I have stories here from 2 different Best American Mystery & Suspense, but I’m not recommending either volume, since I didn’t read a lot of them. The stories seemed child-cruelty heavy or animal abuse heavy, and I’m not really into either of those things. And there’s some I’m not fond of the kind of noir in either of them. So it’s up to you if you get these two volumes. 

So here’s what I liked back in February…

February 2025

Bernier, Ashley-Ruth M., “Ripen,” The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2023,  edited by Lisa Unger, Mariner Books, 2023. When editors are lazy with the Best Americans and do not put the stories in any kind of reading order, the opening story is a real crapshoot. I’m always braced for something that does not give me any ideas as to the way the volume will go. As a result, I approach the first story with trepidation, and usually that trepidation is justified.

In this volume, though, the first story, “Ripen,” is well written, powerful, and memorable. I was happily surprised by the entire thing. The setting is rich, the characters vivid, and the story itself strong. Read this one.

Cho, Winston, “AI: The Ghost in Hollywood’s Machine,” The Hollywood Reporter, December 13, 2024. (This story online has a different title.) Fascinating piece that could have been written about any emerging technology, really. AI will change how business gets done all over the planet (is changing?), and Hollywood is no different. It will make some things easier to “film” such as massive crowd scenes (already is, in fact) but it might cost a lot of jobs. As in a lot of jobs. And the kind that normally don’t get taken by technological change…as in the jobs of creatives. I think we’ll see a lot of these articles in the future as we try to figure out how to live with this newest thing in our lives.

Cobo, Leila, “Guarding Celia Cruz’s Legacy,” Billboard January 11, 2025. Fascinating interview with Omer Pardillo, who manages the Celia Cruz estate. It’s about how he got the job, how he goes about maintaining the estate, and the heart of the estate. He lists where the revenue comes from. He says it’s mostly from recording royalties and brand partnerships. It’s really fun to see his joy at all of the success the estate’s been having. At one point, he states that it’s not bad for an artist who’s been dead for 21 years.

Cole, Alyssa, “Just a Girl,” The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2024, edited by S.A. Cosby, Mariner Books, 2024. This story, written as a series of online TikTok posts, DMs, texts, emails, and online articles, is devastating and heartbreaking and extremely powerful. Tiana, her first year in college during Covid, starts posting updates on TikTok, and gaining a following. She tries a dating app, encounters a gross guy, and calls his yuckiness out on her TikTok…and then he and his friends start going after her. Everything spirals after that. What’s amazing about this story is that you can see the joy leaching from this young woman as she realizes how terrible the world can be—and how dangerous it is for young beautiful women. Highly recommended.

Freimor, Jacqueline, “Forward,” The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2023,  edited by Lisa Unger, Mariner Books, 2023. Normally, I wouldn’t read a story that looked dense and difficult, but the format (and the footnotes) are the point of the story. It’s an amazing work of fiction, with a great reveal. Yes, it takes concentration to read it, but it’s really worthwhile.

McClintock, Pamela, “Ryan Reynolds Multitasks Like a Mofo,” The Hollywood Reporter,  December 13, 2024. There’s a lot of fascinating quotes in this interview with Ryan Reynolds, whom The Hollywood Reporter dubbed their Producer of the Year. He does a variety of things besides act, and seems to enjoy all of them. The quote I like the most is at the end:

…it’s all an emotional investment. If you can create emotional investment in anything, any brand, it creates a moat around that brand that really, I think, facilitates the resilience and allows it to weather the storms in the bad times. And yes, that’s the part I love.

I think I love it too, although not as much as actual writing and making things up. Still, lots of good stuff to think about in this interview.

Zeitchik, Steven,“The Other Rebuild,” The Hollywood Reporter, January 17, 2025. 2025 has been such a shitshow already it’s hard to remember that the LA Fires happened only a few months ago. We seem to be moving from tragedy to tragedy, heartbreak to heartbreak, every single day, and we lose track of what others have gone through. A number of my friends went through the fires and fortunately, in this round of the climate change blues, very few of them lost their homes. (I can’t say that about previous California fires.) But everyone’s mental health took a nosedive. Many moved to different digs in the same town while others are leaving their LA homes. It’s an ongoing tragedy, and this is a piece from the early days. Important.

I did start a book called Christmas in Nevada, which is all about the way Christmases were celebrated here up until about 10 years ago. I like it. I didn’t finish it, so I’m sure I’ll be reading more of it next year. (I stop my Christmas reading on Christmas Day, and move onto other things. Same with my Christmas playlists and so on and so forth. I don’t even make extra holiday desserts to get me from Christmas to the New Year. It’s like a valve switches off).

So, unusual for me, not a lot of holiday material to recommend. It’s a spare list this time, because some of what I read wasn’t something that I want to recommend. Here are the books and articles and stories that I do want to share.

December, 2021

Cumming, Alan, “‘We Started Drinking at Six’: Sparring and Slurring with Gore Vidal,” Vanity Fair, November, 2021. I’m not sure anyone knows who Gore Vidal is anymore, but he was a major literary figure when I was growing up, and one of the few openly gay writers of his generation. He was also an asshole, known for his growing viciousness as he drank. Alan Cumming and his then-boyfriend visited Vidal and his life partner, Howard Austen, on the Amalfi Coast, in Vidal’s legendary home. Cumming was young at that point and knew he was heading into a buzz saw. But he also knew he would be able to dine out on the experience forever.
The piece is an excerpt from Cumming’s memoir, which I think I have to have. The experience was very “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolfe,” which meant it was almost triggering for me, since Vidal and Howard acted like my parents. I guess that was a 1970s thing. Anyway, this is fascinating and sad at the same time. And very, very well written.

Davis, Sam, “A Christmas Carol: Nevada Style,” Christmas in Nevada, edited by Patricia D. Cafferata, University of Nevada Press, 2014. The Christmas in Nevada book starts with a short story written around 1870 or so, and tinkered with a few times. Cafferata says the version here is the original version (complete with some 19th century language). The story is about a saloon, looking for a piano player. A mysterious one shows up on Christmas. The story reminds me of Twain, and certainly shows how much he was influenced by his time here. The ending made me laugh out loud.

Deaver, Jeffrey, The Midnight Lock, Putnam, 2021. This book is exactly what I expected and hoped for in a Jeffrey Deaver book. Twists, turns, good characters, and a bit to think about. It wasn’t great Deaver, but comparing Deaver to Deaver isn’t fair. Comparing Deaver to other writers, well, he always keeps me turning pages. One thing was distracting for me: The villain (one of them) is WMG Media, meaning FOX news. Just not fair! This is a Lincoln Rhyme novel. There are better ones, but they always satisfy.

Gould, Emily, “The State of the Literary Jonathans,” Vanity Fair, September, 2021. This essay made me realize just how much time has passed. I remember all the scandals and other things she mentions with these writers. I also kept thinking they happened not too long ago. Nope. It kinda did my soul good to see one of these literary Jonathans called a has-been, only because he was such an asshole to deal with back in the day. (Yeah, I hold grudges. So what?) There were other things to mine here, and I did for my business blogs. But it’s worth reading just for her analysis.

McDermid, Val, 1979, Atlantic Monthly Press, 2021. I’ve been meaning to read Val McDermid for years. I tried about 25 years ago, and the problem was me. That year, I read and rejected a ton of authors I’m reading now. I was toward the end of editing The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and my critical voice was on so high that one slight irritation in the first chapter, and I was done with the author forever…or at least until the 21st century.

How, though, could I avoid a book set in 1979? A book about a young journalist just starting out? A book about a time period that I remember vividly and clearly McDermid does too.

She was a young journalist in Scotland at the time. I became a young journalist in Wisconsin the following year, even though I was still in college. The problems her character Allie Burns has were not the problems I had until I was established, years later. The news department at Wisconsin Public Radio treated me like an idiot on a joint project, even though I had more qualifications than most everyone in the room. And we won’t discuss what the city editor at the Eugene Register Guard did and said to me when I went to meet him over a freelance gig. I’m still mad at that man, and I told him off at the time.

Allie Burns is a lot less volatile than I was. She actually worked her job, put up with the crap, and out-thought the people who were trying to hold her down. Burns is an interesting character. The front part of the book irritated me because the subtitle is An Allie Burns Novel and in the beginning, the person doing everything was another cub reporter—a man. That changed, and changed dramatically later.

When I hit the middle of the novel, I was deeply entranced. I couldn’t put it down, and, like any good reader, I want the next one right now.

Ross, Dalton & Snierson, Dan, “Let’s Make A Christmas Movie! (Or Not)” Entertainment Weekly, December, 2021. This article is for everyone who has watched one of the roughly 150 Christmas movies that come out on Lifetime, Hallmark, Netflix and other channels, and thought, “I can do that!” EW “tasked” (their word) to write and pitch a holiday movie, which they did. Their experiences should be a lesson to all of you who want a career writing screenplays. Make sure you have a strong backbone and can take criticism. And stuff your know-it-all side into a closet somewhere. Really worth reading, for writers and non-writers alike.

