Blake Crouch

Blake Crouch was born near the piedmont town of Statesville, North Carolina in 1978. He attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 2000 with degrees in English and Creative Writing.

His first two novels are Desert Places and Locked Doors.

Beginning in late 2005, and inspired by his relocation to Durango, Colorado, he researched and wrote a book set in the past and present in a remote mining town high in the San Juan Mountains. The resulting novel, Abandon, was published by St. Martin’s Press in 2009.

His new novel, Snowbound, was released last month.

Recently I asked him what he was reading. His reply:

At the moment, I'm tearing through Michael Koryta's new book, So Cold the River. It's a departure from his PI series and his excellent crime fiction standalone, Envy the Night, but I'm loving it. The main character is a washed-up filmmaker reduced to shooting video montages for funerals, and he goes to this strange town to investigate the history of his reclusive subject who no one seems to know anything about. This is no doubt Koryta's strongest book yet.

Visit Blake Crouch's website.

Read an excerpt from Snowbound.

The Page 69 Test: Abandon.

--Marshal Zeringue

Thomas L. Carson

Thomas L. Carson is Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University Chicago. He is the author of Value and the Good Life, The Status of Morality, and the newly released Lying and Deception, and is the co-editor of Morality and the Good Life and Moral Relativism.

Recently I asked him what he was reading. His reply:

During the last month I read Ronald White’s biography of Lincoln, A. Lincoln, Henry Lewis Gates’s, Lincoln on Race and Slavery, and the Library of America collection of Lincoln ’s speeches and writings. I am preparing to give a series of public lectures on Lincoln’s Ethics at my alma mater, Saint Olaf College, in 2011. These lectures will combine historical biography and moral philosophy. I am combining my work in philosophy with my lifelong interest in history. The last few chapters of Lying and Deception also address historical questions in considerable detail.

I read Philippa Foot’s Moral Dilemmas, a collection of essays by an important analytic philosopher who is a wonderfully clear stylist and writer. She takes on “big” and interesting questions, as opposed to scholarly minutiae.

I am now reading Value and Reality: The Philosophical Case for Theism, by A. C. Ewing. This book talks about the relationship between morality and religion, a topic that greatly interests me and one that I address in my earlier book Value and the Good Life.

Since I have a lot of time on my hands this summer, I have started reading Tolstoy’s War and Peace. He and Dostoevski are among my very favorite writers. It’s a great book and lives up to its reputation.

I read The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Review of Books, The London Review of Books, and The New York Times Book Review which give me good summaries of many more books than I have time to read.

See Thomas L. Carson's Loyola University webpage for more information about him and to see a list of some of his favorite books.

Learn more about Lying and Deception at the Oxford University Press website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Joanne Lessner

Joanne Lessner is a singer, actor, and writer. She is the author of the novel Pandora’s Bottle, which was published by Flint Mine Press in June 2010. Her play, Critical Mass, was named the winner of the 2009 Heiress Productions Playwriting Competition and will receive its New York premiere at the Lion Theatre on Theatre Row in October 2010. She has written the book and lyrics to several musicals with her husband, composer/conductor Joshua Rosenblum, including the cult hit Fermat's Last Tango, which received its Off-Broadway premiere at the York Theatre Company in November 2000. The original cast recording became a bestseller, and the DVD has been screened at festivals from New Jersey to New Zealand.

Last week I asked Lessner what she was reading. Her reply:

You’ve caught me in a spate of re-reading, which is fairly unusual for me! In general, I subscribe to the ‘too many books, too little time’ school of thought, but occasionally, I find myself revisiting favorite works for specific reasons:

I’m reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban aloud to my 9 year-old daughter. I’ve read the series silently for myself, of course, and aloud once before in its entirety to my son who is now 14. I love to read the Potter books this way. What fabulously juicy and idiosyncratic characters – it’s actor catnip! Really, why should Jim Dale have all the fun? I keep the narrator in my own voice and layer on various British dialects for the others. My favorite character to do is Professor Trelawney, the loopy divination teacher. The only problem with reading the Potter books aloud is that I cry unabashedly at various key points and have to stop, much to my kids’ amusement. I think J.K. Rowling is a phenomenal, inspired author. We’re the same age and we share the same name, but I fear the similarity may end there.

I’m also taking a second look at Daphne Du Maurier’s My Cousin Rachel. It’s less well-known than Rebecca, but just as creepy and suggestive, and I’m reading it with an eye towards adapting it as a musical with my husband, composer Joshua Rosenblum. We’re envisioning something moody and mercurial - a sort of gothic, chamber musical. It’s a property we’ve been considering for awhile, and we recently received a commission from the Signature Theatre in Arlington, VA, so its time may have come!

