Five top university-based novels

Kate Weinberg was born and lives in London. She studied English at Oxford and creative writing in East Anglia. She has worked as a slush pile reader, a bookshop assistant, a journalist and a ghost writer.

The Truants is her first novel.

At the Waterstones blog she tagged five favorite university-based novels, including:

Stoner by John Williams

There are two things about Stoner. One is the book itself. It’s the finest piece of character writing of any campus novel I’ve ever read. When you put it down, William Stoner never leaves you. But the other thing about it is the story of the book itself; it was a lost masterpiece, a novel that sold barely a couple of thousand copies on publication in 1965, then was ‘discovered’ nearly half a century later (hats off to Waterstones, who made it Book of the Year in 2014) and, since then, it has sold millions. For every campus student and wannabe novelist who thinks their genius is overlooked, John Williams’ Stoner is an unflinching account of the grinding disappointment of academic life – as well as an example of the world blowing the dust off a failed novel and discovering a masterpiece.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Stoner is among Andrew Hunter Murray's top five books to make you feel less alone, Thomas Maloney's ten best deaths in fiction, Simon Kernick's six best books, The Secret Teacher author's ten top books about teaching, Jamie Fewery's ten best fictional fathers, and Colum McCann's top ten novels featuring poets.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten terrific thrillers featuring missing persons

Lisa Regan is the USA Today & Wall Street Journal bestselling author of the Detective Josie Quinn series as well as several other crime fiction titles. She has a Bachelor’s degree in English and a Master of Education degree from Bloomsburg University. She is a member of Sisters in Crime, International Thriller Writers, Crime Writers Association, and Mystery Writers of America. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband, daughter and Boston Terrier named Mr. Phillip.

Regan's latest Josie Quinn novel is Find Her Alive.

At The Strand Magazine Regan tagged ten favorite thrillers featuring missing persons, including:

The Body Reader by Anne Frasier

Detective Jude Fontaine was held captive for three years by a sadistic kidnapper. This haunting novel takes place after her escape, as she tries to put the pieces of her life back together and find out what really happened to her. Her unique insight into crime from the perspective of a survivor rather than an investigator comes into play when young women start dying. Frasier’s exquisite characters and insight into what it means to survive something truly horrific drive this story to its shocking conclusion.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top psychological thrillers featuring sibling rivalry

Hannah Mary McKinnon was born in the UK, grew up in Switzerland and moved to Canada in 2010. After a successful career in recruitment, she quit the corporate world in favor of writing. She now lives in Oakville, Ontario, with her husband and three sons.

McKinnon's new novel is Sister Dear.

At CrimeReads she tagged ten favorite psychological thrillers with sibling rivalry at the heart of them, including:

He Started It by Samantha Downing

Downing’s stellar debut My Lovely Wife took the world by storm and in He Started It, sibling rivalry reaches new and downright despicable levels. Beth, Portia, and Eddie Morgan don’t see each other often and that’s a good thing, because when they do, bad. stuff. happens. Greed, lies and betrayal are all rolled into a crazy-ass road trip. Downing is one bold and fearless author, who doesn’t blink in the face of fictional mayhem.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top Scottish crime novels

Craig Robertson is the author of Random, Snapshot, Cold Grave, The Last Refuge, Witness The Dead, Murderabilia, The Photographer, and the new novel, Watch Him Die.

At the Guardian he tagged ten top "Scottish crime novels driven by issues of duality, redemption, the nature of good and evil, and a dark, dark, humour," including:

Two-Way Split by Allan Guthrie

If this book was a boxer it would be a classy welterweight. Lean and muscular, taut and fast-moving, and packing a big punch. What it lacks in tartan it more than makes up for in noir. It’s a hard-boiled nugget of a book with not one word wasted. Guthrie specialises in giving us antiheroes we care about, without ever draping them in false sentimentality. Here, we’re firmly on the side of a bank robber who is seeking the ultimate revenge on a fellow gang member.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight top fictional divas in need of a reality check

Tracy Clark is a native Chicagoan who writes mysteries set in her hometown while working as an editor in the newspaper industry. She is a graduate of Mundelein College, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree, and the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she earned her MA.

Her new novel is What You Don't See.

