What is Judith Claire Mitchell reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Judith Claire Mitchell, author of A Reunion of Ghosts.

Her entry begins:

Mostly what I read are short stories and novels in draft form by undergraduates and graduate students. This is a pleasure, but a different kind of pleasure from reading actual published books. Recently, however, I did manage to get through two published books, one a novel and the other a biography.

First, the novel: I’d been hearing lots about the British author Sarah Waters so I got hold of her latest, The Paying Guests, without knowing a thing about it. It turned out to be a riveting story set in the 1920s about murder and love affairs and, equally as interesting, domestic life after World War One. It was an intense read, gripping and rapidly paced, with a lot of food for thought, particularly about the way lesbians had to...[read on]

About A Reunion of Ghosts, from the publisher:

Three wickedly funny sisters.

One family's extraordinary legacy.

A single suicide note that spans a century...

Meet the Alter sisters: Lady, Vee, and Delph. These three mordantly witty, complex women share their family's apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side. They love each other fiercely, but being an Alter isn't easy. Bad luck is in their genes, passed down through the generations. Yet no matter what curves life throws at these siblings—and it's hurled plenty—they always have a wisecrack, and one another.

In the waning days of 1999, the trio decides it's time to close the circle of the Alter curse. But first, as the world counts down to the dawn of a new millennium, Lady, Vee, and Delph must write the final chapter of a saga lifetimes in the making—one that is inexorably intertwined with that of the twentieth century itself. Unspooling threads of history, personal memory, and family lore, they weave a mesmerizing account of their lives that stretches back decades to their great-grandfather, a brilliant scientist whose professional triumph became the sinister legacy that defines them.

Funny, heartbreaking, and utterly original, A Reunion of Ghosts is a magnificent novel about three unforgettable women bound to each other, and to their remarkable family, through the blessings and the burdens bestowed by blood.

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--Marshal Zeringue