Unger, Lisa, Last Girl Ghosted, Park Row Books, 2021. Lisa Unger was my discovery of the fall. The only author to be in both mystery year’s bests, with different stories that held my attention. So I decided to investigate her novels. This one sounded the most interesting. It was and is. I’m really not sure about the ending. I understand what she did and the point she was trying to make, and that’s the problem. It was a point. I don’t believe it organically. I’m not sure I believe anything organically from the moment our heroine makes a decision to ditch her phone. (You’ll see.) I read it though, and I couldn’t put it down, and I am picking up another book, and I was happy to learn that some of the characters in the Hollows are series characters, so something worked for me. Consider this a recommendation…with reservations.

Unknown, “Josephine and The Scary Santa: A Jarbridge Christmas,” Christmas in Nevada, edited by Patricia D. Cafferata, University of Nevada Press, 2014. While I love the Christmas in Nevada book, it’s also deeply irritating. I have no idea when or where some of these pieces came from, nor do I know who wrote them. It’s clear, from the different voices, that Cafferata did not write most of the summaries. They might be from newspapers, but which ones and when is pretty unclear, even from the introductions.

This particular true story is about how little Josephine Cooper and her family spent one Christmas in Jarbridge in the early 1920s. Very short, and very delightful.

Unknown, “The Richest Christmas: Snowbound on the Swallow Ranch,” Christmas in Nevada, edited by Patricia D. Cafferata, University of Nevada Press, 2014. This particular incident happened in 1923. Five-year-old Sheldon Olds lived on the ranch with his father, who worked there. A blizzard came in at Christmas time and no one could leave to celebrate, so the Swallows held a celebration for everyone stuck on the ranch.

Sheldon was particularly terrified because he and one of the Swallow children had actually set fire to some straw in the barn about a month before. They had to hide in the sheep dip to avoid punishment. This story is about the repercussions during his meeting with Santa. Charming little piece.

Weirdly, I can easily handle The Year’s Best Sports Writing 2020, because the essays were about sport and how sport made it through the year. There’s an amazing Armaud Arbery essay in the book which I initially read in Runner’s World, and there are other important essays about protests and politics and international relations and pandemic, pandemic, pandemic, but they’re not about the interior things that we all (or many of us) experienced. Those things I can’t face right now. So I put the book on my shelf next to the other volumes, which I’ve read, and maybe I’ll come back to it. Maybe not. I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready to relieve that year. Who would want to?

One other thing: I have always loved Runners World, even when I wasn’t running (just aspiring) because it is so inspirational. The articles have gotten even better over the last year, so I’d suggest you take a look.

I had less time than I wanted for reading. (I always have less time than I want.) But I did okay. Novels were a hard commit for me, so again, it was mostly short stories, which the list reflects.

Also, for those of you who love short stories and holiday reading, Dean has curated a Holiday Collections Storybundle, with over 70 short stories from some of my favorite authors. (Including him…and yeah, I’m there too.) So go get yours!

November, 2021

Beasley, Jared, “The Navajo Ultrarunner And The Irrepressible Border Collie Pup Who Saved Him,” Runners World, Issue 4, 2021. Runners World often highlights people who do amazing things and live amazing lives, especially in the face of adversity. Eli Neztsosie is one of them. He is an ultrarunner, but he learned how to do that all on his own, for his own reasons. Read the opening to this piece (it’s online). I dare you to stop after that first paragraph.

Broma, Peter, “The Bubble of a Dream,” The Year’s Best Sports Writing 2021, edited by Glenn Stout, Triumph Books, 2021.   Peter Broma decided, to try to qualify for the Olympics in the Marathon. He was thirty-something at the time, with a wife, kids, and a job. Most people who try for the Olympics spend their entire day at it. He didn’t have more than a few hours to give each day. The piece explores his dream, the way he pursued it, and the end result. I won’t spoil it for you, but the essay is one of the highlights of a very good book.

Burke, Alafair, editor, The Best American Mystery and Suspense Stories 2021,  Steph Cha, series editor, Mariner, 2021. Okay, this volume is a breath of fresh air. I loved so many stories in here (all listed in this month’s or last month’s recommended reading lists), and liked most of the others. I only disliked one, which I consider the beginning editor problem. It’s a story that relies on your knowledge of a book published forty-some years ago, a book which is different from the movie made from it. I read the book, forty-some years ago, and didn’t remember that part. An experienced editor might love the story, but realize just how limited the audience for it is. Other than that miss, the rest of the anthology is wonderful. Pick this one up this year. It’s one of the best in the series.

Clack, Cary, “The Bout,” The Year’s Best Sports Writing 2021, edited by Glenn Stout, Triumph Books, 2021.  We know a lot of the big sports stories. We also learn some of the major stories about people who courageously integrated something. But the smaller victories sometimes get lost. Cary Clack tells the tale of a boxer who wanted the right to fight white boxers in the state of Texas in the 1950s, so he went to court. The piece begins with the prize fight, but also gives us the journey to get there. I loved this article. Well done.

