Robert Swartwood

Robert Swartwood is the USA Today bestselling and ITW Thriller Award-winning author of The Killing Room, The Serial Killer’s Wife, No Shelter, Man of Wax, and several other novels. He’s also the author of Girl Gone Mad, One Year Gone, and Dear Seraphina, written under the pseudonym Avery Bishop.

Swartwood's new novel is Enemy of the State.

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

To start, I should note I often read several books at once: usually one digitally, one physically, and one audio-ly.

Sing Her Down by Ivy Pochoda

I've had this one on my Kindle forever. In fact, I think I somehow got a digital ARC. I remember reading the first few pages and immediately deciding to set it aside because the language was so rich that I knew I wanted to come back to it. And I've been reading it on and off for the past year. Not because it's not a good book — it's great in fact — but because it's the kind of book you want to savor. The characters and story are excellent, sure, but it's the language, the visuals, that I don't want to end.

You Like It Darker by Stephen King

I grabbed the hardcover when it came out, just as I do with pretty much all King books. I've been a King fan since middle school but haven't read many of his more recent books for whatever reason. So this collection is the first King I've read in several years, and King's writing style is like a warm blanket: it's so inviting and comforting. Plus, King slipping a short novel into a short story collection like it's no big thing is probably one of the most Stephen King thing ever. You've gotta love that.

Cold In July by Joe R. Lansdale, read by Brian Hutchison

Nobody writes like Joe Lansdale. That's why he's one of a kind. And this book — like all the rest — is a lot of fun.

Visit Robert Swartwood's website.

Q&A with Robert Swartwood.

The Page 69 Test: The Killing Room.

--Marshal Zeringue

James Benn

James R. Benn is the author of the Billy Boyle World War II series, historical mysteries set within the Allied High Command during the Second World War. The series began with Billy Boyle, which takes place in England and Norway in 1942.

Benn newest novel is The Phantom Patrol, the nineteenth installment of the series. Recently I asked the author about what he was reading. Benn's reply:

The Bug in the Martini Olive and Other True Cases from the Files of Hal Lipset, Private Eye by Patricia Holt

Hal Lipset worked in the Army's Criminal Investigations Division during WWII and returned home to start his own private investigator business. He became a pioneer in electronic surveillance techniques, and Francis Ford Coppola's movie The Conversation was partly based on Lipset. The book, written by a former operative who worked for Lipset, shows how he used a mix of old and new techniques. Long, arduous days of surveillance and verifying detailed background checks, combined with devising and deploying new electronic surveillance devices. Lipset never took sides, always claiming that guilt or innocence was up to the courts. He was a central player at the dawn of expanding electronic eavesdropping, for better or worse. A fascinating look at the man and the era he helped usher in.

Learn more about the Billy Boyle WWII Mystery Series at James R. Benn's website.

The Page 99 Test: The First Wave.

The Page 69 Test: Evil for Evil.

The Page 69 Test: Rag and Bone.

My Book, The Movie: Death's Door.

The Page 69 Test: The White Ghost.

The Page 69 Test: Blue Madonna.

Writers Read: James R. Benn (September 2016).

Q&A with James R. Benn.

The Page 69 Test: Proud Sorrows.

The Page 69 Test: The Phantom Patrol.

--Marshal Zeringue

D.W. Buffa

D.W. Buffa's newest novel to be released is Evangeline, a courtroom drama about the murder trial of captain who is one of the few to survive the sinking of his ship.

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

Here is Buffa's take on the American Constitution:

Alexander Hamilton wanted a monarchy; Benjamin Franklin wanted everyone to pray. Everyone wanted a government that would protect the rights of individuals; no one thought democracy anything but the greatest threat to liberty the country could face. Everyone in the Constitutional Convention that met in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 had a different idea of what the new government should look like; everyone agreed that George Washington was the only proper choice to preside over their deliberations. Proving their decision right, he “lamented his want of better qualifications,” and “claimed the indulgence of the House towards the involuntary errors which his inexperience might occasion.”

