Writers Read: Mariah Fredericks

Saturday, October 31, 2026

Mariah Fredericks

Mariah Fredericks was born, raised, and still lives in New York City. She graduated from Vassar College with a degree in history. She is the author of the Jane Prescott mystery series, which has twice been nominated for the Mary Higgins Clark Award, as well as several YA novels. The Lindbergh Nanny, her first standalone novel, was nominated for the Agatha and Anthony Awards.

Fredericks's new novel is Murder on 34th Street.

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

Right now, I seem to be reading about awful people. Like a lot of writer/readers, I have a few books going at once and it usually feeds into what I’m working on in some way.

I’m trying to get up the nerve to write something about Dorothy Parker, so I’m deep into a second read of Marion Meade’s 1987 biography, What Fresh Hell is This? It’s a fascinating work because Meade doesn’t pull punches; at times I find myself disliking Parker intensely. Her wit is so fast and so lethal, it puts you mind of Bruce Lee. But she didn’t always pick on people her own size and there are times you think, Oh, shut up. Like many of her era, Parker wasn’t fond of other women. But then she surprises you, showing strength and integrity when under fire from McCarthy, her genuine dedication to civil rights, her empathy for Marilyn Monroe. Her frenemyship with Lillian Hellman at the end of her life is worth an entire book. I can’t say I have Parker figured out yet. But she’s so brilliant and so unhappy, I doubt I’ll stop trying.

I’m also thinking about awful families—rich awful families. When the scripts to Succession were published, I bought all four heavy expensive volumes right away. I love scripts. Some of the most memorable formative reading I did was plays. I learned the power of the first person confessional tone from Richard III and Amadeus. How to articulate theme in “ordinary” conversation from The Real Thing, the violent beats of language and silence from Pinter. Succession really captures the variations on direct speech used by wealthy people. In the charged, bullying environment of the fictionalized Murdochs, people often end their statements with a question mark. There’s a lot that goes unsaid, for the very good reason that it’s horrible. The Roy heirs end a lot of sentences with “…yeah?” inviting the other person to express the awful idea they have in mind but don’t want to be on the hook for. But they also talk around feelings of yearning or attachment, as Roman does when asking Gerri to marry him: “And um, just another thing, real quick: Should we—get married? Not that. I’m fucking around. An equivalent. A thing. I abduct you, force you to live with me?” Even on the page, his panic is palpable.

I’m reading a novel about a much more ancient power mad family: the Borgias. Written in 2014, Sarah Dunant’s Blood and Beauty belongs to an earlier time for historical novels. It is, as they say, richly detailed. It is also erotic—unlike the Roys, the Borgias enjoy the carnal pleasures their wealth affords them. Today, an editor might insist the story be told entirely from Lucrezia’s perspective, but Dunant clearly relishes what she can see and describe from the points of view of Lucrezia’s male relatives, notably Pope Alexander VI and Cesare.

Finally, I’ve started Q: A Voyage Around the Queen by Craig Brown. I tore through Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret, and Brown’s book on Margaret’s more illustrious sibling is just as good. Brown is a genius with anecdotes; you could write entire novels about some of the peripheral people in the Queen’s life, such as the minor aristocrat who yearned to be her lady-in-waiting or the young woman who happened to be a dead ringer for the monarch. I personally don’t consider Queen Elizabeth to be an awful person, but there’s no question she had some hideous relatives and associates. This is less a chronicle of Elizabeth and more a meditation on her impact and shifting perceptions of her life. In many ways, it reveals more than a straightforward biography.