LibraryThing is pleased to sit down this month with best-selling Taiwanese Canadian author Janie Chang, whose works of historical fiction draw upon her family history in pre-World War II China. After taking a degree in computer science, and then graduating from the Writer’s Studio Program at Simon Fraser University, Chang made her authorial debut in 2013 with the novel Three Souls, which was shortlisted in the fiction category for the BC and Yukon Book Prizes. Subsequent titles include Dragon Springs Road (2017), longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award; The Library of Legends (2020), nominated for the Evergreen Award; The Porcelain Moon (2023); and The Phoenix Crown (2024), which was co-written with Kate Quinn. Chang was the founder of the Authors for Indies event, running from 2015-17, which eventually became Canadian Independent Bookstore Day. Her sixth book, The Fourth Princess: A Gothic Novel of Old Shanghai—available this month as an Early Reviewer giveaway—was published earlier in February. Chang sat down with Abigail this month to discuss the book.

How did the idea for The Fourth Princess first come to you? Many of your books are described as being inspired by your family history. Do you have a family connection to this tale as well?

The Fourth Princess came about purely from a desire to challenge myself by writing in the Gothic vein, moving away from historical to a different genre. So alas, there aren’t any fascinating family connections to this tale.

Your story is set in 1911, in “Old Shanghai.” Did you need to do any kind of research about the history of the city during that period? What were some of the most interesting things you learned?

You should never ask a historical novelist about interesting things learned. You’ll end up with a 12-page essay! I knew that Shanghai had entire neighborhoods of Western-style homes, often called “garden villas.” Many of those homes are still there. What I did not realize was that there were also huge estates outside what was then the city center, owned by the wealthiest families, both foreign and Chinese. They occupied properties as large as 10 acres. The mansion that inspired Lennox Manor in the novel was called Dennartt, built in 1898 by a British barrister. It had a huge garden, lawns, a manmade lake, stables for polo ponies and living quarters for the grooms and house servants. Dennartt still stands, surrounded by apartments and houses instead of lawns and rose gardens and tennis courts.

I also learned that there were electric cars back then! For a while, both internal combustion gas engines and electric engine vehicles were available to consumers. Gas engines were difficult and dangerous to crank up, the emissions were dirty, but could drive farther. Electric vehicles were easy to start and clean to drive, and advertisements aimed them at women for city driving. But once a reliable ignition system for gas engines was invented, electric vehicles lost popularity. In the novel, I have an American import a car for his wife, so that’s the reason behind that particular rabbit hole. And in the end, he did not import an electric car.

Many of your earlier novels feature a fantastical element, from the ghost in Three Souls to an animal spirit in Dragon Springs Road. What role does the fantastic play in The Fourth Princess, and how does it help you to tell your story?

There is the possibility of a ghost. As the servants in the story explain to Lisan, one of the main characters, a previous owner committed suicide in Lennox Manor. Chinese superstitions say that the ghost of a suicide is the worst kind there is because they’re trapped in the afterlife, unable to move on to reincarnation unless they find a replacement. They need to drive another person to suicide, usually through madness. In Gothic novels, there’s always a strong element of psychological fear as well as real danger, so when Lisan sees or thinks she sees a woman in red outside in the garden, are her eyes playing tricks on her? When she hears wailing and sobbing at night, is it the supernatural or just the wind funneling down chimneys and cracks?

This new book addresses the meeting of East and West, both through the characters of Lisan Liu and Caroline Stanton, and in the use of a Gothic literary aesthetic more often associated with Europe. Can you expand upon that? What significance does it have?

It’s absolutely true that “traditional” Gothic novels favor European settings in a remote location, preferably with bad weather. The essential elements of Gothic, however, are portable: a setting that oozes menace and unease, a young woman who discovers a terrible secret and finds herself in danger. In transposing classic Gothic tropes to an Asian setting, it was important for me to do so in a way that was plausible and unique to this time and place.

One of the themes in The Fourth Princess is that of identity. Both Caroline and Lisan have a hidden past. Once these are revealed, what do they do, what are they willing to risk, who should they become? For me, a Shanghai setting made it absolutely necessary to have both Chinese and Western heroines because the city was a bizarre mix of East and West.

Tell us a little bit about your writing process. Do you have a particular schedule or routine that you keep to, a specific spot where you like to write? Do you map your story out ahead of time, or discover it as you go along?

First, I have to write out a summary of the story plus the historical events and background that are the setting, just to stay anchored. Over time, I’ve found myself putting more effort into mapping out the story because it helps get over the sagging middle part of a novel. It’s no fun getting stuck in the middle of the story because it makes you doubt whether the story is worth writing at all.

