Alex Ritany

Alex Ritany is a nonbinary Canadian artist, musician, and author of Dead Girls Don't Say Sorry, I Wish You Wouldn't, and Maybe Tomorrow I’ll Know.

Recently I asked the author about what they were reading. Ritany's reply:

For fiction:

Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells

I’m working away at the Murderbot series whenever my library has copies for me. At the moment I have just finished the first one, and it absolutely lived up to the hype. I love “robot” fiction and this take on consciousness and duty was absolutely fascinating. Plus Murderbot’s sense of humour is just awesome. I’ve had this recommended to me countless times, and honestly put off reading for so long only because I knew I’d be completely obsessed whenever I did pick it up (and I was right!), and I can’t wait to explore the rest of Wells’ work.

Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi

Anything Frankenstein is an automatic win in our house, so I knew I’d like this book even before I’d picked it up. So far it’s not disappointing me! It tackles very different themes than its namesake, but I love what this author is doing with layers of narration and exposition. It’s a more distant POV than I usually favour and the story can feel quite scattered at times, but I’m only about halfway through, so I look forward to seeing how it resolves.

For nonfiction:

Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane

This book is a deeply empathetic and informative look into the titular question: Is a river alive? Does a river have rights? What deep significance do rivers have throughout history, and what can we learn from them? It’s got absolutely gorgeous prose and features one of my favourite musicians, Cosmo Sheldrake, which was a fun surprise. I’m about a third of the way through and have a feeling that this will be one of my top nonfiction reads of the year!

Visit Alex Ritany's website.

Q&A with Alex Ritany.

The Page 69 Test: Maybe Tomorrow I'll Know.

--Marshal Zeringue

Anica Mrose Rissi

Anica Mrose Rissi is the award-winning author of more than a dozen books for kids and teens, including picture books, chapter books, middle grade, and YA. Her essays have been published by The Writer and the New York Times, and she plays fiddle in and writes lyrics for the band Owen Lake and the Tragic Loves. Rissi grew up in Maine and spent many years in New York City, where she worked as an executive editor in children’s book publishing. She currently lives in central New Jersey with her very good dog, Sweet Potato.

Rissi's new book is Girl Reflected in Knife.

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

Back in my editor days, I acquired and edited an unforgettable debut YA novel, OCD Love Story by Corey Ann Haydu. From the start, Corey has been a writer who is unafraid of letting her characters get messy—of allowing them to be fully, deeply, imperfectly human and fully, deeply, imperfectly themselves. Of letting them make big mistakes, feel big emotions, and step right into complicated situations with no easy solutions. And she does it all with gorgeous sentences, an insightful eye, and a generous heart. I went on to edit three more of Corey’s novels before I switched to the author side of the desk, and I’ve remained a huge fan of the many books she has published in the years since, from picture books to YA. This week, Little, Brown published Corey Ann Haydu’s adult debut, Mothers and Other Strangers. It’s a book about mothers and daughters, friendship, and secrets—and a few pages in, I’m already in love.

Visit Anica Mrose Rissi's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Anica Mrose Rissi & Arugula.

The Page 69 Test: Anna, Banana, and the Monkey in the Middle.

Q&A with Anica Mrose Rissi.

--Marshal Zeringue

Chris Nickson

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

Nickson's new novel, The Faces Of The Dead, is the second title in his WWII historical thriller series featuring Sergeant Cathy Marsden – a female police officer working for the Special Investigation Branch – who investigates the death of a local gangster in WWII Leeds.

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

It seems I'm never reading just one book. There's my entertainment reading downstairs, currently November Road by Lou Berney, a crime novel set in the aftermath of the JFK assassination in 1963, around New Orleans and Texas. Too early to tell where it's going, but he's a good enough writer to keep my interested. Also going through several book on Todmorden, a small town on the border of Yorkshire and Lancashire, as research for a novel I've just begun to write. It's set in 1862, and only a part of the book is set there. I've visited several times and walked the streets, imagining myself back 160 years so I can try and capture the place (even some of the street names have changed!)

Upstairs, a Georgette Heyer I've never read, The Infamous Army, all about Waterloo, and supposedly a little different from her usual romances. I'm a big fan of her writing and her impeccable research, so this should be a joy to discover.

Visit Chris Nickson's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Constant Lovers.

The Page 69 Test: The Constant Lovers.

The Page 69 Test: The Iron Water.

The Page 69 Test: The Hanging Psalm.

Q&A with Chris Nickson.

The Page 69 Test: The Molten City.

My Book, The Movie: Molten City.

Writers Read: Chris Nickson (August 2021).

The Page 69 Test: Brass Lives.

The Page 69 Test: The Blood Covenant.

The Page 69 Test: The Dead Will Rise.

Writers Read: Chris Nickson (March 2023).

The Page 69 Test: Rusted Souls.

Writers Read: Chris Nickson (September 2023).

The Page 69 Test: The Scream of Sins.

Writers Read: Chris Nickson (March 2024).

The Page 69 Test: Them Without Pain.

Writers Read: Chris Nickson (September 2024).

Writers Read: Chris Nickson (March 2025).

The Page 69 Test: No Precious Truth.

--Marshal Zeringue

Diana Awad

Diana Awad is an Arab American who grew up all over the world as the daughter of a United States Foreign Service Officer. After college, she became a local television journalist and often covered stories about violent crimes and mysterious disappearances. She eventually decided to write her own stories with unexpected endings. Awad also writes historical romance as Diana Quincy and historical mystery as D. M. Quincy. She is now happily settled in Virginia but still gets the itch to explore far-off places. When she’s not bent over her laptop, Awad reads, devours streaming thriller series, and plots her next travel adventure.

Awad's new novel is As Far as She Knew.

Recently I asked the author about what she was reading. Awad's response:

I just finished The Correspondent, an epistolary novel that unfolds completely through letters and emails. Normally, I’m not a huge fan of this format but decided to give The Correspondent, written by Virginia Evans, a try after it was highly recommended by a friend and named to a few best book of the year lists. The novel focuses on Sybil, a retired law clerk in her seventies, who documents her life through letters and texts. In these missives, she explores loss, coming to terms with grief, human connection and finding love late in life. The Correspondent is a quiet novel and it is that quietude that makes it so powerful. However, what drew me to the novel the most was its celebration of the written word and its ode to the vanishing art of letter writing.

Visit Diana Awad's website.

My Book, The Movie: As Far as She Knew.

The Page 69 Test: As Far as She Knew.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pamela Steele

Pamela Steele holds an MFA in Poetry from Spalding University. Her books include Paper Bird: Poems and Greasewood Creek. She has been awarded residencies and fellowships by the Djerassi Resident Artists Program in Woodside, California; the Hindman Settlement School Oak Ledge, in Knott County, Kentucky; the Jentel Artist Residency in Banner, Wyoming; and Fishtrap’s Gathering of Writers in Joseph, Oregon. She lives on a ranch in the high desert of Eastern Oregon.

Steele's new novel is In the Fields of Fatherless Children.

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

I haven't been finding a great deal of time to read for pleasure due to my novel release. My days are filled with last minute emails from my publisher or prospective hosts for festivals, readings, and signings. That said, I've just listened to an amazing audiobook and am glad to have a chance to recommend it, just as it was recommended to me by a writer friend: A Place Called Winter, by Patrick Gale (2016).

The novel, set in Edwardian England and Canada, is a lovely, bittersweet period piece. Harry Cane, the main character, is a quiet, routine-centered man who is self-conscious of his anxiety-induced stutter. He conscientiously follows the expectations of his family and proper society. It is only after he marries and fathers a child that he finds himself attracted to another man and is able to precariously acknowledge his sexuality. The men enter into a passionate, disastrous affair. When a family member discovers what society considers and illicit relationship, Harry is forced to leave his home for Saskatchewan, where he, unaccustomed to manual labor, begins proving up a homestead with intent to send for his wife and daughter when he owns the land outright. Of course, there is an obstacle-creating bad guy who interferes with Harry's try at living a peaceful, honest life.

When the story moved to Winter, a town on the cinematic Canadian prairie, I began to envision the Terrence Malick film Days of Heaven. I remembered the lonely and beautiful landscape of Denis Johnson's Train Dreams, especially the movie adaptation. In fact, Paul, Harry's nearest neighbor, reminds me a great deal of Robert, the protagonist of Johnson's novel.

The novel's plot is well-paced with adeptly situated flashbacks. For instance, the story begins post WWI and in an insane asylum where Harry is a patient. The reader gets a sense of the telescoping nature of time, especially when war looms and love seems delicate and just out of reach.

The writing in A Place Called Winter is gorgeous, and, as I understand, the story is an echo of the life of one of Gayle's grandfathers. It carries two of my favorite themes: resilience and, in the absence of familial support, the cobbling together of a new one. I grew to love Harry very much and found my stoic self crying on several occasions while listening.

Follow Pamela Steele on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.

My Book, The Movie: In The Fields of Fatherless Children.

Q&A with Pamela Steele.

--Marshal Zeringue

Mark Stevens

Mark Stevens is the author of The Flynn Martin Thriller series including No Lie Lasts Forever (2025) and Two Truths and A Lie (2026); The Fireballer (2023), and The Allison Coil Mystery Series including Antler Dust, Buried by the Roan, Trapline, Lake of Fire, and The Melancholy Howl.

Buried by the Roan, Trapline, and Lake of Fire were all finalists for the Colorado Book Award. Trapline won.

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

The collaborative writing team of Linda Keir (Keir Graff and Linda Joffe Hull) have a new heart-pounding thriller out called I Did Not Kill My Husband. Think of the old television show The Fugitive (or the movie of the same name starring Harrison Ford) but with a female lead and all the modern-day trappings of social media. One big chase, start to finish.

More of a slow burn but with atmosphere in abundance, The Lost House by Melissa Larsen. Set in Iceland, a murder mystery built around a decades-old tragedy that has haunted a fractured family.

Matt Goldman’s mysteries are always solidly built and The Murder Show is no exception. The main character is a show runner for a television series called, yes, The Murder Show. He’s desperate for a new crime to feature in the television production, so why not dig back into the sad, long-ago murder of a high-school friend and see what he can dig up? Very enjoyable.

Don Winslow’s The Final Score. Six beautifully varied crime fiction stories. Nobody pulls you in like Winslow.

And I recently read George Orwell’s Road to Wigan Pier. The first two-thirds show off Orwell’s reporting and writing skills as he chronicles the life of coal miners in northern England nearly a century ago. The second half devolves into Orwell’s rambling thoughts on socialism. But the first part is worth reading for Orwell’s colorful eye for detail and the empathy Orwell brings to the page.

Visit Mark Stevens's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Fireballer.

Q&A with Mark Stevens.

My Book, The Movie: The Fireballer.

Writers Read: Mark Stevens (June 2025).

The Page 69 Test: No Lie Lasts Forever.

My Book, The Movie: No Lie Lasts Forever.

--Marshal Zeringue

Karen Robards

Karen Robards is the New York Times, USA TODAY and Publishers Weekly bestselling author of fifty novels and one novella. She is the winner of six Silver Pen awards and numerous other awards.

Her new novel is The Moonlight Runner.

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

Thanks to the movie that just came out, what I’m reading, or re-reading, right now is Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, one of my very favorite books of all time. I first read it when I was around ten years old. I’d been sent to stay with my grandparents while my parents traveled. Theirs was a big old house in the country and it seems to me in retrospect that it rained the entire time I was there. Which meant I was trapped indoors with little to do except explore the house, so explore I did, all the way up to the cobweb-festooned attic. In the attic I discovered a trunk filled with old books. I was already an avid reader of Nancy Drew and that type of mostly age-appropriate fiction, but what I found in that trunk was a literary revelation. Gone With The Wind, Rebecca, Jane Eyre, The Hobbit – and, among many others, Wuthering Heights. I loved them all (well, maybe not The Grapes Of Wrath, though I grew to appreciate it later), but Wuthering Heights is the story that lodged in my heart and remains there to this day. “Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same,” said by Cathy about Heathcliff, was and is the most romantic line I’ve ever read. And yes, this is a romance, a tragic and tortured romance, but a romance nevertheless. Orphaned, foundling Heathcliff is the ultimate antihero, spoiled, privileged Cathy the classic gothic heroine doomed by her own hubris. Theirs is a haunting tale of passion, obsession and revenge – and ultimately, redemption. This comes in the form of the younger version of their characters, Catherine Linton and Hareton Earnshaw, finding happiness together, while (in my mind, at least) the ghosts of Heathcliff and Cathy are left to wander the Yorkshire moors together for eternity in their own dark version of a happily ever after.

Visit Karen Robards's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Paulette Kennedy

Paulette Kennedy is the author of The Artist of Blackberry Grange (2025), The Devil and Mrs. Davenport (2024), The Witch of Tin Mountain (2023), and Parting the Veil (2021), which received the HNS Review Editor’s Choice Award. Her work has been featured in People Magazine, The Mary Sue, and BookBub. Originally from the Missouri Ozarks, where as a young girl she could often be found wandering through the gravestones in her neighborhood cemetery, Kennedy’s affinity for fog-covered landscapes and haunted heroines only grew, inspiring her to become a writer. She now lives with her family and a menagerie of rescue pets in sunny Southern California, where sometimes, on the very best days, the mountains are wreathed in gothic fog.

Kennedy's new novel is The Two Deaths of Lillian Carmichael.

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

The Other Moctezuma Girls by Sofia Robleda

An epic coming-of-age story set in 16th-century Mexico, after the Spanish Conquest, centering Isabel, the daughter of the last Aztec empress. After her mother's death, Isabel embarks on a journey to discover her mother's story, and unveil the intriguing secrets hidden in her past. Robleda transports readers to a time when women used their wiles and intelligence to survive during an era when men colonized and claimed dominion over the countries they invaded, and viewed the women in their lives as political pawns. Isabel, and Tecuichpoch, the proud daughter of the famed Moctezuma--who relays her story through compelling diary entries Isabel finds on her quest--are both formidable, proud women, who inspire with their matriarchal strength and resilience. I especially enjoyed the elements of magical realism, which were so beautifully woven into the body of the story and convey the author's deep connection to her heritage. There's also a tender love story between Isabel and a young man she befriends on her quest, Juan, which helps to provide levity and contrast within the travel-themed narrative. Robleda is a brilliant author, whose novels are steeped in historical resonance, and deserve acclaim and pride of place alongside the works of Isabel Allende and Gabriel García Márquez.

Sing Down the Moon by Robert Gwaltney

In this gorgeous, redolent Southern Gothic, Gwaltney explores the complexities of generational trauma through a surrealistic lens, as 16-year old Leontyne Skye reckons with an uncomfortable legacy after the death of her mother. Like all of the Skye women before her, Leontyne becomes the caretaker of an ancient fig tree which houses the souls of the dead in its fruit, which Leontyne is tasked with harvesting and distilling into an addictive elixir called Redemption. "Sinners" seeking Redemption visit Good Hope, the remote barrier island off the coast of Georgia where Leontyne lives, in the hopes of procuring this elixir, which carries the desires and hungers of all of the haints entrapped by Damascus. Bottling Redemption requires sacrifice, and Leontyne must grapple with the calling that will ultimately destroy her. When a mysterious stranger arrives on Good Hope, Leontyne is forced to face the scars from her past, and the expectations of those who wish for her to abandon herself to fulfill their demands. Filled with colorful, unforgettable characters, like Leontyne's childhood friends--a charismatic pair of twins wrestling with their own dark legacy--Sing Down the Moon soars with Gwaltney's rhythmic, lyrical prose, grounding the fantastical against the realistic tragedies of loss and betrayal. Sure to become a classic of Southern Gothic literature.

Visit Paulette Kennedy's website.

The Page 69 Test: Parting the Veil.

The Page 69 Test: The Devil and Mrs. Davenport.

My Book, The Movie: The Artist of Blackberry Grange.

The Page 69 Test: The Two Deaths of Lillian Carmichael.

--Marshal Zeringue

Albertine Clarke

Albertine Clarke received an MFA in fiction from the University of Florida and studied English Literature at the University of Edinburgh where she won the Lewis Edwards Memorial prize for creative writing. Raised in London, she now lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Clarke's debut novel is The Body Builders.

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

Right now, I’m reading Septology by Jon Fosse. It’s great, very long and very meditative, and tells the story of an ageing Norwegian painter living in a tiny fishing village. I like books that I can tarry with when I’m supposed to be doing other things, and Septology provides that. I also lost it for a couple of days and found it in my bed, so I feel that I’ve absorbed part of it through my skin.

Before that, I read The Hitch by Sara Levine. It was very funny, and I read the whole thing in a couple of days. There’s a flip kind of conceptual humor that I find off-putting in literature, and although she verges on it, the earnestness of the ending bought it back for me. It’s also just a very unusual book.

Before that, I read George Saunders’ new novel Vigil, which I didn’t like very much, although I’m a huge fan of his, and The Adversary by Emmanuel Carrère. The Adversary altered me permanently. I can never go back to the person I was before I read that book. It’s about a man who kills his wife and children, and Carrère befriends him to try and figure out why. If you like narrative nonfiction that reads like a brilliant novel, I recommend any of Carrère’s work, although they can be so dark they verge on upsetting.

Finally, when I finish Septology, I’m looking forward to reading Marie Ndiaye’s The Witch. I read That Time of the Year recently and I loved it; she has such a subtle and unnerving sense of the uncanny.

Follow Albertine Clarke on Instagram.

Q&A with Albertine Clarke.

My Book, The Movie: The Body Builders.

--Marshal Zeringue

Garrett Curbow

Garrett Curbow is the author of Whispers of Ink and Starlight and the Daughter of Light trilogy, which was short-listed for the Publishers Weekly Selfies Award. He lives in Savannah, Georgia.

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

In Memoriam by Alice Winn

This is a brutal WWI historical fiction following the love story of two men in combat. Winn puts you right there in the trenches, describing all the horrors of war, not gratuitously, but with enough realism to give you nightmares. I don’t read a copious amount of historical fiction, but I fell in love with the main characters of this novel, Gaunt and Ellwood, and found myself fascinated by the real-world events they had to endure. Their story, spanning the years of war, is stained with loss, fear, and longing. Two men stuck in Hell-on-Earth and politically restricted from being in love. It is both a heartbreaking and hopeful novel, and I definitely recommend it, especially if you’re overdue for a cathartic cry.

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

I’ve been fascinated by the cosmos recently, and this novel scratched that itch for me. It follows Ryland Grace, a middle school science teacher on a suicide mission to save Earth from a deadly parasite. Up to the halfway point of this novel, I was enjoying the ride, but I wasn’t in love. Then, a friendship starts to bloom between two characters that changed my reading experience. This friendship becomes the beating heart of the novel. By far, one of the most creative and heartwarming pieces of science fiction that I’ve read.

Visit Garrett Curbow's website.

Q&A with Garrett Curbow.

--Marshal Zeringue