Brionni Nwosu

Brionni Nwosu is a writer, educator, and joyful creative based in the vibrant city of Nashville, where she lives with her husband and their three children. After more than a decade teaching students and mentoring teachers, she shifted her storytelling craft from a side passion to center stage. A 2021 We Need Diverse Books mentee under Rajani LaRocca, Nwosu writes bold, heartfelt fiction that explores connection, purpose, and what it means to live a life well.

Her debut novel, The Wondrous Lives and Loves of Nella Carter, is a sweeping, centuries-spanning tale about love, loss, and one woman’s fight to prove that humanity is worth saving.

Recently I asked Nwosu about what she was reading? Her reply:

I just finished Razorblade Tears by S.A. Cosby as part of one of my book clubs, The Virtual Book Club for Black Women, and it was a fantastic pick, enjoyed by our entire group. I even recommended it to my father, and he enjoyed it as well. I really liked seeing a story written by a Black male author with two male leads, especially how they handled fatherhood, grief, and their complicated feelings about their sons’ sexuality. The descriptions were so vivid, and there were several craft moments I highlighted because they were just that strong.

One moment that stayed with me was when the characters had to make a hard decision. Instead of explaining it outright, Cosby had one of the men look up at the sky. One cloud looked like one object, another looked another object, and the third cloud reminded him of his son. That helped him decide what to do. I loved that — using the environment and small details to help a character make a big emotional choice. It’s something I want to pay attention to in my own writing.

We also talked a lot in my book club about how both fathers carried so much regret. The sad truth is, they probably never would have reconciled with their sons while they were alive. It took losing them to really face how much time they wasted. Watching the two men slowly build a friendship — almost a brotherhood — over the course of the book was really moving. And I appreciated seeing different communities show up in the story, too, from the bikers to the judge to all the side relationships that gave the book texture.

Next up for me is Wrong Place Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister, which is our next book club read, and The Lost Heiress by Elizabeth Klehfoth, one of the Amazon First Reads titles for November 2025, alongside mine. I’m excited to dive into both.

Visit Brionni Nwosu's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

D.W. Buffa

The Dark Backward is among D.W. Buffa's more recent novels to be released. The story revolves around not just the strangest case William Darnell had ever tried;

it was the strangest case ever tried by any lawyer anywhere. It was impossible to explain; or rather, impossible to believe. The defendant, who did not speak English or any other language anyone could identify, had been found on an island no one knew existed, and charged with murder, rape and incest. He was given the name Adam, and Adam, as Darnell comes to learn, is more intelligent, quicker to learn, than anyone he has ever met. Adam, he learns to his astonishment, is a member of an ancient civilization that has remained undiscovered for more than three thousand years.

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 Robert Graves's I, Claudius:

In 1929, Robert Graves published Goodbye to All That, a memoir of his life as a British soldier who fought in the trenches in the First World War. In the prologue to the edition published almost thirty years later, he provided the reason why he wrote it and what happened because of it: “I partly wrote, partly dictated, this book twenty-eight years ago during a complicated domestic crisis, and with very little time for revisions. It was my bitter leave-taking of England where I had recently broken a good many conventions; quarreled with, or been disowned by, most of my friends; been grilled by the police on a suspicion of attempted murder; and ceased to care what anyone thought of me.”

The title of the book became “a catch-word,” his “sole contribution to Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations. More importantly, Goodbye to All That made him enough money that he could move to Majorca and spend all his time writing. Among the dozens of other things he wrote were the two volumes, or the two novels, I, Claudius, published in 1934, and Claudius the God, published two years later in 1936. In an Author’s Note to the second volume, Graves takes up a frequent criticism of the first volume, a criticism which betrayed a complete failure to understand the difference between books of history and historical fiction; a failure, that is to say, between the report of events that had happened at some point in the past, and the attempt to understand what those involved in those events thought they were doing; the difference between seeing things from a distance, the present looking back at the past, and seeing things as they unfold.

Some reviewers, according to Graves, “suggested that in writing it I had merely consulted Tacitus’s Annals, and Suetonius’s Twelve Caesars, run them together and expanded the result with my own vigorous fancy.” Insisting that this “was not so,” he proceeds to list, in addition to Tacitus and Suetonius, twenty-four Greek and Roman authors, including Plutarch, Pliny, Dio Cassius, Diodorus Siculus, Juvenal, Josephus, “and Claudius himself in his surviving letters and speeches.” He then explains that, “Few incidents…are wholly unsupported by historical authority of some sort or other. I hope none are historically incredible. No character is invented.” Graves knew what he was doing.