For schedule, I down two cups of coffee and then get to writing. The main thing is to write every day, even if you’re not happy with it. You need to make progress on the story and remember that the next step is revision. One of the best pieces of advice I ever heard was that “revision” is “re-vision.” When you revise, you are re-visioning the story.

It would be nice if the story moved along according to plan, but as a storyteller, you need to be open to opportunities. You run across a tidbit of research that adds authenticity or detail or insight to the story and you make changes. Then there are the times when the characters themselves are a discovery, when they start telling you who they are and their real motivations. Those are the best moments in the writing process, and make up for all the other hours of agony.

What comes next for you? Do you have any new books you’re working on?

I’m currently researching a new book, nothing announced yet. However, I will be co-authoring again with Kate Quinn on a novel that we’ll start working on this summer. It’s working title is The Jade Mirror and we call it an adventure on the high seas, about two women whose nautical achievements have been largely forgotten.

Tell us about your library. What’s on your own shelves?

I love historical fiction and speculative fiction, and it shows. I also enjoy mystery and crime. There’s one shelf reserved for children’s books that I refuse to throw out. The Narnia series, the Doctor Dolittles, and so on. I have a weakness for cookbooks with nice photos. And I have a section of shelves that hold research books.

What have you been reading lately, and what would you recommend to other readers?

I’ve been reading the Claire North trilogy The Songs of Penelope: Ithaca, House of Odysseus, The Last Song of Penelope. When Odysseus and all the able bodied men of Ithaca went off to the Trojan War, the only people left on the island were women, children, and old men. As queen, Penelope still had to keep the economy going, maintain the security of her island nation, all the while fending off suitors. This is her story and it’s funny and snarky, intelligent, told from the point of view of the women of Ithaca, and it’s about geopolitics.

I highly recommend this series. In fact, I highly recommend anything by Claire North.

LibraryThing is pleased to sit down this month with Kelly Scarborough, who makes her authorial debut this month with Butterfly Games, a historical novel set in the Swedish royal court during the early 19th century. After working for two decades as a law firm partner and white-collar prosecutor, Scarborough returned to her interest in historical fiction and her love of writing, determined to tell stories about fascinating women who lived through challenging times. Scarborough sat down with Abigail this month to discuss her new book, due out later this month from She Writes Press.

Butterfly Games is based on a true story, and its heroine, Jacquette Gyldenstolpe, on a real person. Tell us a little bit about that story and how you discovered it. What made you feel that it needed to be retold?

Like so many turning points in my life, Butterfly Games began with a book. As a teenager, I fell in love with Désirée, Annemarie Selinko’s novel about Désirée Clary—the silk merchant’s daughter who was once engaged to Napoleon and later became Queen of Sweden. I read it over and over, fascinated by how a woman could be swept into history by forces she never chose.

Years later, during a difficult period in my life, that novel came back to me. I began researching Désirée’s descendants—the Bernadotte dynasty, which still reigns in Sweden today—and uncovered a world of political upheaval, fragile alliances, and private heartbreak. That’s when I stumbled across Jacquette Gyldenstolpe.

Jacquette appears in the historical record mostly as a scandal: a young countess who fell in love with Prince Oscar, the heir to the throne. But the more I read—letters, memoirs, court gossip—the more I realized how much of her story had been left untold. She wasn’t just a footnote in someone else’s rise to power. She was a young woman navigating impossible choices in a world where love could threaten a dynasty.

Once I found her, I couldn’t look away. I knew her story needed to be retold.

What kind of research did you need to do, while writing the book, and what were some of the most interesting things you learned in that process?

Can you see me smiling? I don’t think I’m capable of separating the research I needed to do from the research that simply called to me and took over my brain.

Over the course of several years, I spent more than eighty nights in Sweden, translated hundreds of handwritten letters, and built a chronology with more than five thousand entries to track who was where, with whom, and why. Jacquette’s world became a place I loved to inhabit. One day stands out above all others. I was granted special access to Finspång Castle, Jacquette’s childhood home—now a corporate headquarters, a place closed to the public. No photographs were allowed, so I took frantic notes on my phone as we walked through the women’s wing. In a sitting room, I noticed a small mother-of-pearl nécessaire—a sewing and writing box with tiny compartments for her most personal objects. It stopped me cold. My guide, a retired corporate executive who knew the house intimately, leaned in and whispered, “Jacquette’s.”

The box had been a gift from Jacquette’s husband, Carl Löwenhielm. That moment—imagining her hands opening it, choosing a needle or a quill knife—changed the direction of the book.

Suddenly, Jacquette wasn’t a scandal or a symbol. She was real.

