Why am I passionate about this?

I'm a novelist, born and raised in New York City. To train myself to write realistic fiction, I started working in journalism first. I worked for New York magazine for a decade, writing about crime, politics, and other forms of anti-social behavior. Later, I wrote for television shows like Law & Order and Blue Bloods. But writing novels is what it's all about for me. I have nine of them so far. The audience is obviously quite small compared to the number of people who watch TV shows. But that doesn't matter. Nothing else allows you to communicate so directly from the studio in your mind to the theater in someone's else mind.


I wrote

Picture in the Sand

By Peter Blauner,

Book cover of Picture in the Sand

What is my book about?

Picture in the Sand is unlike anything I've written before. Most of my other books are crime novels. But this is…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of Palace Walk

Peter Blauner Why did I love this book?

When I first decided to write a historical novel that takes place in Egypt, I stopped by my local falafel joint in Brooklyn and asked the owner for pointers. He said, “Read Mahfouz, that’s all you need.” These are three interconnected stories that span the period from World War I to World War II. Without getting too deeply into the plot, I’d say they do what all the best historical novels do; they give you a sense of life’s movement, with the specifics that allow you to enter another time and place.

I met Mahfouz on my first trip to Egypt in 2005, shortly before he died, and asked him something about the country’s late leader Gamal Abdel Nasser. Mahfouz said he didn’t know the immediate answer himself, but “when I see Nasser, I’ll ask him.”

By Naguib Mahfouz,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

THE ACCLAIMED INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER BY THE NOBEL PRIZE WINNING AUTHOR.

'A masterpiece' - The Times
'The Arab Tolstoy' - Simon Sebag Montefiore
'Shamelessly entertaining' - Guardian
'Luminous' - New York Times

A sweeping and evocative portrait of both a family and a country struggling to move toward independence in a society that has resisted change for centuries. Set against the backdrop of Britain's occupation of Egypt immediately after World War I, Palace Walk introduces us to the Al Jawad family.

Ahmad, a middle-class shopkeeper runs his household strictly according to the Qur'an while at night he explores the pleasures of…


Book cover of Billy Bathgate

Peter Blauner Why did I love this book?

For most of my life, I’ve written about the present. Historical novels usually didn’t move me, especially if they had the whiff of costume drama. Doctorow’s novels were no exception. Ragtime, when I first read it, seemed more about the scenery than the souls of its characters. But Billy Bathgate gripped me immediately. The first chapter imagines the impending death of Dutch Schultz’s henchman “Bo” Weinberg as a tub of cement hardens around his ankles, and the rest of the narrative took me along as swiftly as Bo found his way to the bottom of the East River. The novel tells what could be a familiar story from the angle of an impoverished Irish Bronx kid who manages to catch on with the Schultz crew.

The author described it as “a young man’s sentimental education in the tribal life of gangsters.” I’d second that, and say that I found elements that were familiar to my experience as a reporter, but had a resonance far beyond the headlines. 

By E.L. Doctorow,

Why should I read it?

5 authors picked Billy Bathgate as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'I was living in even greater circles of gangsterdom than I had dreamed, latitudes and longitudes of gangsterdom'

It's 1930's New York and fifteen-year-old streetkid Billy, who can juggle, somersault and run like the wind, has been taken under the wing of notorious gangster Dutch Schultz. As Billy learns the ways of the mob, he becomes like a son to Schultz - his 'good-luck kid' - and is initiated into a world of glamour, death and danger that will consume him, in this vivid, soaring epic of crime and betrayal.


Book cover of The House of Mirth

Peter Blauner Why did I love this book?

Unlike the other titles listed on my list, The House of Mirth was not written with history receding in the rearview mirror. It was published in 1905, and meant to reflect the moral character and social context of a beautiful young woman at the century’s turn in New York. It’s the kind of book I would have wrongly dismissed as a trifle when I was a teenager. But Wharton writes with such pitiless precision and ferocious insight that she makes her story seem as modern as a Netflix show about Anna Delvey, the grifter. Of course, Wharton portrays her protagonist, Lily Bart, with far more compassion. But the author is so tough and knowing about the world Lily is operating in that I was reminded at times of Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas. Then as now, the city can be a jungle.  

By Edith Wharton,

Why should I read it?

8 authors picked The House of Mirth as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A bestseller when it was published nearly a century ago, this literary classic established Edith Wharton as one of the most important American writers in the twentieth century-now with a new introduction from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jennifer Egan.

Wharton's first literary success-a devastatingly accurate portrait of New York's aristocracy at the turn of the century-is considered by many to be her most important novel, and Lily Bart, her most unforgettable character. Impoverished but well-born, the beautiful and beguiling Lily realizes a secure future depends on her acquiring a wealthy husband. But with her romantic indiscretion, gambling debts, and a maelstrom…


Book cover of Atonement

Peter Blauner Why did I love this book?

McEwan is a modern master, one of the few we have. And like most true masters, he’s often flawed. Not every sentence is perfect, his plots sometimes have potholes, and he’s been accused, at times, of borrowing without attribution. But I’ve been reading him for forty years and I think Atonement has a fair claim to be his masterpiece. The novel takes place in three time periods – 1935, the Second World War, and 1999 – and traces the implications of child’s misapprehension in witnessing a sexual encounter. The novel was published in 2001 and I suspect that some ideologically-minded contemporary readers might protest its inclusion on a best of list. But for those who still have a taste for nuance and ambiguity, It’s a devastating story about families, class, and literature. 

By Ian McEwan,

Why should I read it?

18 authors picked Atonement as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

On the hottest day of the summer of 1934, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis sees her sister Cecilia strip off her clothes and plunge into the fountain in the garden of their country house. Watching her is Robbie Turner, her childhood friend who, like Cecilia, has recently come down from Cambridge. By the end of that day, the lives of all three will have been changed for ever. Robbie and Cecilia will have crossed a boundary they had not even imagined at its start, and will have become victims of the younger girl's imagination. Briony will have witnessed mysteries, and committed a…


Explore my book 😀

Picture in the Sand

By Peter Blauner,

Book cover of Picture in the Sand

What is my book about?

Picture in the Sand is unlike anything I've written before. Most of my other books are crime novels. But this is a historical suspense novel that takes place in Egypt in 1954, when the most extravagant Bible epic in Hollywood history showed up in the aftermath of a revolution. A young local movie fan named Ali Hassan gets his dream job working with the legendary Cecil B. DeMille, on his most famous film The Ten Commandments. Instead, Ali winds up on a journey of love and loss that takes him from the movie set with Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner, to an assassination plot based on real-life events, to prison, a daring escape attempt, and finally to a chance for redemption. It’s a story that Ali has kept secret but now he’s forced to share it because his Americanized, college-bound grandson has decided to become a Holy Warrior instead.

Book cover of Palace Walk
Book cover of The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories
Book cover of Billy Bathgate

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Me and The Times: My wild ride from elevator operator to New York Times editor, columnist, and change agent (1967-97)

By Robert W. Stock,

Book cover of Me and The Times: My wild ride from elevator operator to New York Times editor, columnist, and change agent (1967-97)

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Why am I passionate about this?

Author Journalist Punster Family-phile Ex-jock Friend

Robert's 3 favorite reads in 2023

What is my book about?

Me and The Times offers a fresh perspective on those pre-internet days when the Sunday sections of The New York Times shaped the country’s political and cultural conversation. Starting in 1967, Robert Stock edited seven of those sections over 30 years, innovating and troublemaking all the way.

His memoir is rich in anecdotes and admissions. At The Times, Jan Morris threw a manuscript at him, he shared an embarrassing moment with Jacqueline Kennedy, and he got the paper sued for $1 million. Along the way, Rod Laver challenged Stock to a tennis match, he played a clarinet duet with…

Me and The Times: My wild ride from elevator operator to New York Times editor, columnist, and change agent (1967-97)

By Robert W. Stock,

What is this book about?

An intimate, unvarnished look at the making of the Sunday sections of The New York Times in their pre-internet heyday, back when they shaped the country’s political and cultural conversation.

Over 30 years, Robert Stock edited seven of those sections, innovating, and troublemaking all the way – getting the paper sued for $1 million, locking horns with legendary editors Abe Rosenthal and Max Frankel, and publishing articles that sent the publisher Punch Sulzberger up the wall.

On one level, his memoir tracks Stock’s amazing career from his elevator job at Bonwit Teller to his accidental entry into journalism to his…


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