Eight thrilling titles about getting what you want by taking it

Brendan Gillen is an Emmy-winning writer living in Brooklyn. His fiction has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and appears in Wigleaf, Taco Bell Quarterly, New Delta Review, HAD, X-R-A-Y, South Carolina Review and elsewhere. His debut chapbook is I've Given This a Lot of Thought, and his first novel Static.

At Electric Lit Gillen tagged eight "favorite books [that] deal with stealing in some capacity, or at the very least, getting the things you want by taking them from others." One title on the list:

Teenager by Bud Smith

Teenager is much more than a road trip novel. In some ways, it’s the adolescent cousin of [Joy Williams's] Breaking & Entering. Trade a married couple and beach home B&E for a pair of Bonnie and Clyde-esque teen lovers and a healthy dose of grand theft auto, and you’re in the right area code.

Seventeen-year-old Kody Rawlee Green and his girlfriend Tella Carticelli, who he calls Teal Cartwheels, are the stars of the show. Within the first few pages, Kody escapes from juvenile detention, murders Teal’s parents to save her from abuse, steals a car and peels off with the love of his life in the passenger seat. From there, we’re off on a surreal journey across America following two teens whose trauma has forced them to grow up much too fast.

Teenager is about what it means to be an adolescent in all of its aching, yearning, idiocy and explosiveness. It’s about what happens when your heart writes checks that your brain can’t cash. The voice is unexpected, funny, full of pathos in every sentence. If you’re looking for plausible plot and hyper-real characters, look elsewhere. But if you’re looking for the truth about what it means to be young and wild and free and in love? Look no further.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top thrillers and horror novels set in hotels

Stephanie Wrobel is an international and USA Today bestselling author. Her debut, Darling Rose Gold, has sold rights in twenty-one countries and was a finalist for the Edgar® Award for Best First Novel.

[The Page 69 Test: Darling Rose Gold; My Book, The Movie: Darling Rose Gold; Q&A with Stephanie Wrobel]

Wrobel's new novel is The Hitchcock Hotel.

At CrimeReads she tagged six excellent thrillers and horror novels set in hotels, including:

The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay

I admit that with this selection, I’m stretching the definition of hotel, but if you’ve yet to read Cabin, I promise you’ll thank me later. Seven-year-old Wen and her parents, Andrew and Eric, rent a cabin in a remote part of New Hampshire. One afternoon a giant man shows up in the yard and befriends Wen. With him come three additional strangers, all carrying terrifying, unusual weapons and insisting they need the family’s help in order to save the world. I highly recommend reading this book in one sitting. Don’t forget to breathe.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Cabin at the End of the World is among Jane Hennigan's six top quiet apocalypse titles.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eleven of the best recent vampire titles

At B&N Reads Isabelle McConville tagged eleven of the greatest, recent bloodsucking books. One title on the list:

The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

A funny, campy take on a modern-day vampire invasion, Grady Hendrix (The Final Girl Support Group, How to Sell a Haunted House) tells the story of a woman’s accidental entanglement with a monster.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires is among James S. Murray's five books about women fighting their way out.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top books with strong tween characters

Stuart Gibbs is the New York Times bestselling author of the Charlie Thorne series, FunJungle series, Moon Base Alpha series, Once Upon a Tim series, and Spy School series. He has written screenplays, worked on a whole bunch of animated films, developed TV shows, been a newspaper columnist, and researched capybaras (the world’s largest rodents).

The newest book in the Spy School series is Spy School Goes Wild.

[The Page 69 Test: Space Case; The Page 69 Test: Spy Ski School]

At Lit Hub Gibbs tagged ten great books with strong tween characters, including:

Christina Diaz Gonzalez, Concealed

This book won the prestigious Edgar Award for best mystery, and it’s easy to see why when you read it. Katrina and her family are in the Federal Witness Protection Program—although Karina hasn’t ever been told why.