Your book has been described as a good fit for admirers of Philippa Gregory and Allison Pataki. Did the work of these authors, or others, influence you when writing your story?

Absolutely—though in different ways. Philippa Gregory is a master of taking a story with a known, often tragic ending and making it feel suspenseful and intimate. I admire how she builds emotional momentum even when readers think they know what’s coming. Two of my favorites are The Kingmaker’s Daughter and her most recent novel, Boleyn Traitor.

Allison Pataki has also been influential, particularly in how she blends rigorous research with accessible storytelling. I love the smart, resourceful heroines she creates from women who otherwise might be lost to history. Her work reminds me that historical fiction can be immersive without being intimidating—and romantic without losing its seriousness. Both my book clubs loved Finding Margaret Fuller, and I did, too.

You’ve had a full career as a lawyer and prosecutor, before turning to writing. How has that work informed your writing and storytelling?

Don’t get me wrong, I had a lot to learn before writing a novel, but some of the things I loved about law proved useful for writing historical fiction. Law trained me to think in terms of evidence, motive, and connections. When you’re preparing a case, you assemble fragments—documents, testimony, inconsistencies—and shape them into a coherent narrative that persuades a jury.

Writing historical fiction isn’t so different. The facts matter deeply, but facts alone don’t tell a story. You have to decide what belongs at the center, what remains in the background, and where the emotional truth lives. My legal background also made me comfortable sitting with ambiguity. History is full of unanswered questions, and I don’t feel the need to resolve every one neatly. Sometimes what’s most compelling is what can’t be proven.

Tell us a little bit about your writing process. Do you have a particular routine—a time and place you like to write, a particular method? Do you plot your stories out ahead of time, or discover how they will unfold as you go along?

When the stars align, I retreat early in the day to the attic office of my nineteenth-century house in Connecticut, take my Shih Tzu upstairs with me, and leave the modern world behind. I wrote Butterfly Games in nine drafts. There was an outline, but I changed the plot in significant ways as I went along. For the sequel, I’m trying to be a little more disciplined. I started with an outline—but found myself getting too granular—so I switched to ninety old-fashioned index cards. Each card holds one scene: chapter number, date, setting, point-of-view character, and the scene’s pivot point. There’s barely room left for anything else, which forces clarity. I transcribed those cards into Scrivener, and now I’m writing. We’ll see how closely I stick to the plan.

What comes next? Are you working on any additional books?

Yes. Butterfly Games is the first novel in a planned series. The second book picks up after the events of the first and follows Jacquette and Oscar into a far more dangerous phase of their lives—when love has consequences, secrets carry weight, and survival requires choices that can’t be undone.

Tell us about your library. What’s on your own shelves?

My physical library is filled mostly with historical fiction, especially novels with complex, non- linear structures. I return again and again to Hamnet and The Marriage Portrait, as well as The Time Traveler’s Wife and Pure.

On a special shelf, I keep books connected to Jacquette’s world—like Désirée and The Queen’s Fortune—alongside more than a hundred antique Swedish memoirs and histories, many written by people who actually knew Jacquette.

And for bedtime? A Kindle packed with historical romance by Sarah MacLean, Tessa Dare, and Lisa Kleypas.

What have you been reading lately, and what would you recommend to other readers?

For lovers of royal historical fiction, Boleyn Traitor is a must-read. I was also lucky enough to read an advance copy of It Girl, which I loved.

My favorite read last year was Broken Country—a deeply emotional novel with one of those intricate narrative structures that stays with you. In fact, I want to read it again.

LibraryThing is pleased to sit down this month with Minnesota-based author Loretta Ellsworth, whose published work includes books for both juvenile and adult audiences. A former middle grade Spanish teacher, Ellsworth received her MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Hamline University, and made her authorial debut in 2002 with the young adult novel The Shrouding Woman. She has had three additional young adult novels published, as well as a picture book for younger children, Tangle-Knot, in 2023. These books have won many accolades, including being named as ALA and IRA Notables, and being nominated for prizes such as the Rebecca Caudill Young Readers’ Award. Ellsworth published her first work for adults, the historical novel Stars Over Clear Lake, in 2017, followed in 2024 by The French Winemaker’s Daughter. Her third historical novel for adult readers, The Jilted Countess, which follows the story of a Hungarian countess who makes her way to Minnesota following World War II, in pursuit of her American GI fiancé, is due out from HarperCollins this coming January. Ellsworth sat down with Abigail this month to discuss the book.

The Jilted Countess was apparently inspired by a true story of a Hungarian countess who emigrated to Minnesota after the Second World War. Tell us a little bit about that original story. How did you discover it, and what made you feel you needed to retell it?