Still sitting on my bedside table because I’ve just finished them for the second time, is the Cazalet Chronicle by Elizabeth Jane Howard. I’m clearly a sucker for anything British, but particularly for books that reveal England in the first part of the last century. These four novels - The Light Years, Marking Time, Confusion and Casting Off – are a charming, but penetrating saga of an extended family before, during and after World War II. Just after 9/11, the BBC film version aired on PBS and I found tremendous comfort watching another generation survive and triumph over a stealth threat from abroad. When I turned to the novels, I saw that Howard, like Rowling, had created a supremely detailed and involving world that reflected my own, despite obvious differences. Howard delivers much more than a garden-variety family saga; she is an acute observer of human nature. As soon as I finished them the first time, I knew I would read them again. I made myself wait almost ten years, and presented them to myself as a reward for finishing Pandora's Bottle. In fact, they were just what I needed as a palate cleanser before my last manuscript review.

Next up, to read for the first time, so I don’t have much to say yet, is Inheritance, by Natalie Danford. Not England this time, but Italy, another favorite locale, and WWII again. Looks right up my alley. Then, for completeness’ sake, I’ll read The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. And if anyone reading this has a direct line to Reginald Hill, could you let him know I’m ready for the next installment of Dalziel and Pascoe? That has to be the slyest, most intellectually entertaining detective series ever!

Visit Joanne Sydney Lessner's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Meg Gardiner

Meg Gardiner's novels include the Jo Beckett series -- The Dirty Secrets Club, The Memory Collector, and the newly released The Liar's Lullaby.

About a week ago I asked her what she was reading Her reply:

The Big Short, by Michael Lewis, shocked and gripped me. Lewis’s account of the crash of the mortgage bond market—which led to the near-collapse of the U.S. financial system—is clear, compelling, and full of intensely drawn characters. The book discusses arcane securities such as credit default swaps, yet I was flipping the pages to find out what happened next. And yes, nearly everybody on Wall Street who jumped into the subprime mortgage market became so greedy that it made them stupid. And they were playing with other people’s money, including yours and mine. “Cautionary tale” doesn’t begin to cover it.

To cool me down after that book, I needed a good thriller. 61 Hours, Lee Child’s latest, did the trick. Reacher’s trapped in a blizzard in South Dakota, dealing with small town cops and a big league drug lord. The novel went down smooth—like a dagger carved from ice.

The Page 69 Test: The Dirty Secrets Club.

The Page 69 Test: The Memory Collector.

Learn more about the author and her work at Meg Gardiner's website and blog.

--Marshal Zeringue

Susan Hasler

Susan Hasler spent twenty-one years at the CIA, where she held a variety of positions including counterterrorism analyst. In 2004 she resigned from the CIA and now writes full time. Her short stories have appeared in The Beloit Fiction Journal, O. Henry Festival Stories 2005, and more.

Her new novel is Intelligence.

Earlier this month I asked Hasler what she was reading. Her reply:

Of the novels that I’ve read this year, three have lodged in my mind with particular stubbornness.

I loved T. C Boyle’s The Women for the strange warp and rhythm of its backwards chronology. Boyle takes the material of Frank Lloyd Wright’s life and turns it into a long prose poem. As a writer, I have to admire the skill required to pull this off so effectively. If Boyle were a figure skater, this would be a quadruple axel.

Barbara Kingsolver’s The Lacuna is a masterful rendering of the political and social sins of an era. How could I, as a one-time art major, one-time Soviet expert, and frequent visitor to the North Carolina mountains not love this novel? It features Frida Kahlo, Trotsky, and Asheville. Moreover, Kingsolver’s account of McCarthy era excesses has a chilling political relevance in a time of cable news screamers.

Finally, I adored Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead. How does this woman make each page so special? Every sentence exudes its own atmosphere and makes you breathe its air. This quiet story of a midwest minister nearing the end of his life sounds in the memory for a long time after you put it down.

These are writers that leave me feeling humbled and anxious to push myself to do more.

Visit Susan Hasler's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Joshilyn Jackson

New York Times bestselling novelist Joshilyn Jackson lives in Georgia with her husband, their two children, and way too many feckless animals. Her debut, gods in Alabama, won SIBA's 2005 Novel of the year Award and was a #1 BookSense pick. Jackson won Georgia Author of the Year for her second novel, Between, Georgia, which also a #1 BookSense pick, making Jackson the first author in BookSense history to receive #1 status in back to back years. Her third novel, The Girl Who Stopped Swimming, was a Break Out book at Target and has been shortlisted for the Townsend Prize for Fiction. All three books were chosen for the Books-A-Million Book Club.

