What We’re Reading

Every once in a while the writers at MCW like to share what we’ve been reading. Here’s a sampling of books other writers have written that are currently providing us with distraction from our own work.

from Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson: I’m currently partway through three novels that all, purely by coincidence, feature witches as characters, in two cases as the protagonists. The first is Deborah Harkness’s The Black Bird Oracle, the fifth entry in her All Souls series. She goes back to focusing on Diana Bishop, the lead character in the first three titles, a witch married to a vampire. Harkness is a writer I admire a lot, not least because she’s also the author of a scholarly work on an aspect of the Elizabethan period. And there’s my segue into the second novel I’m reading, or rather rereading, The Elegant Witch (alternate title: Mist Over Pendle) by Robert Neill. It was first published in 1951, but since it has an historical setting, that doesn’t much matter. It’s his take on the Pendle Witch Trials during the reign of James the First, seen through the eyes of a young woman rebelling against her Puritan upbringing. It holds up well 70+ years later. The third book is slower going but I couldn’t resist the premise. It’s Wickedly Dangerous by Deborah Blake, the first in a series that turns the old Russian legends about a witch named Baba Yaga on their ear. I loved reading the Highlights for Children Baba Yaga stories when I was a kid. This is a very different incarnation. Baba is now calling herself Barbara Yager and lives in a camper with a secret door into another world. It’s the present day, and it looks like she’s destined for romance and crime solving with a sheriff who finds her presence in the area very suspicious. I don’t know yet if I’ll continue with the series, but I definitely want to keep reading to find out what happens next in this one.

John Clark: I’m reading half a dozen different books right now. Just finished The Smell of Smoke and Ash by Patty Blount as an ARC reviewer. It comes out in November and is a dandy YA mystery with supernatural aspects. In addition, I’m enjoying The Eyes Are The Best Part by Monika Kim (creepy as hell), House of Ash and Bone by Joel Sutherland (another paranormal YA), Arcadia’s Curse by Jesi Lea Ryan (second in a three part series about a teen psychic), The Bloodborn Dragon by J.C. Rycroft (Sexy fantasy about a traveling spellsword who accidentally revives a miniature dragon who bonds with her and forces her on a mission with multiple baddies on their tail), and Cross The Line by Simone Soltani (a Formula One racer hires his best friend’s younger sister as his PR manager, but neither can keep their hands off the other…Steamy sports themed stories are one of my guilty pleasures)

Rob Kelley: My go-to reads are almost always thrillers and suspense, admiring the author’s craft, while also enjoying a lovely escape! I just finished Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha, an amazing tale set during the unrest in LA in both the early 1990s and the present day, exploring the implications of race, violence, and redemption for two families struggling with their personal histories over the last decades and in the present moment.

At the same time I was re-reading the closing scene of Tom Clancy’s Patriot Games for a good coastal chase scene example for my current work in progress: the first book in a thriller/amateur detective series set in Midcoast Maine.

But my new read, one I’ve been waiting for all year, is The Bright Sword: A Novel of King Arthur by Lev Grossman. Many folks will know Grossman as the author of the Magicians Trilogy (The Magicians, The Magician King, The Magician’s Land) which I think of as a darker, funnier Hogwarts made up of way-too-smart graduate students having sex, drinking, and making world-ending decisions.

The Bright Sword begins with a young knight questing to Camelot to join the Round Table, only to find that Arthur has recently died in battle and only a motley few straggler knights remain. The book has all of the fabulous detail that sets Grossman’s writing apart, building a world that we both fear for and want to inhabit. At 683 pages, this one’s going to be distracting me for a little while!

Kait Carson Just finished Lake County by Lori Roy. Goodreads styles the book as a Southern Gothic Thriller. Of course I had to try it. Started slow, but don’t let that deter you. When the book took off, it grabbed me by the throat and didn’t let go. Read the last three quarters in one sitting.

The story is set in a 1950s fictional Lake County, Florida town and features a star-struck teenager, a re-imagined Marilyn Monroe (know as Aunt Jean for the duration of this novel), a bolita game running boyfriend, an accidental murder, and the Tampa mob. The book is far from light fluff. It’s an in-depth study of how life can turn horribly wrong in a heartbeat and how no one is free from the consequences of past actions. Their own, or others.

The world Lori Roy imagines is the natural successor to Dennis Lehane’s Joe Coughlin stories. The book is a standalone, but I’ll be looking for more from this author.

Kate Flora: I haven’t been doing enough reading because I’m trying to finish a book. But one author I’ve really enjoyed recent is the Irish author Claire Keegan. Her fiction and short stories are little gems, so perfectly written, that often leave you to finish the stories for yourself. The collection of short stories, Walk the Blue Fields, is stunning. Foster, which was made into the great film The Silent Girl, is a short and moving and perfect. So is Small Things Like These. Right now I’m about to dig into a book that Matt Cost suggested, Matt Bell’s editing book, Refuse to Be Done. True confession, though. Since summer usually involves a lot of company, I spend some of my reading time reading cookbooks. In that vein, I often turn to Bon Appetite’s Weekend Entertaining.