But when their location is leaked and her parents suddenly disappear, Karina is suddenly in a race to find the answers—and her parents as well. This is a taut, page-turning thriller that I’m very, very jealous of.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight top books about women being bad

Arielle Egozi has been featured across major publications for her destigmatizing work. She was Salon’s inaugural sex and love advice columnist, and has spoken on stages around the world. As a writer and creative director, they use their queer, Latine, and neurodivergent perspective to center the stories of stigmatized bodies and identities. She shares a bed with her two perrhijos and partner.

Being Bad: Breaking the Rules and Becoming Everything You're Not Supposed to Be is her first book.

At Electric Lit Egozi tagged eight books that are "not only achingly well-written, but infused with the particular perspective of those who know what it is to be on the outside—even if they pretend not to be." One title on their list:

Nevada by Imogen Binnie

Easily one of my favorites, this book is often considered the first work of the new “trans lit”. Written by a trans woman for other trans women, the novel follows Maria, a Brooklyn internet blogging trans woman who writes tips for other trans women online. Although she’s positioned herself as an “educator” of sorts for baby trans women, she’s a mess. Her external and internal lives come undone as she gets dumped, gets fired, and borrows-but-actually-steals her best friend’s car and begins a roadtrip across the country, meeting a young sales assistant at a Walmart in Nevada who she can tell is maybe, probably, trans. She takes James under her wing and you’ll have to read the rest because it’s an absolute cult classic for a reason, primarily because it’s not written for anyone else but Binnie’s own community.

Read about the other entries on the list at Electric Lit.

--Marshal Zeringue

Fifteen random books every environmentalist should read

At The Revelator John R. Platt tagged fifteen random books that every environmentalist should read. One title on the list:

The Einstein Effect: How the World’s Favorite Genius Got into Our Cars, Our Bathrooms, and Our Minds by Benyamin Cohen

A planet-hopping travelog through the late scientist’s achievements and impact on the world, including several surprising environmental tie-ins. You’ll gain a new appreciation for the white-haired icon and a better understanding of how one person can have a powerful ripple effect that lasts for decades. Plus, you get to find out what happened to Einstein’s brain after he died. (Spoiler alert: It ain’t pretty).

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven eerie crime novels

In addition to her eerie psychological thriller, The Therapist’s Daughter, Megan Taylor’s dark novels include We Wait, her take on a traditional haunted house mystery, and she’s also had many short stories published, some of which are included in her collection, The Woman Under the Ground. Taylor lives in Nottingham, UK, where she’s working on her next twisted thriller and a second collection.

At CrimeReads she tagged seven crime novels "steeped in the kind of eerie atmosphere that threatens to unsettle your perceptions and infect your dreams." One title on the list:

Sarah Waters, Affinity

It was tricky to decide which wonderful Waters novel to choose. The Little Stranger, which begins as a traditional haunted house story and, layer by layer, becomes something creepily else, was tempting, but I’m going with Affinity because, for all its overtly gothic tropes, it’s concerned with crime and conspiracy from the outset.

Margaret Prior is a volunteer visitor at Millbank prison when she meets disgraced spiritualist Selena Dawes, convicted for her role in an unexplained death at a séance. With her trademark twists and reveals, Waters deftly delivers the noirish story of the affinity between these two women, but what lingers is the novel’s darkness. Dread slithers through love and longing as queasily as the crawling fingers of Selena’s spirit guide’s waxy hand.

Read about the other entries on the list at CrimeReads.

Affinity is among M. M. DeLuca's five great books that feature mediums & the spirit world.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven mysterious and unsettling novels set on campuses

Caroline Wolff is a writer and editor. She holds an MFA in Fiction from New York University, where she also taught undergraduate creative writing. She lives in downtown Manhattan.

Wolff's new novel The Wayside

takes place at Paloma College, a (fictional) liberal arts school in Northern California. The novel opens with a pair of hikers discovering the body of Jake Cleary, a student at Paloma, at the bottom of a cliff. Local police deem Jake’s death a suicide. But as Jake’s mother Kate uncovers the secrets of his life on campus, she becomes convinced that something even more sinister might have pushed Jake over the edge.

[Q&A with Caroline Wolff]

At Electric Lit Wolff tagged seven more mysterious and unsettling novels set on campuses, including:

Vita Nostra by Marina and Sergey Dyachenko

The first in a trilogy by a Ukrainian husband-and-wife writing team, Vita Nostra lingers in some liminal space along the spectrum of dark fantasy, speculative fiction, and (stay with me here) metaphysical treatise. Briefly, it follows Sasha, a teenaged girl who’s recruited to enter a mysterious university. There, Sasha and her peers undergo increasingly bizarre tests, such as memorizing nonsense passages and listening to excruciatingly long recordings of absolute silence. The students are never told the purpose of these lessons—only that they’re of vital importance, and that progressing through them will result in uncanny changes in their biological and psychological makeups. If they fail, their instructors warn them, their loved ones will die.

This is an intellectually rigorous read, as we’re left to our own devices to uncover both the what and the why of Sasha’s byzantine education. The translation from its original Russian captures the bleak setting for a deeply unsettling sensory experience overall. But this is incredibly rewarding, too, and it’ll stay with you long after you read the final page.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven mysteries featuring librarian sleuths

New York Times bestselling author, Sofie Kelly, writes the Magical Cats mysteries, set in the small town of Mayville Heights, Minnesota. As Sofie Ryan, she is the author of the popular bestselling Second Chance Cat mysteries that feature repurpose shop owner, Sarah Grayson, a group of senior sleuths and the world's oldest computer hacker.

Kelly has been a late night disk jockey—which explains her love of coffee--and taught absolutely terrified adults how to swim. Like Kathleen Paulson in the Magical Cats books, she practices Wu style Tai Chi. Kelly is also a mixed-media artist and likes to prowl thrift shops looking for things to re-purpose in her art.

Her new novel is Furever After.

[My Book, The Movie: Curiosity Thrilled the Cat; The Page 69 Test: Faux Pas; Writers Read: Sofie Kelly (August 2024); My Book, The Movie: Furever After]

At CrimeReads Kelly tagged seven mysteries featuring bookish sleuths, including:

Ann Beckett in the Village Library Mysteries by Elizabeth Spann Craig

Set in the small town of Whitby, North Carolina, this series offers the charm of a small town, quirky supporting characters and a smart, resourceful amateur sleuth in librarian Ann Beckett. (And yes, there’s a cat.)

Start with Checked Out.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top books shaped by lists

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 latest book is Loss, A Love Story: Imagined Histories and Brief Encounters.

At the Guardian she tagged five of the best books shaped by lists, including:

Schindler’s Ark by Thomas Keneally

Published in the US as Schindler’s List, Keneally’s Booker prize-winning historical novel tells of the German industrialist who saved more than 1,000 Jewish factory workers from Nazi death camps. Oskar Schindler used the medium by which the Nazis worked – the dehumanising list – to save lives, writing a list of his own by which he extricated his employees: “Oskar’s list, in the mind of some, was already more than a mere tabulation … It was a sweet chariot which might swing low.” The novel also focuses on the tragedy of those not carried to safety. Schindler’s list “is life”, but “all round its cramped margins lies the gulf”.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten titles for understanding the “Constitutional Sheriff” movement

Jessica Pishko is a journalist and lawyer with a JD from Harvard Law School and an MFA from Columbia University. She has been reporting on the criminal legal system for a decade, with a focus on the political power of sheriffs since 2016. In addition to her newsletter, Posse Comitatus, her writings have been featured in The New York Times, Politico, Rolling Stone, The Atlantic, The Appeal, Slate, and Democracy Docket. She has been awarded journalism fellowships from the Pulitzer Center and Type Investigations and was a 2022 New America Fellow. A longtime Texas resident, she currently lives with her family in North Carolina.

Pishko's new book is The Highest Law in the Land: How the Unchecked Power of Sheriffs Threatens Democracy.

At Lit Hub she tagged ten books for understanding the far right “Constitutional Sheriff” movement, including:

Daniel Levitas, The Terrorist Next Door

Levitas, a writer, researcher, and lawyer, spent eight years in the Midwest researching right-wing efforts to recruit rural residents in the 1980s. His book focuses on a man named William Potter Gale, a racist and antisemite, who began the Posse Comitatus movement, which believed that the sheriff was the only rightful law enforcement officer in the country.

Drawing on Gale’s speeches and writings as well as multiple investigations into far-right violence, Levitas draws a picture of a primarily rural far -right movement they preyed upon people experiencing genuine social upheaval.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten great works of sea literature by people of color

Richard J. King lives in Santa Cruz, California and is a visiting professor in Maritime Literature and History with the Sea Education Association in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

He is the author of five books of nonfiction about our relationship to the ocean, including most recently Sailing Alone: A Surprising History of Isolation and Survival at Sea.

[The Page 99 Test: Ahab's Rolling Sea]

At Electric Lit King tagged "ten great works of sea literature in English by people of color." One title on the list:

Tentacle by Rita Indiana, translated by Achy Obejas

Set in the Dominican Republic, this work of cli-fi, speculative fiction, bends the rules of this list in that it was written first in Spanish as La mucama de Omicunlé (2015)—the English translation is by the Cuban writer Achy Obejas—but I can’t resist slipping Tentacle in here, because Rita Indiana spun such a fascinating story of a beach town ravaged by global warming, overfishing, drugs, and capitalism. Prisoners watch Blue Lagoon in a room that despite the fans and the shade bakes at 115˚ F: “Movies in which the sea is full of fish and humans run in bare skin under the sun are now part of the required programming during this season, just like movies about Christ during Holy Week.” Short, profane, and punchy, Tentacle explores the art world, Spanish colonialism, gender, sex work, coastal tourism, and marine conservation. This is truly a 21st-century work of sea literature.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six thrillers where the victim’s body is hidden

Barbara Gayle Austin writes crime fiction. She grew up in Houston, Texas, but has spent most of her adult life in the Netherlands and the UK. She now lives in Amsterdam with her two children and her dog.

What You Made Me Do is Austin’s debut novel, a thriller set in Amsterdam and a Dutch island in the Wadden Sea. The novel was longlisted for the esteemed Crime Writers’ Association Debut Dagger award (under the title Lowlands). Her short stories have been longlisted in the Margery Allingham short mystery competition and in the Aestas 2022 competition.

At CrimeReads Austin tagged six "favorite thrillers where the victim’s body is hidden, only to be uncovered later… moved to a new spot… or never found at all." One title on the list:

End of Story by A.J. Finn

Who knows how to dispose of a dead body better than a mystery writer? Two decades ago, Sebastian Trapp’s wife and son vanished without a trace. They are presumed dead and likely murdered, with Trapp—a celebrated mystery writer—as the prime suspect. Trapp has been in contact with Nicky Hunter, a young mystery novel expert, for several years. Now, with only months to live, he asks her to write his story and invites her to move into his mansion’s attic room. But Nicky has more on her mind than writing—she should have let sleeping dogs lie! This beautifully crafted mystery is packed with unforgettable characters and a twist that left me reeling.

Read about the other titles on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five of the best spy novels

David McCloskey is the author of The Seventh Floor, Moscow X, and Damascus Station. He is a former CIA analyst and former consultant at McKinsey & Company.

While at the CIA, he wrote regularly for the President’s Daily Brief, delivered classified testimony to Congressional oversight committees, and briefed senior White House officials, Ambassadors, military officials, and Arab royalty.

McCloskey worked in CIA field stations across the Middle East throughout the Arab Spring and conducted a rotation in the Counterterrorism Center focused on the jihad in Syria and Iraq. During his time at McKinsey, he advised national security, aerospace, and transportation clients on a range of strategic and operational issues.

For the Waterstones blog McCloskey tagged five favorite spy novels, including:

Fatherland by Robert Harris

Alright, I admit it – this Robert Harris historical thriller is spy-adjacent, not pure espionage like the others on this list, but it is near enough and, more importantly, it is a masterpiece. Set in 1964 in an alternative history in which Nazi Germany has prevailed in World War 2, the story centers on a detective investigating the murder of a government official who had participated in the Wannsee Conference, which oversaw planning for the Final Solution. This is a thriller and a murder mystery, but like the best spy novels it is also a story about love, betrayal, and how humans try to survive in inhuman political systems. Absolutely brilliant.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Fatherland is among Josh Weiss's ten top alternate history thrillers and Jay Rayner's six best books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten thrilling titles about women on the verge

Holly Baxter is an executive editor and staff writer at the Independent in New York. She has experience in generating clicks on both sides of the Atlantic, having worked in the Independent’s London office as a reporter for three years. Her work was shortlisted for a Press Award for Feature of the Year in 2019 and she often appears on British radio and television.

Baxter lives in Brooklyn, New York. Clickbait is her debut novel.

At Electric Lit she tagged ten thrilling books about women on the verge. One title on the list:

The New Me by Halle Butler

The New Me is a dark novel with a wink-wink-nudge-nudge light-sounding title. It follows Millie, a young woman whose anxieties and depressive tendencies interfere with her ability to pretty much bond with anyone or anything, as she navigates a job she hates yet can’t help wanting to succeed in.

The petty characters Butler writes feel familiar, and even though most of their behaviors and impulses are loathsome, you can often understand exactly how they got there. Millie refuses to feel grateful for her own fairly privileged position—the financial support of her parents, for instance—and she has a serious superiority complex about the people who she encounters at her awful job. She’s someone you want to pick up and shake, but she’s also someone you end up feeling sorry for, despite yourself. The gap between what she expected her life to look like and what it looks like for the duration of the novel is painful, and we’ve all felt a semblance of that pain.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten heist novels

Mailan Doquang has published extensively on the art and architecture of medieval France.

She is an avid traveler, photographer, and runner.

She is a Canadian transplant and longtime resident of New York City.

Doquang's debut novel is Blood Rubies.

At The Strand Magazine she tagged ten recent standout heist novels. One title on the list:

Blacktop Wasteland, by S. A. Cosby (2020)

Cosby’s award-winning book sees Beauregard “Bug” Montage, the best getaway driver on the East Coast, resume his life of crime to save his family from financial ruin. When a daring diamond heist goes wrong, Bug is drawn into a gritty underworld that upends his entire life. Fast-paced and atmospheric, Blacktop Wasteland was one of the most celebrated crime novels of 2020.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Blacktop Wasteland is among The Amazon Book Review editors' ten favorite books to celebrate Black History Month, Lee Matthew Goldberg's seven stellar heist tales, Lisa Unger's five novels revolving around dysfunctional families, Nick Kolakowski’s five best getaway drivers in contemporary crime fiction, and Kia Abdullah's eight novels featuring co-conspirators.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six sci-fi thrillers about AI

Lois Melbourne is the author of “STEM Club Goes Exploring” and “Kids Go To Work Day,” illustrated books helping students explore careers. Formerly a global software CEO, she is a pragmatic optimist willing to push the risks for technology, when it can help people. She reads and writes in an eclectic variety of genres. Melbourne serves her community through working at the voting polls, voter registration drives, and mentoring students and entrepreneurs.

Melbourne wrote her debut novel, Moral Code in collaboration with her husband Ross.

At CrimeReads she tagged six sci-fi thrillers about Artificial Intelligence, including:

Dark Matter, by Blake Crouch

I love a story that challenges us to consider, would we really like the life we dream of living? The mechanisms Crouch uses in “Dark Matter” to make us consider this question are gripping and unexpected.

Read about the other entries on the list at CrimeReads.

Dark Matter is among John Marrs's seven novels that effortlessly blend travel and crime.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top books about female friendship

Michaela Makusha is a freelance writer and journalist, writing about culture, politics, racial and gender politics in Britain and more.

At the Guardian she tagged five "stories about the highs and lows of female friendship," including:

Conversations With Friends by Sally Rooney

Rooney is known for her ability to dive into the messiness and complexities of relationships. In her 2017 debut novel, she applies this to the friendship between Bobbi and Frances, who are also exes. Their relationship is tested as they become increasingly involved with an older couple and long-held feelings – love, lust, envy and anger – come to the surface.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Conversations With Friends is among B&N Reads's fifteen top books about unforgettable friendships.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine titles about women leaning into darkness to find power

Dawn Kurtagich is the award-winning author of The Dead House, And the Trees Crept In, Teeth in the Mist, and Blood on the Wind. She leaves her North Wales crypt after midnight during blood moons. The rest of the time she exists somewhere between mushrooms, maggots and mould. She is enjoying life with her new liver, Lucy, her husband, two black cats, and those moldy forest mushrooms.

