Sherry Rankin

Sherry Rankin grew up in New Jersey where she became an early and avid reader of mystery fiction. She earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in English and currently lives in Abilene, Texas where she has taught writing and literature at a local university for twenty years.

Her novel, Strange Fire, was shortlisted for the 2017 Daniel Goldsmith First Novel Prize and won the 2017 CWA Debut Dagger Award.

Her debut thriller, The Killing Plains, was published by Thomas & Mercer as a super lead title in February 2025.

Rankin's new novel is The Dark Below.

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

I tend to read less for information than for the emotions books evoke—which makes me a devoted re-reader. For every new book I read, I probably reread ten.

I’ve just finished rereading Jane Harper’s The Lost Man. I’m always struck by her ability to make landscape feel like a living presence, as well as by her spare, clean, understated style and her seamless weaving of past and present.

At the moment, I’m also rereading Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy. It feels like returning to an old friend—comfortable and comforting, but intellectually and morally challenging, as well. It helps keep me grounded.

Visit Sherry Rankin's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Killing Plains.

The Page 69 Test: The Killing Plains.

Q&A with Sherry Rankin.

My Book, The Movie: The Dark Below.

The Page 69 Test: The Dark Below.

--Marshal Zeringue

Verlin Darrow

Verlin Darrow is a psychotherapist who lives with his psychotherapist wife in the woods near the Monterey Bay in northern California. They diagnose each other as necessary. Darrow is a former professional volleyball player (in Italy), unsuccessful country-western singer/songwriter, import store owner, and assistant guru in a small, benign spiritual organization.

His new novel is The Brighter the Light, the Darker the Shadow.

Recently I asked Darrow about what he was reading. The author's reply:

At the moment, I’m oscillating between several genres. (Can you oscillate between more than two things? I’m too lazy to look this up). I like humor mixed into what I read, so I seek out comic crime, quirky science fiction, and offbeat mystery novels. (I did manage to look up synonyms for humor).

Here are the three I’m currently (and concurrently) reading:

Fortunate Son by Caimh McDonell

This is the ninth and latest book in The Dublin Trilogy (Go figure.) I’m not a laugh out loud kind of guy, but in this case…. All the books in the series feature Bunny McGarry, an Irish policeman with a distinctly alternative perspective from any cop you’ve ever read about. The plots are wonderfully convoluted—more like mysteries than most crime novels. I can’t recommend this author more highly.

The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells

I wasn’t familiar with this author until I streamed a TV series by the same title. The inner monologue of the sentient, cynical, misanthropic android is consistently amusing, and other elements are wonderfully imaginative. I can’t say this author is a paradigm of great writing, but it doesn’t matter to me. Inspired by this book, I actually started writing a novel featuring a sentient android, but it didn’t have legs (the book, I mean, not the android), so now it’s just forty dormant pages.

The Fugitive Pigeon by Donald E. Westlake

Westlake is my favorite author—in all his incarnations and pseudonyms. Nobody can do either comic crime or hard-boiled caper novels with quite the same consistent level of professionalism. And his screenplays—such as Grifters—have won awards. That said, I’m rereading this older novel and may stop. I really want to like it, but I guess it’s not possible for an author’s vision to always match up to what suits me.

Visit Verlin Darrow's website.

Writers Read: Verlin Darrow (May 2023).

My Book, The Movie: Murder for Liar.

The Page 69 Test: Murder for Liar.

The Page 69 Test: The Not Quite Enlightened Sleuth.

Writers Read: Verlin Darrow (April 2024).

My Book, The Movie: The Not Quite Enlightened Sleuth.

My Book, The Movie: The Brighter the Light, the Darker the Shadow.

Q&A with Verlin Darrow.

--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 Otto Friedrich’s Before The Deluge: A Portrait of Berlin in the 1920s:

Otto Friedrich distinguishes himself from the typical historians who specialize, compartmentalize and would “mistrust any journalistic attempt to include movie stars and generals and bankers and poets in the same chronicle.” The story he wants to tell, “the story of Berlin in the 1920s permits no other approach.” What Friedrich calls his “journalistic attempt,” however, is precisely what a truly great historian tries to achieve. And that is what Otto Friedrich really was, a great historian, perhaps the greatest American writer of European history in the twentieth century. Like Jacob Burckhardt in his classic The Civilization of the Renaissance In Italy, Friedrich gives more than a chronology of interesting events and biographies of important people; he paints a portrait of a place and time, a work of art that, in a way nothing else can, shows what it was like to live in Berlin, a city that before we have read the first page we know is doomed to destruction, and something more than that in the memory of those who remember what the Third Reich did to the world.