In 1948, a penniless Hungarian countess came to Minnesota to marry the GI fiancé she’d met abroad, only to find out he’d recently married someone else. Determined to stay in the U.S., she appealed to newspaperman Cedric Adams to help her find a husband before she’d be deported in two weeks back to Hungary, which was under Communist control. He agreed, using a fake name for her, and putting her picture in the newspaper, citing her circumstances. She received almost 1800 offers of marriage! And in two weeks she narrowed it down, went on a few dates, chose a husband, and was never heard from again. Fast forward to 2015, when someone found an old copy of that article in their attic and asked columnist Curt Brown if he knew what had happened to her. Curt Brown wrote a short article asking if anyone could provide an answer. Unfortunately, no one could. But that article made me wonder how a Hungarian countess could disappear like that, and I also wondered if she ever encountered her former fiancé again. She was, after all, the first Bachelorette, before the show was even a concept.

Did you do any kind of research, historical or cultural, in order to write the book? What were some of the most interesting things you learned?

I spent an exorbitant amount of time at the Minnesota History Center researching old microfiche articles to find anything I could about her. I examined marriage records for Minneapolis and St. Paul for any Hungarian-sounding names, and I searched for clues as to her whereabouts. Without a name, though, it was very difficult, and I never found her. I also had to research Hungary during and after the war, and the life of aristocrats, which I knew little about.

Contemporary readers might be surprised at the idea of a “Bachelorette” dating program taking place in the 1940s. How do you think Roza’s experience would tally with and differ from that of contemporary women seeking a spouse in this way?

After her marriage, she was approached by Look Magazine and other outlets for interviews, all of which she turned down as she wanted a private life. With social media today, there’s no way Roza would have been able to disappear like she did in 1948. And most likely her search would have taken place on social media rather than through the newspaper and mail.

World War II stories remain perennially popular with readers, despite the passage of the years. Why is that? What is it about this period that continues to speak to us?

I think it was such a pivotal time in the world, and one we’re still struggling to understand. And there are so many hidden stories that we’re constantly discovering about that time period that continue to speak to us. Also, the last of WWII veterans are disappearing, and their stories will be gone as well.

Tell us about your writing process. Do you write in a particular place, have a specific schedule you keep to, or any rituals that help you? Do you outline your stories, or discover them as you go along?

Because I worked as a teacher and had four children of my own, I had to learn to write in short intervals and adapt my writing schedule to be flexible. I wrote everywhere: at soccer practices and coffee shops and the library. Now that I no longer teach and my children are grown, I have a more disciplined schedule and usually write in the mornings in my home office, sometimes stretching into the afternoon. I also have learned to outline, whereas I used to write from the seat of my pants before. It’s helped to save me from a great deal of revision, although I still revise, just not as much as before.

What’s next for you? Will you be writing more historical novels for adults, or perhaps returning to the world of young adult books?

I am working on a young adult novel as well as another historical novel, so I hope to keep my foot in both genres as long as I’m able to. I enjoy both and read both.

Tell us about your library. What’s on your own shelves?

I have one full shelf of books on the craft of writing–I’m still drawn to how others write and am curious about their process. I have a mix of memoir, middle-grade, YA, and a lot of historical fiction. I still buy physical books, and my shelves are always overflowing. I donate a lot of books to our local Friends of the Library group for their annual book sale. And I have so many signed copies of books that I can’t part with. But that’s a good problem to have, isn’t it?

What have you been reading lately, and what would you recommend to other readers?

I read a great deal–I just finished reading the first two books of the Westfallen series by Ann and Ben Brashares with my grandson, and I’m reading The Correspondent by Virginia Evans, The Ivory City by Emily Bain Murphy, and The Gospel of Salome by Kaethe Schwehn. And I just finished James by Percival Everett. There are so many good books out there!

LibraryThing is pleased to sit down this month with award-winning African Australian author Eugen Bacon, whose Afro-Centered Futurisms in Our Speculative Fiction just won an Ignyte Award, and who won the 2025 Nebula Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award—given by the SFWA to an author who has made “significant contributions to the science fiction, fantasy, and related genres community”—earlier this year. Born in Tanzania, Eugen earned a Master of Science with distinction in distributed computer systems from the University of Greenwich, UK, and a Master of Arts and a doctorate in writing from Swinburne University of Technology, Australia. Before becoming a professional writer full-time, she worked in the information and communication technology field and continued to do so, juggling a day job with motherhood, professional editing and numerous writing projects.

