Ken Jaworowski

Ken Jaworowski is an editor at The New York Times. He graduated from Shippensburg University and the University of Pennsylvania. He grew up in Philadelphia, where he was an amateur boxer, and has had plays produced in New York and Europe. He lives in New Jersey with his family.

Jaworowski's new novel is What About the Bodies.

Reacently I asked the author about what he was reading. Jaworowski's reply:

I'm going to bend the rules here and tell you not what I've been reading, but what I've been rereading. Lately, I've been knee-deep in several projects, including preparing my new thriller, What About the Bodies, for its Sept. 2 publication. When I get this busy, I find myself revisiting old favorites rather than devoting myself to a new book that I won't be able to give my full attention to. So here are three that I've been picking up and paging through for a third or fourth (or more) time.

The Razor's Edge by Somerset Maugham

This is the book that changed my life. In the first few years after I'd gotten out of college, I did little but chase money and material success, and wonder why I was so miserable. Then I read this story of a soldier devastated by his experiences during World War I, and how he later struggles to find his place in an unforgiving world. Its messages moved me deeply.

Benediction by Kent Haruf

The quiet, ordinary people who populate Haruf's stories can make you grin or break your heart. The most affecting character in this novel is the dying Dad Lewis. Haruf doesn't pander to the reader by sugarcoating his situations, and here we find Dad Lewis looking back on a life of regrets, most notably that of his relationship with his son, who he pushed away and now longs to see.

Clockers by Richard Price

A masterpiece of crime fiction, Clockers follows Strike, a drug dealer, and Rocco, a detective, whose lives intertwine in the tough, fictional town of Dempsy, New Jersey. Price writes some of the sharpest dialogue in any genre, and his characters are multifaceted and entirely human. The novel, first published in 1992, remains both clear-eyed and compassionate, and full of the dark energy that pulses through a city’s streets.

Visit Ken Jaworowski's website.

Q&A with Ken Jaworowski.

The Page 69 Test: What About the Bodies.

--Marshal Zeringue