every child’s story is different so every child needs a situation that’s tailored to their issues. Despite the grim-sounding outline it was a fun book to read; the narrator has a very no-nonsense way of talking that’s human and relatable.

Among her charges were many young orphans--for instance there was a girl that was literally feral, not quite having been abused so much is simply neglected, raised in a cabin that she wasn’t able to leave. She knew very few words and had apparently never had a bath in her entire life.

Then there was a long-running case of a girl of about six, who had been molested by her mother‘s boyfriend. The mother had immediately dropped the boyfriend but was a disinterested (to put it mildly) woman who simply didn’t want to raise a child but was trying to hang onto custody only at the behest of her mother; the grandmother was quite wealthy and couldn’t stand the embarrassment of having such an unproductive daughter. This went back-and-forth for a while because of course the focus in foster care is always to try to reunite the family, if it all possible. But the child harbored such resentment at her mother, who she believed knew about this molestation, that a reunion wasn’t truly wished for on either side. Then just as the author decides to adopt this girl, the girl’s father reappears.

Another little girl had schizophrenic parents, who adored her. But occasionally they would go off their meds, and the neighbors would find the girl hungry and cold and dirty out in the hallway. Yet her parents loved her and wanted her back so she was an odd combination of spoiled and neglected at the same time.

Then two little sisters found living with their abusive family in the back of a van. On the surface their manners were perfect, but in secret the older one acted out. The younger one was an angelic-looking thing with blonde ringlets and huge blue eyes, but the author saw a budding sociopath. The girl was adopted, and as much as the author felt she may be releasing a wolf into a group of sheep, she had to say nothing and err on the side of hope.

The stories were as fascinating as they were individual, and gave me a new appreciation for anyone who would have the love and patience and understanding to be a foster parent.

Learn more about the book and author at Lisa Black's website.

The Page 69 Test: Suffer the Children.

--Marshal Zeringue

William Boyle

William Boyle is from Brooklyn, New York. His debut novel, Gravesend, was published as #1,000 in the Rivages/Noir collection in France, where it was nominated for the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière. Gravesend is currently shortlisted for the John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger in the UK and will be reissued by Pegasus Crime in the US in September 2018. Boyle is also the author of a book of short stories, Death Don’t Have No Mercy, and of another novel, Tout est Brisé (Everything is Broken). His most recent novel, The Lonely Witness, is out now from Pegasus Crime. A new novel, A Friend is a Gift You Give Yourself, is forthcoming in March 2019. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi.

Recently I asked Boyle about what he was reading. His reply:

I was in a reading funk—kept starting things and putting them down—and then Elle Nash’s Animals Eat Each Other broke me out of it. I picked it up because it’s got a killer cover by Matthew Revert and I’ll pick up anything with a Revert cover; I was glad to find killer prose to match. Some books just hit you at the right time and this one has that raw, desperate feeling I long for in fiction. I don’t think Elle Nash would describe herself as a noir writer, but this sure feels like noir to me: doom rules the mood, to crib a line from Barry Hannah. It reminded me at various times of Susanna Moore’s In the Cut, Vicki Hendricks’s Miami Purity, and Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son, with maybe a dash of Jean Rhys mixed in there. A compelling-as-hell look at desire and obsession. So much of the tension comes from the tautness of the writing. Lines like this continue to haunt me: “She named me Lilith because it was what I wanted to become. I wanted to know what it would be like to carry a bad habit all the way through.” The book feels like stumbling in and out of the unnamed narrator’s secret lives.

Visit William Boyle's website.

My Book, The Movie: Gravesend and The Lonely Witness.

The Page 69 Test: Gravesend and The Lonely Witness.

--Marshal Zeringue

S. M. Thayer

S. M. Thayer is a pseudonym for an award-winning fiction writer and McDowell Fellow whose work has appeared in numerous publications and received several Pushcart Prize nominations. A native of New York, Thayer lived for decades in the Washington, DC, metropolitan region before moving to rural Virginia and earning an MFA from Virginia Tech.

His debut novel is I Will Never Leave You.

