Danielle Banas

Danielle Banas, a Pittsburgh native, earned a degree in communication from Robert Morris University. After years spent dreaming up characters instead of paying attention in class, Banas joined the storytelling platform Wattpad, where her work has received millions of views online. When she isn’t writing, she can be found loudly singing show tunes, spouting off Walt Disney World trivia, and snuggling with her puppy.

Banas's debut novel is ​The Supervillain and Me.

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

I’ve always tended to gravitate toward fantasy, which started with my love of Harry Potter when I was a little kid. At the moment I’m finishing up War Storm by Victoria Aveyard. It’s the final book in the Red Queen series, about a world that is divided by blood. Those with common, red blood serve the silver-blooded elite, who are gifted with superhuman abilities. It’s a beast of a book, and I’ve been working on finishing it for a while but life keeps getting in the way. I’m really enjoying it though. I’ve been following this series for over three years now, so I’m anxious to see how it all ends. If you like books with superpowers, drama, and tons of betrayal, then give it a shot.

Visit Danielle Banas's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Danielle Banas & Cooper.

My Book, The Movie: The Supervillain and Me.

The Page 69 Test: The Supervillain and Me.

--Marshal Zeringue

Danielle Girard

Danielle Girard is the author of Chasing Darkness, The Rookie Club series, and Exhume and Excise, featuring San Francisco medical examiner Dr. Annabelle Schwartzman. Girard’s books have won the Barry Award and the RT Reviewers’ Choice Award, and two of her titles have been optioned for movies.

A graduate of Cornell University, Girard received her MFA at Queens University in Charlotte, North Carolina. She, her husband, and their two children split their time between San Francisco and the Northern Rockies.

Girard's new novel is Expose.

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

To be a good writer, you must be a good reader. Someone really smart said that. (I think it was Stephen King.) I love to read and I do it as much as possible between my own writing and life with a family. So far this year, I’ve read about 50 books, almost exclusively fiction. (I find reality either utterly boring or truly terrifying.)

My taste in fiction runs across genres and styles. I’ve usually got a few books going at once—some I’ll read and others I’ll listen too. In suspense, I just finished AJ Finn’s The Woman in the Window and Shari Lapena’s The Couple Next Door. Both are fast and thrilling. Lee Goldberg’s True Fiction is hilarious. On Audible, I’m currently listening to Pachinko by Min Jin Lee, a saga about four generations of a poor Korean family living in exile in Japan. I also recently listened to Behold the Dreamers, by Imbolo Mbue, which was heart-wrenching and wonderful.

Visit Danielle Girard's website.

My Book, The Movie: Expose.

--Marshal Zeringue

Gwen Florio

Gwen Florio grew up in a 250-year-old brick farmhouse on a wildlife refuge in Delaware and now lives in Montana. Currently the city editor for the Missoulian, Florio has reported on the Columbine High School shooting and from conflict zones such as Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia. In 2013, Montana, her first novel in the Lola Wicks detective series, won the High Plains Book Award and the Pinckley Prize for debut crime fiction.

Florio's latest novel is Silent Hearts.

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

I'm reading The Eight Mountains, by Paolo Cognetti.

This book was a bit of a whim; I think it was a Simon & Schuster special ebook offer. Anyhow, I like mountains and books about adventure (Cognetti is an alpinist) so I clicked, and immediately was hooked—liking it so much, in fact, that I headed over to my local independent bookstore, Fact and Fiction, for a hardcover copy.

The comparison to Elena Ferrante’s books (which I loved) is inevitable, if not quite parallel. In this case, the story follows to adulthood two boys, Pietro and Bruno, who meet when Pietro’s parents rent a house in Bruno’s mountain village to escape Milan’s summer heat. Pietro is educated, worldly; Bruno is rustic, spending his summer herding cows. But the boys share a love of the mountains, along with Pietro’s father, who leads them in exploring the wild heights, where for the first time Pietro sees a world beyond the forested hills his mother prefers. Cognetti captures the awe and elation such places inspire.

I was more attracted to the kind of mountainscape that comes afterward: Alpine meadows, torrents, wetlands, high-altitude herbs, grazing animals. Higher up again the vegetation disappears, snow covers everything until the beginning of summer; and the prevailing color is that of the gray rock, veined with quartz and the yellow of lichen. That was where my father’s world began. After three hours’ walking the meadows would give way to scree, to lakes hidden in glacial basins, to gorges gouged by avalanches, to streams of icy water. The mountain was transformed into a harsher place, inhospitable and pure; up there he would become happy.