Otto Friedrich was not a professional historian, but he majored in history at Harvard, where his father, Carl Friedrich taught government, and became one of the best read men of his generation, a generation that still took reading seriously. In one of his other works, City of Nets, which tells the story of Hollywood in the 1940s, he read five hundred books before he started to write; he read more than three hundred in preparation for Before The Deluge. This gave him the kind of familiarity with things - the different colors, and the different shades of colors - with which to paint the most vivid picture of Berlin in the 1920s we will ever have. It begins with the Russians.

After the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Russian contingent in Berlin grew to perhaps as many as 50,000. “Russian restaurants and cabarets…opened everywhere.” Karl Radek, Lenin’s personal envoy to Berlin, “sometimes exchanged barbed remarks with the former grand dukes who waited on tables.” A young playwright, Carl Zuckmayer, happened to be in one of the Russian restaurants one evening when the great Russian ballerina, Pavlova, entered. All the talking stopped. Everyone stared in silence. Pavlova, who knew what she was about, acknowledged what they wanted and danced for five minutes, “floated above that narrow space like a phantom, then with a deep bow of her whole body sank to the stone floor. The cheers that burst out seemed on the point of shattering the vaulted ceiling, but she silenced them with another gesture of her lovely arms, then returned to the small sofa and her companions. Thereafter no one looked in her direction.”

The Russians, unfortunately, brought more than the marvelous dancing of Pavlova. They brought their politics, which meant their ideas, and their violent disagreements, about revolution. Rosa Luxemburg attacked Karl Radek for the Bolshevik’s use of terror. “Radek had the standard answer - Lenin applied terror, he said, only against ‘classes whom history has sentenced to death.’” Vladimir Nabokov’s father, a former member of the Russian parliament and the editor of the leading Russian daily newspaper in Berlin, opposed any compromise with Lenin and was shot and killed when he threw himself in front of an assassin’s bullet meant for Peter Miliukov with whom he was having a public debate on this very question. Even more troubling than the terror that Lenin and the Bolsheviks were willing to use against classes history had sentenced to death was what some Russians thought should happen to a race that, in their judgement, had no right to live. Fyodor Vinberg, a former Czarist officer, founded a newspaper in Berlin in which “He argued, quite emphatically, that all Jews should be killed.” He brought to Germany the first copies “of a provocative Russian work called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a fraud concocted in 1895, apparently by the Czarist secret police,’ alleging that a Jewish conspiracy existed to take over the world. A new edition sold 100,000 copies in Germany.

It would have been easy to dismiss this as the ravings of a lunatic fringe. Jews were proud to be German and no one was more patriotic. One of every six Jews, including women and children, had served in the German armed forces in World War I. One hundred thousand had entered the army; 35,000 were decorated for bravery. Twelve thousand had been killed. After the war, Walter Rathenau became“one of the most nationalistic of Germany’s foreign ministers.” Rathenau was also anti-Semitic. “I am a German of Jewish descent,” he explained. “My people is the German people, my fatherland is Germany, my religion is that German faith which is above all religions.” The Jewish refugees that had arrived from Eastern Europe were to him “an alien organism,” a problem that should be dealt with, not by making them “imitation Germans, but Jews bred and educated as Germans.”

When Rathenau, who was enormously popular, was murdered, a million people marched in protest. At the trial of those who had conspired to kill him, one of the defendants testified that he had been told that Rathenau belonged to a Bolshevist movement that was attempting to bring the world under the rule of the Jews. Some years later, on the eve of the Nazi take over, one of the conspirators hit Goebbels on the side of the face and shouted: “It wasn’t for swine like you that we shot Rathenau.” This did not stop the Nazis using his death for their own purposes, declaring that the murder of Rathenau was all in the “spirit of the SS.”

More than anything, what happened in Berlin in the l920s was because of the insistence of the victorious allies that Germany pay for the war. The reparation issue, which Winston Churchill called “A sad story of complicated idiocy,” produced increasing inflation as the government printed money to pay its debt. The German mark fell from 4.2 to the dollar in l918 to thousands, then millions, then billions to the dollar, falling so far and so fast that Bruno Walter, the conductor of the Berlin philharmonic, would take a break during rehearsal so the orchestra’s musicians could use their paychecks to buy what they could before prices were higher an hour, or even a few minutes, later. By the middle of the 1920s, “the whole of Germany had become delirious.” The savings of the middle and the working class were wiped out. All values changed; everyone did what they had to do to survive. Morality could no longer afford to exist.

Life went on anyway it could. And, strangely enough - or perhaps not strangely at all - the arts and architecture took a new turn. Walter Gropius saw that the machines which seemed to produce nothing but ugliness could be used to make beautiful things, and with that insight he began the era of modern furniture and modern design. With the same reasoning, Gropius imagined glass and metal skyscrapers, buildings that “were to be giant crystals,” and would change forever the shape of cities and the way in which people lived and worked in them. Everywhere the traditional was rejected in favor of the new and innovative; nowhere was this passion to abandon the past taken to a greater extreme than in classical music.