In what might easily have gone unnoticed, Graves thanks, as he did in the preface to the first volume, “Aircraftsman T. E. Shaw for reading the proofs.” Not everyone then, and very few now, would know that T. E. Shaw was his close friend, T. E. Lawrence, who had played a different role in the First World War when he became known, to Lawrence’s own great displeasure, as Lawrence of Arabia.

I, Claudius purports to be the autobiography of the Emperor Claudius, a “confidential history” intended for his “eventual readers of a hundred generations ahead, or more,” which means, of course, readers of the twentieth century. The main point of this history, the principle lesson to be learned, is that Rome has become entirely corrupt, and all because that instead of a small republic, it has become an empire. “The money madness that has choked Rome since she…made herself mistress of all the riches of the Mediterranean. With riches came sloth, greed, cruelty, dishonesty, cowardice, effeminacy and every other unRoman vice.”

Much of what happened to Claudius, much of what happened to Rome, was because of his grandmother, Livia, whom Augustus had taken as his second wife when he became the first Emperor. Though only seventeen, she had been one of the three most beautiful women in Rome. Augustus had been expected by those closest to him to give up power and return to private life after he had defeated his rivals in the civil war that followed the death of Julius Caesar, but the proscriptions which had among the thousands killed ended the lives of three hundred senators, had “carried away the boldest and the best” of the Roman aristocracy and the survivors “tended more and more to behave like family slaves to Augustus and Livia.” The return to the republic had to wait. Livia insisted that there was still work to be done, and, as she constantly reminded Augustus, “Rome was not yet ready to be free.” What she thought in private was even more emphatic. The Roman people, so far as she was concerned, were “Rabble and slaves! The Republic was always a humbug. What Rome really needs is a king again.”

Livia was Claudius’s grandmother, but all that meant was that Claudius was a source of embarrassment. When he wrote a biography of his father, Germanicus, who had been one of the most respected Roman generals, Livia dismissed it as little more than trash. She wrote to Augustus: “Claudius has singled out for praise his dear father’s one intellectual foible - that willful blindness of his to the march of time, the absurd delusion that the political form that suited Rome when Rome was a small town at war with neighboring small towns could be re-established after Rome has become the greatest kingdom since the days of Alexander.” And to make her point as clear as possible, she adds, “Thank God for Tiberius and Germanicus,” referring to her two sons. “There is no republican nonsense about them, so far as I know.”

When Augustus dies - dies, as Livia will later confess to Claudius, of a poison she gave him - Livia’s son, Tiberius, whom Augustus had adopted, became Emperor. Livia insisted in public that this was only because she decided he should. “She made a boast of it not only to strengthen her position as Augustus’s widow but to warn Tiberius that if her crimes ever came to light he would be regarded as her accomplice, being the person who principally benefitted from them.” What else, one might ask, should a mother do?

Claudius, thought to be a stammering fool by his grandmother and nearly everyone else in Rome, had acquired an unusual insight into the characters with whom he is forced to find ways to survive, including especially his uncle, the new Emperor, Tiberius. He was, “at times, easily tempted to virtue, and in a noble age might well have passed for a noble character: for he was a man of no mean capacity. But the age was not a noble one and his heart had been hardened, and for that hardening Livia must, you will agree, bear the chief blame.” And yet, despite that, Claudius does not disparage what Livia was able to achieve. However criminal the means by which she won the direction of affairs, first through Augustus, then Tiberius, “she was an exceptionally able and just ruler.”

Livia’s career of treachery and violence, begun when, only seventeen, she married Augustus, continued until she was eighty-three and to protect herself against her son, gave a public reading of some of the letters written to her, years earlier, by her husband. The reading lasted an hour and a half, and though her voice was weak, she “held her audience spellbound.” It is not difficult to understand why. Augustus had written her tens of thousands of letters, but she chose the fifteen most damaging to Tiberius she could find. In one letter, Augustus called Tiberius, “a man whose character I confess I continue to feel the greatest repugnance, and I pray to Heaven that by giving way to you now I do not inflict lasting damage on the commonwealth.” The last letter she read, written a year before Augustus died, was devastating: “If I did not believe that when I am dead he will be guided by you in all matters of State and shamed by Germanicus’s example into at least a semblance of decent living, I would even now, I swear, disinherit him and ask the Senate to revoke all his titles of honor. The man’s a beast and needs keepers.” Tiberius did not enter the Senate for two whole months; he could not look senators in the face with the knowledge that “their wives had heard Augustus’s letters about him.”