Her latest novel, Backseat Saints (June 2010), tells the story of Rose Mae Lolley, a fierce, tiny ball of war wounds who was a minor character in gods in Alabama. Her life changes dramatically when she meets an airport gypsy who shares her past and knows her future. The gypsy's dire prediction: Ro's handsome, violent husband is going to kill her - unless she kills him first...

Last month I asked Jackson what she was reading. Her reply:

I just finished tour, which means umpty plane rides, which means I’ve been reading a metric buttload of eclectic picks, based on the ARCS I managed to hoover up at BEA, books I nabbed in airports, and the recommendations of booksellers I met on tour.

Ape House: I shamelessly stole an ARC at BEA even though there were a limited number and everyone was trying to nab them. I am not even sorry. I would steal it again. It opens with a bang, literally, as animal rights activists blow up a lab to “rescue” a group of Bonobo apes who speak American Sign Language. Isabel Duncan, a scientist who has bonded with the apes and who isn’t great at making human connections, is the rich, red heart of this book. She’ll do anything to find her missing family, and the plot is a rollercoaster ride that explores what it means to be human.

61 Days: Number something-teen in a long-running thriller series that never seems to get stale. I unabashedly love Jack Reacher, an ex-military cop and current drifter who is a magnet for big, fat, hairy trouble. 61 days could be easily read as a stand alone, I think, but it’s worth starting at book one (Killing Floor) and getting the next one whenever you find yourself in the thriller mood. I did it that way, and I am SO sad that I have caught up with the series and now have to wait for the next release!

City of Thieves: Recommended to me by a bookseller at The BookMark in Atlantic Beach, Florida, this coming of age tale is set during the Nazi Siege of Leningrad. I laughed out loud and wept openly on a plane like an idiot reading this brutal, blackly funny, bittersweet tale. A pair of mis-matched “war criminals” search for a dozen eggs for a powerful colonel’s daughter’s wedding cake to save their lives.

A Soft Place to Land: This book was in every airport I went to, which struck me as ironic, as it opens with a plane crash. It tells the story of a pair of half sisters orphaned in that crash as they grow up separately, a country apart. It was so beautifully written and so moving. It’s all about connection, and it is ultimately hopeful without ever once slipping into sentimentality. It’s the work of a first rate talent.

The 19th Wife was a gift from Calvin Crosby at Books INC in San Francisco, and that guy can pick my next read anytime. It’s a novel that swings back and forth in time, from Brigham Young’s 19th wife and her crusade to end polygamy to a contemporary murder mystery that features “lost boys,” young men forcibly run off by the older, powerful men running a town of modern day polygamists. It’s a page turner for sure, and a compassionate examination all the ways--for good or ill--we define and create families.

Learn more about the author and her books at Joshilyn Jackson's website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: The Girl Who Stopped Swimming.

My Book, The Movie: The Girl Who Stopped Swimming.

--Marshal Zeringue

Andrei S. Markovits

Andrei S. Markovits is the Karl W. Deutsch Collegiate Professor of Comparative Politics and German Studies at the University of Michigan. His books include Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America, Offside: Soccer and American Exceptionalism, and (with Lars Rensmann) the recently published Gaming the World: How Sports Are Reshaping Global Politics and Culture.

Recently I asked him what he was reading. His reply:

Arik Brauer, Die Zigeunerziege: Fast wahre Geschichten (Munich/Vienna: Langen - Mueller, 1976)

This wonderful selection of brilliant vignettes represent Arik Brauer's first foray into the world of literature. While never a core member of the famous "Vienna School of Fantastic Realism," Brauer's paintings -- just like these writings -- merge fantasy with reality in an immensely exciting manner. Every one of Brauer's short stories commences with a banal and pedestrian event of city life and then becomes part of a fable-like tale featuring macabre, even grotesque, qualities. His synthesis of deeply-felt Jewish and Viennese sensibilities evoke much of my own boyhood experiences in Vienna where I lived from the age of nine to eighteen, from 1958 to 1967.

Michael Boloker, The Gym Rat (Lincoln, Nebraska: iUniverse, 2002)

Boloker details graphically the story of Guy Golden, Division I college basketball coach, who is forced to deal with the aura of the NCAA tournament, "March Madness," while his star player is accused of raping a coed. The novel concerns the conflict between his love for the game and the pressure to win at any cost.