It did not matter what Bach or Beethoven or Mozart had done; it was time to do something different, a “whole new language for modern music,” something Arnold Schoenberg was certain he could do. The twelve tones of the chromatic scale were to be equal in value. They could be played in any sequence, but - and this was crucial - “no note could be repeated until the other eleven had been stated.” Schoenberg did not care if an audience hated it. That only proved he was right: The “laws of nature manifested in a man of genius,” he explained, “are but the laws of the men of the future.”

The pianist, Rudolph Serkin, loved Schoenberg. “But I did not love his music. I told him so, and he never forgave me.” Thomas Mann and Schoenberg were good friends. Mann wrote Dr. Faustus in which Schoenberg’s music is made to be the work of the Devil. Schoenberg never spoke to him again. Whatever one thinks about Schoenberg and his music, it is impossible not to admire what he did when the Nazis came to power. While he was in Paris working on an opera, he was informed that he had been dismissed as a professor at the Berlin Academy of Music and should not come back to Germany. Without a job, and without a country, Arnold Schoenberg, a German Catholic, changed his religion and became a Jew.

The incessant desire for change, the belief that everything is the creation of human genius, that the only rules are the rules we make and impose upon ourselves, found support, and had, as it were, its foundation, in what was happening in theoretical physics. Friedrich treats this with a clarity a specialist in science could never achieve. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Max Planck explained the Quantum Theory. “Light and energy, he said, do not move in continuous waves but in a flow of tiny particles.” Niels Bohr then applied Planck’s Quantum Theory to the problem of atomic structure, which in turn led to Werner Heisenberg’s Principle of Indeterminacy which “abolished, to state it simply, the whole idea of exact observation. There was no longer such a thing as a ‘scientific fact.’” The result was, that “If, basically, Einstein taught that all facts are relative, Heisenberg taught that all facts are purely momentary perceptions of possibilities.”

Everything is relative, there are no objective facts. Everything is subject to interpretation, and no interpretation is any better, any more true, than any other. As Nietzsche had foreseen, everything takes the shape of whoever has the power to enforce their belief on everyone else. It is the will to power that Nietzsche insisted gave meaning to the world; it is the will to power that, with the loss of belief in all objective standards, made Hitler so appealing. It was the reason that so many of the youth of Germany gave him such great support. Richard Lowenthal, who had studied at the University of Berlin in the twenties, told Friedrich that nearly two-thirds of the students “were already committed to the right.” Friedrich expressed astonishment. How could the Nazis “appeal so strongly to young students,” he asked, “when one usually thinks of young people as idealistic?” Lowenthal answered without hesitation. “Because the Nazis were idealistic, too.” They “promised national unity and national resurrection.” They “promised an alternative to what they called the corrupt plutocratic system.” But there was more involved than misguided idealism; there was a deep dislike of Jews. In l927, the Prussian Student Organization, Friedrich reports, was 77% against the admission of Jews. More than their parents, they were not just anti-Semitic, they were pro-Nazi, “60% by actual count - and ready for violence.”

None of this seemed to matter at the beginning of 1929. It was the year when Berlin, like much of Europe and America as well, basked in the glow of “euphoric prosperity.” The new technology, the speed of transport, the crossing of the Atlantic by air, seemed to mark the triumph of the machine age. Germany, finally, was on the road to recovery. Then, suddenly, on October 29, the stock market crashed and within weeks 750,000 of Berlin’s population of four million were out of work. Goebbels’ newspaper with its slogan, ‘For the Oppressed Against the Exploiters,’ had a new appeal. The National Socialist Party which had only 17,000 members in 1926, and 120,000 in the summer of l929, had at least a million members in 1930. In the election of that year, the Nazis, who had only twelve seats in the Reichstag before, won 107 and became Germany’s second largest party. More than the numbers changed inside the Reichstag. Enjoying parliamentary immunity, the Nazi members turned legislative debates into “a scene of shouted insults, loud singing, and threats of violence.” And then, in the next election, in 1932, the Nazis nearly doubled their vote, won a majority in the Prussian state election, forced Hindenburg to make Hitler chancellor and gave birth to the Third Reich.

The reaction in Germany was emphatic. Hans Gisevius, “who, as a young lawyer, shared in the national illusion,” explained years later that, “The glorious sensation of a new fraternity overwhelmed all groups and classes.” They had “suddenly learned what seemed to be the greatest discovery of the century - that they were comrades of one race…. Above all, youth, youth was getting its due.”

