The Incumbent Coroner
Whodunnit? Well, Paul Austin Ardoin dunnit. Again. That’s right, Paul’s killed again—he’s written another mystery novel, and I’ve designed the cover. For you ultra-professional designers like me, here’s the very formal, exhaustive creative brief: As with the first book, the title and author name must be very prominent. It needs to carry on the general look and […]
The Reluctant Coroner
My longtime friend and colleague Paul Austin Ardoin recently released his first novel, a murder mystery called The Reluctant Coroner. Never mind all those tired old clichés—you can absolutely judge this book by its fantastic cover: (Psst. Yeah. I designed it.)
Less
He finds himself awakening at dawn, when the sea is brightening but the sun still struggles in its bedclothes, and sits down to lash his protagonist a few more times with his authorial whip. And somehow, a bittersweet longing starts to appear in the novel that was never there before. It changes, grows kinder. Less, […]
Slade House
Sometimes I envy the weeping parents of the definitely dead you see on TV. Grief is an amputation, but hope is incurable hemophilia: you bleed and bleed and bleed. —David Mitchell
Little Fires Everywhere
Sometimes you need to scorch everything to the ground and start over. After the burning the soil is richer, and new things can grow. People are like that, too. They start over. They find a way. —Celeste Ng
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine
My goodness, the hoi polloi do get about these days, and they eat and drink in public with very few inhibitions. —Gail Honeyman
The Alienist
We revel in men like Beecham, Moore—they are the easy repositories of all that is dark in our very social world. But the things that helped make Beecham what he was? Those, we tolerate. Those, we even enjoy… —Caleb Carr
The Muse
Life was a series of opportunities to survive, and in order to survive you had to lie, constantly—to each other, and to yourself. —Jessie Burton
Days Without End
Just a moment of something that didn’t mean nothing. It gave me heart to see. Things that give you heart are rare enough, better note them in your head when you find them and not forget. —Sebastian Barry
The One-In-A-Million Boy
He said, softly enough that she might not catch it, “I was a rotten father.” Ona nodded, noncommittal. “There are worse things.” “Like what?” He really wanted to know. “Being an adequate mother.” She took a swig from her coffee mug. “Rotten fathers are a dime a dozen, who even notices? Whatever kind you were—and […]
Before the Fall
Life is a series of decisions and reactions. It is the things you do and the things that are done to you. And then it’s over. —Noah Hawley
News of the World
Maybe life is just carrying news. Surviving to carry the news. Maybe we have just one message, and it is delivered to us when we are born and we are never sure what it says; it may have nothing to do with us personally but it must be carried by hand through a life, all […]
The Summer That Melted Everything
Dad was telling every one of them to get out of our house. I’d never seen my father so angry. Years later, I would find myself dog-earing a page in a book about the ocean. On the page a painting of gray, wild waves. I have since torn that page out of the book and […]
A Gentleman in Moscow
Presumably, the bells of the Church of the Ascension had been reclaimed by the Bolsheviks for the manufacture of artillery, thus returning them to the realm from whence they came. Though for all the Count knew, the cannons that had been salvaged from Napoleon’s retreat to make the Ascension’s bells had been forged by the […]
Moonglow
He cut the engine. The clack of sprinklers filled the car. The wide empty lawns were veiled in shifting iridescence. One of the rivulets in the flow of his imaginings that morning had been the sight of my grandmother rising to her feet on the topmost step of the main building, in the belted navy […]
Version Control
…history lives in the gap between the information and the truth. And each of us has no choice but to determine our own history, for ourselves. —Dexter Palmer
Grief is the Thing With Feathers
Moving on, as a concept, is for stupid people, because any sensible person knows grief is a long-term project. I refuse to rush. The pain that is thrust upon us let no man slow or speed or fix. —Max Porter
Homegoing
As Sonny passed the projects that filled the distance between his apartment and Willie’s, he tried to remember the last time he’d really spoken to his mother. It was 1964, during the riots, and she had asked him to meet her in front of her church so that she could lend him some money. “I […]
Lily and the Octopus
Someone once said give a dog food and shelter and treats and they think you are a god, but give a cat the same and they think they are the god. —Steven Rowley
The North Water
He finds the lying comes easy enough, of course. Words are just noises in a certain order, and he can use them any way he wishes. Pigs grunt, ducks quack, and men tell lies: that is how it generally goes. —Ian McGuire