Wiltrud I. MacKinnon, Wings and Ashes (Boston: MacKinnon, 2009)

Wiltrud was arguably among the most gifted of my many students that I had the honor of teaching in my 35-year professorial career at the finest universities in the United States, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Israel. She took a course from me on comparative fascism that I taught at the Harvard University Extension School in the spring term of 2003 while a Visiting Professor of Social Studies at that university. I remained in touch with her via e-mail after my return to Ann Arbor and have not seen her in seven years. She just sent me this collection of her poems which have overwhelmed and awed me. Full of empathy for the weak, particularly animals, but also children and the poor, these poems have touched me like few others in recent years. They obviously bespeak Wiltrud's childhood in her native Germany and her Boston-area adulthood but all poems enjoy a much greater relevance. Apart from the emotional salience of Wiltrud's poems, their style is also beautiful in my opinion.

Read more about Gaming the World, and visit Andrei S. Markovits' website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Julia London

Julia London is the New York Times and USA Today best selling author of more than a twenty romantic fiction novels. She is the author of the popular Desperate Debutante and Scandalous historical romance series, as well as several contemporary romances, including American Diva, the very popular tie-in novel to the daytime drama, Guiding Light: Jonathan’s Story, and Summer of Two Wishes.

She is the recipient of the RT Bookclub Award for Best Historical Romance and a four-time finalist for the prestigious RITA award for excellence in romantic fiction.

London's latest novel is One Season of Sunshine.

Last week I asked her what she was reading. Her reply:

I just finished reading Shirley Jackson’s Life Among the Savages. You may remember Shirley Jackson’s "The Lottery," the short story that was required reading in most public schools, or at least it was when I was a kid. I had never read any of her work other than "The Lottery" and was amazed to find such a delightfully amusing book. It’s a memoir about her life with her children and her husband. It was written in 1948 and has the Ozzie and Harriet appeal.

This book was my bookclub’s pick for May, in honor of Mother’s Day, and I could not have been more pleased with it. It reminded me of my own childhood, in the days before video games and cell phones. We had television, of course, but it didn’t monopolize us. We played outside. We ate food fresh from the garden. We invented wild games and stories, and we were loved. There is nothing remarkable in this book, no platform, no agenda. It’s just a feel good book about family.

Shirley Jackson wrote several books in the vein of "The Lottery," but wrote two non-fiction books, including this one, as well as Raising Demons. It is fascinating to imagine this woman, who clearly had a grand sense of humor, writing something like "The Lottery." I can imagine her writing the horrible stoning scene, then tromping downstairs to make supper for her children and listen to the events of their day, and converse with her daughter’s imaginary friends. It’s a wonderful book for anyone who has ever had young children in the house.

Visit Julia London's website and follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Read--Coffee with a Canine: Julia London and Moose.

--Marshal Zeringue

Lorien Foote

Lorien Foote is associate professor of history at the University of Central Arkansas and the author of Seeking the One Great Remedy: Francis George Shaw and Nineteenth-Century Reform.

Her new book is The Gentlemen and the Roughs: Violence, Honor, and Manhood in the Union Army.

Earlier this week I asked her what she was reading. Her reply:

I’ve been traveling a lot recently and asked some friends to lend me books that would be good reading to pass the time in airports and train stations. One gave me Interesting Times by Terry Pratchett, a novel that is part of a fantasy series set on Discworld. The hero is a coward, the barbarian horde is comprised of geriatrics, the wizards are at a university where neither students nor professors attend lectures, and the revolutionaries spout slogans about moderate change and preserving tradition. I thoroughly enjoyed this bit of light reading. It was funny, quirky, and yet oddly insightful and satirical about the real world. I’ve never read anything quite like it. The only problem with reading this book on public transportation was the embarrassment of all the stares I received on the multiple occasions it made me laugh out loud.

Visit Lorien Foote's faculty webpage, and read more about The Gentlemen and the Roughs: Violence, Honor, and Manhood in the Union Army.

--Marshal Zeringue

Dana Haynes

Dana Haynes was, for more than twenty years, a journalist and editor at several newspapers in Oregon.

His new thriller, Crashers, was released by St. Martin’s Press on June 22.

He’s also written three mysteries under the pen name Conrad Haynes.

Haynes' first screenplay, an adaptation of Crashers, made it to the semifinals of the prestigious Nichols Fellowship in 2005.

A few days ago I asked him what he was reading. His reply:

Globish, by Robert McCrum. It’s a brilliant take on how English – rather than lingua franca or Latin or French – became the world language by the 20th century. But I’d be horrified if you saw me as some would-be intellectual. I’m also taking the time to re-introduce myself to Peter O’Donnell, who wrote the brilliant “Modesty Blaise” comic strip for about 40 years. Best thriller strip of all time. What an incredibly difficult and demanding medium! He had about 40 words and three images per day to keep your heart racing. Every time I go back to O’Donnell, I learn more.

Visit Dana Haynes' website and blog.

--Marshal Zeringue