Jacqueline Friedland

Jacqueline Friedland is the USA Today and Amazon bestselling author of both historical and contemporary women’s fiction. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and NYU Law School, she practiced as a commercial litigator for as long as she could stand it. She then returned to school to earn her Masters of Fine Arts in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College and has been writing ever since.

Friedland’s books have been awarded the 2020 and 2021 gold medals in fiction from Readers’ Favorite. Her novels have also been named the 2021 Kirkus Reviews Best Indie Book of the Year, the SheReads Best Book Club Pick of 2021, and the Women’s Fiction Writers Association Star finalist for 2022. She regularly reviews fiction for trade publications and appears at schools and other locations as a guest lecturer.

Friedland lives in Westchester, New York with her husband, four children, and two dogs.

Her new novel is Breathing Under Water.

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

I'm currently reading Summer State of Mind by Kristy Woodson Harvey. It's a big-hearted story about a burnt-out NICU nurse and a high school baseball coach who once almost made it big. It's full of fun summer themes, human connections, complex situations, and adorable side characters. I picked it up because I love a great summer read, and Kristy Woodson Harvey always delivers. It felt like the perfect book to throw in a beach bag or read poolside, and so far, I've been totally right about that!

Also just finished The Thoroughbreds by Elin Hilderbrand. I wasn't sure what to expect knowing it was co-authored with her daughter, but just like Elin's solo books, it was immediately gripping. There are a lot of fun, younger themes because it takes place at a boarding school, but it also includes storylines about the faculty with adult themes and issues. Highly recommend!

Visit Jacqueline Friedland's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jon St. Denis

Jon St. Denis (pseudonym for J. Sydney Jones) is a former journalist in Europe, filing stories from Austria, Italy, France, Greece, and Ireland. Formerly a college professor in California, St. Denis writes compelling historical mysteries with thriller and international espionage elements.

St. Denis's new novel is Killer Art.

Recently I asked the author about what he was reading. St. Denis's reply:

I am spending the summer months in Hong Kong as usual and while here I always try to fill in some of my many blank spots in Chinese history and culture. This summer I am finally digging into a book I have long been looking forward to reading, Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China’s Last Golden Age, by Stephen R. Platt.

This is a great read, filled with a legion of characters on the British, American, and Chinese sides of what became a deciding event in the creation of modern China.

At the time, the end of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, China was the fourth-largest empire in world history, a respected and wealthy land under the Qing (the ‘Q’ is pronounced like ‘ch’) dynasty. However, by the early nineteenth century, that Empire was slowly in decline, ultimately becoming the final Chinese dynasty.

Contact with the West hastened that decline, which was capped off by the Opium Wars with the British Empire between 1839 and 1842, in which the British Empire shamefully forced the sale of the drug, opium, on China. Defeat in this war led to China’s century of shame and humiliation that ultimately helped lead, in turn, to the rise of the Chinese Communist Party and the firm conviction by China and the Chinese that they would never be humiliated like that again.

And I promise that Platt’s book is nowhere as dry as this brief description.

But it’s not all historical reading for me. I have come late to the work of John Grisham. Better late than never. Currently reading The Chamber. A fine writer, but got to admit a bit of a rankle. Why the hell can’t these lawyer chaps stay in their own lane? They are already making a good living with the law. Now they come to cut into the literary pie as well?

But I forgive him.

Visit Jon St. Denis's website.

The Page 69 Test: Killer Art.

--Marshal Zeringue