Jennifer McMahon is the author of six novels, including Promise Not to Tell and Island of Lost Girls. She grew up in suburban Connecticut, and graduated from Goddard College in 1991. Over the years, she has been a house painter, farmworker, paste-up artist, pizza delivery person, homeless shelter staff member, and has worked with mentally ill adults and children. She lives in Vermont with her partner and their daughter. Her new novel, The One I Left Behind, will be published on January 2, 2013, by Morrow.
On your nightstand now:
The Twelve by Justin Cronin, The End of the Wasp Season by Denise Mina and Hints of Heloise: Three Stories by Laura Lippman.
Favorite book when you were a child:
Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh. Harriet was my hero. I developed my own spy route around the neighborhood after reading it, unfortunately for my neighbors. I read it to my daughter about a year ago, when she was seven, and was silently praying she wouldn't get any ideas.
Your top five authors:
That's hard! If I have to choose today, let's say: Harper Lee, Shirley Jackson, Patricia Highsmith, Sarah Waters and Denise Mina.
Book you've faked reading:
Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham in high school. I got an A on essay about it that I did after reading the Cliffs Notes. I felt so guilty I never faked reading a book again.
Book you're an evangelist for:
The Complete Poems by Anne Sexton. Truly, everyone should read some Anne Sexton.
Book you've bought for the cover:
Bangkok 8 by John Burdett--I was browsing the crime fiction section and the hot-pink cover with the snake jumped out at me. I ended up really enjoying the book.
Book that changed your life:
To Kill A Mockingbird. I remember finishing it at our dining room table and closing the cover. I looked around my house, which seemed strangely flat and unfamiliar. I knew right then and there that I wanted to be able to do this--to become a storyteller who could create such an intensely magical world that when the reader put the book down, the real world would feel bland.
Favorite line from a book:
"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." --from The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany. Irving is such an incredible writer and this book blew me away--making me think about faith and fate in whole new ways.
author photo: Drea Thew