Faux, Zeke, “The Master Thief,” The Year’s Best Sports Writing 2021, edited by Glenn Stout, Triumph Books, 2021.  This is less of a story than it is a sports collecting story. Or maybe a sports revenge story. A man who considered himself a master thief and who might have held some bragging rights to the title, decided to steal Super Bowl rings. That’s just the beginning of this tale, which gets weird and twisted and interesting.

Koryta, Michael, editor,  When A Stranger Comes to Town, Hanover Square Press, 2021. This is the Mystery Writers of America anthology for 2021. It’s a solid book with some stellar stories. I only disliked one, rather intently, not because it’s a bad story, but it’s clearly just here for the author’s name. It doesn’t fit at all. Everything else works beautifully with the theme and gave me a good several hours of reading time. It will do the same for you.

Lawrence, Andrew, “Does Aliphine Have Your Attention Now?” Runners World, Issue 4, 2021. Aliphine Tuliamuk has competed under the radar for years, finally getting the attention of the mainstream sports press with her impressive runs in 2021. Her life is even more impressive. Read this.

Naymark, Emilya, “Exit Now,”  When A Stranger Comes to Town, edited by Michael Koryta, Hanover Square Press, 2021. When I came back to this book, I couldn’t remember the story from the title, but oh, the ending. Yeah. I remembered everything after glancing at that. So ignore the rather mundane title, and sink into a lovely, twisted story about fascinating people, and the stranger who interrupts their lives.

Okosun, Elizabeth, “What Lillian Green-Chamberlain Has Learned From A Lifetime of Running,” Runners World, Issue 4, 2021. Lillian Green-Chamberlain is the first African-American woman to represent the world internationally in the 400 and 800 meter runs, among other accomplishments. And she did this before the Civil Rights Act passed in 1964. After her running career ended, running did not. Nor did her impressive life. Another spectacular read from Runners World.

Snowden, Faye, “One Bullet, One Vote,” The Best American Mystery and Suspense Stories 2021, Alafair Burke, editor, Steph Cha, series editor, Mariner, 2021. Everyone in America needs to read this story. Everyone. It is an amazing slice of (true) history, but it also shows people at their very best (and others at their very worst). If I describe any more of it, I’ll spoil it. I will say this: the problem with reading in a crowded lunchroom is that when you react out loud to an amazing story, people give you the side eye. Yes, I had a real reaction to this in real time. Yes, that’s why I want you to read it. Now.

Stone, Jonathan, “Russkies,” When A Stranger Comes to Town, edited by Michael Koryta, Hanover Square Press, 2021. At some point, you’ll get ahead of this story, and you’re supposed to. That’s what makes it heartbreaking. I’m not going to say anymore. Just read and enjoy.

Stout, Glenn, The Year’s Best Sports Writing 2021, Triumph Books, 2021.  I loved this book. So much, in fact, that I was disappointed when it ended. As you can tell from all the recommendations both this month and last, I found a lot to highlight in this particular volume. Some of it is the 2020 perspective, as I mentioned above, but a lot of it is just so different and so riveting. I didn’t list some of my favorites because I recommended them when I read them in other venues, such as the piece on Ahmaud Arbery that originally appeared in Runner’s World. Even if you’re not a big sports fan, you will like this book. The only thing I didn’t like is that the paper version, which is the one I got, literally fell apart in my hands. I’m holding it now, careful not to lose half the pages. Minor quibble, though, for an exceptional volume.

Thompson, Nicholas, “The Nameless Hiker and the Case The Internet Couldn’t Crack,” The Year’s Best Sports Writing 2021, edited by Glenn Stout, Triumph Books, 2021.  A man went hiking, talking to a few folks, and was found dead in his tent weeks later. No i.d., nothing. No one knew who he was, although a lot of people had seen him. I got so wrapped up in this mystery that when I finished it, I immediately went to the original website to read the follow-up story. Which is sad. Fascinating stuff here.

Unger, Lisa, “Let Her Be,” The Best American Mystery and Suspense Stories 2021, Alafair Burke, editor, Steph Cha, series editor, Mariner, 2021. I don’t recall ever reading a Lisa Unger story before. I read two of them this month, and was impressed with both. This is the first one that I read. It’s a story about a young writer who was involved with a woman, but the relationship didn’t work. He stalks her on social media and…I can’t say much more. I figured out one major twist in the story; the other caught me by surprise. Plus the writing is stellar. I’m going to look for more of her work.

Unger, Lisa, “A Six-Letter Word For Neighbor,” When A Stranger Comes to Town, edited by Michael Koryta, Hanover Square Press, 2021. I read this Lisa Unger story a few days after the one above, and that encouraged me to pick up one of her novels (which I have not read yet). This story is lovely and subtle and breathtaking in its twists. It seems so straightforward…until it’s not. Very well done.