Todd Merer

In his thirty years as a criminal attorney, Todd Merer specialized in the defense of high-ranking cartel chiefs extradited to the United States. He gained acquittals in more than 150 trials, and his high-profile cases have been featured in the New York Times and Time magazine and on 60 Minutes. A “proud son of Brooklyn,” Merer divides his time between New York City and ports of call along the old Spanish Main.

Merer's first novel is The Extraditionist.

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

I like mysteries and thrillers with strong, eccentric lead characters who are loners and who straddle the bright line between law and criminality. I also love historical nonfiction, particularly about the Civil War. The following are next up on my reading list (I’m a fast reader, so within a month I’ll be drawing up another list):

December 6th by Martin Cruz Smith

Fatherland by Robert Harris

Dirty White Boys by Stephen Hunter

The Counterfeit Agent by Alex Berenson

The House of Wolfe by James Carlos Blake

God is a Bullet by Boston Teran

Creole Belle by James Lee Burke

Mr. Lincoln’s Army by Bruce Caitlin

Hell or Richmond by Ralph Peters

A German Requiem by Phillip Kerr

The Secret Lovers by Charles McCarry

Yes, most of these books are several years old—now that I’m no longer an attorney, I’m catching up on all the authors I love.

Learn more about The Extraditionist.

My Book, The Movie: The Extraditionist.

--Marshal Zeringue

Stephen R. Bown

Stephen R. Bown is a critically acclaimed author of several literary non-fiction books on the history of science, exploration and ideas.

His latest book is Island of the Blue Foxes: Disaster and Triumph on the World's Greatest Scientific Expedition.

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

Right now I’m reading the memoir of the man who spent 23 years backpacking around the world visiting every country and region on the planet. It is called The World’s Most Travelled Man: A Twenty-Three Year Odyssey to and Through Every Country on the Planet, written by Mike Spencer Bown. Mike is my brother, so many of his incredible stories are familiar to me from talks over the years. He didn’t start out with a plan to visit everywhere, he began as most travellers do, exploring different countries out of curiosity and a sense of adventure. But Mike continued beyond the natural time for travel one has in their 20s: he and his then girlfriend ran a gardening accoutrement business out of Bali in the 1990s and he continued travelling around Asia during the off seasons. For the past ten years, however, Mike has single-mindedly devoted most of each year to travel in dangerous and unpleasant places. His stories include being the first tourist in war-torn Mogadishu, hitchhiking through Iraq during the Second Gulf War, being served a platter of goat eyeballs as the guest of honor at a Mongolian feast, and living and hunting with the Mbuti Pygmy tribe in the Congo. His philosophy of travel, and life in general, is “stories, not stamps” – a reference to a certain type of traveller who does so merely to get a stamp in their passport, which he suggests would be like claiming that you “did England,” for example, because you changed planes at the airport in London on your way to Italy. Anyway, this book is a fascinating window into the weird and shadowy places of the world written by someone who actually has been everywhere and seen all the sights.

Learn more about the book and author at Stephen R. Bown's website and Facebook page.

My Book, The Movie: The Last Viking.

The Page 99 Test: White Eskimo.

My Book, The Movie: Island of the Blue Foxes.

--Marshal Zeringue

Casey Daniels

Casey Daniels has a degree in English and experience as a journalist and writing teacher. She fell in love with mysteries early thanks to her father, a Cleveland police detective who enjoyed reading Sherlock Holmes, and went on to devour every mystery story she could get her hands on. Agatha Christie and Conan Doyle are among her favorite authors. When Daniels is not writing, she's usually with her family and two dogs. She enjoys knitting, gardening and, of course, stomping through cemeteries in search of history, stories and inspiration.

Smoke and Mirrors, Daniels's new historical mystery, introduces museum curator and amateur sleuth Miss Evie Barnum.

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

I have a friend who loves to knit.  Knitting isn’t just her hobby, it’s her passion.

So it’s only natural I wasn’t surprised to hear she was opening a knitting store.  Like so many others who’ve taken the plunge, my friend had dreams of what owning a shop would be like: she’d chat with customers about knitting, she’d teach the uninitiated how to knit.  Even more importantly, she’d spend her days in peace, drinking in the luscious colors of the yarns that surrounded her, knitting, knitting, and knitting.

Not so much.

As so many people who love what they do have found out, owning a business is a whole lot different than dreaming of owning a business.  Instead of knitting all day (or baking cupcakes, making jewelry, brewing beer ... whatever the dream may be), they are suddenly thrust into dealing with customer service, attending Chamber of Commerce meetings, working with banks, balancing books, buying advertisements.

That’s a long, round-about way of explaining that to me, reading is a lot like knitting is for that friend of mine, a lovely dream.

If only I had more time to do it!

When I’m writing fiction, I don’t often read it.  I’m afraid I’ll pick up too much of another author’s voice or unwittingly hang onto phrases I found particularly delicious.  When I’m actively writing a book, most of the reading I do is nonfiction for research.  But that doesn’t mean I don’t make exceptions.  Here are some of my recent reads (fiction and non):

A Brilliant Death

Coming-of-age meets murder mystery.  The novel is set in southern Ohio in a town of hard-scrabble, hard-working folks, and follows the adventures of two boys who are eager to find out more about one of their mothers, a woman who supposedly drowned in the river years before.  The author is Edgar-nominated Robin Yocum and I picked up the book because Robin and I did an event together and I wanted to be familiar with his work.  I’m glad I did.  The book is written in clear, vivid prose, the characters are memorable, and I like little better than a cold case!

A Killer’s Guide to Good Works

Another of the authors on the venue for that book event I recently attended was Shelley Costa.  I didn’t have to scramble to read her book because I read everything Shelley writes, as soon as it comes out.  A Killer’s Guide is a great look into the nature of power and the ability of good to conquer evil.  Shelley’s writing in this book, as in all her others, is breathtaking.  She, too, has been nominated for an Edgar award.

A Season with the Witch

This one is non-fiction, and an engrossing read.  It follows the adventures of author J.W. Ocker and his family as they spend the month of October in Salem, Massachusetts.  Part travelogue, part memoir.  The book gives readers a sense of the true dichotomy of Salem, a town that is half sideshow all the while it is rooted in history and tragedy.  As to why I read it ... I’ve always dreamed of visiting Salem in October.  Now that I’ve read about how crazy it is at that time of year, I’d still like to go, but I think I’ll pass on October!

Visit Casey Daniels's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Cathy Gere

Cathy Gere is associate professor of history at the University of California, San Diego, and the author of Knossos and the Prophets of Modernism and the newly released Pain, Pleasure, and the Greater Good: From the Panopticon to the Skinner Box and Beyond.

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

I just finished Collecting the World by historian of science James Delbourgo, about Hans Sloane, the eighteenth-century physician whose vast assembly of botanical and cultural wonders from all over the globe was the seed from which the British Museum sprouted. My father was keeper of one of the departments of the British Museum, and I grew up in Hans Sloane’s old neighborhood in London, so for me the book holds a double personal significance. I found it a fantastic read, full of hilarious insights into how bizarre and quirky much of the Enlightenment drive towards universal knowledge turned out to be.

Perhaps most impressive is Delbourgo’s handling of the questions of slavery and empire, which are pivotal to the story. Sloane’s early career was as a doctor in colonial Jamaica, and the island was the fountainhead of his obsessions, the place that stirred his insatiable thirst for everything rich, strange and exotic. Delbourgo’s analysis of the Jamaican context is simply perfect: delicate, compassionate, and judicious, it will stand as an enduring commentary on the vexed relationship between natural science and brutal imperialism.

Currently I’m reading Dodie Bellamy’s 2015 collection of essays When the Sick Rule the World, which is a bracing combination of hilarious and terrifying.  Her obscene description of the ‘Whistle While You Work’ sequence of Disney’s Snow White had me laughing out loud. I’m reading it straight through, as part of an effort to get up to speed on the New Narrative movement of which she is a founding mother, but I would recommend taking it a bit more slowly – maybe one or two essays at a time, interspersed with other things – as the cumulative effect of all that intensity is a bit dizzying. I also recently got around to Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts, another New Narrative masterpiece, which I read in one great draft, riveted by the way that it braids together shockingly frank autobiography and complex academic philosophy into one unputdownable text.

Learn more about Pain, Pleasure, and the Greater Good at the University of Chicago Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Knossos and the Prophets of Modernism.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ivy Pochoda

Ivy Pochoda is the author of the novels Visitation Street and The Art of Disappearing.

Her new novel is Wonder Valley.

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

One of the best things about having a novel come out is that, for various professional reasons, you wind up reading books you might not have picked up—whether it's for a blurb or for an author interview. I'm lucky enough to be doing an event with Michael Connelly, so I'm brushing up on my Bosch. I'd read a few before, but this immersion is a blast. I just finished Angels Flight which I love, not least of all because it's set in my stomping grounds of downtown LA. I'm smack-dab in the middle of The Wrong Side of Goodbye which is another masterful look at Los Angeles. Between these I was lucky enough to read an advance copy of Robin MacArthur's novel Heart Spring Mountain which blew me away and made me want to move to Vermont. (That would make my dad super happy, as he lives in New Hampshire.)

I'm not usually capable of reading more that one book at a time, but ever since I started teaching a class in writing the essay, I've been keeping essay collections on my nightstand that I read for a break from fiction. I've been dipping in an out of Fiona Helmsley's Girls Gone Old which is so damn fantastic. It's amazing to read a collection of an exact contemporary with similarly bizarre interests.

Visit Ivy Pochoda's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Art of Disappearing.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eryk Pruitt

Eryk Pruitt is a screenwriter, author and filmmaker living in Durham, NC with his wife Lana and cat Busey. His short films have won several awards at film festivals across the US.

Pruitt's new novel is What We Reckon.

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

I'm a big fan of Southern crime fiction. I've read every word published by Daniel Woodrell and William Gay and Tom Franklin…I love the grit in the words written by Jedidiah Ayres and Steve Weddle…I'm a big fan of the new guys coming up like Greg Barth, S.A. Cosby and Marietta Miles.

However, when someone asked if I was a fan of any African-American crime fiction from the South, I had to think long and hard about it. Most black Southern crime fiction writers like Chester Himes left the South to write about New York City. Walter Mosley took Easy Rawlins out of Texas and dropped him into LA. The only Richard Wright book which could count as crime (Native Son) takes place in Chicago, not his native Mississippi.

So I've been on a bit of a hunt to find crime fiction written by African-Americans from the South, which takes place in the South. That's why, upon someone's recommendation, I picked up Ernest J. Gaines' novel A Gathering of Old Men. It's a twist on the murder mystery, after a black sharecropper shoots a white man, then a collection of black men claim guilt. Who is the real killer? What other crimes will come to the forefront? It's a perfect slice of crime fiction from the rural South.

Visit Eryk Pruitt's website.

My Book, The Movie: What We Reckon.

The Page 69 Test: What We Reckon.

--Marshal Zeringue

Randolph Lewis

Randolph Lewis is a professor of American studies at the University of Texas at Austin. He has written extensively on how visual culture shapes our sense of the nation, often focusing on people who work outside the cultural mainstream. His books include Navajo Talking Picture: Cinema on Native Ground.

Lewis's new book is Under Surveillance: Being Watched in Modern America.

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

I’m reading a brand new book, The Heart of the Mission: Latino Art and Politics in San Francisco,  which was written by my colleague at UT-Austin, Cary Cordova. The topic is so appealing—incredible art, intense politics, urban space, gentrification, and so much else is going on in this book. Her publisher says it best: this book "combines urban, political, and art history to examine how the Mission District, a longtime bohemian enclave in San Francisco, has served as an important place for an influential and largely ignored Latino arts movement from the 1960s to the present."

Learn more about Under Surveillance at the University of Texas Press website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Amy S. Foster

Amy S. Foster is a celebrated songwriter, best known as Michael Bublé’s writing partner, and has collaborated with Beyoncé, Diana Krall, Andrea Bocelli, Josh Groban, and a host of other artists. She is also the author of the novel When Autumn Leaves. When she’s not in a studio in Nashville, she lives in the Pacific Northwest with her family.

Foster applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, The Rift Frequency, and reported the following:

Okay, here’s the thing, I adore a cozy mystery. I am currently reading Lemon Pies and Little White Lies by Ellery Adams. It has everything I love in a cozy mystery. The protagonist is A) magic. The protagonists in these novels doesn’t always have to be magic but if she isn’t, she creates a homey space that feels magical. B) It takes place in a pie/tea shop. Most of these settings are businesses of this nature: yarn, book, fabric or vintage clothing stores, apothecaries, or they are self employed in some sort of supernatural job. Alternately, they do a lot of estate shopping for some reason? C) The victims are never anyone the protagonist knows very well. They are strangers or they were jerks who sort of deserved it. Either way, the reader isn’t too bummed about the dead body and it’s never a kid. D) Finding said dead body is not a particularly gruesome or traumatic ordeal. E) The protagonist is almost always single and without children. She is classy, sassy and (quietly) bad ass-y. As a busy mother of three, I never get to have any sleuthing adventures (unless you count all the times I can’t find my keys). I rarely get to spend much time in tea, knitting or vintage stores. For me, a cozy mystery is the ultimate escape. It’s not heady reading or overly intellectual. It’s not gory or bombastic. There are stakes, but, they aren’t very high, which is what I need when I want to just curl up by the fire and get away from it all.

Visit Amy Foster's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Rift Frequency.

--Marshal Zeringue

Craig Schaefer

Craig Schaefer's books have taken readers to the seamy edge of a criminal underworld drenched in shadow (the Daniel Faust series), to a world torn by war, poison and witchcraft (the Revanche Cycle), and across a modern America mired in occult mysteries and a conspiracy of lies (the Harmony Black series).

Despite this, people say he's strangely normal. Suspiciously normal, in fact. He practices sleight of hand in his spare time, though he's not very good at it.

Schaefer's new novel is Cold Spectrum.

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

On the fiction front, I’ve been digging into Mo Hayder. She’s been writing for years but she’s a delightful new discovery for me, and as typically happens when I find a new author I love, I pretty much have to put everything on hold and devour their catalog from start to finish. Her suspense novels are bitterly dark, gruesome, and chilling to the bone, with zero punches pulled. Check out The Devil of Nanking or Birdman, and settle in for an unnerving good time. Just have something happy and light lined up for after you’re finished. You’re going to need it.

I’ve always got a nonfiction book in progress, both for my own continuing education and for professional research. Currently, that’s The Fear Factor: How One Emotion Connects Altruists, Psychopaths, and Everyone In-Between, by Abigail Marsh. Dr. Marsh relates stories from her work with child psychopaths and her studies into brain chemistry, and the material is gripping without being tabloid-sensational. She comes to some fascinating conclusions about the role of fear in terms of human nature and brain chemistry, and while I don’t have the scientific chops to confirm or argue against her findings, they make for thoughtful consideration.

Visit Craig Schaefer's website.

The Page 69 Test: Cold Spectrum.

--Marshal Zeringue

S.F. Henson

S.F. Henson was born and raised in the deep south. She graduated from Auburn University with a degree in Animal Science, which she put to great use by attending law school. Her law degree has gotten some mileage, though, giving her the experience to write about criminals and other dark, nefarious subjects. She lives beside a missile test range in Huntsville, Alabama with her husband, dog, two oddly named cats, and, of course, the missiles that frequently shake her house.

Henson's debut novel is Devils Within.

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

I'm typically a monogamous reader, but I'm cheating a little right now and scandalously reading two books at once.

First, I'm currently re-reading 1984, by George Orwell. I hate being without a book, so I keep a couple in my car for emergency reading needs. I found myself alone at lunch one day recently, and without a book. I reached in the seat pocket of my car and was delighted to find 1984 shoved in there. It's been so long since I last read it that I'd forgotten some plot points that seem especially relevant to our current political climate. The particular copy that I'm reading is one that came from my mother's old classroom where she taught high school English and Literature, so it's a bit dog-eared and covered with students' highlights and notes. I'm very anti writing in books, but it's actually been quite enjoyable to see what students thought the story meant back in 1997 versus what I'm interpreting the story now.

I'm also reading Caraval, by Stephanie Garber. This is one I've been meaning to pick up all year, but it kept getting pushed down my TBR pile. It's about a mysterious, magical performance where the audience participates and everything is a game, a potentially deadly one. It has been completely delightful. The world is richly described and refreshingly unique. It's quite the juxtaposition to 1984, but I'm enjoying the opportunity to slip into another world for a while.

Visit S.F. Henson's website.

Coffee with a Canine: S.F. Henson & Francie.

My Book, The Movie: Devils Within.

The Page 69 Test: Devils Within.

--Marshal Zeringue