Why am I passionate about this?

A thing I love about detective stories is that, from the moment they were probably invented by Edgar Allen Poe in 1841, authors have been playing with the form. Poeā€™s The Murders in the Rue Morgue begins with a display of Dupinā€™s ratiocinative powers, and detective stories do often involve a protagonist reasoning through clues and red herrings on the way toward the resolution of a central mystery. But the kinds of ā€œcluesā€ we use to make sense of (or make peace with) the world are varied, and the mysteries that obsess us are vastā€”as illustrated over and over again in this mutable genre.


I wrote...

Swallow the Ghost

By Eugenie Montague,

Book cover of Swallow the Ghost

What is my book about?

Swallow the Ghost traces the impact of a violent event on three different lives, each interconnected story further complicating theā€¦

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of The Monkey's Mask

Eugenie Montague Why did I love this book?

This book is a traditional, hardboiled mystery about a young poet that goes missing at a writing program in Australiaā€¦except the whole thing is written in verse. Itā€™s laugh-out-loud funny, mournful, insightful, and full of sinister characters like poetry professors who go on too long at readings.

Itā€™s the kind of book you can read in an afternoon, though certain lines and images from the various poems have stayed with me long after. It also includes an Australian dictionary at the back with words like ā€œlairy,ā€ which means ā€œvisually loud; excruciatingly colorful.ā€ What a word. Donā€™t tell the poets. 

By Dorothy Porter,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Monkey's Mask as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Monkey's Mask is a totally unique experience. It's poetry. It's a crime thriller. It's where high art meets low life, passion meets betrayal, and poetry faces profanity on the streets of a harsh modern city. Dorothy Porter's internationally bestselling verse novel holds you in its grip from the first verse paragraph to the final haunting pages. The Monkey's Mask won the Age Book of the Year for Poetry in 1994, the National Book Council Award for Poetry and the Braille Book of the Year. It has been adapted for stage and radio and is currently being adapted for film.ā€¦


Book cover of Subdivision

Eugenie Montague Why did I love this book?

In classical detective fiction, the story of the crime is like a puzzle, and piece by piece, clue by clue, we arrive at the big picture. Subdivision is, in some ways, a classic puzzle mystery (it even involves a puzzle!)ā€”except it doesnā€™t start at a crime scene. It starts with a woman arriving at a guesthouse in the surreal and Kafkaesque Subdivision where she now lives. She canā€™t remember why she is there or really anything from her past.
Unlike more classical detective fiction, she is not a guide; I followed herā€”tracking, assembling, interpretingā€”but when certain elements of the real (maybe) slid into focus, they did so mostly despite her. I couldnā€™t put it down, and notwithstanding its fairly cerebral tone, I cried at the end.

By J. Robert Lennon,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

An unnamed woman checks into a guesthouse in a mysterious district known only as the Subdivision. The guesthouse's owners, Clara and the Judge, are welcoming and helpful, if oddly preoccupied by the perpetually baffling jigsaw puzzle in the living room. With little more than a hand-drawn map and vague memories of her troubled past, the narrator ventures out in search of a job, an apartment, and a fresh start in life.

Accompanied by an unusually assertive digital assistant named Cylvia, the narrator is drawn deeper into an increasingly strange, surreal, and threatening world, which reveals itself to her through aā€¦


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Book cover of Wildcat: An Appalachian Romance

Wildcat by Jeffrey Dunn,

A retired English teacher has come home to Appalachia, a land of industrial disaster and natural beauty. He has been enticed with stories of Wildcatā€™s transformation: of the collective action embodied in Hotel Wildcat as well as the artisanal pursuits springing to life in the old iron mill. But inā€¦

Book cover of The Taiga Syndrome

Eugenie Montague Why did I love this book?

The crime scene generally occurs near the start of a mysteryā€”something incomprehensible and threatening the reader and detective will endeavor to explain by the bookā€™s end. Sometimes, though, the world is the crime. In almost painfully beautiful language, this book sets us down in a frightening fairytale forest. Weā€™re traveling with a failed detective looking for a runaway wife, but much of the investigative work emanates from the reader attemptingā€”and often failingā€”to break through the atmosphere, through the visceral but unmappable feelings of danger and loss the text produces in order to find something that can be named, explained, neutered.

This is the kind of book that affected me sidewise; I never saw it coming, but it got me over and over again. The Spanish edition includes illustrations, the English a suggested playlist.

By Cristina Rivera Garza, Suzanne Jill Levine (translator), Aviva Kana (translator)

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Taiga Syndrome as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Fairy tale meets detective drama in this David Lynchā€“like novel by a writer Jonathan Lethem calls ā€œone of Mexico's greatest . . . we are just barely beginning to catch up to what she has to offer.ā€

A fairy tale run amok, The Taiga Syndrome follows an unnamed Ex-Detective as she searches for a couple who has fled to the far reaches of the earth. A betrayed husband is convinced by a brief telegram that his second ex-wife wants him to track her downā€”that she wants to be found. He hires the Ex-Detective, who sets out with a translator intoā€¦


Book cover of If On A Winter's Night A Traveler

Eugenie Montague Why did I love this book?