Goebbels was not surprised. He claimed to have helped the Nazi cause “in four essential ways: by introducing Socialism into a middle-class group, by ‘winning Berlin,’ by working out the style of the party’s public ceremonies, and by the ‘creation of the Fuhrer myth. Hitler had been given the halo of infallibility.” It was a myth Hitler himself believed. When one of his followers told him he was mistaken about something, he angrily replied, “I cannot be mistaken. What I do and say is historical.” There was never any doubt about what Hitler meant to do, and how he meant to do it. He understood what he was working with, and what had to be done to get what he wanted: “The receptivity of the masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be repeated until every last member of the public understands what you want him to understand.”

Before The Deluge is an extraordinary book, a book that tells the story - the whole story - of what happened in Berlin a hundred years ago, and what happened to the rest of the world because of it. If that seems too far back in the past to have any relevance to the present situation, if it seems too far back in time to tell us anything about what our own future may hold, we would do well to remember that, as the author explained at the beginning, “people who forget the past are condemned to misunderstand it.” Anyone who does not see the parallels with what happened in Berlin in the l920s and what could happen here today has not read Otto Friedrich, and does not understand the past.

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; The Remarkable Edmund Burke; The Novels of W.H. Hudson; America Revised; The City And Man; "The Use And Abuse Of History"; I, Claudius; The Closing of The American Mind; History of Rome.

--Marshal Zeringue

Megan Chance

Megan Chance is the critically acclaimed, award-winning author of more than twenty novels, including Glamorous Notions, A Dangerous Education, A Splendid Ruin, Bone River, and An Inconvenient Wife. She and her husband live in the Pacific Northwest.

Chance's new novel is The Vermilion Sea.

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

I just finished The Everlasting by Alix Harrow. My bookseller daughter urged me to read it, and since she usually has my reading taste on speed dial, I did. I used to read a lot of fantasy when I was younger, and I still do on occasion, though it’s not really my go-to genre. Why, I don’t know. Truly the best writers work in fantasy, and the themes they explore are often mind-bending and challenging.

This book was no exception. I absolutely loved it. As a writer, I was awed by the way she pulled off the structure. It’s impossible to describe this book without giving too much away, and its appeal is in the pleasure of discovery. In essence, The Everlasting is about how legends are made. Even more importantly, it’s a thoughtful exploration of why legends exist, and who they serve.

The hidden voices in history, and how history changes depending on who is telling the story is ever at play here. This is already one of my favorite books of the year.

Visit Megan Chance's website.

My Book, The Movie: A Splendid Ruin.

The Page 69 Test: A Splendid Ruin.

Q&A with Megan Chance.

The Page 69 Test: A Dangerous Education.

My Book, The Movie: A Dangerous Education.

Writers Read: Megan Chance (February 2023).

Writers Read: Megan Chance (January 2025).

My Book, The Movie: Glamorous Notions.

The Page 69 Test: Glamorous Notions.

My Book, The Movie: The Vermilion Sea.

The Page 69 Test: The Vermilion Sea.

--Marshal Zeringue

N. West Moss

N. West Moss is the author of the memoir Flesh & Blood and the short story collection The Subway Stops at Bryant Park. Her essays and short stories have appeared in McSweeney's, The Saturday Evening Post, and The New York Times, among other publications. She lives in New Jersey.

Birdy is her first book for young readers.

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

A Sky Full of Song by Susan Lynn Meyer

This is a piece of historical fiction set in 1905 on the North Dakota Prairie, and follows a Jewish family of immigrant pioneers as they struggle to make a go of it in America. I continue to love the Laura Ingalls Wilder books about pioneer life, and this gave me a new angle on that time and place that I found both moving and informative.

Allan Cole is not a Coward by Eric Bell

The narrator of this book is smart, hilarious, vulnerable, and deeply lovable. He is keeping it a secret that he has a crush on another boy, and is trying to find his way in middle school, even as his home life threatens to fall apart. This book is quirky and idiosyncratic – and is wholly original and fun to read.

The Teacher of Nomad Land by Daniel Nayeri

One of my favorite aspects of reading is that it gives me access to worlds I would not otherwise have access to. This book did just that. It’s set during World War II in Iran, not a place I associate with WWII. I appreciated the spareness of Nayeri’s prose, and his artful under-explaining. He gives readers just enough detail to orient us, and then dives into the very specific world of a boy and his sister, who are trying to survive. I read it in one sitting, and am still thinking about it.

Earthrise: The Story of the Photograph that Changed the Way We See Our Planet by Leonard S. Marcus

This is a fascinating, short, nonfiction book about the lasting impact of the photograph now known as ‘Earthrise.’ I learned a lot about the space race, the cold war, the beginnings of the environmental movement, and much more that I had either forgotten or never known. Marcus teaches without coming off as didactic, and the book ends up covering a lot of terrain, considering that it’s ultimately about a single, if iconic, photograph.

