Why am I passionate about this?

All my life, I’ve been fascinated by interest-driven people and the subcultures they discover or form around themselves. Though my writing ranges from mainstream literary work to music criticism to speculative fiction in many different flavors, I’m best known for what one longtime reader referred to as my “oddly personable brand of horror.” Call them people-and-their-ghosts stories. I’ve written six novels and four collections, which have earned me the Shirley Jackson and International Horror Guild Awards, among other honors. I’ve also taught writing at the graduate, university, and secondary level for more than 25 years.


I wrote

Infinity Dreams

By Glen Hirshberg,

Book cover of Infinity Dreams

What is my book about?

In my most recent book, a novel-in-stories called Infinity Dreams, two insatiably curious, instinctively solitary people, Nadine and Normal…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of 84, Charing Cross Road

Glen Hirshberg Why did I love this book?

A memoir in letters about a solitary writer in mid-century New York corresponding with the proprietor and staff of a used book shop in London, from whom she orders inexpensive but attractive copies of mostly classics over a period of decades. Even more, it’s a memoir of relationships that develop as a consequence (all through letters; the principals never meet in person). There are so many reasons I love it. For one thing, Helene Hanff collects, rather than accrues. She’s not in it for the First Editions (which doesn’t mean she can’t appreciate decent paper or proper weight or used book smell); she’s in love with the words, and the way they seem to make her feel more like a fellow human being than her interactions with actual people do. There is the natural infusion, over a period of years, of not just incidental details of lives being lived but the personalities of the correspondents. But it’s the language, and the vessels that contain it, that ferry Hanff back and forth between the private world she treasures and the baffling, teeming, everyday one. The most precise and painful evocation of the very real joys of a certain kind of loneliness that I’ve ever encountered.

By Helene Hanff,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked 84, Charing Cross Road as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"Those who have read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, a novel comprised of only letters between the characters, will see how much that best-seller owes 84, Charing Cross Road." -- Medium.com

A heartwarming love story about people who love books for readers who love books

This funny, poignant, classic love story unfolds through a series of letters between Helene Hanff, a freelance writer living in New York City, and a used-book dealer in London at 84, Charing Cross Road. Through the years, though never meeting and separated both geographically and culturally, they share a charming, sentimental friendship…


Book cover of Ways to Disappear

Glen Hirshberg Why did I love this book?

Emma, the bored and restless translator into English of the works of a reclusive, once-celebrated Brazilian author, learns that the author has disappeared. On impulse, and uninvited, Emma ducks out of her Pittsburgh life and a relationship she has tired of, jets off to Brazil, and insinuates herself into the ongoing investigation into what has happened. Less a detective story than a constantly unfolding act of decoding—like Helene Hanff, Emma seems to have an easier time coaxing layered meaning out of words than interpreting gestures or interactions with actual people—Ways to Disappear is packed with doubts about humanity but soul-deep love of books, Brazil, and the process of translation. (Novey herself has translated the brilliant and enigmatic Clarice Lispector.) This being 21st Century American lit, the relationships that form feel less stable, healthy, and sustainable. And yet, in indulging her fascination with the mysteries of other places and languages and literary lives and layers of meaning, Emma keeps accidentally rediscovering and reengaging with the mysteries of the people right in front of her.

By Idra Novey,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Ways to Disappear as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Winner of the Sami Rohr Prize in Fiction

Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for First Fiction

NPR Best Book of 2016
Buzzfeed Best Debut of 2016
BUST Magazine Best Book of 2016

Winner of the 2016 Brooklyn Eagles Literary Prize for Fiction

New York Times Editors' Choice

2016 Barnes & Noble Discover selection

"An elegant page-turner....Charges forward with the momentum of a bullet." --New York Times Book Review

For fans of Robin Sloan's Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore and Maria Semple's Where'd You Go, Bernadette, an inventive, brilliant debut novel about the disappearance of a famous Brazilian novelist…


Book cover of The Garden of Evening Mists

Glen Hirshberg Why did I love this book?

Maybe more hopeful about the redemptive power of re-engagement, this beautiful book employs eloquent language to evoke a passion and a way of interacting involving almost no words whatsoever. In Malaysia in 1949, a prosecutor of Japanese war criminals arrives at the gates of the Emperor’s former chief gardener, seeking reparation (and maybe revenge) for the death of her sister in a prisoner-of-war camp. The story itself is sweeping in scope, but the narration stays quiet, and the real core of the book is the spell cast by the building and walking of Japanese gardens on the understandably embittered protagonist and her enigmatic target/mentor. In immersing us in the lore of and techniques for the gentle framing of space, Eng provides his characters (and us) with new contexts for making sense of and coming to a sort of peace with human behavior, monstrous and otherwise.

By Tan Twan Eng,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked The Garden of Evening Mists as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Malaya, 1951. Yun Ling Teoh, the scarred lone survivor of a brutal Japanese wartime camp, seeks solace among the jungle-fringed tea plantations of Cameron Highlands. There she discovers Yugiri, the only Japanese garden in Malaya, and its owner and creator, the enigmatic Aritomo, exiled former gardener of the emperor of Japan. Despite her hatred of the Japanese, Yun Ling seeks to engage Aritomo to create a garden in memory of her sister, who died in the camp. Aritomo refuses but agrees to accept Yun Ling as his apprentice "until the monsoon comes." Then she can design a garden for herself.…


Book cover of Wylding Hall

Glen Hirshberg Why did I love this book?

