Eleven self-help books that may change your life

At Vogue Mia Barzilay Freund tagged eleven self-help books that will change your life, including:

Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert

Gilbert takes readers by the hand and guides them toward a more compassionate, cooperative relationship with the creative spirit. Her suggestions range from the practical to the philosophical—exploring everything from dressing up to attract inspiration to understanding creative labor as both playful and serious. Her reflections are wise and reasonable, whimsical without being trite. She shares meaningful insights from her own creative practice and gets candid about pressing ahead in the face of work-halting fear.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine novels about women living alone

Amy Key is a poet and essayist based in London. She is the author of two collections of poetry, Luxe and Isn’t Forever.

Her new book, Arrangements in Blue: Notes on Loving and Living Alone, was inspired by her viral Granta essay, “A Bleed of Blue.”

At Electric Lit Key tagged nine "novels about women living alone." Her "list—by accident rather than intent—is formed of books where in solitude women contemplate their relationship to other women (in the main), rather than to men." One novel on the list:

Kick the Latch by Kathryn Scanlan

Described by one critic as a kind of “ghosted memoir,” the book unfolds over a sequence of 12 chapters, each formed of several immaculate vignettes, told by Sonia, a horse trainer. It’s the sort of book that could be read all in one go; it has a powerful, propulsive energy. But I found myself reading one or two each night, as I would poems. Each sentence is perfectly calibrated, each left me fizzing with my own desire to create. It was almost too much, too potent! I’m obsessed with this book.

Sonia largely lives alone “in a trailer, a motel room, a stall at the track” and sometimes out of her truck. She describes the kind of living environment I would hate, a bedroom that “looked onto a cow pen” and the possibility of waking up to a goat chewing on my sleeve if I left the door open, but Sonia herself is so pulsing with her electric life, her passion for horses and sharp expressiveness, I felt I wanted to live like her, if not with her.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six novels whose crimes and mysteries grow out of place & manners

Peter Nichols is the author of the bestselling novel The Rocks, the nonfiction bestsellers A Voyage for Madmen, Evolution's Captain, and three other books of fiction, memoir, and non-fiction. His novel Voyage to the North Star was nominated for the Dublin IMPAC literary award. His journalism has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He has an MFA degree from Antioch University Los Angeles, and has taught creative writing there and at Georgetown University, Bowdoin College, and New York University in Paris.

Nichols's newest novel is Granite Harbor.

At CrimeReads the author tagged six (plus) "novels whose crimes and mysteries grow out of place and manners," including:

Jane Harper, The Dry

Jane Harper’s novels are set in Australia, beginning with The Dry, three of them featuring her detective Aaron Falk, others are stand-alone mysteries. Usually involving cold cases—not always murders, sometimes deaths resulting from tragic relationships—Harper’s slow-burn but cinematically rendered stories unwrap layers of Australian communities, family secrets, broken friendships that are defined by landscapes both beautiful and harsh.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Dry is among Kate Alice Marshall's five mysteries and thrillers about returning to your hometown, Olivia Kiernan's seven modern classics of small town mystery, Sarah J. Harris's top eight mysteries with images that might stay with you forever and Fiona Barton's eight favorite cold-case mysteries.

--Marshal Zeringue

Fifteen books for fans of "Fallout"

At B&N Reads Isabelle McConville tagged fifteen books for fans of the post-apocalyptic TV-drama Fallout, including:

Lessons for Survival: Mothering against "the Apocalypse" by Emily Raboteau

American Book Award-winner, Emily Raboteu (Searching for Zion) knows in today’s climate (both environmental and social) we all need a stark reminder of the fragility of our planet and humanity — especially after enduring the fear of emerging from the vaults to a war-torn landscape alongside Lucy.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven titles about women chasing love abroad

Juli Min is a Korean-American writer based in Shanghai. She holds an MFA in fiction from Warren Wilson, and she studied Russian and comparative literature at Harvard University.

Her new novel is Shanghailanders.

At Electric Lit Min tagged seven books:

[all are] narratives about women pursuing love in foreign countries (and, in one case, foreign universes). All these novels follow characters experiencing literal and emotional displacement. They are met with the challenge of redefining their relationships, and themselves, on new grounds.

One title on the list:

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

An “Americanah” is a Nigerian who returns to Nigeria after spending time in the U.S. and adopting Americanisms. Ifemelu, the heroine of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s contemporary romantic masterpiece, is one such returnee, who feels neither completely at home while studying abroad in America nor after moving back to Lagos. At every turn, Ifemelu is confronted with her outsider status, in life and in love. But her great romance is with Obinze, her college sweetheart from before leaving Lagos, and who has also lived life on two continents.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Americanah is among Amber Medland's top ten books about long-distance relationships, Lupita Nyong’o’s ten favorite books, Yara Rodrigues Fowler's ten favorite tales told in multiple languages, Greta Gerwig's ten favorite books, and Nada Awar Jarrar's ten favorite books about exile.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five books that serve as love-letters to American cities

At The Amazon Book Review editor Erin Kodicek tagged five "great reads that also serve as love letters to the US cities in which they take place," including:

Skye Falling by Mia McKenzie

Philadelphia

Skye Falling features a flawed, but lovable, heroine you can’t help but root for—a woman in constant motion, adept at maneuvering around life’s messiness, until one day she makes a discovery that stops her in her tracks. Skye Falling is a hilarious and heartfelt story about coming of age (in midlife!), filled with a cast of characters that McKenzie portrays with obvious affection, including the City of Brotherly Love.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top books about eating

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

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

At the Guardian she tagged five of the best books about eating, including:

The Gastronomical Me by MFK Fisher

Fisher’s pioneering “gastrography” or “foodoir” won plaudits on its 1943 publication. Most famously from one of greatest poets of the 20th century. “I do not know of anyone in the United States who writes better prose”, wrote WH Auden. Fisher’s story is about her personal experience of food and the pain of war. She writes richly and variously of food and communion, of “the warm round peach pie and the cool yellow cream”, of how she “ate bread on a lasting hillside” or “drank red wine in a room now blown to bits”. An extraordinary combination of travelogue and feminism, strawberry jam and oysters, fascists and refugees, love and hunger.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five of the best novels about hauntings

Jen Williams lives in London with her partner and their small ridiculous cat. A fan of pirates and dark folklore from an early age, these days she writes horror-tinged crime thrillers with strong female leads as well as character-driven fantasy novels with plenty of banter and magic. In 2015 she was nominated for Best Newcomer in the British Fantasy Awards.

[My Book, The Movie: Games for Dead Girls]

Williams's new novel is The Hungry Dark.

At CrimeReads she tagged her "five favourite books about Hauntings (which are really books about Bad Places, and Terrible People). One title on the list:

Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel

Now you could say that I am throwing out my thesis in my second example, because surely Hilary Mantel’s wonderful book about a genuine psychic haunted by the ghosts of her past is not about place at all, but about Alison herself, a woman slowly run ragged by the diabolical men, long dead, who made her childhood a living hell. I would argue that it is still very much about place. In Beyond Black, the very landscape of England feels haunted as Alison flits between pubs and working men’s clubs, plying her trade. Here, you feel, you can’t walk down the road without being accosted by some dreadful little spirit. And the idea of England being thick with spirits and strangeness is present in Mantel’s Booker Prize-winning Wolf Hall trilogy too. I think Mantel understood the nature of haunting better than any of us.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Beyond Black is among Katya Apekina's eight books about characters with psychic abilities, M. M. DeLuca's five top books that feature mediums & the spirit world, Isaac Fellman's five books that feel like a trippy haunted house, Laura Purcell's ten top books about spirit mediums, Jess Kidd's ten essential supernatural mysteries, and Sarah Porter's five top books with unusual demons and devils.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight novels about absent mothers

Heidi Reimer is a novelist and writing coach. Her debut novel, The Mother Act, is now out from Penguin Random House. Her writing interrogates the lives of women, usually those bent on breaking free of what they’re given to create what they yearn for. Her front row seat to The Mother Act’s theatrical world began two decades ago when she met and married an actor, and her immersion in motherhood began when she adopted a toddler and discovered she was pregnant on the same day.

At Electric Lit Reimer tagged eight "nuanced stories that explore the complicated reasons behind mothers leaving their children." One title on the list:

Olga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl Gonzalez

Olga and Prieto haven’t seen their mother, Blanca, in over 25 years, since she abandoned them as young teenagers to fight for a militant political cause. Their only contact is the letters she sends, always knowing what they’re up to, frequently judging their life choices. She’s proud of Prieto’s success as a congressman representing their Latinx Brooklyn neighborhood but disapproves of Olga’s work as the go-to wedding planner of the one percent, work Olga comes to realize she embraced in rebellion to the very values that led Blanca to leave. What different choices might she have made, Olga wonders, had her mother deemed her worthy of time and affection? Blanca is an unfulfilled longing, existing to Olga as “a floating entity,” her only location “inside the many envelopes that arrived from destinations unknown”—until the day she resurfaces in the flesh, asking for help.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven too-good-to-be-true tech stories

James Folta is a writer and the managing editor of Points in Case. He co-writes the weekly Newsletter of Humorous Writing.

At Lit Hub he tagged seven titles that "feature technology that’s not ready for primetime." One entry on the list:

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

One of the earliest and greatest stories about tech tinkering gone wrong, Mary Shelley’s book about a grad student who works through his grief by defying God, only to get sick and forget about the giant man that he created, is a classic of the “whoopsie, now I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds” genre. Although to be fair, haven’t we all forgotten about some leftovers in the fridge, only to later find a whole Whoville of mold growing in there? Maybe we should go easier on self-driving car guys who are unleashing multi-ton unmanned and under-scrutinized cars onto our roads.

Read about the other titles on the list.

Frankenstein is among Rachel Harrison's seven novels that blend romance and body horror, Binnie Kirshenbaum's ten top books about vegetarians, Jeff Somers's top ten seemingly unrelated books that complement each other, Olivia Laing's top ten books about loneliness, Helen Humphreys's top ten books on grieving, John Mullan's ten best honeymoons in literature, Adam Roberts's five top science fiction classics and Andrew Crumey's top ten novels that predicted the future.

--Marshal Zeringue

The best literary novels masquerading as crime novels

Ash Clifton grew up in Gainesville, Florida, home of the University of Florida, where his father was a deputy sheriff and, later, the Chief of Police. He graduated from U.F. with a degree in English, then got an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Arizona. He lives in Gainesville with his wife and son. He writes mystery, thriller, and science fiction novels.

Clifton's new novel is Twice The Trouble.

At Shepherd he tagged five titles that feel "like a genre novel (that is, it has a great plot) but also has the depth and vividness of a literary novel." One title on the list:

Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone

This is my favorite novel. I read it every year or so, and each time, I feel like it makes my own writing better.

Set in the latter years of the Vietnam War, it tells the story of two friends—Converse, a war-traumatized journalist, and Hicks, a world-weary, cynical marine—who smuggle three kilos of heroin back to Berkeley, California.

I love the realism of this book, but it might be too brutal were it not tempered by how intelligent and sympathetic the main characters are, even when doing terrible things. The book feels exactly like a crime/adventure novel, exploring the dark underbelly of the counterculture in the 1970s. It’s also an amazingly complex and philosophical novel about the balance between morality and ego.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Dog Soldiers is among T.C. Boyle's six best books that explore man's inherent violence.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top books about books

Elly Griffiths is the author of the Ruth Galloway and Brighton mystery series, as well as the standalone novels The Stranger Diaries, winner of the Edgar Award for Best Novel, and The Postscript Murders. She is the recipient of the CWA Dagger in the Library Award and the Mary Higgins Clark Award.

[The Page 69 Test: The Crossing Places; My Book, The Movie: The House at Sea’s End; The Page 69 Test: A Room Full of Bones; The Page 69 Test: A Dying Fall]

Griffith's newest Ruth Galloway mystery is The Last Word.

At CrimeReads she tagged her ten favorite books about books, including:

Yellowface by Rebecca F Kuang

This story of a writer who steals her dead friend’s unpublished manuscript was deservedly a smash hit. It is by turns hilarious and tragic and says important things about cultural appropriation and the corrosive nature of success. I used to be an editor and I defy any ex-publisher not to cringe at the editorial scenes.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Yellowface is among 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

Seven books featuring fictional tech with world-altering consequences

Joe Fassler is a writer and editor based in Denver, Colorado. He is an MFA graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and his fiction has appeared in The Boston Review and Electric Literature. In 2013, Fassler started The Atlantic’s “By Heart” series, in which he interviewed authors—including Stephen King, Elizabeth Gilbert, Amy Tan, Khaled Hosseini, Carmen Maria Machado, Viet Thanh Nguyen, and more—about the literature that shaped their lives and work. That led to editing Light the Dark, a book-length collection that included favorites from “By Heart” alongside new contributions. Fassler’s nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, The Guardian, Longreads, and The Best American Food Writing. Fassler currently teaches writing at Vermont’s Sterling College. The Sky Was Ours is his first novel.

At Electric Lit Fassler tagged seven "warped versions of reality [in which] tech is expanding the scope of what’s possible, at a cost." One title on the list:

The Candy House by Jennifer Egan

In some ways, the invention at the heart of Egan’s novel isn’t so different from today’s internet: it’s a portal that lets billions of strangers connect. But our texts and posts and reels seem pretty crude compared to what’s possible with the Mandala Consciousness Cube, which lets you crawl fully inside another person’s skull. With the help of a few electrodes, people can upload their memories into a vast repository, where they can be viscerally experienced by anyone with a cube. (The device, as it works, becomes “warm as a freshly laid egg.”) It’s an unnerving portrait of the way technology hacks individual agency, coercing us into adoption no matter how much we might want to resist. And as the cube collapses distance between people, resulting in new connections that can be redemptive or uncomfortably close, Egan seems to wonder: Do we really need Silicon Valley to understand each other better? Don’t we already have fiction?

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top books about queer relationships

At the Guardian Safi Bugel tagged five "rich, nuanced LGBTQ+ tales," including:

Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters

While many will be familiar with the title from its 2002 BBC adaptation, the original text by Sarah Waters is even more of a treat. Set in the 1890s, the story follows Nan, a young Whitstable oyster girl, as she comes to terms with her sexuality. After becoming infatuated with a “male impersonator” (what we might now call a drag king) at a local music hall, she dumps her boyfriend and plunges into a sequence of queer affairs, with plenty of drama and racy moments along the way. It’s funny, raunchy and extremely camp, but Tipping the Velvet is also a whistle-stop tour through different corners of British lesbian history, building fiction around real-life subcultures.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Tipping the Velvet is among Lianne Dillsworth's seven titles about the theater set in Victorian London, Sam Cohen's thirteen books that explore codependent relationships, and Kate Davies's ten top books about coming out.

--Marshal Zeringue

The five best gothic novels about distressed women

Chin-Sun Lee is the author of the debut novel Upcountry (2023) and a contributor to the New York Times bestselling anthology Women in Clothes (2014).

Her work has also appeared in Electric Literature, Literary Hub, The Georgia Review, and Joyland, among other publications. She lives in New Orleans.

At Shepherd Lee tagged five favorite gothic novels about distressed women. One title on the list:

Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin

Most people are familiar with the movie, and I was, too, before I read the novel—which is shockingly good! Though published in 1967, the prose is modern and restrained.

Rosemary is betrayed by those she trusts, most heinously by her opportunistic husband, but she’s no passive victim; instead, she becomes ferocious. I give props to Levin for channeling the burgeoning feminist rage of the times, which he also did in his 1972 classic, The Stepford Wives. The dream/hallucination scene where Satan impregnates Rosemary and her confrontation with Guy the morning after is so well-written and horrific it made me want to stab him with a pitchfork.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Rosemary's Baby is among Lisa Unger's five top horror novels that explore the darkest corners of our minds, Alice Blanchard's ten chilling thrillers to get you through a winter storm, Ania Ahlborn's ten scariest books of all time, Jeff Somers's twenty-one books that will give you an idea of how the horror genre has evolved and "twenty-five books that might not necessarily be the best horror novels, but are certainly the scariest," Christopher Shultz's top ten literary chillers, and Kat Rosenfield's top seven scary autumnal stories.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six crime stories set in small towns

Samantha Jayne Allen is the author of the Annie McIntyre Mysteries. She has an MFA in fiction from Texas State University. Her writing has been published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, The Common, and Electric Literature. Raised in small towns in Texas and California, she now lives with her husband in Atlanta.

Allen's new novel is Next of Kin.

[Q&A with Samantha Jayne Allen]

At CrimeReads she tagged six "titles that use crime as the vehicle and small towns as the fuel, all in service of a well-told story." One entry on the list:

Bone on Bone by Julia Keller

Another brilliant series, the Bell Elkins mysteries are, like many of the genre, concerned with crime and punishment, but what sets them apart is the overarching theme of retribution in all its forms and what it really means to hold ourselves and our institutions accountable. A native of the small town of Acker’s Gap, West Virginia, Bone on Bone opens with former prosecutor Bell returning home after a prison stint. She has it in mind to begin work on a long-term project holding big pharma responsible for the ravaging of her community by opioids, but soon narrows her focus, hired to look into a drug-related homicide by the thinly-stretched local law enforcement. The grip the opioid epidemic has on this town is tight, and it’s hard for anyone—the law, the family of those lost to overdoses or the addicted themselves—to imagine a way forward. Keller doesn’t pull any punches, but the book is not overly grim in its portrayal of the region; the deep, thoughtful characterizations of the community members who haven’t lost all faith—Bell, also a disabled former deputy and the new county prosecutor—show that in the pursuit of truth, in loving a place even when it’s complicated, you might work through some of your own demons and find glimmers of hope for a better future along the way.

Read about the other titles on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven titles about unconventional situationships

Christine Ma-Kellams is a Harvard-trained cultural psychologist, Pushcart-nominated fiction writer, and first-generation American.

Her work and writing have appeared in HuffPost, Chicago Tribune, Catapult, Salon, The Wall Street Journal, The Rumpus, and elsewhere.

The Band is her first novel.

At Electric Lit Ma-Kellams tagged seven books that feature situationships "replete with the kind of sexual tension that makes you wonder: will they or won’t they?" One title on the list:

I’m a Fan by Sheena Patel

Patel’s obsessive, thoroughly modern novel also has plenty of sex—forget “spicy”; this book will burn the roof of your mouth with the searing, unflinching way it talks about the kind of intercourse that can only be called f*cking and not “love-making.” This makes it all the more ironic—and unusual—that the central relationship of the book is not between the 31-year old narrator and her roster of both official and unofficial lovers, but rather, between her and the woman she is obsessed with, the ex-girlfriend of the man she wants to be with. It’s a situationship—or “delusionship”—unlike any other and I am here for it. By all the critical accolades it’s been getting (here’s to the Women’s Prize), I’m not the only one.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine books to read after David Nicholls's "One Day"

British author David Nicholls is best-known for the globally bestselling love story One Day, adapted first as a feature film and more recently as a major Netflix production. It charts the lives of two people over 20 years on the same day.

People magazine called One Day an "instant classic.... One of the most ...emotionally riveting love stories you’ll ever encounter."

Nicholls's new novel is You Are Here.

At the Waterstones blog Mark Skinner tagged nine literary love stories for fans of One Day. One title on the list:

Normal People by Sally Rooney

Capturing the zeitgeist with all the skill and subtlety of her debut, Conversations with Friends, Sally Rooney’s Normal People is both a study of how one person can irrevocably shape another, and a profound examination of love, power and influence.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Normal People is among Emily Austin's top ten millennial heroines in fiction.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top murder mysteries set in college towns

Harry Dolan is the author of the mystery/suspense novels Bad Things Happen, Very Bad Men, The Last Dead Girl, The Man In The Crooked Hat, and The Good Killer. He graduated from Colgate University, where he majored in philosophy and studied fiction-writing with the novelist Frederick Busch. A native of Rome, New York, he now lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Dolan's new novel is Don't Turn Around.

At CrimeReads he tagged "five crime novels that have entertained and influenced me—all of them set in college towns." One title on the list:

Where They Found Her by Kimberly McCreight

When the body of a newborn girl is found near the campus of Ridgedale University in New Jersey, local reporter Molly Anderson is assigned to the story. Soon Molly’s efforts to understand what happened to the child result in her discovering a series of unsettling crimes that have taken place in the town over a period of two decades. Interwoven with Molly’s investigation are chapters from the perspective of three other women: Barbara, the wife of Ridgedale’s chief of police; Sandy, a teenage girl from the wrong side of the tracks; and Jenna, Sandy’s troubled mother. In the course of the narrative, we learn how these characters’ lives are interconnected, as Molly’s search for answers leads her down a tangled path through Ridgedale’s history—and ultimately to darker truths than she could have imagined.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight thrillers about dysfunctional mother-daughter relationships

K.T. Nguyen's features have appeared in Glamour, Shape, and Fitness. After graduating from Brown University, she spent her 20s and 30s bouncing from New York City to San Francisco, Shanghai, Beijing and Taipei, and has now settled just outside Washington, D.C. with her family. Nguyen enjoys native plant gardening, playing with her rescue terrier Alice and rooting for the Mets.

You Know What You Did is her debut novel.

At Electric Lit Nguyen tagged eight thrillers that "explore the darker side of mother daughter relationships ...[and] deliver raw emotion, tension, and complexity." One title on the list:

The Leftover Woman by Jean Kwok

The Leftover Woman is a poignant family drama with the page-turning engine of a thriller. Jasmine Yang flees her rural village in China and travels to New York City in search of her daughter, given up at birth for adoption by her abusive husband. In debt to the snakeheads who smuggled her into the United States, Jasmine is forced to work as a waitress in a seedy strip club. Just a few miles away—but it might as well be another country—privileged publishing executive Rebecca Whitney struggles to balance a high-powered career, marriage, and caring for her adopted Chinese daughter Fifi, who Rebecca begins to worry has bonded a little too much with the new Chinese-speaking nanny. The dual storylines collide in an emotionally satisfying conclusion to Kwok’s suspenseful study of motherhood, identity, and class.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top books to understand modern China

Amy Hawkins is the Guardian's senior China correspondent.

One of five books she tagged that "are a good place to start if you want to know more about [China] and its people:"

Leftover Women by Leta Hong Fincher

When Hong Fincher first published her landmark book about gender inequality in China in 2014, China’s birthrate was 14 per 1,000 people. By January 2024, just after the updated 10th anniversary edition of Leftover Women was published, that number had halved. Understanding why more and more women are rejecting the social and political pressure to become mothers also requires understanding why Chinese women are so disenchanted with marriage. In accessible, entertaining prose, Leftover Women guides the reader through the economic and social inequalities embedded in marriages in China that are so off-putting for increasingly educated young women.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

The eleven best books about John F. Kennedy

Emily Burack is the Senior News Editor for Town & Country, where she covers entertainment, culture, the royals, and a range of other subjects.

At Town & Country she tagged eleven top books about John F. Kennedy, including:

An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917 - 1963 by Robert Dallek

Robert Dallek's An Unfinished Life uses new material (new as of 2003, we should clarify) to give a full portrait of JFK. As the publisher notes, "Dallek succeeds as no other biographer has done in striking a critical balance—never shying away from JFK's weaknesses, brilliantly exploring his strengths—as he offers up a vivid portrait of a bold, brave, complex, heroic, human Kennedy."

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine novels about grand estates that are filled with secrets

Chanel Cleeton is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick Next Year in Havana, When We Left Cuba, The Last Train to Key West, The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba, Our Last Days in Barcelona, and The Cuban Heiress.

Her latest novel is The House on Biscayne Bay.

At CrimeReads she tagged nine of her "favorite novels featuring grand estates that are filled with secrets." One title on the list:

The Missing Years by Lexie Elliott

When Alicia Calder inherits half of a manor house in the Scottish Highlands, she’s transported back in time to face her childhood secrets. Her father disappeared twenty-seven years ago, and alongside the half-sister who is practically a stranger to her, Alicia is forced to confront both the house’s past and her own. There’s something treacherous about the home and the surrounding grounds, and this atmospheric thriller will keep readers guessing until the end.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Page 69 Test: The Missing Years.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight magical libraries in literature

Douglas Westerbeke is a librarian who lives in Ohio and works at one of the largest libraries in the U.S. He has spent the last decade on the local panel of the International Dublin Literary Award, which inspired him to write his own book.

His debut novel is A Short Walk Through a Wide World.

At Electric Lit Westerbeke tagged eight books "which are only the smallest sample of the breadth and variety of ideas writers have mined from libraries." One title on the list:

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke

Much of this tale of two dueling magicians concerns the collection and curation of books. The library Mr. Norrell keeps is full of rare magic books, containing spells and incantations, a history of magic, and other rare and forbidden knowledge. Mr. Norrell is quite stingy about whom he shares his library with, which is one of the themes of the book, the attempt by these two magicians to control the magic around them. The climatic moment, when magic finally rebels, takes place in the library and it is a stunner.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is among Trip Galey's five books with devilishly dangerous fairy deals, Gita Trelease's five best intrusive fantasy books, Emily Temple's top ten contemporary Dickensian novels, April Genevieve Tucholke's top five books with elements that echo Norse myth, and D.D. Everest's top ten secret libraries.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five inspirational and instructional gardening books

At The Amazon Book Review Seira Wilson tagged five inspirational, and instructional, gardening books, including:

Bird-Friendly Gardening: Guidance and Projects for Supporting Birds in Your Landscape by Jen McGuinness

One of my favorite things about a garden is watching the birds, bees, and butterflies enjoying it too—and these invaluable critters need us more than ever. This book is so easy to understand and use, with sections for small, medium, and large spaces, and covering pretty much any conditions you might need, including condo-friendly plantings and how to create a hummingbird haven on your balcony or patio. Easy-to-use charts of plants in full color outlining what each needs to grow and thrive, along with which birds and pollinators they will attract, made me want to grab my gloves and dig in right now!

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top campus crime novels

Ali Lowe has been a journalist for 20 years. She has written for magazines, newspapers, and websites in London and then Australia, after she moved to Sydney sixteen years ago on a trip that was meant to last a year. She was Features Editor at OK! in London, where she memorably stalked celebrities in Elton John's garden at his annual White Tie and Tiara ball.

Lowe lives on the northern beaches of Sydney with her husband and three young children.

Her newest novel is The School Run.

At CrimeReads the author tagged six of her favorite campus crime novels. One title on the list:

What Was She Thinking? (Notes on a Scandal), by Zoe Heller

Barbara Covett is a lonely and introverted school teacher who attaches herself to the new art teacher at St George’s School in north London, the whimsical and childlike Sheba Hart. When Sheba begins an illicit affair with a fifteen-year-old male pupil, Barbara uses the situation to her own advantage, claiming a sort of ‘ownership’ over Sheba. The crime in this story (nominated for the 2003 Man Booker Prize and later made in to a film starring Cate Blanchett and Dame Judi Dench) is obviously Sheba’s sexual relationship with a minor, which makes for uncomfortable reading. But so does Barbara. A gritty psychological thriller that touches on obsession, victimhood and regret.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Notes on a Scandal is among Elizabeth Brooks's ten top novels with unreliable narrators and Charlotte Northedge's top ten novels about toxic friendships.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight books by writers who use horror as a way to understand themselves

Richard Scott Larson is a queer writer and critic. His debut memoir is The Long Hallway.

Born and raised in the outer suburbs of St. Louis, he studied literature and film criticism at Hunter College in Manhattan and earned his MFA from New York University in Paris. He has received fellowships from MacDowell and the New York Foundation for the Arts, and his work has also been supported by residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Vermont Studio Center, Paragraph Workspace for Writers, La Porte Peinte, and the Willa Cather Foundation.

At Electric Lit he tagged eight "books that helped [him] understand how writing about horror can be a way of writing about ourselves." One title on the list:

In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado

“The memoir is, at its core, an act of resurrection,” writes Machado in the opening pages of In the Dream House, an innovative account of her experience of domestic abuse that embeds her personal story within an extensive cultural history. The book is structured as a series of brief sections titled after various tropes—many of them from horror film iconography, such as “Dream House as Creature Feature,” “Dream House as Haunted Mansion,” “Dream House as Demonic Possession,” “Dream House as Apocalypse,” and “Dream House as Nightmare on Elm Street”—expressing elements of her time in a house in Indiana where her girlfriend lived during most of the duration of their relationship while Machado was a graduate student in Iowa. Her story is punctuated by harrowing moments of conflict that feel, because of their specificity, almost uncannily familiar. Readers come to inhabit her mind so wholly that the claustrophobia of her relationship with this other woman is made present first in the mind and then in the body, a cancer spreading quietly beneath the skin.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top books about siblings

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

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

At the Guardian she tagged five of the best books about siblings, including:

Mayhem by Sigrid Rausing

Rausing’s account of her brother Hans’s and sister-in-law Eva’s struggles with drug addiction is, in many ways, an ordinary story. The “individuality of addicts”, Rausing writes “is curiously erased by the predictable progress of the disease”. But in this case, the Rausing family’s Tetra Pak fortune, and the grim circumstances around her sister-in-law’s death, created something more seemingly sensational, and her family’s life swiftly became the stuff of tabloid headlines. This is a thoughtful and compelling memoir about guilt, boundaries and the fictions of memory – “the stories that hold a family together, and the acts that can split it apart”.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top bad-neighbor thrillers

Seraphina Nova Glass is an Edgar Award-nominated author. Her fifth and latest book is The Vacancy in Room 10.

Named a New York Times Book Review Summer Read and an Amazon Editor’s Pick in Mystery & Thrillers, her last book, On A Quiet Street, earned her #1 bestselling status in the Thriller category on Amazon. It was also hailed by Bustle as one of “10 Must-Read Books” and one of “10 Top Thrillers To Read On Your Summer Vacation” in the Boston Globe.

[ Q&A with Seraphina Nova Glass]

At CrimeReads Glass tagged six "thrillers is guaranteed to give you the chills and keep you up all night." One title on the list:

Stranger In The Lake by Kimberly Belle

Charlotte has escaped her troubled past and impoverished childhood and now lives her dream life, in her dream house, with a loving husband and seemingly no problems…except that everyone talks. Did she get pregnant to trap him, did the trailer park girl marry him for his money?

That all seems like petty gossip when a body washes up by the dock behind their house and she’s faced with real, life altering problems. Does she really know the man she married? Can she trust his friends who are all suspect and seem to be hiding secrets themselves? Is she in danger?

This story was immediately gripping and atmospheric. Belle breathes fresh life into a familiar storyline and creates a truly page-turning and spellbinding mystery.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue