Bookreporter.com Blog Posts

My Personal Hero

tom — Fri, 08 May 2026 13:58:14 +0000

Contributors

We wrap up this year’s Mother’s Day Author Blog series with Casey Sherman, whose latest book, THE KILLER AND FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT, releases on May 26th. Here, he delves beyond the myth of Frank Lloyd Wright's genius to reveal a man of relentless ambition, consuming passion and devastating loss. Throughout his career, Casey has shared the stories of many inspirational people. But his personal hero has been and always will be his mother, Diane Sullivan Dodd, whose love, support and guidance literally saved his life.

My mother would have turned 80 this May. We always celebrated her birthday on or close to Mother’s Day.

During my career, I've had the great fortune of writing about and sharing the stories of inspirational people. Among them are Coast Guardsman Bernie Webber, who captained the small lifeboat in a heroic rescue depicted in my book, THE FINEST HOURS, which was adapted as a Disney film; spectators who rushed into the smoke and fire at the Boston Marathon to save lives in my book, BOSTON STRONG, which became the movie Patriots Day; Pete Frates, the ALS survivor who took a virtual death sentence and used it as a rallying cry to save the world in my book, THE ICE BUCKET CHALLENGE; and Beatles legend John Lennon in the book I co-authored with James Patterson, THE LAST DAYS OF JOHN LENNON.

But my personal hero is and always will be my mum, Diane Sullivan Dodd, who protected me, supported me and even saved my life.

I lost my dad when he was 43 years old. I was in high school at the time, completely lost and headed down a dark path. My mother had experienced tremendous loss in her life and guided me through that painful time with a firm hand on my shoulder and nurturing advice.

Her sister, Mary Sullivan, was murdered by the so-called Boston Strangler in 1964. Mary was the youngest and final victim in that notorious murder case. She was frozen in time at 19 years old, but her younger sister, Diane (who was 17 at the time), had to carry on.

Despite this tragedy, my mother never saw herself as a victim. She shielded my brother and me from hardship, opened her own hairdressing shop on Cape Cod, and greeted each day with hope and a smile.

After my father’s sudden death, I became angry and rudderless. A month after his funeral, I got arrested for drunk driving. I was 17 years old.

Instead of bailing me out, my mum left me in a jail cell for hours where I experienced all the stages of grief seemingly at once: shock, sadness, outrage and, finally, acceptance.

When she picked me up from the police station, I was sober and truly focused for the first time in years.

"Mum, I need to leave Cape Cod," I said. "Everything here reminds me of dad, and I fear that I won’t survive. I’d like to go away to school.”

My mother was raising two boys on her own while running a small hair salon and would have to take on another job or two to make that happen.

She looked me in the eyes and asked me a simple question: “Casey, are you worth it?”

It was a question that I had to answer for myself. She wasn’t thinking about her own sacrifice and the cost of a private education. My mother was asking me to discover my own value.

“Yes, I am worth it,” I told her.

It was that fork-in-the-road moment in my life where my future could have been decidedly different.

I doubt that I would even be alive today to write this blog if she hadn't guided me down the right path.

When I became a professional journalist, I dispatched her across Cape Cod if I got word of a breaking story. She was one of the first to arrive at the Kennedy family compound after JFK Jr.’s plane went missing and convinced the neighbors, many of whom were her hairdressing customers, to speak to me for my news stories.

I had a nickname for her: Scoop Dodd from Cape Cod.

When I became an author, I would present each manuscript to my mum before passing it along to my editor. She would study each line with a red pen held firmly in her tiny hand. She marked up my prose like a true pro and always baked me an apple pie to make her criticism easier for me to swallow.

She was loving but firm, and she was right every time. Her recommendations made each of my books better.

The last book she pre-edited for me was my USA Today bestseller, A MURDER IN HOLLYWOOD. In fact, it was her idea that led me to approach Hollywood legend Lana Turner not as a femme fatale, but as a feminist hero, much like my mum.

