This week, I got to talk with L.S. Stratton about her newest thriller In Deadly Company! We dive into how she wanted to write a fun, bingey thriller, how she used the meta approach of a movie being made about the past timeline, and how she crafted the very corrupt, very welathy family in the middle of it all.

In Deadly Company Synopsis

As the assistant of the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, Nicole Underwood has plenty of tasks on her to-do list—one of which is the blowout birthday celebration for her nightmare, one-percenter boss, Xander Chambers. But when the party ends in chaos and murder and Nicole is one of the survivors, suspicion—from the investigators to the media—lands on her. Was she the reason for all the bloodshed?

A year after those deadly events, Nicole tries to set the public record straight by agreeing to consult on a feature film based on her story. However, on the set in LA, she's sidelined by inappropriate casting and persistent, bizarre script changes, while also haunted by the events of that party weekend with visions of her now-deceased boss. It seems clearing her name isn't so simple when the question of guilt or innocence is...complicated.

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Brian Watson @readingwithbrian

This week, Steph and I talk about fiction books that taught us about different subjects!

Books We Talked About

Play Nice by Rachel Harrison
Eloquent Rage by Brittney Cooper
Wordslut by Amanda Montell
Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall
The Great Mann by Kyra Davis Lurie
Francine’s Spectacular Crash and Burn Renee Swindle
You Know Her by Meagan Jennett
The Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali
What Comes After by Joanne Tompkins
Blood Sisters by Vanessa Lillie
The Whistler by Nick Medina
Do What Godmother Says by Shelley Stratton
Harlem Rhapsody by Victoria Christopher Murray
The Reformatory by Tananarive Due
My Government Means to Kill Me by Rasheed Newson
The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai
The Yellow Wife by Sadeqa Johnson
The House of Eve by Sadeqa Johnson
Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
Happy Land by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
The Foundling by Ann Leary
The Manor of Dreams by Christina Li

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Brian Watson @readingwithbrian

This week, I got to talk with Penny Zang about her debut novel Doll Parts! We dive into her inspiration for the story, the importance of music throughout, and the ways Sylvia Plath's life and writing influenced Doll Parts.

Doll Parts Synopsis

Some stories refuse to stay buried.

For best friends Nikki and Sadie, college was supposed to be a fresh start, a way to blast Courtney Love from car speakers and leave their youth behind. But along with sadness-obsessed girls and intrusive professors, a dark story plagues their small all-women's school: the Sylvia Club, a campus legend surrounding the deaths of multiple Sylvia Plath-adoring students, all written off as suicides. Aspiring writer Nikki finds herself drawn to the tragic tales, so much so that dead girls begin to haunt her dark imagination. As she digs deeper, Nikki soon suspects there's much more to the story - a suspicion that will lead to a tragedy of its own, one that will tear her and Sadie apart.

It's been nearly twenty years since Sadie last saw her estranged friend. Now, Nikki is dead, and when Sadie ends up pregnant by Nikki's grieving husband not long after the funeral, she finds herself stepping into her ex-best friend's seemingly perfect life. But the longer Sadie lives in Nikki's eerily preserved home, the more she sees her appear and soon, she's convinced that Nikki is sending her clues from beyond the grave. Because it seems Nikki never stopped looking for answers about what happened to the girls of the Sylvia Club, and she may have been its latest victim.

Told in a dual timeline, Doll Parts is a provocative and irresistible debut, at once an exploration of the dark chasms that break apart friendships, an ode to the aching beauty of girlhood, and a sharp portrayal of grief that can physically haunt you.

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Halley Sutton @halleysutton25

Brian Watson @readingwithbrian

This week, Gare, Steph and I talk about some of our favorite books we read in August!

Books We Talked About

My Husband by Maud Ventura

Too Old for This by Samantha Downing

Don’t Forget to Write by Sarah Goodman-Confino

Happy Land by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

The Locked Ward by Sarah Pekkanen

Knife River by Justine Champine

Dominion by Addie Citchens

Everyone is Lying to You by Jo Piazza

Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green

The Trad Wife’s Secret by Liane Child

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Halley Sutton @halleysutton25

Brian Watson @readingwithbrian

This week, I got to talk with Rebecca McKanna with Steph Lauer IN PERSON about Rebecca's book Don't Forget the Girl. We dive into how a short story collection inspired the book, how she got to know her characters, and why she chose the ending she chose.

Don't Forget the Girl Synopsis

We never remember the dead girls. We never forget the killers.

Twelve years ago, 18-year-old University of Iowa freshman Abby Hartmann disappeared. Now, Jon Allan Blue, the serial killer suspected of her murder, is about to be executed. Abby's best friends, Bree and Chelsea, watch as Abby's memory is unearthed and overshadowed by Blue and his flashier crimes. The friends, estranged in the wake of Abby's disappearance, and suffering from years of unvoiced resentments, must reunite when a high-profile podcast dedicates its next season to Blue's murders.

Tense and introspective, Don't Forget the Girl is an astonishing debut thriller that mines the complexities of friendship and the secrets between us that we may take to the grave.

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Halley Sutton @halleysutton25

Brian Watson @readingwithbrian

This week, Gare, Steph and I share short, bingey books we highly recommend!

Books We Talked About

Everyone Is Lying to You – Joe Piazza
The Favorite Girl – Monica Arya
The Mad Wife - Meagan Church
The Grave Artist – Isabella Maldonado & Jeffrey Deaver
Happy Land – Dolen Perkins-Valdez
Bath Haus – P.J. Vernon

Short & Bingey
Everything Is Tuberculosis – John Green
The Trap – Catherine Ryan Howard
The Locked Door – Freida McFadden
Liars – Sarah Manguso
The Retreat – Krysten Ritter
I Did It for You – Amy Engel
Lula Dean’s Little Library of Banned Books – Kirsten Miller
Black Sheep – Rachel Harrison
The Woods Are Waiting – Katherine Green

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Halley Sutton @halleysutton25

Brian Watson @readingwithbrian

This week, I got to talk with Kaila Yu about her memoir Fetishization: A Reckoning with Yellow Fever, Feminism, and Beauty. We dive into her experience growing up amidst yellow fever, how her self image was affected, and how she learned to love and accept herself.

Fetishization: A Reckoning with Yellow Fever, Feminism, and Beauty Synopsis

No one fetishized Kaila Yu more than she fetishized herself. As a young girl, she dreamt of beauty. But none of the beautiful women on television looked like her. In the late '90s and early 2000s Asian women were often reduced to overtly sexual and submissive caricatures—the geishas of the book-turned-film Memoirs of a Geisha; the lewd twins, Fook Mi and Fook Yu, in Austin Powers in Goldmember; Papillon Soo Soo’s sex worker character in the cult Vietnam War movie Full Metal Jacket; and pin-up goddess Sung-Hi Lee. Meanwhile, the "girls next door" were always white. Within that narrow framework, Kaila internalized a painful conclusion: The only way someone who looked like her could have value or be considered beautiful and desirable was to sexualize herself.

Blending vulnerable stories from Yu’s life with incisive cultural critique and history, Fetishized is a memoir-in-essays exploring feminism, beauty, yellow fever, and the roles pop culture and colonialism played in shaping pervasive and destructive stereotypes about Asian women and their bodies. Yu reflects on the women in media who influenced her, the legacy of U.S. occupation in shaping Western perceptions of Asian women, her own experiences in the pinup and import modeling industry, auditioning for TV and film roles that perpetuated dehumanizing stereotypes, and touring the world with her band in revealing outfits. She recounts altering her body to conform to Western beauty standards, allowing men to treat her like a sex object, and the emotional toll and trauma of losing her sense of self in the pursuit of the image she thought the world wanted.

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Halley Sutton @halleysutton25

Brian Watson @readingwithbrian

This week, I talk with Zoe B. Wallbrook about her hilariously funny and suspenseful mystery novel History Lessons. We dive into her inspiration for the book, how she incorporated misogynoir and how she injected so much humor.

History Lessons Synopsis

A college history professor must solve her superstar colleague's murder before she becomes the next target in this funny, romantic debut mystery, perfect for readers of Janet Evanovich, Kellye Garrett, and Ali Hazelwood.

As a newly minted junior professor, Daphne Ouverture spends her days giving lectures on French colonialism, working on her next academic book, and going on atrocious dates. Her small world suits her just fine. Until Sam Taylor dies.

The rising star of Harrison University’s anthropology department was never one of Daphne’s favorites, despite his popularity. But that doesn’t prevent Sam’s killer from believing Daphne has something that belonged to Sam—something the killer will stop at nothing to get.

Between grading papers and navigating her disastrous love life, Daphne embarks on her own investigation to find out what connects her to Sam’s murder. With the help of an alluring former-detective-turned-bookseller, she unravels a deadly cover-up on campus.

This well-crafted, voice-driven mystery introduces an unforgettable crime fiction heroine.

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Halley Sutton @halleysutton25

Brian Watson @readingwithbrian