Six top YA books featuring cross-cultural friendships

Sarah Skilton is the author of Bruised, a martial arts drama for young adults; and High and Dry, a hardboiled teen mystery. At the B&N Teen blog she tagged six top YA books featuring cross-cultural friendships, including:

Under a Painted Sky, by Stacey Lee

Chinese American musician Samantha forms an unbreakable bond with Annamae, an escaped slave, in 1849, when they flee their violent pasts. The Oregon Trail is particularly unsafe for young women, so Sam and Annamae disguise themselves as boys. Although they discover unexpected allies in a group of cowboys, it’s the girls’ friendship that forms the heart of the story.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Under a Painted Sky is among Dahlia Adler's seven top YA novels about best friendship.

My Book, The Movie: Under a Painted Sky.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten wartime love stories

Ayelet Gundar-Goshen is the author of One Night, Markovitch. One of her ten top wartime love stories, as shared at the Guardian:

Beloved by Toni Morrison

Some historians tell us that the American civil war ended in 1865. But just because they say the war was over then (it wasn’t even officially so until the following August), it doesn’t mean that it was over in the minds of the people who suffered it. Beloved, by the Pulitzer and Nobel-winning fixture of the modern books pantheon, is set in the years after President Andrew Johnson signed the Proclamation – Declaring that Peace, Order, Tranquillity, and Civil Authority Now Exists in and Throughout the Whole of the United States of America in 1866. Sethe, an escaped slave, tries to build a life as a free woman. As the possibility of love emerges, the past comes back to haunt her. Morrison suggests that for some people the war is never done, and examines whether, in such cases, love even has a chance.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Beloved also appears on Judith Claire Mitchell's list of ten of the best (unconventional) ghosts in literature, Kelly Link's list of four books that changed her, a list of four books that changed Libby Gleeson, The Telegraph's list of the 15 most depressing books, Elif Shafak's top five list of fictional mothers, Charlie Jane Anders's list of ten great books you didn't know were science fiction or fantasy, Peter Dimock's top ten list of books that challenge what we think we know as "history", Stuart Evers's top ten list of homes in literature, David W. Blight's list of five outstanding novels on the Civil War era, John Mullan's list of ten of the best births in literature, Kit Whitfield's top ten list of genre-defying novels, and at the top of one list of contenders for the title of the single best work of American fiction published in the last twenty-five years.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top nine wonderfully quirky love stories

Laura Barnett is an author and journalist. Her first novel, The Versions of Us, is now out in the UK and will be published in the US in May 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. One of her top nine unconventional love stories, as shared at the Daily Express:

Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler

Anne Tyler - probably my favourite author of all time - sets all her novels in and around Baltimore, where she lives. When I first started reading Tyler as a teenager, I had never been there, but I was utterly drawn in by her sense of place, and the characters that people it.

Now, I visit Baltimore often - my husband has family there - so the city, and Tyler’s characters, have come to even more vivid life. I love all her novels, but none more than Breathing Lessons, which is an unconventional love story not only in terms of structure - it is set over just one day, on which a long-married couple, Ira and Maggie Moran, are driving to a funeral - but in subject matter, too.

So many love stories focus on the passion of a first encounter and its aftermath, but Tyler is unafraid to confront love’s more workaday side: the pushes and pulls of a long relationship; the strains exerted by family, personality, and having to earn a living. It is a master class in how a novel can distil entire lives, in all their ordinary glory, onto the page.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

The ten best Emily Dickinson poems

Nuala O'Connor's latest novel is Miss Emily. One of her ten best Emily Dickinson poems, as shared at Publishers Weekly:

"I taste a liquor never brewed"

In life and in art Emily Dickinson was idiosyncratic – she did not choose the prescribed life of a well to-do woman of her era (marriage etc.) rather she become an outsider. While ‘I taste a liquor never brewed –’ illustrates her devotion to rhyme, it also shows her maverick’s disregard for it – she often chose an apt image rather than a full rhyme. Dickinson sometimes wrote alternative lines for ‘finished’ poems. Here ‘Not all the Frankfort berries’ can be swapped out for ‘Not all the vats upon the Rhine’; we’re still in Germany but with a vastly different image. This poem illustrates how intoxicating the natural world was to Dickinson. Luckily the house she chose to sequester herself inside, in the latter part of her life, was set on large grounds. There she and her family grew an abundance of produce and flowers; all the better for this little tippler.

Read about the other poems on the list.