I miss our conversations about writing and everything else we talked about. Most importantly, I miss the love she had for her grandchildren, Bella and Mia, along with my wife, Kristin, and me.

Happy Mother’s Day, mum. And Happy Birthday, too!

The Inheritance of Reading

tom — Thu, 07 May 2026 13:46:18 +0000

Contributors

Laurie Frankel

Laurie Frankel’s sixth book, ENORMOUS WINGS, is an exuberant and timely novel about female agency and bodily autonomy, morality and mortality. It’s about motherhood and family, sex and love and friendship, and how those bedrocks --- even so late in the day --- can still change, and then change everything. Laurie and her sister inherited a love of reading from their parents and grandmothers. They, in turn, have passed down their passion for books to their own children. Reading has been and always will be a family affair for Laurie and her loved ones. She wouldn’t have it any other way.

My grandmothers were readers. Both had teeming bookshelves and indulgent reading habits. The way other granddaughters inherit two sets of china or silver, I have crumbling heirloom Shakespeare editions passed down on both sides. When I slept over at their houses, my grandmothers read to me before bed. They were inclined to do so, but they wouldn’t have had a choice. Going to bed without stories would have seemed to me like going to bed without brushing my teeth. (This is still the case; the only difference now is that I read while brushing my teeth and honestly can’t imagine why everyone doesn’t.)

My grandmothers raised readers. My father is as left-brained as they come, mathematically gifted, tech-inclined, and an engineer by trade. But he still reads more --- mostly fiction --- than anyone I know (and that is saying something). My mother taught me to read. No doubt lots of mothers are the ones to teach their kids to read, but my mom taught many people to read. At the beginning and end of her career, she taught elementary schoolers to read. In the middle, for more than three decades, she taught college students to read: immigrants, refugees and English-language learners of all kinds, students with dyslexia and learning disabilities, students who somehow had fallen through the cracks and made it all the way to community college without learning how to read. You can imagine how in love they all were with my mom.

My parents also raised readers. My sister and I never go anywhere without a book. We married readers and are raising readers. As more kids grow up scrolling and replacing words with videos and AI-ing their homework, the ability to read critically and joyfully, to engage with a text for 10 hours instead of 10 seconds, to consume books instead of posts is nothing short of a superpower.

I worry that I sound smugly self-impressed here when in fact I feel the opposite. The readers who raised me, the ones who surround me, the one inside feel like nothing that I or my forebears get credit for. None of us chose or caused these readerly proclivities and dispositions. Rather, our family inclination towards books is clearly hereditary (and this despite my daughter being adopted). My very literate grandmother would say that we all came by our bookishness honestly. Readers beget readers. I have been lucky to spend my life surrounded by books, but even better (well, at least equally as good), I have been lucky to spend my life surrounded by people who read.

Changing the Narrative: On Dead Moms in Books

tom — Wed, 06 May 2026 13:48:49 +0000

Contributors

Caitlin Shetterly

Releasing on May 19th, THE GULF OF LIONS is a stand-alone sequel to acclaimed author Caitlin Shetterly’s PETE AND ALICE IN MAINE. Recovering from the trauma of breast cancer and a mastectomy, Alice takes a once-in-a-lifetime trip across France with her two daughters. During all the years of reading books to her children, Caitlin realized that there were so many stories where the mother was either dead or was dying. So when it came time to start writing THE GULF OF LIONS, she was determined to flip the script on this disconcerting trope. Six months after sending the novel off to her editor, Caitlin received shocking news and turned to her protagonist for some much-needed comfort.

Some of my coziest memories as a mother are of reading aloud to my two sons: a Saturday morning with my husband serving us breakfast in bed as my younger son and I finish THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE, or the time my older son and I read the final pages of the seventh and final Harry Potter book on a dock on a remote lake in Northern Maine, both of us laughing and crying at the same time. From their age zero on, my boys and I inhaled everything from the Brambly Hedge, Lyle Lyle Crocodile and Alfie books when they were younger to, eventually, WATERSHIP DOWN.