A reader begins a book only to discover that the same sixteen pages are printed over and overā€”so begins a journey across the beginning of novels and through continents. This is a book that breaks rules and taught me how to read it page by pageā€”and I love that feeling.

Though first published in 1979, Calvinoā€™s novel is remarkably timely with respect to the impact of data science and artificial intelligence on literature, as well as the ā€œauthorā€™s position with regard to Trends of Contemporary Thought and Problems That Demand a Solution.ā€

Some might not consider this detective fiction, but I thinkā€”like The Aspern Papers (James) and The Savage Detectives (BolaƱo)ā€”the quest to find an obscure or missing text (or artist) fits within the genre and, indeed, is one of my favorite kinds of detective stories. 

By Italo Calvino, William Weaver (translator),

Why should I read it?

6 authors picked If On A Winter's Night A Traveler as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel...Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade." ā€”from If On A Winter's Night a Traveler

Italo Calvino's stunning classic imagines a novel capable of endless possibilities in an intricately crafted, spellbinding story about writing and reading.

If on a Winter's Night a Traveler is a feat of striking ingenuity and intelligence, exploring how our reading choices can shape and transform our lives. Originally published in 1979, Italo Calvino's singular novel crafted a postmodern narrative like never seen beforeā€”offering not one novel but ten, each with aā€¦


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Book cover of Shortcake

Shortcake by Christopher Gorham Calvin,

Enter a captivating world where science fiction and thrilling suspense converge. After plummeting from the roof of Helix Unbound, Amanda awakens to a life devoid of memories. Desperately longing to fit in, yet sensing she harbors an extraordinary secret beneath her seemingly ordinary facade, she explores the unfamiliar world inā€¦

Book cover of Big Machine

Eugenie Montague Why did I love this book?

In this genre-bending novel, Ricky Rice is working as a janitor in an upstate New York bus station when heā€™s sent a ticket to Burlington, Vermont, with a note that reminds him of a promise he made years agoā€”a promise no one else could know about because he made it only to himself. There are a variety of crimes in the book, as well as several mysteries that unfoldā€”not the least Rickyā€™s quest to understand the organization where he finds himself working.

As he does, he must sift through his past, including the narratives heā€™s grown up with and that he has used to understand and survive his world. I wonā€™t tell you what the big machine is or how it works, but I loved this book and Ricky and the world heā€™s trying to (re)make. 

By Victor LaValle,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Big Machine as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Ricky Rice is a middling hustler with a lingering junk habit, a bum knee, and a haunted mind. A survivor of a suicide cult, he scrapes by as a porter at a bus depot in Utica, New York, until one day a mysterious letter arrives, summoning him to enlist in a band of paranormal investigators comprised of former addicts and petty criminals, all of whom had at some point in their wasted lives heard what may have been the voice of God.

Infused with the wonder of a disquieting dream and laced with Victor LaValleā€™s fiendish comic sensibility, Big Machineā€¦


Explore my book šŸ˜€

Swallow the Ghost

By Eugenie Montague,

Book cover of Swallow the Ghost

What is my book about?

Swallow the Ghost traces the impact of a violent event on three different lives, each interconnected story further complicating the truth.

Things are going well for Jane Murphy, or so it seems. She's making it in New York, a sort of wunderkind at the social media marketing startup where she works. She's put an experimental writer, Jeremy Miller, on the map by helping him concoct a viral internet novel, told in fragments through various fake social media accounts. But privately, Jane feels trapped, ruled by her routines and her compulsions, caught up in an endless cycle of soothing and punishing herself. There is so much that she has to keep hidden, especially from Jeremy as their professional relationship transforms into something more.

But then, tragedy strikes, and the story changes track. As the perspective shifts, so too does our image of Jane and those in her orbit as what we think we know begins to unravel.

Audacious, emotionally precise and head-spinning in its ingenuity, Swallow the Ghost interrogates our public identities and private realities through the kaleidoscopic portrait of one woman's life.

Book cover of The Monkey's Mask
Book cover of Subdivision
Book cover of The Taiga Syndrome

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Book cover of Foster's Revenge

Foster's Revenge by Jack Kelley,

In a kill-or-be-killed world, The Reaper does whatever it takes to survive.

Following the murder of his half-brother, legendary Army Ranger Luke Foster returns to the United States from fighting terrorists. His brother's history with a prominent New York Mafia family was no secret, so it's no surprise his lifeā€¦

Book cover of Shadows of Medusa

Shadows of Medusa by Brian Enke,

The first manned mission to Mars doesn't go as planned. Or does it? 

Shadows of Medusa describes the unexpected tempest unleashed by a private mission to explore Mars. Though written twenty years ago, the novel puts a decidedly mystery/sci-fi twist on current space science and mission planning efforts. The socio-politicalā€¦

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