What is Peng Shepherd reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Peng Shepherd, author of All This and More: A Novel.

Her entry begins:

With novels, I’m always either early for or late to the party—half of my TBR pile is advanced copies of upcoming books that editors have sent me and the other half is treasures I’ve found while wandering bookstores or been recommended by friends over the years.

Dictionary of the Khazars by Milorad Pavić (1988)

This is one of the strangest books I’ve ever read. I love stories with unusual structures, and narratives that come together fragment by fragment like puzzles. Dictionary of the Khazars is an imaginary history of the Khazars, a semi-nomadic people from the seventh and ninth centuries, written in the form of three mini-encyclopedias which cross-reference and sometimes contradict each other. The effect is mysterious, fascinating, and...[read on]

About All This and More, from the publisher:

From the critically acclaimed, bestselling author of The Cartographers and The Book of M comes an inventive new novel about a woman who wins the chance to rewrite every mistake she’s ever made… and how far she’ll go to find her elusive “happily ever after.” But there’s a twist: the reader gets to decide what she does next to change her fate.

One woman. Endless options. Every choice has consequences.

Meek, play-it-safe Marsh has just turned forty-five, and her life is in shambles. Her career is stagnant, her marriage has imploded, and her teenage daughter grows more distant by the day. Marsh is convinced she’s missed her chance at everything—romance, professional fulfillment, and adventure—and is desperate for a do-over.

She can’t believe her luck when she’s selected to be the star of the global sensation All This and More, a show that uses quantum technology to allow contestants the chance to revise their pasts and change their present lives. It’s Marsh’s only shot to seize her dreams, and she’s determined to get it right this time.

But even as she rises to become a famous lawyer, gets back together with her high school sweetheart, and travels the world, she begins to worry that All This and More’s promises might be too good to be true. Because while the technology is amazing, something seems a bit off.…

Can Marsh really make her life everything she wants it to be? And is it worth it?

Perfect for fans of Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library and Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life, bestselling author Peng Shepherd’s All This and More is an utterly original, startlingly poignant novel that puts the reader in the driver’s seat.

Visit Peng Shepherd's website.

Writers Read: Peng Shepherd (June 2018).

Q&A with Peng Shepherd.

Writers Read: Peng Shepherd.

--Marshal Zeringue