reading
The Secret History‘s tragic flaw? Those Kids Are No Fun
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I recently reread Donna Tartt’s Dark Academia classic The Secret History—published 30 years ago this month—for the first time since I was a young identity-less Classics student myself. On…
The New York City Theater Where True Crime Was All the Rage…in the Early 19th Century
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Long before the doors opened, a crowd gathered outside the theater. Noisily, they bustled in, country folk and urban dandies alike, to find themselves good seats. The old mansion’s…
The Writer as Magpie
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I am not the kind of writer who finds every plot twist, detail of setting, and character description in my imagination. I am like a magpie when it comes…
The Backlist: Revisiting Vicki Hendricks’ ‘Miami Purity’ with Alex Segura
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I didn’t know what to expect from a novel called Miami Purity. Was it about nuns, or one of those creepy abstinence-only pledges for teens? I had no idea…
Bigfoot Is in the Woods, Our Hearts and Our Nightmares
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What pop culture figure of the 1970s had his own board game, guest-starred on “The Six Million Dollar Man” and terrorized backwoods campers with his screams in the night…
A Lovely Place to Die: Favorite Settings for a Charming Murder
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A twitching curtain conceals a pair of prying eyes. A friendly smile belies a litany of terrible sins. And eventually, someone is going to find a dead body on…
Texas: Home to Bizarre True Crimes (And So Many Serial Killers)
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True crime writers hold the state of Texas in special regard, not so much for the volume, or even variety, of newsworthy crimes committed there, but for the often…
Phonies: J.D. Salinger and Wielding Copyright as Self-Protection
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After J.D. Salinger published his story “Hapworth 16, 1924” in The New Yorker in 1965, he decided to stop publishing his works. Although he had resigned from his nearly…