Emily Dickinson is one of Ruth Padel's top ten women poets.

--Marshal Zeringue

Fifteen great books about the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan

Jesse Goolsby is an Air Force officer and the author of the novel I’d Walk with My Friends If I Could Find Them.

At The Daily Beast he tagged fifteen top books about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including:

FOBBIT BY DAVID ABRAMS (2012)

Opening:

“They were Fobbits because, at the core, they were nothing but marshmallow.”

Fobbit possesses the finest and most unique narrative voice of our recent war novels. Hilarious, heart-breaking, believable, and at its center, an innovative critique of what we’ve asked of our service members.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Fobbit is among Joel Cunningham's seven sharpest modern satires.

The Page 69 Test: Fobbit.

Writers Read: David Abrams.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten YA thrillers with sisters

At the Guardian, author Laura Jarratt tagged her ten favorite Young Adult thrillers featuring strong relationships between sisters, including:

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

The premise of Katniss as a heroine is set around her love for her little sister, Prim. In the ultimate dark dystopian YA thriller, Katniss sacrifices herself for Prim and volunteers to take part in the games – it’s a death sentence. She knows that when she offers herself up as Tribute. But Katniss is a fighter and she’s not going down easily…

Read about the other books on the list.

The Hunger Games also appears on Jeff Somers's top eight list of revolutionary SF/F novels, Tina Connolly's top five list of books where the girl saves the boy, Sarah Alderson's top ten list of feminist icons in children's and teen books, Jonathan Meres's top ten list of books that are so unfair, SF Said's top ten list of unlikely heroes, Rebecca Jane Stokes's top ten list of fictional families you could probably abide during holiday season and top eight list of books perfect for reality TV fiends, Chrissie Gruebel's list of favorite fictional fashion icons, Lucy Christopher's top ten list of literary woods, Robert McCrum's list of the ten best books with teenage narrators, Sophie McKenzie's top ten list of teen thrillers, Gregg Olsen's top ten list of deadly YA books, Annalee Newitz's list of ten great American dystopias, Philip Webb's top ten list of pulse-racing adventure books, Charlie Higson's top ten list of fantasy books for children, and Megan Wasson's list of five fantasy series geared towards teens that adults will love too.

--Marshal Zeringue

Kim Stanley Robinson’s ten favorite SF novels

Kim Stanley Robinson’s novels include the landmark Mars trilogy to the award-winning 2312. One of his ten favorite science fiction novels, as shared at the B & N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog:

Solaris, by Stanislaw Lem

“The final word on first contact with an alien intelligence, this is a taut psychological thriller as well as a complete work-out of the scientific method when confronted with a mystery. There’s a reason it has been filmed multiple times; it succeeds on many levels.”

Read about the other entries on the list.

Also see Kim Stanley Robinson's ten favorite Mars novels.

--Marshal Zeringue

Four books that changed Mary Norris

Mary Norris is a senior copy editor at The New Yorker magazine and the author of Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen.

One of four books that changed her, as shared at the Sydney Morning Herald:

East of Eden
John Steinbeck​

There was something rhapsodic to me about Steinbeck​ when I was a teenager. East of Eden was assigned in my sophomore year in high school, and for years I read it every spring. I thought it was sexy, and it had real evil and also redemption, and characters whose eyes you could look into.

Read about the other books on the list.

East of Eden is among John Mullan's ten best fraternal hatreds in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue

The twelve greatest fictional detectives (who aren't Sherlock Holmes)

At io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell tagged the twelve greatest fictional detectives (who aren't Sherlock Holmes), including:

Alex Cross

Alex Cross, the protagonist of a series of novels that begin with Along Came A Spider, is the most soft-spoken member of a list that includes several little old ladies. His habits include playing the piano, owning a contented cat, and quietly observing social injustice. Choosing to live in the area of Washington populated by the Have-Nots, he spends much of his time as a consulting detective and a psychologist working on the operatic crimes perpetrated on, and by, the Haves. Both dogged and empathetic, he proves that you don’t have to be a jerk to be a great detective—even when people give you every reason to be a jerk.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Along Came A Spider is one of Octavia Spencer's six favorite books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten books about migrants

Sunjeev Sahota is the author of Ours are the Streets and The Year of the Runaways. One of his top ten books about migrants, as shared at the Guardian:

My Ántonia by Willa Cather

Last year, in India, I spoke to a deported illegal immigrant who said he’d come to England so that “kuch ban jaweh”, “something might be made” - a future, perhaps. It reminded me of the immigrants in Cather’s novel - from Bohemia, mainly, but also Scandinavia – who live in sod-houses and work the Nebraskan soil, where “there was nothing but land; not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made”.

Read about the other books on the list.

My Ántonia is one of Chris Hannan's top ten tales of the American frontier.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven YA books where friendship trumps romance

At the B&N Teen Blog Natalie Zutter tagged seven Young Adult books "where friendship is more important than—or even entirely replaces—a love story," including:

This Song Will Save Your Life, by Leila Sales

Often, first love in YA acts as a catalyst for the protagonist’s emotional development, as she learns to open up and have confidence in herself. But for unpopular, awkward outsider Elise, her life-changing relationship comes in the form of three new friends: bandmates Vicky and Pippa, who adopt her into their group without any issue, and mysterious DJ Char. And the big love that catches Elise entirely unawares? Her love of (and talent for) DJing.

Learn about the other entries on the list.

This Song Will Save Your Life is among Non Pratt's top ten books about teens in trouble.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five books with gods as characters

Lou Anders is the author of Frostborn, the first book in the Thrones & Bones middle-grade series, and its sequel, Nightborn. For Tor.com he tagged five favorite books with gods as characters, including:

Blackdog by K. V. Johansen

Every mountain, lake, and river has its own deity in K. V. Johansen’s Blackdog. Some are quite powerful and distant, some are mad, and others are like kindly village elders, keeping alive the oral history of the tribe and officiating at weddings. The lake goddess Attalissa is unique. She chooses to incarnate, being born as a baby and living a full life, then repeating the cycle again. When she is young, she is vulnerable, and so, long ago, she bound a dark spirit called the Blackdog to the life of a man. The Blackdog is her guardian and protector, and passes from man to man as each host dies. It is better when a host is willing, but not necessary. When unforeseen events force a very young incarnation to flee her temple, a rogue named Holla-Sayan becomes the newest host of the Blackdog. Holla-Sayan takes Attalissa back with him to the caravan roads, where he introduces her as… his illegitimate daughter! K. V. Johansen has done something I’ve never seen before—she’s told a coming-of-age tale about a goddess.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Coffee with a Canine: K.V. Johansen & Ivan.

Writers Read: K. V. Johansen (December 2014).

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight books every dad should read

The Telegraph tagged eight books every dad should read, including:

About a Boy by Nick Hornby (Penguin, 1998)

Fatherhood is not a biological given, but a tricky, demanding, sometimes frustrating arrangement that a man forges with a child – that’s the central notion behind Nick Hornby’s wise, funny story about likeable lad-about-town Will and his relationship with his (suicidal) friend’s 12-year-old son, Marcus. It is the latter’s social awkwardness that provides much of the gentle humour in the novel, but the joke, finally, is on Will, who is compelled to confront adulthood and responsibility by an instinctive, growing bond with the boy.

Read about the other entries on the list.

About a Boy is among Jamie Fewery's ten best fictional fathers and Kay S. Hymowitz's five best books on the won't-grow-up modern male.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five of the greatest road trips in sci-fi & fantasy

Jeff Somers is the author of Lifers, the Avery Cates series from Orbit Books, Chum from Tyrus Books, and We Are Not Good People from Pocket/Gallery. He has published over thirty short stories as well.

At B & N Reads Somers tagged five of the greatest road trips in sci-fi & fantasy, including:

The Dead Lands, by Benjamin Percy

If Percy’s apocalypse isn’t the most original—another superflu, another nuclear war—his idea of what comes after totally is: the people of St. Louis build massive walls around their city to ride out the end of the world, and succeed, if living in a spoiling, crumbling city running out of water and ruled by corrupt and incompetent tyrants is your definition of success. When a rider appears outside the walls reporting the Northwest U.S. is seeing rain and growing crops, Lewis Meriweather and Mina Clark set out along a historically significant trail to see if humanity’s salvation can be found. Old-school road trip meets irradiated monsters, slave gangs, and giant spiders in a book that deserves to survive to classic status.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ernest Cline’s ten favorite SF novels

Ernest Cline’s novels include Ready Player One and the follow-up, Armada. One of his ten favorite science fiction novels, as shared at the B & N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog:

The Martian, by Andy Weir

A “MacGuyver trapped on Mars” tale that feels as real and harrowing as the true story of Apollo 13. Read it soon—the guy who directed Blade Runner is adapting it into a film.

Read about the other books on the list.

The Martian is among Jeff Somer's five top sci-fi novels with plausible futuristic technology and James Mustich's five top books on visiting Mars.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top spinsters in literature

Rachel Cooke, an award-winning journalist who writes for the Observer and is the television critic for the New Statesman, is the author of Her Brilliant Career: Ten Extraordinary Women of the Fifties.

One of Cooke's top ten single women, as shared at the Guardian:

Miss Havisham

Driven half-mad by her lover’s desertion on their wedding day, the star of Dickens’s 13th novel, Great Expectations, lives in her ruined mansion with her adopted daughter, Estella, whom she has brought up to use her beauty to torture men (“I stole her heart away and put ice in its place”). Miss Havisham can be read in two ways: while some have placed feminist interpretations on her witchy character, others see her as misogyny personified. But whatever line you take, her influence is beyond doubt. Were it not for her, Norma Desmond would surely never have uttered the words: “I’m ready for my close-up.”

Read about the other entries on the list.

Great Expectations appears on Robert Williams's top ten list of loners in fiction, Chrissie Gruebel's top ten list of books set in London, Melissa Albert's list of five interesting fictional characters who would make undesirable roommates, Janice Clark's list of seven top novels about the horrors of adolescence, Amy Wilkinson's list of five books Kate Middleton should have read while waiting to give birth, Kate Clanchy's top ten list of novels that reflect the real qualities of adolescence, Joseph Olshan's list of six favorite books, John Mullan's lists of ten of the best clocks in literature, ten of the best appropriate deaths in literature, ten of the best castles in literature, ten of the best Hamlets, ten of the best card games in literature, and ten best list of fights in fiction. It also made Tony Parsons' list of the top ten troubled males in fiction, David Nicholls' top ten list of literary tear jerkers, and numbers among Kurt Anderson's five most essential books. The novel is #1 on Melissa Katsoulis' list of "twenty-five films that made it from the book shelf to the box office with credibility intact."

Read an 1861 review of Great Expectations.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten books about spies

Stephen Grey's new book is The New Spymasters: Inside the Modern World of Espionage from the Cold War to Global Terror. One of his top ten books about spies, as shared at the Guardian:

Agent Storm: My Life Inside al-Qaeda and the CIA by Morten Storm (2014)

Probably the best account of a modern-day secret agent. Morten Storm, a convert to Islam, vividly recounts his work for the CIA and British intelligence, against extremists in Europe and al-Qaeda in the Yemen. Recruits like Storm are clearly hard to handle, but they may also have the sheer courage needed to operate unsupported deep inside enemy territory.

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five books that work equally well as both novels and story collections

Jeff Somers is the author of Lifers, the Avery Cates series from Orbit Books, Chum from Tyrus Books, and We Are Not Good People from Pocket/Gallery. He has published over thirty short stories as well.

At B & N Reads Somers tagged five books that work equally well as both novels and story collections, including:

Haunted, by Chuck Palahniuk

Palahniuk, as always, doesn’t approach anything straightforwardly. The story of desperate (and, naturally, weird) aspiring authors who lock themselves into an old theater for the ultimate writer’s retreat is a double-subversion of a book: both a short novel punctuated by short stories that at first glance are independent of each other, and a larger narrative of increasingly insane writers. Dig deeper, however, and the stories refer back to the overall themes of the novel and provide much of the backstory normally handled in exposition in more traditional forms. In the end, if you separated the stories from the larger narrative they would both lose much of their power, which is your main clue that this is a hybrid book that’s more than the sum of its parts.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Haunted is among Jeff Somers's four huge books that will hurt your brain—but in a good way, Ginni Chen's top eight bone-chilling books to help beat the summer heat, and Amanda Yesilbas and Charlie Jane Anders's ten horror novels that are scarier than almost any movie.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five fictional women of under-appreciated strength

Melissa Grey is a writer of young adult fiction powered entirely by candlelight and cups of tea. She can also ride a horse and shoot a bow and arrow at the same time. Her debut novel is The Girl at Midnight.

One of Grey's top five "fictional women of under-appreciated or otherwise unconventional strength," as shared at Tor.com:

Clara—Winterspell by Claire Legrand

Winterspell‘s Clara is a complex character. Thanks to her godfather Drosselmeyer’s tutelage, she can kill a man with her bare hands, but she’s still haunted by an almost paralyzing fear. Clara comes of age in an alternate version of New York governed by a shadowy (and deadly) criminal cabal and is pursued relentlessly by the creepiest, scariest man imaginable—and he’s got the trail of dead bodies to prove it. Clara lives her life in a fog of fear and insecurity until she’s forced to find her strength to save the lives of the ones she loves—or die in the attempt.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

The ten best books about cycling

Jon Day, writer, academic and cyclist, is the author of Cyclogeography. He worked as a bicycle courier in London for several years, and is now a lecturer in English Literature at King's College London. One of his ten best books about cycling, as shared at the Guardian:

Flann O’Brien, The Third Policeman (1968)

Though he wasn’t much of a cyclist himself, Flann O’Brien must be the patron saint of all cycling literature. In The Third Policeman, written at the end of the 1930s but published only posthumously, he outlined his “Atomic Theory” of cycling: spend too long on a bike, O’Brien argued, and you’ll begin to exchange atoms with your machine. “You would be surprised at the number of people in these parts,” says one of the titular policemen to the nameless narrator of O’Brien’s novel, “who are nearly half people and half bicycles.”

In the circular hell described in the book, keen cyclists end their lives sleeping standing in hallways with their elbows propped up against walls. Bicycles take on humanity, and begin creeping around at night and stealing from pantries. It’s all gloriously weird.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Third Policeman is among A.F. Harrold's top ten imaginary friends in fiction, William Fotheringham's top ten cycling novels, and Michael Foley's top ten books that best express the absurdity of the human condition.

Also see the Barnes & Noble Review's five top books on cycling, John Mullan's list of ten of the best bicycles in literature, Marjorie Kehe's list of ten great books about cycling, Matt Seaton's top 10 books about cycling, and William Fotherham's top ten cycling novels.

--Marshal Zeringue

The ten best short story collections you've never read

Mia Alvar's debut story collection is In the Country. One entry on her list of the ten best short story collections you've never read:

Girls At War and Other Stories by Chinua Achebe

These bleak, unflinching tales of bureaucrats and schoolchildren, soldiers and housewives during the Nigerian civil war of the late 1960s are far from an easy or comfortable read. Yet even as Achebe traces just how quickly political ideals and worthy causes can decay into corruption and opportunism, he maintains a deep empathy for all his flawed characters, not to mention a sometimes gut-wrenching humor, throughout each story. “Let no one be fooled by our writing in English, for we intend to do untold things with it,” he famously declared of Anglophone African writers like himself, and so here he does.

Read about the other titles on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five awesome YA breakup books

One title on Melissa Albert's list of five awesome Young Adult breakup books, as shared on the B & N Teen Blog:

The Break-Up Artist, by Philip Siegel

After watching her sister’s emotional destruction by a fiancé who ditched her on their wedding day, Becca sees love for what it is: a destructive force that compromises people’s happiness and identity before it tears them apart. She re-creates herself as an anonymous vigilante “breakup artist” who separates couples for cash—but it still doesn’t stop her from embarking on an ill-advised love story of her own. Friendships are tested, priorities realigned, and breakups had in spades.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten animal friendship stories

Sarah Lean's books include A Dog Called Homeless and Harry and Hope, the story of the friendship that develops between a girl and a donkey. One of her top ten animal friendship stories, as shared at the Guardian:

Northern Lights by Phillip Pullman

Apart from the significant relationship with the polar bears in this story, Lyra and her daemon, Pantalaimon, are central to this story. Bringing together the domestic, close relationship of a child and her pet, with their intimate level of knowledge of each other, alongside the fantasy elements, raises the acts of learning, growing, and transformation to a high level.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten gleeful adulterers in literature

Eliza Kennedy attended the University of Iowa and Harvard Law School, where she was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. After graduation she served as a law clerk for a federal judge, then practiced litigation for several years at a prestigious Manhattan law firm. I Take You is her first novel.

One of Kennedy's top ten gleeful adulterers in literature, as shared at the Guardian:

Ada Vinelander in Ada or Ardor by Vladimir Nabokov

You don’t tend to think of Ada and Van, the lovers at the centre of this novel, as adulterers, because their affair began when they met as children, cousins spending a summer on the family estate. Turns out that they’re actually (whoops!) brother and sister, and their father’s discovery of the affair causes them to break it off. The romance is rekindled after Ada is married, and they plan to run away together, until her husband discloses that he has tuberculosis. Still, love triumphs in the end – if you consider siblings having hot sex into their 80s a triumph. Which, in Nabokov’s hands, it is.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Ada or Ardor is among Kate Kellaway's ten best love stories in fiction.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven top literary horror titles

At B & N Reads, Kelly Davio tagged seven of the best literary horror titles--books that "are as well written as they are goosebump-inducing"--including:

Come Closer, by Sara Gran

More than a mere scary story, the terse, fast-paced Come Closer is equal parts psychological investigation and story of demonic possession. This short, powerful novel follows a successful young architect, Amanda, who finds herself behaving oddly. From writing obscene notes to her boss to eventually harming others in alarming and unprovoked ways, Amanda reels ever further out of control. She blames her shifting personality on Naamah, a demonic figure that haunts her in dreams, but Gran keeps the reader guessing as to whether Amanda has truly fallen prey to a malevolent spirit or simply blames her own taste for the dark side on a fictitious force.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top books about "almost magical" women

Karen Joy Fowler's books include the novels The Jane Austen Book Club and We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves and the short-story collection Black Glass. One of Fowler's six favorite books about "almost magical" women, as shared at The Week magazine:

The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston

A longtime favorite of mine. Technically a memoir, The Woman Warrior becomes almost magical through its inclusion of folk tales, dreams, and revisions. Varied in its narrative strategies, shimmering in its language, sharp in its subject matter, Kingston's 1976 book remains a true tour de force.

Read about the other books on the list.

Also see: Karen Joy Fowler's top ten books about intelligent animals.

The Woman Warrior is among Ginni Chen's top seven books to celebrate the Chinese Year of the Sheep, Eva Hoffman's top five striking memoirs, and Julia Alvarez's five most important books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten teen YA books about teen pregnancy

The Baby, Lisa Drakeford's first novel, was shortlisted for the (London) Times / Chicken House children’s fiction competition 2014. One of her top ten Young Adult books about teen pregnancy, as shared at the Guardian:

Tess of the D’urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

I studied this at A-level. Thanks to a very clever English teacher it was not forever ruined. Tess’s tragedy is timeless and terrible. A classic which I am confident in recommending. Possibly one of Hardy’s greatest works, it came out in 1892 to mixed reviews as it challenged the morals of its time. The subtitle A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented reveals Hardy’s allegiance to his character. Tess’s baby boy only lives a few weeks but the ensuing consequences of the birth and its implications are, in the end, heartbreaking.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Tess of the D’urbervilles is one of Joanna Biggs's top ten books about working life.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top eight revolutionary SF/F novels

"Revolution and rebellion are powerful concepts in real life and in fiction," Jeff Somers reminds us. "Science fiction and fantasy in particular offer us the opportunity to imagine revolutions both glorious and sinister, epic and underwhelming." One of Somers's top eight revolutionary SF/F novels, as shared at the B & N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog:

The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins

By now, everyone is familiar with The Hunger Games, and the dystopian postwar world it describes. While the basic concept of an oppressive central government wielding technological dominion over a more populous, less powerful citizenry is hardly new, but Collins tells the story with verve and surprising plot twists, leading up to one of the smartest climaxes in the revolt-against-dytopia tradition, as Katniss rejects the obvious victory—simply replacing one tyranny with another—and sacrifices everything she has left to give true freedom a chance. It’s an emotional gut-punch of an ending that elevates the story to a whole new level, reminding us that revolution has a cost.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Hunger Games also appears on Tina Connolly's top five list of books where the girl saves the boy, Sarah Alderson's top ten list of feminist icons in children's and teen books, Jonathan Meres's top ten list of books that are so unfair, SF Said's top ten list of unlikely heroes, Rebecca Jane Stokes's top ten list of fictional families you could probably abide during holiday season and top eight list of books perfect for reality TV fiends, Chrissie Gruebel's list of favorite fictional fashion icons, Lucy Christopher's top ten list of literary woods, Robert McCrum's list of the ten best books with teenage narrators, Sophie McKenzie's top ten list of teen thrillers, Gregg Olsen's top ten list of deadly YA books, Annalee Newitz's list of ten great American dystopias, Philip Webb's top ten list of pulse-racing adventure books, Charlie Higson's top ten list of fantasy books for children, and Megan Wasson's list of five fantasy series geared towards teens that adults will love too.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five fictional books too dangerous to read

At B & N Reads, Ella Cosmo tagged five fictional books-within-a-book too dangerous to read, including:

1984, by George Orwell

1984 is masterpiece of dystopian fiction. In the 60 years since its publication, Orwell’s profound take on government surveillance and the effects of oppression on the human psyche has become firmly entrenched in the cultural and political lexicon. It also contains a powerful book within a book, The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism. Written by a feared and hunted opponent of the state, the text is “a terrible book, a compendium of all the heresies, of which Goldstein was the author and which circulated clandestinely here and there. It was a book without a title. People referred to it, if at all, simply as The Book.” Unlike the other fictional tomes on this list, “The Book,” despite the terror it invokes, is ultimately a catalyst for good rather than evil, leading the protagonist Winston Smith to fight, however fleetingly, against the tyranny of big government.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Nineteen Eighty-four is on the list of four books that changed Peter Twohig, the Guardian's list of the five worst book covers ever, the Independent's list of the fifteen best opening lines in literature, W.B. Gooderham's top ten list of books given in books, Katharine Trendacosta and Amanda Yesilbas's list of ten paranoid science fiction stories that could help you survive, Na'ima B. Robert's top ten list of Romeo and Juliet stories, Gabe Habash's list of ten songs inspired by books and a list of the 100 best last lines from novels. The book made Charlie Jane Anders's list of ten science fiction novels we pretend to have read, Juan E. Méndez's list of five books on torture, P. J. O’Rourke's list of the five best political satires, Daniel Johnson's five best list of books about Cold War culture, Robert Collins' top ten list of dystopian novels, Gemma Malley's top 10 list of dystopian novels for teenagers, is one of Norman Tebbit's six best books and one of the top ten works of literature according to Stephen King. It made a difference to Isla Fisher, and appears on John Mullan's lists of ten of the best Aprils in literature, ten of the best rats in literature, and ten of the best horrid children in fiction.

--Marshal Zeringue

The top ten books about the mafia

Born in Sicily, Roberto Dainotto is professor of romance studies and literature at Duke University, where he teaches courses on modern and contemporary Italian culture. His latest book is The Mafia: A Cultural History.

One of Dainotto's top ten books about the mafia, as shared at the Guardian:

Gomorrah by Roberto Saviano (2006)

Saviano investigates the global and financial ambitions of organised crime in the age of neoliberalism. Reading Gomorrah, it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish the logic of today’s mafias from that of global corporations. Beautifully written, Gomorrah is an example of that peculiar Neapolitan genre, the “essay-novel”.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Also see Alice-Azania Jarvis's reading list on the mafia.

--Marshal Zeringue

The ten best Hollywood novels

Michael Friedman’s new book is Martian Dawn & Other Novels, a collection of three novels.

One of the author's ten best Hollywood novels, as shared at Publishers Weekly:

Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion (1970

The book is for the most part narrated in the first person, but it occasionally shifts to the third. In spare, elliptical chapters and scenes, Didion offers us bits and pieces of the story of Maria Wyeth, a divorced B-list actress, and her dissolute coterie of Hollywood power players and hangers-on. The action moves among LA, Las Vegas and the Mojave Desert. The tale is a not particularly pleasant one involving drugs, drink, one-night stands, illegal abortions, dysfunctional relationships, questionable parenting, institutionalization, joy rides and flameouts.

Read about the other books on the list.

Play It As It Lays also appears on Becky Ferreira's seven best list of books set in Los Angeles, Janelle Brown's list of five great California novels, and Janet Fitch's book list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top literary genre benders

At B & N Reads Nicole Hill tagged six "literary works that break barriers, combining genre tropes and standards to produce entirely unique, enthralling stories," including:

The Supernatural Enhancements, by Edgar Cantero

The Supernatural Enhancements defies all attempts to define it. Cantero has crafted a Southern gothic whodunit with traces of surrealism and a fascination with banter that rivals a Wes Anderson script—all told in epistolary style, through journal entries, letters, brief notes, security footage, and the odd cipher. It’s a wonderful, whimsical romp that starts with that most hallowed literary impetus: the arrival of a life-changing letter, in this case addressed to twentysomething A., who learns he is the long-lost heir to a grand estate in Virginia. But this house has seen tragedy, most recently when A.’s cousin jumped to his death from a second-story window. When A. and his mute companion, Niamh, journey to claim his inheritance, they become entangled in a mystery that encompasses not only a haunted house, but a secret society. This book doesn’t just bend genres, it absorbs them—all of them.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue