Holiday weekend links

Thriller writer Stephen Leather went to Australia to research his newest effort, COLD KILL — which imagines a terrorist attack in Sydney. He talks to the Sydney Morning Herald about the end result.

A.M. Homes talks to New York Magazine about why she’s gone all optimistic in her newest novel, THIS BOOK CAN SAVE YOUR LIFE — and why she owes a lot of the outlook change to her 3 year old daughter.

That scoundrel Jeffrey Archer gets airtime in the Globe and Mail, with Simon Houpt describing him as “a clutch of contradictory images at once.”

Susan Straight tells the LA Times how her novel imagines what life would have been like for her daughters if slavery had persisted.

Canada Reads has begun anew, and this week the CBC will whittle down the winner from a shortlist of five books picked by various Canadian luminaries.

Patrick Anderson gets caught up with one of the Da Vinci Clones, but ultimately decides Matilde Asensi’s THE LAST CATO is a frustrating read.

Ava Gardner seems to be the biography girl of the hour, as Lee Server’s portrait of the hard-drinking hellcat gets lavish praise by Janet Maslin and the Sunday Times’ Tom Shone.

On his brand new blog, Anthony Rainone offers a peek at a typical week in New York — going to a short story panel with SJ Rozan, Lawrence Block & Otto Penzler, and interviewing Cara Black.

And finally, did anyone read Gawker this weekend? Talk about trainwrecks….