Leo Tolstoy, author of my favorite novel, War and Peace, said that the purpose of art is to teach us to love life, an observation that has pleased me since I first read it. But on reflection, I think it fair to say there are other things that art can do in relation to life; it can change the way we see life; it can teach us to endure or perhaps enable us to escape life. For a time, anyway. In a world beset by unprecedented horrors, where the survival of the planet itself seems to hang by a fraying thread, art can sometimes grant us respite—time, as it were, to catch our breath. Art can take u ..read more

If you follow the news at all—on TV, newspapers, social media—you are aware of crimes perpetrated both at home and in faraway places. You might read them, feel a pang of grief for the victim or a flare of rage at the villain. But our fast-moving media often gives us only a glimpse of the crime itself and then the news cycle is on to the next crime. Most of the time, the aftereffects of crime aren’t acknowledged. It’s not because those reporting the news are bad people. There’s just so much crime and only so many minutes in the day. Part of it may also be our own viewing habits. In these days ..read more

I grew up in the former USSR surrounded by books on shelves built by my grandfather. The books came in multiple numbered tomes – grey, brick red, pale green – and bore the names of the authors in gold lettering that glistened under the light of the lamp. Chekhov. Pushkin. Akhmatova. One collection – Tolstoy – numbered in 14 emerald-colored volumes. There were foreign ones too: the Brontës, Hemingway, London. It would be a while until I learned that such collections were a status symbol for the Soviet middle class and that they were very hard to come by. Back then, long before I became a debut ..read more

Given how much I love reading and writing about dysfunctional families, it’s no wonder I would soon turn my attention to evil mothers! While my new book, Darling Girls, is about the relationship between three women who grew up in foster care together and call each other sisters, once you meet their foster mother Miss Fairchild, you’ll understand what I mean. Here are some of my favourite thrillers that feature evil mothers, all of which definitely provided inspiration for Darling Girls… Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent This incredibly twisty book is an absolute page-turner! Strange Sally ..read more

The beetles could help her disappear, but not in the same way the others had. She would do it for a better life. This was why, even though someone had trashed her van, even though her cell phone was now one big useless glitch and even though her mother was probably sick with worry, Chenoa Cloud had hiked for days to reach this ravine in the dark. If the beetles were nocturnal, so was she. The November wind whirred into the chasm and up the sleeves of her jacket like a threat, carrying with it loamy soil laced with the scent of decay. Chenoa tried to clear her head, to think instead of the wai ..read more

Statically speaking, when someone hurts a woman, her intimate partner, whether current or former, is the most likely culprit. We don’t protect teenage girls from this reality, either. They’re exposed to its foundations during one of the most emotionally vulnerable periods of their life: middle school and high school. Experiencing first love and first heartbreak might be considered canon events when it comes to growing up, but so is experiencing the first time the person you like pressures you into doing something you’re not ready to do; the first time you reject an advance; the first time you ..read more

The Bond Girl. The phrase itself is a source of celebration and contention. Few other thriller writers before Ian Fleming placed such emphasis on creating rounded female protagonists with their own backgrounds, motives and agency. Few other action films attract such attention with the question of who will play the next female lead. At the same time, the word “girl” rather than “woman” suggests a childlike, even subservient helplessness. Bond would never be described as a “boy” rather than a “man”. A possessive apostrophe seems to hover nearby in invisible ink: Bond’s Girl – defining these wom ..read more

The phrase “people often ask me” sounds like a setup here, but it’s true that people often ask me why it is I’ve chosen to write about small-town Texas. And every time, the question sort of takes me aback—not because it’s an unusual one, but because the setting of my books feels inherent to me, the first thing that comes when I sit down to write; it doesn’t feel like much of a choice. The straightforward answer is that I’m writing what I know: I grew up in small towns and rural areas. I enjoy wide-open spaces and have a need to spend time there in my mind. There’s also an intrinsic relationsh ..read more

It was an introvert’s paradise. Two weeks after Fidel Castro forced Fulgencio Batista from power in 1959, Justin Gleichauf found himself as the one and only employee of the new CIA operation in Miami. Part of the Domestic Contacts Division of the Directorate of Intelligence, the CIA field office (meaning Gleichauf) was tasked with monitoring and reporting on developments in Cuba. Gleichauf missed the fighting in the Second World War because he was too underweight for combat action (he was the water boy in college at Notre Dame because he was so skinny). Instead, he s ..read more

“Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows …” / Insert sinister laugh here. The Shadow, a proto-Batman who, unlike the Caped Crusader, was more than willing to gun down the bad guys, began as a character on a 1930 radio show and then backtracked into his own pulp magazine the following year.  The shadowy crimefighter is probably the best-known pulp hero, but those cheap magazines delivered hundreds of heroes and villains into the hands of eager readers for much of the first half of the 20th century. Heroes like the Shadow and Doc Savage and the Avenger are remember ..read more