Cognetti is an observant, sensitive writer, offering keen insights into his characters, and the different worlds they inhabit, the wonder of the mountains versus the creature comforts and companionship of the city, and the push-pull of those lives on his characters—and the fact that few of them actually have a choice as to which they’ll succumb.

For instance, Bruno reflects that his love of mountains comes from his mother, a reclusive woman. “We’re just like each other, me and her. ... Except that she’s a woman. If I decide to go and stay in the woods no one says anything about it. If a woman does it, she’s taken for a witch. If I keep quiet, what problem is there with that? I’m only a man who chooses not to speak. A woman who doesn’t speak must be half-crazy.”

That passage brought the slap of recognition. A favorite escape fantasy of mine involves a cabin in the high country, delicious solitude, tramping around the mountains in the afternoon for the physical exertion necessary as the antidote to the hard mental work of the morning’s writing. One of the reasons I live where I do is because of its proximity to wilderness, affording me the opportunity to steal away to the uninhabited places that inspire the same blend of peace and exhilaration Cognetti describes in his characters.

Would I give up my town life to retreat full-time to the forest or mountains? Almost certainly not. But, at least for the hours I was immersed in Cognetti’s book, I could share that existence with Pietro and Bruno.

Visit Gwen Florio's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Gwen Florio & Nell.

My Book, the Movie: Silent Hearts.

--Marshal Zeringue

Susan McBride

Susan McBride is the USA Today bestselling author of the Debutante Dropout Mysteries and the River Road Mysteries.

The debut of her Jo Larsen series, Walk Into Silence, was a #1 Kindle bestseller in the US and the UK, and #3 in Australia.

McBride's new book, Walk A Crooked Line, is the second Jo Larsen novel.

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

What I’m reading right now is The Martian by Andy Weir. I’m a little behind the curve on this one, I know, but I caught the movie on TV and loved it. Thanks to Matt Damon bringing Mark Watney to life so brilliantly, I can easily envision him. Sometimes the writing is clunky, but Watney’s voice is so engaging that I don’t mind. I’m rooting for him, just as I’m supposed to, hoping he survives being left behind on Mars (and his potato “field” blowing up). My only negative: I find myself wanting to skim through some of the technical stuff (which I used to do when I binged on Tom Clancy). But, hey, I’m not the typical science fiction reader. I’m just a chick who likes a good story. I don’t exactly need to know how to repair an oxygenator with a rubber band.

Next up in my TBR pile: The Death of Mrs. Westaway by Ruth Ware. Again, I’m late to jump onto the Ruth Ware bandwagon. But I didn’t marry until 43 and had a baby at 47. I’m kind of late to everything.

Visit Susan McBride's website.

My Book, The Movie: Walk Into Silence.

The Page 69 Test: Walk Into Silence.

My Book, The Movie: Walk a Crooked Line.

--Marshal Zeringue

Prentis Rollins

Prentis Rollins has over twenty-five years of experience working as a writer and artist in the comics industry.

His debut full-length graphic novel is The Furnace.

Recently I asked Rollins about what he was reading. His reply:

I recently, finally, read The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. I say ‘finally’ because it’s a classic of American literature, very often required reading in high school—but it’s one of those books that if you don’t read it then, likely as not you never will.

But I did, and I’m glad. Sinclair spent seven weeks working in Packingtown (the gigantic stock yard/meat processing and packaging facility) in Chicago in 1904 as research for the novel. The experiences of many of the immigrant workers he met there are telescoped into his protagonist, Jurgis Rudkus, who has newly arrived with his family from Lithuania. Through Jurgis’ eyes we witness the appalling ordeal these immigrants endured—the relentlessly long hours working in shockingly unsanitary conditions, the low wages (kept low by the ever-growing surplus of men and women clamoring for work), the ubiquity of predatory conmen and political bosses, the miserably shabby housing, and the poisonous food (Jurgis has no idea that the milk his infant son drinks is watered-down and doctored with formaldehyde).

The book is a portrait of a living hell-on-earth. In its wake domestic and international sales of American beef and pork declined by 50% (if Sinclair is right, men who fell into the mixing vats simply became part of the sausage—not to mention the rats that fell in, and the meat tainted with cholera). The book also led to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act. A blistering, nauseating read about capitalism at its very worst and man’s inhumanity to man, told in terse, to-the-point prose, and ending with a ringing call for revolutionary socialism.

From one Sinclair to another—I recently re-read Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis. This much-neglected classic from 1922 is (as far as I’m concerned) suddenly and strangely relevant. Lewis had a love/hate relationship with America—the hate side predominates here (for the love side, check out Dodsworth). George F. Babbitt, real-estate salesman, comfortably married, father of three, Rotary Club member, Sunday-go-to-church Christian, Republican who wants a ‘business’ president, is the perfect epitome of smug, complacent, myopic, ‘respectable’, hypocritical, racist and sexist American conformist mediocrity. He is so perfectly average, in every conceivable respect, that you can only call him excellent at it. He begins to suspect that his existence is a hollow lie (he doesn’t have the vocabulary to formulate it like that to himself, but he knows something is badly off-kilter), and he fecklessly attempts in one way and then another to burst the tiny confines of his life. This book is incredibly funny, and sad, and a true eye-opener about how little some aspects of the peculiarly American character have changed over 100 years. You may not like George Babbitt, but you might just find yourself (swear to God!) rooting for him.

One of my very favorite films is Cool Hand Luke—for years I didn’t even know it was based on a novel of that name by one Donn Pearce. It is—it was Pearce’s first novel, published in 1965 (he wrote several others, but is mainly remembered for this one). It bears comparison to The Jungle inasmuch as Pearce spent time in a Florida chain-gang prison (his ‘research’), and, though it is fiction, it can be viewed as an expose’ of the harsh life these convicts endured.

Lloyd Jackson—who acquires the prison moniker ‘Cool Hand Luke’—is 28, a heavily-decorated WW2 hero, rootless—a perfect embodiment of the sort of anomie and resentment examined in Sloan Wilson’s The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. He ends up in a chain-gang road prison in sweltering Florida. His crime? Cutting the heads off of parking meters with stolen plumbers’ tools during a drunken spree.

The book is told by another prisoner as a series of flashbacks, in which we see Jackson’s gradual acquisition of almost mythical, Christ-like status through his stunts in the prison (he eats 50 boiled eggs in one hour on a bet, a scene brilliantly recreated in the Paul Newman film), and his doomed multiple escape attempts (he is beaten and worked almost to death in the wake of these attempts, also recreated on screen). He becomes a sort of second Christ for his surviving prison ‘family’-members—the myth of Luke becomes part of the oral history they pass on to each other in order to survive. What we get in the book that’s not in the film is a much fuller picture of Jackson’s backstory, and his inner life—his perplexity at and hatred of American hypocrisy (a man commits multiple murder overseas during war and is dubbed a ‘hero’; at home he commits petty vandalism and is slapped in prison—WTF?!)

The prose is desultory, conversational, laced with prison slang, occasionally soaringly poetic—it put me in mind of the voice that would later be adopted by Chuck Palahniuk in Fight Club. A profoundly beautiful, thought-provoking book.

Visit Prentis Rollins's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Furnace.

The Page 69 Test: The Furnace.

--Marshal Zeringue

Libby Page

Libby Page graduated from The London College of Fashion with a BA in fashion journalism before going on to work as a journalist at The Guardian. After writing, her second passion is outdoor swimming. Page lives in London, where she enjoys finding new swimming spots and pockets of community within the city.

The Lido is her first novel.

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

I think most writers start as readers, and I am no exception! I read constantly. I like to read a real mix of fiction and non-fiction and I have recently started dipping back in to children’s books too. Children’s books were how I fell in love with reading, so it is a joy to go back to them and remind myself of how that passion first started. As an author I do feel a certain pressure to read the ‘right’ kind of books but I am trying to resist this and maintain reading as something I do simply for enjoyment.

The most recent book I finished was Northern Lights by Philip Pullman, borrowed from my local library. I never read the Northern Lights trilogy as a child but they were some of the favourite books of both my sister and boyfriend, so I decided to give them a go. I found it a little slow to start with but before I knew it was racing through, desperate to find out what happened. I love the concept of daemons and when I finished the book my boyfriend and I spent a long time discussing what our daemons would be! I shall be checking the next book in the series out of the library!

Another book that I’ve been recommended many times over the years is My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell, so on a recent holiday I finally read it. I’m so pleased I did as I found it completely charming. I loved the description of all the creatures (human and otherwise) and it was the perfect read for a holiday. I’m now desperate to read all his other books.

A more recently-published novel that I have enjoyed was The Librarian by Salley Vickers. It is about a children’s librarian in a small town and is a gentle but compelling story that captures a moment in time (it is set in the 50s) so well. I loved the messages in it about the importance of books and libraries, particularly for children.

I’ve also read a few non-fiction books over the past few months that I have loved. One was Impossible Things Before Breakfast by author and actor Rebecca Front. It is a book of essays or ‘sketches’ of remembered significant moments in her life. I absolutely loved it – everything is so poignantly observed and captured. I love people-watching (it’s one of the main reasons I wanted to be a writer!) so I really identify with the way Rebecca sees the world and her desire to capture moments and stories on paper.

Two others I loved are The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin and The Year of Living Danishly by Helen Russell. Both are about the art and science of happiness, a subject that I am fascinated by. I am a naturally optimistic person but also work hard to be this way. In both books the authors combine research and personal experience in order to explore ways to live happier lives. I’m a little obsessed with books in this area at this moment as I find them incredibly uplifting and inspiring, and these are two of my favourites. The Happiness Project in particular left me with a million ideas of new things I’d like to do, and I have since recommended it to lots of friends.

Visit Libby Page's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Spencer Wise

Born in Boston, Spencer Wise is a graduate of Tufts University and the University of Texas at Austin and worked in the editorial departments at Sports Illustrated and Time Out New York. His work has appeared in Narrative magazine, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Florida Review, and New Ohio Review. He is the winner of the 2017 Gulf Coast Prize in nonfiction. Wise teaches at Florida State University and lives in Tallahassee.

His debut novel is The Emperor of Shoes.

Recently I asked Wise about what he was reading. His reply:

I’ve been on the road for over a month touring, so I’ve had to poach some time here and there to read. Mostly short stories. I adored Elizabeth McCracken’s collection Thunderstruck. It’s a few years old. What I love about it--the narrators and protagonists are all laughing about things you absolutely aren’t supposed to laugh about. The grandmother in “Hungry” mocks her granddaughter’s appetites at the same time she encourages them. The granddaughter loves “heat-lamped fried chicken and tall glasses of cubed Jell-O”and she’s already split one pair of pants and didn’t care in the slightest. It’s hilarious and wrong. None of this cheek-pinching nonsense, here’s a grandmother that you know is real. “Juliet,” the story about the murder of a library patron, is also somehow funny. The narrator gets you to lower your guard and fall in love with her voice, but then you slowly realize it’s all about grief and how we process loss. That’s true of the whole collection. McCracken is obviously an incredible talent. We also both adore Grace Paley--who writes in a similar style. Lots of humor and pathos all mixed together. In fact, and maybe it’s just the zeitgeist that makes me think of this, but the brilliant author, Leslie Epstein (Please read King of the Jews, just trust me) once said to me when I was interviewing him: “Wherever humor is absent, perk up your ears--trouble is on the way.” That always stayed with me.

I also went back to “Kindness” by Yiyun Li. It’s from Gold Boy, Emerald Girl. She’s tremendous, as everyone knows. This story is heart wrenching. Moyan, the middle-aged protagonist, is basically a recluse. This narrative relies on a lot of dramatic irony. Moyan says right at the start that she doesn’t feel alone and yet goes on to tell a novella-length story about loneliness. She has two primary female mentors--one from her time in the People’s Liberation Army, the other a professor. The voice is straight and without much adornment, and that makes it even more heartbreaking when, for instance, she remembers how her father solemnly shook her hand at the train station when she went off to the army. It also gets at why we as humans feel so terrible all the time. I mean, why are we sad, why are we alone even when we’re surrounded by people. It’s those huge ineffable mysteries that Yiyun Li gets at in this piece, which makes it feel epic.

I’ve also really looking forward to reading Lucy Tan’s new novel, What We Were Promised, set in modern-day Shanghai.

Visit Spencer Wise's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Emperor of Shoes.

--Marshal Zeringue

Tiffany Brownlee

Tiffany Brownlee was born in San Diego, California, and, as with many authors, her love for reading and writing began at an early age. Because her father was in the Navy, she and her family moved around far more often than she would have liked (she went to five elementary schools–not kidding!), but despite the many moves, her love of education, books, and writing remained.

Her family’s final move brought her to New Orleans, Louisiana, where she went on to study for and earn her B.S. in Psychology at Xavier University of Louisiana. Immediately after graduation, Brownlee began work as a Teacher’s Assistant while also pursuing a teaching certification from The University of Holy Cross. Juggling both school and work as a full-time teacher’s assistant was a little hectic for her, but she still managed to squeeze in some time to read and work on a YA novel idea that she’d thought up while rereading Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights (one of her favorite classics). That idea eventually became Wrong in All the Right Ways, her newly released debut novel.

Brownlee currently works as a middle school English teacher in New Orleans.

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

I’m such a sucker for YA romances (which explains why I wrote one), and nothing is better than kicking back by the pool or on the beach with a summer romance, so that’s all I’ve been reading lately. I just finished Always Never Yours, a recent debut from Austin Siegemund-Broka and Emily Wibberley. In a nutshell: it’s about a girl named Megan who has just been cast as Juliet in her school’s Shakespeare production. She’s single and pours herself into the role as a distraction from her failing love life. In walks Owen, an aspiring playwright who agrees to help her prepare in exchange for help writing his new script. As they spend more time together, Megan begins to fall for him, and she just has to hope that things don’t end like every other relationship she’s ever been in: with Megan’s ex falling for the next girl after her.

This is a must-have for readers of YA romance. It’s funny, sweet, and oh-so swoon-worthy!

Visit Tiffany Brownlee's website.

My Book, The Movie: Wrong in All the Right Ways.

--Marshal Zeringue

Elizabeth Klehfoth

Elizabeth Klehfoth grew up in Elkhart, Indiana. She received her BFA in creative writing from Chapman University and her MFA in creative writing from Indiana University, where she taught fiction writing and composition. She currently lives in Los Angeles. All These Beautiful Strangers is her first novel.

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

I recently finished Judy Blundell’s The High Season, which follows three women in a small town in the Hamptons that’s on the brink of becoming trendy and fashionable among the extremely wealthy and celebrity crowd. There’s Ruthie, a forty-something director of a local museum, who has a teen daughter and is hopeful of rekindling her relationship with her separated husband. Although Ruthie and her husband own a house in town, they are forced to rent it out during the summer to afford to keep it. When they rent it out to Adeline Clay, a wealthy socialite, and her son, Ruthie’s life quickly becomes upended, and she starts to lose her grasp on everything she cares about—her job, her family, and her home. The book also follows Jem, Ruthie’s 15-year old daughter, who’s juggling a falling-out with the popular girls at school and a crush on the handsome and troublesome son of the tenant renting her house for the summer. And finally, there’s Doe, a young woman who’s trying to make her way in the world despite a troubled past by rubbing elbows (and snapping Instagram shots) of the well-to-do in the Hamptons. I loved this novel and devoured it in just a few days. It’s a poignant story that explores the dividing line between the have and the have-nots, is full of laugh-out-loud lines and heartbreak, and is all about second chances, finding yourself, and new beginnings.

I’m currently reading Curtis Sittenfeld’s latest book, You Think, I’ll Say It, which is a collection of short stories. I’ve been a fan of Sittenfeld’s since her debut novel Prep, which was actually a big influence on my first book. Sittenfeld is a master of expertly capturing the interiority of complex characters and exploring their insecurities in a way that makes you instantly relate to and empathize with them.

The book on my nightstand that I plan to read next is Michelle McNamara’s I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, her non-fiction investigation into the case of the Golden State Killer, which was instrumental in actually capturing the serial rapist/murderer. I’m a huge true crime fan, and I’ve heard nothing but good things about this book.

Visit Elizabeth Klehfoth's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Derek Milman

Derek Milman has worked as a playwright, screenwriter, film school teacher, DJ, and underground humor magazine publisher. A classically trained actor, he has performed on stages across the country and appeared in numerous TV shows, commercials, and films.

Milman's newly released first novel is Scream All Night.

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

I'm reading David Sedaris' new book, Calypso. I had been reading a lot of YA recently, and some literary fiction, and I needed a change of pace. The book has Sedaris' typical droll observations on things, and some of his lines are just hilarious. I've laughed out loud a number of times. But to me this book is a little more melancholic and heavy than other works I've read by Sedaris; the stories he tells are woven together with a thicker through-line. There are darker shadows here: getting older, mortality, settling into middle age, the strain of familial relationships over time, the difficulties of romantic relationships over time, and the suicide of his sister, Tiffany, who Sedaris was estranged from. That had to be rough. He's bought a house on the Carolina coast and it just doesn't seem to be the eternal seaside daydream he had hoped. There are always cracks in every foundation, and life isn't ever what you think it will be. People change, and so do expectations. But through it all, there are always moments that crackle: laughter and love, and with age, knowing who you are to a better degree; having that wisdom to see through all the storms.

Visit Derek Milman's website.

My Book, The Movie: Scream All Night.

--Marshal Zeringue