Jodi Compton

Jodi Compton is the author of the acclaimed novel The 37th Hour, which features Detective Sarah Pribek, and the newly released Hailey's War.

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

Macbeth. Generally, I think Shakespeare loses a lot in just being read, instead of seen on the stage or screen. But I reread Macbeth every once in a while because it’s my favorite Shakespeare, and chances are relatively few to see it live (I blame the alleged ‘Scottish play curse’ for that).

You’d expect a four-hundred-year-old verse drama based on royal history to present murder as a well-choreographed ballet by villains with steely resolve, but instead, Macbeth and his wife act a lot like the poor 20-century shlubs who end up in the pages of Ann Rule’s true-crime books. The evening of the planned murder, the two are still debating about whether to do this thing or not. Lady Macbeth goes into Duncan’s bedchamber and comes back saying she would have stabbed him herself, had he not looked so much like her father as he slept. Macbeth does succeed in killing him, and then there’s a weak attempt at a frame job, a hasty, bloody cleanup afterward, and then a spiral into psychological collapse.

People tend to consider Macbeth a story about the big questions -- is there such a thing as fate? -- but I’m more interested in the little ones. Like, what happened to the baby Lady Macbeth says she nursed, in Act 1? Who is MacDuff really talking about when he says ‘He has no children‘ in Act 4? (I’m in the minority; I think it’s Macbeth, not Malcolm, who is, after all, standing in front of MacDuff and should reasonably be addressed in second person).

Okay, I could go on about all the fascinating bits of business in this play, but it’s Macbeth; it’s famous. Just read it already, if you haven’t.

Bike for Life, by Bill Katovsky and Roy M. Wallack. Nobody gets stabbed to death in a bedchamber in this book, but it’s very readable, and it’s a godsend to bicycle lovers who, like me, have unwisely been using the bike as their only form of exercise equipment. Bike for Life covers ‘prehab’ (which is what it sounds like, injury prevention), effective cross-training (swimming makes an ideal companion), the best yoga asanas for cyclists, and so on. Also included are interviews with a fascinating cross-section of famous cyclists -- not Armstrong, no, but Marla Streb and Missy Giove are represented. Perhaps best is the interview with John Sinibaldi, born in 1913, an Olympian who never wanted to turn pro and spent most of his adult life as a sheet metal worker. He did a century ride (100 miles) with a pack of younger riders to celebrate his 90th birthday.

Sinibaldi tells the story of the day he and his team took the ferry to the 59th Street Bridge in New York for a race (again, 100 miles), and got there too late: the race had already started, the peloton was gone. He and his team didn’t even start after them right away -- it was a rainy day, so they stopped at a machine shop and greased up their legs to repel water, and then set off. Says Sinibaldi, ‘We chased and chased and chased.‘ He bent a wheel out of true and had to take off the brakes to compensate, so he rode after that with no stopping power. They finally caught the group after 70 miles and won it in the final 15. He concludes: ‘God, was I riding good that day.’

Word.

Visit Jodi Compton's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nancy Thayer

Nancy Thayer is the New York Times bestselling author of Moon Shell Beach, The Hot Flash Club, The Hot Flash Club Strikes Again, Hot Flash Holidays, The Hot Flash Club Chills Out, Between Husbands and Friends, and Summer House. She lives on Nantucket.

Thayer's new novel is Beachcombers.

Recently I asked her what she was reading. Her reply:

Richard Russo is my newest own personal literary discovery. This winter I read That Old Cape Magic, which is a wonderful book about relationships, funny and profound, so I bought Empire Falls, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize, and devoured that. Now I'm reading The Risk Pool. His books are full and his heart is generous.

I'm also reading--because I always seem to have at least two books going at the same time for the different moods I'm in--my favorite genre, mysteries. Last night I finished The Ice Princess, a mystery set in Sweden by Camilla Läckberg. Perhaps I bought it because of the word "ice" in the title--it's so hot here! Also, I'm building a collection of Scandinavian mystery writers. There's something brooding and elemental about all the Scandinavian mysteries, something that deepens the mystery genre.

My favorite "mystery" this summer is Margriet de Moors' The Storm, which is set in Holland (I know that's not Scandinavia) and is about a real storm that took place fifty years ago, devastating an entire area of the coast. Perhaps it fascinated me because I live on an island surrounded by water. Also, her writing is brilliant--a page-turner that makes you feel the power of nature, something we all need to remember. I think the best mysteries, the best books, remind us that there's something else in the universe, something more than just us.

Read an excerpt from Beachcombers, and learn more about the book and author at Nancy Thayer's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Charlotte Jacobs

Charlotte Jacobs, M.D., the Ben and A. Jess Shenson Professor of Medicine at Stanford University, is the author of Henry Kaplan and the Story of Hodgkin's Disease.

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

As a biographer, I tend to read lots of biographies and memoirs. One of my favorites, which I am re-reading, is My Own Country by Abraham Verghese. Many of your readers are familiar with his current novel and best-seller, Cutting for Stone, an exquisite saga of the type we rarely see today. Verghese is a gifted writer and storyteller whose talents span nonfiction and fiction.

My Own Country tells the story of a newly-trained infectious disease specialist who takes a position in Johnson City, Tennessee at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic. We learn about AIDS as Verghese does through his patients and their families. The author captures the voice and spirit of the people of east Tennessee as he unfolds his experiences with them. The tale is as engrossing as a novel, except these people are or were real, and that makes the book even more compelling. Woven throughout are the issues of how it feels to be a foreign physician and how a doctor’s devotion to patients can displace one’s own family.

The central character, Dr. Abraham Verghese, reveals his emotional responses with incredible honesty, humor, and humility—characteristics lacking in many doctor-authors. His quiet dignity and compassion, words he never uses to describe himself, emerge from the page through his interactions with patients, their families, staff, and neighbors. I’ve always loved this book, not just for the writing—the superb characterizations and narrative—but mainly because the author lets us look into his heart in a way few people can or are willing to do.

Learn more about Henry Kaplan and the Story of Hodgkin's Disease at the publisher's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Lauren Belfer

Lauren Belfer's debut novel, City of Light, was a New York Times bestseller, as well as a #1 Book Sense pick, a Barnes & Noble Discover Award nominee, a New York Times Notable Book, a Library Journal Best Book, and a Main Selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club. City of Light was a bestseller in Great Britain and has been translated into seven languages.

Her new novel is A Fierce Radiance.

A couple of weeks ago I asked Belfer what she was reading. Her reply:

I just finished What I Loved, by Siri Hustvedt. On the surface, this novel is a portrait of two families involved in art world in New York’s SoHo neighborhood, beginning in 1975 and continuing for over two decades. I lived in New York during that time, and I was fascinated to see the evolution of the neighborhood as the lives of these two families, the closest of friends, played out. But What I Loved is much more than a novel about the art world and about New York City. Beneath the surface, it’s a riveting suspense story that accumulates tiny, precise clues one by one by one, to reach an overpowering and tragic conclusion.

Recently I read Embers, by Sandor Marai. Embers was originally published in Hungary in 1942. It takes place on a vast estate in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The mystery unfolds with one mundane detail after another, until a terrible betrayal becomes clear. The narration begins on the eve of the Second World War, then goes back in time to reveal secrets from forty years before. While the story plays out, the reader knows that the immense tragedy of World War II awaits the characters and their way of life, and this knowledge adds to the novel another layer of insight and power.

And I’ve just reread The Blind Assassin, by Margaret Atwood. This novel, which begins in Canada after World War II, is an astonishing achievement. The first time I read it, I didn’t understand what was actually taking place until I reached the final pages. Then was I so surprised that I immediately reread the novel from the beginning. In The Blind Assassin, nothing is wasted, and everything contributes to the whole. The science fiction story-within-the story has shocking parallels to the “real” story unraveling through the book. In fact, this novel is so consistently fascinating that I think I’ll start rereading it again now…

Visit Lauren Belfer's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Cynthia Robinson

Cynthia Robinson lives in San Francisco, where she works as a part-time advertising shill, and a full-time raconteur.

Her debut novel, The Dog Park Club, is a noir comedy. It’s the first installment in a series about the reluctant adventures of Max Bravo—an opera singer whose real life adventures are even more dramatic than his stage roles. The sequel, The Barbary Galahad, is coming in 2011.

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

Momento Mori by Muriel Spark

There’s a lot of buzz about Muriel Spark right now. Her biography, by Martin Stannard, has just come out and that’s what turned me on to her—I caught a review of it in the New York Times.

Once I learned a bit about Ms. Spark—she was imperious, tempestuous, brilliant, a documented speed-freak and a purported lesbian—I had to read her.

I went to a local bookstore intending to buy The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Instead, I came away with Momento Mori. Two reasons: The Tennessee Williams endorsement on the cover. And the book’s subject.

It’s about a set of aged, 1950s British aristocrats being terrorized by an anonymous phone caller who keeps reminding them that they must die.

How germane, I thought, in this time when the insistent shadow of our Baby Boom generation is baring its long teeth everywhere you go; bargain matinee movies, the opera house, the queue at the grocery market they instigate by laboriously writing out cheques.

Ms. Spark’s keen eye and sharp wit renders her ancient characters in deft, resonant strokes. It’s sly and funny and unstoppable.

She captures mannerisms perfectly. And motivations. Ms. Spark’s characters are driven by the mad furies that whirl inside their own grey heads. The past intrudes on the present. Secrets and intrigues, many of them decades old, run riot. And it turns out that these desiccated passions—wandering the landscape like senile zombies—are far scarier than the mysterious phone stalker.

The most illuminating moments come when Ms. Spark allows her characters to break free of their obsessions. That is, when they simply choose to stop sweating the small stuff—which is, let’s be honest, pretty much everything.

It’s in these bright spots that Ms. Spark is sublime. Many sharp-penned satirists can skewer their subjects. Ms. Spark can do so with a perfect compassion that comes only from divine detachment.

The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen

This book was published in 1899. It’s the third time I’ve read it. Never has it seemed so pertinent to me as it is right now.

Veblen is popularly known as the economics theoretician who developed the theory of “conspicuous consumption.” He, of course, goes a whole lot deeper than that. And his precise, vivid prose is as riveting a read as you’ll find.

I recommend reading Veblen. Do it now. While the shrapnel of our freshly imploded consumer-spending-based economy is still lodged in your mind.

Read an excerpt from The Dog Park Club, and learn more about the book and author at Cynthia Robinson's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Janni Lee Simner

Janni Lee Simner's first novel for teens, Bones of Faerie, is a post-apocalyptic fairy tale, set after the war with Faerie has destroyed much of the world. Her second, Thief Eyes, is a contemporary fantasy based on the Icelandic sagas, Njal's Saga in particular. She is also working on Faerie Winter, a sequel to Bones of Faerie.

She has also written three books for younger kids-most recently Secret of the Three Treasures, which is about a kid who's determined to live a life of adventure from the start, and who isn't about to let small things like still being in elementary school, too young to book passage to anywhere (these days even caravans require major credit cards) get in her way.

Simner has published more than 30 short stories for kids, teens, and adults, including appearances in Cricket magazine, Gothic! Ten Original Dark Tales, and Moving Targets and Other Tales of Valdemar.

Recently I asked her what her what she was reading. Her reply:

As a lifelong fantasy reader, one of the things I love most is when a story manages to spin mythology that feels so real that some part of me feels it surely can't be new, but that the author must instead be tapping into something that's always been true.

Given that, two recent reads made me very happy.

Laini Taylor's Blackbringer--with its miniature winged fairies and talking crows--is steeped in a sort of whimsy that doesn't always work for me, but in this case, that whimsy was bound up in worldbuilding that was so original and dark and textured that it won me over.

In Blackbringer world is a tapestry woven by the dreams of djinns. Only the tapestry is fraying--as tapestries do over time--letting in darkness and an ancient enemy who seeks the unmaking of all things. Worse, the memory that the tapestry is even real has slipped from the world--as such memories do--leaving most creatures unaware their existence is imperiled. So it falls to the (miniature, winged) fairy Magpie Windwitch--the first non-djinn with the ability to reweave the tattered threads--to set things right. And she does, and if as readers we never doubted it, that doesn't change the fact that the tapestry feels so real that it's hard not to look for its hidden threads behind the workings of our own world when the story is through.

Bruce Coville's The Last Hunt, the fourth book of the Unicorn Chronicles series, completes a story begun fifteen years ago. I love how this entire series takes the sorts of unicorn stories so many of us grew up on--stories of gentle creatures stripped of their historical fierceness--and, instead of undercutting it, uses it to create something new. In earlier books we get the story of Beloved, a human maiden who is forever being both wounded and healed by the shard of unicorn horn lodged in her heart, and who has become the deadly enemy of the unicorns as a result of that pain, forever training hunters to seek their lives. Had the mythmaking ended here, I wouldn't have been disappointed.

But in the last two books, we get something more: the story of the Whisperer, a dark seducer created by the unicorns themselves--when they chose to purge themselves of the darkness all creatures have to become, well, the all-good, all-light creatures I grew up with. That creating such one-dimensional goodness comes with a price, for the unicorns and for all of us, feels true to me, too--true enough that it makes not only this story but other unicorn stories as well feel more real and more true. There's a lot more going on in these books--especially in The Last Hunt, which also has things to say about the relationship between creators and their creations--but it's the lore of how the unicorns came to be the creatures I've known them as much of my life that stayed with me when I finished reading.

Visit Janni Lee Simner's website and blog/journal.

--Marshal Zeringue

Susan Wiggs

Susan Wiggs' first book was published by Zebra in 1987, and since then she has been published by Avon, Tor, HarperCollins, Harlequin, Warner and Mira Books. Unable to completely abandon her beloved teaching profession, Wiggs is a frequent workshop leader and speaker at writers' conferences, including the literary institution Fields End and the legendary Maui Writers Conference. Her novel The Charm School was voted one of RWA's Favorite Books of the Year. She is the proud recipient of three RITA awards for Lakeside Cottage, Lord of the Night and The Mistress, and is often a finalist for the prestigious award.

Her 2010 releases include The Summer Hideaway (#7 in the Lakeshore Chronicles Series).

Not so long ago I asked her what she was reading. Her reply:

I always have a book within reach, and my tastes are eclectic. A couple of memorable recent reads for me: A Castle in the Backyard: The Dream of a House in France by Betsy Draine, about her summer home in southwestern France. I'm heading to Bordeaux and St. Cirq Lapopie later this month, so this incredibly charming memoir fed my excitement. It's perfect for armchair travelers, too, and for fans of books like Under the Tuscan Sun and the Peter Mayle books.

The Passage by Justin Cronin is a vampire book for grown-ups. He writes beautifully, and although I'm not a huge fan of apocalyptic or futuristic fiction, this one definitely drew me in. I'm definitely a sucker for the innocent-child-saving-the-world plots, and this is what the book is, at its heart.

One of my favorite thriller authors is Tess Gerritsen, and her latest, Ice Cold, is a fabulous addition to the Rizzoli and Isles series. They're going to be in a series on TNT, so I'm primed to tune in.

Bodily Harm by Robert Dugoni is another thriller I loved. Nobody writes courtroom drama better. There's a wrongful death suit and an ending I didn't see coming.

Visit Susan Wiggs' website and blog.

--Marshal Zeringue

Caroline Clemmons

Caroline Clemmons writes historical and contemporary genre fiction. Historical romances, contemporary romantic suspense, mysteries, and paranormals are among her current works.

A couple of weeks ago I asked her what she was reading. Her reply:

Hello, I'm Caroline Clemmons and I write romance. Oops, that sounded like an AA statement, didn't it? Not meant that way, I promise. I love romance novels because they entertain and take readers' minds off their daily grind and problems. I'm an eclectic reader, so you're in for a variety of books. I hope you've read some of them.

Last night I finished Welcome to Harmony, by Jodi Thomas. To paraphrase Will Rogers, I've never read a Jodi Thomas book I didn't like. This is no exception. Her characters are so well-formed they seem real. Yes, that's the point, but not something that always happens. Reagan is introduced as the central character. We never learn her real last name, but she's an adorable runaway who is not afraid of hard work. She is a little afraid of Jeremiah Truman, hates school, and yearns for a real home. Reagan's arrival launches the events that catapult this story and its characters into a book that will stay with you long after you've finished reading it. I can hardly wait for the next linked book, Somewhere Along the Way, due out this fall. I hope readers will also pick up the first of this series, Twisted Creek, for the story of Allie and Gran. Jodi Thomas delivers in that one, too, and it's set near Lubbock where I grew up. Reading Twisted Creek seemed like visiting friends.

The House on Tradd Street, by Karen White, and the linked book, The Girl on Legare Street. I put these two books together because the second continues the story of Melanie Middleton and Jack Trenholm. Members of the book club I'm in chose the first, and each of us liked it so well we chose the second one a few months later. These are paranormal stories--ghosts--and are well crafted. Even if you don't enjoy paranormal books, I think you'd enjoy these two. Secondary characters lend humor to lighten the tension of the battle Melanie and Jack wage against dark forces. Along the way, they discover a great deal about themselves and about Melanie's family. The books are about reconciliation and righting past wrongs.

The Daisy Dalrymple series by Carola Dunn is on my nightstand. Yes, all of them. My daughter collected this series and loaned it to me so that I can read them in order, something she knows I enjoy. I've read the first two of the series and adore Daisy. She is an Honorable who is penniless but doing something about it. These books remind me of Rhys Bowen's Her Royal Spyness series. The heroine is just as spunky, just as poor, and just as bound by the rules of an outdated peerage system. Okay, I'll admit it, I'm an anglophile and an admirer of Queen Elizabeth II. In addition, I love reading about the 1920's and 1930's. These are just my ticket!

Caroline Clemmons lives in North Central Texas and writes full-time, unless life interferes. You can learn more about her and about her books at her website. Visit her blog and comment to enter her weekly prize drawing.

--Marshal Zeringue

Lori Handeland

Lori Handeland has written nearly fifty novels, novellas and short stories in several genres--historical, contemporary, series and paranormal romance, as well as urban fantasy--for such publishers as: Dorchester, Kensington, Harlequin, St. Martin's Press, Harper-Collins and Simon and Schuster.

She is a New York Times, USA Today, Waldenbooks and Bookscan Bestselling Author and the recipient of many industry awards, including two RITA Awards from Romance Writers of America for Best Paranormal (Blue Moon) and Best Long Contemporary Romance (The Mommy Quest), a Romantic Times Award for Best Harlequin Superromance (A Soldier's Quest), the Colorado Romance Writers Award of Excellence, the Write Touch Readers Award, the National Readers Choice Award and the Prism Award. She lives in Southern Wisconsin with two sons, a husband, and a yellow Lab named Elwood.

Her new book is Shakespeare Undead.

As summer approached I kept hearing whispers about an upcoming "big" summer vampire book, The Passage. It sounded like something I would like, but when I caught a glimpse of the length (766 pages) I put the thought aside. I like to carry my books around with me and at that size, I might hurt myself!

However, I kept hearing about the book. Everything I heard, I liked. When I saw the quote from Stephen King: "It has the vividness that only epic works of fantasy and imagination can achieve. Read this book and the ordinary world disappears" I decided I'd risk the injury.

I'm very glad I did. The Passage reminds me very much of The Stand, one of my all time favorite King novels. By combining great characters and stellar writing with vampires, secret government experiments and an apocalyptic setting, Justin Cronin has penned both a literary work and a great summer read.

Visit Lori Handeland's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Gregg Hurwitz

Gregg Hurwitz is the author of several novels, including Trust No One, and has been a finalist for the ITW Best Novel and the Ian Fleming Gold Dagger. His new novel is They're Watching.

Earlier this month I asked him what he was reading. His reply:

I am reading a graphic novel called Chew, about a detective who can solve crimes -- by tasting the dead flesh of the victims! It's a crazy little comic and really takes advantage of the medium. Good sense of humor, great underlying conspiracy/mythology, and in the middle of it all, a protagonist gnawing on human legs. What's not to love?

Visit Gregg Hurwitz's website and blog.

My Book, The Movie: The Crime Writer.

The Page 69 Test: Trust No One.

--Marshal Zeringue