Friday Reads 12.13.24

Ending the Year on Friday the 13th!

Happy Friday, friends. This is my last official Friday Reads of the year. At COB today, I turn in a tiny reindeer with a red nose and fly away for the holiday break. I can’t remember the last time I was able to take the last two weeks of December entirely off work. Granted, I have been working VERY hard to get to this point, working feverishly to wrap multiple projects in a happy red bow, so it’s going to be an especially lovely break.

That means no post next week, but I have queued up something special for the 28th, a year-end roundup of ALL the books discussed this year. It’s a monster list and a fabulous way to cap off 2024. And then, we resume in the new year, with both Friday and Reads and 22 Steps continuing, amd with luck, my annual review. I still haven’t landed on a word, but I’m homing in.

It’s been a sad and poignant week. Wednesday, I finished the final revision of the final Jayne Thorne novel and sent it in for copyedit. I love these books so much, but it is time to move on. Doesn’t make it easier, but I do love the way it’s ended — a surprising yet inevitable conclusion. I will admit, I cooked up a bit of new magic at the very end, so if a window opens…I will respect that urge and give things another look.

And then, on Thursday, we woke to the terrible news that a vital member of all our lives had passed away unexpectedly. M.J. Rose is a name everyone in our community knows. She was hugely instrumental in my debut year. She took one look at what we were doing with Killer Year and sat us down, offering advice and, ultimately, adoption by the nascent International Thrillers Writers organization. That meant doors opened. We were given mentors (mine was Lee Child!) who guided us through the debut year. These incredible luminaries in the field blurbed our books, answered our questions, advised us, and bolstered our careers in innumerable ways. It changed all of our lives.

Ultimately, Killer Year became the outstanding ITW Debut Author’s Program, that vibrant rite of passage for all debuts in our field. When we put together an anthology, our mentors wrote introductions to our stories and essays of their own. MJ wrote a fantastic essay about the experience of mentoring an unruly group of baby creatives. She always recognized how vital industry education is for a new author.

But I was a fan of her work most of all. A luminous writer, her books crossed the gamut of thrillers. She was a self-published author before that was really a thing, and her body of work starts there with her indomitable spirit and moves through to traditional success, co-writing success, publishing success, and a marketing organization everyone wanted a part of.

I’ve included two of my favorites in the roundup today. THE REINCARNATIONIST is spectacular. If you like archeology, history, mythology, and Italy, this is right up your alley. And an early favorite is THE VENUS FIX — a dark, seductive thriller set at the Butterfield Institute; this whole series is outstanding.

If you haven’t had a chance to read her, these are a good place to start. And if you didn’t have a chance to know her, believe me when I say MJ always made an impression. RIP, Melisse.

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I have a slew of new books to recommend this week to get us to the end of the year. First up is the lovely Pip Drysdale. We did an event together where she read the opening of THE CLOSE UP and I literally ordered it during the event. If the first page is any indication, it’s going to be outstanding!

Keeping with the California theme, friend of the blog Jennifer Silva Redmond sent me a copy of her memoir HONEYMOON AT SEA. Can’t wait to dig in!

My next rom-com is Alexandra Kiley’s KILT TRIP. I am missing my Scottish landscape, and I’m hopeful this will plunge me back into the brogues and mists and mysteries of the highlands.

Carter Wilson has a new one out called THE FATHER SHE WENT TO FIND. It's an evocative title, and Carter is a great writer. Plus he has a very cool show called Making It Up that I’ve been lucky enough to participate in.

Kimberly Belle’s THE PARIS WIDOW is now in my sights, too. I’ve been saving it for when I was ready to think about writing a new thriller, because I love her twisted mind.

Meredith R. Lyons's first book in a superb fantasy series, A DAGGER OF LIGHTNING, is coming out. I was lucky enough to get a first look at it and offer my thoughts. I can’t wait to see where she takes Imogen’s story!

And the last recommendation of the year belongs to my sweet friend Patti Callahan Henry whose outstanding new book, THE STORY SHE LEFT BEHIND, is out in March. I am madly in love with this story, the cover, the whole thing.

And… that’s it from me. How about you? Do you have a whole stack of books to get through this holiday season? I’d love to hear about them!

In the meantime, Merry Everything!!!

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