Lifting the lid
Sophia Khan’s debut novel Dear Yasmeen is the story of Irenie, a young girl in upstate New York whose charismatic mother disappeared five years ago, and her distant, eccentric father James, who refuses to open up about the past. As Irenie digs around for details of her mother’s life, she uncovers love letters written between...
Intrigue and discovery
Helen Dunmore’s latest novel Exposure is a spellbinding, multilayered tale of love, betrayal, vulnerability and fierce loyalties at the height of the Cold War. As spy fever dominates the news headlines a sensitive government file goes missing and a swift arrest is made, but recent events suggest a cover-up. She lets us in on her...
Lost in story
Peter Swanson’s gripping new thriller The Kind Worth Killing, containing a satisfyingly twisted and murderous plot with nods to Patricia Highsmith, Agatha Christie and James M. Cain, has become an immediate bestseller and is shortlisted for the 2015 Ian Fleming Silver Dagger. He tells us about his influences and reading habits, and about delving into...
Living with authoritis
I’m a bit of a recluse. It comes with the job of writing books. I live with my husband and our two middle-school children in a canyon in the Santa Monica Mountains in southern California. Between school drop-off and pick-up I’m a novelist. I sit alone in my pajamas with crazy hair and a mug...
Twixt cup and lip
Alex Preston’s latest novel In Love and War weaves fact and fiction into a compelling tapestry in which a British fascist is sent to Italy to forge a union with Mussolini – and escape the fallout of a scandalous love affair. He wrote it with a pen picked up in Florence… Where are you now?...
Biblio bibelots
Patricia Ferguson’s gripping and life-affirming new novel Aren’t We Sisters?, the sequel to The Midwife’s Daughter, examines the transformative power of buried secrets, unlikely friendships and unexpected connections among three women in the fictional Cornish town of Silkhampton, where a killer is on the prowl… She shares her literary trinkets. Where are you now? At...
Grounded and up in the air
Greg Baxter’s tense and gripping psychological thriller Munich Airport sees an American expat whose sister’s body has been found in mysterious circumstances marooned by bad weather in the titular airport with his irascible father and a sympathetic American Consulate official who is trying to help discover the cause of death. He tells us about his...
Hot coffee and no haiku
Mona Simpson is lauded as a sharp and infectious chronicler of American family life. Her latest novel, Casebook, is a coming-of-age story about two boys who unearth powerful secrets that threaten a family’s health and sanity. She invites us into her home and gives an insight into her literary habits. Where are you now? At...
Darkness and light
Where are you now? My parents’ house in Hampstead, north London. Where and when do you do most of your writing? At a desk or kitchen table wherever I am living. If you have one, what is your pre-writing ritual? I set the timer for 180 minutes on a program called SelfControl which blocks most...
Staying home
Joseph Connolly’s comic novels are always written as interior monologue, a writing technique he recently told the Guardian “just falls out of me… I sort of become the person when I am writing in their voice.” So how does he live from day to day deep within his writing chamber? Where are you now? At...
