Andromeda Romano-Lax

Born in Chicago and now a resident of Vancouver Island, Canada, Andromeda Romano-Lax worked as a freelance journalist and travel writer before turning to fiction. Her first novel, The Spanish Bow, was translated into eleven languages and chosen as a New York Times Editors’ Choice, BookSense pick, and one of Library Journal’s Best Books of the Year. Her next four novels, The Detour, Behave (an Amazon Book of the Month), Plum Rains (winner of the Sunburst Award), and Annie and the Wolves (a Booklist Top 10 Historical Fiction Book of the Year) reflect her diverse interest in the arts, history, science, and technology, as well as her love of travel and her time spent living abroad. Starting with The Deepest Lake (a Barnes & Noble Monthly Pick and Amazon Book of the Month) and continuing with her new novel, What Boys Learn, Romano-Lax has swerved into the world of suspense fiction, although she continues to write historical and speculative fiction as well.

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

On my nightstand are two novels that defy easy genre categorization, as many of my favorites do. New Zealander Catherine Chidgey’s The Book of Guilt is a slow burn alternate history that takes us into a world where no one won World War II and where sickly orphans are being kept in group homes and isolated from the public for reasons we don’t understand at first. I love Chidgey’s ethically nuanced fiction, empathetic characterization, and unique angles on historical events. She pulls me back toward historical fiction, a genre I love most when authors take risks, avoid sentimentality, and play with what we think we know about the world.

Gilly Macmillan’s The Burning Library. Inspired by an ancient manuscript that intrigued the author, this smart new thriller melds cryptography, conspiracies, dark academia, and a race against time in a novel that pits one fictional women’s sect against another. A departure for Macmillan, whose suspense novels usually follow clever but more expected plotlines, this unexpected page-turner somehow manages to be both stark—throats are slit with abandon—and at the same time, oddly cozy. Maybe it’s the UK setting? I’m finding it just escapist enough for light holiday reading.

Visit Andromeda Romano-Lax's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Spanish Bow.

The Page 69 Test: The Detour.

Writers Read: Andromeda Romano-Lax (February 2012).

The Page 69 Test: What Boys Learn.

--Marshal Zeringue