Stephen Mitchell’s “The First Christmas”

As many of you know, I still review for the Boston Globe. I don’t share all my reviews, but this was a particularly timely book – a Zen take on the Nativity (with a gorgeous illustration). Read it online here. BOOK REVIEW Away in a manger in ‘The First...

Happy Jólabókaflóðið!

Iceland’s Jólabókaflóðið – which translates to “book flood” – is a great holiday born of necessity. Although this northern nation has a great literary history, its island location has at times left it isolated. In the lean years following World War...

Five compelling questions

That’s the name of Shawn Reilly Simmons’ podcast, and now I know it’s true. Shawn — an author and one of the brains behind the annual Malice Domestic traditional mystery festival — is super easy to talk to, and that means we authors tend to spill the...

Gina Arnold: The Monkees, music, and me

I read Gina Arnold long before I met her. When I was coming up as a music writer, in the ’80s, she was already an established critic, with bylines in Spin and the Village Voice. Somewhere in there — in between gigs with Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, and a...

What makes any of us victims? What made me?

(This ran in today’s Boston Globe, reprinted here in full.) ALEKSANDRA/ADOBE What makes a victim? This might seem like an odd question for a writer of crime fiction, where the emphasis is usually on the crime, if not the criminal. But, recently, as I branched...

Thankful

Maybe you’re celebrating with friends or family today or settling down with a beloved pet or a Hallmark movie. Maybe you’re out there on the front lines at a shelter or a protest, doing your bit to make this a better world. Wherever you are today,...