Visit N. West Moss's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

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.

Visit Laura Jensen Walker's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Alphabet Sleuths.

Q&A with Laura Jensen Walker.

The Page 69 Test: The Alphabet Sleuths.

--Marshal Zeringue

Louise Fein

Louise Fein is the author of Daughter of the Reich, which has been published in thirteen territories, the international bestseller The Hidden Child, and The London Bookshop Affair. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from St Mary’s University. She lives in Surrey, UK, with her family.

Fein's new novel is Book of Forbidden Words.

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

Here are the recent books I’ve read and loved:

The Artist [US title - The Artist and the Feast] by Lucy Steeds

This is a story of a young aspiring journalist who hopes to kick start his career by travelling to rural Provence shortly after the end of World War I to interview a famous, reclusive artist. There he encounters the artist’s strange and silent niece. This is a stunningly beautiful and evocative novel, which positively drips with secrets, colour, light and the slow pace of life in 1920’s rural Provence. It is part mystery, part love story, part exploration of the twisted, painful affairs of the human heart. I loved every exquisite page.

The Lost Passenger by Frances Quinn

I loved this wonderful, uplifting page-turner about a woman taking on impossible odds. This novel is about Elinor, the unhappy wife of a British aristocrat. When she has the opportunity to travel to New York for a holiday on board the Titanic with her young son, she jumps at the chance. But when she and her son miraculously survive the ship’s sinking, she realises she has an opportunity to start a new life in America, if only she can find a way to disappear and be listed as one of those who sank without trace. But will she be able to pull it off, or will her secret rise to the surface?

A Mother’s Promise by Renee Salt and Kate Thompson

Renee Salt is a ninety-seven year old holocaust survivor and this incredible narrative non-fiction book tells the story of how she survived Auschwitz and Bergen-Belson, and then went on to live a long and purposeful life. The story is harrowing, but somehow also filled with so much love, hope and strength that I think it is a book everyone should read. I shall never forget it.

Visit Louise Fein's website.

Q&A with Louise Fein.

--Marshal Zeringue

Will Shindler

Will Shindler has spent most of his career working as a broadcast journalist for the BBC. He also spent nearly a decade working on a number of British television dramas, working for both the BBC Drama Series Department, and Talkback Thames Television as a writer and script editor. He has been writing novels since 2020, including the five-book critically acclaimed DI Alex Finn series: The Burning Men, The Killing Choice, The Hunting Ground, The Blood Line, and The Cold Case. He currently combines reading news bulletins for BBC Radio London with his novel writing and has previously worked as a presenter for ITV West, a reporter for BBC Radio Five Live, and as one of the stadium presenters at the 2012 London Olympics. He lives in London.

Shindler's new novel is The Bone Queen.

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

Never Flinch by Stephen King.

Given that I write a mixture of crime and horror, it’s probably no surprise that a new King novel is always an automatic purchase for me. I’ve been particularly drawn to his later work, beginning with Mr Mercedes, which introduced us to Holly Gibney - one of his most quietly fascinating creations.

As someone who’s written a series I can testify that one of the most difficult things to do is moving a character forward, without losing those essential traits that people liked about them first place. It’s an exercise in running on the spot sometimes – giving a sense of more propulsion than sometimes you as, as a writer can allow. King has managed something genuinely impressive with Holly though. All her familiar tics and anxieties remain intact, but they now sit within a character who has clearly lived, learned, and been shaped by her experiences.

The novel itself is a masterclass in weaving disparate characters and storylines into a single narrative. It also has a great deal to say about contemporary America without ever tipping into sermonising. The villain, Trig, is particularly effective: morally compromised, unsettlingly human, and written with enough psychological depth that even when sympathy is impossible, empathy isn’t.

Follow Will Shindler on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.

My Book, The Movie: The Bone Queen.

Q&A with Will Shindler.

The Page 69 Test: The Bone Queen.

--Marshal Zeringue

Robert Dugoni

Robert Dugoni is a critically acclaimed New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and #1 Amazon bestselling author, reaching over 9 million readers worldwide. He is best known for his Tracy Crosswhite police series set in Seattle. He is also the author of the Charles Jenkins espionage series, the David Sloane legal thriller series, and several stand-alone novels including The 7th Canon, Damage Control, The World Played Chess, and Her Deadly Game. His novel The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell received Suspense Magazine’s 2018 Book of the Year, and Dugoni’s narration won an AudioFile Earphones Award. The Washington Post named his nonfiction exposé The Cyanide Canary a Best Book of the Year.

Dugoni's new novel is Her Cold Justice.

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

I’m often asked what I’m reading.

