Carrie Vaughn

Carrie Vaughn is the New York Times bestselling author of more than twenty novels and over eighty short stories. She's best known for the Kitty Norville urban fantasy series about a werewolf who hosts a talk radio advice show for supernatural beings -- the series includes fourteen novels and a collection of short stories -- and the superhero novels in the Golden Age saga.

Vaughn's new novel is Martians Abroad.

Recently I asked the author about what she was reading. Her reply:

I don't have a to-be-read pile or shelf. I have an entire case. It's kind of nice, because no matter what I feel like reading next I can usually find something on that case to fit the bill, and books never go stale. Discovering a good book is always fun. Discovering one while also feeling the satisfaction of moving one more title off the to-be-read case is sublime. So, I've been playing catch up lately.

I'm trying to learn more about mystery -- it's a genre I just haven't read much of. So last week, my first read of the year, was Well-Schooled in Murder by Elizabeth George. I'm really enjoying George's Inspector Lynley series. I think it's a great demonstration of why so many mystery series are so popular: watching clever people solve difficult cases is all well and good, but the characters are really what keep us coming back. I worry about Lynley and Havers. I want to know more about them, and George is great about weaving together details of their personal lives through the tension of the murder investigation. These are also quite English books, and they remind me of my year abroad in York.

My current read is My Life in France by Julia Child and Alex Prud'homme. I was in the mood for some light but informative nonfiction, and this fits the bill exactly. Child is such a well-known figure in the cooking world, and in this book her personality really comes through. Moreover, she's incredibly engaged with whatever is going on around her, whether it's Parisian restaurant culture or the politics of the American Foreign Service, where her husband Paul was employed. I've been on my own learning-to-cook project for the last several years. I'm not as obsessed or ambitious as Child was (she talks early on about wanting to explain and demystify French cooking specifically for American audiences), and I never really felt an urge to try any of the recipes from her cookbooks. Well, now I kind of do. Just to make another connection with this great personality.

Learn more about the author and her work at Carrie Vaughn's website and Facebook page.

--Marshal Zeringue