Three Books I'm Reading Now, 9/22/25 Edition

The Books I'm Reading Now

I'm reading a favorite author's most recent historical fiction, The Briar Club by Kate Quinn; I'm listening to my first Zadie Smith novel, the Victorian-England-set historical fiction The Fraud; and I'm reading Richard Osman's charming mystery The Thursday Murder Club.

What are you reading, bookworms?

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01 The Briar Club by Kate Quinn

In The Briar Club, Kate Quinn turns her considerable talent for bringing history to life by tackling the McCarthy era--in what feels like a very timely novel about free speech, the twisting of truth, and destructive governmental paranoia.

Quinn's historical fiction offers the stories of multiple women in a females-only Washington, D.C. boardinghouse. They are brought together as not just boarders but friends by new tenant Grace March, who initiates weekly makeshift attic-apartment dinner parties and builds bonds between the disparate characters. But none of the women is precisely as she seems.

Kate Quinn is the author of the fantastic titles The Diamond Eye, The Huntress, The Rose Code, and The Alice Network, as well as The Phoenix Crown, which she wrote with Janie Chang.

I'm reading this book for my book club.

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02 The Fraud by Zadie Smith

Last week I wrote about reading my first book by T. Kingfisher, and this week I'm reading my first book by Zadie Smith.

In her first historical fiction novel, Smith offers a Victorian England tableau featuring a wonderfully complex female character in Eliza Touchet, the unmarried, aging housekeeper, cousin, and confidante to the terrible but aspiring novelist William Harrison Ainsworth.

Smith builds a subplot from the real-life, much-publicized case of the Tichborne Claimant, in which a cockney butcher returned from an extended stay in Australia and attempted to lay claim to the Tichborne family fortune, insisting that he was a long-lost son much changed by his time away--and with the actual Tichborne heir's former slave as his key witness.

Smith is also the author of the novels White Teeth, The Autograph Man, On Beauty, NW, and Swing Time, as well as essays and short stories.

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03 The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman

My sister-in-law was enjoying this book while we were at the beach this summer, which is what finally got me to push the novel to higher up on my to-read list. And now there's a movie based upon the book to enjoy after I finish!

In the first installment in Osman's mystery series, four septuagenarians meet each week to discuss unsolved murders and put their wits to the test to try to resolve them.

But when a slick local developer associated with their own retirement community is murdered, and other deaths follow, this funny, grumpy, big-hearted, underestimated group of friends becomes determined to solve the case.

Deanna Raybourn's Killers of a Certain Age is another series about older protagonists who use their wits and significant life experience to solve crimes--and, in their case, evade their own murders. You can check out my reviews of the first two titles here and here.