Can I be honest? When I’m writing, I’m writing 8 hours a day. I write my first draft like I’m running a marathon. I just keep going and going and going. The goal is to reach the end, figure out what the book is about and then rolls up my sleeves, dig in and edit like crazy. Because of this, at the end of the day, the last thing I want to do is read. Sounds terrible for a writer, doesn’t it?

When I’m on vacation, I like something light, good fun and enjoyable. Harry Potter. The Lord of the Rings. But really, put any book in front of me with a good story, no matter the genre, and I’ll read it. The author doesn’t matter to me if they can tell a great story.

Visit Robert Dugoni's website and Facebook page.

The Page 69 Test: Wrongful Death.

The Page 69 Test: Bodily Harm.

My Book, The Movie: Bodily Harm.

The Page 69 Test: Murder One.

My Book, The Movie: Murder One.

My Book, The Movie: The Eighth Sister.

The Page 69 Test: The Eighth Sister.

My Book, The Movie: A Cold Trail.

The Page 69 Test: A Cold Trail.

The Page 69 Test: The Last Agent.

My Book, The Movie: The Last Agent.

Q&A with Robert Dugoni.

The Page 69 Test: In Her Tracks.

Writers Read: Robert Dugoni (March 2024).

The Page 69 Test: A Killing on the Hill.

My Book, The Movie: A Killing on the Hill.

The Page 69 Test: Beyond Reasonable Doubt.

My Book, The Movie: Beyond Reasonable Doubt.

Writers Read: Robert Dugoni (October 2024).

My Book, The Movie: Her Cold Justice.

The Page 69 Test: Her Cold Justice.

--Marshal Zeringue

Maria Tureaud

Maria Tureaud is an editor and acclaimed author of middle grade and adult fiction. Born and raised in County Clare on the west coast of Ireland, she now lives with her husband and son in New Jersey.

Her new novel is This House Will Feed, which Hester Fox called "both a luscious Gothic, as well a poignant examination of the nature of loss and collective memory in a time of unspeakable horrors," and Paulette Kennedy praised as a "gripping, multilayered tale of vengeance set against the backdrop of one of the worst genocides in human history."

Recently I asked Tureaud about what she was reading. The author's reply:

Since Gothic horror is having a “moment,” I’m delighted to have so many amazing titles to choose from. My current read is The Hunger We Pass Down, by Jen Sookfong Lee. It’s a vivid, raw, and emotional Gothic that weaves the lives of three generations together in a tale bathed in horror — both historical, and supernatural — to create a scathing narrative that deals with the pressure we place on our children, and the generational trauma we pass down. It’s a slow-burn with alternating timelines that culminates in quiet contemplation every time I put it down. Heavy, sad, terrifying, and relatable: sleep with a nightlight.

Visit Maria Tureaud's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Wendy Walker

Wendy Walker is the author of the psychological suspense novels All Is Not Forgotten, Emma in the Night, The Night Before, Don’t Look for Me, What Remains, and the Audible Originals Hold Your Breath, American Girl, Mad Love, and The Room Next Door. Her work has been translated into twenty-three languages, topping bestseller lists both in the United States and abroad, and featured by the Today show, the Reese Witherspoon Book Club, and the Book of the Month Club. Six of her titles have also been optioned for television and film.

Walker holds degrees from Brown University and Georgetown University Law School. Prior to her writing career, Wendy trained for competitive figure skating, worked as a financial analyst at Goldman Sachs, and practiced both corporate and family law. She resides in Connecticut, where she raised her three sons.

Her new novel is Blade.

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

I love reading outside the thriller genre whenever I can. While I adore suspense and psychological thrillers, reading within my own genre can sometimes feel like work I’m always analyzing structure, pacing, and technique. Reading outside of it, by contrast, is pure pleasure.

Right now, I’m listening to the audiobook of Wreck by Catherine Newman, the follow-up to her runaway bestseller Sandwich. Wreck follows a family as they navigate a series of quiet and not-so-quiet crises, told through the voice of a fifty-something wife and mother confronting middle age, empty nesting, and a recent family loss. The writing is witty and sharp, yet deeply emotional - almost every sentence makes me smile yet lands with meaning. I also adore the narrator, Helen Laser, who also performed The Wedding People by Alison Espach - another novel I couldn’t stop listening to. I highly recommend Wreck, Sandwich, and The Wedding People for anyone who wants an immersive, emotionally resonant read about the everyday joys and heartbreaks of life.

Visit Wendy Walker's website.

The Page 69 Test: Four Wives.

The Page 99 Test: Social Lives.

The Page 69 Test: Don't Look for Me.

Q&A with Wendy Walker.

