Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Seven titles about women on a journey to figure out who they are

Phoebe McIntosh is an actress and playwright from London. She wrote and performed in a sell-out run of her first play, The Tea Diaries, at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, followed by her solo show, Dominoes, which toured the South East and London. She completed the Soho Theatre Writers’ Lab program, and her most recent full-length play, The Soon Life, was shortlisted and highly commended for the Tony Craze Award as well as being longlisted for the Alfred Fagon Award. McIntosh won a place on the inaugural Tamasha x Hachette creative writing program and was selected for Penguin’s WriteNow program.

Dominoes is her debut novel.

At Electric Lit McIntosh tagged seven novels "about women who, at any one time, have had their doubts about who they are and who they present themselves to the world as." One title on the list:
Temper by Phoebe Walker

Purpose and identity are often inextricably linked to place for many women. We feel this in almost every line of Phoebe Walker’s debut. Infused with her characteristic poetic imagery and keenly observant eye for the world around her, she gives us yet another unnamed narrator (a theme worthy of a reading list of its own!) who has left London on the coat tails of her corporate boyfriend and his new job. Being a freelance writer, she has the freedom to work from anywhere, and the Netherlands, she reasons, is as good a place as any. But the promise of expat life, with its shiny, social media-ready exterior and the feeling of excitement in the first days and weeks, quickly fades. What our protagonist is left with is creeping isolation, loneliness and a lack of purpose. When she reluctantly befriends an untrustworthy fellow expat who has been shunned by everyone else who knows her out there, the narrator’s reflections on just how and exactly where to go about building a life for oneself in a big world, becomes all the more intriguing and absorbing.
Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Monday, March 18, 2024

Six spooky & fantastical missing-persons tales

Melissa Albert is the New York Times and indie bestselling author of the Hazel Wood series (The Hazel Wood, The Night Country, Tales from the Hinterland) and Our Crooked Hearts, and a former bookseller and YA lit blogger. Her work has been translated into more than twenty languages and included in the New York Times list of Notable Children’s Books. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.

Albert's new novel is The Bad Ones.

At CrimeReads she tagged six "supernatural and horror-inflected stories in which vanishings drive the plot." One title on the list:
The Return by Rachel Harrison

Four women gather for a girls’ trip in a super-hip, highly secluded inn to celebrate the mysterious return of one of their number: Julie, back after two years gone, without any apparent memory of where she has been. Things are a little awkward—they haven’t been together in a long time, their friendship dynamics are uneven. Not to mention the fact that Julie is skinny and stinking and craving raw meat. Fresh meat. Things degrade from there in a disgusting fashion, featuring Harrison’s usual excellent character building and funny, sharp dialogue. This is a friendship story to soothe your ego if you’ve ever lived through a less than perfect reunion.
Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Sunday, March 17, 2024

Eight titles for St. Patrick’s Day

The Zoomer Book Club's Nathalie Atkinson tagged eight notable new reads in the Irish literary wave, including:
THE HUNTER by Tana French

Fans of the American-born Irish writer love the loosely connected mysteries of her superb and psychologically astute Dublin Murder Squad series. But in 2020, French ventured away from Dublin with The Searcher, to feature retired Chicago detective Cal Hooper, who moved to rural western Ireland for solace. In this sequel – ingeniously told largely through conversations – he continues to learn what makes his neighbours tick, as the absent father of Trey (Hooper’s teen protégé from the earlier novel) comes back to the village with an ulterior motive.
Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Saturday, March 16, 2024

Five top Irish reads

The Amazon Book Review editors tagged five of their favorite Irish reads, including:
Last Call at the Local by Sarah Grunder Ruiz

I hadn’t read a love story like Jack and Raine’s, and I cherished every minute. Raine is a musician with ADHD traveling Europe as a busker until an unfortunate theft leaves her stranded at The Local in Cobh, Ireland. Enter Jack, charming Irishman and owner of the bar. Their chemistry is instant, but Jack has a different idea – hire Raine to bring life back into his bar. The only problem is Jack’s OCD makes change a struggle. Raine and Jack’s endless compassion for one another challenges them to think beyond the limitations they’ve put on themselves in both life and love. This tender, sexy, witty romance was a breath of fresh air, and I was rooting for Jack and Raine from the first page to the last. There was also a fantastic supporting cast of characters, including an enigmatic cat (is there any other kind) named Sebastian.
—Abby Abell, Amazon Editor
Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Friday, March 15, 2024

Five top books inspired by classic novels

Sophie Ratcliffe is professor of literature and creative criticism at the University of Oxford and a fellow and tutor at Lady Margaret Hall. In addition to her scholarly books, including On Sympathy, she has published commentary pieces and book reviews for the Guardian, the New Statesman, and the Times Literary Supplement, among other outlets, and has served a judge for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction and the Wellcome Book Prize.

Ratcliffe's forthcoming book is Loss, A Love Story: Imagined Histories and Brief Encounters.

At the Guardian she tagged five of the best books inspired by classic novels, including:
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

A passionate, feminist prequel to Jane Eyre, Rhys’s final novel gives a voice to the madwoman in the attic. Before she became Bertha Mason, Rochester’s first wife was we learn, the beautiful, troubled Antoinette Cosway. Dramatic and painterly, Rhys’s narrative captures the beauties of the landscape of Jamaica, Cosway’s childhood home, as well as the ugliness of historical guilt and complicity. Groundbreaking on its publication in 1966, Wide Sargasso Sea has lost none of its charge.
Read about the other entries on the list.

Wide Sargasso Sea is among Jane Corry's ten heroines who kept their motives hidden, Siân Phillips's six favorite books, Richard Gwyn's top ten books in which things end badly, and Elise Valmorbida's top ten books on the migrant experience.

--Marshal Zeringue

Thursday, March 14, 2024

Six top psychological thrillers set in Washington D.C.

Aggie Blum Thompson worked as a newspaper reporter, covering cops, courts, and trials, with a healthy dose of the mundane mixed in. Her writing has appeared in newspapers such as The Boston Globe and The Washington Post. A native New Yorker, she now lives just over the Washington D.C. line in Bethesda, Maryland with her husband, two children, cat, and dog.

Thompson's new novel is Such a Lovely Family.

At CrimeReads she tagged six top non-political thrillers set in the nation’s capital, including:
The Senator’s Wife by Liv Constantine may sound like the title of a political thriller, but this psychological suspense explores a rocky second marriage, rife with gaslighting and suspicion. After the tragic deaths of their respective spouses two years earlier, Sloane Chase and Senator Whit Montgomery marry in the hopes of moving on with their lives. Felled by illness in her beautiful Georgetown home, Sloane struggles with who she can trust as she fights to uncover what happened to her first husband.

What to visit: Georgetown, where you can dine at Café Milano, which makes an appearance in the book and has been dubbed by The New York Times as “Where the world’s most powerful people go.” If the prices there are a little steep, there are plenty of other eateries and cafes nearby. Take your coffee down to the waterfront, and if you’re up for it, walk the mile along the Potomac River to the Lincoln Memorial.
Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Eight titles about characters with psychic abilities

Katya Apekina is a novelist, screenwriter and translator. Her novel, The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish, was named a Best Book of 2018 by Kirkus, Buzzfeed, LitHub and others, was a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize, and has been translated into Spanish, Catalan, French, German, and Italian. She has published stories in various literary magazines and translated poetry and prose for Night Wraps the Sky: Writings by and about Mayakovsky (2008), short-listed for the Best Translated Book Award. She co-wrote the screenplay for the feature film New Orleans, Mon Amour, which premiered at SXSW in 2008. She is the recipient of an Elizabeth George grant, an Olin Fellowship, the Alena Wilson prize, and a 3rd Year Fiction Fellowship from Washington University in St. Louis, where she did her MFA. She has done residencies at VCCA, Playa, Ucross, Art Omi: Writing, and Fondation Jan Michalski in Switzerland. Born in Moscow, she grew up in Boston, and currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband, daughter and dog.

Apekina's new novel is Mother Doll.

At Electric Lit the author tagged eight "stories about characters who can predict the future and connect to the other side," including:
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, translated by Larissa Volokhonsky

This book is in my canon, the reason I became a writer. It wasn’t published until after Bulgakov’s death, because its biting social satire couldn’t get past the Soviet censors. The writer in the book is channeling the story of Pontius Pilate, which is confirmed by Satan and his entourage when they descend on Moscow and wreak havoc, trolling the literary elite. Satan, In the opening scene, psychically predicts the death of the man in charge of Massolit, saying mysteriously that “Annushka has already spilled the sunflower oil.”
Read about the other entries on the list.

The Master and Margarita is among Jeff Somers's twenty-five best cats in sci-fi & fantasy, Gabriel Weston's five best books by doctors, Joel Cunningham's nine favorite talking animals in fiction, Josh Ritter's six favorite books that invoke the supernatural, Cornelius Medvei's's top ten talking animals in literature, Joseph Fiennes' six best books, and Daniel Johnson's five best books about Cold War culture. It's also a book that English actor and writer Stephen Fry tries to read as often as he can.

--Marshal Zeringue

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Seven top vacation and road trip rom-coms

New York Times bestselling author Allison Winn Scotch's novels include Cleo McDougal Regrets Nothing, In Twenty Years, and Time of My Life. She lives in Los Angeles with her family and their two rescue dogs, Hugo and Mr. Peanut.

Her new novel, Take Two, Birdie Maxwell -- think Notting Hill meets The Proposal -- is new in bookstores.

At LitHub Scotch tagged seven favorite great vacation and road trip rom-coms, including:
Sarah Adler, Mrs. Nash’s Ashes

Okay, you need to pick this one up for the premise alone: our heroine, Millicent, promises her elderly best friend that she will carry her ashes from Washington D.C. to Florida to reunite her remains with the woman she believed was her one true love. (Seriously, this is the best idea—I read this wishing I had come up with it!) When flights get cancelled, Millicent is forced to drive, along with an acquaintance who may or may not be a smoke-show, and who, of course, is as cynical about love as Millicent is optimistic.

I loved this book for its swoony vibe, its exploration of many facets of love, and of course, the crackling leads.
Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Monday, March 11, 2024

Seven modern gothic novels featuring a feminist perspective

Paulette Kennedy is the bestselling author of The Witch of Tin Mountain and Parting the Veil, which received the prestigious HNS Review Editor’s Choice Award. She has had a lifelong obsession with the gothic. As a young girl, she spent her summers among the gravestones in her neighborhood cemetery, imagining all sorts of romantic stories for the people buried there. After her mother introduced her to the Brontës as a teenager, her affinity for fog-covered landscapes and haunted heroines only grew, inspiring her to become a writer. Originally from the Missouri Ozarks, she now lives with her family and a menagerie of rescue pets in sunny Southern California, where sometimes, on the very best days, the mountains are wreathed in fog.

Kennedy's new novel is The Devil and Mrs. Davenport.

At CrimeReads the author tagged seven books that "serve to illustrate the dangers of misogyny while centering the power and resilience of all women." One title on the list:
A Sweet Sting of Salt by Rose Sutherland

When village midwife Jean discovers a laboring mother outside her cabin one dark and stormy night, she falls into a web of dark secrets centering on her neighbor and his mysterious new wife in this sapphic retelling of The Selkie Wife folktale. While charming Muirin claims to be happy with her husband, Jean can’t overlook the fear in her new friend’s eyes. Her growing concern—and growing feelings—for Muirin means she can’t set her worries aside. But when the answers she’s seeking are more harrowing than she ever could have imagined, Jean finds herself in peril as she strives to save the woman she loves.
Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Sunday, March 10, 2024

Ten books to read on St. Patrick’s Day

At The Zoomer Book Club Athena McKenzie tagged ten "notable books illuminate the history, culture and food of the Emerald Isle," including:
WE DON'T KNOW OURSELVES: A PERSONAL HISTORY OF MODERN IRELAND by Fintan O'Toole

The judges for the An Post Irish Book Awards described Fintan O’Toole’s chronicle of his country as “a book that will remain important for a very long time – a reflection of who we are and where we came from. Truly, this is a book for the ages.” The 64-year-old journalist and author uses his own life and experiences as a guide to chart the course of Ireland’s tumultuous social, cultural, and economic change.
Read about the other entries on the list.

Marshal Zeringue

Saturday, March 9, 2024

Eight titles from across the world about isolation

Scott Alexander Howard lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. He has a PhD in philosophy from the University of Toronto and was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard, where his work focused on the relationship between memory, emotion, and literature.

The Other Valley is his first novel.

At Electric Lit he tagged eight novels from across the world about isolation, including:
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Never Let Me Go is about memory, lies, and hope. Another theme, emblazoned in its title, is loneliness. Kathy is an itinerant “carer” whose adult life is a slow blur of passing fields, motorway pit stops, and hospital visits. As her own ominous transition into a hospital grows near, she reflects on her childhood at a secluded school called Hailsham, before her friends were distributed around England for a purpose long kept secret from them. Ishiguro’s novel is a tender look at the transience of human connection. It’s also a masterpiece of worldbuilding-by-elision that blends golden nostalgia with growing horror.
Read about the other entries on the list.

Never Let Me Go is on Kat Sarfas's list of thirteen top dark academia titles, Raul Palma's list of seven stories about falling into debt, Akemi C. Brodsky's list of five academic novels that won’t make you want to return to school, Claire Fuller's list of seven top dystopian mysteries, Elizabeth Brooks's list of ten great novels with unreliable narrators, Lincoln Michel's top ten list of strange sci-fi dystopias, Amelia Morris's lits of ten of the most captivating fictional frenemies, Edward Ashton's eight titles about what it means to be human, Bethany Ball's list of the seven weirdest high schools in literature, Zak Salih's eight books about childhood pals—and the adults they become, Rachel Donohue's list of seven coming-of-age novels with elements of mystery or the supernatural, Chris Mooney's list of six top intelligent, page-turning, genre-bending classics, James Scudamore's top ten list of books about boarding school, Caroline Zancan's list of eight novels about students and teachers behaving badly, LitHub's list of the ten books that defined the 2000s, Meg Wolitzer's ten favorite books list, Jeff Somers's lists of nine science fiction novels that imagine the future of healthcare and "five pairs of books that have nothing to do with each other—and yet have everything to do with each other" and eight tales of technology run amok and top seven speculative works for those who think they hate speculative fiction, a list of five books that shaped Jason Gurley's Eleanor, Anne Charnock's list of five favorite books with fictitious works of art, Esther Inglis-Arkell's list of nine great science fiction books for people who don't like science fiction, Sabrina Rojas Weiss's list of ten favorite boarding school novels, Allegra Frazier's top four list of great dystopian novels that made it to the big screen, James Browning's top ten list of boarding school books, Jason Allen Ashlock and Mink Choi's top ten list of tragic love stories, Allegra Frazier's list of seven characters whose jobs are worse than yours, Shani Boianjiu's list of five top novels about coming of age, Karen Thompson Walker's list of five top "What If?" books, Lloyd Shepherd's top ten list of weird histories, and John Mullan's lists of ten of the best men writing as women in literature and ten of the best sentences as titles.

--Marshal Zeringue

Friday, March 8, 2024

Five top books about democracy in crisis

Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist and leader writer. He was formerly a correspondent in the Baltic region and Russia. He is the author of Politics: A Survivor's Guide.

At the Guardian he writes about
the permacrisis – a state of perpetual turbulence that folds geopolitical tension into cultural polarisation and spins it all around in a furious vortex. It can feel like being knocked over in the sea, unsure which way is up, afraid that another wave will strike the moment you breach the surface.
Behr says the "usual political narratives aren’t adequate to explain what is happening." He recommends five books that "go deeper," including:
Why Politics Fails by Ben Ansell

Ansell is professor of comparative democracy with a ferociously sharp mind and a genial turn of phrase. He has organised pretty much the whole of political practice and theory into five paradoxes (traps, he calls them) from which policymakers and voters around the world struggle to break free. This book is clinical, an MRI scan of the democratic soul in torment.
Read about the other entries at the Guardian.

--Marshal Zeringue