Eugen has published numerous short stories and novels in various speculative fiction genres, and is particularly known for her Afrofuturism and exploration of gender. She was twice a finalist for the World Fantasy Award, Shirley Jackson Award, Aurealis Award, and in 2023 she won a British Fantasy Award in the Non-Fiction category for her An Earnest Blackness. The latter was also a finalist for a 2023 Locus Award, which she won this year in the Non-Fiction category for her Afro-Centered Futurisms in Our Speculative Fiction. She has won or been nominated for numerous other awards, and also has served as a judge for various Australian book prizes, as well as for global awards, including chairing various jury categories of the Bram Stoker Awards. She is currently the chair of the jury for the Otherwise Awards that encourage the exploration and expansion of gender. This past September a new novelette, Novic, a standalone prequel to Claiming T-Mo, the debut title in her Outbreeds series, was published by Meerkat Press. Also in September, The Nga’phandileh Whisperer, a novella in The Sauútiverse, was published by Star and Saberse Publishing. Eugen sat down with Abigail this month to discuss these stories, and her work in general.

Your fictional work is often described as Afrofuturist. You have explored this genre in your scholarly work as well, in titles like Afro-Centered Futurisms in Our Speculative Fiction. What is Afrofuturism, what does it entail, and what is its significance, both to you personally, and in a wider, global sense?

Actually, Abigail, my work is more than Afrofuturist. I like to think of it as Afrosurreal, or Afro-irreal—fantastical literature that demands the reader to trust and find immersion in the story’s impossibility. The irreal story stays unpredictable and believable in all its unbelievability. The reader finds immersion in the illusion, entranced in the satire or symbolism, cementing even while challenging realism. I use this type of fiction as an allegory for somber themes of belonging, social in/justice, climate action, “Othering”… in the real world. I hero Black people stories, giving voice in sometimes dystopian futurisms, to the woman in the village, the little orphan girl, little lost boy in the village—people who have seen much, suffered much, and need to find the hero/ine within.

In terms of Afrofuturism itself, there’s much discord about this term. It is for me, simply, Afrocentric representation in a kind of fiction that engages with difference. Afrofuturism is to reimagine Africa in all its diversity, to expand and extrapolate it through literature, music, the visual arts, religion, even philosophy. It is that which haunts imagination and transmutes itself into a craving for revolution.

What is the Sauútiverse, and The Sauúti Collective? How did it first get going, who’s involved, and what are its purpose and goals?

I am part of an Afrocentric collection of writers from across Africa—Ghana, Tanzania, Nigeria, South Africa, and the diaspora (Haitian American)… We came together in 2021 with a vision of Afrocentric-based collaboration, support and creativity. Together, we have invented a world deeply rooted in African culture, language and mythology. We’re like-minded creatives who came together for a shared cause in giving voice and space for Afrocentric literature. The Sauútiverse comprises five planets, two suns, two moons and is enmeshed with sound magic. The name of each planet, Ekwukwe, Órino-Rin, Zezépfeni, Wiimb-ó and Mahwé is derived from an African word meaning song. There is also an inhabited moon, Pinaa. You can find out more about the Sauútiverse in our FAQs.

There’s much potential in this Afrocentric universe, and we have a new anthology coming out, Sauúti Terrors, published by Flame Tree Publishing and distributed by Simon and Schuster. I co-edited this anthology with Cheryl S. Ntumy and Stephen Embleton, out in January 2026.

Tell us a little bit about The Nga’phandileh Whisperer specifically. Where does this story fit into the wider universe in which you have set it? Do readers need to be familiar with that universe beforehand, to fully appreciate the story?

Readers can approach The Nga’phandileh Whisperer blind without being familiar with the Sauútiverse. Each Sauútiverse story out there is standalone, self-sufficient and boasting a richness in unique and robust worldbuilding. I’ve written several short stories in this world, the first one “Sina, the Child with no Echo”, published in our first anthology, Mothersound: A Sauútiverse Anthology. “Sina” is set in Ekwukwe, the hollow planet, where having a magical echo is important. Sina’s neurodivergence is perceived a curse but turns out to be a gift. Another playful tale is “The Mystery of the Vanishing Echoes”, published in Sherlock is a Girl’s Name. In this multiverse story, sleuth Shaalok Ho-ohmsi and her ward Wa’watison are summoned to the planet Ekwukwe to solve a mystery of vanishing echoes.

I wanted to write a longer Sauútiverse story with a strong female protagonist, and found this in Chant’L—a young Guardian with an affinity to hive-minded beasts, unaware that she has more magic than she knows how to use. Hence The Nga’phandileh Whisperer.

The novella is a second-person ‘you’ narrative, addressing the protagonist. I am at home with this voice, a personal connection with the protagonist, seeing as they see, feeling as they feel, yet omniscient—knowing just a little more outside them.