--Marshal Zeringue

S.J. Rozan

SJ Rozan, a native New Yorker, is the author of twenty novels and eight dozen short stories. Her work has won the Edgar, Shamus, Anthony, Nero, and Macavity awards for Best Novel and the Edgar for Best Short Story. She’s also the recipient of the Japanese Maltese Falcon Award and has received Life Achievement Awards from both the Private Eye Writers of America and the Short Mystery Fiction Society.

Rozan's new novel, First Do No Harm, is the latest title in the Lydia Chin and Bill Smith mystery series.

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

I've just finished one book and am starting another. Both are non-fiction, which I read a lot.

The first is Kate Fox's Watching the English. Fox, a British anthropologist, decided to turn the participant-observer techniques she uses on foreign societies back onto her own people, to see if she could find the essential nature of "Englishness." It's sharply observed and in places very funny. I'm writing a new series set in London so I thought I'd try to increase my understanding of my characters and their milieu. I did, too.

The book I've just started is Steven Blier's From Ear to Ear. Blier's a pianist, co-founder of the New York Festival of Song, and this is his memoir of his life in music. It's remarkably well-written, by turns gossipy and profound. I'm a music lover but also an ignoramus, and in this book I never feel talked down to or dismissed. As I read I'm comprehending some elements of music-making that I wasn't able to follow before this.

Both books highly recommended!

Visit S.J. Rozan's website.

The Page 69 Test: Paper Son.

The Page 69 Test: The Art of Violence.

Q&A with S. J. Rozan.

Writers Read: S.J. Rozan (February 2022).

The Page 69 Test: Family Business.

Writers Read: S. J. Rozan (November 2023).

The Page 69 Test: The Mayors of New York.

The Page 69 Test: First Do No Harm.

--Marshal Zeringue

Mara Williams

Mara Williams drafted her first novel in third grade on a spiral notebook—a love story about a golden retriever and the stray dog who admired her from beyond the picket fence. Now she writes about strong, messy women finding their way in the world. Williams is the author of The Truth Is in the Detours and The Epicenter of Forever. When not writing or reading, she can be found enjoying California’s beaches, redwoods, and trails with her husband, three kids, and disobedient dog.

Recenty I asked Williams about what she was reading. Her reply:

Most Eligible by Isabelle Engel.

The Bachelor meets Miss Congeniality in this hilarious romcom about a reporter who goes undercover as a contestant on a dating show and finds out the host is her one-night-stand from a year ago, and whoops…she might be falling for the wrong person. The hijinks and shenanigans in this one are unmatched. I caught myself laughing out loud and swooning in equal measure. It’s perfect for fans of reality television and classic romcoms, and for anyone looking for an infusion of joy in their fiction.

The Best Worst Thing by Lauren Okie.

This romance tackles divorce, infidelity, and infertility, and does so with unparalleled wit and warmth. It has a deep emotional range and prose so beautiful it will win over even the most hardened romance skeptic. At one point, I couldn’t read the page through my tears, and at another, my family asked me why I was laughing so hard. It breaks the writing rules in all the best ways to produce a book that’s both startlingly fresh and comfortingly familiar.

Wreck by Catherine Newman.

I was so excited when Catherine Newman released this follow-up to Sandwich, one of my all-time favorites. We join the anxious, big-hearted protagonist Rocky again—this time back home—and follow her as she navigates aging, grief, and the complexities of accepting all the imperfect versions of her loved ones and herself.

How About Now by Kate Baer.

I read this book of poetry in one sitting, with tears in my eyes and warmth in my heart. The slim volume grapples with the demands of motherhood, womanhood, and midlife in poems that are often sharp and always tender. Her poems depict struggles that are both timeless and uniquely of the moment: the unequal division of labor in modern marriage, the ephemerality of watching our children grow, and the vulnerability of being human.

August Lane by Regina Black.

This is a perfectly crafted second-chance, multi-point-of-view, dual timeline romance where each plot point and perspective is critical to the hard-won happily ever after. It’s set within the high-stakes world of country music and follows three Black country western musicians trying to break in or hang on to transient success in an industry that has forcibly excluded them. It’s heart-wrenching and soul-healing.

Visit Mara Williams's website.

Q&A with Mara Williams.

The Page 69 Test: The Truth Is in the Detours.

My Book, The Movie: The Truth Is in the Detours.

Writers Read: Mara Williams (August 2025).

My Book, The Movie: The Epicenter of Forever.

--Marshal Zeringue

Laura Carney

A writer and magazine copy editor in New York, Laura Carney has been published by the Washington Post, the Associated Press, The Hill, Runner’s World, Good Housekeeping, The Fix, Upworthy, Maria Shriver’s The Sunday Paper, and other places. She has worked as a copy editor in national magazines—primarily women’s—for twenty years, including Vanity Fair, GQ, People, and Good Housekeeping.

