Seven historical novels that explore the underbelly of the art world

Laura Leffler is a writer and art historian who builds stories within the gorgeous, strange, and sometimes terrifying art world. After receiving a master’s degree in post-war and contemporary art, she spent more than a decade working in commercial galleries, doing everything from art fair sales to condition reporting and logistics. Along the way, she witnessed more of that glittering world’s dark underbelly than she thought possible. Leffler currently lives in Colorado with her family.

Tell Them You Lied is her first novel.

At CrimeReads Leffler tagged seven standout art historical crime novels, including:

The Magnolia Palace by Fiona Davis

As in all of Davis’s novels, The Magnolia Palace centers on a New York City landmark—this time it is the Frick Museum—and alternates between two timelines. In 1919, artists’ model Lillian Carter, a woman once lauded as the most beautiful in the world, is at an impasse. She is only 21, but her body has changed, ending her career. Her mother is dead and Lillian is alone and without means. She takes a job as a secretary to young Miss Frick, but soon gets accused of murder. Meanwhile, fifty years later, fashion model Veronica agrees to do a photo shoot at the museum, but a winter storm disrupts everything, leaving her stranded and following a trail of clues that will eventually solve the old murder.

Read about the other novels on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five notable books about cults

As a forensic scientist at the Cuyahoga County Coroner’s Office, New York Times bestselling author Lisa Black analyzed gunshot residue on hands and clothing, hairs, fibers, paint, glass, DNA, and blood as well as other forms of trace evidence. Now she is a Certified Crime Scene Analyst and Certified Latent Print Examiner and for the Cape Coral Police Department in Florida. Black is a member of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, the International Association for Identification, and the International Association of Bloodstain Pattern Analysts. She has testified in court as an expert witness and served as a consultant for CourtTV.

She is the author of the Locard Institute series and of the highly acclaimed Gardiner & Renner series, for which she was nominated for the Sue Grafton Memorial Award. Her books have been translated into six languages.

Black's latest title in the Locard Institute series is Not Who We Expected.

[The Page 69 Test: That Darkness; My Book, The Movie: Unpunished; The Page 69 Test: Unpunished; My Book, The Movie: Perish; The Page 69 Test: Perish; The Page 69 Test: Suffer the Children; Writers Read: Lisa Black (July 2020); The Page 69 Test: Every Kind of Wicked; Q&A with Lisa Black; My Book, The Movie: What Harms You; The Page 69 Test: What Harms You; My Book, The Movie: The Deepest Kill; My Book, The Movie: Not Who We Expected; The Page 69 Test: Not Who We Expected]

At The Strand Magazine Black tagged five books that made her want to write about a cult, including:

Stolen Innocence: My Story of Growing Up in a Polygamous Sect, Becoming a Teenage Bride, and Breaking Free of Warren Jeffs by Elissa Wall

This is also a story of someone raised from birth in a situation which gradually got worse as Warren Jeffs turned a religious outpost into his personal biosphere. Forced to marry a hated cousin at the age of fourteen, Elissa finally escaped four years later. The day to day details of life in Jeffs’ world are horridly fascinating and sometimes unexpected.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Also see Kate Robards's five essential books about cults, Janice Hallett's five top books on cults, Melanie Abrams's seven novels about crimes in communes, cults, & other alternative communities, Joanna Hershon's seven darkly fascinating books about cults, Claire McGlasson's top ten books about cults, and Sam Jordison's top ten books on cults and religious extremists.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven titles about girls doing crime

Darrow Farr is a Salvadoran American writer. She was a Stegner Fellow in Fiction at Stanford University from 2017 to 2019 and received an MFA in creative writing from the Michener Center at the University of Texas. She was born and raised outside Philadelphia, where she now lives with her husband and son.

The Bombshell is her debut novel.

At Electric Lit she tagged seven novels in which women "don’t resign themselves to injustice, desperation, inattention, or boredom—they change their circumstances. So what if their methods are technically illegal?" One title on the list:

A Prayer for Travelers by Ruchika Tomar

The plot seems simple enough: Two friends, Penny and Cale. Penny goes missing, Cale looks for her. But this novel is a labyrinth, and as you wend your way through the out of order chapters, bumping into hangman’s puzzles and images of tarot cards and serpents, the book itself begins to feel like an occult object. The crimes committed are far from the most unsettling thing about this story; a sense of disquiet pervades even the most anodyne interactions, and you realize there is nothing simple about these girls’ friendship, their desert town, and the reasons someone might disappear from there.

As quiet, bookish Cale searches for Penny, she encounters the dark sides of the people in town, including Penny herself. However, coming into contact with that darkness doesn’t merely destabilize Cale—in a twisted complication of the coming-of-age narrative, it empowers her.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

Five titles that grapple with visions of apocalypse

Martha Park is a writer and illustrator from Memphis, Tennessee. She received an MFA from the Jackson Center for Creative Writing at Hollins University, and was the Spring 2016 Philip Roth Writer-in-Residence at Bucknell University’s Stadler Center for Poetry. She has received fellowships and grants from the Religion & Environment Story Project, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.

Her collaborative illustrated journalism has been recognized with an EPPY Award for Best use of Data/Infographics and was a finalist for the Institute for Nonprofit News’ Insight Award for Visual Journalism.

Park’s work has appeared in Orion, Oxford American, The Guardian, Grist, Guernica, The Bitter Southerner, ProPublica, and elsewhere.

Her new book is World Without End: Essays on Apocalypse and After.

At Lit Hub Park tagged five "books that grapple with—and seek to undermine, complicate, and create new meanings from—visions of apocalypse." One title on the list:

The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War by Jeff Sharlet

The least optimistic book in the list, but the most clear-eyed and clarifying excavation of the Far Right and its spiritual deprivations, from the vacuity of “hipster Christendom” to the red-pilled, “great phallic oversoul” of the manosphere; the conspiratorial gnosticism of Trump devotees and the perverse prosperity gospel of Trump’s rallies where, Sharlet writes, it is as if “loss itself, the very concept of grief, had been disappeared.”

I read The Undertow a couple years ago and there are specific images I have never been able to shake: an emaciated moose covered in glistening ticks, a family cat lying amid a massive pile of guns, a three-year-old child lying on his belly, shooting an automatic rifle. The heaviness is punctuated by Sharlet’s photography, his hysterically funny observations, as well as painfully beautiful meditations on the prophetic imagination of Harry Belafonte and Occupy Wall Street protestors—who Sharlet describes as fools “in the holy tradition, the one that speaks not truth to power but imagination to things as they are.”

Sharlet writes from “the aftermath,” peering into the deepest darkest reaches of a world wrought by the entangled forces of white Christian nationalism, fascism, and authoritarianism. Still, Sharlet draws us forward: “We will need new songs if we are to make it through what is to come—what is already here. I am not the one to write them. My hope is less than that: only that this book may reveal fault lines within our fears, in which others will find better words our children may one day sing.”

Read about the other books on Park's list at Lit Hub.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six mysteries set in international destinations

Jaclyn Goldis is a graduate of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and NYU School of Law. She practiced estate planning law at a large Chicago firm for seven years before leaving her job to travel the world and write novels. After culling her possessions into only what would fit in a backpack, she traveled for over a year until settling in Tel Aviv, where she can often be found writing from cafés near the beach.

Goldis is the author of The Chateau, The Main Character, and The Safari.

At CrimeReads the author tagged six destination thrillers, including:

Appointment with Death by Agatha Christie.

No roundup of international destination mysteries would be complete without at least one of the several epic, eligible Christies. Appointment with Death is one of the Queen of Mystery’s most atmospheric and exotic forays, set in both the Old City of Jerusalem and Petra, Jordan. Inspired by Christie’s real-life Middle Eastern expeditions with her archaeologist husband, the featured locales—with their historic and religious backdrops, awe-inspiring, red-rock ruins, warm hospitality, and remote desert landscapes—are infrequently portrayed in modern mysteries and thus all the more intriguing. Here, our favorite Belgian detective must solve the murder of the most detestable woman he’d ever met. Petra’s harsh beauty and remoteness heightens the claustrophobia and serves to exacerbate the characters’ emotional unraveling. Of course, twists and turns abound, while the murderer remains cleverly concealed until Poirot’s little gray cells perform their ingenious analysis of psychological motivations and catalyze a most astonishing unveiling.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight funny novels that satirize the writer’s plight

Ashley Whitaker is a writer from Texas. She received her MFA in Prose from the University of Michigan Helen Zell Writers' Program. Her work has appeared in Tin House, StoryQuarterly, and has received support from the Ragdale Foundation. She lives in Austin with her family.

Whitaker's first novel is Bitter Texas Honey.

At Electric Lit the author tagged eight novels that "satirize their main characters’ literary ambitions. Each ... features a writer main character at varying career stages, battling against their own ego." One title on the list:

Less by Andrew Sean Greer

In Greer’s charming novel, 49-year-old “minor” author Arthur Less accepts a stack of invitations he would usually decline. He jaunts around the globe, to New York, Mexico, Italy, Germany, Japan, and India, to avoid attending, or even being in the same time zone as, the wedding of his longtime ex-lover. Throughout his journey, we are reminded of poor Arthur’s career insecurities. His narrator describes Less early on as “an author too old to be fresh and too young to be rediscovered, one who never sits next to anyone on a plane who has heard of his books.” Despite his perceived worldly failures, it is hard not to fall in love with Arthur Less by the end of this tenderhearted novel.

Read about the other novels on the list.

Less is among Olivia Wolfgang-Smith’s eight contemporary novels with omniscient narrators and Gnesis Villar's seven novels about the struggle of being a writer and Sarah Skilton's six novel novels about novelists.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight works of historical fiction set in America’s Chinatowns

At Book Riot Courtney Rodgers tagged eight works of historical fiction set in America’s varied Chinatowns. One title on the list:

China Dolls by Lisa See

At San Francisco’s most exclusive Chinatown nightclub, Ruby, Helen, and Grace audition for the same showgirl role. Grace is fleeing an abusive father, Helen’s family has been in San Francisco a long time, and Ruby is Japanese, posing as Chinese. Their differences and similarities buoy their complex friendship. This novel follows Ruby, Helen, and Grace through 50 years of war, romance, and heartache.

Read about the other entries on the list.

China Dolls is among Jane Smiley's top ten books about California.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven novels featuring imposters among us

Allison Buccola is the author of The Ascent and Catch Her When She Falls.

She has a JD from the University of Chicago and lives in the Chicago suburbs with her husband and their two young children.

[Q&A with Allison Buccola; The Page 69 Test: Catch Her When She Falls; Writers Read: Allison Buccola; The Page 69 Test: The Ascent]

At CrimeReads Buccola tagged "seven books that play with identity in a variety of fun ways and feature some of the different types of imposters that appear in thrillers." One title on the list:

The Likeness (Tana French): The Doppelgänger.

Tana French’s The Likeness features another unsettling device in suspense fiction, the doppelgänger. Detective Cassie Maddox arrives at a crime scene to find a victim who looks exactly like her. She uses the resemblance to her advantage and goes undercover as the victim, moving into the beautiful manor house the victim shared with four other students and inserting herself into the uncomfortably close-knit group. In stories where the protagonist is the look-alike imposter, the question of whether she is actually fooling anyone looms large. Who is really deceived, and who is only pretending, hiding secrets of their own?

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Likeness is among Anna Snoekstra's seven titles built on the weight of a shared secret, Louise Hegarty’s eight Irish novels about the rise & fall of Big Houses, Emily Bain Murphy's seven mystery novels with the best twists, Emily Beyda's seven top doubles in the twisted world of mystery fiction, Sophie Stein's eight books about small-town woman detectives, Alison Wisdom's sven great thrillers featuring communal living, Christopher Louis Romaguera's nine books about mistaken identity, and Simon Lelic's top ten false identities in fiction.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten realist titles that integrate futuristic topics

Fred Lunzer is a writer based in London, with a background in AI research and strategy. He grew up in London and Tokyo, and speaks Japanese. He writes literary fiction novels and short stories, as well as essays and reviews.

Sike, Lunzer's debut novel, is about a young man using an AI psychotherapist to navigate his relationships.

At Electric Lit the author tagged ten novels by "authors [who] write realistically while contending with the futuristic topics the 21st century throws our way." One title on the list:

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

We’re in the mind of a robot, called Klara. She’s an “Artificial Friend,” who is in a store and waiting to be bought by a family. Eventually a young girl called Josie chooses her, and Klara’s job will be to give Josie companionship. Klara gains energy from the sun. Josie suffers from a mysterious illness, possibly a result of a genetic enhancement surgery she underwent, and Klara thinks the sun might be able to help her too.

Ishiguro is a master of matter-of-factness: Klara and the Sun delivers its extreme subject matter through Klara’s naïve eyes. So we come to recognize the loneliness of technology, the horror of sequestering a child’s future, gradually, bit by bit, as though the future is creeping on us.

And as we stand in the wings with Klara, watching the human theatre and only ever half understanding it, the sense of technology as humanity’s tool develops. Ishiguro doesn’t condemn the future, even when he condemns the humans living it.

Read about the other titles on Lunzer's list.

Klara and the Sun is among Jalen Giovanni Jones's top ten literary adaptations coming to TV & film in 2025 and Sierra Greer's seven top stories of robot-human relationships.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven books about the wives of Henry VIII

Martha Jean Johnson is a writer of fiction and non-fiction and the author of a series of books and articles on public opinion and public policy. The Queen’s Musician is her debut novel. She also reviews trends in historical fiction and discusses her own love of reading and writing in her biweekly blog, Historical Magic. She currently divides her time between writing and her work with the National Issues Forums Institute, an organization that encourages civil discourse and nonpartisan deliberation on national and local issues.

During a long public policy career, Johnson analyzed and reported on American public thinking, working with noted social analyst and public opinion pioneer, Daniel Yankelovich. She has published articles in USA Today and The Huffington Post and appeared on CNN, MSNBC, and PBS. She is the author of a series of nonfiction paperbacks on major political issues, co-authored with Scott Bittle.

At The Nerd Daily Johnson tagged seven books for fans of Six the Musical. One title on the list:

The Constant Princess by Philippa Gregory

Henry divorced Katherine of Aragon after two decades of marriage because she hadn’t “produced” a son. Popular entertainment often portrays her as the embittered first wife, but this highly gratifying novel describes the 15-year-old Spanish princess arriving in England to marry Prince Arthur, the heir to the throne. When Arthur dies unexpectedly, she weds his younger brother, the future Henry VIII. Gregory’s narrative captures Katherine’s resolve and intelligence and foreshadows what is to come. Not much is known about the relationship between Katherine and Arthur, but this author imagines a love story. You’d have to have a heart of stone not to enjoy it.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Constant Princess is among Theresa Breslin's top ten books about the Spanish inquisition.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five novels involving destructive relationships

Meg Serino is a graduate of Emory Law School and the Bennington Writing Seminars. Born in New York City, she now lives in Westport, Connecticut.

Annapurna is Serino's first novel. Her research (and love of hiking) led her to Nepal, where she trekked to the base camp of Annapurna. Closer to home, she enjoys hiking with her family and her dog, Penny.

At Lit Hub the author tagged five "books that examine the complexities of destructive relationships and the stories we tell ourselves—the excuses we make—before we can let them go." One title on the list:

Julie Buntin, Marlena

The bonds that form between teenage girls can be intensely thrilling. They can also be destructive. Sometimes, those friendships have lasting repercussions. In this novel, Catherine, a woman in her 30s, grapples with memories of her adolescence with Marlena, who is captivating, wildly charismatic but also troubled. Like Annapurna, it’s about how events and relationships from the past can haunt those in your present. Cat’s fifteen-year-old self—insecure and caught in the swirl that is Marlena—transforms and defines her, even as an adult.

Buntin’s portrayal of the power and dynamics of young female friendships is both vivid and visceral, and stays with you.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven top psychological thrillers for "White Lotus" fans

Andrea Bartz is a journalist and the New York Times-bestselling author of Reese’s Book Club pick We Were Never Here, The Spare Room, The Lost Night, and The Herd.

Her new novel is The Last Ferry Out.

"[N]ot alone in [her] obsession with suspense set in the middle of complicated social spiderwebs," for People magazine Bartz tagged seven "novels [that] deliver twisted group dynamics and drama aplenty (and — bonus! — fill that White Lotus-shaped hole in your life)." One title on the list:

The Last Session by Julia Bartz

In this genre-blending thriller (that just happens to be written by my sister), a young woman travels to the New Mexican desert to stay at a mysterious wellness center that promises to help her open herself to love. At first, her stay at the quirky compound — amid a group of charismatic leaders and lovelorn attendees of all stripes — seems to bring her closer to enlightenment. But nothing and no one are what they seem.

Read about the other thrillers on the list.

Also see Molly Odintz's five top new thrillers for White Lotus fans.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight pre-apocalyptic novels

Alex Foster received his MFA from New York University, where he served as fiction editor of Washington Square Review. His short stories have appeared in Agni, The Common, The Evergreen Review, and elsewhere. Previously, he studied economics at the University of Chicago and conducted research for the U.S. government and for the World Bank’s Gender Innovation Lab in West Africa.

Circular Motion is his first novel.

At Electric Lit Foster tagged "eight pre-apocalyptic books ... set in the run-up to a particular apocalypse that only arrives near the end of the book, if ever." One title on the list:

The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

Some earlier works of climate fiction by Kim Stanley Robinson depicted Earth in the post-apocalyptic distant future, flooded out or ravaged by mass extinction. The Ministry for the Future, in contrast, shows Earth as it is—or at least could be—today: imperiled by climate change and responding to that threat. Through bureaucracy, diplomacy, and direct action campaigns, Robinson’s characters address the looming prospect of climate apocalypse. Here is the most dismally realistic book on this list, and also the most hopeful.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven titles built on the weight of a shared secret

Anna Snoekstra is the author of Only Daughter, Little Secrets, and The Spite Game. Her novels have been published in over twenty countries and sixteen languages. She has written for many publications including The Guardian, The Sydney Morning Herald, CrimeReads and is a profile writer for The Saturday Paper. In 2023 she released her first audio drama This Isn’t Happening.

Snoekstra's new novel is The Ones We Love.

At CrimeReads the author tagged seven top novels built on the weight of a shared secret, including:

The Likeness, by Tana French

This Irish detective novel is pure bliss! Detective Cassie Maddox goes undercover in a crumbling mansion in a tiny town where a group of young academics live together. She is pretending to be a student with whom she shares a distinct likeness, who was found dead near the house. This book is almost an invert of my previous recommendations. While those novels show us the dynamics of the group and slowly reveal the crime they are hiding, The Likeness describes the basics of the crime up front then slowly reveals the group dynamics behind it. The reader isn’t sure who of these housemates are responsible and in what way. We see their guilt and the weight of their secret from the outside as Cassie infiltrates the group and uncovers the twisty truth.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Likeness is among Louise Hegarty’s eight Irish novels about the rise & fall of Big Houses, Emily Bain Murphy's seven mystery novels with the best twists, Emily Beyda's seven top doubles in the twisted world of mystery fiction, Sophie Stein's eight books about small-town woman detectives, Alison Wisdom's sven great thrillers featuring communal living, Christopher Louis Romaguera's nine books about mistaken identity, and Simon Lelic's top ten false identities in fiction.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven novels on the workplace

Lorna Graham was born in the San Francisco Bay Area and graduated from Barnard College. She has written for Good Morning America and Dateline NBC. She also wrote a short film, "A Timeless Call," honoring America's military veterans, that was directed by Steven Spielberg. She lives in Greenwich Village.

Graham's new novel is Where You Once Belonged.

At Lit Hub she tagged seven top novels on the workplace, including:

Christian Jungersen, The Exception

Scandinavians are known for their skill with the high-minded thriller and The Exception, by Christian Jungersen, is no exception. In this novel, four women work at the fictional Danish Center for Information on Genocide. Their mission is critical and noble, but the workaday aspect of their days is brought to life in all its deliciously petty, relatable glory.

There’s a door in the office that separates one woman from the other three. It can’t be left open because one of the three woman is worried about drafts. The one on her own, who’s newest to the group, feels left out and later, bullied, causing her to spiral: “As she types, she realizes that she’s losing control. I shouldn’t be feeling like this, she thinks. They’re turning me into a different Anne-Lise…She imagines each tap on the keyboard as if it were a knife plunging into Malene’s body. Or Iben’s.”

The women’s work output is also highlighted, with the inclusion of passages written by the characters that explore the twentieth century’s most notorious real-world atrocities. This allows Jungersen to meditate on the nature of evil by juxtaposing how it functions on a grand-scale (genocide) with how it plays out on the mundane level of office politics.

The distance between the two is called into question after some of the women receive threatening emails, prompting colleagues to wonder whether they come from a war criminal they’ve profiled or the person in the next cubicle.