I believe he was in the seventh grade when my older son decided he didn’t want me to read to him anymore. I remember feeling heartbroken but also impressed that he had the chutzpah to just come out with it. But as his decision stuck, I realized that there was so much happening for me, and likely both of us, in those reading marathons, so letting go was hard. Thank goodness I had a younger child coming up the ranks: I could still perform all the British characters in OVER SEA, UNDER STONE one more time, I could cry once more while reading THE INCREDIBLE JOURNEY.

But if I'm honest, there was one thing that started to chafe at me during all those years of reading. I'd noticed that in many, many books, the mother was often disconcertingly dead or dying. My sons liked to tease me about it. “Oh here comes another dead mother,” I'd announce. They would chuckle and say something like, “Lucky kid, no mom!” Then we'd forge ahead into THE SECRET GARDEN, THE WOLVES OF WILLOUGHBY CHASE or even CHARLOTTE’S WEB --- the most perfect book ever written and also the most devastatingly heartbreaking book ever written.

Over time, I was becoming a little tired of this trope (and I have a feeling it made my sons uneasy, too).

So when I started my latest novel, THE GULF OF LIONS, I found myself thinking back on movies and shows I'd watched as an adult, like Terms of Endearment, “The Big C” and, more recently, Dying for Sex. I thought about the newer adult novels, too. I realized that no matter where I looked, it seemed that when there's a mother dying from anything --- but especially the most popular mode of death, breast cancer --- she's terminal.

This didn’t make sense to me. I Googled it and found that the data doesn't support it. Many more women actually survive than die from breast cancer. About four million women are currently surviving breast cancer, compared to around 40,000 who will die from it. So, in the fall of 2023, I set out to write a book about a mother of two girls named Alice who not only survives breast cancer but thrives --- if messily, clumsily and full of flaws. (My own grandmother had died from breast cancer when I was three. So I also had a personal reason for changing the narrative.)

As I wrote, I asked myself: What would a woman who's busy living her "one wild and precious life" go do? My answer came while traveling across France with my husband and sons: Obviously, she'll go to France. Once I had that, the story poured out of me: France, the wine and food, the cafés and sunlight, the Pyrenees and Mediterranean, Alice's fear giving way to joy. It was all so vivid, so tactile. I felt good when I sent the book off in the fall of 2024.

Six months later, it was a cold spring morning in 2025 when a nurse practitioner called me to deliver the news: I had the exact same cancer, in the exact same breast, that I had given my narrator, Alice.

At that moment, so many terrible things were happening in America and across the globe that my cancer felt like a mere footnote.

But as the week wore on, the undeniable shock of it, the shattered division between myself and my main character --- well, I had never experienced anything like that before. It seemed like the only person who could truly understand what I was going through was Alice, my fictional friend.

I have long believed, and told my sons, that we can find our best friends in books. If the author has done their job correctly, stories can make us all feel less alone and deeply validated.

Over last summer, as I went through radiation and began Tamoxifen, I found myself thinking about my own character, Alice. If she could rise up like a phoenix and seize her life, then so could I, I told myself. I needed to get busy at the surviving part for as long as I had.

I wrote THE GULF OF LIONS for all the moms who are enduring all kinds of small and large trials; all the moms who see themselves represented as ill or dying when they read aloud to their kids; all the moms who find their doppelgängers dying when they put on Netflix after their kids are in bed. I wrote it to say: “I see you, you're still here. You are not a footnote in a story. You are the story.”

Library Saturdays

tom — Tue, 05 May 2026 14:36:35 +0000

Contributors

Marie Benedict

Marie Benedict is back with her latest work of historical fiction, DAUGHTER OF EGYPT, a sweeping tale of a young woman who unearths the truth about a forgotten pharaoh --- rewriting both of their legacies forever. As a child, Marie always looked forward to spending Saturday mornings with her mother at the library, where a treasure trove of books awaited her.

Saturday mornings. First one through the library door the minute it opened. Racing to the circulation desk. Hands outstretched to receive the stack of books carefully selected for me. My mother hard on my heels.

This weekend ritual was one organized by my mom. As a wildly precocious reader who also was the oldest of six children, I was a voracious consumer of books, and it was no easy task for my parents to keep me in them. But with great diligence and care, my mother and our children’s librarian orchestrated this weekly rite.

Carrying that tall, teetering stack of books, my mom and I would return home on those Saturday mornings. There, on the kitchen table, I would fan out the expertly curated choices. I would stare down at a mystery or two, a history book, the next installment in a fantasy series, and at least one harrowing tale of adventure. My mom would ask, “Where will you begin?” And I would start to turn the pages.

My Mother, the Octopus, and Me

tom — Mon, 04 May 2026 15:50:38 +0000

Contributors

Casey Scieszka

THE FOUNTAIN, Casey Scieszka’s debut novel, blends the spectacular with the everyday in a tale about eternity and mortality that asks what it would mean to live forever. Casey’s mother developed an appreciation for the octopus after watching a documentary and reading Sy Montgomery’s bestseller about this surprisingly complex creature. Years later, another book about an octopus would take on an even greater and deeper meaning for Casey and her mother.

My mother is not an “animal person.” But at some point in her 60s, she watches a documentary about octopuses that leads her to pick up THE SOUL OF AN OCTOPUS by Sy Montgomery, which leads to a lifelong swearing off of ever eating octopus again.

She tells me about how good they are at camouflage and escaping, as well as their general intelligence, all three of their hearts and nine brains, and the tastebuds in their suckers. Now I am impressed by this creature but also baffled by my mother’s enthusiasm because it feels so out of character. After all, I’ve seen her pet a dog maybe 10 times in my whole life. But her love persists, and suddenly I cannot bring myself to eat octopus either, if only because it would feel like such a betrayal of her.

About a decade passes, and my mother is eventually, devastatingly --- after several years of mysterious symptoms and pain --- diagnosed with a rare and terminal brain disease. It will rob her of just about every physical and mental ability, and the previously slow, downward tilt of her quality of life is suddenly a shockingly rapid landslide of loss. She decides to participate in Oregon’s Medical Aid in Dying program for the terminally ill. So during an already excruciating time, my father and I uproot with her for what will be her final month.

We juggle hospice appointments and a staggering amount of bureaucratic details, pain medication, and so many different kinds of goodbyes. I have left my husband and two small children back home in the Catskill Mountains. So at night, my solace will be books. I usually read about two a week, so I have arrived with a stack. But I also make near daily pilgrimages to Powell’s Books and scour the titles for stories that will speak to me, hold me, and remind me that I am not alone in facing a moment like this. But maybe not too much, because if I’ve ever needed some literary escapism, it’s now.

However, I struggle with every single one of them in a way I never have before. They sit in stacks on my hotel nightstand, not even half-read.

Meanwhile, my mother can no longer move around easily on her own. So during the day, in between her various appointments, she is usually perched in a chair, on a couch, or even tucked into bed, depending on how bad her chronic headache is. It is, from the outside, the perfect opportunity to read, something she always has loved to do --- big names in fiction, dishy mysteries, anything and everything by Carl Hiaasen.

Except she can’t. And not because she, like me, is having a hard time finding her Goldilocks tale for this moment. It literally is too difficult for her to read a book; it’s too hard on her distressed eyes and pounding head. Even holding a book for a long period of time can prove difficult.

For a brief moment, I consider reading aloud to her the way she used to read to me when I was little --- bedside stories, chapter by chapter --- but I know instantly that I will not be able to trust my voice to hold for an entire book. The full cycle-ness of this --- her having cared for me these ways that I now care for her --- will at some points be too much for me to read through. Besides, I want her to enjoy a book on her own, when I’m off answering emails or sorting lunch or doing any of the other things she once could do for herself so easily.

The answer, of course, is obvious: audiobooks.

I ask friends and the internet for the best ones of the year. I play my mother samples of narrators’ voices, but none of them are to her particular taste. All the while, I try not to think too hard about the fact that this will be the last book she ever experiences. We are doing so many “lasts” right now.

And then, scrolling through a digital library, I spot it:

REMARKABLY BRIGHT CREATURES by Shelby Van Pelt. The one with the beautiful, bright orange creature on the cover: an octopus.

A few days before her chosen death day, my mother and I sit in two big armchairs by a rain-streaked window and listen to it together. She leans back, eyes closed, face relaxed in a peaceful half-smile. She has been listening mostly on her own, so I have to make guesses at who certain characters are and what has happened so far, but I don’t care. I am not really listening anymore. I am only watching her, the same way I used to when I was small. Which is to say unabashedly, with a deep and personal curiosity and love, wondering what it’s like where she is ahead of me in this Timeline of Being a Woman. When I was young, it was adulthood, something I envied and craved but also feared a little. Now, it is the end of life.

She breathes slowly and evenly, but she’s rubbing her thumbs in small circles together so I know that while she might be drifting, she is still awake. Still with me for now. Still loving me and the remarkable octopus.

Reading MIDNIGHT, AT THE WAR on Mother’s Day

tom — Fri, 01 May 2026 14:13:15 +0000

Contributors

Devi S. Laskar

We are kicking off this year’s Mother’s Day Author Blog series with Devi S. Laskar. Her third novel, MIDNIGHT, AT THE WAR, is about a reporter chasing the biggest story of her career as she contends with a tense newsroom, a dangerous global conflict, and all the problems she’s running away from at home. The book’s release has been bittersweet for Devi, as she explains in this heartwarming tribute to her family of voracious readers. She is especially eager to hear what her mother thinks of her latest work.

This little girl loved to be read to --- and later, to read herself. GREEN EGGS AND HAM and THE GIVING TREE were among her favorites. She was especially delighted when she was introduced to timeless classics like WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE and CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY.

Years later, she devoured ISLAND OF THE BLUE DOLPHINS, BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA and the Earthsea Trilogy, and relished talking about new books in her English classes. She wrote her first poem at the age of nine and her first short story at 11. She loved poetry and filled a slate gray journal with her words. When she visited India in the summers, her grandparents gave her Mahabharata and Ramayana comic books.

As she grew older, this little girl wept over TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, BELOVED, THE COLOR PURPLE and THE HOUSE ON MANGO STREET --- and, many years later, over the first drafts of her own novel, THE ATLAS OF REDS AND BLUES. By the time her debut was published, she grieved the loss of much of her own work, lost nine years earlier through no fault of her own.

She took a few recovered pages from a quarter century before and rewrote and reimagined them into a story that became her second novel, CIRCA, all the while reading and rereading books like LEAVING YUBA CITY, THE BUDDHA IN THE ATTIC, AS I LAY DYING, EUPHORIA, CITIZEN, THE BOOK OF LIGHT, THE SECRET HISTORY, and I, THE DIVINE: A Novel in First Chapters.

This little girl --- now grown, and after years working as a newspaper reporter in the United States --- channeled the outrage she had felt watching TV news for 25 years after September 11th into her third novel, MIDNIGHT, AT THE WAR. She still carried with her the influence of books like INVISIBLE CITIES, MAO II, MIDAQ ALLEY, THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS and THE STORY OF ZAHRA.

Decades before, while she was a graduate student, she lost her beloved father-in-law to cancer. In the years between her first and third novel, she lost her dear father, also to cancer, and then her wonderful mother-in-law.

This Mother’s Day will be the first time my mother is the only one of the four parents --- my parents and my beloved in-laws --- alive to read my new book. At the heart of MIDNIGHT, AT THE WAR is a story about love and grief, facts and truth, and the bond between a daughter and her mother.

Reading has always been a family affair. I grew up in a family that loved books, in both English and Bengali, and I married into a family equally devoted to reading and the arts.

I grew up in a college town in North Carolina in the 1960s and ’70s. I have fond memories of the public library and of my parents, who instilled in me a love of reading along with a sense of autonomy and independence. I still remember my father showing me the bus route, placing the correct change in my hand, and sending me off to the public library so I could attend after-school programs on my own.

My parents had many obligations to their families back in India, yet when the Scholastic Book Fair came to my school, they never hesitated. I would come home with a cardboard box full of books and disappear into strange and wonderful worlds for hours.

I had a great language arts teacher in elementary school, Mrs. Heath, who encouraged a love of poetry and literature and introduced us to an eclectic range of voices. Years later, when I married into my husband’s family, my father-in-law started a book club with me. It was just the two of us --- voracious readers --- plowing through everything from westerns to vampire novels, science fiction to “classics,” that neither of us had read before.

After his death, my mother-in-law took up the mantle. She was as steadfast a supporter of my writing as my own mother. Both women were deeply encouraging, though they balked --- like proper immigrant mothers --- at my lack of restraint in bookstores. I am always buying more books than I could ever finish in two lifetimes. All three of the remaining parents were so proud when my debut novel, THE ATLAS OF REDS AND BLUES, was published in 2019.

My father and I corresponded in verse for decades, exchanging thoughts on everything from poetry to creative nonfiction, journalism, biographies and, of course, novels. He was always reading, whether academic texts or Rabindranath Tagore, and was constantly composing poetry himself.

I regret that Baba did not have a chance to read MIDNIGHT, AT THE WAR, but he knew I was writing and revising the story in the months before he died, and I take comfort in that. It has been bittersweet to see my new novel out in the wild. I’m especially looking forward to hearing what my mother --- now reading on behalf of all four parents --- will think of it.

The Voyage of RAISE THE TITANIC! 50 Years On

tom — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 17:32:54 +0000

Contributors

Michael Barson

Clive Cussler was the author of more than 70 books in five bestselling series, beginning with THE MEDITERRANEAN CAPER, the opening installment in the Dirk Pitt adventure series, which debuted in 1973.

A second Dirk Pitt novel followed, but it was the third one --- RAISE THE TITANIC! --- that paved the way for a new level of success. The book reached number two on the New York Times bestseller list following its publication on October 26, 1976, and Clive’s career would never be the same again.

Over the five decades that followed, Clive’s novels appeared on the national bestseller charts dozens of times featuring an array of his colorful and resourceful protagonists. In 2004, the Dirk Pitt adventure BLACK WIND welcomed Clive’s son, Dirk, as coauthor of the series for the first time. Today, Dirk Cussler remains the architect of the Pitt franchise, with Clive having passed away in 2020.

In this interview, longtime Cussler fan Walter Winterburn, who now oversees the Facebook operations of the Clive Cussler Collector’s Society, talks to Michael Barson --- Clive’s primary publicist at Putnam from 1999 to 2015 --- about the publishing history of the groundbreaking RAISE THE TITANIC! as it celebrates its 50th anniversary year.

And many thanks to Cussler fan Mike Branigan for providing counsel, along with illustrations from his splendid collection, some of which you can see on this page.

Question: What was the standing of Clive Cussler in the world of adventure novels prior to the publication of RAISE THE TITANIC! in 1976? Were his first few Dirk Pitt novels considered commercial successes?

Walter Winterburn: The publication of ICEBERG was only around 5,000 copies, with an estimated 3,200 sold, many of which went to libraries. THE MEDITERRANEAN CAPER, published as a mass market paperback, was around 45,000 printed, with a reported 30,000 sold. So I don't believe they were all that successful, especially after the publisher Dodd, Mead & Co. turned down RAISE THE TITANIC!, in part due to Publishers Weekly at that time saying that sales in Fiction were lagging.

Q: As far as you are aware, did Viking, the publisher of RAISE THE TITANIC!, position it as anything special for its release on October 26, 1976?

WW: Once Viking decided to go with the book, it is apparent from correspondence between Clive and the publisher that they made a big deal out of promoting it. There was a promotion package consisting of a book cover poster, a biography of Clive, and a synopsis/write-up about the book. In addition, hard copies were sent, requesting the book to be reviewed --- a large media push, though not all reviews were favorable! --- along with a promotional card for sellers to request orders. According to the ARC (advance reader copy) notes, there was a $40,000 advertising campaign and a first printing of 65,000.

Q: Once the book was published, was there an immediate reaction to it on the part of the review media and/or the book-buying public? Or was it more of a slow build over a period of time?

WW: Wayne Valero’s essential history of Cussler publications says that the book sold 150,000 copies in its first two printings. This was evidenced by it being number two by the end of January 1977 on the New York Times bestseller list, where it stayed for 24 weeks. At this point, Clive could claim to be the author of a true national bestseller.

Q: Did Clive himself regard RAISE THE TITANIC! as something special at the time? Or was it more or less equal to his other Dirk Pitt adventures in his eyes?

WW: After the rejection from Dodd, Mead, he and his agent were a little set back. They tried a few other publishers, with Clive eventually signing with Viking. So it became very apparent that Viking saw the potential, even to go as far as to change the title from TITANIC to RAISE THE TITANIC! and with very little editing.

Q: With the benefit of having 50 years hindsight now, how do you regard the book when compared to the dozens of subsequent Pitt novels that followed over the years?

WW: Personally, I still enjoy reading it. Over time, you see how Clive matured in his writing, even setting his own standard of no cursing/foul language and not bogging down the reader with too much technical jargon. However, it has been noted that some modern-day readers have a hard time separating fact from fiction, with the most common statement being: The ship was found in two pieces.

Q: Do you find that RAISE THE TITANIC! is held in special regard today by Clive’s enormous fan base? If so, what are the qualities it possesses that might account for that?

WW: RAISE THE TITANIC! set the tone and established the formula for all future Dirk Pitt novels --- a historical prologue, the "What if" scenario, an epically evil bad guy who has a need for some object or artifact, and for our hero Pitt to save the world from that villainy against all odds. This is what I believe established Clive as one of our premier action/thriller adventure writers for so many decades.

“Bookaccino Live” Special Event: Bookreporter Reviewers Share Their Favorite Books of 2025

tom — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 22:48:32 +0000

On Wednesday, December 10th, we hosted our year-end “Bookaccino Live” event featuring eight Bookreporter reviewers: Sarah Rachel Egelman, Megan Elliott, Harvey Freedenberg, Pamela Kramer, Bronwyn Miller, Rebecca Munro, Norah Piehl and Stuart Shiffman. Each talked about two of their favorite books of 2025.

Kate Ayers and Ray Palen, who have appeared on previous programs, were not able to join us live. But we showed Ray’s presentation on video, and we shared Kate’s picks, along with brief excerpts from her reviews of those books.

Click here to watch the event or here to listen to the podcast. A list of the featured titles, along with their covers, can be found here. We loved hearing about the books that especially resonated with these reviewers. Their enthusiasm showed in their presentations, all of which were fabulous!

You can check out more 2025 faves from these reviewers and many others in Bookreporter's annual Reviewer Picks feature. See which of their fiction and nonfiction selections you agree or disagree with --- and which titles you may want to add to your 2026 reading lists or discuss with your group.

The Best Gift

tom — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 15:03:05 +0000

Contributors

Terah Shelton Harris

We wrap up this year’s Holiday Author Blog series with Terah Shelton Harris, whose latest work of fiction, WHERE THE WILDFLOWERS GROW, releases on February 17th. This poignant story of survival and redemption questions what it means to stop existing and start living. In 2023, Terah gave her friend a copy of her debut novel, ONE SUMMER IN SAVANNAH. Read on to find out why she considers it to be the best book she has ever gifted.

As a former librarian, I gift books all the time. Where’s the story in one friend gifting a book to another friend? But in 2023, I was able to gift my friend a copy of my first novel, ONE SUMMER IN SAVANNAH. And it allowed me to gift her more than just a book.

It started several years ago, when I shared with my friend that I wanted to write a book about forgiveness. Months prior, after a lack of interest from publishers and agents, I had shelved my first manuscript and vowed never to write again.

But that’s not the way life works, especially when you’re called to do something. I’ve fumbled through so many aspects of my life, questioning decision after decision. But the one decision I’ve never questioned was my calling to be a writer. I’ve always known that’s what I was supposed to do. And you can’t make that feeling go away because you tell it to.

Slowly, that itch returned. Instead of ignoring it, I leaned in and opened my heart and mind to the idea of writing another book. This time, I would wait for the inspiration to hit.

That inspiration came after the 2015 Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church shooting in Charleston, South Carolina. After the parishioners fed him and prayed for him, a man shot and killed nine of them. Days after that terrible tragedy, before they buried their loved ones, some of the survivors and relatives of those killed walked into a South Carolina courtroom and forgave the murderer. At the moment, I realized I knew nothing about forgiveness and decided to explore that by writing a book that challenged readers on the definition of forgiveness and what it truly means to forgive.

I shared this with my friend, telling her that I had a theme but not a plot. She turned to me and said, “I have a story for you.” She told me something about her that I never knew: that she conceived a child following a sexual assault. At the end of her story, she said, “And I practice the act of forgiveness every day.” With those words, I knew I had my story. That story became ONE SUMMER IN SAVANNAH.

Two years later, just before Christmas, with tears in my eyes, I gifted her a copy of the book she inspired me to write. I was able to gift her story. We cried over the book, proud I had gotten published. More importantly, we cried that not only was she finally able to tell her story, but that so many readers had (and continue to have) such a wonderful response to it.

It is by far the best book I have ever gifted.

Books and Ballet Shoes

tom — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 15:22:24 +0000

Contributors

Brisa Carleton

Set amongst the glittering backdrop of London's iconic Savoy hotel, LAST CALL AT THE SAVOY is Brisa Carleton’s debut novel and a Bookreporter.com Bets On selection. In it, a young woman is forced to confront her troubled past as she uncovers the story of the hotel’s first female bartender who has been erased from the history books. In her holiday blog post, Brisa explains how reading THE NUTCRACKER and performing in her town’s ballet production of E. T. A. Hoffmann’s classic tale ignited her passion for the theater and led to an award-winning career as a Broadway producer.

As a child, I spent every December immersed in THE NUTCRACKER. Before I ever pirouetted onstage in our town’s ballet production, I had already lived inside the story through E. T. A. Hoffmann’s tale. I read it again and again, letting my imagination set the scene long before the curtain ever rose. The words gave the choreography a wider world to belong to. They made the stage feel larger than our modest sets could ever suggest.

The first notes of Tchaikovsky’s overture became my doorway into that world. Each year that overture signaled the beginning of the season. I still play it at the start of every December. The music carries me back instantly, the same way it did when I was a girl tying my toe shoes in the wings. It brings back the discipline of rehearsal and the quiet anticipation before stepping onstage, but it also brings back the world I first entered in the pages of the book.

That early blend of reading and dance shaped something fundamental in me and likely led me toward a life in the theater. I learned that the page invites the mind to imagine without limits. The stage turns that imagination into something you can see and feel. Together, they create a way of experiencing a story that is both inward and expansive. I did not have the language for it then. I only knew that the story felt different after I had read it and deeper after I had danced it.

Now, even though my little toe shoes no longer fit and that original copy of THE NUTCRACKER is gone, the moment the overture begins, I am there again. Back in the land of sugarplum fairies and princes. Back in the dreamscape that lets THE NUTCRACKER leap off the page for me every year.