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Elizabeth Little is the author of Dear Daughter, Pretty as a Picture, and two works of nonfiction. Her writing has also appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, McSweeney's, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, among other publications. She lives in Los Angeles with her family. Good Girls Die Bored (Bantam, August 4, 2026) is a gripping, emotionally charged thriller featuring a woman hired to join a security detail team for an investigative journalist, but the job and the people involved might be hiding more than they appear.
Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:
You ever wish your action heroes were women with complex inner lives and emotionally rich female friendships? Me too! So here's Die Hard meets Fleabag.
On your nightstand now:
I'm a strange little goblin who likes to read in the dark, so at night I'm usually on an e-reader, but I do have two physical books on my dresser at the moment. First, Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry by Leanne Shapton. I picked this gem up on a bookseller's recommendation--it's a chronicle of a couple's relationship as told through an auction catalog, and I'm enjoying it so much I ration myself to only a few pages a night. Then there's The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff, which I'll freely admit I've been reading for months. (And I'll probably never finish it because I keep setting it aside to rant to my husband about whatever it is I've just learned.) Meanwhile, the next novel in my e-book queue is Bromantasy by Máire Roche, which had me at the tagline: "Two heroes. One brain cell."
Favorite book when you were a child:
I was a Little Golden Book devotee, and the first book I remember thinking of as "my favorite" was The Pink Panther in the Haunted House by Kennon Graham, illustrated by Darrell Baker. (I was a genre-fiction girl from the start.) Later on, I probably told people that my favorite book was Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, and maybe that's true in an aesthetic sense, but if I were to calculate the number of rereads, I'm pretty sure Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey would come out on top.
Your top five authors:
These definitely change according to mood, but at the moment I'll go with Shirley Jackson, Ursula K. Le Guin, Elmore Leonard, Patricia Highsmith, and Dorothy L. Sayers.
Book you've faked reading:
With apologies to my 11th grade English teacher: The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. I'm so sorry, but that essay I handed in was in fact a five-paragraph educated guess. I was just too busy reading very important books about dragons and vampires.
Book you're an evangelist for:
The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey. Perhaps my favorite mystery novel of all time--a Scotland Yard inspector laid up in the hospital becomes fixated on the disappearance of Richard III's nephews, the so-called Princes in the Tower. Just impeccably crafted. (But while I'm here, can I also put a good word in for Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow and Iris Murdoch's A Severed Head?)
Book you've bought for the cover:
I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy.
Book you hid from your parents:
I never went so far as to actually hide a book, but let's just say I wasn't exactly volunteering information about Jean M. Auel's The Clan of the Cave Bear sequels.
Book that changed your life:
Either Louise Fitzhugh's Harriet the Spy or Ellen Raskin's The Westing Game--whichever I read first. For better or for worse (and when I'm under deadline, I'd definitely say worse), those are the books that made me fall in love with mysteries.
Five books you'll never part with:
A first edition of Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire that was given to me as a wedding present. A collection of 17th-century British poetry that belonged to a dear friend who is no longer with us. My father's much-loved childhood copy of A.A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh (illustrated by E.H. Shepard). A slim volume of Italian verb conjugations that's just the most perfectly well-constructed language reference work I've ever come across. And The Age of Surveillance Capitalism--because, like I said, I'm never going to finish the damn thing.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Murder on the Orient Express. I've been reading mystery novels for many years now, and while I'm not going to pretend I'm never surprised by a twist, it's pretty rare. These days, I probably read crime fiction more for the journey than the destination--which isn't without its pleasures, of course! But it's a special treat to be expertly hoodwinked, and no one did it better than Agatha Christie. So wipe my memory, please, and give me the chance to be fooled all over again.