Recently I asked Thayer about what he was reading. His reply:

The Fall Guy, by James Lasdun

This was the third time I’ve read the novel since it was published in 2016. For me, it’s that rare breed of novel that works both as intelligent literary fiction and an honest-to-goodness page-turning psychological thriller. I just finished writing the first draft of a new novel so, before going to work on revisions, I wanted to dive into something that could show me yet again what I should be aiming for. Lasdun’s prose, imagery, dialogue, pacing, and his sense of time and place, are impeccable. Like many (every?) good psychological thriller, envy and illicit love propel The Fall Guy’s plot, but I’m equally drawn to Lasdun’s exploration on “how [money] affects the consciousness of people who have it, or work with it.”

The Favorite Daughter, by Kaira Rouda

I was given an advanced copy of The Favorite Daughter, which will be published next year, and tore through it with shocking quickness. Rouda’s got a way with writing totally compelling, totally shocking characters. Like Rouda’s previous novel (Best Day Ever), the novel’s central character is a narcissistic psychopath who cackles with malicious verve. The weird thing is, despite their many and obvious flaws, as a reader I root for Rouda’s psychopaths almost up to the end. As a writer, one of the things I struggle with is writing sympathetic characters, so I paid attention to how Rouda made me feel so close to her characters. I hoped I learned a few things. It’s a tough balancing act—trying to create a character underhanded enough to effectively manipulate others and yet likeable enough so the reader doesn’t throw down his or her books in disgust. At this, Rouda’s a master!

“Dark vs. Darker” by Leslie Pietrzyk (essay)

I just stumbled upon this essay tonight but I have a feeling I’ll be thinking about it for several weeks—especially once I start revising the draft of my next novel. Pietrzyk, an award-winning writer who teaches in a low-residential MFA Program, muses about how all the best writing originates from some deep, dark place inside each writer. When thinking about some of her novels she’d been unable to sell to publishers, she concludes that that they failed because she didn’t dig to the darker places all of us have within us.

One paragraph that especially got to me was this:

Oh, I’m a hundred percent right; the best writing comes from the dark place. As a teacher, I’ve got to tell them that. But as a writer, I know we don’t muck down there all the time. I mean, there are funny books, and skillful stories that don’t require guts splayed on paper, and practiced writers learn to distract readers with style! Intellect! Tricks! All sorts of glittery baubles work, or seem to, keeping the writer safely distant from the dark place while getting published.

Believe it or not, I once considered myself a pretty clever, intelligent, witty writer. Prior to writing I Will Never Leave You, I wrote aggressively experimental novels stuffed up the wazzoo with bells and whistles and parlor tricks. None of those previous manuscripts got close to being published, and still I clung to my literary baubles. I Will Never Leave You was the first novel I consciously wrote in a realistic style. Because I didn’t try to hold readers’ attention with bells and whistles, I dug deeper, and darker. I hope I remember this lesson as I plow forward with the next novel.

Visit S. M. Thayer's website.

The Page 69 Test: I Will Never Leave You.

--Marshal Zeringue

Chad Zunker

Chad Zunker studied journalism at The University of Texas, where he was also on the football team. He’s worked for some of the most powerful law firms in the country and invented baby products that are now sold all over the world. He has wanted to write full time since he took his first practice hit as a skinny freshman walk-on from a 6’5, 240 pound senior All-American safety — which crushed both him and his feeble NFL dreams. He lives in Austin with his wife, Katie, and their three daughters.

Zunker's new novel is Hunt The Lion, the third Sam Callahan thriller.

Recently I asked the author about what he was reading. His reply:

My Sister’s Grave by Robert Dugoni

This book is the first in Dugoni’s phenomenally bestselling Tracy Crosswhite series. Dugoni and I are part of the same wonderful publishing house, Thomas & Mercer, and I just discovered I’ll be working with the same developmental editor as Dugoni on a new series my publisher will be launching next year. So I wanted to give it a read. With an intriguing protagonist who is haunted by the shocking death of her sister twenty years ago—whose body was recently discovered—the book is everything you could want in a great thriller. It’s no wonder Dugoni has sold more than three million copies in the series so far.

Visit Chad Zunker's website.

My Book, The Movie: Hunt The Lion.

--Marshal Zeringue

Caz Frear

Caz Frear grew up in Coventry, England, and spent her teenage years dreaming of moving to London and writing a novel. After fulfilling her first dream, it wasn’t until she moved back to Coventry thirteen years later that the second finally came true. She has a degree in History & Politics, and when she’s not agonizing over snappy dialogue or incisive prose, she can be found shouting at Arsenal football matches or holding court in the pub on topics she knows nothing about.