Carney's memoir is My Father's List: How Living My Dad's Dreams Set Me Free.

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

I hoard books, and it doesn't help that I picked up books for free when I worked full-time at a women's magazine (I also now own enough anti-aging cream to look 47 forever). But since publishing My Father's List: How Living My Dad's Dreams Set Me Free, in June 2023, I've discovered yet another reason to own too many books—publishing a successful one makes lots of people want you to blurb theirs. Or pass theirs along to your agent. I'm happy to do so, and I'm also happy to pre-order every new book a new author friend publishes. The result: I currently have about 60 books in my to-be-read pile, next to my nightstand, which probably scared my in-laws when they house-sat. Or at least tripped them.

Of the 60 or so I'm currently reading, here are the ones I'm most excited about (and keep in mind I bought about 15 more when I was on vacation after my One City, One Book award in Greensboro, NC):

Gratitude and Trust: Six Affirmations That Will Change Your Life: I bought this book before I interviewed one of my heroes, the composer Paul Williams, and I highly recommend it. Oprah liked it too. I've learned a lot from my conversations with Paul, but mainly to "view every no as a gift," one of his mottos, and to view every turn in my life as a direction from "the big amigo." The insights in this book, based on the 12-step program, are wonderful.

Myths to Live By by Joseph Campbell: I've read just about every book in Joseph Campbell's catalogue, but this one has to be my favorite. It was a big influence when I wrote My Father's List. Sometimes if there's a central idea in a book that I've built a life philosophy around, I'll scour that book again just to find it. So I'm rereading this.

In one of the chapters (which are based on his lectures), but I'm not sure which one yet, Campbell posits that the Garden of Eden was never a real place, and man was never locked out of it, that we aren't meant to look at God as a big man in the sky. He also theorizes that we aren't meant to believe that we must live our lives separated from Him until we die. Campbell explores the theory instead that the Biblical garden is a metaphor for one's heart, and so is the birth of Christ. He talks about how man's goal should be to live in accordance with his own beliefs, with the Christ figure in his heart—that when he does so, he'll be back in the garden, not cast out, and united with God while living.

I've always loved this idea of Campbell's, or at least this interpretation, though it's one put forth by lots of great thinkers, like Dr. Joseph Murphy and Florence Scovel Shinn—it's this idea that our life mirrors back to us what we radiate out, and if we radiate out wholeness, integrity, consistency and love, this is what we'll get back (or at least what we will see in our everyday experiences). "A vital person vitalizes," Campbell often said. He also said that if heaven is eternal, that means it's a place with no time, not infinite time...and it's possible, through following one's bliss, to have that experience right now. What I learned while completing my dad's bucket list (the premise of my book) was the art of being present—the list items were wholly engaging and typically meant learning new things. This is the main reason I was able to reconnect with my father, in spirit—where he is, time is eternal, and I was living in an eternal space now too.

Gratitude by Oliver Sacks: This book was given to me by John Jordan, who's in charge of public relations at my father's old high school, Archmere Academy in Delaware. I keep it next to my gratitude journal on my nightstand as a reminder. PS: I also keep five journals at once—so I guess I'm a journal hoarder, too!

After by Bruce Greyson, M.D.: My work has happily brought me in touch with a handful of psychic mediums and one near-death experiencer, Jacob Cooper, who turned me on to this book. Jacob calls me a "journalist to the dead," which I think means that in My Father's List, I only ever provided indisputable examples of communication with my father, patterns that came to me rather than my looking for them...I just thought to jot them down. It often felt like my dad was pulling strings for me, helping me along as I went. This book helps explain, scientifically, why people have those kinds of experiences. Bruce Greyson is a "scientist to the dead," I suppose.

Conversations With God (Book One) by Neale Donald Walsch: My friend Erin recommended this one, and I've only just gotten started. But I listened to an interview with the author on my friend Karen Noé's podcast, and I loved the idea he shared, that God told him what every human being wants in life is to be used to their fullest potential. My prayer most often is "use me." Or "show me." So this book will likely resonate.

The Way of the Wild Goose: Three Pilgrimages Following Geese, Stars and Hunches on the Camino de Santiago by Beebe Bahrami: I only recently bought this, and I'm excited to read it not only because I plan on finishing my own bucket list with a hike on the Camino—500 miles when I turn 50—but because this is a feminist take on the hike, one I hope to write about too. I have a theory that the pilgrimages of Europe were placed on top of ancient Druid ley lines, and that if I hike the Camino, I'll find sheela-na-gigs in ruins of churches as proof. Either way, I'm excited to explore the life of a female pilgrim (which I suppose is how I feel as a writer as it is)."

Visit Laura Carney's website.

The Page 99 Test: My Father's List.

My Book, The Movie: My Father's List.

--Marshal Zeringue