Novic is the origin story for one of the characters in Claiming T-Mo. What is the Outbreeds series all about, and why was it important for you to go back and write a prequel to explain this specific character’s beginnings?

The Outbreeds series by Meerkat Press is about a breed of others. It engages with difference, tackling the unbelonging individual’s experience—even today in our polarized world, and especially in the current US environment, for being different. Novic is the father who broke tradition in my first novel Claiming T-Mo, with devastating consequences. I thought about why did he do that? What makes this immortal priest who and what he is? What makes him tick? Hence Novic, the story before the story. It’s a moment in time in Grovea, the made-up planet. I wanted to reconnect with Claiming T-Mo, to revive the versatility of a character’s light and shade. I scrutinized Novic’s story arc—a wandering anti-hero seeking to comprehend his incarnations, and had fun with this novelette that demystifies death.

You’re a very prolific author. Can you describe your writing process? Do you devote a certain amount of time daily to writing, do you write in a specific place, or have certain rituals? How do you plan your stories—do they unfold as you go along, or do you outline them?

I’m a very experimental writer! I write to explore. My writing is a curiosity, a response to a trigger or an incipient question troubling my mind. I write to find an answer, or a better question. I’m a very immersive writer and an immersive reader. I need to feel the story. All my stories, irrespective of genre, explore a character’s relationship with others, with themselves, and with the world around them. I feel their yearning and my quest begins.

Because my life is very busy, I’ve taught myself to write in the moment. I call it Sudden: writing on the go. Chunking in bits and pieces, scraps and notes to self, spurting in bite size. I jot down points that are little triggers, simple word or phrase prompts—mini scenes that don’t have to be perfect. Later, when I have time, I have all the minis to develop into robust scenes.

What’s next for you? Will you be writing more stories set in Sauútiverse, or more entries in the Outbreeds series? Do you have other forthcoming titles and projects?

In 2026, I have a Sauútiverse novel, Crimson in Quietus, an Afrocentric novel by Meerkat Press, Muntu, a novella by Bad Hand Books (you can pre-order it already, comes with a signed bookplate!), and a collection of short stories, Black Dingo, by Flame Tree and distributed by Simon and Schuster. In 2027, I have another collection of short stories, The Rawness of You, half of which comprises Sauútiverse stories—this is also by Meerkat Press. Let’s just say I am very prolific. Find my works on my website: eugenbacon.com.

Gosh, I newly joined TikTok—it’s scary as hell. What a minefield! Find me @EugenBacon. Also @genni.bsky.social.

Tell us about your library. What’s on your own shelves?

Toni Morrison’s Sula, Song of Solomon, Tar Baby, The Bluest Eye, Beloved… um… everything. Michael Ondaatje’s Divisadero, love it to bits. Peter Temple’s Truth, The Broken Shore—an Aussie literary crime writer who writes the best dialogue I’ve ever read. Octavia E. Butler, Anthony Doerr, Chinua Achebe, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Ray Bradbury, N.K. Jemisin, Eugen Bacon, Eugen Bacon, Eugen Bacon…

What have you been reading lately, and what would you recommend to other readers?

I’m currently reading books as a juror (chair) for the Otherwise Awards 2025. Can’t reveal my favourites yet!

But this year, I’d recommend other readers to check out Kathe Koja’s Dark Factory and Dark Matter, and Tavia Nyong’o’s Black Apocalypse: Afrofuturism at the End of the World—it’s a nonfiction that embraces differentiation and survivalist self-invention in the speculative estrangement that Afrofuturism affords in an apocalyptic era.

LibraryThing is pleased to sit down this month with British mystery novelist S.J. Bennett, whose Her Majesty the Queen Investigates series, casting Queen Elizabeth II as a secret detective, has sold more than half a million copies worldwide, across more than twenty countries. Educated at London University and Cambridge University, where she earned a PhD in Italian Literature, she has worked as a lobbyist and management consultant, as well as a creative writing instructor. As Sophia Bennet she made her authorial debut with the young adult novel Threads, which won the Times Chicken House Children’s Fiction Competition in 2009, going on to publish a number of other young adult and romance novels under that name. In 2017 her Love Song was named Romantic Novel of the Year by the RNA (Romantic Novelists’ Association). She made her debut as S.J. Bennett in 2020 with The Windsor Knot, the first of five books in the Her Majesty the Queen Investigates series. The fifth and final title thus far, The Queen Who Came In From the Cold is due out next month from Crooked Lane Books. Bennett sat down with Abigail this month to discuss the book.

The Queen Who Came In From the Cold is the latest entry in your series depicting Queen Elizabeth II’s secret life as a detective. How did the idea for the series first come to you? What is it about the Queen that made you think of her as a likely sleuth?