During the nearly four months the Convention deliberated, Washington spoke only once, but ruled the Convention with a steady hand and an even gaze. The rules themselves were quite clear. When someone rose to speak they addressed Washington directly. While someone was speaking, no one was allowed to talk or read. When it was time to adjourn, everyone was to stand in their place “until the President shall pass him.” One rule was more important than all the others: everyone was sworn to absolute secrecy about the proceedings: “That nothing spoken in the House shall be printed, or otherwise published or communicated without leave.”

By agreeing to keep secret what was said in the Convention, no one had to worry what the public might think about what they said or how they voted. This did not mean that they did not want a permanent record of what they had done. They knew what they were doing and how it might change the world. James Madison determined “to preserve as far as I could an exact account of what might pass in the Convention.” He was not “unaware of the value of such a contribution to the fund of materials for the History of the Constitution on which would be staked the happiness of a people great even in its infancy, and possibly the cause of Liberty throughout the world.”

Six days a week for nearly four months, never absent even a single day and seldom absent for more than a fraction of an hour, Madison wrote down everything that was said, and did it at the same time he was taking a leading part in the very debate he was transcribing. It was, at the end, a perfect record, the most thorough report of its kind ever written. And no one but Madison ever read it, until after he died, nearly half a century later. He had followed faithfully Washington’s rule that nothing that happened in the Convention could be revealed to anyone who had not been there.

More than anything an American has ever put on paper, Madison’s Notes teach that freedom without limits is no freedom at all, and that democracy itself can become freedom’s greatest threat. That was the issue - democracy - the delegates had come to address. On Thursday, May 31, Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts said what was on everyone’s mind: “The evil we experience flows from the excess of democracy. The people do not want virtue, but are the dupes of pretended patriots.”

Whatever the failings of democracy, everyone agreed that the lower house had to be elected directly by the people. The only disagreement was on how much time should pass between elections. There were those who insisted that there should be annual elections because this was the only way to keep representatives attached to the opinions of their constituents. Madison opposed this for reasons that go to the heart of the great, if largely forgotten, change that has taken place: not how much larger, but how much smaller, the country has become. In l787 a man on horseback was the measure of the fastest time anyone could travel from one place in America to another. A trip across country that now takes five hours by plane, took months, if it was possible to make the trip at all. Madison thought members of the House should have a three year term because it would take the better part of a year just to manage everything involved in traveling only once back and forth between the nation’s capitol and its most remote districts.

This extended territory, which seemed to make democracy, in which the citizens meet together to make decisions, impossible, was for Madison the “only defense” against the dangers of democracy. If everything is decided by a majority vote, if the majority decides to take away some, or even all, of a minority’s rights, there is nothing the minority can do. As Madison put it, “in all cases when the majority are united by a common interest or passion, the rights of the minority are in danger.” To make his point as emphatically as he could, Madison uses an example that shows how little understanding the present has of the American attitude toward slavery in the past: “We have seen the mere distinction of color made in the most enlightened period time, a ground of the most oppressive dominance ever exercised by man over man.”

The remedy, the way to prevent the danger, was to make the existence of a majority almost impossible, and make a majority, if one came into being, unaware of its own existence. Democracies had always failed because they had always involved small places in which all the citizens gathered together to make decisions. This could not be done in America, and that was precisely the reason why freedom - the rights of individuals - could for the first time be protected: “enlarge the sphere, and thereby divide the community into so great a number of interests and parties, that in the first place a majority will not be likely at the same moment to have a common interest separate from that of the whole or of the minority; and in the second place, that in case they have such an interest, they may not be apt to unite in pursuit of it.”

This argument, made famous as Federalist #10, a perfect description of 18th century America, describe conditions that no longer exist. We now live in a world in which majorities that form in the morning are known everywhere that same evening. Public opinion polls that tell us what a majority wants and how large that majority has become, are broadcast to every distant corner of the country. The only security against the “majority faction” Madison viewed as the greatest threat to liberty is now government itself, a government divided against itself, each part guard against the misconduct of the others, and yet still able to work together in the best interests of the nation. The central problem was the power of the House of Representatives. It had to be elected by the people and it had to work as a democracy, everything decided by the vote of a majority, but how could it be stopped from doing harm to a minority?

Two plans were offered as the basis of discussion about how a republican government should be constructed. The Randolph Plan, offered by John Randolph of Virginia, called for two branches of a national legislature, the first elected by the people; the second elected by the members of the first branch “out of a proper number of persons nominated by the individual legislatures,” that is to say, the state legislatures. A national executive - the president - would be chosen by the national legislature and would be ineligible for a second term. The judiciary would also be chosen by national legislature and would serve “during good behavior.”

It was the second branch - the senate - that gave all the trouble. The small states, which meant all the states except Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York, insisted that each state should have an equal vote. Delaware, and some of the other small state delegations, had been expressly prohibited from changing the equality of votes the states had under the Articles of Confederation. That was the legal argument. The political argument was that without this protection the new, national government, dominated in both the House and Senate by the larger states, would destroy the small states. Charles Pinkney of South Carolina, with a quick, incisive, and at times inventive, mind, suggested giving every state at least one senator and no state more than five. This went nowhere. The small states were adamant: equal vote in the Senate or they would never join the Union.

In an attempt to make a fresh start, Patterson of New Jersey offered a plan of his own. He opposed a national government and reminded the Convention that some of the delegates from the small states would rather submit to a foreign power than come under the domination of the large states. The states were sovereign, and for that reason representatives “must be drawn” from the States, not from the people; “we have no power to vary the idea of equal sovereignty.” John Randolph was appalled, and had an immediate reply: “When the salvation of the Republic is at stake, it would be treason to our trust, not to propose what was necessary.” The issue was clear: “The true question is whether we shall adhere to the federal plan or introduce a national plan.”

Two days later, on Monday, June 18, Alexander Hamilton rose for the first time to address the Convention. His speech destroyed whatever hope those who opposed a national government ever had. Hamilton had not spoken before, “partly from regard to others whose superior abilities and age and experience,” made him “unwilling to bring forward ideas dissimilar to theirs,” and partly because he did not agree with the views of his colleagues from his own state. He was unfriendly to both the Randolph and the Patterson plans, especially the latter. The “amazing violence and turbulence of the democratic spirit” was the cause of “the union dissolving or already dissolved - he sees evil operating on the States which must soon cure the people of their fondness for democracies….” Aware that “it went beyond the ideas of most members,” he offered a sketch of what he thought would be the best government. The House, elected by the people, would have a three year term. The members of the Senate, elected from election districts in the States, would, like the executive and the judiciary, serve for life, “or at least for good behavior.”

No one was for any of this, but now, instead of two, there were three plans, and the Randolph Plan, the plan that proposed a national government, was no longer at the opposite extreme from the Patterson Plan; it was now the moderate position. Hamilton had effected a compromise. Opposition to the idea of a national government all but disappeared. But that did not mean the small states would yield on the question of equal representation in the Senate.

Benjamin Franklin, who at eighty-one was the oldest delegate, had heard enough: “after four or five weeks close attendance and continued reasoning with each other - our different sentiments on almost every question, several of the last producing as many noes as ayes, is methinks a melancholy proof of the imperfections of Human Understanding.” Why, he asks, have we not thought of “humbly applying to the Father of lights to illuminate our understandings?” It had been done before. “In the beginning of the Contest with Great Britain, when we were sensible of the danger we had daily prayer in this room for the divine protection - Our prayers, Sir, were heard, and they were graciously answered.”

Having reminded everyone that it was in the very room in which they were now deliberating that American Independence had been declared and the war for American liberty begun, Franklin warns them that if they fail in their responsibilities the consequences will be nothing short of catastrophic. Divided by “our little partial local interests…we shall become a reproach and a bye word down to future ages. And what is worse, mankind may hereafter from this unfortunate instance, despair of establishing Governments by Human wisdom and leave it to chance, war and conquest.”

Cautioned by Franklin, the Convention began to work in earnest. No one talked anymore about a new confederation of sovereign States. There would be a national government, but a government, as Madison, nearly half a century younger than Franklin, put it, that would not only “protect the people against their rulers,” but against “the transient impressions into which they themselves might be led.” To do this required two main things. The first was “a body in the Government sufficiently respectable for its wisdom and virtue,” a Senate that, as the Convention eventually agreed, would be made up of two senators from each state serving six year terms. The second was a single executive, a President, elected by electors chosen by the state legislatures and in that way made independent of the national legislature.