At CrimeReads, Clark tagged "eight books that feature either high priestesses of haughtiness you love to hate or stealthy stalkers who’ll have you sleeping with the lights on, checking your locks ten times a night and nailing your mailbox shut." One title on the list:

Your Heart Belongs to Me, Dean Koontz

No one’s creepier than Koontz (book wise, not personally. I don’t know the man). In this one, Ryan Perry, young guy, living his life, suddenly needs a heart transplant, which he soon gets. A while later, feeling better than he has in a long time, he begins to get weird gifts in the mail with a message on it “Your Heart Belongs to Me.” Creepy. Turns out the woman sending the messages and the gifts, is a full-on doppelganger for his heart donor. Creepy doubled. And this twisted sister, apparently, now wants the heart back. Mic drop. Well played, Koontz, well played.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight top pandemic thrillers

Born, raised, and still residing in Vancouver, Daniel Kalla spends his days (and sometimes nights) working as an Emergency Room Physician in a major teaching hospital. In his ‘off’ time, he writes and manages a dual career. He is the author of numerous books, which have been translated into eleven languages to date, and his Shanghai trilogy has been optioned for feature films.

The idea for his first medical thriller, Pandemic, sprang from his clinical experience in facing the SARS crisis of 2003.

Kalla's new novel is The Last High.

At The Strand Magazine, he tagged eight favorite pandemic thrillers, including:

The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton (1969)

I wonder if I would even be an author, at least a published one, were it not for the inspiration of my literary hero, Michael Crichton, who’s sadly no longer with us. I’ve always been awed by his ability to take huge scientific topics—from cloning dinosaurs to time travel—and deconstruct them in a non-condescending way, while still thrilling readers with original storylines and relatable characters. His skill of simultaneously educating and entertaining is on full display in his debut novel, The Andromeda Strain, which tells the story of an alien microorganism that inadvertently falls to earth and threatens to launch a pandemic.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Andromeda Strain is among Jim Al-Khalili's ten top end-of-the-world novels, Lydia Kang's nine great medical thrillers, Jeff Somer's' nine science fiction novels that imagine the future, Neil deGrasse Tyson's six favorite books, and Joel Cunningham's 11 fictional maladies that will keep you up at night.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five of the best books for sports fans

Nige Tassell's book Bottom Corner: Hope, Glory And Non-League Football was named among Waterstones’ top twelve sports books of 2016, while Three Weeks, Eight Seconds: Greg LeMond, Laurent Fignon And The Epic Tour de France Of 1989 was shortlisted in the Cycling Book of the Year category at the Sports Books Awards and has since been published in the Netherlands, Spain and the US.

His other books include Mr Gig: One Man’s Search For The Soul Of Live Music, Butch Wilkins And The Sundance Kid: A Teenage Obsession With TV Sport, and Boot Sale: Inside The Strange And Secret World Of Football’s Transfer Window.

At the Guardian, Tassell tagged five favorite sports books, including:

Even this kind of close observation [of Bissinger's Friday Night Lights] wasn’t enough for Adharanand Finn, who puts himself into the action in Running With the Kenyans. A fan of Kenya’s long-distance runners since childhood, Finn decides to uproot his family, swapping rain-lashed Britain for the scorched earth of east Africa. It is only by running alongside its future stars that he can understand how the country has dominated marathon-running in recent times. Coasting along in his slipstream is a fine place to be.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best Australian novels

Susan Allott is from the UK but spent part of her twenties in Australia, desperately homesick but trying to make Sydney her home. She completed the Faber Academy course in 2017, during which she started writing her debut novel, The Silence. She now lives in south London with her two children and her very Australian husband.

At CrimeReads, Allott tagged ten favorite Australian titles, including:

Tim Winton, Dirt Music (2001)

Tim Winton is Australia’s literary God, and deservedly so. His writing is colloquial, fresh, sharp. He captures the landscape, wildlife and people of Australia with such precision and economy, his books can be savored for the language alone, although he tells a good yarn too. His novel Cloudstreet is considered by many to be the Great Australian Novel. I’ve picked Dirt Music because it’s such a great example of Winton’s ability to put a character through hell and pull her out again the other side, taking us with her. It’s also a romantic novel about an intense love affair that is moving and never sentimental. It was shortlisted for the Booker in 2002 and it won the Miles Franklin award in the same year. Probably his best in my opinion, but you can’t go wrong with anything by Tim Winton, including his non-fiction.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven post-apocalyptic sci-fi escapist titles

Paulette Jiles is a novelist, poet, and memoirist. She is the author of Cousins, a memoir, and the novels Enemy Women, Stormy Weather, The Color of Lightning, Lighthouse Island, and News of the World, which was a finalist for the 2016 National Book Award.