The Queen was alive and well when I first had the idea to incorporate her into fiction. She was someone who fascinated people around the world, and she was getting a lot of attention because of The Crown.

I was looking for inspiration for a new series, and I suddenly thought that she would fit well into the mold of a classic Golden Age detective, because she lived in a very specific, self-contained world and she had a strong sense of public service, which I wanted to explore. Her family didn’t always live up to it, but she tried! What’s great for a novelist is that everyone thinks they know her, but she didn’t give interviews, so it leaves a lot of room to imagine what she was really thinking and doing behind the scenes.

I often get asked if I was worried about including her as a real figure, and I was a bit, to start with. But then I realized that she has inspired a long line of novelists and playwrights – from Alan Bennett’s The Uncommon Reader, and A Question of Attribution, to Peter Morgan’s The Queen, The Crown and The Audience, Sue Townsend’s The Queen and I. I think they were also attracted by that combination of familiarity and mystery, along with the extraordinary life she led, in which she encountered most of the great figures of the twentieth century.

My own books are about how a very human public figure, with heavy expectations on her, juggles her job, her beliefs, her interests and her natural quest for justice. The twist is, she can’t be seen to do it, so she has to get someone else to take the credit for her Miss Marple-like genius.

Unlike many other detectives, yours is based on a real-life person. Does this influence how you tell your stories? Do you feel a responsibility to get things right, given the importance of your real-world inspiration, and what does that mean, in this context?

I do feel that responsibility. I chose Elizabeth partly because I admired her steady, reliable leadership, in a world where our political leaders often take us by surprise, and not always in a good way. So, I wanted to do justice to that.

The Queen’s circumstances are so interesting, combining the constraints of a constitutional monarch who can’t ever step out of line with the glamour of living in a series of castles and palaces. Weaving those contrasts into the book keeps me pretty busy, in a fun way. Plus, of course, there’s a murder, and only her experience and intelligence can solve it.

I made the decision at the start that I wouldn’t make any of the royals say or do anything we couldn’t imagine them saying or doing in real life. Anyone who has to behave oddly or outrageously to fit my plots is an invented character. But it helps that the royal family contained some big characters who leap off the page anyway. Prince Philip, Princess Margaret and the Queen Mother have lots of scenes that make me giggle, but that I hope are still true to how they really were. I would honestly find it much harder to write about the current generations, because their lives are more normal in many ways, and also, because we already know about their inner lives, because they tell us. The Queen and Prince Philip were the last of the ‘mythical’ royals, I think.

With a murder seen from a train, and the title The Queen Who Came In From the Cold, your book suggests both Agatha Christie and John le Carré. Are there other authors and works of mystery and espionage fiction that influenced your story?

I love referencing other writers, and someone on the train in this novel is reading Thunderball, by Ian Fleming, which came out in 1961 and deals with one of the themes that’s present in my book too, namely the threat of nuclear war. At that point, The Queen Who Came In From the Cold is very much still in the Agatha Christie mold, where a murder is supposedly seen from the train, but Fleming’s book hints at the more modern spy story that the book will become in the second half.

As well as Fleming and John le Carré, whose debut novel came out that year, I read a lot of Len Deighton when I was growing up, so I hope some of his sense of adventure is in there too. But another big influence was film. I love the comedy and graphic design of The Pink Panther, and the London-centered louche photography of Blow-Up. I asked if the jacket designer (a brilliant Spanish illustrator called Iker Ayesteran) could bring some of that Sixties magic to the cover, and I like to think he has done … even if the lady in the tiara isn’t an exact replica of the Queen.

Unlike the earlier books in your series, which were contemporaneous, your latest is set during the Cold War. Did you have to do a great deal of additional research to write the story? What are some of the most interesting things you learned?

I hadn’t realized there were quite so many Russian spy rings on the go in and around London at the time! One of my characters is based on a real-life Russian agent called Kolon Molody, who embedded himself in British culture as an entrepreneur (set up by the KGB) selling jukeboxes and vending machines. According to his own account, he became a millionaire out of it before he was caught. His world was a classic one of microdots and dead-letter drops.

As a teenager, I lived in Berlin in the 1980s, when the Berlin Wall literally ran around the edge of our back garden. We were at the heart of the Cold War, but by then it was obvious the West was winning, so I didn’t personally feel under threat – although people were still dying trying to escape from East Germany to the West. I hadn’t fully realized
how much more unsafe people must have felt a generation earlier. I don’t think the western world has felt so unstable since those days … until now, perhaps.

