Jack Skillingstead

Jack Skillingstead’s Harbinger was nominated for a Locus Award for best first novel. His second, Life on the Preservation, was a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award. He has published more than forty short stories to critical acclaim and was short-listed for the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. His writing has been translated internationally.

Skillingstead’s new novel is The Chaos Function.

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

I like to keep a couple of books going at once, plus whatever random selections I take to bed. Most recently, for our Science Book Club, I read Timefulness: How Thinking Like A Geologist Can Help Save The World. Marcia Bjornerud is a very good writer, her prose is clean and her personality shines through. The early parts of the book are heavy on the science of geology, which I found a bit of a hard go, but it was good for me. The last couple of chapters are absolute knockouts. Part philosophy of time and how our modern world isolates us from a sense of being part of its flow, and part an examination of the history of climate change as it is revealed to us in the geological record.

I’m also reading a new novel by Ted Kosmatka, a far future adventure and examination of a society literally stratified within immense towers. This one is still in manuscript form, and it’s a terrific read.

A couple of weeks ago I finished a long biography: Leonardo da Vinci, by Walter Isaacson. I love reading about painters and artists in general. This bio was packed with great details about Leonardo’s life and times that I’d had no clue about. For instance, Leonardo’s famous notebooks contained some fiction, most interestingly notes and descriptive passages for a planned novella that he never quite got around to writing. Well, he was famous for not finishing projects, even as the projects the did finish are towering works of genius. Anyway, the proposed novella is about the end of the world by apocalyptic flood. When I posted about this on Facebook, Gordon Van Gelder, publisher of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction directed my attention to The Deluge, a “science-fantasy” novel some enterprising editor back in 1954 cobbled together using Leonardo’s original writings and published it as a mass market paperback with a lurid cover. “…a powerful and violent story of life and love in a time of blazing turmoil and savage upheaval!” I might do a little essay for F&SF’s Curiosities department.

Visit Jack Skillingstead's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ayesha Harruna Attah

Ayesha Harruna Attah is the author of three novels: Harmattan Rain, nominated for the 2010 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize; Saturday's Shadows, shortlisted for the Kwani? Manuscript Project in 2013; and The Hundred Wells of Salaga.

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

I just finished Bisi Adjapon’s Of Women and Frogs, a novel about a girl’s sexual and emotional awakening in a world where the adults can’t stop lying to her about life. Esi is a feisty half-Ghanaian half-Nigerian girl who questions everything she sees. Her father has mistresses and yet chastises his daughters for having boyfriends. She is caught between adoring her father and loathing him for his hypocrisy. Her intelligence means she’s privy to the secrets everyone around her is keeping, and yet, a big secret is also being kept from her, that of her mother’s whereabouts. This book doesn’t hold back on the juicy details that come with Esi’s awakening and growing up, while highlighting the political upheaval Ghana goes through in its early post-colonial years. Adjapon’s skill is in making us laugh one minute, and then crushing our hearts the next. Highly recommend this book.

Visit Ayesha Harruna Attah's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Mariah Stewart

Mariah Stewart is the award-winning New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of numerous novels and several novellas and short stories. A native of Hightstown, New Jersey, she lives with her husband and two rambunctious rescue dogs amid the rolling hills of Chester County, Pennsylvania, where she savors country life and tends her gardens while she works on her next novel.

Stewart's new novel is The Goodbye Café, book three in The Hudson Sisters Series.

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

I love thrillers – suspense – police procedurals – mysteries. I thought I’d read just about everyone but then I stumbled over John Sandford and slapped myself on the forehead. How had I missed John Sandford? I’d picked up one book in the supermarket – we live in the country and there is no such thing as a local bookstore – on a day I had nothing to read and snow was in the forecast. I wasn’t aware the book was part of a series, but by the time I’d finished it – the following day, by the way, time off for eating and sleeping only – I wanted all the books in the Prey series and I wanted them right then and there. Accepting the sad fact that even I could read only one book at a time (I do read really really fast!), I started ordering them three at a time. My plan was to read three books/week. That’s worked out pretty well, actually.

So I’ve gone from the first book in the series (Rules of Prey) straight on through to Twisted Prey (and yes, I’ve preordered Neon Prey, which goes on sale on April 23). So what, you ask, is the big deal? Sandford begins each book with a hook, and with fewer words than one might expect, you’re immediately into the story, right there whether in the midst of a cold, bitter Minnesota winter or a hot, muggy Minneapolis summer. The characters are so strong and so well-defined, you know them, from womanizer Lucas Davenport to the crew who works with and for him. He can be a jerk, yes, I realize that, but he’s written with such humor and humanity, I can’t hate him for it. Actually, I have a sort of crush on him, truth be told. Besides, he does grow and change as the series progresses, marrying a surgeon who is very much a feminist and who puts an end to his days as a player.

Sandford’s characters, like his plots, are multi-dimensional. The bad guys are really bad, but they’re never clichés and they don’t always behave the way you expect. As first a Minneapolis detective, and later as head of the Minnesota Bureau of Investigative Apprehension, Davenport is a stone-cold killer when he has to be, but he’s also a man with a heart so soft, he brings home an orphaned twelve-year old girl (he and his wife adopt her). In another book, he angsts for days after he meets the five year old child whose mother had been murdered. He’s also smart and savvy and might be the sharpest knife in the block.

Some books in the series are better than others, admittedly, but they’re all worth a read. I’m disappointed there’s only one more book to go – I hate to see my time with Davenport and company come to an end. But I’ve heard the other series is great too. I’m going to have to check it out. This detective, Virgil Flowers, sounds like a guy I’d like.

Visit Mariah Stewart's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Samantha Downing

Samantha Downing currently lives in New Orleans, where she is furiously typing away on her next thrilling standalone.

My Lovely Wife is her first novel.

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

Right now I’m reading Milkman by Anna Burns, novel that recently won the Man Booker Prize. Immediately I was struck by the language, which both intrigued me and drew me in. The female narrator is eighteen years old and is dealing with unwanted advances from an older man. All women can identify with this at some level, especially at such a young age when you are insecure and unsure of how to handle the situation. This is an enlightening book on so many levels. I didn’t expect that and am delighted by it. I love being surprised by a book.

Visit Samantha Downing's website.

The Page 69 Test: My Lovely Wife.

--Marshal Zeringue

Joy Fielding

Joy Fielding is the New York Times bestselling author of Someone Is Watching, Now You See Her, Still Life, Mad River Road, See Jane Run, and other acclaimed novels. She divides her time between Toronto and Palm Beach, Florida.

Fielding's latest novel is All the Wrong Places.

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

I've recently discovered Swedish writer, Fredrik Backman, and am greedily devouring all his books. A friend recommended Beartown, the story of a small town whose worship of its high school hockey team is put to the test by a shocking act of violence, which I thought was one of the best books I've ever read. I've since read A Man Called Ove, Britt-Marie Was Here, and The Deal of a Lifetime and Other Stories. I've also got his latest, Us Against You, a sequel to Beartown, that I'm looking forward to.

I've also recently finished David Sederis's collection of humorous essays called Calypso, Kristin Hannah's The Nightingale, and am currently reading Michelle Obama's beautifully written book, Becoming.

Learn more about the book and author at Joy Fielding's website.

My Book, The Movie: All the Wrong Places.

The Page 69 Test: All the Wrong Places.

--Marshal Zeringue

Karen Odden

Karen Odden's interest in the Victorian era goes back to her New York University doctoral dissertation, which explored how the medical, parliamentary, and literary representations of nineteenth-century railway disasters helped to create a discourse out of which Freud and others fashioned their ideas of “trauma.”

Her first book, A Lady in the Smoke, was a USA Today Bestseller and won the 2017 New Mexico-Arizona award for eBook Fiction.

Odden's new novel is A Dangerous Duet.

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

I just finished reading several books, all of which I’d recommend, for each has fed my writing spirit. I am currently writing my third book, A Trace of Deceit, and with roughly 80% written, I feel like the Kraken with that giant maw, gulping inspiration and energy from all sorts of directions.

One book is Miss Burma, an historical novel by Charmaine Craig, who came to Phoenix to speak. She shared that she drew upon her own family’s story for this book: her mother was “Miss Burma” (as in the tiara-and-sash variety) and a highly public and political figure. I knew very little about the country itself—I had to pull out a map to follow parts of the plot—and (much like Pachinko) this novel takes us across generations, beginning in pre-WWII. My novel A Dangerous Duet takes place in 1875 London, and I know how hard it is to build a convincing world on the page; Craig does a lovely job with Rangoon, particularly with respect to architecture, tastes, and smells.

A second book: The Lost Art of Listening. I sometimes find parenting books tedious or too “pop”; but this one challenged me in productive ways. It positions listening as an intentional act, offering both some astute psychological insights about what sort of emotional baggage (anxieties, mistaken beliefs) prevents us from being good listeners, as well as practical suggestions for cultivating our abilities. (The section on listening to teens was particularly useful!) This book fed several of the characters I’m writing now, particularly my next heroine, Annabel Rowe, who must both challenge her unconscious assumptions and listen beyond the words to find the truth about her brother’s past.

