What is Jenny Milchman reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Jenny Milchman, author of The Usual Silence (Arles Shepherd Thriller).

Her entry begins:

Getting lost in a book with nothing else to do besides read it is a unique joy that got me through childhood, but is now pretty much relegated to taking a rare—like, as in a hundred year storm rare—vacation, my birthday, and those fleeting bits of summer when time suddenly and fleetingly expands.

So I am juggling three books right now.

One is a novel called You Will Never Be Me by Jesse Q. Sutanto. I’m reading this as research to inform an aspect of my forthcoming novel, which has a subplot concerning influencer culture. Sultano captures the more outrageous details of being an influencer—purchasing organic carrots at a farmers market, then burying them in your own fallow garden so you can dig them up for a TikTok—which she wraps in a novel that’s less of a whodunnit than a...[read on]

About The Usual Silence, from the publisher:

A psychologist haunted by childhood trauma must unearth all that is buried in her past in this twisting, lyrical novel of suspense by Mary Higgins Clark Award–winning author Jenny Milchman.

Psychologist Arles Shepherd treats troubled children, struggling with each case to recover from her own traumatic past, much of which she’s lost to the shadows of memory. Having just set up a new kind of treatment center in the remote Adirondack wilderness, Arles longs to heal one patient in particular: a ten-year-old boy who has never spoken a word―or so his mother, Louise, believes.

Hundreds of miles away, Cass Monroe is living a parent’s worst nightmare. His twelve-year-old daughter has vanished on her way home from school. With no clues, no witnesses, and no trail, the police are at a dead end. Fighting a heart that was already ailing, and struggling to keep both his marriage and himself alive, Cass turns to a pair of true-crime podcasters for help.

Arles, Louise, and Cass will soon find their lives entangled in ways none of them could have anticipated. And when the collision occurs, a quarter-century-old secret will be forced out of hiding. Because nothing screams louder than silence.

Learn more about the book and author at Jenny Milchman's website.

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--Marshal Zeringue