Anyone who’s ever had their yogurt swiped from the office fridge for the umpteenth time or overheard a couple of snarky colleagues talking about them from behind the doors of bathroom stalls, and thought of what a good weapon a stapler might make, will surely relate.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eleven titles about the peculiar miseries of wealth

Ariel Courage is a graduate of the Brooklyn College MFA program, where she was editor-in-chief of the Brooklyn Review.

She’s currently an assistant fiction editor at Agni. Her work has appeared in Guernica, Joyland, and elsewhere.

Courage's new novel is Bad Nature.

At Electric Lit she tagged eleven books that "reach beyond Gatsby and Chuzzlewit to illustrate the damage money can do to those who have it." One title on the list:

Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

The Fletchers live large in Long Island off the polystyrene fortune amassed by their Holocaust-survivor grandfather. Generational wealth in no way empowers them to cope with their generational trauma, and their “kidnappable” richness also makes them a target for crime, leaving them all crippled to varying degrees by neuroses. This novel’s narrator claims to be agnostic on the question of whether it’s better to “rise to success on [your] own but never stop feeling the fear at the door” or to “be born into comfort and safety” but “never become fully realized people.” Still, this book’s scathing depiction of the rich seems to suggest an answer.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Thirteen sexy & addictive romance novels

Emma Specter is the Culture Writer at Vogue, where she covers film, TV, books, politics, news and (almost) anything queer. She has previously worked at GARAGE and LAist and has freelanced for outlets including The Hairpin, Bon Appetit, them, the Hollywood Reporter and more. Her first book is More Please: On Food, Fat, Bingeing, Longing and the Lust for ‘Enough’.

Specter lives in Los Angeles. In her spare time, she shops for vintage purses and bakes a lot of bagels.

For Vogue she tagged "the 13 best romance books to pick up now." One title on the list:

Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld

Real Saturday Night Live heads will appreciate the marriage of late-night comedy and romance in this typically charming novel from Curtis Sittenfeld, which revolves around TV writer Sally falling (somewhat unwillingly) for pop star Noah when he guest-hosts the show she works on. Sittenfeld’s understated, naturalistic voice only makes the tension between Sally and Noah—and its ultimate payoff—feel richer and more true.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Romantic Comedy is among Pamela Spradlin Mahajan's best books about the fabulous—and painful—parts of fame and Catriona Silvey's top six romances about creatives in love.

--Marshal Zeringue

Four titles featuring cultural institutions & crime

Molly Odintz is the managing editor for CrimeReads and the editor of Austin Noir. She grew up in Austin and worked as a bookseller before becoming a Very Professional Internet Person. She lives in central Texas with her cat, Fritz Lang.

At CrimeReads Odintz tagged "four excellent recent and upcoming novels featuring cultural institutions and plenty of crimes." One title on the list:

Poupeh Missaghi, Sound Museum

Why should male torturers get all the credit? In Poupeh Missaghi’s parody of corporate feminism and the misplaced morality of professionalism, the women holding up a brutal regime would like their contributions acknowledged, too, thank you very much. And one has created a strange new archive dedicated to analyzing the sounds of torture, which she would love to tell you all about. Humorous enough to avoid feeling heavy-handed, Sound Museum may challenge the squeamish, but even if it takes several sessions to get through Poupeh Missaghi’s Kafka-esque tone poem, it’s well worth the effort.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top legal thrillers

Sally Smith is a barrister and KC who has spent all her working life in the Inner Temple. After writing a biography of Sir Edward Marshall Hall KC, a renowned Edwardian barrister she retired from the bar to write fulltime. A Case of Mice and Murder, her first novel, was inspired by the historic surroundings in which she lives and works and by the centuries of rich history in Inner Temple Archives and Library. This is the first in a series introducing the amateur and unwilling sleuth Sir Gabriel Ward KC.

At the Waterstones blog Smith tagged five favotite legal thrillers ("sticking to what have become classics"). One title on the list:

The Firm by John Grisham

The story of an idealistic young lawyer offered what is apparently the dream job in a law firm, who uncovers corruption and learns about the attraction of power and the importance of moral integrity and the pull of both. A terrific read and thought provoking as well.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Firm is among Michelle Frances's eight top workplace thrillers, Jamie Kornegay's five top novels with criminals covering their tracks, and Alafair Burke's seven top books that show the real lives of lawyers.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine titles that center asexuality

Debbie Urbanski is the author of the novel After World (2023)—which was named a best book of the year by the San Francisco Chronicle, Engadget, the Los Angeles Times tech, Booklist, and Strange Horizons—and Portalmania (2025). Her writing focuses on the intersections of horror, fantasy, science fiction, asexuality, memoir, and/or the planet. Over the past two decades, she's published widely in such places as The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, The Best American Experimental Writing, The Sun, Granta, Orion, and Junior Great Books.

At Electric Lit Urbanski tagged nine "narratives [that] push against the traditional definitions of love that confine all of us." One title on the list:

Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe

This graphic memoir relates Maia’s experience growing up as e (Maia uses e/em/eir pronouns) tries to figure out eir identity: what gender e is, who e’s attracted to, what attraction means to e, how e feels about sex, and what sorts of relationships e wants to have in eir life. One of my favorite passages is when Maia describes the relief of realizing that eir life can reflect who e actually is. “I remember when I first realized I never had to have children. It was like walking out of a narrow alley into a wide open field. ‘I never have to get married.’ ’I never have to date anyone.’ ‘I don’t even have to care about sex.’ These realizations were like gifts that I gave myself.” The book, to me, is often about language—specifically the words we use to describe ourselves—and how language can either constrict or expand the possibilities of identity. Since its publication in 2019, Gender Queer has gone on to become one of the most challenged and most frequently banned books in U.S. public schools.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten books for fans of "Sinners"

Brittany K. Allen is a writer and actor living in Brooklyn.

At Lit Hub she tagged ten books for fans of Sinners, the 2025 American musical horror film produced, written, and directed by Ryan Coogler. One title on the list:

Claire Kohda’s Woman, Eating

This contemporary vampire novel also finds echos of colonialism in Dracula’s fangs. Lydia is a “frustrated foodie” who yearns to eat the Japanese cuisine of her father’s homeland. But she can’t stomach anything but blood, due to being undead.

This literary fiction is concerned with thwarted desires, and finely depicts a person straddling several identities while feeling at home in none. Like Coogler, Kohda also does a lot of mixing around the usual lore.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Woman, Eating is among Isabelle McConville's eleven greatest recent bloodsucking books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top puzzle novels

K. A. Merson is a vaguely reclusive writer who lives in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, along with a patient spouse, a malevolent boxer dog, and an Airstream trailer.

The author's new novel is The Language of the Birds.

At CrimeReads Merson tagged six favorite puzzle novels, including:

The Twyford Code by Janice Hallett

A brilliantly clever, mind-bending mystery, The Twyford Code is a page-turning scavenger hunt chock full of puzzles, red herrings, and an endearing protagonist you will not soon forget. I must confess to holding The Twyford Code in a special place as it was one of the three comps (comparable titles) that I used when querying agents for The Language of the Birds manuscript (you won’t find my other two comps on this list). While discussing The Twyford Code, I should also mention The Appeal, Hallett’s debut novel. The Twyford Code might be considered more puzzle-oriented, whereas The Appeal is more of a puzzling twist on a classic whodunnit. But both stories are presented to the reader in strikingly original ways.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight novels exploring complicated feelings about ambition

Emma Pattee is a climate journalist and fiction writer.

Her work has been published in The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and elsewhere.

Her debut novel, Tilt, is available now.

At Electric Lit Pattee tagged eight "contemporary novels that explore ambition in complicated, nuanced, and exciting ways." One title on the list:

So Big by Edna Ferber

Inspired by a true story, So Big is about a woman who is determined to make something of her life no matter what it takes. When she has a son, she names him So Big, and puts her own dreams to the side in order to help foster his. As every child gymnast tells us, that never goes great! This book is an examination of the American Dream, and asks us that eternal question: is it better to chase money or to be true to yourself?

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight top revenge thrillers

At Book Riot Addison Rizer tagged eight "satisfying revenge thrillers where the bad guys finally get their due." One title on the list:

Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha

In the aftermath of the shooting of a Black teenager in 2019, tensions in Los Angeles rise. Especially for Shawn, the brother of a Black girl who was shot and killed in the 1990s. His story intersects with Grace, the daughter of Korean immigrant parents who run a local pharmacy full of family tension of their own. As Shawn and Grace’s stories overlap, revenge, injustice, and loss amass into a tragedy.

Read about the other thrillers on the list.

Your House Will Pay is among the thirteen most essential Los Angeles books of mystery or crime, Jordan Harper's three top novels in the new L.A. crime canon, Erin E. Adams's seven titles that use mystery to examine race, María Amparo Escandón's eight books about living in Los Angeles, Alyssa Cole's five top crime novels that explore social issues, Sara Sligar's seven California crime novels with a nuanced take on race, class, gender & community, and Karen Dietrich's eight top red herrings in contemporary crime fiction.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine books about women without children

Nicole Louie is a writer and translator based in Ireland. Her essays have appeared in Oh Reader Magazine, The Walrus, and The Guardian and her curated collections of books, movies and podcasts about women who are not mothers by choice, circumstance or ambivalence can be found on Instagram: @bynicolelouie.

Others Like Me: The Lives of Women Without Children is her first book.

At Electric Lit Louie tagged nine favorite books "by women who placed writing, not babies, at the center of their lives and flourished outside of motherhood." One title on the list:

Where the Past Begins: A Writer’s Memoir by Amy Tan

By uncovering seven plastic boxes of family memorabilia in the corner of her office, Amy Tan goes deep into her traumatic childhood, reflects on her Chinese heritage, and offers insights into the nature of creativity and her writing methods. Where the Past Begins is a poignant and humorous memoir that recounts Tan’s complex relationship with her mentally ill mother, the loss of both her 16-year-old brother and her father within months of each other, and examines her love for art, music, and linguistics.

Old letters to and from her mother, some dating from 1969, when Tan went to college and they separated for the first time, give further insight into a relationship marked by frequent emotional fights and declarations of love. Sunk deep into the material evidence of their mother-daughter bond, Tan shares her feelings about becoming a mother herself, expressing no desire to pass along her genetic structure by stating, “What’s in me that I’d have wanted to pass on is already in the books.”

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

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight globe-spanning titles on World War II

Natasha Lester is the New York Times bestelling author of The Paris Seamstress, The Paris Orphan, and The Paris Secret, and a former marketing executive for L’Oréal. Her novels have been international bestsellers and are translated into twenty-one different languages and published all around the world. When she’s not writing, she loves collecting vintage fashion, practicing the art of fashion illustration, and traveling the world. Natasha lives with her husband and three children in Perth, Western Australia.

Lester's newest novel is The Mademoiselle Alliance.

At Lit Hub the author tagged eight books "which are set in different theaters of the Second World War, from France to Hong Kong, Britain, Japan, Australia and Germany." One title on the list:

Anne Sebba, Les Parisiennes: How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved and Died in the 1940s

If you only want to read one nonfiction book about WWII, make it this one. Anne Sebba doesn’t cover the battles and the front-line heroics of the war; instead she tells the story of the Frenchwomen who had to deal with their German occupiers every day of their lives.

It’s hard to draw a line in the sand between collaborators and résistantes after reading this book because Sebba also considers survival, not just for the women, but for the families who depended on these women for food and shelter. When you finish this book, you’ll want to find out more about the different women Sebba brings to life, some of whom were famous, but many of whom are unknown.

Read about the other entries on the list at Literary Hub.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top titles about rivers

Robert Macfarlane is Professor of Literature and the Environmental Humanities at the Faculty of English in Cambridge. He is well-known as a writer about nature, climate, landscape, people and place, and his books –– which include Underland (2019), a book-length prose-poem Ness (2018), Landmarks (2015), The Old Ways (2012) and Mountains of the Mind (2003) –– have been translated into more than thirty languages, won prizes around the world, and been widely adapted for music, film, television, radio and theatre.

Macfarlane's new book, Is a River Alive?, is his most personal and political work to date.

At the Waterstones blog the author tagged "five books that present the complexity and importance of rivers through both fiction and non-fiction." One title on the list:

A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean

I have long thought Maclean’s novella to be one of the most perfect pieces of English prose of the twentieth century, from its unforgettable first sentence (‘In our family, there was no clear line between religion and flyfishing’) to its last (‘I am haunted by waters’). It unfurls in the fast-running mountain rivers of western Montana, where two brothers, both obsessive fly-fishermen, follow very different courses in life. I have read it six times now, and each time it yields new wonders to me.

Read about the other entries on the list.

A River Runs Through It is among Jeff Somers's five novels that play with time and Eric Blehm's most influential books.

--Marshal Zeringue