Alie Dumas-Heidt

Alie Dumas-Heidt lives in the Puget Sound with her husband, adult kids, and two Goldendoodles – Astrid and Torvi. Growing up she wanted to be a detective and a writer and spent a few years working as a police dispatcher. Now, working is writing in her home office with the dogs at her feet. When she’s not writing she enjoys being in the forest, creating glass art, yarn crafts, and watching baseball.

Dumas-Heidt's new novel is The Myth Maker.

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

I am currently reading two very different books right now, which I do to myself often. I have an older cozy mystery called The Quiche of Death by M.C. Beaton, and Evil Eye by Etaf Rum.

The Quiche of Death is the first in the Agatha Raisin cozy series that started in the 90's. I jumped into the books after watching the show on the BBC. It's a fun read with a spirited leading lady, Agatha Raisin, who leaves a successful PR career and unwittingly becomes a super sleuth in the Cotswolds. It is a little sassier than other cozy reads, but the sass feels true to the characters. I love how the side characters and the town itself add to the story and it's been my escape place before bed.

Evil Eye by Etaf Rum is one I just bought and it was because of my mom's recent obsession with the image of the evil eye. The cover art caught me from across the bookstore and then I got pulled in by the details of the story. The writing is so clean and easy to fall into. Right now I'm getting to know the main character, Yara Murad, and feel the suffocation she's enduring from a life that isn't quite her own. I'm only few chapters in but I'm invested in Yara and I'm pretty sure she will eventually make me cry.

Visit Alie Dumas-Heidt's website.

Q&A with Alie Dumas-Heidt.

--Marshal Zeringue

Turner Gable Kahn

Turner Gable Kahn is the author of the debut novel The Dirty Version, a feminist contemporary romance about a novelist and an intimacy coordinator who are forced to collaborate on new steamy scenes for the TV adaptation of her book. Set between South Florida and Hollywood, it’s a slow-burn love story that explores power, creative control, and emotional intimacy.

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

One of the books I keep returning to—mentally and emotionally—is Everything’s Fine by Cecilia Rabess. On the surface, it’s a workplace romance between two people on opposite ends of the political spectrum: Jess, a young Black analyst starting out at a finance firm, and Josh, her smug, conservative coworker. But of course, it’s not really a romance in the traditional sense. It’s a razor-sharp exploration of power, identity, race, and the emotional gymnastics involved in navigating proximity to someone who can’t—or won’t—see the world the way you do.

What struck me most is how Rabess lets the emotional tension simmer under the surface of everyday interactions. The love story feels both impossible and deeply believable, which is what makes the book so haunting. She writes the desperation between them so well—the push and pull, the longing, the ache of two people who can’t seem to stay away. It reminded me of the magnetic attraction between the two main characters in Sally Rooney’s Normal People, but filtered through a lens of cultural tension and emotional realism that’s entirely Rabess’s own.

I admire how unflinching it is—how it refuses to resolve itself neatly. It reminded me that the most provocative fiction doesn’t always shout; sometimes it just sits with the discomfort and lets you feel it long after you’ve turned the last page.

Visit Turner Gable Kahn's website.

Q&A with Turner Gable Kahn.

My Book, The Movie: The Dirty Version.

--Marshal Zeringue

Miriam Gershow

Miriam Gershow is the author of Closer, Survival Tips: Stories and The Local News. Her writing is featured in The Georgia Review, Gulf Coast, and Black Warrior Review, among other journals. She is the recipient of a Fiction Fellowship from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, an Oregon Literary Fellowship, and is a two-time finalist for the Oregon Book Award. Gershow is the organizer of “100 Notable Small Press Books,” a curated list of the year’s recommended books from independent publishers.

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

I found a copy of Gin Phillip’s Fierce Kingdom at the library book sale this year. I’d been interested when this first came out eight years ago, but I was too early into parenting to be able to stomach the story of a woman trapped with her four-year-old son at the zoo during an active shooter situation. I’m so glad I came back to it: it was harrowing, propulsive, and so well-rendered up to the very last note. It’s a story of motherhood at its most desperate, though the writing is so sharp and lively, you’re never entirely cowed by the desperation. Phillip’s keeps the story aloft in unimaginable circumstances.

I’m also in the middle of spearheading 100 Notable Small Press Books 2025, a project of 50+ volunteer reviewers reading and recommending titles across genres and presses. The final list will be published in LitHub in November. In the meantime, I’m on a small press reading kick. Currently I’m rereading Scott Nadelson’s Trust Me (Forest Avenue Press) for an event we’re doing together on how we imagine Oregon in our work. Scott’s version of Oregon is so tender and mossy and mushroom-capped, you can see it and smell it in every page. His work makes you want to snug your fleece cap tighter around your head and pull up your smart wool socks. It’s pretty close to the opposite of how I write about place - I mostly approach it through the people and the sociological updrafts and winds.

And finally I’m reading my friend Heather Ryan’s essay collection in progress. Bookmark Heather’s name; her essay, "Ballistic Trajectory," which anchors her collection, is one of the most affecting essays I’ve read in years: unflinching and heartbreaking about so many things, including institutional failures of academia, the limits of teaching, and how, years later, the progress of MeToo is no progress at all. It’s going to blow everyone’s ears back when it’s published.

Visit Miriam Gershow's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Local News.

Q&A with Miriam Gershow.

--Marshal Zeringue

Molly MacRae

Molly MacRae spent twenty years in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Upper East Tennessee, where she managed The Book Place, an independent bookstore; may it rest in peace. Before the lure of books hooked her, she was curator of the history museum in Jonesborough, Tennessee’s oldest town.

MacRae lives with her family in Champaign, Illinois, where she recently retired from connecting children with books at the public library.

Her latest novel is There'll Be Shell to Pay.

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

Shirley Rousseau Murphy’s Joe Gray books have been on my radar since the first one, Cat on the Edge, came out in 1996. I finally started reading them this spring and I’m up to book ten, Cat Cross Their Graves. The books are cozy with dashes of police procedure and fantasy. The three main characters are Joe Gray, Dulcie, and Kit, sentient house cats able to understand, speak, and read English. The mysteries are good and twisty and they aren’t told for the laughs one might expect from the set up. Except for their unusual talents, the cats act like cats. They’re also serious and successful amateur sleuths. There’s great situational humor, though. Not laughing at the cats, but at the issues they have using human technology, like computers and cell phones, and their very reasonable reactions to some of the things the humans around them do.

I love short stories and have had a subscription to Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine for at least forty years. I’m reading the most recent issue with stories by some of my favorite authors including John M. Floyd, G. Miki Hayden, Janice Law, and R.T. Lawton. You can’t beat Hitchcock or Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine for great mystery shorts.

We don’t eat a lot of desserts at my house, but we like drooling over them in cookbooks. I’m reading a perfect cookbook right now—Malai: Frozen Desserts Inspired by South Asian Flavors, by Pooja Bavishi. Just leafing through for the gorgeous photographs is getting me through the heat wave we’re having. There are recipes for dairy and non-dairy ice creams, milkshakes, sundaes, ice cream pies, bars, frozen icebox cakes, toppings and sauces, as well as baked goods to go with the frozen treats. Sprinkled throughout the recipes are cardamom, ginger, black pepper, turmeric, and other warm spices. I have my eye on Bavishi’s Salted Brown Butter Pecan Ice Cream with Chocolate Cardamom Sauce.

Visit Molly MacRae's website.

My Book, The Movie: Plaid and Plagiarism.

The Page 69 Test: Plaid and Plagiarism.

The Page 69 Test: Scones and Scoundrels.

My Book, The Movie: Scones and Scoundrels.

The Page 69 Test: Crewel and Unusual.

The Page 69 Test: Heather and Homicide.

Q&A with Molly MacRae.

Writers Read: Molly MacRae (July 2024).

The Page 69 Test: Come Shell or High Water.

My Book, The Movie: Come Shell or High Water.

--Marshal Zeringue

Camilla Trinchieri

Camilla Trinchieri worked for many years dubbing films in Rome with directors including Federico Fellini, Pietro Germi, Franco Rossi, Lina Wertmüller and Luchino Visconti. She immigrated to the US in 1980 and received her MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University. Under the pseudonym Camilla Crespi, she has published eight mysteries. As Camilla Trinchieri, she has published The Price of Silence and Seeking Alice, a fictionalized account of her mother’s life in Europe during WWII.

Trinchieri's new novel isMurder in Pitigliano, the fifth title in her Tuscan mystery series.

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

I am presently engrossed in two very different novels: The Searcher by the Irish writer Tana French and Jumping the Queue by the deceased English author Mary Wesley.

In The Searcher, Cal Hooper, a retired and divorced American police officer has bought a ramshackle house in a small Irish town. When a young boy asks for his help finding his brother, Cal, at first reluctant, accepts the challenge. French’s depiction of Cal is so well done I want to follow him as he gets in deeper and deeper. Through her incredible talent French brings the setting and the inhabitants so alive I felt I was hearing the rooks, feeling the wind in the trees and smelling the beer. That is so very hard to do.

I had heard of Mary Wesley but bought this book because I was intrigued by the title. Jumping the queue (British for line) is considered very bad manners and I was curious to know what that might represent. In the case of practical Matilda and the man she encounters on a wharf, it’s very bad manners to interrupt a suicide by wanting to kill yourself first. This meeting of two unhappy people starts a wonderfully humorous relationship. Back to the cleared out house they both go, the goose of course comes back to the animal’s great relief and I can’t wait to know more. Down to earth Matilda is someone I immediately wanted to meet in person. Wesley writes with great heart and humor. That too is so very hard to do.

I try to bring my readers to the small Tuscan town where widower Nico Doyle, like Cal, an American retired detective, has made his home. I hope they will find themselves with him, taste the food and the wine, enjoy the beauty of the patchwork of vineyards that brave the land of Chianti. I try.

Visit Camilla Trinchieri's website.

Q&A with Camilla Trinchieri.

The Page 69 Test: Murder in Pitigliano.

--Marshal Zeringue