Third book: Inside the Victorian Home: A Portrait of Domestic Life in Victorian England. This is one of those books on my research shelf that I reread periodically because it has all kinds of juicy tidbits about London houses and objects. It theorizes the relationships between physical spaces and Victorian social norms, such as the separation of work and home and of parents and children. It discusses mundane objects such as counterpanes, towel rails, bed pockets made of Japanese fans, wardrobes with shelves (there were no hangers until the 1900s), and bed curtains, including whether the latter protected one from nighttime miasmas or trapped them inside with the hapless sleeper!

Fourth book: I’m rereading (for the third or fourth time) Geraldine Brooks’s first novel, Year of Wonders, which is probably one of my favorite historical novels. It is set in 1666 in England and told from the perspective of a young woman who lives in a town that sequesters itself from the rest of the world to keep the plague from spreading. (This novel has some elements in common with the WWI version of this plot, about the Spanish Flu epidemic, in Thomas Mullen’s The Last Town on Earth, which was also very good.) Brooks won the 2005 Pulitzer for March, which represents the story of Mr. March (from Little Women), but Year is still my favorite of her books.

Visit Karen Odden's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Karen Odden and Rosy.

My Book, The Movie: A Dangerous Duet.

The Page 69 Test: A Dangerous Duet.

--Marshal Zeringue

Amber Royer

Amber Royer writes fun science fiction involving chocolate, aliens, lovesick AIs, time travel, and more. She teaches enrichment / continuing education creative writing classes for both teens and adults at UT Arlington.

Royer's new novel is Pure Chocolate.

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

I just finished Twain's Feast: Searching for America's Lost Foods in the Footsteps of Samuel Clemens by Andrew Beahrs. Twain was definitely an early influence on my sense of humor. ("The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calavaras County" is the first short story I can clearly remember reading.) So it’s been interesting learning more about him as a person (I knew a bit, like that Twain was a steamboat pilot, but I underestimated how dangerous that occupation was – and understanding that gives the fact that he chose “Mark Twain,” which basically meant safe depths, as his pen name more profound), and seeing a critical look at the times he was living in and his complicated context within those times. This book starts with a list of foods Twain said he enjoyed. Then it explores history in the context of those foods. I’ve always felt that food is a good entry into understanding any time period or culture. (I write sci-fi, and I’ve actually taken the time to develop culinary traditions for the invented cultures my alien characters belong to. It makes them have so much more context, and makes their invented planets seem so much more real.)

I’ve also been binge-reading cookbooks, since my husband and I have been working up a revised and expanded version of the chocolate-paired-with-herbs cookbook we self-published back when we were doing events for the local herb society. One of the most fascinating was Michael Ruhlman’s Ratio. It’s a book about principles. Knowing the basic ratios that will give you different doughs, batters, stocks and sauces allows you to insert your own preferred ingredients to create unique recipes. It also teaches you how to look at a recipe and figure out how to scale things up and down. I recommend reading it cover to cover. It will change the way you think about food.

I did a reading out of Free Chocolate at the Dallas Chocolate Festival, and I met the guys from Dandelion Chocolate, a craft chocolate company out of San Francisco. They have a book out now called Making Chocolate: From Bean to Bar to S'more. It actually goes into the nuts and bolts of chocolate making, with detailed photographs, charts and graphs. It also talks about the creativity and innovation that sometimes goes into the process on a small business scale, because some chocolate-processing equipment is dang expensive. It’s a compelling read, and did I mention the gorgeous photographs? Because they will make you hungry.

On the fiction side of things, I just finished All Systems Red by Martha Wells, the first in her Murderbot Diaries series. They’re novellas, which make them quick reads, and I have an hour commute on the days I teach, so audiobooks really help me get in reading time. It was cool from a fellow-writer perspective to see how much sympathy and tragic backstory she wove into a story about a cybernetic being meant to be a killing machine that would really just rather watch the entertainment feeds – without slowing down the story.

In hard copy, I’m currently working through Asimov’s Foundation Series. It is one of those classics that I somehow never got around to reading. So far, it sounds like they’re building Wikipedia, though that’s just part of laying the groundwork for a much larger conflict. I intend to study it to see how the galactic-scale worldbuilding was done but I’m having a little trouble with the fatalism implied by psychohistory. I’ve always said that genre is a conversation, so you need to be conversant with what other authors have said in the past to say something new and relevant.

Visit Amber Royer's website.

The Page 69 Test: Free Chocolate.

My Book, The Movie: Pure Chocolate.

The Page 69 Test: Pure Chocolate.

--Marshal Zeringue

Vanessa McGrady

Vanessa McGrady spends time thinking about feminist parenting, high-vibrational food, and badass ways to do things better. She often wonders why people aren’t more freaked out about plastic in the oceans. Whether in New York, the Pacific Northwest, or Glendale, California, she is grateful to call each place home.

After two years of waiting to adopt—slogging through paperwork and bouncing between hope and despair—a miracle finally happened for McGrady. Her sweet baby, Grace, was a dream come true. Then McGrady made a highly uncommon gesture: when Grace’s biological parents became homeless, McGrady invited them to stay.

McGrady's new book is Rock Needs River: A Memoir About a Very Open Adoption.

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

I’m furiously consuming more memoirs. Right now I’m ‘halfway through Educated by Tara Westover, but I just finished A River Could be a Tree by Angela Himsel and Maid by Stephanie Land. I’d also recommend Priestdaddy and The Glass Castle. It’s sort of horrifying to think how tough it is for some people to just survive childhood. What a triumph it is to be able to get that story in the world. I bow down to these authors who made it happen.

Visit Vanessa McGrady's website.

My Book, The Movie: Rock Needs River.

The Page 99 Test: Rock Needs River.

--Marshal Zeringue

Katia Lief (aka Karen Ellis)

Karen Ellis is a pseudonym of author Katia Lief. She is a member of Mystery Writers of America, International Thriller Writers and The Authors Guild. She lives with her family in Brooklyn, NY.

Her new novel is Last Night.

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

When I realized that I’d never read Shirley Jackson’s seminal story “The Lottery,” I got a copy of the collection The Lottery and Other Stories. Because this story has been embedded in the literary zeitgeist since it was first published in 1948, I forgave myself for thinking I’d read it—I had seen a short film based on it, so I knew the essentials of the story—but now I craved the experience of reading it in the author’s own words.

I turned to the table of contents, found the titular story at the very end, and started reading. It was short, clear, clean—and powerful. Spoiler alert: A housewife in a small town waits with her neighbors in an annual rite in which someone is randomly selected as a sacrifice believed to bring farming luck. When to her horror her name is chosen, her friends and neighbors gather round and stone her to death.

Jackson’s tour de force in “The Lottery” was showing the shattering effects of rote social custom and thought on the individual. It’s a theme that she revisited in many of the collection’s other stories, and that feels eerily relevant today.

Next up on my TBR pile is Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life by Ruth Franklin. I’m so curious to learn about the woman behind all that dark brilliance.

Visit Katia Lief/Karen Ellis's website.

The Page 69 Test: Last Night.

--Marshal Zeringue

Devin Murphy

Devin Murphy grew up near Buffalo, NY in a family with Dutch roots. He holds a BA/MA from St. Bonaventure University, an MFA from Colorado State University, a PhD from the University of Nebraska—Lincoln, and is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Bradley University. He has worked various jobs in national parks around the country and once had a three–year stint at sea that led him to over fifty countries on all seven continents. His fiction has appeared in over 60 literary journals and anthologies, including The Missouri Review, Glimmer Train, The Chicago Tribune, New Stories from the Midwest, and Confrontation. He lives with his wife and children in Chicago.

Murphy's new novel is Tiny Americans.

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

The last few novels I’ve read were all wonderful.

The Vegetarian, by Han Kang, was certainly the most unsettling book I’ve read in a long time. My wife read it first and handed it over when she finished with this sort of concerned expression. The book is broken into three sections that each take a different path into a character’s extreme mental illness. At the start of the story, the focal character can’t get enough sunlight, and is constantly bearing herself to the sky, which was such a strong image that I think of her every time I feel the sun on my own skin now.

Elise Hooper’s Learning to See, about Dorothea Lange, delivers a fascinating look at a rebel who challenges a society set up to suppress women by developing an aesthetic that hews toward the honest beauty and terror found in a single face. Lange becomes the perfect tour guide through the era of the Roaring 20’s, the Great Depression, and The Japanese Internment, asking all relevant questions: What do we do from a place of comfort when we see injustice being done to others? What value does art hold in the face of pain and loss? How do we deal with having cameras in our pockets that both capture a moment and keep us from it? This is a fantastic historical novel that shows off the impressive talent Hooper has for compelling stories.

Lisa Duffy’s This is Home is a phenomenal novel which reveals such unique and endearing characters struggling through upheaval and loss in order to forge the true shape of their family. They face each day with humor, grit, and vulnerability that draws the reader in. Libby, Quinn, Bent, and even the world’s smelliest dog rush to life on these pages and have carved out a place for themselves forever in my imagination. Duffy is a master of writing hope into heartbreak.

I could keep going. I’ve had a lot of great reads lately. There, There, by Tommy Orange, where Native American culture and history are put into gritty contemporary characters who we see interact and interweave in a plot that hammers all through the story, and all through Oakland.

Finally, I was drawn to Where the Crawdads Sing because of Owens' background as a naturalist, and man, does she deliver a stunning look at the natural world of the Carolina coastal region as the backdrop to great love story and murder mystery with a huge twist.

Visit Devin Murphy's website.

My Book, The Movie: Tiny Americans.

--Marshal Zeringue