Claudius is more than surprised, astonished, when shortly after this his grandmother invites him to dine with her on her birthday. “I had never in my life been allowed to visit her on her birthday. I had never even dined with her. I had not spoken to her, except ceremoniously at the Augustan festival, for ten years.” At dinner, Livia asks, “Do you dislike me, Claudius? Be frank.” He replies with candor: “Probably as much as you dislike me.” Livia laughed. “Frank enough! By the way, have you noticed that monster there?” she asked, nodding toward another grandson, Caligula. “He’s going to be the next emperor.” Claudius thinks she is making a joke. She was not.

“Tiberius will make him his successor,” she explains. “He can’t bear the idea of a successor who is more popular than himself.” Then, with clinical detachment, she describes what Caligula is, and what will happen to Claudius when Caligula takes power. Caligula is treacherous, cowardly, lustful, vain and deceitful, but he will never kill you, she tells him, because he is going to be murdered and you are going to avenge him. It is all a question of fate. “And now that Rome has been ungrateful and mad enough to let my blackguardly son put me on the shelf, and insult me - me, can you imagine it, perhaps the greatest ruler the world has ever known, and his mother, too….”

But there are compensations. She has been told by a soothsayer she trusts that she will, after her death, be acknowledged as a Goddess, and not just that, but “the greatest Deity the world has ever known.” This, she tells Claudius, is only reasonable. “If Augustus is a God, it’s absurd for me to be merely his priestess. I did all the work, didn’t I? He no more had it in him to be a great ruler than Tiberius has.”

After Livia dies, Tiberius names Caligula his successor just as she said he would. More than the question of their respective popularity, Caligula was “one of the few people wicked enough to make Tiberius feel, by comparison, a virtuous man.” The proof was soon to come. When Tiberius becomes seriously ill, but does not die, Caligula watches while someone smothers him to death with a pillow. He does not worry that anything like this will ever happen to him, because unlike Tiberius, unlike anyone who has ever lived, he is not mortal. He is, as he explains to Claudius, undergoing a metamorphosis, a very painful one, “as if I were my own mother.” If Claudius has not noticed this it is because Caligula is “still in mortal disguise, so it is not remarkable that you did not notice my Divinity at once.” It is the reason, he admits, that he killed his own father. “He stood in my way. He tried to discipline me - me, a young God, imagine it!” Caligula does not just admit, he brags, that he slept with all three of his sisters; Jupiter had slept with only one of his. He knows he is the son of a God - Augustus. “I am his son by his incest with Julia,” his daughter. “I must be. That’s the only possible solution. I’m certainly not the son of Agrippina, her father was a nobody. It’s ridiculous.”

There seems to be no limit to what people will believe, or pretend to believe, about those who have power, no matter how insane it might be. Caligula’s “Divinity was accepted by everyone without question.” No one objected, no one questioned - no one was willing to risk the danger - when he ordered that all the most famous statues of the Gods be removed from the temples of Greece and sent to Rome so he could have their heads removed and replaced with his own. No one was willing to say anything that might incur his wrath, and there was hardly a citizen in Rome who did not want him dead. The inevitable conspiracy was formed, a conspiracy to kill Caligula and all his family, including Claudius, and restore the Republic. “If only the idiots had taken me into their confidence this story would have had a very different ending. For I was a better Republican than any of them.”

The citizens of Rome may have wanted a Republic, or thought they did, but the Roman army wanted an Emperor, and when two soldiers found Claudius hiding in the palace, the army ignored his protests and declared him Rome’s fourth Emperor. What thoughts or memories passed through his mind? Not what you would expect. Nothing about his three Imperial predecessors - Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula - their lives and their deaths; nothing about the promise he had made to his grandmother, Livia, to deify her when he became Emperor. He thought instead in the way of an author that now at least “I’ll be able to make people read my books.” He also thought, more seriously, that as Emperor he would have the opportunity, not given to other people, “for consulting the secret archives and finding out just what happened on this occasion or that.” And, as the readers of I, Claudius have now discovered, “I took full advantage of my opportunities."

