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It was reported on June 28, 2016 that Cormac McCarthy had died of a stroke. The story was a deliberate hoax, a lie that spread halfway around the world before it was quashed like the bug it was. I received the news of McCarthy’s actual death on June 13, 2023, in a terse email delivered late in the afternoon on the day he passed. The report came from a lifelong friend who I had blessed and cursed decades ago by suggesting that he read McCarthy’s BLOOD MERIDIAN, one of those rare books that takes up permanent residency in the reader’s mind.

I was in a state of shock when I learned of Anne Rice’s passing. After I discovered that she had succumbed to the effects of a stroke that she had suffered two months ago, right around the time of her 80th birthday, the realization that the literary world had lost one of the all-time greats really set in. Next to Stephen King, I don’t think there was a bigger literary name with the global success that Rice enjoyed. Of course, it all began with that classic first book, INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE, in 1976. I still remember taking my mother’s Book of the Month edition when I was a lad and reading what would become one of the best horror novels of all time.

For those who may not be aware, the author known as Charles Todd has always been a collaborative effort between Caroline Todd and her son, Charles. Their books, set during the WWI era, feature Inspector Ian Rutledge and army nurse Bess Crawford. What has consistently stood out for me is how human they have been able to make their characters. Each novel is complex, impeccably plotted and handles heavy moral dilemmas with ease and class.

In a full and sweeping writing career, Larry McMurtry wrote essays, novels and Academy Award-winning screenplays. However, his love for books went beyond writing. While living in Washington, D.C., he established a bookstore called Booked Up in 1971. Seventeen years later, a second Booked Up store opened in Archer City, Texas. It became one of the largest bookstores in the United States with an inventory between 400,000 and 450,000 books. By 2012, McMurtry decided it was time to downsize the business, and an auction was conducted, drawing book lovers, dealers and curious onlookers. "I've never seen that many people lined up in Archer City, and I'm sure I never will again,” McMurtry observed to a New York Times reporter.

John le Carré catapulted to fame in 1963 following the publication of THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD, which was promptly turned into a hit movie starring one of Hollywood’s leading actors, Richard Burton, as British spy Alec Leamas. 

Mary Higgins Clark was the first suspense writer whose work I fell in love with. I don’t remember quite how I found her books, but it was somewhere around age 10 or 11. Certainly, I’d known her name for a while; the “Queen of Suspense” was an icon of every bookstore, supermarket mass-market paperback section, and library front table.

In a speech to the Mills College class of 1983, Ursula K. Le Guin set out to talk “like a woman.” She said, “It’s going to sound terrible” --- because instead of deluging the graduates with golden promises of success, she spoke to them of children, failure and dark places. So I decided, in remembering Le Guin, to “sound terrible,” too: to talk like a woman, despite the warning voices in my head that it’s too personal, too egotistical, not intellectual enough. Panegyrists, those voices assure me, should be world-historical, big-picture, profound. But I’m simply trying to get at what she meant to me.

I first discovered Sue Grafton’s Alphabet series while volunteering at the local library in the seventh grade. I overheard a patron come up to the librarian with a copy of Q IS FOR QUARRY and asked her if she had the unreleased R yet. The idea that there was a series of books that was released in alphabetical order delighted my OCD. I went over to the mystery shelf, picked up an omnibus of A through C, and devoured it in two weeks.

"I decided to devote my life to telling the story because I felt that having survived I owe something to the dead. And anyone who does not remember betrays them again.” Elie Wiesel --- the man who gave voice to the voiceless, urged us toward understanding, reminded us to remember, fought for justice, inspired us to act bravely, and astonished and taught us with his unforgettable, poignant and absolutely indispensable works of literature --- died on July 2, 2016 in New York at the age of 87.

In a deeply felt blow to the American contemporary canon, one of the champion authors of 20th-century Southern literature has passed away. Pat Conroy, author of the seminal THE PRINCE OF TIDES and THE GREAT SANTINI, was recently diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Early Saturday morning, his Facebook page notified us that he “left this world Friday, March 4, 2016...surrounded by his family and friends in his Beaufort home overlooking the marshes he so loved.”