Writers Read: Laura Jensen Walker

Tuesday, February 17, 2026

Laura Jensen Walker

Bestselling, award-winning author Laura Jensen Walker is the Agatha and Lefty-nominated author of more than 20 books including Murder Most Sweet, Hope, Faith & a Corpse, and Death of a Flying Nightingale.

A rabid Anglophile since being stationed at an RAF base with the USAF in her twenties, Walker lives in Northern California with her Renaissance-man husband and two rescue terriers, where she drinks tea and dreams of England.

Her new novel is The Alphabet Sleuths.

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

I usually have two or three books going at the same time—toggling between them depending on my mood. Recently, I finished The Correspondent, the book that has taken the world by storm. Understandably so. I loved this debut novel by Virginia Evans (and confess to feeling jealous that she knocked it out of the park with her first book.) I’ve always liked epistolary novels—The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is a particular favorite—and found this contemporary tale of the smart, stubborn, and opinionated septuagenarian Sybil as revealed through her daily letters and emails, captivating and moving. Dubbed “a gem of a novel about the power of finding solace in literature and connection with people we might never meet in person,” this book is all that and more. Brilliant, witty, and eloquent Sybil van Antwerp, a retired lawyer, sits down at her desk every day to write letters—and the occasional email—to the people in her life, including her brother, children, best friend, neighbor, a customer service rep she befriends, and literary idols, including Joan Didion, Ann Patchett, and Larry McMurtry. Fascinating. As her life unspools through her correspondence, you see Sybil’s grief and regret. This lovely, poignant book reminds us it’s never too late to find connection.

Another recent read was The Library of Borrowed Hearts by Lucy Gilmore—a dual timeline story about the power of books to bring people together. I rooted for young wannabe librarian Chloe who’s had a hardscrabble life and is struggling to make ends meet while taking care of her younger siblings after her mom abandoned them. Chloe finds a bootleg copy of Tropic of Cancer in the library basement and discovers notes scribbled in the margins between two young lovers from the 1960s, setting her off on a literary scavenger hunt. As a confirmed bibliophile, I loved all the literary references as well as the heart-wrenching love story combined with a tale of found family and the way books can bring the most unexpected people together. Avid readers will love this.

As a longtime fan of Jan Karon’s Mitford novels back in the day, I read her latest, My Beloved, eagerly, expecting to love it. I was disappointed. I love Father Tim, Cynthia, and the retired Episcopal priest’s relationships with the quirky denizens of Mitford, but there were too many characters competing for attention. Esther, Harley, Hope, Puny, Dooley, Lace, Grace, Helene, Jack, Coot, Ray, Sammy, Pauline, ad infinitum—with each character getting their own chapter (sometimes as brief as a page) and point of view. At the expense of the characters I really cared about. This book also made me realize I somehow missed the last couple entries in the Mitford series since I don’t recall Lace and Dooley getting married and having kids. The good news: it did make me want to go back and read the whole series again, start to finish.

A new book on my nightstand is Mona’s Eyes by Thomas Schlesser, Barnes and Noble’s 2025 Book of the Year. Originally published in France, it’s the story of ten-year-old Mona and her beloved grandfather who have only fifty-two weeks to visit fifty-two works of art and commit to memory “all that is beautiful in the world” before Mona loses her sight forever. As an art lover whose favorite museum is Paris’s the Musee D’Orsay, I can’t wait to read this.