Eryk Pruitt, Vicki Hendricks, Gary Philips, Christa Faust and more: what Rusty Barnes has on tap for holiday reading

What are some of the titles in your current TBR pile?

I only buy new books on Kindle these days, so what’s on deck is mostly newish material: My Darkest Prayer, by S.A. Cosby, The Long and Faraway Gone, by Lou Berney, Townies, by Erik Pruitt, Peepland, by Christa Faust and Gary Phillips, Cruel Poetry by Vicki Hendricks, The Girl from Blind River, by Gale Massey.

What book are you currently reading?

Some Die Nameless, by Wallace Stroby. The opening action scene seems to me to be a clinic in how to do it well, and so far, it’s taking a grizzled old plot–the over-the-hill special operative brought in for one last job–and making it new for me again. I’m also reading the poet Philip Larkin’s letters over. He was a complicated and curmudgeonly man who wrote some the most beautiful and feeling poems I’ve ever read while simultaneously being an often repellent personality, at least in some of his correspondence.

What do you hope to add to your TBR pile soon and why?

There’s a new biography of Ross MacDonald I’ve been itching to get to after reading his correspondence with Eudora Welty, as it’d be tough to find two more distinctly different writers. I’m a fan of Welty’s from way back when my obsession with things Southern began twenty-five years ago in the Kmart bargain book lot when I discovered Larry Brown and now I want to become a fan of MacDonald’s based on the letters.

Bonus: Which author do you want to see have a new book out soon?

I have a hankering for Appalachian literature lately having finished my friend Charles Dodd White’s most recent–and great–book In the House of Wilderness, so it would be especially nice to see a new Ron Rash or Pinckney Benedict novel or to see Chris Holbrook or Chris McGinley publish a new book. They have a knack for the vernacular and a love for the country,which shows in the writing. I’m always on the lookout for new crime writers, too, but I keep my ear pretty close to the ground on those.

Rusty talks about his latest novel, The Last Danger, here.

Rusty Barnes is a 2018 Derringer Award finalist and author of the story collections Breaking it Down and Mostly Redneck, as well as four novels, Reckoning, Ridgerunner, Knuckledragger, and The Last Danger, His fiction, poetry and non-fiction have appeared or are forthcoming in many journals and anthologies. He founded and edits the crime journal Tough.