Visit D.W. Buffa's website.

Buffa's previous third reading essays: The Great Gatsby; Brave New World; Lord Jim; Death in the Afternoon; Parade's End; The Idiot; The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; The Scarlet Letter; Justine; Patriotic Gore; Anna Karenina; The Charterhouse of Parma; Emile; War and Peace; The Sorrows of Young Werther; Bread and Wine; “The Crisis of the Mind” and A Man Without Qualities; Eugene Onegin; The Collected Works of Thomas Babington Macaulay; The Europeans; The House of Mirth and The Writing of Fiction; Doctor Faustus; the reading list of John F. Kennedy; Jorge Luis Borges; History of the Peloponnesian War; Mansfield Park; To Each His Own; A Passage To India; Seven Pillars of Wisdom; The Letters of T.E. Lawrence; All The King’s Men; The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus; Naguib Mahfouz’s novels of ancient Egypt; Main Street; Theodore H. White's The Making of the President series, part I; Theodore H. White's The Making of the President series, part II; Thus Spoke Zarathustra; Fiction's Failure; Hermann Hesse's Demian; Frederick Douglass, Slavery, and The Fourth of July; Caesar’s Ghost; The American Constitution; A Tale of Two Cities; The Leopard; Madame Bovary; The Sheltering Sky; Tocqueville’s America and Ours; American Statesmen; Ancient and Modern Writers Reconsidered; Père Goriot; Edmund Burke; The Novels of W.H. Hudson; America Revised; The City And Man; "The Use And Abuse Of History".

--Marshal Zeringue

Brittany Amara

Brittany Amara is an author, screenwriter, actress, and model with a passion for science fiction and fantasy that ventures beyond space and time. She loves writing about curious aliens, morally gray protagonists, other dimensions, rifts in reality, and all things playfully wicked. When she’s not working on something new, Amara can be found stargazing, collecting stuffed animals, and baking pumpkin bread. She grew up in Bronx, New York, and graduated summa cum laude from SUNY New Paltz in 2021 with a degree in digital media production, creative writing, and theater arts. In 2024 she furthered her storytelling journey at Queen’s University Belfast. Since then, her work in various genres has been recognized by film festivals and writing competitions across the globe.

Amara's new novel is The Bleeding Woods.

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

Reading is such a beautiful and inspiring part of my writing process. Not only does it illuminate unexplored parts of my own imagination, but it allows me to surf the seas of endless imagination and connect with creatives outside of space and time. It is through our work that we forge bonds that would have otherwise been impossible. In some strange, inexplicable way, I can meet with Mary Shelley as she unveils the tale of Frankenstein. Centuries sit between us, and yet, we speak. I’ve never met her in person, but Stephanie Garber’s Once Upon A Broken Heart pierced my soul in a way no series has before. We are complete strangers, but in her work, I felt found.

The stories I read always become worlds I settle into, so I tend to fill my bookshelf with books that ignite in my highest happiness. I read about places I’d like to explore, places currently unavailable on our Planet Earth. I read about people I’d like to meet, befriend or fall in love with, even if they haven’t taken physical form on this plane. By some intuitive, indescribable magic, the stories I end up reading are always the ones I need most, exactly when I need them most.

I'm a feral fiction reader, just as I am a feral fiction writer. Most often, I read sci-fi, fantasy, romance, or anything that blends the three. Currently, I’m reading Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros. In it, we follow Violet Sorrengail as she strives to survive in a cutthroat academy for dragon riders, finding strength she never thought she had and love she never thought possible in the process. Before becoming an author, I worked at my local Barnes & Nobles, and witnessed the beautiful mayhem every time a new installment in her series was released. Still, back then, I never felt quite called to dive in myself. Then, on a random, dreary Autumn afternoon… my dog started pawing at the hardcover copy. I went outside, perched on a rock, and let myself fall into Yarros’s world right away. I am so grateful I did. The explosive joy she takes in building her beautiful, complex, expansive world is exactly the kind of joy I needed to reignite in my own writing. The sweeping, swoon-worthy romance is exactly the kind of love I needed to remind myself I deserve in my own life. Violet’s journey of self-acceptance, self-empowerment and self-discovery is exactly what I needed to embrace in my own heart.

As I continue to read, Rebecca Yarros’s work speaks directly to me. She may not know it, but from miles and miles away, the story she shared years ago is helping and healing me. That’s the magic of writing so that others may read, and reading so that I may find the courage to write.

Visit Brittany Amara's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Bleeding Woods.

--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 Scot's Eggs.

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

I've been injured and dealing with immobility, surgery and physiotherapy the last few months, which had an effect on my reading. I retreated into comfort. Now, since I'm a crime writer, my idea of comfort is maybe not everyone's. I had read and adored about five of Linda Castillo's seventeen Chief Kate Burkholder, Amish country procedurals. Immediately I got back from the ER, I bought myself the other twelve. I've read eleven and am saving the most recent installment, Rage, for the Christmas holidays. Blimey, they're good. They're pretty violent and not at all cosy - don't let "Amish" or "country" mislead you, but Kate's team of officers at Painter's Mill PD are the best kind of found family. And the plots are brilliant.

In between the Castillos, I also gave myself the gift of Lisa Gardner's Frankie Elkin series, about a freelance cold-case missing-person investigator. She's a loner, a drifter, a bit of a lost soul herself but she's excellent company. There are only four of them so far, but they're an ideal gateway read into any of Gardner's longer series. These four are set in central Boston, remote Wyoming, the hardscrabble end of Tucson, and Hawaii. I opened that one, Still See You Everywhere, the day before my cancelled ten-day trip to Hawaii should have started. Oh, how I laughed.

And now I'm well on the mend and back to my usual habit of reading through the TBR in alphabetical order. (It cuts down on the agonising choice of what to read next.) I was at G for Gardner when I broke off, so I resumed with G for Guha: Puja Guha's nail biting Sirens of Memory, about a Kuwaiti refugee who has been living in Texas for twenty-five years and is about to slam hard into her own past. Both the 1990 sections in the refugee camps and the present-day Texas/DC sections are a masterclass in grinding tension.

Then came Jasmine Guillory's While We Were Dating, a delightful romance about a Hollywood actress, soooo close to A-list stardom, who enlists a fake boyfriend to tease the tabloids into a frenzy, raise her profile, and land the role of her life. Guess what happens! Yes, but watching it unfold is a joy. Don't you love what's going on with the Romance genre recently? I do.

Right now, I'm on page 143 of Tamron Hall's debut, As the Wicked Watch, about a television news reporter who becomes embroiled in the tragic case of a murdered Black child. It's a wonderful if sobering look at over-policing and under-protecting on Chicago's South Side, from one who knows. (I should say, I had no clue who Tamron Hall was when I picked the book up, but I did think her headshot looked extremely glam, for a crime writer!)"

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.

Writers Read: Catriona McPherson (September 2024).

Writers Read: Catriona McPherson (December 2024).

The Page 69 Test: Scotzilla.

My Book, The Movie: Scotzilla.

The Page 69 Test: Scot's Eggs.

--Marshal Zeringue

Elizabeth Hobbs

Elizabeth Hobbs is a New Englander born and bred, who spent her childhood roaming the woods, making up stories about characters who live far more exciting lives than she. It wasn’t always so—long before she ever set pen to paper, Hobbs graduated from Hollins College with a BA in classics and art history, and then earned her MA in nautical archaeology from Texas A&M University. While she loved the life of an underwater archaeologist, she has found her true calling writing historical mysteries full of wit, wickedness, and adventure. Hobbs writes wherever she is and loves to travel from her home in Texas, where she lives with her husband, the Indispensable Mr. Hobbs, and her darling dogs, Ghillie and Brogue, in an empty nest of an old house filled to the brim with bicycles and books.

Her new novel is Murder Made Her Wicked: A Marigold Manners Mystery.

Recently I asked Hobbs about what she was reading. Her reply

For a writer, reading is not just a relaxing pleasure, but an essential tool for keeping my imagination full of new and different voices and ideas and vocabulary. I usually have a few different books going at once and usually a combination of fiction and non-fiction. But the common denominator is usually a strong female protagonist. This month, I’ve read:

The Wind in the Willows

This is an annual re-read for me. During my recent downsizing, I pulled this 1908 Kenneth Grahame book out of my children’s bookshelf to put in my ‘keeper’ pile, but ended up sitting down and re-immersing myself in the pastoral children’s tale of a group of anthropomorphized animals who band together to save a feckless friend. What once seemed a charming adventure tale, now strikes me quite differently— Mole, Ratty, Badger and Mr. Toad have stuck with me throughout my writing life as archetypes of the Fish Out of Water, The Loyal Stalwart Friend, the Wise Leader and the Feckless Ne’er-do-Well. I think that every protagonist I’ve ever written—male or female—is some version of Ratty, that rugged, persistent fellow who lives in the moment, packs an extravagant picnic basket, stands loyally by his many and varied friends and never, ever gives up. Beneath all that children’s charm lies a brilliant character study.

The Librarians

Sherry Thomas is one of my go-to authors in a number of different genres—mystery like this story (she also writes the Lady Sherlock historical mystery series), Young Adult Fantasy, English language versions of a Chinese Wuxia novels (with Thomas’s characteristic heroic female spin), Chinese language web novels, and several different romance genres (see below), most prominent among them historical romance. In this recently released who-done-it, four librarians working in an Austin branch library must solve the murders of two patrons of a mystery-themed game night. Like all Thomas novels, the characterizations are beautifully and insightfully drawn and the prose is measured yet propulsive. Always a great author.

Prima (After the End Collection)

Once I had read Sherry Thomas’s Librarians, I was eager to prolong my stay in her distinctive voice, so I read her most recent post-apocalyptic romance, Prima. In this novella that is part of the After the End collection, Thomas creates an evocative setting on the open ocean, where the romantic protagonists meet. The writing is lush and lyrical and the characters and romance is beautifully drawn. Honestly, I will read anything and everything Thomas writes.

A Botanist’s Guide to Rituals and Revenge

After the romance, I needed the cozy reality of Kate Khavari’s most recent Saffron Everleigh mystery. This academic-set historical mystery series is set in 1920’s University College London and the English countryside. The protagonist, Saffron Everleigh, is a crime-solving botanist who uses her specialist knowledge and scientific process to solve a series of murders. A Botanist’s Guide to Rituals and Revenge, the fourth book of the series, is brilliant catnip for my mystery-solving soul.

Real Tigers

Once I was reading about historic London, I wanted a little more of the grit of the present-day metropolis, so I turned to Mick Herron’s third Slough House novel, Real Tigers. Now that the anti-heroic Slow Horses of Slough House are on our TV’s, the characters need no introduction. But if you’ve only watched the TV series, you’re missing a vast deal of the superb language and acerbic wit of Herron’s writing. In this story, one of the Slow Horses themselves is abducted and the team have to navigate a deep web of intrigue and betrayal within MI5 to ensure their cohort’s safety. Such gritty fun.

The Sway of the Grand Saloon

I do have to write myself, so my reading always includes a vast deal of research and non-fiction histories. At the moment, my reference book of choice is The Sway of the Grand Saloon: A Social History of the North Atlantic by John Malcolm Brinnin, which I hope will give readers a hint as to the setting of the next Marigold Manners Mystery.

Mythology

And last, but certainly not least, my constant companion during the writing of my Marigold Manners Mysteries has been Edith Hamilton’s classic Mythology. Concentrating on the classical myths of Ancient Greece and Rome, Hamilton was a classics scholar who, after an illustrious career in women’s education, retired to write her seminal works, which remain standard reading for all classical studies scholars—just like my Marigold Manners. I often recommend this book because the myths that Hamilton translated are repeat with archetypes and themes that every working author should know.

Visit Elizabeth Hobbs's website.

Q&A with Elizabeth Hobbs.

--Marshal Zeringue

Kim DeRose

Kim DeRose writes dark, magical stories about strong, magical girls for teens and former teens. She is the author of Hear Her Howl and For Girls Who Walk Through Fire, which was selected for ALA’s 2025 Rise: A Feminist Book Project List, received a starred review from School Library Journal, praise from Kirkus Reviews and Booklist, and was the recipient of the 2024 Millikin Medal for Excellence in Young Adult Fiction.

She grew up in Santa Barbara, California, earned her MFA in film directing from UCLA, and currently lives in Brooklyn, NY as a recovering Catholic and ex-good girl. When she’s not writing or reading, she can be found listening to endless podcasts, taking long walks through the woods (of Prospect Park), and teaching her children how to howl.

Hear Her Howl is her most recent book.

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

I’m one of those people who has a giant TBR stack beside their bed and normally has 3-5 books I’m simultaneously reading at once (which never stops me from acquiring more books!). Here’s what I’m currently reading and enjoying:

Winter White by Annie Cardi

I loved Annie Cardi’s previous YA book, Red, (a retelling of The Scarlet Letter) and did several panels with Annie discussing the importance of accurately and sensitively representing sexual assault in YA fiction. So when she asked if I’d blurb Winter White I was thrilled. Once again she’s written another beautiful retelling (this time of Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale) that this time sensitively portrays a difficult dynamic within a family system. Her characters are always beautifully wrought and there’s a tenderness within her stories that I very much appreciate.

A Curious Kind of Magic by Mara Rutherford

If you’re looking for a cozy and delightful book this fall or winter, this is the one. Mara Rutherford is a writing friend and I had the privilege of hearing her read the first chapter of A Curious Kind of Magic at a writing retreat last fall (we’re in the same writer’s group, which Laini Taylor started). I was immediately hooked by this YA romantic fantasy and am so thrilled I finally have my own copy. It’s got witchy vibes, a magic curiosity shop, and a slow burn romance. All of which is to say, perfect for the season.

Beasts of Carnaval by Rosália Rodrigo

Rosália Rodrigo is another writer friend from Laini Taylor’s writing group, and this gorgeous book is her debut. It’s a Caribbean/Latino adult fantasy with themes of decolonization and reclamation, indigenous Taíno mythology, and an atmospheric island setting. Though the island in question is not exactly what it seems. I'm thoroughly enjoying this one and love both the strong characters and the lush writing.

An Amateur Witch’s Guide to Murder by K. Valentin

Yet another writing friend from Laini Taylor’s writing group (are you seeing a trend here?!). I just got my copy of K Valentin’s debut in the mail and already this queer YA romantic fantasy is laugh out loud funny. Even if she wasn’t a writing friend, I’d want to read this book stat - I mean, with a tagline like “Mateo Borrero has 99 problems - and all of them hinge on his missing bruja mother and the demon she trapped inside his body," how could I not?

Visit Kim DeRose's website.

Q&A with Kim DeRose.

The Page 69 Test: For Girls Who Walk through Fire.

My Book, The Movie: For Girls Who Walk through Fire.

The Page 69 Test: Hear Her Howl.

--Marshal Zeringue

Tessa Wegert

Tessa Wegert is the critically acclaimed author of the Shana Merchant mysteries, as well as the North Country series, beginning with In the Bones. Her books have received numerous starred reviews and have been featured on PBS and NPR Radio. A former journalist and copywriter, Tessa grew up in Quebec and now lives with her husband and children in Connecticut, where she co-founded Sisters in Crime CT and serves on the board of International Thriller Writers (ITW).

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

I always have three books on the go at once — one in print, one ebook or NetGalley arc, and one audiobook — so I’ll share a recent favorite from each bucket.

In print, I adored Jennifer Fawcett’s Keep This for Me, a stunning and atmospheric mystery set in Upstate New York. This re-imagining of the serial killer thriller examines the aftereffects of murder on both the victim’s daughter and the son of the convicted killer with prose that’s lyrical and lush.

I just finished reading an early copy of Darby Kane’s Such a Clever Girl, a domestic thriller set in Sleepy Hollow, New York. It’s about what happens when a member of the Tanner family, which disappeared more than a decade ago and is presumed dead, returns to confront the three local women with connections to the case. Inheritance games, exposed secrets, and twisted family dynamics make this upcoming novel a must-read.

My most recent audiobook was Wendy Walker’s The Room Next Door, which expertly juggles a vast cast of narrators along with music and special effects (think of it as a modern radio play). The dual timelines and multiple points of view make this a riveting, multi-layered mystery, and Wendy’s rendering of teenage girls and their complex inner lives was incredibly effective.

Visit Tessa Wegert's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Dead Season.

The Page 69 Test: The Dead Season.

Q&A with Tessa Wegert.

The Page 69 Test: Dead Wind.

Writers Read: Tessa Wegert (April 2022).

Writers Read: Tessa Wegert (December 2022).

The Page 69 Test: Devils at the Door.

The Page 69 Test: The Coldest Case.

--Marshal Zeringue