No one worried who the first President might be; the concern was with what might happen later. When Franklin observed that, “The first man put at the helm will be a good one,” everyone knew he meant George Washington. When Franklin added that, “No body knows what sort may come after,” and that the “Executive will always be increasing here, as elsewhere, till it ends in a Monarchy,” they understood that the threat to liberty is never ending. It was the reason Alexander Hamilton hated democracy: it always led to despotism, the rule of one man supported by a mob.

Day after day, James Madison wrote down every word of the greatest sustained debate ever undertaken over what a constitution for a free people should be, until, at the end, he had written close to a quarter of a million words. No one read what Madison wrote while he was alive; not nearly enough have read it since. Lincoln spoke of the necessity to make the Declaration of Independence America’s Civic Religion; Madison’s Notes on the Constitutional Convention should be American’s Civic Textbook.

Visit D.W. Buffa's website.

Third reading: The Great Gatsby. 

Third reading: Brave New World.

Third reading: Lord Jim.

Third reading: Death in the Afternoon.

Third Reading: Parade's End.

Third Reading: The Idiot.

Third Reading: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

Third Reading: The Scarlet Letter.

Third Reading: Justine.

Third Reading: Patriotic Gore.

Third reading: Anna Karenina.

Third reading: The Charterhouse of Parma.

Third Reading: Emile.

Third Reading: War and Peace.

Third Reading: The Sorrows of Young Werther.

Third Reading: Bread and Wine.

Third Reading: “The Crisis of the Mind” and A Man Without Qualities.

Third reading: Eugene Onegin.

Third Reading: The Collected Works of Thomas Babington Macaulay.

Third Reading: The Europeans.

Third Reading: The House of Mirth and The Writing of Fiction.

Third Reading: Doctor Faustus.

Third Reading: the reading list of John F. Kennedy.

Third Reading: Jorge Luis Borges.

Third Reading: History of the Peloponnesian War.

Third Reading: Mansfield Park.

Third Reading: To Each His Own.

Third Reading: A Passage To India.

Third Reading: Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

Third Reading: The Letters of T.E. Lawrence.

Third Reading: All The King’s Men.

Third Reading: The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus.

Third Reading: Naguib Mahfouz’s novels of ancient Egypt.

Third Reading: Main Street.

Third Reading: Theodore H. White's The Making of the President series, part I.

Third Reading: Theodore H. White's The Making of the President series, part II.

Third Reading: Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

Third Reading: Fiction's Failure.

Third Reading: Hermann Hesse's Demian.

Third Reading: Frederick Douglass, Slavery, and The Fourth of July.

Third Reading: Caesar’s Ghost.

--Marshal Zeringue

Julie Czerneda

Julie E. Czerneda is a biologist and writer whose science fiction has received international acclaim, awards, and best-selling status. She is the author of the popular "Species Imperative" trilogy, the "Web Shifters" series, the "Trade Pact Universe" trilogy and her new "Stratification" novels. She was a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Her stand-alone novel, In the Company of Others, won Canada's Prix Aurora Award and was a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award for Distinguished SF.

Czerneda new novel is A Change of Place.

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

Karin Lowachee’s The Mountain Crown

I love dragons—and have huge respect for Karin Lowachee’s writing (she’s the author of the magnificent Warchild Mosaic). Imagine my joy to find her writing them in her latest, The Mountain Crown. Impressive, wonderful masses of original and fascinating dragons (called suons) permeate the landscapes of her world and if this wasn’t enough to make me hug this book, there’s more. The main character, Méka, is a member of the Suonkang family, a Ba’suon, with the innate ability to reach into nature—and the minds of suons—to create a partnership. When she’s sent into the land of their magic-blind enemies to coax a king dragon from the wild, little does she realize where her path will lead. It reminded me of my favourite moments in McCaffrey’s Dragonriders. I’m delighted this is only the first in Lowachee’s new Crowns of Ishia series. Trust me, the rest are on my must-have list.

John Wiswell’s Someone You Can Build a Nest In

Trust me, I’m a bit of a stickler when it comes to shapeshifter stories but this one is perfect. For me, the wonderful thing about Wiswell’s monster, Shesheshen, is her sensible vulnerability. She goes from thinking of herself as the apex predator to being apex prey without hesitation, just as she goes from wanting most to hide what she is to desperate to reveal it all for love.

While I adore everything about how she forms and reforms herself from whatever she can find—not to mention her frustration over keeping herself mostly in one piece—it’s Shesheshen’s inner debate, her interpretations of what is it to be human and to be valued that charmed me most.

Wiswell’s story, though unique, begs for comparisons which I almost never do. Here you go: His language flows like Patricia McKillip’s, sparse and powerful and lyrical. The story feels like The Last Unicorn meets Betelguese, until it takes a swing over to “The Princess Bride” and beyond. How’s that? By the end, who’s a monster and who isn’t is left to the reader. I can guarantee you won’t ever forget Shesheshen and Homily, and be warmed inside forever. Hmm. About time I read this again.

Visit Julie E. Czerneda's website.

The Page 69 Test: To Guard Against the Dark.

The Page 69 Test: The Gossamer Mage.

The Page 69 Test: Mirage.

Q&A with Julie E. Czerneda.

The Page 69 Test: To Each This World.

My Book, The Movie: To Each This World.

My Book, The Movie: A Change of Place.

The Page 69 Test: A Change of Place.

--Marshal Zeringue

James Markert

J. H. Markert, the author of The Nightmare Man, Mister Lullaby, and Sleep Tight, is the pen name for writer James Markert, an award-winning novelist of historical fiction. Markert is a produced screenwriter, husband, and father of two from Louisville, Kentucky, where he was also a tennis pro for 25 years, before hanging up the racquets for good in 2020. He graduated with a degree in History from the University of Louisville in 1997 and has been writing ever since. With a total of 10 published novels under his belt, Markert writes historical fiction under his name and horror/thriller under J.H. Markert. He has recently completed his next historical novel, Ransom Burning, a civil rights era family/crime drama that Markert calls “my best book yet!” He recently finished another horror novel called Dig, and is currently hard at work on his next novel, Spider to the Fly.

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

This prompt caught me in between books, one author I’m quite familiar with and another I’m admittedly getting a late start on. I just finished Stephen King’s newest collection, You Like It Darker (yes I do, thank you very much), and thought it was vintage King, the reason I ever started writing in the first place. But onward now to a novel I’ve been wanting to read since finishing the mind-blowing The Cabin at the End of the World, and that is A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay. I can already tell, twenty pages in, that it just might creep me out, but in the best of ways!

Visit J.H. Markert's website.

Q&A with J. H. Markert.

My Book, The Movie: The Nightmare Man.

The Page 69 Test: The Nightmare Man.

My Book, The Movie: Sleep Tight.

The Page 69 Test: Sleep Tight.

--Marshal Zeringue

Catriona McPherson

Catriona McPherson was born in Scotland and lived there until 2010, then immigrated to California where she lives on Patwin ancestral land. A former academic linguist, she now writes full-time. Her multi-award-winning and national best-selling work includes: the Dandy Gilver historical detective stories, the Last Ditch mysteries, set in California, and a strand of contemporary standalone novels including Edgar-finalist The Day She Died and Mary Higgins Clark finalist Strangers at the Gate. She is a member of Mystery Writers of America, The Crimewriters’ Association, The Society of Authors and Sisters in Crime, of which she is a former national president.

McPherson's new novel is The Witching Hour.

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

The brief for this assignment is very clear: do not simply list the books you’ve read. However, if anyone’s interested, everything I’ve read since December 2019 is on this page of my website.

But what have I been reading recently that I want to shout about?

Shannon Baker, a longtime resident of the Nebraska sandhills (although she now lives in Arizona), writes the Sheriff Kate Fox series of police procedurals. Or are they? Kate is one of a large family in a small town, where old feuds and fresh gossip confound every case she encounters. The landscape and lifestyle are brutal but the writing is lush and the stories are always absorbing, whether the background is the plight of migrant workers, the intricacies of policing the reservation or, as in the one I’ve just read, the big business of bucking bulls.

Still in the crime-fiction genre, but a different kettle of fish entirely, I thoroughly enjoyed Janice Hallett’s latest. Hallett writes her novels in the form of emails, texts, transcribed conversations, memos and the occasional news report. When I embarked on The Appeal (her debut), I didn’t expect there to be much characterisation. Shows what I know! The appalling cast of characters in the Fairway amateur dramatic society came rolling of the page and the two true-crime journalists in The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels are no different. Airtight plotting and car crash interpersonal drama – irresistible.

Right now I’m reading James McBride’s Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, seventy-five pages in to . . . a lot. It’s not in the crime genre, but like so much of the best literary fiction there is a puzzle about a crime right in its heart. Mind you, I reckon even if there was no plot whatsoever I’d read on, for McBride’s sharp but warm depiction of the Jewish and Black residents of Chicken Hill in Pottstown, Pa, who sometimes join hands and sometimes lock horns in their struggle to survive, thrive and prosper in the middle decades of the twentieth century. And I’ve fallen in love with Chona, who interrupts the Rabbi to point out mistakes, who will not give up her grocery store and take it easy, no matter that her husband Moshe could now afford to keep her, who is determined to stay on Chicken Hill where she was born. I have no idea what’s going to happen in this novel but I’m all in.

Visit Catriona McPherson's website.

The Page 69 Test: Go to My Grave.

Writers Read: Catriona McPherson (November 2018).

My Book, The Movie: The Turning Tide.

The Page 69 Test: The Turning Tide.

My Book, The Movie: A Gingerbread House.

The Page 69 Test: Hop Scot.

The Page 69 Test: Deep Beneath Us.

Q&A with Catriona McPherson.

The Page 69 Test: The Witching Hour.

--Marshal Zeringue

Laila Ibrahim

Laila Ibrahim is the bestselling author of After the Rain, Scarlet Carnation, Golden Poppies, Paper Wife, Mustard Seed, and Yellow Crocus. Before becoming a novelist, she worked as a preschool director, a birth doula, and a religious educator. Drawing from her experience in these positions, along with her education in developmental psychology and attachment theory, she finds rich inspiration for her novels. She’s a devout Unitarian Universalist, determined to do her part to add a little more love and justice to our beautiful and painful world. She lives with her wonderful wife, Rinda, and two other families in a small cohousing community in Berkeley, California. Her children and their families are her pride and joy. When she isn’t writing, she likes to cuddle with her dog Hazel, take walks with friends, study the Enneagram, do jigsaw puzzles, play games, work in the garden, travel, cook, and eat all kinds of delicious food.

Ibrahim's new novel is Falling Wisteria.

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

At the moment I'm reading The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. It's been on my 'check it out list' for a long time and I grabbed it when a friend put out a pile of books that included it.

In general I strive to live intentionally. I want to notice what brings me more in line with my values and keeps me in balance physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually.

I'm only two chapters into the book, however I already appreciate it very much. She lays out her goal clearly as well as her methodology, and then reports on how she did. Her writing is accessible and she is speaking for herself, not as an expert for all humans.

I could see it inspiring me to make my own list of values with measurable tasks that might enhance them. I love a good life hack and the idea that if I pay close attention I can make my already amazing life just a little better.

Visit Laila Ibrahim's website.

Q&A with Laila Ibrahim.

The Page 69 Test: Falling Wisteria.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ayelet Tsabari

Ayelet Tsabari is the author of the memoir in essays The Art of Leaving, finalist for the Writer’s Trust Hilary Weston Prize and The Vine Awards, winner of the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for memoir, and an Apple Books and Kirkus Review Best Book of 2019.

Her first book, the story collection The Best Place on Earth, won the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, and the Edward Lewis Wallant Award for Jewish Fiction.

The book was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, was nominated for The Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, and has been published internationally.

She’s the co-editor of the award-winning anthology Tongues: On Longing and Belonging Through Language. Tsabari teaches creative writing at The University of King’s College MFA and at Guelph MFA in Creative Writing. Her debut novel is Songs for the Brokenhearted.

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

I have just finished two books since I always have at least two on the go, one in audio (for walking, driving, hanging laundry, etc.) and one to read in bed at the end of the day.

The audiobook was All Fours by Miranda July, read by her, which made it an extra treat. It's a bold, un-put-down-able book about being a woman in midlife, about sex and marriage and parenthood and art. I admit that it's only through this novel that I was introduced to July's brilliance and I can't believe it took me so long. I devoured it!

The second book was a memoir with the brilliant title, The Widow's Guide to Dead Bastards by Jessica Waite. It is the story of a woman whose beloved husband dies suddenly, leaving her to raise their 9-year-old child on her own. Over the following weeks, as she deals with the unpleasant formalities of death, she discovers shocking, unsettling secrets about her husband that make her question everything. It's beautiful, complex, honest memoir about grief and forgiveness. I found it both funny and deeply moving.

Visit Ayelet Tsabari's website.

--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 newest Simon Westow mystery is Them Without Pain.

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

I tend to keep two books on the go, a novel for my downstairs ready and something non-fiction on the bedside table. The other week I picked up a Henning Mankel Wallender novel at a free library, and that's sending me down a rabbit hole. I've read many of them before, but a long time ago. Currently I'm on Sidetracked, set around the Swedish midsummer, and a series of strange deaths - most of which are gruesome murders. As always, Wallender is appealing and repellent in equal amounts. I'm curious to see how he solves this one.

Upstairs it's A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages, by Anthony Bale. Travel became an industry then, with increasing numbers going to pilgrimages to Rome, Jerusalem, Compostella and more. I read plenty of English history, but this takes me farther afield. Bale weaves his scholarship lightly and easily, with fascinating details about the people making these voyages and the places they go. The section on Venice is quite detailed, with plenty of interesting asides - apparently the powers that be deemed prostitution necessary to the local economy - and a sense of the place and time, when travel was often interrupted by outbreaks of plague; the Black Death wasn't the only one. I read plenty of history, often as research for my own books. Sometimes, though, it's simply because a topic piques my curiosity, and this did that. So far, it's very satisfying.

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.

The Page 69 Test: Brass Lives.

The Page 69 Test: The Blood Covenant.

The Page 69 Test: The Dead Will Rise.

The Page 69 Test: Rusted Souls.

The Page 69 Test: The Scream of Sins.

The Page 69 Test: Them Without Pain.

--Marshal Zeringue

Bryn Turnbull

Bryn Turnbull is an internationally bestselling author of historical fiction. Equipped with a Master of Letters in Creative Writing from the University of St. Andrews, a Master of Professional Communication from Toronto Metropolitan University and a Bachelor's degree in English Literature from McGill University, Turnbull focuses on finding stories of women lost within the cracks of the historical record.

Her debut novel, The Woman Before Wallis, was named one of the top ten bestselling works of Canadian fiction for 2020 and became an international bestseller. Her second, The Last Grand Duchess, came out in February 2022 and spent eight weeks on the Globe & Mail and Toronto Star bestseller lists. It was followed by The Paris Deception, which came out in May 2023.

Turnbull's new novel is The Berlin Apartment.

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

Despite my enduring love for history, I find that my reading interests these days tend increasingly towards contemporary fiction: character studies of so-called ordinary people, living so-called ordinary lives. I'm not entirely sure what's driving the shift. Perhaps it's because I've lived so long in the past -- after four novels set between 1910 and 1960, the early 20th century feels quite domestic. Perhaps, too, it's the realization that I've reached the age and stage where the early days of my lifetime are officially historical fiction fodder: apparently, anything older than 30 years is fair game for historical fiction novelists, and I'm not sure how comfortable I am with that, definitionally.

My newest novel is also my youngest: set in Cold War East and West Germany, The Berlin Apartment follows a twenty-something couple separated by the Berlin Wall, who hatch a plan to smuggle Lise, our East German heroine, west. Not to put too fine a point on things, but it didn't escape my notice that my historical novel fishtails neatly with my own story: it came down a year and four months after I came squalling into the world. Historical indeed.

So: contemporary fiction. A few weeks back, I picked up David Nicholls's most recent novel, You Are Here: a really lovely story that hits slightly too close to home about a young-ish (okay, young middle aged) pair of unlikely romantic leads, flung together on a weekend jaunt over England's rolling hills. It's not quite a rom com - it's more poignant than that -- but it has the exact right amount of romance to warm even the chilliest (of elder-millennial hearts.

Visit Bryn Turnbull's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Paris Deception.

The Page 69 Test: The Paris Deception.

Q&A with Bryn Turnbull.

My Book, The Movie: The Berlin Apartment.

The Page 69 Test: The Berlin Apartment.

--Marshal Zeringue