Frear's new novel is Sweet Little Lies.

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

I’m currently reading Skin Deep by the fantastic Liz Nugent. Skin Deep tells the story of Cordelia Russell, an Irish woman passing herself off as an English socialite on the French Riviera. Nugent is the new queen of unlikeable heroines, in my humble opinion, and she’s the queen of the deliciously dark first line too:

I wondered when rigor mortis would set in, or if it already had.

While the central mystery is who has been killed and why has Cordelia killed them, Skin Deep is far more than a classic ‘why-dunnit’ – it’s a super-smart character study, a psychologist’s dream! While Nugent doesn’t flinch from showing us the bleakest parts of human nature, she’s also careful to help us understand Cordelia, even when we want to turn away in disgust. There’s such a skill in balancing such brutality and compassion and I’m absolutely loving the Skin Deep ride so far.

Prior to this, I read The Secret Place by Tana French – the only French book to have somehow passed me by. The Secret Place focuses on the murder of a teenage boy at an exclusive Dublin school, and as with all French’s novels, it’s as much a commentary on current society and the human condition as it is a standard thriller. I’ll be honest, it probably isn’t my favourite French novel, although that’s like saying X isn’t my favourite child – I still loved it. Seriously, Tana French could write a recipe for a boiled potato and I’d probably still rave about it!

Follow Caz Frear on Twitter.

The Page 69 Test: Sweet Little Lies.

--Marshal Zeringue

Julia Buckley

Julia Buckley is a Chicago mystery author. She writes the Writer's Apprentice Series and the Undercover Dish mysteries, and is soon to launch a new series with Berkley Prime Crime.

Buckley has taught high school English for thirty years; she lives near Chicago with her husband, four cats, and a mischievous Labrador named Digby. She has two grown sons. She is a lifelong reader and a writer since around age six, when she started a notebook of poems.

Buckley's newest Writer's Apprentice mystery is A Dark and Twisting Path.

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

Probably the best book I read in the last few months was A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. The book, about a Russian Count who "Lives under house arrest for a poem deemed incendiary by The Bolsheviks" (Amazon Book Review) made wonderful fodder for the book club I started on my block, and Count Rostov was loved by all for his quick wit, his gentility, and his romantic soul. What amazed me about this second book by Amor Towles was that it was so many things at once, and yet it was never distractingly digressive. And while the main character, Alexander Rostov, is strong enough to command the reader's attention throughout, Towles offers a whole universe of eccentric supporting characters whose stories are laugh-out-loud funny in some cases and desperately sad in others. I am thrilled to hear that it has been adapted for film and that Kenneth Branagh will play the lead role.

Another powerful book I read recently was written by a thirteen-year-old Japanese boy with such severe autism that he cannot speak, but he found a way to communicate with the world in The Reason I Jump. I'm quoting my own Goodreads review here, in part: "[He used] an alphabet grid to painstakingly construct words, sentences and thoughts that he is unable to say out loud," but he was able to think about his own thinking and behavior in order to attempt to explain it to other people. This meta-cognition would be remarkable for anyone, but for someone so young, and with such challenges, it is awe-inspiring.

One of the most powerful passages, for me, was this revelation: "The truth is, we'd love to be with other people. But because things never, ever go right, we end up getting used to being alone... whenever I overhear someone saying how much I prefer being on my own, it makes me feel desperately lonely."

While these two books had little in common, starting with the fact that one is fact and one is fiction, they both provided one thing: a main character who helped me to see the world in a different way, and whose isolation made me question the ways that we judge the quality of our lives.

Visit Julia Buckley's website and blog, Mysterious Musings.

My Book, The Movie: A Dark and Twisting Path.

--Marshal Zeringue

David Gordon

David Gordon's books include The Serialist, Mystery Girl, and White Tiger on Snow Mountain. His new novel is The Bouncer.

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

During the school year, which is about to start, I rarely have time to read for fun. During the summer, when I am traveling and working on my own stuff, I tend to have a few books on the go at once: one by the bed, one in my bag for the subway or waiting rooms, one that I am saving for a long flight or a day at the beach. Also I tend to mix a heavier book, that I read slowly and ponder, or nap over, with a faster, funnier or more thrilling one. Here are the handful that I have around right now:

Simenon - a biography by Pierre Assouline. I am a long time fan of Simenon, who created one of the great detective series with his character Inspector Maigret, and also great psychological noir thrillers, which he cranked out by the dozen, often writing a whole novel in fifteen days. He was also a kind of maniac, compulsive about writing, sex, money, smoking, travel. So when I came across this biography in a used bookshop, I decided to check it out. A fascinating character. A monster in many ways. And a genius.

Full Moon - PG Wodehouse. I am pretty much always reading Wodehouse. It is impossible not to be happy reading him. In his field - the comic novel, specifically farce, there really is no one comparable. It is like watching the world’s greatest magician pull off another stunning trick, a champion gymnast turn in the air or ballet dancer leap - how can you do anything but watch in wonder?

The Illogic of Kassel - Enrique Vila-Matas - How does one describe Vila-Matas? Reading his books is like being on the phone late at night with your wise, clever, funny, incredibly well-read old friend while you suspect he might be losing his mind. In this one, he is asked to participate in Documenta 13, the avant garde art fair, and eagerly accepts, since he is fascinated with the idea of contemporary art, but is dismayed to learn that he will be sitting and writing in a Chinese restaurant on the outskirts of town as a performance piece, which slowly induces both ecstasy and panic. It is like a profound theoretical and philosophical inquiry directed by Hitchcock.

The Girls of Slender Means - Muriel Spark -She is one of the greatest. I’ve never not loved on of her books and this is true to form - brilliant, witty, wicked, and weirdly spiritual. Go read all her books if you haven’t already.

Visit David Gordon's blog.

--Marshal Zeringue

Rea Frey

Rea Frey is an award-winning author of nonfiction books. She lives in Nashville with her husband and daughter.

Her new novel is Not Her Daughter.

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

Right now, I have a list a mile high of books I should/want/need to read. Currently I’m reading David Bell’s Somebody’s Daughter. (I mean his book has Daughter in the title, too, so it must be good, right?) Because I’m a bit obsessed with kidnappings, this one presents a very interesting premise: a man gets a knock on the door to discover his ex-wife. She says her 10-year-old daughter is missing. What the man doesn’t know is that the daughter is his. Or is it? It’s a fast-paced race to see who’s telling the truth and what happened to the girl. I love books that have me questioning until the very last page and David’s succinct, sparse writing and attention to action present a master class in a gripping suspense.

I also recently finished Kimberly Belle’s Three Days Missing, which is another kidnapping story about a little boy who goes missing from his summer camp. Belle creates a mother’s worst nightmare and presents twists and turns with possible motives you don’t see coming.

Visit Rea Frey's website.

My Book, The Movie: Not Her Daughter.

The Page 69 Test: Not Her Daughter.

--Marshal Zeringue

Elsa Hart

Elsa Hart was born in Rome, Italy, but her earliest memories are of Moscow, where her family lived until 1991. Since then she has lived in the Czech Republic, the U.S.A., and China. She earned a B.A. from Swarthmore College and a J.D. from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. She wrote her first novel, Jade Dragon Mountain, in the mountain borderlands of Southwest China.

Hart's latest novel is City of Ink.

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

Dune, by Frank Herbert

I write historical mysteries, but I often turn to fantasy and science fiction for lessons on how to build worlds.

The more removed a setting is from contemporary reality, the more elucidation it needs to make it navigable for readers. There is added pressure on mysteries, which work best when readers are given a fair shot at guessing the solution. A reader can’t be expected to solve a puzzle without knowing the rules. What do the characters in this setting value? What do they fear? What choices are available to them?

Great writers of science fiction and fantasy are experts at embedding descriptions of unfamiliar settings into a story. I’d been intending to read Dune for years, knowing the acclaim it has received for the sheer scope of its world-building.

Having finished it, I can see why! The brilliance of this book is in details so subtle they are easy to overlook, details of weaponry and combat, of mythology and religion, of ecology and technology. Dune is considered fundamental to its genre, and I expected to encounter more elements that have become tropes in the years since its publication. I didn’t expect to be so surprised, and I thoroughly enjoyed the jolt to my imagination.

The book I’ll be picking up next is The Invisibility Cloak by Ge Fei.

Visit Elsa Hart's website.

--Marshal Zeringue