It fascinates me that Peter Sellers, who was so entertaining as Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther films, was also the star in Dr Stangelove, which was based on an early thriller about the threat of nuclear annihilation called Red Alert, by Peter George. That dichotomy between fear and fun seemed to characterize the early 19§0s, and is exactly what I’m trying to capture in the book.

On a different note, it was a surprise to see how well Russia was doing in the Space Race. At that time, the Soviet Union was always a step ahead. Yuri Gagarin was the first person to go into orbit, and the Queen and Prince Philip were as awestruck as anyone else. When Gagarin visited the UK in the summer of 1961, they invited him to lunch at the palace and afterwards, it was Elizabeth who asked for a picture with him, not the other way around.

The Soviet success was largely down to the brilliance of the man they called the Chief Designer. His real name was Sergei Korolev, but the West didn’t find this out for years, because the Soviets kept his identity a closely-guarded secret. He was an extraordinary figure – imprisoned in the gulags by Stalin, and then brought out to run their most important space program. I’d call that pretty forgiving! Their space program never recovered after he died. I’m a big fan of his ingenuity, and he has a place in the book.

Tell us a little bit about your writing process. Do you have a particular writing spot and routine? Do you know the solution to your mysteries from the beginning? Do you outline your story, or does it come to you as you go along?

I went to an event recently, where Richard Osman and Mick Herron – both British writers whose work I enjoy – talked about how they are ‘pantsers’, who are driven purely by the relationships between the characters they create. I tried that early in my writing life and found I usually ran out of steam after about five thousand words, so now I plot in a reasonable amount of detail before I start.

I always know who did it and how, and I’ve given myself the challenge of fitting the murder mystery alongside everything the Queen was really doing at the time, so I need a spreadsheet to keep track of it all. Nevertheless, red herrings will occur to me during the writing process, and I adapt the plot to fit. I find if I know too much detail, then the act of writing each chapter loses its fun. I need to leave room for discoveries along the way.

If in doubt, I get Prince Philip on the scene to be furious or reassuring about something. He’s always a joy to write. So is the Queen Mother, as I mentioned. It’s the naughty characters who always give the books their bounce.

Her Majesty the Queen Investigates was published as part of a five-book deal. Will there be more books? Do you have any other projects in the offing?

I was very lucky to get that first deal from Bonnier in the UK. My editor had never done a five-book deal before, and I’m not sure he’s done one since! I always knew I wanted the series to be longer, though. I’ve just persuaded him to let me write two more, so book six, set in the Caribbean in 1966, will be out next year, and another one, set in Balmoral back in 2017, will hopefully be out the year after. I miss Captain Rozie Oshodi, the Queen’s sidekick in the first three books, and so do lots of readers, so it’ll be great to be in her company again for one last outing.

Tell us about your library. What’s on your own shelves?

My bookshelves are scattered around the house and my writing shed, wherever they’ll fit. I studied French and Italian at university, so there are a lot of twentieth century books from both countries. I love the fact that French spines read bottom up, whereas English ones read top down. I bought really cool blue and white editions of my favourite authors from Editions de Minuit in the 1990s and it’s lovely to have them on my shelves.

I’ve always loved classical literature, so there are plenty of Everyman editions of Jane Austen, George Eliot and Henry James, but equally, the books that got me through stressful times like exams were Jilly Cooper and Jackie Collins, so they have their place. These are the books that inspired the kind of literature I wanted to write: escapist, absorbing and fun. They’re near the travel guides, for all the real-life escaping I love to do.

I have two bookcases dedicated to crime fiction, packed with Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, P.D. James, Rex Stout (Nero Wolfe was a big inspiration for the way I write the Queen and her sidekicks), Donna Leon and Chris Brookmyre. I inherited my love of the mystery genre from my mother, who has a library full of books I’ve also loved, by other authors such as Robert B. Parker and Sue Grafton, as well as her own shelf of Le Carrés. She decided to start clearing them out recently, but I begged her not to: I still love seeing them there.

Finally, my bedroom is awash with overfull shelves and teetering piles of contemporary novels and non-fiction that I really must sort out one day. Highlights include Golden Hill by Francis Spufford, which someone at my book club recommended, A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan and Where’d You Go Bernadette by Maria Semple. They’re all books whose inventiveness inspires me.

What have you been reading lately, and what would you recommend to other readers?

Thanks to my book club, I’ve been re-reading Jane Austen, and am reminded of what a fabulous stylist she was. But in terms of new writers, I’ve recently enjoyed The Art of a Lie by Laura Shepherd-Robinson, set in Georgian London, and A Case of Mice and Murder by Sally Smith, set in the heart of legal London at the turn of the twentieth century. Both Laura and Sally write vivid characters with aplomb, and create satisfying, twisty plots that are a joy to follow. I definitely recommend them both.