What is Kevin Egan reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Kevin Egan, author of A Shattered Circle: A Novel.

His entry begins:

I recently re-read This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I first read the book in college, where a standard litmus test among English majors was whether you preferred Fitzgerald to Hemingway or vice-versa. (I was firmly in the Fitzgerald camp.) Though I read The Great Gatsby in three college English courses and re-read it several more times over the years, I never returned to any of Fitzgerald’s other novels. In fact, as time removed me from my undergraduate youthfulness, I actually switched to the Hemingway camp. (A Farewell to Arms and The Sun Also Rises aged well with me.)

In January, I binge-watched the first season of Z, which is the story of the Fitzgerald marriage told from Zelda’s point of view. The episodes...[read on]

About A Shattered Circle, from the publisher:

Barbara Lonergan is ferociously protective of her husband, Judge William Lonergan. After a New Year’s Day accident leaves the judge mentally impaired, Barbara draws a small circle around him to protect his health, his career, and his reputation. The circle consists only of Barbara, who doubles as the judge’s confidential secretary, and the judge’s law clerk. Together, and with the cooperation of the administrative judge of the well-known New York County Courthouse, they support Judge Lonergan enough for him to fulfill his judicial duties. Months pass under this exhausting routine, but as August deepens into heat and humidity, Barbara finds her small circle under siege from a persistent private investigator who needs the judge’s help in investigating the April murder of a well-known lawyer in upstate New York and a demented litigant in Judge Lonergan’s last trial who has filed a grievance with the Judicial Conduct Commission. Meanwhile, court officer Foxx, in keeping a deathbed promise to a childhood friend, pokes at the edges of Barbara Lonergan’s protective circle.

As the private investigator reveals troubling information and the judicial grievance heads toward resolution, Barbara removes her husband to the supposed safety of their summer home in the Berkshires. She does not realize that she has placed both of them in greater danger.

Learn more about the book and author at Kevin Egan's website.

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The Page 69 Test: A Shattered Circle.

Writers Read: Kevin Egan.

--Marshal Zeringue