Jardine Libaire

Jardine Libaire is a graduate of Skidmore College and the University of Michigan MFA program. White Fur is her second novel. She lives in Austin, Texas.

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

I have a little stash of books I’m gleefully reading now. It’s summertime, and it’s too hot to do anything else! I just finished Eve Babitz’s Slow Days, Fast Company, which begins with a brilliant introduction by Matthew Specktor. Why oh why did it take me so long to find Eve? From the lavender jacaranda to the honest talk about love and sex, this book made me a newly minted fan of hers.

The two books of poems I just got and have been browsing through and adoring are: There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé by Morgan Parker, which is so fresh and true and razor-sharp and emotional; and A Dark Dreambox of Another Kind, The Poems of Alfred Starr Hamilton, which is a strange and mystical volume that feels like a set of prayers I can actually use.

On deck is Brian Van Reet’s novel Spoils, which I heard him discuss at the Austin indie BookPeople, and which has gotten powerful reviews. And Jacqueline Woodson’s Another Brooklyn, whose first few paragraphs have already mesmerized me.

Visit Jardine Libaire's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Mike Brooks

Mike Brooks was born in Ipswich, Suffolk and moved to Nottingham when he was 18 to go to university. He’s stayed there ever since, and now lives with his wife, two cats, two snakes and a collection of tropical fish. He is the author of the Keiko novels, sci-fi adventures that follow the escapades of those crewing the spaceship of the same name; Dark Run is the first book in the series, Dark Sky the second.

When not writing, Brooks works for a homelessness charity, plays guitar and sings in a punk band, watches football (soccer), MMA and nature/science documentaries, goes walking in the Peak District or other areas of splendid scenery, and DJs wherever anyone will tolerate him.

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

Anyone who’s read anything like this written by me will probably be aware that Tad Williams’ Memory, Sorrow and Thorn trilogy was a huge influence on me. As a result, I was incredibly excited at the announcement that he was going back to that world, and I gleefully devoured The Heart Of What Was Lost earlier this year. I have to admit that it took a little while to settle – the start of it seemed a little stilted, as though he wasn’t quite comfortable back in Osten Ard yet – but it smoothed out and I ended up enjoying it a lot. He’s excellent at evoking the timeless, alien nature of the non-human beings he writes about, and it gave a wonderful glimpse into the intricacies of Norn society. I’ll be sure to get The Witchwood Crown, but there’s other stuff I need to read first…

More recently I read The Vagrant by Peter Newman, which was fascinating and compelling and weird and a bit disgusting, all in relatively equal measure! It’s a sort of post-apocalyptic supernatural sci-fi setting, a bit like Mad Max with demons, and the most original thing I think I’ve read for quite a while. Despite the generalised unpleasantness of the setting – or perhaps because of it – Newman manages to focus on occasional moments of beauty and purity, and they ring out all the more as a result. Also, the goat’s brilliant.

At the moment I’m halfway through The Ninth Rain by Jen Williams, which doesn’t appear to get any shorter no matter how much of it you read, but that’s not a bad thing as it’s really rather good! Williams has left the world of the Copper Cat trilogy and gone full-bore into another, just as weird and wacky, with the revolting Worm People displacing various rampaging gods and insane sorcerers as the antagonists. It’s got a strong cast, with most of the main characters being female, and manages to make some commentary on the patriarchal suppression of women (including by other women) at the same time as being a cracking fantasy adventure novel. If you like flame-spouting witches, giant bats, reimagined vampires and the lingering threat of baddies that are sort of a cross between the body snatchers and Games Workshop’s Tyranids, I highly recommend it.

My to-read pile is big and still growing, but there’s a few people whose books I owe a read: so the question is, will I choose Age Of Assassins by RJ Barker, The Court Of Broken Knives by Anna Smith Spark, Snakewood by Adrian Selby or The Malice by Peter Newman?

Visit Mike Brooks's website.

My Book, The Movie: Dark Run.

The Page 69 Test: Dark Run.

--Marshal Zeringue

Beth McMullen

Beth McMullen is the author of the Mrs. Smith’s Spy School for Girls series and several adult mysteries. Her books have heroes and bad guys, action and messy situations. An avid reader, she once missed her subway stop and rode the train all the way to Brooklyn because the book she was reading was that good. She lives in Northern California with her family, two cats and a parakeet named Zeus, who is sick of the cats eyeballing him like he’s dinner.

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

I’ve been binging on middle grade action/adventure books with strong girl protagonists this summer. I think I’ve been influenced by the Wonder Woman movie! What an absolute delight to see a female superhero saving the day. A Dash of Dragon, a new release by Heidi Lang and Kati Bartkowski, fits right into my theme. Plus, a novel written by sisters just has to be fun.

Lailu Loganberry is an expert at hunting dangerous beasts. And she’s even better at cooking them. At thirteen years old, this master chef has a lot to prove as she tries to run a five-star restaurant, cook the perfect dragon cuisine, repay a greedy loan shark, and outsmart the Elven mafia in a novel full of fantasy, humor, adventure and action. Lailu is just the sort of feisty heroine that goes perfectly with summer reading.

Visit Beth McMullen's website.

The Page 69 Test: Mrs. Smith’s Spy School for Girls.

My Book, The Movie: Mrs. Smith’s Spy School for Girls.

--Marshal Zeringue

Dave Boling

A native of south Chicago, Dave Boling is a sports columnist in the Seattle area. His first novel, the international best-selling Guernica, was translated into 13 languages with an English-language edition sold worldwide. Prior to becoming a journalist, Boling was a football player at the University of Louisville, an ironworker in Chicago, a logger in the Pacific Northwest, a bartender and bouncer, and a laborer in a car factory and in steel mills. He took up fiction writing at age 53.

Boling's new novel is The Lost History of Stars.

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

Fearing a cross-contamination of styles, I don’t read novels much when I’m working on one of my own. I may dip into a dozen books a day while checking for margin notes and underlined passages that inspire me. But, being suggestible, I fear I might fall victim to the power of somebody else’s words and tempo and style, and it will disrupt the “voice” of the story I’m working on.

But I do like to start a writing day by reading poetry, hoping to be influenced by the concision of words, the clarity and the insight. Tony Hoagland is a current favorite because of his vision and wit, and his ability to decode contemporary absurdities.

At the moment I was invited to identify the book I was reading, it was The Blue Buick, a collection by B.H. Fairchild. I’ve been a fan since reading “Body and Soul,” a lengthy narrative poem that may be the best piece of sports-adjacent writing I know. It’s a remembrance of a group of hardscrabble Oklahoma laborers and an existential sandlot baseball outing on summer Sunday afternoon.

They are looking back to the dusty day when they became victims to a home-run barrage by a switch-hitting teenager named Mickey Mantle. Clinging to their roughneck obduracy, they refused to simply walk the wunderkind, and he sprayed five homers out toward the vanishing point. They limped home with their threadbare dignity and the singular memory of nascent greatness courtesy of “… the blond and blue-eyed bringer of truth.”

As in “Body and Soul,” Fairchild in The Blue Buick merges poetry and prose into a giant river-of-consciousness run-on that somehow renders an elegance to the daily battles against boredom and futility in places where every out-of-town license plate screams “… life is somewhere else.”

Visit Dave Boling's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Anne Corlett

Anne Corlett is a criminal lawyer by profession and has recently completed an M.A. in creative writing at Bath Spa University. Her work has been published in magazines and anthologies, and her short fiction has won, placed, or been short-listed in national and international awards. The Space Between the Stars is her first novel.

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

What have I been reading recently?

The honest answer is ‘not enough’. My current novel is proving quite slow going due to a fairly complicated structure which seems to involve long periods of staring at the computer screen, muttering so if person X knows this in chapter 3, then why does person Y behave like that in chapter 7? As a result, I’ve fallen into the trap of thinking of all non-writing time as time wasted, when the reality is that if you’re going to write, you have to read!

Despite my reading dry patch, I did recently get through Megan Hunter’s The End We Start From. To be fair, not getting through it would have taken things to a whole new level of not making time to read, because it’s very short – novella length really. But despite its length, it covers a lot of ground, due in no small part to the unusually sparse style in which the story is told. The novel essentially consists of a series of short verbal ‘snapshots’, capturing the key moments in the life of the main character, whose experiences of new motherhood are set against the backdrop of a disintegrating world. This fragmentary style leaves much unsaid, which forces the reader to work hard to fill in the gaps, but also gives space for individual interpretation.

This was a compelling and bold novel, and the bathwater grew cold around me as I ploughed on to the end in a single sitting.

Visit Anne Corlett's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jo Perry

Jo Perry earned a Ph.D. in English, taught college literature and writing, produced and wrote episodic television, and has published articles, book reviews, and poetry.

She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, novelist Thomas Perry. They have two adult children. Their three cats and two dogs are rescues.

Perry's latest novel is Dead is Good.

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

I am reading a bunch of things at once, among them Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife, Mary Roach's hilarious history and account of the search for life after death––and when it's not found––a catalogue the inventive and grotesque fakes produced to con the gullible, the heartbroken and the wishful. I've learned that the desire for the immortal is immortal.

I just finished Hack by Duncan MacMaster, a very funny mix of 80's popular TV culture and murder mystery. As a former TV writer, I enjoyed the 80's TV stuff and enjoyed the gruff, rough around the edges, smart protagonist, Jake Mooney, a professional ghost writer whose once-famous actor client is killed.

I loved Timothy Hallinan's spectacularly original and satisfying Pulped. It's a mystery yes, but also a meditation of the author's relationship to the reader, and a contemplation of imagined worlds. I loved it.

And I just started Jacqueline Chadwick's dark thriller, In The Still. The protagonist, Ali, is a successful, troubled and talented forensic pathologist/psychologist who's exchanged her career for full-time motherhood in a remote Canadian village. Ali is terrific (with an emphasis on terror). Ali's complexity as a person and as a woman really interests me and impresses me. Ali is at once a highly competent professional, a resentful housewife, a worried mother whose head is filled with the quoditian minutiae required of parents, a person fighting the encroachment of mental illness, and an outsider in a small, tightly bound community. Ali's foul-mouthed rant against life-sapping housework is magnificent.

Visit Jo Perry's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Jo Perry & Lola and Lucy.

My Book, The Movie: Dead Is Good.

The Page 69 Test: Dead Is Good.

--Marshal Zeringue

Gary Corby

Gary Corby is the author of the Athenian Mystery series, starring Nicolaos, his girlfriend Diotima, and his irritating twelve year old brother Socrates. The latest book in the series is Death on Delos.

The author lives in Sydney, Australia, with his wife, two daughters, two ducks, two budgerigars, and a brush turkey that is almost as irritating as Socrates.

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

The Road To Gandolfo, by Michael Shepherd, who was in fact Robert Ludlum. This is the most un-Ludlum-like book that he ever wrote. It is in fact a comedy, almost a farce, about a crazy plot to kidnap the Pope!

As you can probably tell, I'm as likely to read books that are years old as recent releases.

Doctor Faustus, by Christopher Marlowe. Yes, that one was released just a while ago. Marlowe is rather hard done by I think because that young upstart friend of his Shakespeare tends to get all the attention. I reread Faustus from time to time, because it is awesome.

And now for something slightly more modern.

Signal, by Patrick Lee. Patrick and I have the same literary agent, which is how I first met him. He's a scarily good author of technothrillers. Signal is the second book of his second series. He always seems to come up with interesting twists on what you can do by manipulating time.

This is a complete cheat, but I want to put in a word for a television series. Vikings, written by Michael Hirst. As a writer of historicals, I usually look at TV series and movies set in the past with a very jaundiced eye. Frankly, I think there's almost always something wrong with them, and usually something very wrong. But Hirst has got it right. He's conflated two hundred years of Viking history into a single family and friends and enemies, he's altered history in a number of ways to suit his plot, but it feels right.

Visit Gary Corby's website.

Five books that changed Gary Corby.

My Book, The Movie: Death on Delos.

The Page 69 Test: Death on Delos.

--Marshal Zeringue

Claire Booth

Claire Booth is a former true crime writer, ghostwriter, and reporter. She lives in California. The Branson Beauty, featuring Sheriff Hank Worth, is her first novel.

Booth's new novel is Another Man's Ground, the second Sheriff Hank Worth Mystery.

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

Right now, I’m reading Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America, by Jill Leovy. Frankly, I’m embarrassed that I missed this when it first came out in 2015. It is an absolutely phenomenal piece of reporting. Leovy spent years covering South Central LA, and she turns her reporting into a tour de force indictment of how the system fails communities like South Central. She argues that law enforcement needs to concentrate on solving and prosecuting homicides. Lip service to community policing isn’t making anything better for the people who live in these areas. She profiles both families who’ve lost young men to gun violence, and dedicated detectives who spend every waking hour trying to solve the crimes. It’s a must-read.

And I just finished a terrific YA thriller, City of Angels, by Kristi Belcamino. It’s also set in Los Angeles, but a bit further back – during the 1992 riots. It’s a perfect backdrop for the story of a teenager who flees trauma in the Midwest only to get swept up in a movie director’s twisted child porn ring. Nikki Black rescues a twelve-year-old and they land in a residential hotel in LA’s gritty downtown. The whole novel has a fantastic sense of place and a great mystery as well. I loved it.

Visit Claire Booth's website.

My Book, The Movie: Another Man's Ground.

The Page 69 Test: Another Man's Ground.

--Marshal Zeringue

Deborah E. Kennedy

Deborah E. Kennedy is a native of Fort Wayne, Indiana and a recent graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She has worked as both a reporter and editor, and also holds a Master's in Fiction Writing and English Literature from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

Kennedy's new novel, her debut, is Tornado Weather.

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

A Very Private Eye: An Autobiography in Diaries and Letters, by Barbara Pym. Edited by Hazel Holt and Hilary Pym

I am always reading this book. I am never not reading it. A mash-up of letters, diary entries, and back-of-receipt jottings from the irreplaceable, inimitable Barbara Pym, it's the book equivalent of the perfect English breakfast – nourishing, funny, perfectly balanced. And there's always something new to discover and laugh about and sigh over. Critics often refer to Pym as the second-coming of Jane Austen, but she's kinder than Austen, less abrasive. And that's coming from a die-hard Austenite.

A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, H.W. Fowler

Fowler is another bedside necessity, not because his entries on everything from absolute possessives to Wardour Street are uniformly useful, but because he's grouchy, opinionated, and hilarious. An obsessive, Fowler clearly believed in the power of words and our moral obligation to use them correctly. Consider his ruminations on “Novelty-Hunting,” or a tendency to use fancy words when their simple alternative would suffice. He calls this proclivity “a detriment to the language” and “a confession of weakness.”

(Maybe I should have substituted “proneness” for “proclivity”? Who am I kidding? I'm a horrible novelty-hunter. My apologies, Mr. Fowler. I'm most profoundly, sincerely, fervently, ardently sorry.)

Map: Collected and Last Poems, Wislawa Szymborska

Szymborska is one of the wittiest writers I've ever read, and her humor runs right along side pathos in these poems, many heretofore unpublished. I keep turning again and again to “Written in a Hotel,” a melancholy meditation on the hazards of travel, and this particular stanza: “While writing these lines / I wonder / what in them will come to sound / ridiculous and when.” The writer's eternal dilemma.

The Complete Short Stories of Elizabeth Taylor

I bet you thought the only Elizabeth Taylor worth talking about was the screen siren turned perfumier turned AIDs activist, but my favorite Liz is a British writer who lived in the same time as Mrs. Burton/Fisher/Burton but led a much more modest and unsung existence. Taylor's prose is basically perfect, but what I love most about her stories are the razor-sharp observations she makes about suburban life and the relations between men and women, parents and children, and the haves and the have-nots. Taylor's novels are wonderful as well, especially A Game of Hide and Seek and Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont.

The Flying Creatures of Fra Angelico, Antonio Tabucchi

Everyone I know is wild about Calvino, and for good reason, but Antonio Tabucchi is my favorite Italian. This slim volume of odd and beautiful stories is utterly transporting, thanks in large part to Tabucchi's liberal employment of “saudade,” aka the unique combination of nostalgia and longing that is rumored to characterize the Portuguese temperament. Tabucchi was born in Pisa but lived for most of his life in Lisbon and his wide travels and unimpeachable humanity make the experience of reading these impossible-to-label pieces akin to drinking your favorite wine in your favorite place with your favorite person. What's the Portuguese word for that?

Follow Deborah E. Kennedy on Facebook and Twitter.

My Book, The Movie: Tornado Weather.

The Page 69 Test: Tornado Weather.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nancy Kress

Nancy Kress is the bestselling author of multiple science-fiction and fantasy novels, including Beggars in Spain, Probability Space, and Steal Across the Sky. Her SF has won six Nebulas, two Hugos, a Sturgeon, and the John W. Campbell Award.

Her most recent book is Tomorrow's Kin, an expansion of the Nebula-winning novella “Yesterday’s Kin,” which takes the story forward several generations. Her fiction has been translated into multiple languages, including Klingon.

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

The last three books I’ve read have differed wildly from each other. A few weeks ago I finished Charlie Jane Anders’s Nebula-winning novel, All The Birds In The Sky. Although I’m not usually a fan of science-and-magic-alltogether-O, this book worked for three reasons: First, it is a romp, with the science not meant to be taken seriously. Second, the writing is so good. Anders has a genuine gift for metaphor. Third, the characters are affecting; I was rooting for them to win out, which they do.

Next, I read Philippa Gregory’s historical novel, The Boleyn Inheritance. Gregory is at odds with nearly every other historian in her interpretation of the events of Tudor England. Hilary Mantel, author of Wolf Hall, can barely resist sneering when she discusses Gregory in recorded interviews. But I find Gregory’s books entertaining and inventive, and Tudor England has always interested me. I enjoyed the book, even if I didn’t believe it.

Now I am reading The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Quest For What Makes Us Human, by V.S. Ramachandran. I have only just started it, but so far am fascinated. He discusses why phantom limbs ache, what mirror therapy is doing to alleviate phantom pain, and what that tells us about how the brain can be rewired. This is the sort of book that often yields story ideas for me. Even if it doesn’t, I’m intrigued to learn what I can about the organ that is, even now, directing my fingers to type these words.

Follow Nancy Kress on Twitter and Facebook.

The Page 69 Test: Dogs.

The Page 69 Test: After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall.

The Page 69 Test: Tomorrow's Kin.

--Marshal Zeringue

Kathleen Anne Kenney

Kathleen Anne Kenney is an author, freelance writer, and playwright. Her writing has appeared in Big River, Coulee Region Women, and Ireland of the Welcomes, as well as other publications. She has had numerous short plays presented in Minnesota theaters and has published the play The Ghost of an Idea, a one-actor piece about Charles Dickens. Her play New Menu was a winner in the 2012 Rochester Repertory Theatre’s national short-play competition. She is currently at work on a novel based on her 2014 stage play, The Bootleg Blues.

Kenney's new novel is Girl on the Leeside.

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

I just read The Help – finally. I’ve seen the film twice and was ashamed I hadn’t read the novel, which I had bought years ago. It is truly an almost perfect novel. The character development, setting descriptions, situations, and depictions of personal stakes are drawn beautifully. For me as a reader, novels set in tumultuous historic periods are very compelling, if done well. Character development and an memorable setting are what I look for in a story. This novel had no stereotypes, no false steps, no contrivances. And Kathryn Stockett is a terrific writer. I know I will read it again, and hope her 1920’s novel will soon be released!

I’m currently reading The French Wedding by Hannah Tunnicliffe. I’m only about 50 pages in but I love the writing – very evocative, beautifully crafted. I’m a reader (and writer) who enjoys prologues and loved the one for this book. Can’t wait to finish it!

Other books "on deck" – Everyone Brave is Forgiven by Chris Cleave (recommended by our daughter) and Nutshell by Ian McEwan (because it’s based on the Hamlet plot and I love Shakespeare!)

Visit Kathleen Anne Kenney's website.

My Book, The Movie: Girl on the Leeside.

--Marshal Zeringue

Kendra Elliot

Kendra Elliot is the award-winning author of numerous books, including the Bone Secrets and Callahan & McLane series. Elliot won the 2015 and 2014 Daphne du Maurier awards for Best Romantic Suspense, and she was an International Thriller Writers finalist for Best Paperback Original and a Romantic Times finalist for Best Romantic Suspense.

Elliot's new novel is A Merciful Truth.

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

Over the last few weeks I read five fantasy books. I was finishing up my own book and needed something soothing for my brain. Since I write twisty suspense plots with murder, death, and violence, I often turn to historical romance to rest my neurons, but this time I got hooked on the Kingfountain series by Jeff Wheeler. I plowed through the first four and mentioned on Twitter that I was loving the series, and then the author pointed out that the fifth (unpublished) was available for review purposes. I took him up on that offer and devoured that one too. It’s a great series. Full of world building and heroes and magic.

Now that I’m getting ready to start my next suspense novel, I reach for authors in my own genre. I’m nearly finished with Rachel Caine’s Stillhouse Lake. I’ve never read her before and it won’t be my last. This book makes me wish I’d written it. I can’t wait for the second in the series to release in December.

Visit Kendra Elliot's website.

The Page 69 Test: A Merciful Truth.

--Marshal Zeringue

Bianca Marais

Bianca Marais holds a Certificate in Creative Writing from the University of Toronto’s SCS, and her work has been published in World Enough and Crime. Before turning to writing, she started a corporate training company and volunteered with Cotlands, where she assisted care workers in Soweto with providing aid for HIV/AIDS orphans. Originally from South Africa, she now resides in Toronto with her husband.

Marais's new novel is Hum If You Don’t Know the Words.

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

I’ve just finished reading What it Means When a Man Falls From the Sky, a short story collection by Lesley Nneka Arimah. I don’t usually read short stories, mainly because I find that just as I become invested in the characters, the story’s over, but since I grew up in South Africa, I really love African stories and the author writes a lot about Nigeria where she spent some time in her youth. Also, besides being on many ‘most anticipated books of 2017’ lists, this collection made the Indies Next list for April. When booksellers recommend a book, I listen! It was an amazing read with something for every reader: magical realism, dysfunctional relationships, dystopian futures, vivid and engaging characters, as well as brilliant dialogue. It covers the full spectrum of the human experience and I absolutely loved it!

I’m currently reading Fierce Kingdom by Gin Phillips which I also picked up because it was recommended by a bookseller. I’m only halfway through it, but It’s a gripping, nail-biting, page-turning read that also has a lot more depth than what I was expecting from a thriller. I’m pretty sure I’ll finish this in a day or two.

Visit Bianca Marais's website.

The Page 69 Test: Hum If You Don’t Know the Words.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jean E. Pendziwol

Jean E. Pendziwol is an award winning Canadian author. Born and raised in northwestern Ontario, she draws on the culture, history and geography of the region for inspiration for her stories.

The Lightkeeper's Daughters, her debut adult novel, is an affecting story of family, identity, and art that involves a decades-old mystery. Vividly drawn, Lake Superior is almost a character in itself, changeable yet constant, its shores providing both safety and isolation.

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

Like many other writers, I get very picky about what I read when I’m writing and avoid novels in my own genre when I’m actively drafting. Right now, I’m in the research stage of my next project, which means I’ve been able to expand my reading and get “caught up” on my to-be-read list.

As a Canadian, I have read several of Margaret Atwood’s books over the years, but somehow her dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale slipped through the cracks. Because the story has recently been adapted for TV and broadcast on Hulu, and the themes echo the current political dynamic in the United States, it has experienced a renewed popularity and I felt it was time to dig up a copy. I’m glad I did. Set in a near-future New England when the United States government has been overthrown by a totalitarian Christian theocracy, it explores themes of women living as non-citizens in a patriarchal society and the means by which they survive and strive for individualism and independence. Beautifully rendered, in true Atwood style, it is also a stark reminder of how reality can mimic fiction.

With a focus on reading regional writers and regional content, I have made a point of seeking out Indigenous authors and their work. Shelia Watt-Cloutier’s book The Right To Be Cold was selected as one of the CBC Canada Reads books for 2017. I had the great opportunity to meet Watt-Cloutier when she visited my hometown and listen to her speak about her experiences as an advocate for the Inuit in the face of the devastating and compounded affects of climate change on their culture and environment. While climate change is having an impact in all parts of the globe, the far north is particularly vulnerable, and as such, so are the people who live there. Watt-Cloutier not only brings the perspective of an Inuk woman who hunted with her brothers by dog sled and ate whale and seal as regular components of her “country” diet, she also took an active role advocating globally for environmental awareness and protection and was co-nominated with Al Gore for the Nobel Prize in 2007. (Al Gore was the sole recipient.) I was particularly struck by the fact that Inuit women need to consider whether or not they can breastfeed their children because their milk has often been contaminated by pollutants generated far, far from their community and food sources. The issue becomes one of human rights as much as global responsibility.

Part of my heritage as a Canadian is Finnish, and I’ve been exploring the history of the North American Finnish experience. While I’ve read bits and pieces before, I recently picked up a translation of the Kalevala – Finland’s epic folk tale. The Kalevala apparently served as inspiration for Tolkien’s tales of Middle Earth. It’s an interesting collection of stories comparable to the Iliad, but with references to birch trees and cuckoo birds that feel a little closer to home for me. I love the language – the rhythm of the poetry, the many references to nature.

And the last book I have on the go is a copy of James Herriot’s All Things Bright and Beautiful. Because sometimes I just need to read about the adventures of a country vet, the birth of lambs, and the simplicity of farm life.

In my TBR pile? The Witches of New York by Ami McKay, The Lonely Hearts Hotel by Heather O’Neill and I’ve just started Louise Erdrich’s The Plague of Doves.

Visit Jean E. Pendziwol's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Lightkeeper's Daughters.

--Marshal Zeringue

Martha Wells

Martha Wells has written many fantasy novels, including The Books of the Raksura series (beginning with The Cloud Roads), the Ile-Rien series (including the Nebula-nominated The Death of the Necromancer) as well as YA fantasy novels, short stories, media tie-ins, and non-fiction. Her most recent fantasy novels are The Edge of Worlds (2016) and the newly released The Harbors of the Sun, the last book in The Books of the Raksura series.

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

The Furthest Station by Ben Aaronovitch - This is a novella in the Peter Grant/Rivers of London series. It's a fantasy series set in modern day London, about a young police constable who works for the division of the police that takes care of magic-related crime. I love British TV mysteries and fantasy and this series combines the best of both worlds, and the tone is so engaging and funny.

Raven Stratagem by Yoon Ha Lee - This is an SF novel, the sequel to last year's Ninefox Gambit. It's military SF, which I don't read that often, but the lush worldbuilding, relatable characters, and the complexity of the story about technology and belief has really grabbed me. It's also an exciting, fast-paced plot, and I don't have any idea what's going to happen next.

Bright Thrones by Kate Elliott - This is another novella set in an ongoing series, which started with the novel Court of Fives. This is a secondary world fantasy series, a gripping, tense story about a young woman trying to keep herself and her mother and sisters alive under an oppressive colonial government undergoing a violent political upheaval. The story is absolutely edge-of-your-seat engrossing and I can't wait for the third book in the trilogy, which is due out soon.

Visit Martha Wells's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Harbors of the Sun.

--Marshal Zeringue

Robin Wagner-Pacifici

Robin Wagner-Pacifici is the University in Exile Professor of Sociology at the New School for Social Research. She is the author of a number of books, most recently What is an Event? (University of Chicago Press, 2017) and The Art of Surrender: Decomposing Sovereignty at Conflict’s End.

Recently I asked the author about what she was reading? Wagner-Pacifici's reply:

I'm currently reading three books that, quite by coincidence, all seem to touch on how humans experience time:

François Hartog, Regimes of Historicity: Presentism and Experiences of Time (2016)

Hartog is an historian and this book's focus (and target) is our current time-regime, what he calls "presentism" or "short-termism" a way of living in time in which only the present seems to exist. Through a series of explorations of different experiences of time, "regimes of historicity", in different ages and cultures (including those of Homer, of Augustine, of the 19th century Maori dealing with the imperial British, and of the French writer Chateaubriand), Hartog reveals how we can live history so differently, sometimes putting all our emphasis on the present, sometimes living the present as an extension or recurrence of the past, sometimes living the present only for its journey toward the future. It's a deep book, and a beautiful one, filled with moments that illuminate the lives of others. Sometimes this is sobering as when Hartog writes that the chronically unemployed are forced to live a relentless presentism of one day at a time.

Benjamin H. Snyder, The Disrupted Workplace: time and the moral order of flexible capitalism (2016)

Snyder is a sociologist who has studied the experiences of work-time in the early 21st century, for financial service professionals, for truck drivers, and for unemployed white-collar workers. His multi-faceted ethnography is keyed into the intensities and rhythms of work, work that is no longer clearly guided by clock-time or predictable career paths but rather pushed and pulled by "flexible" global capitalism run rampant. Snyder's deeper questions are about what kind of moral order emerges from disruption - can our disrupted work times and lives provide us with an armature for living moral lives?

Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent (2016)

This is a novel set in London and Essex in 1893 and features a wonderful, if flawed, main character Cora Seaborne. Cora is a widow (actually somewhat merry) who throws off gendered constraints to roam the coastal byways of Essex collecting fossils and other objects of interest to her as a burgeoning naturalist. Perry also provides a "super" natural mystery in the form of a possibly returning mythical 'Essex Serpent'. In her quest to discover the truth about this creature, Cora is provided with several counterparts, comrades, collaborators and suitors. These are characters as diverse as a socialist activist, a cutting-edge London surgeon, a local Essex vicar and his ethereal wife, and a cast of wealthy and working-class men and women in London and Essex. All the them are sympathetically drawn - even, improbably, a vengeful attacker. Time flows almost melodically in this novel, with keen observations about the light and shadows of days, the mists of evenings, and the darkness of nights by the sea. The seasons come and go, history marches forward with medical advances, urban housing reforms, women actively shaping their own lives, even as the mythical time of monstrous creatures also continues to shape the characters' experience of time.

Learn more about What Is an Event? at the University of Chicago Press website.

The Page 99 Test: The Art of Surrender.

The Page 99 Test: What Is an Event?.

--Marshal Zeringue