Timothy Jay Smith

From a young age, Timothy Jay Smith developed a ceaseless wanderlust that has taken him around the world many times. En route, he’s found the characters that people his work. Polish cops and Greek fishermen, mercenaries and arms dealers, child prostitutes and wannabe terrorists, Indian Chiefs and Indian tailors: he hung with them all in an unparalleled international career that had him smuggle banned plays from behind the Iron Curtain, maneuver through Occupied Territories, and stowaway aboard a ‘devil’s barge’ for a three-day crossing from Cape Verde that landed him in an African jail.

Smith has won top honors for his novels, screenplays and stage plays in numerous prestigious competitions. Fire on the Island won the Gold Medal in the Faulkner-Wisdom Competition for the Novel, and his screenplay adaptation of it was named Best Indie Script by WriteMovies. Another novel, The Fourth Courier, was a finalist for Best Gay Mystery in the 2020 Lambda Literary Awards. Previously, he won the Paris Prize for Fiction (now the de Groot Prize) for his novel, Checkpoint (later published as A Vision of Angels). Kirkus Reviews called Cooper’s Promise “literary dynamite” and selected it as one of the Best Books of 2012.

Smith's latest novel is Istanbul Crossing.

One novel on his recent reading list:

Rabih Alameddine is no stranger to the LGBTQ literary community. In 2017, his novel, The Angel of History, won the Lammy Award for Best Gay Novel, and he’s a frequent essayist-cum- philosopher on subjects ranging from HIV/AIDS to the emerging status of gay writers and the role we play in world literature.

Somewhat belatedly, I learned about his book, The Wrong End of the Telescope, published in 2021. In it, a trans Lebanese doctor (living in Chicago with her wife) travels to the Greek island of Lesbos for a short stay to help refugees – primarily Syrian – who arrive by crossing a narrow but treacherous channel from Turkey.

The setting intrigued me for more than the obvious reason that it’s set in Greece. For over twenty years, I’ve gone every year to Lesbos and know exactly where Alameddine has set his novel. At the height the refugee crisis (2015-2017), I assisted the relief efforts in many capacities, so I was especially curious how he would describe and characterize the situation.

Alameddine’s portrayal of the place, people, and situation is perfect. For anyone who wants to know how the refugee crisis played out in terms of the interactions between volunteers, international aid agencies, and local villagers, Telescope captures it – including cringe-worthy moments when volunteers take selfies with refugees who’ve barely had a chance to find their footing on solid land.

Alameddine has always used his writing to bear witness to social injustice and Telescope is no exception. The refugee crisis swamping Europe was of such magnitude that it was almost easier for people to ignore it than conceive of any way that they could help. (Over one twelve-month period, 500,000 refugees arrived on Lesbos’s northern rocky coast adjacent to villages of no more than a few hundred people.) Alameddine was determined that people viscerally recognize the human tragedy in the crisis.

He traveled to Lesbos to find his story and characters. As soon as he gives them names, for his readers, they become real people. Mina, the trans doctor from Chicago, befriends Sumaiya, a gravely ill refugee. Together, they struggle with issues of survival and death that are repeated thousands-fold all around them. Alameddine, though, begins to question his right to tell the refugees’ story, and increasingly relies on Mina to tell it for him. In an odd twist, she becomes a first-person narrator who describes to the author what he is experiencing and how he should convey it to his readers. Mina’s story, too, is eventually revealed, and is only one of many LGBTQ threads woven into Alameddine’s beautifully written and crafted novel.

Visit Timothy Jay Smith's website.

Writers Read: Timothy Jay Smith (May 2019).

My Book, The Movie: The Fourth Courier.

The Page 69 Test: The Fourth Courier.

Q&A with Timothy Jay Smith.

The Page 69 Test: Fire on the Island.

The Page 69 Test: Istanbul Crossing.

Writers Read: Timothy Jay Smith (October 2024).

--Marshal Zeringue

Robert Dugoni

Robert Dugoni is a critically acclaimed New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and #1 Amazon bestselling author, reaching over 9 million readers worldwide. He is best known for his Tracy Crosswhite police series set in Seattle. He is also the author of the Charles Jenkins espionage series, the David Sloane legal thriller series, and several stand-alone novels including The 7th Canon, Damage Control, The World Played Chess, and Her Deadly Game. His novel The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell received Suspense Magazine’s 2018 Book of the Year, and Dugoni’s narration won an AudioFile Earphones Award. The Washington Post named his nonfiction exposé The Cyanide Canary a Best Book of the Year.

Dugoni's new novel is Beyond Reasonable Doubt.

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

At present I’m reading Barbed Wire Heart by Martha Salinas, a writing student of The Novel Writing Intensive. It’s a coming of age story of a poor girl who is a piano prodigy in the oil fields of Texas. Her father is abusive to his wife and his four kids and her mother takes off to get help with drug and alcohol addiction leaving Starlene to care for her and her three younger siblings. The voice in this story is so authentic and real, it just breaks my heart. It is a tremendous story by a soon to be published author.

I’m also reading Bad Liar by Tami Hoag. It's a masterful mystery of a murder victim found at the end of a country road in the Bayou, hands and face missing from gunshot. The sheriff-detective, Annie Broussard is back on the job and this mystery turns out to be nothing she expects. It’s taut and tense.

Visit Robert Dugoni's website and Facebook page.

The Page 69 Test: Wrongful Death.

The Page 69 Test: Bodily Harm.

My Book, The Movie: Bodily Harm.

The Page 69 Test: Murder One.

My Book, The Movie: Murder One.

My Book, The Movie: The Eighth Sister.

The Page 69 Test: The Eighth Sister.

My Book, The Movie: A Cold Trail.

The Page 69 Test: A Cold Trail.

The Page 69 Test: The Last Agent.

My Book, The Movie: The Last Agent.

Q&A with Robert Dugoni.

The Page 69 Test: In Her Tracks.

Writers Read: Robert Dugoni (March 2024).

The Page 69 Test: A Killing on the Hill.

My Book, The Movie: A Killing on the Hill.

The Page 69 Test: Beyond Reasonable Doubt.

My Book, The Movie: Beyond Reasonable Doubt.

--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 Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities:

Two of the most famous lines Charles Dickens wrote, two of the most famous lines in the English language, are the first and the last sentences of A Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” And, “It is a far, far better thing I do than I have ever done.” Both lines are connected to the the events of the French Revolution, which, along with the American Revolution, changed the world forever, a revolution which is now celebrated as a new birth of freedom, but which, at the time, and for a great many years after, was seen as the end of civilized life. Charles Dickens saw it as both.

The opening line, that remarkable first sentence, is not the kind of sentence taught today in writing classes; the first sentence is a whole paragraph:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epic of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present, that some of the noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

In this, the “year of Our Lord 1775,” while Louis XVI was safely on the throne of France, a young boy was sentenced to have his hands cut off, his tongue torn out with pincers and his body burned alive, “because he had not kneeled down in the rain to do honor to a dirty procession of monks which passed within his view, at a distance of some fifty or sixty yards.” Death was a remedy for crime, or rather for criminals; “not that it did the least good in the way of prevention…but, it cleared off (as to this world) the trouble of each particular case….” It was also a popular form of entertainment, and not just in France. In England, Dickens explains, people paid to see “the play at the Old Bailey.” Someone is asked what was coming at the next court trial. He is told that the defendant would “be drawn on a hurdle to be half hanged, and then he’ll be taken down and sliced before his face, and then his inside will be taken out and burned while he looks on, and then his head will be chopped off, and he’ll be cut into quarters. That’s the sentence.”

When I was still practicing law, a judge once told me during a pre-trial conference that if my client pled guilty he would get probation, but if he went to trial he would go to prison. “Even if he’s acquitted?” I asked, trying not to laugh. The English were more direct, and more brutal. “If he’s found Guilty, you mean to say?” “Oh, they’ll find him guilty,” said the other. “Don’t you be afraid of that.”

This brief conversation takes place while the prisoner, Charles Darnay, charged with being an enemy of England and a friend to the United States, stands there, “being mentally hanged, beheaded, and quartered, by everybody there.” But Darnay “neither flinched from the situation, nor assumed any theatrical air in it.” That Darnay was able to maintain his composure in such circumstances was unusual, but more unusual still, he was acquitted by the jury. Part of the reason was that he bore such a striking resemblance to one of the lawyers, Sydney Carton, that the witness for the prosecution was forced to admit that he could not be absolutely certain that his identification of Darnay was correct.

Charles Darnay is a French aristocrat who had come to believe that the French aristocracy was doomed. His uncle, Monseigneur, on the other hand, thought his nephew part of the cause: “We have lost many privileges; a new philosophy has become the mode.” Darnay thought too many privileges were left. “I believe our name to be more detested than any name in France.” This, to the uncle, is a source of pride. “Let us hope so. Detestation of the high is the involuntary homage of the low.”

Unlike those members of the French aristocracy who, reading Rousseau, became so enamored of the rights of man that they were willing to join in the movement for equality, Monseigneur never doubted his God-given right to have everything his own way, from having four different servants involved in making and serving his hot chocolate in the morning - he would have been humiliated had there been only three, and “must have died of two” - to killing anyone, including a child, who became a nuisance. When his carriage rode over and killed an infant, he shouted, “It is extraordinary to me that you people cannot take care of yourselves and your children. One or the other of you is for ever in the way. How do I know what injury you have done my horses?” Proving his humanity, he threw out a gold coin, and when someone threw it back at him, he exclaimed: “I would ride over any of you very willingly and exterminate you from the earth.”

Among the others who saw this was a woman who the whole time kept knitting, and “still knitted on with the steadfastness of Fate,” the unforgettable Madame Defarge. Later, when someone murders the Monseigneur and the killer is executed, Defarge promises the destruction of the “chateau and all the race.” She only had to wait until 1789, when the Bastille was attacked. An axe in her hand, and carrying both a pistol and a knife, Madame Defarge led the mob, shouting to the other women, “We can kill as well as the men when the place is taken.” She cuts off the head of one man, and then puts her foot on the body of the governor of the prison “to steady it for mutilation.”

The revolution has started. The nobility flee France any way they can. No one pities them. Madame Defarge has seen “our sister-women suffer, in themselves and in their children, poverty, nakedness, hunger, thirst, sickness, misery, oppression and neglect of all kinds.” Everyone thought to have played any part in this is put in prison where they are brought before “a self-appointed Tribunal…by which they were rapidly ordered to be put forth to be massacred or to be released, or (in a few cases) to be sent back to their cells.”

The figure that stands out in all this is “the sharp female called La Guillotine,” which became, not just an efficient method of decapitation, but “the sign of the regeneration of the human race. It superseded the Cross. Models of it were worn on the breasts from which the Cross was discarded, and it was bowed down to and believed in where the Cross was denied.” Every day the tumbrils ‘jolted heavily, filled with the condemned.” The Guillotine was sometimes called ‘the barber,’ shaving more than sixty heads in a day. One of those heads was supposed to belong to Charles Darnay.

While everyone was fleeing France, Charles Darnay returned, keeping a promise to help someone in need. He is brought to trial as an emigrant, whose life, according to the prosecutor, “was forfeit to the Republic, under the decree which banished all emigrants on pain of Death.” Darnay, however, is married to the daughter of Dr. Manette who had for years been a prisoner in the Bastille and was, for that reason, thought a hero of the Revolution. When he testifies that his son-in-law had stood trial as a “foe of England and a friend of the United States,” the crowd cheers and the jury acquits. Darnay knows that the same people now cheering would, “carried by another current,” have torn him to pieces in the street.

His freedom does not last. Denounced by Madame Defarge and her husband as “one of a family of tyrants, one of a race proscribed, for that they had used their abolished privileges to the infamous oppression of the people,” he is again imprisoned and put on trial. When Dr. Manette tries to testify again on his son-in-law’s behalf, he is told by the Court that, “If the Republic should demand of you the sacrifice of your child herself, you will have no duty but to sacrifice her.” Darnay is condemned to die.

A story about the rage and oppression of men and women driven mad by the sudden acquisition of the power to do to others what had been done to them - the extermination of an entire class - requires someone willing to do something noble and heroic, someone who can recite with credibility that famous last line: “It is a far, far better thing I do, than I have ever done.” In a classic use of double identity, Sydney Carton, the lawyer who looked just like Charles Darnay when Darnay was on trial in England, and who, like Darnay, had fallen in love with the daughter of Dr. Manette, keeps a promise he had made when he told her, after she rejected his offer of marriage, to “think now and then that there is a man who would give his life to keep a life you love beside you.” Carton visits Darnay in prison the night before Darnay’s scheduled execution, and over prisoner’s objection, changes clothes with him and, undetected, takes his place. If this seems more than a shade too melodramatic, Charles Dickens might well ask whether the real question is whether we have all become far too unromantic.

The last line comes after what, Dickens tells us, would have been Carton’s last thoughts. He sees “the long ranks of the new oppressors who have risen on the destruction of the old, perishing by the retributive instrument, before it shall cease out of its present use. I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long long years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out.”

But why, exactly, did the French Revolution happen? Dickens paints a picture of an arrogant, and brutal, aristocracy at best indifferent, and at worse, celebrating, the oppressions of the poor, which meant the great majority of the people of France, and with Madame Defarge he creates a character that almost defines the word ‘revenge.’ But what, suddenly, set everything on fire. Writing twenty-five years earlier, another British writer, Thomas Macaulay, suggested that it was the addition of “new theories” to “ancient abuses” that made it all happen.

The people, having no constitutional means of checking even the most flagitious misgovernment were indemnified for oppression by being suffered to luxuriate in anarchical speculation, and to deny or ridicule every principle on which the institution of the State reposed. Neither those who attribute the downfall of the old French institutions to the public grievances, nor those who attribute it to the doctrine of the philosophers, appear to us to have taken into their view more than half the subject.

The French Revolution, like the American Revolution, depended, ultimately, on the thought that had come to dominate the way people thought about their condition. The French read Rousseau; the Americans read John Locke. The French Revolution ended with Napoleon, an emperor; the American Revolution ended with George Washington, an elected president of an elected federal government. It is our misfortune that Charles Dickens did not write a novel about that.

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.

Third reading: The American Constitution.

--Marshal Zeringue

Timothy Jay Smith

From a young age, Timothy Jay Smith developed a ceaseless wanderlust that has taken him around the world many times. En route, he’s found the characters that people his work. Polish cops and Greek fishermen, mercenaries and arms dealers, child prostitutes and wannabe terrorists, Indian Chiefs and Indian tailors: he hung with them all in an unparalleled international career that had him smuggle banned plays from behind the Iron Curtain, maneuver through Occupied Territories, and stowaway aboard a ‘devil’s barge’ for a three-day crossing from Cape Verde that landed him in an African jail.

Smith has won top honors for his novels, screenplays and stage plays in numerous prestigious competitions. Fire on the Island won the Gold Medal in the Faulkner-Wisdom Competition for the Novel, and his screenplay adaptation of it was named Best Indie Script by WriteMovies. Another novel, The Fourth Courier, was a finalist for Best Gay Mystery in the 2020 Lambda Literary Awards. Previously, he won the Paris Prize for Fiction (now the de Groot Prize) for his novel, Checkpoint (later published as A Vision of Angels). Kirkus Reviews called Cooper’s Promise “literary dynamite” and selected it as one of the Best Books of 2012.

Smith's latest novel is Istanbul Crossing.

One novel on his recent reading list:

Hall of Mirrors by John Copenhaver.

In Hall of Mirrors, the second novel in his Nightingale Trilogy, John Copenhaver once again seduces his readers with false but believable leads, characters uncertain about their own motives, and a surprise ending that makes perfect sense when the clouds lift enough to reveal it. If ‘tricky mysteries’ were a genre, Copenhaver would be its king.

When the novel opens, two lesbian amateur sleuths, Judy and Philippa, stand on the street with their new friend, Lionel, as they watch his upper floor apartment belch fire and smoke. Where is his lover, Roger, if they dare even use that word? It’s the early 1950s, McCarthyism is at its peak, as is the nation’s tolerance for homophobia and racism.

Roger had recently lost his job at the State Department when a lie detector test revealed him to be a homosexual. The police instantly assume he’s committed suicide. They are even less little interested in pursuing an investigation when they realize that Roger had been shacking up with mixed-race Lionel.

Judy and Philippa are convinced it wasn’t suicide. In the first novel of Copenhaver’s trilogy, The Savage Kind, they teamed up to identify a serial killer of young girls, who was never arrested. Bogdan had been an invaluable spy for the U.S., so deemed untouchable. He’d started his distinctive killings again: young girls, by waterways, with writing on their bodies. Intent on stopping Bogdan, Judy and Philippa had anonymously sent out their investigation’s conclusions to journalists and police; and Roger who, as a part-time crime writer, might hopefully reveal the true story of the serial murders. Had they brought Bogdan to him?

Hall of Mirrors it titled for a passage in the novel where a room of mirrors forces everyone to find themselves in others’ reflections; not unlike the ‘instant of recognition’ inside the Magic Theatre in Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf when Harry Haller recognizes the many aspects of himself in the broken chards of a mirror and finally overcomes his self-loathing. In their relationship, Philippa struggles with her relationship with Judy; she’s not as confident about her sexuality. That tension feeds the plot all along. In Philippa’s own Magic Theatre moment, she has her own epiphany. They’ll both be back.

And so will many of Copenhaver’s readers!

Visit Timothy Jay Smith's website.

Writers Read: Timothy Jay Smith.

My Book, The Movie: The Fourth Courier.

The Page 69 Test: The Fourth Courier.

Q&A with Timothy Jay Smith.

The Page 69 Test: Fire on the Island.

The Page 69 Test: Istanbul Crossing.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jenny Milchman

Jenny Milchman is the Mary Higgins Clark award winning and USA Today bestselling author of five novels. Her work has been praised by the New York Times, New York Journal of Books, San Francisco Journal of Books and more; earned spots on Best Of lists including PureWow, POPSUGAR, the Strand, Suspense, and Big Thrill magazines; and received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Booklist, and Shelf Awareness. Four of her novels have been Indie Next Picks. Milchman's short fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies as well as Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, and a recent piece on touring appeared in the Agatha award winning collection Promophobia. Milchman's new series with Thomas & Mercer features psychologist Arles Shepherd, who has the power to save the most troubled and vulnerable children, but must battle demons of her own to do it. Milchman is a member of the Rogue Women Writers and lives in the Hudson Valley with her family.

Her new novel is The Usual Silence.

Recently I asked Milchman about what she was reading. The author's reply:

Getting lost in a book with nothing else to do besides read it is a unique joy that got me through childhood, but is now pretty much relegated to taking a rare—like, as in a hundred year storm rare—vacation, my birthday, and those fleeting bits of summer when time suddenly and fleetingly expands.

So I am juggling three books right now.

One is a novel called You Will Never Be Me by Jesse Q. Sutanto. I’m reading this as research to inform an aspect of my forthcoming novel, which has a subplot concerning influencer culture. Sultano captures the more outrageous details of being an influencer—purchasing organic carrots at a farmers market, then burying them in your own fallow garden so you can dig them up for a TikTok—which she wraps in a novel that’s less of a whodunnit than a will-she-get-away-with-it?

Next is Red River Road by Anna Downes, which concerns van life and a woman traveling alone. Since there’s little I find more compelling than a wilderness thriller, reading about Phoebe who vanishes from the remote Australian coast rises both hairs and hackles for me.

Finally, as I prepare to launch myself with arms spread as wide as wings into the pages of a new novel, I look to books on craft, which lend inspiration as well as concrete guidance. My choice this time is The Technique of the Mystery Story by Carolyn Wells, a lesser known counterpart to such mystery grande dames as Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers.

Learn more about the book and author at Jenny Milchman's website.

My Book, The Movie: Cover of Snow.

The Page 69 Test: Cover of Snow.

The Page 69 Test: Ruin Falls.

My Book, The Movie: Ruin Falls.

My Book, The Movie: The Second Mother.

The Page 69 Test: The Second Mother.

Q&A with Jenny Milchman.

My Book, The Movie: The Usual Silence.

The Page 69 Test: The Usual Silence.

--Marshal Zeringue

Paula Munier

Paula Munier is the USA TODAY bestselling author of the Mercy Carr mysteries. A Borrowing of Bones, the first in the series, was nominated for the Mary Higgins Clark Award and named the Dogwise Book of the Year. Blind Search also won a Dogwise Award. The Hiding Place and The Wedding Plot both appeared on several “Best Of” lists. Home at Night, the fifth book in the series, was inspired by her volunteer work as a Natural Resources Steward of New Hampshire. Along with her love of nature, Munier credits the hero dogs of Mission K9 Rescue, her own rescue dogs, and a deep affection for New England as her series’ major influences. A literary agent by day, she’s also written three popular books on writing: Plot Perfect, The Writer’s Guide to Beginnings, and Writing with Quiet Hands, as well as Happier Every Day and the memoir Fixing Freddie: The True Story of a Boy, a Mom, and a Very, Very Bad Beagle.

Munier's new Mercy Carr mystery is The Night Woods.

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

My TBR pile is eclectic if nothing else. I’m reading for research as I write the next Mercy Carr mystery (coming next year), and I’m reading for just plain fun and friendship (she says happily, as many of her friends are writers with new books):

For research:

In the mystery I’m writing now, it’s December. Which means I get to play with all of the holiday tropes. So, I’ve been reading up on everything from Christmas carols to New Year’s traditions. Three of my favorites:

Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris / I love this hilarious collection of holiday stories so much that I often give copies as Christmas presents to friends and family. I myself have read it multiple times and was thrilled to have an excuse to read it again. If you haven’t read this one, pour yourself a bourbon and eggnog and get to it.

The Secret History of Christmas, by Bill Bryson / I’m a big fan of Bryson’s work, most notably A Walk in the Woods and I was delighted to discover he’d written a book about Christmas. Bryson gives us the historical lowdown on the holiday’s rituals and traditions—from Santa Claus’s many past lives to the risqué origins of Christmas carols. All good fodder for the writing mill.

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens / You knew I had to reread this classic. But this time I listened to the audiobook version of the story, read by Hugh Grant. This is Bah Humbug! at its best.

For just plain fun and friendship:

Death at the Sign of the Rook, by Kate Atkinson / Kate Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie ranks among my all-time most beloved detectives, right up there with Maigret and Morse and Vera. In this new entry in the series, #6, Atkinson brings back some of my favorite characters—most notably Reggie and Louise—to play with Jackson in a send-up of Golden Age mysteries that’s as funny as it is clever. Atkinson is the only crime writer I read with a dictionary by my side, which I naturally consider a plus.

Argos: The Story of Odysseus as Told by His Loyal Dog, by Ralph Hardy / Just in time for the publication of The Night Woods, Mercy Carr #6 and my humble homage to The Odyssey, I met Ralph Hardy, who’s penned the most wonderful adaptation of Homer’s epic poem, written from the point of view of the dog. Just. Plain. Awesome. Note: I write books with dogs in them, but I’ve never had the chutzpah to write from their POV. If I ever do, I hope I do it this well.

Blue Christmas Bones, by Carolyn Haines / Carolyn, my pal and sister Minotaur author, writes the bestselling Sarah Booth Delaney mysteries. Her latest, which pubs October 15) is a murderous romp through Tupelo during the annual holiday-themed Elvis Festival. Elvis. Christmas. Murder. What more do you want?

I could go on and on, but I have a book—untitled Mercy Carr #7—to write. (If you have any ideas for a Christmas-related title, please let me know.) And a book—The Night Woods—to promote. Until next time, happy reading!

Visit Paula Munier's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Paula Munier & Bear.

My Book, The Movie: A Borrowing of Bones.

The Page 69 Test: A Borrowing of Bones.

Writers Read: Paula Munier (October 2019).

My Book, The Movie: Blind Search.

The Page 69 Test: Blind Search.

My Book, The Movie: The Hiding Place.

The Page 69 Test: The Hiding Place.

Q&A with Paula Munier.

My Book, The Movie: The Wedding Plot.

The Page 69 Test: The Wedding Plot.

Writers Read: Paula Munier (July 2022).

Writers Read: Paula Munier (October 2023).

My Book, The Movie: Home at Night.

The Page 69 Test: Home at Night.

My Book, The Movie: The Night Woods.

The Page 69 Test: The Night Woods.

--Marshal Zeringue

Margaret Mizushima

Margaret Mizushima writes the internationally published Timber Creek K-9 Mysteries. She serves as past president of the Rocky Mountain Chapter of Mystery Writers of America and was elected Writer of the Year by Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers. She is the recipient of a Colorado Authors League Award, a Benjamin Franklin Book Award, a CIBA CLUE Award, and two Willa Literary Awards by Women Writing the West. Her books have been finalists for a SPUR Award by Western Writers of America, a Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Award, and the Colorado Book Award. She and her husband recently moved from Colorado, where they raised two daughters and a multitude of animals, to a home in the Pacific Northwest.

Mizushima's new Timber Creek K-9 mystery is Gathering Mist.

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

I’ve recently begun reading Den of Iniquity by New York Times Bestselling Author J.A. Jance. I try to read everything written by Jance, and this is her latest release. A couple decades ago, I started reading her Joanna Brady series, and those books inspired me to write a mystery of my own about a spunky female K-9 handler serving in a rural jurisdiction in the Colorado high country. Thus, my Timber Creek K-9 Mysteries were born. J.A. Jance has been one of my author idols ever since.

Den of Iniquity is the latest installment in a different Jance series, this one featuring J.P. Beaumont. Like most of her novels, this book focuses on families and their dynamics while delivering a suspenseful puzzle. A retired homicide cop, Beaumont has formed his own private investigation agency. When he’s asked to look into what appears like an accidental death, he uncovers evidence that leads him to believe that something more sinister happened. At the same time, he begins to investigate a case that is much closer to home—one involving his grandson’s stepmother who is driving a wedge between the boy and his dad. These two cases become more and more complicated, and the cover flap description indicates the two will eventually collide.

Every time I read one of her books, Jance hooks me with her twisted plots and engaging characters. I can’t wait to continue reading to see what she has in store for me in this terrific novel!

Visit Margaret Mizushima's website and follow her on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.

Coffee with a Canine: Margaret Mizushima & Hannah, Bertie, Lily and Tess.

Coffee with a Canine: Margaret Mizushima & Hannah.

My Book, The Movie: Burning Ridge.

The Page 69 Test: Burning Ridge.

The Page 69 Test: Tracking Game.

My Book, The Movie: Hanging Falls.

The Page 69 Test: Hanging Falls.

Q&A with Margaret Mizushima.

The Page 69 Test: Striking Range.

The Page 69 Test: Standing Dead.

The Page 69 Test: Gathering Mist.

--Marshal Zeringue

S.E. Redfearn

S. E. Redfearn is the award-winning and Amazon #1 bestselling author of seven novels: Two Good Men, Where Butterflies Wander, Moment in Time, Hadley & Grace, In an Instant, No Ordinary Life, and Hush Little Baby. Her books have been translated into twenty-five different languages and have been recognized by Goodreads Choice Awards, Best Book Awards, RT Reviews, Target Recommends, Publisher’s Marketplace, and Kirkus Reviews. In addition to being an author, Redfearn is also an architect. She currently lives in Laguna Beach California, where she and her husband own two restaurants: Lumberyard and Slice Pizza & Beer.

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

I’m currently listening to All the Colors of the Dark, by Chris Whitaker, and it is spellbinding. I love psychological suspense, and this one is absolutely brilliant. I’m not sure how it ended up on my radar, but I’m certainly glad it did. It is the most haunting missing person story I’ve ever read.

And I am reading Yellowface by R.F. Kuang. The book won the 2023 Goodreads Choice Award for Best Fiction, which is why I chose it. It’s fascinating to read a fictionalized version of what it’s like to be a bestselling author. While some of it rings true, a lot of it is greatly exaggerated and romanticized. But I am definitely getting a kick out of reading a story that hits so close to home.

Visit Suzanne Redfearn's website, Facebook and Instagram pages, and Twitter perch.

Coffee with a Canine: Suzanne Redfearn and Cooper.

My Book, The Movie: Hush Little Baby.

The Page 69 Test: Hush Little Baby.

The Page 69 Test: No Ordinary Life.

Writers Read: Suzanne Redfearn (February 2016).

My Book, The Movie: No Ordinary Life.

My Book, The Movie: In an Instant.

The Page 69 Test: In an Instant.

Q&A with Suzanne Redfearn.

My Book, The Movie: Hadley and Grace.

The Page 69 Test: Hadley & Grace.

Writers Read: Suzanne Redfearn (March 2022).

The Page 69 Test: Moment in Time.

My Book, The Movie: Moment in Time.

Writers Read: Suzanne Redfearn (February 2024).

--Marshal Zeringue

Kate Robards

Kate Robards is the author of two thriller novels. Her debut novel, The Three Deaths of Willa Stannard, was nominated for the 2024 Simon & Schuster Mary Higgins Clark Award and received a starred review from Kirkus Reviews. Her second novel, Only the Guilty Survive, was released this summer.

She studied journalism and advertising at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. Currently, Robards works in communications at a nonprofit organization.

When she isn’t writing her next book, Robrads is spending time with her children, gardening, reading, or tackling a new sewing project. She lives outside Chicago with her family.

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

Currently, I’m reading A Flicker in the Dark, the suspenseful debut by Stacy Willingham. It follows Chloe, a psychologist haunted by the crimes her serial killer father committed twenty years ago. It’s well-written and engrossing—the very definition of a page-turner. This is the second book I’ve read by Willingham, and I’m impressed by her character development and pacing.

I like to balance my reading list, alternating between fiction (mostly thrillers and mysteries) and nonfiction. I just finished Tangled Vines: Power, Privilege, and the Murdaugh Family Murders by John Glatt. This story proves that truth can certainly be stranger than fiction. Glatt is thorough in his presentation of the events leading up to the crimes. My interest in this case was piqued after seeing a documentary series on Netflix, but I was left wondering why and why now. Glatt answered those questions in his book.

Mysteries always appeal to me, especially when I can see fictional thrillers happening in real life and when I have to suspend belief in true crime accounts. Those are the stories that always make it to the top of my reading list.

Visit Kate Robards's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Three Deaths of Willa Stannard.

The Page 69 Test: The Three Deaths of Willa Stannard.

Q&A with Kate Robards.

--Marshal Zeringue