Neal Thompson's Blog: Blood & Whiskey, page 2

Blood & Whiskey #33

Hello friends and readers,

I don’t say too much about my own books in this space. I’m like a parent who brags about other parents’ kids. But my offspring have been on my mind lately, so indulge me…. This week is the 1-year paperback birthday and 2-year hardcover birthday of my sixth book, The First Kennedys: The Humble Roots of an American Dynasty. Also this week, I received a first-ever royalty check for my second book: Driving With the Devil: Southern Moonshine, Detroit Wheels, and the Birth of...

Blood & Whiskey #32

Hello friends and readers,

Well, here we are in 2024. Election year. Nothing to worry about, right? I’m starting off the year-that-might-explode with a few weeks of sobriety (hurry up, Dry January, let’s go…) and a bunch of reading. Happy to share a few faves.

The Lost Van Gogh, by Jonathan Santlofer

This follow up to Santlofer’s excellent The Last Mona Lisa (which I reviewed back in 2021, here) reunites us with artist-sleuth Luke Perrone, art-thief daughter Alexis Verde, and INTERPOL agent John Wa...

Interrogation: Abbott Kahler

Hello friends and readers,

Happy New Year — and, for those partaking, happy Dry January. A full Blood & Whiskey newsletter is coming next week, with cocktails and mocktails. But first, I’m happy to share this Q&A with the hyper talented Abbott Kahler, whose previous books (written as Karen Abbott) include Sin in the Second City; American Rose; Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy; The Ghosts of Eden Park.

Now Abbott has done what many of us nonfiction writers dream of: written a novel, and a very good o...

Blood & Whiskey #31: end-of-year edition

Hello friends and readers,

Before we get to the moll or the Korean novelist or the Irish unraveling or the Du Maurier homage or my favorite cocktail of the year, let’s start with the serial killer on death row.

I’d missed it when it came out last year, but glad I finally found time for Danya Kukafka’s incredible Notes On An Execution. We meet Ansel Packer twelve hours before he’s scheduled to die. In alternating chapters, we slide back in time to hear different women in Packer’s life — a detectiv...

Blood & Whiskey #30

Hello friends and readers,

Lots of bookish stuff to cover this month. I’ll start with my recent visit to the excellent Portland Book Festival, run by Literary Arts. Like many arts organizations, Literary Arts got bruised by Covid, but attendance at this year’s festival was impressive and inspiring. There were lines out the door to see Viet Thanh Nguyen, Tim O’Brien, Safiya Sinclair, Michael Lewis and others. My little slice of the action was moderating a discussion about “Family Secrets” with Eda...

Interrogation: Tim Johnson

Hello friends and readers,

A full Blood & Whiskey newsletter is coming in a few days, but first I wanted to share this interview with Tim Johnston, whose great new novel DISTANT SONS is out from Algonquin (available at Bookshop, Amazon, Barnes & Noble).

I had enjoyed two of Tim’s previous books (2019’s The Current and Descent, from 2015). The new book is the story of two wounded men, Sean and Dan, who meet accidentally in a small Wisconsin town, where decades earlier three boys had disappeared. Se...

Blood & Whiskey #29

Hello friends and readers,

I had the chance to see two authors at my local Seattle bookshops recently: Ben Fountain (at Elliott Bay Bookstore1) and McKenzie Funk (at Third Place Books2). I mentioned both books last week, but apparently have more to say…

Ben Fountain’s previous novel Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, ranks among my favorites of the last decade. The new one, Devil Makes Three, is a different beast altogether — and it is a bit of a beast, weighing in at 500+ pages. At Elliott Bay, Fou...

Blood & Whiskey: this month featuring "coast"-themed books, drinks, and music

Hello friends and readers,

A punch in the face from Covid and a cross-country move back home to Seattle plus a couple writing deadlines delayed this month’s newsletter a bit. But the Pacific Northwest rainy season has begun here (aka the Big Dark), and I’m eager to dive into primo read-and-drink season and share the results. (Next up: Ben Fountain’s Devil Makes Three and The Hank Show by Mackenzie Funk.)

At the tail end of my summer in Boston, I read two books set on that other coast: The Stolen ...

Blood & Whiskey #27

Hello friends and readers,

I grew up an hour outside New York and have never lived in LA. For most of my adult life, though, I’ve been drawn to LA fiction — especially crime fiction — far more than New York stories (despite my love of Colson Whitehead’s latest).

If you’ve read more than a few Blood & Whiskeys, you’ve been exposed to this bias. From older classics (Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald, Dorothy Hughes) to modern masters (James Ellroy, Walter Mosley, Percival Everett, Michael Connelly, D...

Interrogation: Edan Lepucki

Edan Lepucki’s third novel, Time’s Mouth, which comes out today, has already been earning gobs of pre-pub buzz — summer preview picks by the New York Times and NPR, a People ‘Book of the Week’, an Indie Next pick for August, and Edan was profiled in the LA Times. (I’ll have a review later this month.)

In our Q&A, Edan discusses music she writes to, her …

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