Kurtagich's debut adult novel is The Madness.

At Electric Lit she tagged nine "favourite novels that feature unhinged women," including:

Diavola by Jennifer Marie Thorne

In this delicious vacation-horror, we follow Anna as she navigates a dreaded family holiday to Italy. Anna’s voice is dry, jaded and wholly refreshing as she attempts to survive her boisterous, often irritating family. The location of their vacation is the beautiful Monteperso villa. It has everything you could want: gorgeous views, proximity to a vineyard, pool, vengeful ghost. The usual. Anna is such a fun anti-hero—villain, even—and watching her navigate a haunting both by her family and a vengeful la dame blanche was the icing on a very delicious cake. Anna’s casual acceptance of her own haunting was hilarious and truly unhinged.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top campus novels

At B&N Reads Isabelle McConville tagged ten "books that capture the messiness of love and friendship and the uncertainty of life in your early twenties." One title on the list:

Anita de Monte Laughs Last by Xochitl Gonzalez

A sharp and rollicking read about the power of art and the lasting legacy of those who make it, from the bestselling author of our previous Discover pick, Olga Dies Dreaming.

Read about the other novels on the list.

Also see Elise Juska’s list of eight of the greatest campus novels ever written, Ali Lowe's list of six of the best campus crime novels, Kate McCusker's five top campus novels, Michael Woodson's ten top campus novels, and K.D. Walker's eight top campus novels set in grad school.

--Marshal Zeringue

Four top screwball thrillers

Sandra A. Block graduated from college at Harvard, then returned to her native land of Buffalo, New York for medical training and never left. She is a practicing neurologist and proud Sabres fan, and lives at home with her husband, two children, and impetuous yellow lab. Her work has been published in the Washington Post. Little Black Lies is her debut, a finalist in the International Thriller Awards, and The Girl Without a Name and The Secret Room are the other books in the Zoe Goldman series. What Happened That Night is her stand-a-lone novel, and Girl Overboard a Young Adult thriller. The Bachelorette Party is her newest novel.

At CrimeReads Block tagged four favorite screwball thrillers, including:

Janet Evanovich, Stephanie Plum series

With her Stephanie Plum series, Janet Evanovich is the queen of the screwball thriller. Bounty hunter Stephanie Plum quips her way through outrageous plots, with kooky (and hilarious) sidekicks, a spattering of romance, and of course some bad guys who need catching. When reviews call the series “banana-pants crazy,” you might be dealing with a screwball thriller. My one complaint with the books? They are disallowed in the bedroom, as the excessive laughter that they provoke bothers my “honey, please-I’m-trying-to-sleep-here” spouse.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Stephanie Plum is among Elizabeth Breck's five of the most realistic PIs in fiction.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven books about badass medieval women

Molly Aitken grew up on the south coast of Ireland. Her first novel, The Island Child, was longlisted for the Authors’ Club First Novel Award. Her short fiction has appeared in Ploughshares, for which she won the Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction, and has been dramatized for BBC Radio 4. She is currently studying for a PhD in Creative Writing and History at Sheffield Hallam University.

[Q&A with Molly Aitken]

Aitken's "second novel, Bright I Burn, is about the loudest of ghosts: a wildly intelligent, ravenous and angry woman from history."

At Electric Lit the author tagged

a small list of fiction and non-fiction books about “badass” medieval women, so that you too, if you wish, can experience the middle ages through the eyes and ears and hearts and minds of women. Let’s remember these women, not as faultless, but complicated and messy, terrifying and clever, brilliant and badass.

One title on the list:

She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England by Helen Castor

In medieval England, men ruled women, and the King was ruler of everyone. Yet, royal power ended up in the hands of women. Of course, not all historians agree with this delicious and convincing reading of the past by Helen Castor, but we shan’t concern ourselves with them. In She-Wolves Castor tells the dramatic histories of four women who wielded great power: Matilda, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Isabella of France and Margaret of Anjou. Castor fleshes out the lives of these four who have, with the exception of Eleanor of Auiquitaine, were overlooked in history books because they were wives, and their husbands, the kings, were considered to be more important than them. Castor maps out how each of these women shaped the England that followed, laying the way for Mary Tudor and Elizabeth I to become sole ruler of England. Throughout the book, the writing is fluid and full of verve. It is clear in every sentence what pleasure Castor takes in the written word, illustrating that beautiful sentences are created not only by novelists. I predict you will be won over by the she-wolves, and Castor too.

Read about the other books on the list at Electric Lit.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eleven riveting nonfiction books for Erik Larson fans

Jeff Somers is the author of Writing Without Rules, the Avery Cates series, The Ustari Cycle, Lifers, and Chum (among many other books) and numerous short stories.

At BookBub he tagged eleven "engrossing narrative nonfiction books that will keep you engaged and teach you something new," including:

Death in the City of Light by David King

In Nazi-occupied Paris, police made a grisly discovery: a group of corpses hacked to pieces in violent murders. As the Allies invaded Normandy and the Germans retreated from the city, the police launched a search for Dr. Marcel Petiot, a man previously considered above reproach in society. Once Petiot was captured, the ensuing trial spiraled into chaos — an incident that is detailed in this engrossing book that will captivate Erik Larson fans.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Page 99 Test: Death in the City of Light.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight thrillers in which the characters actually get to have fun

Rachel Koller Croft is an author and screenwriter in Los Angeles, where she has scripted projects for Blumhouse, Sony Pictures Entertainment, and Comedy Central, among others. She lives by the beach with her husband, Charles, and their rescue pitbull, Juniper. Stone Cold Fox is her first novel.

Croft's new novel is We Love the Nightlife.

At CrimeReads she tagged eight favorite thrillers "that let their characters actually have some fun amidst the drama, backstabbing, murder and all that other good stuff we readers and writers love about this genre." One title on the list:

The Next Mrs. Parrish by Liv Constantine

There is just something about the Mrs. Parrish universe that screams fun and I think it’s because Constantine lets the characters’ be nefarious and naughty in such splashy fashion. You can just tell they get as much of a kick out of themselves as the readers do. If you have a Desperate Housewives-sized hole in your fun-loving heart, this book will fill it.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five of the best books translated from Polish

Antonia Lloyd-Jones graduated from Oxford University in 1983 with a degree in Russian and Ancient Greek, and has been teaching herself Polish ever since. She has translated works by many of Poland's leading contemporary novelists and reportage authors, as well as crime fiction, poetry and children's books. Her translation of Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by 2018 Nobel Prize laureate Olga Tokarczuk was shortlisted for the 2019 Man Booker International Prize. She is a mentor for the Emerging Translators' Mentorship Programme, and former co-chair of the UK Translators Association.

Lloyd-Jones is the translator of Warsaw Tales, a short-story anthology.

At the Guardian she tagged five of the best books translated from Polish, including:

The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk, trans. Jennifer Croft

The Nobel laureate’s historical epic fictionalises the life of Jacob Frank, the bizarre but influential self-proclaimed messiah whose dedicated worshippers followed him around 18th-century Europe. This visionary novel re-creates his world in vivid, sensual detail, and can be read on many levels: as a history book exploring the development of Europe’s religions and philosophies, as a scrapbook of esoteric arcana such as alchemy and the Kabbalah, or the story of a rebel and his bewitched associates.

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight books about youthful mistakes that come back to haunt you

Elizabeth Staple is an attorney. Prior to law school, she worked in media relations for the New York Giants, New England Patriots, Frankfurt Galaxy, and Syracuse University Athletic Communications. She was a member of the NFL media relations staff at three Super Bowls, and has also worked in events for Madison Square Garden, the PGA, and the NCAA Men's March Madness tournament. Staple lives in Connecticut with her husband and three children.

Staple's new novel is The Snap.

At Electric Lit she tagged eight "books about youthful mistakes that come back to haunt you," including:

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang

This book is a car crash you desperately want to look away from but can’t, careening forward as the tension ratchets up and up to the point where you’re literally begging the protagonist to make any other choice. June Hayward is a frustrated middling author. She watches bitterly as her sometimes-friend Athena rockets to literary stardom, attributing Athena’s ability to break out of a crowded marketplace to her Chinese-American background. June knows her talent is on par with Athena’s; the deck is simply stacked against her as a dime-a-dozen white girl in publishing. When the opportunity comes to step into Athena’s shoes, June takes it, because it’s no less than what she’s owed. The magic trick of this book is that June’s delusion is so complete she has no idea her comeuppance is coming, although the reader unbearably feels it page by unbearable page.

Read about the other books on the list.

Yellowface is among Lauren Kuhl's eight top novels about toxic relationships, Elly Griffiths's top ten books about books, Toby Lloyd's seven books that show storytelling has consequences, Sophie Wan's seven top titles with women behaving badly, Leah Konen's six top friends-to-frenemies thrillers, and Garnett Cohen's seven novels about characters driven by their cravings.

--Marshal Zeringue

Fifteen top Appalachian stories

At B&N Reads Isabelle McConville tagged fifteen "favorite Appalachian stories, from the poignant to the magical and beyond." One title on the list:

Ramp Hollow: The Ordeal of Appalachia by Steven Stoll

This is a thorough history of Appalachia from its first settlers to pioneers and modern-day citizens. Steven Stroll delves into the past to get to the root of why our country sees Appalachia as a backward region, and what we can do to better understand the land and its people.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Ramp Hollow is among Lorraine Berry's eight books that offer a more honest approach to America's working class than Hillbilly Elegy.

Also see: fifteen top books about Appalachia; seven eye-opening books about Appalachia; and Katie Pickard Fawcett's five favorite books of Appalachia.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six psychological suspense stories that feature young protagonists

M. M. (Marjorie) DeLuca spent her childhood in the beautiful cathedral city of Durham in North-Eastern England. She attended the University of London, Goldsmiths College, studied psychology, then became a teacher. She immigrated to Canada and lives in Winnipeg with her husband and two children. There she also studied writing under her mentor, Pulitzer Prize winning author, Carol Shields.

She loves writing for all ages and in many genres—suspense, historical, sci-fi for teens. She's also a screenwriter with several pilot projects in progress.

DeLuca enjoys teaching workshops in Creative Writing and the writing process.

Her latest novel is The Night Side.

[My Book, The Movie: The Night Side; The Page 69 Test: The Night Side; Writers Read: M.M. DeLuca (January 2024)]

At CrimeReads DeLuca tagged six "gripping stories of psychological suspense that feature young protagonists struggling with the legacy of growing up in the chaos of a toxic family." One title on the list:

The Turnout by Megan Abbott

This sinister Gothic drama digs deep into the seemingly pink and perfect facade of ballet to reveal the gory truth behind it: mangled feet, blackened toenails and injured joints. Darkness also lingers in the lives of Dara and Marie Durant who have been dancers since they can remember. Growing up, they were homeschooled and trained by their glamorous but unstable mother, founder of the Durant School of Dance. After their parents’ death in a tragic accident nearly a dozen years ago, the sisters began running the school together, along with Charlie, Dara’s husband. As the story progresses, the twisted truth about their childhood and adolescence surfaces; memories of parents, constantly at war with each other, of the unrelenting mother who drove them to view pain as their friend, and who forced them to live a sheltered life in which nothing but dance mattered. Who groomed her beautiful and prized student Charlie, then introduced him into Dara and Marie’s sexually-charged adolescent world. As adults, Dara and Marie are still emotional adolescents, shaped by their mother’s twisted legacy. It’s no wonder this fragile façade can’t hold together when a cunning and determined outsider infiltrates their flimsy gingerbread house of a life and threatens to expose the truth and destroy it all.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Turnout is among Lynn Slaughter's five memorable mysteries for performing arts lovers.

--Marshal Zeringue