Recently the BBC World Book Club did an interview with Chilean author Isabel Allende. World Book Club was kind enough to arrange a time for me to call in.

Robert J. Lloyd discovered Robert Hooke’s Diary working on his MA in the History of Ideas. Based on his research, he wrote The Bloodless Boy, a murder mystery

Author Juhea Kim made a strong debut with her novel Beasts of a Little Land. The book is an epic story of love, friendship, war, and redemption.

Kyle McCord was kind enough to answer several questions I had in mind. In this era which seem to embrace cultish mentality, as well as “cancel” culture

Jason McMillan wrote The Grey Zone, which takes place in a future where The United States has joined the Global Federation to implement the Basic Human Standard

I read and enjoyed Land of Hidden Fires by Kirk Kjeldsen very much. At first I had trepidation about reading it, but I’m very glad I read the novel. Mr. Kjeldsen was kind enough to answer a few questions for me. Q. How did you prepare to tell the story of Kari, a teenage girl? A. I didn’t intend to write the novel with a teenage girl as the protagonist; I first wanted to write about the story of my great-grandfather’s brother, Anfinn Kjeldsen, who helped a downed American pilot get to Sweden during WWII. I couldn’t find enough details, though, and trying to tell what had happened with what little that I had wasn’t working for me, so I put it aside for a few years. I eventually tried it again as fiction, making the protagonist a young man about Anfinn’s age, and it started coming easier. Then I thought it might be more interesting if the main character was a teenage boy, and then a teenage girl, and the story took off. So the character sort of wrote herself, in a way, which I think all good characters do.I didn’t consciously or specifically prepare writing the story of a…

As a six word story, explain what The Devil’s Work is about? Dream job becomes a terrifying nightmare. (My original pitch was ‘The Devil Wears Prada rewritten by Stephen King’ but that’s eight words!) As opposed to other types of fiction, what do you think the is appeal of psychological thrillers? Psychological thrillers are hot right now because readers want to connect with stories in which they can imagine themselves. Marriage, relationships with friends and children, co-workers and lovers…Psychological thriller writers take ordinary situations and add a layer of fear and darkness – from the toxic marriage in Gone Girl to the everyday voyeur in Girl on the Train, readers like those familiar situations and characters and thinking about what they would do if it were them. I think it’s a reaction to the Dan Brown years, which were followed by the Stieg Larsson-fuelled Scandinavian noir period – we’ve gone from worldwide conspiracy theories and outlandish situations to what is now called domestic noir. It’s not new but it’s never been more popular. How do you come up with the idea for a great plot twist? No spoilers since there is a great one in The Devil’s Work! I…

Linda Rodriguez McRobbie, wrote the book Princesses Behav­ing Badly: Real Sto­ries from His­tory With­out the Fairy-Tale End­ing, a collection of mini-biographies from far and wide of the strong, crazy and brave female members of the royal households. Ms McRobbie, an American journalist living in London, has just released the book and was kind enough to answer a few of my questions. Q. What made you want to write about Princess Behaving Badly? A. Mostly being asked to! My publishers, Quirk, very kindly approached me with the outline of the idea and we went from there. What I loved, however, was that though it was a topic I hadn’t given much thought to before, it quickly became absolutely fascinating – especially uncovering women whom history had left by the wayside, and whose stories were just tremendous. Q. Which princess did you find the most fascinating and why? A. I think perhaps my favourite princess is “Princess” Caraboo, although Caroline of Brunswick runs a close second. I have an abiding affection for late 18th, early 19th century British history – it could be a Jane Austen thing, if I’m really honest, but I also love the sense of this period of time…

Jason Mott, author of The Returned and newly minted New York Times best seller list has been kind enough to take some time out from his successful career and answer a few questions for this blog.

Elizabeth L. Sivler wrote one of this summer’s hottest books The Execution of Noa P. Singleton and was kind enough to answer a few questions for me. Q. How did for the idea for the novel came about? A. In my last semester of law school, I enrolled in a class on capital punishment. As part of the course, I visited Texas’s death row and worked on a clemency petition, where I spoke with inmates and victim family members. Then, for two years following law school, I was a judicial clerk for one of the nine judges on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and worked on several death penalty appeals. I researched the law and examined several cases from both an advocate as well as neutral perspective and wanted to present both sides of the death penalty debate by removing the obvious questions of whether or not the person did the crime, to instead focus on the question of punishment. How does society treat its prisoners? How do we accept our own shortcomings and mistakes? How does our guilt define us? These were just a handful of issues that I hoped to explore by examining the death penalty through…