Nothing ultimately redemptive or reconnective happens in the bucolic English country house where the wayward members of Windhollow Faire, a drug-addled early ‘70s folk-rock ensemble very much in the Fairport Convention mold, meet to write and record a new album. These people are spinning away from each other and out of control at different speeds and toward their own ends—not all of them tragic—and nothing that happens in this sun-dappled but crumbling and very possibly haunted shambles is going to slow or reverse that. But, what they do share—what they create, or stumble into, seemingly just by being near each other—is that accidental alchemy through which great bands produce something exponentially more transcendent than any of their members will ever manage individually. This is a ghost story, in the end, and some of it is truly scary—best and most terrifying use of birds since The Birds—but it’s also a paean to the wildest magic humans may ever touch or know: the kind they make together.

By Elizabeth Hand,

Why should I read it?

7 authors picked Wylding Hall as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

After the tragic and mysterious death of one of their founding members, the young musicians in a British acid-folk band hole up at Wylding Hall, an ancient country house with its own dark secrets. There they record the classic album that will make their reputation but at a terrifying cost, when Julian Blake, their lead singer, disappears within the mansion and is never seen again. Now, years later, each of the surviving musicians, their friends and lovers (including a psychic, a photographer, and the band s manager) meets with a young documentary filmmaker to tell his or her own version…


Book cover of Too Many Cooks

Glen Hirshberg Why did I love this book?

Really, almost anything in the Nero Wolfe/Archie Goodwin series would fit here. A lazy, blustering, brilliant recluse, Nero Wolfe is perpetually badgered, kicking and grumbling, back toward humanity either by his passions—American cuisine, beer, books, orchids—or by Archie, his leg-man/lacky/surrogate son. I picked this specific novel because it involves a murder amid a gathering of world-class chefs; the cooking banter alone is worth the price of admission (which will be cheap; how and why have these books somehow fallen off our collective cultural radar??). None of Nero’s adventures among his fellow human beings make him want to venture out of the fortress he has made for himself inside his Manhattan brownstone. But they’ll make you want to hole up in his company. The man himself thinks he just wants to be left alone with his interests and comforts. But what he creates and relies on to sustain him feels pretty damn close to a family. 

By Rex Stout,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Too Many Cooks as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

As Nero Wolfe prepares to speak at a gathering of the world’s great chefs, one is found indelicately murdered. When the target for killing shifts to himself, the great detective must close this case quickly or his next meal may be his last.

World-class cuisine, charming company . . . The secret ingredient is poison.

Everyone knows that too many cooks spoil the broth, but you'd hardly expect it to lead to murder. But that's exactly what's on the menu at a five-star gathering of the world's greatest chefs. As guest of honor, Wolfe was lured from his brownstone to…


Explore my book 😀

Infinity Dreams

By Glen Hirshberg,

Book cover of Infinity Dreams

What is my book about?

In my most recent book, a novel-in-stories called Infinity Dreams, two insatiably curious, instinctively solitary people, Nadine and Normal (aka the Collector), sustain a decades-long romance neither of them expected largely through a shared love of prowling the more arcane corners of the collecting universe. Far from antique shops or garage sales or flea markets, they help (or sometimes thwart) people who collect everything from maps of places that may not exist to lost tastes. They also keep bumping up against an elusive and increasingly dangerous sense of something fraying at the edges of what we insist on calling reality. And they keep rediscovering each other.

Here are five more books I love about obsessive people pursuing their interests and incidentally discovering possible bridges back toward others.

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The Widow Maker

By Janet Fix, Cheryl Bradshaw,

Book cover of The Widow Maker

Janet Fix Author Of The Broken Soul

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

Writer, reader, editor, reviewer, publisher… those are all parts of me. With a lifetime of experience in the “words” industry, I have a pretty good handle on what makes a book not just good, but hot. I say this with the understanding that each reader brings their own histories to the reading experience, and what one person may like, another may not. Nonetheless, I offer you my professional and personal favorites in the mystery/thriller/suspense categories. It is my sincere hope that you find these books as addictive as I’d found them. Superb and clever writing, engaging characters, unpredictable plots—yes, please! Though I occasionally step outside my comfort zone, I'm consistently drawn back to these categories. 

Janet's book list on intriguing whodunits

What is my book about?

Liza O’Connell was a horror buff in every sense of the word. But there was one deadly nightmare she would never be able to talk about … her own. A friend murdered. A business in trouble. A marriage struggling to survive. And that’s just the beginning. 

When salon owner Carrie King discovers Liza dead in the back room of her shop, everyone becomes a suspect, even her. As tensions in the community rise, so does the death toll, and now the local cops believe there’s a serial killer on the loose. The question is … are the two investigations connected?…

The Widow Maker

By Janet Fix, Cheryl Bradshaw,

What is this book about?

Liza O’Connell was a horror buff in every sense of the word. But there was one deadly nightmare she would never be able to talk about … her own.

A friend murdered.

A business in trouble.

A marriage struggling to survive.

And that’s just the beginning.

When salon owner Carrie King discovers Liza dead in the back room of her shop, everyone becomes a suspect, even her. As tensions in the community rise, so does the death toll, and now the local cops believe there’s a serial killer on the loose.
The question is … are the two investigations connected?…


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in private investigators, gardens, and Brazil?

Gardens 45 books
Brazil 75 books