Her new novel is Simon the Fiddler.

At Lit Hub, Jiles tagged seven titles "for respite in a time of pandemic--riveting stories of societal collapse, plagues, near-death experiences, distant futures on bald stone planets and other tales that will help you escape from this annoying and fretful news-cycle life into the worlds of pure imagination." One title on the list:

John C. Wright, Awake In The Night Land

This is almost impossible to describe but you will be unable to put it down to finish your cup of whatever. Add agave nectar. Anything is drinkable with agave nectar added to it. This is us several thousand years from now, a remnant of us, in a self-contained mountain on a bald Earth of stone with observers on the peak watching great masses of stone moving ever closer year by year and inch by inch. There are Things out there. Inside the Aristocrats have their entertainments and the main character is a princess changing into a warrior, inch by inch.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven revenge thrillers featuring women who have officially had enough

Pip Drysdale is a writer, actor and musician who grew up in Africa and Australia. At 20 she moved to New York to study acting, worked in indie films and off-off Broadway theater, started writing songs and made four records. After graduating with a BA in English, Drysdale moved to London where she dated some interesting men and played shows across Europe.

Her first novel, The Sunday Girl, a bestseller in Australia, is newly released in the US.

At CrimeReads, Drysdale tagged seven revenge thrillers featuring women who have officially had enough. One title on the list:

The Arrangement by Robyn Harding

Natalie is a young art student living in New York City, struggling to make ends meet when a glossy friend from university makes a suggestion: Why doesn’t she sign up to be a sugar-baby? Sex doesn’t have to be involved unless she wants it to be. At first, Natalie is dubious, but soon she meets Gabe and it feels like she’s living out a scene from Pretty Woman… That is, until she’s making her one call from a police station, whispering: “I killed someone.”

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Arrangement is among Kathleen Barber's eight novels that will make you never want to look at your phone again.

The Page 69 Test: The Arrangement.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top books about silence

Abbie Greaves studied English Literature at Cambridge University. She worked in publishing for three years before leaving to focus on her writing. She now lives in Edinburgh, Scotland.

The Silent Treatment is her first novel.

At the Guardian, Greaves tagged ten books with "one unifying feature:...the way in which readers themselves are made to work harder when confronted with an impenetrable quiet." One title on the list:

The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker

Barker retells the Iliad primarily from the perspective of Briseis, the woman awarded as a prize to Achilles after the ransacking of Lyrnessus. With the narrative in her hands, there is nowhere to hide from the misogyny of ancient Greece. Ajax may be convinced that “silence becomes a woman”, but it is through Barker’s reclaiming of the voices muted by history that we realise just how much modern resonance these classical stories hold in the #MeToo era.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Silence of the Girls is among Kris Waldherr's ten favorite books inspired by mythology.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best novels set in Greece

Andrew Bostock first traveled to Greece over 25 years ago, and has lived in the country. He is the author of the Bradt Guide to the Peloponnese region.

At the Guardian, Bostock tagged ten "books will take you [to Greece] and lead you on to other things," including:

The King Must Die by Mary Renault

Mary Renault was one of the writers who sent me to Greece in the first place. I read her in my early teens and her “historical” takes on myth are still a firm favourite. This, and its sequel The Bull from the Sea, are a retelling of the life of Theseus, and the first book has action in the Peloponnese, Crete and Athens – all places that have played an important part in my life. Renault does not shy away from the difficult aspects residing in these tales. There is dark stuff here, and no real heroes, either. If you enjoyed Game of Thrones, Renault might be where to go next.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven novels about crimes in communes, cults, and other alternative communities

Melanie Abrams is the author of a new novel Meadowlark (Little A).

Her novel Playing (Grove Atlantic) has been acquired in Italy, France, Germany, India, and Israel. She teaches writing at UC Berkeley and is married to the writer Vikram Chandra. They live with their children in Oakland, CA.

At CrimeReads, Abrams tagged seven novels about crimes in communes, cults, and other alternative communities, including:

South Village by Rob Hart

Ash McKenna plans to waste some time on a commune in the Georgia woods, but when one of the commune members ends up dead, Ash uses his amateur P.I. skills to uncover that this was no accident. A faction of rogue community members who put Ash’s life in danger and a bunch of kooky commune members make this a quintessential commune gone criminal read.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight books about being haunted by the past

John Elizabeth Stintzi is the recipient of the 2019 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers, and their work has appeared in the Malahat Review, Kenyon Review, and Ploughshares. They are the author of the novel Vanishing Monuments as well as the poetry collection Junebat.

At Electric Lit Stintzi tagged eight books about characters trying to escape their history, including:

The Dark Room by Rachel Seiffert

Composed of three novellas, The Dark Room grapples with World War II from the perspective of three German civilians: Helmut (a photographer early on in the war in the 1930s), Lore (a twelve-year-old girl trying to escape the Russians to West Germany in 1945), and Micha (a teacher living in contemporary/late 90s Germany). In Micha’s novella, Micha is shocked to learn that his grandfather was a Nazi, and finds himself obsessed with learning the truth about what his grandfather’s role in the war was. Micha’s dark and relentless curiosity begins to create rifts in his family as he refuses to stop unearthing what they would prefer remain earthed. Reminiscent of Michael Verhoven’s film The Nasty Girl (1990), The Dark Room’s final novella does an excellent job of capturing the discomfort and trauma people experience in learning their proximity to both atrocities and their perpetrators.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven top books about burnout

Emma Glass was born in Wales in 1987 and is now based in London, where she writes and works as a children's nurse. Her debut novel Peach was published by Bloomsbury in 2018, has been translated into seven languages and was long-listed for the International Dylan Thomas Prize.

Her new novel, also from Bloomsbury, is Rest and Be Thankful.

At the Guardian, Glass tagged seven of the best books about burnout, including:

[S]ufferers do not just work in the medical professions. The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris presents a New York lawyer with a mysterious condition that pushes him to exhaustion. He is compelled to walk, his body propels him, but the relentless walking wears him away physically and emotionally. There is no sympathy, no understanding. He is relegated to a tiny office where his depleting form can be hidden from view. It is a story of life taken for granted.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Twelve books featuring the hardest working moms in mysteries

Mary Keliikoa spent the first 18 years of her adult life working around lawyers. Combining her love of all things legal and books, she dove into mystery creating twisting mysteries where justice prevails. A Pacific Northwest native, she enjoys the area in all its beauty. When she’s not there, you can find Keliikoa on a beach on the Big Island where she and her husband recharge. But even under the palm trees and blazing sun she’s plotting her next murder—novel that is.

Keliikoa's debut novel is Derailed.

At CrimeReads, she tagged twelve books featuring fierce moms ready to do anything to protect their families, including:

Little Voices by Vanessa Lillie

This book was such an engrossing read and Vanessa is one talented writer. Devon Burges is in the throes of a high-risk birth when she learns of her dear friend’s murder. The police quickly name another friend as the chief suspect, but Devon doesn’t buy it—and despite her difficult recovery, she decides to investigate. Haunted by postpartum problems that manifest as a cruel voice in her head, Devon is barely getting by. Yet her instincts are still sharp, and she’s bent on proving her friend’s innocence. But as Devon digs into the evidence, the voice in her head grows more insistent, the danger more intense. Each layer is darker, more disturbing, and she’s not sure she—or her baby—can survive what lies at the truth.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Page 69 Test: Little Voices.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven novels about grieving a family member

Sahar Mustafah is the daughter of Palestinian immigrants and the author of the novel The Beauty of Your Face and the prize-winning short story collection Code of the West. Stories from Code of the West (2017) have been awarded the Guild Literary Complex Prize for fiction, a Distinguished Story honor from Best American Short Stories, and three Pushcart Prize nominations, among other honors. Mustafah teaches literature and creative writing to high school students outside of Chicago.

At Electric Lit she tagged seven books that "offer tender, and sometimes violent, representations of losing a parent or sibling and its complicated grief." One title on the list:

Sing, Unburied Sing by Jesmyn Ward

In the mythical, elegant, and unapologetic tradition of Toni Morrison, Ward conjures the ghost of a wrongfully killed son and brother. Those left behind—River, a sturdy patriarch, whose wife is slowly dying on their bed, and his grandson Jo Jo habitually abandoned by Leonie, his grief-stricken, addicted mother—must carry on.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Sing, Unburied Sing is on LitHub's list of ten books we'll be reading in ten years.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top books about Iran

Nazanine Hozar was born in Tehran, Iran, and lives in British Columbia, Canada.

Aria is her first novel.

At the Guardian, Hozar tagged ten notable books about Iran, including:

Journey From The Land of No by Roya Hakakian

This memoir from Iranian-Jewish writer and journalist Hakakian traces her growth as a budding revolutionary in 1978-1979 towards the realisation that the political reforms she and her friends had fought for had been hijacked and undermined by a religious totalitarianism not only targeted at her own Jewish community but at intellectual, egalitarian and democratising Iranians alike, regardless of faith. Hakakian particularly focuses on the violations of women’s rights as the first sign that any political system is poised to fall to autocracy.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Also see Mark Skinner's eleven top books on Iran and Kamin Mohammadi's top ten Iranian books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best novels set in Spain

Stephen Burgen writes for The Guardian and Observer. He is a translator from Spanish & Catalan.

One title on his list of ten of the best novels set in Spain:

Homeland by Fernando Aramburu

If a better Spanish novel than Homeland has appeared in the past 10 years, I’d like to hear about it. Set in a fictitious village near San Sebastián, it’s the story of two families and, above all, two women: one whose son is serving a long jail sentence for a killing he carried out as a member of the Basque terror group Eta, and the other whose husband was murdered by the group. It is a story of personal and tribal loyalty, of oppression by the state and by Eta, and ultimately of people trapped in a story from which they can’t escape. And yet, in spite of that and the constant rain, it is an uplifting tale, beautifully crafted and full of feeling.

Read about the other entries on the list at the Guardian.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven novels about the beauty & hardship of life in rural America

Jordan Farmer was born and raised in a small West Virginia town, population approximately two thousand. He earned his MA from Marshall University and his Ph.D. at The University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

His new novel is The Poison Flood.

At Electric Lit, Farmer tagged seven novels about the beauty and hardship of life in rural America, including:

American Rust by Philipp Meyer

After missing out on college to take care of his ailing father, Isaac English decides to leave Buell, Pennsylvania, the fictional, economically destitute steel town Meyer uses to represent the very real parts of America abandoned by prosperity. Recruiting his best friend, Billy Poe, the two set out on a doomed exodus that is sidetracked by an act of violence. Meyer smoothly transitions to others in Buell like Chief Bud Harris, who is busy policing a town with increasing crime, and Isaac’s sister, Lee, currently attending Yale University and experiencing the uncomfortable truth that her birthplace will keep her from fitting into her new privileged environment. Those circulating the more prominent Isaac and Billy could feel like distracted digressions, but none of the large cast are underdeveloped. Written in a Modernist influenced stream of consciousness reminiscent of literary giants like Wolfe, Joyce, and Faulkner, Meyer’s prose never delves into imitation. Social class, masculinity, family obligation, and the other well-explored literary themes never feel tired. Frankly, it’s the sort of debut novel that makes other writers jealous.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Page 69 Test: American Rust.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight thrillers that highlight fierce moms-to-be

Heather Gudenkauf is the Edgar Award nominated, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Weight of Silence, These Things Hidden, Not A Sound, and Before She Was Found.

Her new novel is This Is How I Lied.

At CrimeReads, Gudenkauf tagged eight favorite novels about fierce mothers-to-be, including:

The Girl in the Green Raincoat by Laura Lippman

“Is there anything else you need to make your haven perfect?” Crow asked.

“Binoculars,” Tess said.

If you’re in the mood for a shorter read, check out this novella featuring Laura Lippman’s fearless Baltimore PI, Tess Monaghan. Nearing the end of her pregnancy, Tess is ordered to stay on bedrest. Unaccustomed to the inactivity, Tess grits her teeth, channels her inner Jimmy Stewart a la Rear Window and takes to staring out the window with a pair of binoculars.

When one of her subjects, a young woman wearing a green raincoat, suddenly disappears leaving her dog behind, Tess can’t shake the feeling that something is very wrong. Determined to solve the mystery, Tess begins to unravel a mystery that could have deadly consequences for her and her unborn child.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five big & brillaint books for quarantine reading

Viv Groskop is an award-winning comedian, writer, and broadcaster. She is the author of The Anna Karenina Fix: Life Lessons from Russian Literature.

Her new book is Au Revoir, Tristesse: Lessons in Happiness from French Literature.

At the Guardian, Groskop tagged five big, bold and brilliant books to last through lockdown, including:

Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate (871 pages) was written in 1960 in secrecy and Grossman died thinking nobody would ever read it, especially after the KGB raided his flat and destroyed everything including his typewriter ribbons. A friend smuggled a manuscript to the west and it depicts Grossman’s memories of the frontline during the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. If you like it, the even more sprawling 900-page prequel, Stalingrad, came out in translation in English for the first time last year.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Life and Fate is among Jonathan Hyde's six best books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight novels that celebrate unlikable women

Molly Pohlig graduated from James Madison University with a BA in English, and from University College Dublin with an MA in Film Studies. She is the associate editor for Vogue Knitting magazine, and has written humorous pieces and personal essays for Slate, The Toast, Racked, and The Hairpin. Originally from Virginia, she currently lives in Brooklyn.

The Unsuitable is her first novel.

At Electric Lit Pohlig tagged eight novels that center women who are mean, mad, and miserable, including:

Harriet Said, Beryl Bainbridge

Based on the Parker-Hulme murders (recognizable to modern audiences from the film Heavenly Creatures), Bainbridge’s first novel is about a curious thirteen-year-old with a decidedly nasty side, who ropes her more naive friend into a devious plan to humiliate a middle-aged man. A critic wrote: What repulsive little creatures you have made the two central characters, repulsive almost beyond belief!

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten riveting reads filled with shocking secrets

Lisa Regan is the USA Today & Wall Street Journal bestselling author of the Detective Josie Quinn series as well as several other crime fiction titles. She has a Bachelor’s degree in English and a Master of Education degree from Bloomsburg University. She is a member of Sisters in Crime, International Thriller Writers, Crime Writers Association, and Mystery Writers of America. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband, daughter and Boston Terrier named Mr. Phillip.

Regan's latest Josie Quinn novel is The Girl With No Name.

At CrimeReads Regan tagged ten of her "favorite novels that will keep you gasping for air till the very end," including:

Little Secrets by Jennifer Hillier

Hillier’s latest is due out this month. If you only have time to read one book this year, read this one. Marin’s perfect life is shattered when her son, Sebastian is abducted. A year later, all clues in Sebastian’s abduction have dried up, and Marin is left hopeless and destroyed. When she finds out her husband is having an affair with a younger woman, she is sparked to action. She lost her son. She’s not going to lose her husband. As her obsession with her husband’s mistress grows, things spiral out of control. Every character in this amazing novel has secrets—as the title suggests—and some of them are little, yes, but some of them are big, terrible secrets that you’ll never guess. Just when you think you’ve reached the end of the trail of little secrets, Hillier drops another in this brilliant, gut-wrenching, powerful read.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top books about nursing

Katharine McMahon is a British historical novelist. She has taught in secondary schools, performed in local theater, and worked as a Royal Literary Fund fellow teaching writing skills at the Universities of Hertfordshire and Warwick.

Her titles include The Alchemist’s Daughter, Season of Light, The Crimson Rooms, and The Rose of Sebastopol.

At the Guardian, McMahon tagged ten of her favorite books about nursing, including:

Reasons to Be Cheerful by Nina Stibbe

This novel is so deadpan the laughter caught me by surprise. The heroine, Lizzie, enlists as a dental nurse and describes in exquisite detail aspects of her weird family, dubious friends and sinister employer – a dentist obsessed with joining the Freemasons. I’ve included it here because it’s funny, quirky and beautifully written. An antidote.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five great mysteries & thrillers with lessons about the good marriage

Kimberly McCreight is the New York Times bestselling author of Reconstructing Amelia, which was nominated for the Edgar, Anthony, and Alex Awards and was called Entertainment Weekly’s Favorite Book of the Year. Reconstructing Amelia has been optioned for film by HBO and Nicole Kidman’s Blossom Films. McCreight’s second adult novel, Where They Found Her, was a USA Today bestseller and a Kirkus Best Mystery of the Year.

Her new novel is A Good Marriage.

At CrimeReads, McCreight tagged five mysteries and thrillers that have something to teach us about the good marriage, including:

Blind Man’s Bluff, Faye Kellerman

A devoted marriage and faith come first for Detective Peter Decker in this installment of Kellerman’s long-running mystery series. This time Detective Decker and his wife Rina Lazarus’ mutual trust is tested when Rina is inadvertently drawn into a case Peter is working on: Peter must reluctantly accept the danger of allowing Rina to help so that he can get to the bottom of a horrific crime. But throughout the chaos that ensues, it’s the little things that keep Decker and Lazarus tethered—a long drive in the car, a meal heated up, a simple walk on the Sabbath.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue