What We're Reading

LUCY BURDETTE: I only took three books with me on my two-week vacation--a scary-low number, right? But I knew we’d be busy, and we only took carryon luggage so my space and weight was limited. Lest you think I’d lost my marbles, I did have my ipad loaded to the gills with back-up books just in case. My first read was CRY THE BELOVED COUNTRY by Alan Paton, which you may remember reading in high school--a heartbreaking story about an African pastor trying to rescue his son and sister from a life of crime in race-riven Johannesburg, which is at the time a white man’s world. Paton wrote this in long hand in 1947, and shortly after it was published by Scribner, and became an international bestseller. It has been described as the greatest novel to come out of the South African tragedy, I found it distressing but haunting and lovely--a good introduction to what we’d see in that country. (Also if you’re interested in this difficult subject, read Trevor Noah’s BORN A CRIME. Or better still, listen to him narrate his story.)

 Book number two was HARBOUR STREET by Ann Cleeves, the 6th Vera Stanhope investigation. I’ve been doling these out so I don’t have a big wait before a new one arrives--next fall I think. She’s simply an amazing wordsmith, aside from drawing characters so clearly and developing intricate plots. I always enjoy her books--and having this one with me in a foreign country was like traveling with an old friend. And the third book which I finished on the way home was HOW TO WALK AWAY by Katherine Center. She’s immensely popular in the field of women’s fiction and with good reason--her characters face disruptive life events and enormous disappointments but manage to emerge having made the best of them. Or at least grown from them...

Now I’ve started Juliet Blackwell’s THE VINEYARDS OF CHAMPAGNE, and after that Jenn’s BURIED TO THE BRIM is waiting. How about you, Reds?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Why is this such a hard question? It always makes my brain fry. 

I just finished Joe FInder’s HOUSE ON FIRE. I always admire his fast-paced linear story-telling ,which I can NEVER do, but my special reason for devouring this one came from a funny story. He and I were at dinner recently--a few months ago--and I asked him: “What’s your new book about?” And he said “I’ll tell you, but you tell me about ours first, “ Okay,”  I said, “I have to figure out how to talk about it, and it’s not really ABOUT this, but the main character is a daughter of a Sackler-like family who decides to blow the whistle on the big pharma company. What’s yours?

And Joe paused ,and said:  “The main character is a daughter of a Sackler-like family who decides to blow the whistle on the big pharma company.”

I am not kidding.  And then we just stared at each other. 

So I went crazy, because yikes. (And his book came out Monday, and mine not til August.) But it is so fascinating, because now that I’ve read it, it’s a master class in how EXACTLY the same description can be used for two ENTIRELY DIFFERENT books. (and whew.)

I also read the amazing Jennifer Hillier’s new LITTLE SECRETS. (She wrote the super creepy Jar of Hearts.)  She is such a brilliant writer, and such a master of suspense. I loved it. AND I’m very envious of her talent.

And next up is an advance copy of WAITING FOR THE NIGHT SONG by Julie Carrick Dalton,  is a thriller about a climate change scientist who’s searching for a certain insect she thinks is precursor of  massive wild fires. So far, so fabulous.

HALLIE EPHRON: I’m reading Paula Munier’s BLIND SEARCH and loving it. Great dogs-and-people book. Amazing weather. A page turner.

We were just on a 2-plus week vacation so I stopped at my library book sale to get some paperbacks I could read and leave behind. I grabbed an ancient paperback copy of Dorothy Sayers STRONG POISON and I’m here to tell you, it does not hold up. Not at all. It begins with a judge going on for about 40 pages summarizing, for the jury, what happened during testimony at a murder trial -- Harriet Vane is on trial for the murder of her ex-boyfriend. So boring. And when Lord Peter and Harriet are finally on the page together, talking in her a jail cell, it’s like Rosalind Russell dialogue from His Girl Friday. Quip. Parry. Quip. So dated. And I *loved* Dorothy Sayers. Sigh. 

Fortunately I also picked up a copy of C. J. Box’s Joe Pickett novels. Terrific. And I’m getting ready to read Carol Goodman’s THE SEA OF LOST GIRLS with great anticipation.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Hallie, I loved Blind Search, and A Borrowing of Bones, a couple of my favorite reads last year. And that’s very interesting about Dorothy Sayers. A  year or so ago I tried to reread Gaudy Night and found I just...couldn’t. It seemed overwritten and snarkily mean. Maybe I was just not in the right frame of mind, but it was disappointing. I loved Dorothy Sayers, too.

On the upside, I’ve just finished reading Ruth Reichl’s Save Me the Plums, which I’d started last year but got sidetracked, and I loved it. I’ve got her novel, Delicious, on Kindle. Has anybody read it? I’m also reading Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo, which was the co-winner of the Booker Prize last year. The language and characters are fabulous, but I’m not sure yet if there is actually a plot. I’ve started Jenn’s Buried to the Brim--such fun! And I’ve been reading my way through Barry Maitland’s Brock and Kolla detective novels, but I’m a bit burned out on them. Time for a break before the last couple to date in the series. 

LUCY: I read everything Ruth Reichl writes--loved SAVE ME THE PLUMS as well as DELICIOUS! Hope both she and Ann Mah come out with new novels soon...

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Well, I’ve started a new series based on the fact I also liked Paula Munier’s A BORROWING OF BONES and BLIND SEARCH. I’m reading THE DARKEST THREAD by Jen Blood. She’s a Maine author I met at a library event (she and the fabulous Bruce Coffin read) and I was intrigued. It’s about a single mom whose business is both training dogs for law enforcement and rescue and working search-and-rescue herself. So far, so good. 

Right after the holidays, I read Stephen King’s THE INSTITUTE which is wonderful and creepy and so well-written. I tore through it the first time and then went back to see what he had done, because the book has an almost perfect four-act structure, and the novel I’m working on is a four-act as well. Best way to learn is by watching a master do it.

Then of course, I have my science-fiction read: GIDEON THE NINTH by Tamsyn Muir, which I picked up a couple months ago and finally got around to. It’s SO good, y’all. If you like SF/Fantasy, run, don’t walk to the bookseller and grab this before its sequel, HARROW THE NINTH comes out. It’s so unique and Muir’s prose is like a molotov cocktail thrown through an original edition of Frankenstein.

JENN McKINLAY: Oh, Julia, I loved GIDEON THE NINTH! It was recommended by my friend Kevin Hearne, fantasy author, and it did not disappoint - so original. I loved it! Currently, I just finished REAL MEN KNIT by Kwana Jackson. It was fabulous. A romcom set against the backdrop of friends and family trying to save the Harlem knitting shop when the owner, grandma to the neighborhood, passes away. Right now, I’m tucking into Dean James’s CARELESS WHISKERS, because any mystery set in a library is a-okay with me but his are particularly wonderful.

Your turn Reds--what are you reading?