Eight memoirs about the childhood loss of a mother

Jacque Gorelick is a California native who has moved too many times to count. She’s lived all over the West Coast from Santa Barbara to Alaska. Now firmly rooted in the San Francisco Bay Area, she lives beside a creek under redwood trees with her husband, two boys, and a mélange of rescues.

Before freelance writing, Gorelick spent two decades as an elementary school teacher helping students turn ideas into stories. Her debut memoir, Map of a Heart: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Finding the Way Home, is about hearts (medical and metaphorical) and discovering—through a traumatic medical event and motherhood—the meaning of family.

At Electric Lit Gorelick tagged eight memoirs that "explore the ripple effects of early mother loss on womanhood, motherhood, identity, and belonging. A loss that shapes daughters for a lifetime." One title on the list:

Living Proof by Tiffany Graham Charkosky

Tiffany Graham Charkosky’s girlhood unfolded against the backdrop of her mother’s cancer diagnosis and declining health. Eighteen years later, as a woman finding her footing in marriage and motherhood, Charkosky’s grief and fear resurface when she discovers her mother’s illness was a result of a specific and rare genetic mutation. What follows is a familial excavation, genetic reckoning, and heartrending reminiscence of what is lost when a mother dies, leaving her young children with unanswerable questions that cannot be quieted, no matter the years that pass. Charkosky faces genetic testing and uncertainty as she unravels the mystery of her family’s legacy through her own DNA. Living Proof is a profound story of what we inherit through genetics, memory, and time.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

Five crime novels where objects and houses remember

C. L. Miller is the internationally bestselling author of the Antique Hunter Series. She started working life as an editorial assistant for her mother, Judith Miller, on The Miller’s Antique Price Guide and other antiquing guides. She lives in a medieval cottage in Dedham Vale, Suffolk, with her family.

The author's newest novel is The Antique Hunter's Murder at the Castle.

At CrimeReads Miller tagged five crime novels "where houses act as witnesses, objects function as evidence, and history is not background texture but an active participant in the mystery." One title on the list:

S.A. Cosby, All the Sinners Bleed

S.A. Cosby’s All the Sinners Bleed is one of my favorite crime reads–although I would argue that it’s not a traditional historical mystery, but it brilliantly uses the legacies of the Southern landscape—its racial fault lines, its layered memory of violence and resistance to anchor its powerful narrative.

The small Virginia town isn’t just a backdrop; its history amplifies the tension and moral conflict faced by a sheriff hunting a serial killer whose crimes feel rooted in long-standing community wounds.

Read about the other entries on the list at CrimeReads.

All The Sinners Bleed is among Amber and Danielle Brown's five top thrillers with social commentary and Publishers Weekly's best mysteries and thrillers of 2023.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five titles for fans of the "Project Hail Mary" novel and/or movie

At Book Riot Liberty Hardy tagged five "great reads about searching for new habitable planets, or encountering aliens, or both." One entry on the list:

The Best of All Possible Worlds by Karen Lord

[W]hen the homeland of an alien society is destroyed, they realize their only chance for survival is to ask for help from the indigenous life forms on their adopted planet. Soon, it’s a race to keep the species from dying out, while long-kept mysteries are unraveled and the two cultures are forced to work together.

Read about the other titles on the list.

The Best of All Possible Worlds is among Ceridwen Christensen's eleven adult SF novels to turn teens into genre fans for life.

--Marshal Zeringue

The five best celebrity/normal person romance novels

Haruka Iwasaki is a writer and bookseller living in Brooklyn, NY. She writes personal essays about her Japanese American identity, grief and growing up in NYC. One essay has appeared in print this year in Oh Reader magazine.

At Lit Hub she tagged five favorite celebrity/normal person romance novels, including:

Rachel Reid, Game Changer

Scott Hunter, the star hockey player of the New York Admirals, is having a bad streak of games and steps into a smoothie place after a run where he meets Kip, a twenty five year old who works in food service while he decides what to do with his history degree. Scott wins that evening’s game and, crediting the smoothie with his changing luck, visits Kip at his smoothie shop again (this time with more flirtation), Later they meet again at a fancy gala where Kip is working as a caterer. They decide to go out for burgers after and quickly start a fun, loving relationship but have to operate completely in secret since Scott is not out as a gay hockey player. The happy scenes between Kip and Scott show that happiness and steadiness in a relationship is not boring at all and getting to know your new partner is a fascinating process.

This romance novel explores the long distance part of being in a relationship with a celebrity: there are tons of spicy scenes that involve Skype or old-school talking over the phone and reunions after many days apart. Because Kip feels a little lost in his career, there is a bit more of a Cinderella dynamic with an enormous class difference between the two men and higher stakes because of the danger in publicly outing an athlete before Scott and Kip are ready for what comes afterward. This is a really sweet love story and the first book in the Game Changers series that helped create the popular show Heated Rivalry.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven darkly surreal Irish books

Eoghan Walls is a Northern Irish poet from Derry. He has lived and worked in Ireland, Britain, Germany and Rwanda. He won an Eric Gregory Award in 2006, and his poetry has been shortlisted for multiple international awards, including the Bridport Prize, the Manchester Poetry Prize and the Piggott Prize. He has published the first major translation of Heidegger’s poetical works and currently teaches Creative Writing at Lancaster University.

Walls's new novel, Field Notes from an Extinction, "deals with ecological disaster, weaponized starvation, and anti-immigrant sentiment."

At Electric Lit the author tagged seven favorite darkly surreal Irish books, including:

The Wild Laughter by Caoilinn Hughes

The bleak desperation of a more recent Ireland is conjured in Caoilinn Hughes’s The Wild Laughter; a novel set in post-Celtic Tiger Ireland’s financial collapse, where a father in Roscommon, “the Chief,” is dying of age and poor investments and asks his sons to assist in his suicide. The pains in the book have a grand mythic scope—as of Cain and Abel or Saturn and his kids. There are intimate blood ties: Brothers are troubled in wild fields. Dogs howl at the damp horizons. The wild laughter of the title is the absurd—defiant? hopeful? despairing?—response to the new darknesses that drive us into the earth.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six books to read if you loved the movie "Sinners"

Erica Ezeifedi is a writer, editor, and advocate currently serving as an Associate Editor at Book Riot. For the site she tagged six "books that each touch on the major themes and feelings in Sinners," including:

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones

The release of this book being so close to Sinners is too perfect. It also has vampirism as an analogy of European violence against Indigenous and non-white populations, but this time, one of the brown bodies it consumes bites back.

Read about the other titles on the list..

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is among V.E. Schwab's five top modern vampire novels.

Also see Brittany K. Allen's top ten books for fans of Sinners.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six thrillers that feature contagions and pandemics

Alice Martin is a writer, reader, and teacher from North Carolina. She holds a PhD in Literature from Rutgers University and works as an Assistant Professor of English Studies at Western Carolina University, where she teaches fiction writing and American literature. She lives outside of Asheville, North Carolina with her husband, her son, and too many typewriters.

Westward Women is Martin's debut novel.

At CrimeReads the author tagged six novels that are

stories about societies on the edge in the face of contagions, stories made pulse-pounding not only because of the way they demonstrate contagion as a threat but also the way they reveal how contagion can be a catalyst for social change, a reminder of the potential reckless delights in being free of social constraint.

One title on Martin's list:

Chuck Wendig, Wanderers

Like Westward Women, Chuck Wendig’s Wanderers features a biologically mysterious contagion that compels people to trek across the United States in a zombie-like fashion. Unlike in Westward Women, detaining the infected causes those very infected to explode (yes, really). The result is an unstoppable movement that inspires loved ones, called “Shepards,” to join the trek.

The reverberates of this phenomenon are widespread: the development of an AI to predict other pandemics, the formation extremist groups who see the Walkers as a threat, and the rise of a smalltown preacher who tries to take charge of the situation while under the influence of a white supremacist. The outcomes are explosive, but so is the subtler truth the contagion embodies: that sometimes we are drawn to compulsion; that despite our better judgements, sometimes we, too, wish to submit to forces beyond our control.

Read about the other entries on the list at CrimeReads.

Wanderers is among Vanessa Armstrong's seven top books featuring frightening fungi and Mark Skinner's ten top reads for Stranger Things fans.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five mystery titles set in the aftermath of WWII

Shaina Steinberg is the author of the Bishop & Gallagher Mysteries, as well as a film and television writer who’s worked on Malcolm in the Middle, Everwood, Cold Case, Bionic Woman, and Spartacus. Named to the Young and Hungry List in 2013 and the WriteHer List in 2017, she has developed pitches, pilots and features with companies such as Temple Hill, Endgame Entertainment, Fremantle, eOne, Blondie Girl, Josephson Entertainment and Alcon.

At The Strand Magazine she tagged five mystery books set in the aftermath of World War Two. One title on the list:

Evergreen – Naomi Hirahara

The follow-up to Naomi Hirahara’s brilliant Clark and Division, Evergreen continues Aki (neé Ito) Nakasone’s story. Aki and her family returned to Los Angeles, after being forced into internment camps. While somewhere able to find housing, many people were forced into camps located in Burbank. They were dirty, crime-ridden places, that proved hard to leave with the shortage of affordable housing.

Aki is working as a nurse’s aide when an old man, who has been badly beaten, is brought into the hospital. To Aki’s surprise, he is the father of her husband’s best friend, Babe, from the war. She cannot help but suspect him of elder abuse. When the old man killed a few days later and Babe goes missing, Aki is determined to unravel this mystery. The bond Aki’s husband developed with Babe while serving as soldiers in the 442nd is something Aki cannot understand. It makes her realize how much she still has to learn about her husband. They got married during the war and are only now living together for the first time.

Aki’s quest to find the killer reunites her with old friends from Chicago as she navigates Los Angeles from Pasadena to Little Tokyo, in search of answers.

Read about the other novels on the list.

Q&A with Naomi Hirahara.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five books about breaking up... with your friend

Sarvat Hasin is a novelist and dramaturg from Pakistan. She has a masters in creative writing from the University of Oxford. Her first novel, This Wide Night, was published by Penguin Random House India and longlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. Her second book, You Can’t Go Home Again, was published in 2018 and featured in Vogue India's and The Hindu's best of the year lists. Her third novel, The Giant Dark, was a runaway critical success, won the Mo Siewcharran Prize, and was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Encore Award. Strange Girls is her US debut. She lives in London.

At Lit Hub Hasin tagged "five novels [that] are a kind of canon for the friendship breakup," including:

Kamila Shamsie, Kartography

This novel is full of friendship breakups, both past and present. It’s about a quartet of young Karachiites, whose parents all know each other and have a shared and knotty history that our heroes discover over the course of the book. Shamsie’s early novel is an elegant portrayal of breakups, coloured by many different things: bigotry, misunderstandings and shame are all things that tear people apart in this book. Raheen and Karim are at the heart of the book, friends first and an eventual love story. Even when they both leave Pakistan and move to American, they continue to satellite each other. The friendship breakup in the diaspora is its own particular haunting: representing not just your past relationship but the home you’ve left behind.

Read about the other titles on the list at Lit Hub.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight historical fiction titles about women fighting fascism

Susie Dumond is a queer writer originally from Little Rock, Arkansas. She is the author of Queerly Beloved, Looking for a Sign, and Bed and Breakup, and she also talks about books as a senior contributor at Book Riot and a bookseller at her local indie bookstore. Dumond lives in Washington, D.C., with her spouse, Mickey, and her cat, Maple. When she’s not writing or reading, you can find her baking cupcakes or belting karaoke at the nearest gay bar.

At Book Riot Dumond tagged eight works of historical fiction about women fighting fascism. One title on the list:

The Library of Legends by Janie Chang

One of fascism’s most powerful tools is the erasure of history from conflicting viewpoints. Janie Chang puts a magical spin on the real history of a group of Chinese students tasked with protecting ancient books from fascist attacks. As Japanese bombs fell on 1937 Nanking, an entire university’s students, faculty, and staff were forced to walk 1,000 miles west to safety. Each person was tasked with carrying a different volume of the 500-year-old Library of Legends. Their brave journey awakens spirits that accompany them along the way in this luscious, fantastical tale inspired by real events.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Library of Legends is among Bryn Turnbull's seven top books about life under occupation in WWII and Megan Mabee's eight books about magical and mysterious libraries.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five thrillers featuring technofascism

Ani Katz is a writer, photographer, and teacher. She was born and raised on the South Shore of Long Island, New York, and lives in Brooklyn.

Her new novel is Haven, which she calls "a meditation on techno-dystopia masquerading as a locked room mystery."

At CrimeReads Katz tagged five "genre-bending thrillers that employ elements of sci-fi, noir, and horror to explore what happens when the imaginations of the powerful serve the most venal and repressive of goals." One title on the list:

Gliff by Ali Smith

A harrowing and heartbreaking novel, Gliff, like all great thrillers, demands to be read in a few breathless gulps. Siblings Bri and Rose were raised by their mother to reject new technologies and the grasping tentacles of the algorithm in an attempt to hold on to their freedom and humanity, a choice which renders them “unverifiable” and uniquely vulnerable. When their mother is called away, Bri and Rose find themselves running from an authority that is both inexorable and faceless, a threat made visible by the seemingly inescapable painting of red lines around the dwellings of undesirables—a detail both banal and chilling. Gliff explores the terrifying consequences of surveillance and intolerance in a grim, technocratic and totalitarian society that is perilously close in character to the present, and finds possibilities for resistance and resilience in language, art, and connection.

Read about the other titles on the list at CrimeReads.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six essential titles about birds

Eric Wagner is a staff writer with the Puget Sound Institute at University of Washington, Tacoma. He is author of After the Blast: The Ecological Recovery of Mount St. Helens and Penguins in the Desert, and wrote the text for Once and Future River: Reclaiming the Duwamish.

His new book is Seabirds as Sentinels: Auklets, Puffins, Shearwaters, and the View from Destruction Island.

At Lit Hub Wagner tagged six essential books about birds, including:

Maria Mudd Ruth, The Bird with Flaming Red Feet: Seasons with an Uncommonly Common Seabird

The pigeon guillemot is in many ways everything the rhinoceros auklet is not—loud, visually dramatic, gregarious, conspicuous, with a willingness to come to land during the day. In The Bird with Flaming Red Feet, Maria joins a citizen science group devoted to their study and follows the birds for years. Documenting her and her fellow volunteers’ attentions, the book is an ode to the kind of careful, patient natural history that contemporary science practiced at its increasingly rapid pace does not encourage as much anymore.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top literary romance titles

Alison Doherty is a writing teacher and part time assistant professor living in Brooklyn, New York. She has an MFA from The New School in writing for children and teenagers. She loves writing about books on the Internet, listening to audiobooks on the subway, and reading anything with a twisty plot or a happily ever after.

At Book Riot she tagged five top literary romance novels, including:

This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

This genre-bending sci-fi sapphic love story features time-traveling spies from warring empires. Red and Blue jump from timeline to timeline and universe to universe. They start out on opposite sides, but start leaving each other messages that slowly morph from adversarial to friendly to loving. Through the letters they write each other, the book takes on a lyrical and often philosophical quality. At just under 200 pages, it’s a short read that will keep your mind occupied with big thoughts long after you finish.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six titles that explore disrupted and shattered childhoods

As a passionate advocate of lifelong learning, Frances Crawford was delighted to graduate with distinction at age sixty from Glasgow University’s Creative Writing program. Frances grew up in North Glasgow, and credits the people of Possilpark and Milton as her writing inspiration. She still lives in Glasgow with her family and likes libraries and punk rock.

A Bad, Bad Place is Crawford's debut novel.

At CrimeReads the author tagged six of her favorite books that explore disrupted and shattered childhoods, including:

Angie Thomas, The Hate U Give

Aimed at young adults, this novel describes the fallout of a racist shooting in inner-city America. Sixteen-year-old Starr is the only witness to the shooting and her ordinary life with loving family comes to a shocking and abrupt end. When Starr makes the courageous decision to testify in court, she faces outrage, danger and threat.

The novel is a powerful depiction not only of a young black life wrecked by one incident, but also by daily injustice and inequality.

Read about the other titles on the list at CrimeReads.

The Hate U Give is among Kai Harris's six portrayals of Black girlhood in fiction, Chris Whitaker's six top kid narrators in literature, Sif Sigmarsdóttir's top ten novels about burning issues for young adults, and Natasha Ochshorn's seven banned books that should be required reading.

--Marshal Zeringue

Fifteen memoirs and bios for Women’s History Month

One title on Tertulia's list of "memoirs and biographies [that] spotlight remarkable women across literature, activism, and the arts:"

Judy Blume: A Life
Mark Oppenheimer

For generations of readers, Judy Blume’s novels said what no one else would. With books like Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret and Deenie, she transformed children’s literature into something frank, candid, and deeply human. Drawing on extensive interviews and archival material, journalist Mark Oppenheimer traces Blume’s rise from suburban housewife to one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century.

Read about the other titles on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten must-read modern classics of historical fiction

Leah Rachel von Essen is an editor, writer, and book reviewer. She is a copyeditor and fact-checker at Encyclopedia Britannica, as well as a contributing editor, Adult Books, for American Library Association’s magazine Booklist. She writes regularly for Chicago Review of Books and is a senior contributor at Book Riot.

At Book Riot she tagged ten must-read modern classics of historical fiction. One title on the list:

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

In the early 1900s, a Korean immigrant family settled in Japan, beginning with a young pregnant woman named Sunja and the sickly minister Baek Isak. Over the next century, Sunja, as a matriarch, fights to feed and keep her family alive, fostering her sons into what she hopes will be a prosperous future. This modern historical fiction classic covers everything from the temptation and pressures to assimilate and “pass” as Japanese to the institutional, social, and political oppression of Koreans in Japan over the years.

Read about the other books on the list.

Pachinko is among McKenzie Watson-Fore's eight titles featuring cathartic bathhouse scenes, Adrienne Westenfeld and Sirena He's twenty-five essential books about the Asian American experience, Daphne Fama's seven top novels set during times of great political upheaval, Mia Barzilay Freund's eighteen best historical fiction books of the last several decades, Courtney Rodgers's best historical fiction of the 21st century so far, Bethanne Patrick's twenty-five best historical fiction books of all time, Asha Thanki seven books about families surviving political unrest, the Amazon Book Review editors' twelve favorite long books, Gina Chen's twelve books for fans of HBO’s Succession, Cindy Fazzi's eight books about the impact of Japanese imperialism during WWII, Eman Quotah's eight books about mothers separated from their daughters, Karolina Waclawiak's six favorite books on loss and longing, Allison Patkai's top six books with strong female voices, Tara Sonin's twenty-one books for fans of HBO’s Succession, and six books Jia Tolentino recommends.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six contemporary titles that center caretaking through crisis

Sarah Bruni is a graduate of the MFA program at Washington University in St. Louis and the MA in Latin American Studies at Tulane University. She has taught English and writing classes in New York and St. Louis, and she has volunteered as a writer-in-schools in San Francisco and Montevideo, Uruguay. She is also the author of the novel The Night Gwen Stacy Died. Her fiction has appeared in Boston Review, and her translations have appeared in the Buenos Aires Review. She lives in Chicago with her family.

Bruni's new novel is Mass Mothering.

At Lit Hub the author tagged six contemporary novels that "explore the psychological toll of caretaking, the challenge of parenting through personal and political awakening, or the legacy of mutual aid within community." One title on the list:

Brit Bennett, The Mothers

The Mothers opens with an abortion and spans the friendship of two motherless girls into adulthood, living in the aftermath of decisions their mothers have made. When, following her own mother’s suicide, seventeen-year-old Nadia gets pregnant by the pastor’s son, she forges an unlikely friendship with Aubrey, whose mother has left her family behind. The titular mothers of Bennett’s novel—narrating in the first-person plural—offer observations and judgements from the of Upper Room of a Southern California Black church: “We were all mothers by then, some by heart and some by womb. We rocked grandbabies left in our care and taught the neighborhood kids piano and baked pies for the sick and the shut-in. We all mothered somebody.” The novel is haunting, asking what we owe our mothers, the communities given to us by birth, and those we create for ourselves.

Read about the other novels on the list.

The Mothers is among Kelsey McKinney's seven top novels about losing faith in religion, Priyanka Champaneri's nine top novels about gossip, and Patrick Coleman's eight top San Diego books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top atmospheric thrillers set during heatwaves

Elizabeth Arnott is an award-winning writer and journalist and has written critically acclaimed historical fiction as Lizzie Pook. Her work—covering everything from true crime to Arctic exploration—has featured in publications including The Sunday Times, National Geographic, The New York Times Book Review, and The Guardian. She lives with her husband and their young daughter in London, where she spends far too much time drinking iced coffee and watching serial killer shows.

Arnott's new novel is The Secret Lives of Murderers' Wives.

At CrimeReads the author tagged six "of the finest, most evocative crime novels that take place during heatwaves." One title on the list:

Patricia Highsmith, The Talented Mr. Ripley

Sprawling across a long, hot summer in Italy, Highsmith’s sun-baked 1950s classic follows the ruthlessly ambitious Tom Ripley, who’ll stop at nothing in his bid for success and self-preservation. When he is approached by shipping magnate Herbert Greenleaf and asked to persuade Greenleaf’s wayward son, Dickie, to return to the United States, Ripley has no qualms with exaggerating his own connections and accepting.

The resulting recce mission is filled with lies, manipulation and, ultimately, murder. Ripley is tantalizingly amoral, but it’s the picturesque coastal setting, with its mirrored seas and sultry summer heat, that make this an irresistible heatwave read.

Read about the other entries on the list at CrimeReads.

The Talented Mr Ripley is on Adam Hamdy's list of ten of the most popular literary antiheroes, Nadia Khomami's list of five of the best psychological thrillers by women, the UK-based Crime Writers' Association's list of ten page-turning reads, Nathan Oates's list of eight of the best bad seed novels, Lizzy Barber's list of seven titles about wealthy people behaving badly, Charlotte Northedge's top ten list of novels about toxic friendships, Elizabeth Macneal's list of five books that explore the dark side of fitting in, Saul A. Lelchuk's nine great thrillers featuring alter egos, Emma Stonex's list of seven top mystery novels set by the sea, Russ Thomas's top ten list of queer protagonists in crime fiction, Paul Vidich's list of five of the most enduring imposters in crime fiction & espionage, Lisa Levy's list of eight of the most toxic friendships in crime fiction, Elizabeth Macneal's list of five sympathetic fictional psychopaths, Laurence Scott's list of seven top books about doppelgangers, J.S. Monroe's list of seven suspenseful literary thrillers, Simon Lelic's top ten list of false identities in fiction, Jeff Somers's list of fifty novels that changed novels, Olivia Sudjic's list of eight favorite books about love and obsession, Roz Chast's six favorite books list, Nicholas Searle's top five list of favorite deceivers in fiction, Chris Ewan's list of the ten top chases in literature, Meave Gallagher's top twenty list of gripping page-turners every twentysomething woman should read, Sophia Bennett's top ten list of books set in the Mediterranean, Emma Straub's top ten list of holidays in fiction, E. Lockhart's list of favorite suspense novels, Sally O'Reilly's top ten list of novels inspired by Shakespeare, Walter Kirn's top six list of books on deception, Stephen May's top ten list of impostors in fiction, Simon Mason's top ten list of chilling fictional crimes, Melissa Albert's list of eight books to change a villain, Koren Zailckas's list of eleven of literature's more evil characters, Alex Berenson's five best list of books about Americans abroad John Mullan's list of ten of the best examples of rowing in literature, Tana French's top ten maverick mysteries list, the Guardian's list of the 50 best summer reads ever, the Telegraph's ultimate reading list, and Francesca Simon's top ten list of antiheroes.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six notable bad moms from fiction

Ej Dickson is a senior writer at New York magazine’s The Cut. She previously worked as a senior writer for Rolling Stone and her writing has also been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, GQ, Elle, and many others. She lives with her family in Brooklyn, New York.

Dickson's new book is One Bad Mother: In Praise of Psycho Housewives, Stage Parents, Momfluencers, and Other Women We Love to Hate.

At Lit Hub Dickson tagged six "favorite bad moms from fiction, from the archetypical overbearing suburban Jewish bubbes to horny housewives." One title on the list:

Frida Liu; School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan

This book by Jessamine Chan crept its way into my marrow and refused to get out. It is absolutely chilling and it shaped my perspective on a lot of the issues I discuss in my book. It’s basically a dystopian black comedy (though really there’s nothing funny about it) about a single mom who gets sent by a judge to a yearlong school for good mothers after she has a momentary freak out and leaves her child alone in her crib to pick up some papers at her office. She and the other mothers (who are mostly women of color, as is the case in real life with mothers whose kids are removed by the state) are subject to an increasingly impossible series of tasks to prove their worth as mothers, which of course makes it impossible for them to get their kids back. It’s chillingly inspired by a true story and it’s the most terrifying book I have ever read.

Read about the other entries on Dickson's list at Lit Hub.

School for Good Mothers is among Ainslie Hogarth's eight titles about monstrous mothers.

--Marshal Zeringue

Four thrillers that capture the horror of siblings left behind

Isabel Booth is the pen name of Karen Jewell, a former trial attorney and now a writer. She holds an undergraduate degree in English, a Master’s in Business Administration, and a Juris Doctorate degree. When she’s not writing she loves to read, travel, and cook dinner for friends. She lives in Houston, Texas, with her husband.

Booth's new novel is Then He Was Gone.

At CrimeReads the author tagged four thrillers "examine the effects on the sibling left behind." One title on the list:

Tim Johnston, Descent

The Courtland family is on vacation in Colorado when eighteen-year-old Caitlin, starting college in a few weeks on a track scholarship, is abducted. Her younger brother Sean is left lying by the side of the road, his leg shattered by the stranger in yellow-tinted glasses who took her.

Months go by, then years, and Sean undergoes transformation from a shy, overweight teenage boy his sister called Dudley, to a muscular, cigarette-smoking young man. He wanders aimlessly around the country in a truck he stole from his father, taking odd jobs to earn gas money to keep going. Ready to fight anyone abusing or disrespecting young women, he is haunted by shame that he didn’t do more to stop Caitlin from climbing into the kidnapper’s vehicle to go get help for her brother.

Beat up, released after a night in jail, Sean asks his father, “Do you think we’ll ever feel normal again?” When his father asks what’s normal, Sean replies, “I don’t know….Not this.” The novel is a powerful story of guilt, loneliness, and a family falling apart.

Read about the other novels on the list at CrimeReads.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten sunny destination thrillers

Robyn Harding is the international bestselling author of several novels including The Haters, The Perfect Family, The Arrangement, and Her Pretty Face. Her novels The Party and The Drowning Woman were both finalists for the Crime Writers of Canada best crime novel award. Her novel The Swap debuted at #1 on the Globe and Mail and Toronto Star Canadian bestsellers lists. She is also the screenwriter and executive producer of the independent film, The Steps. She lives in Vancouver, BC, with her family and two cute but deadly rescue chihuahuas.

[Coffee with a Canine: Robyn Harding & Ozzie; The Page 69 Test: The Arrangement; My Book, The Movie: The Swap; The Page 69 Test: The Perfect Family]

Harding's new novel is Strangers in the Villa.

At People magazine the author tagged ten destination thrillers set in warm and sunny locales. One title on the list:

With Malice by Eileen Cook

This riveting YA thriller has echoes of the Amanda Knox case, including its gorgeous Italian setting and a public trial by media. Eighteen-year-old Jill wakes up in a hospital room with serious injuries, and no memory of the devastating Tuscany car accident that killed her best friend. In the headlines, Jill is painted as a jealous monster, a sociopath. She must piece together the events of her forgotten trip to prove her innocence.

Read about the other thrillers on Harding's list.

With Malice is among Kit Frick's five YA thrillers about vacations gone horribly wrong and Darren Croucher's six YA murder mysteries for fans of Big Little Lies.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven notable Hamptons novels

Nicole Sellew is a writer and English teacher based in Connecticut and New York City. In 2022, she received an MLitt in fiction from the University of St Andrews, where she is currently studying for her PhD.

Sellew's new novel is Lover Girl. The publisher calls it a "picaresque debut of forbidden desire, in which a young woman escapes NYC to work on her novel in the Hamptons, falling into a downward spiral of lovers and other destructive behaviors."

At Lit Hub the author tagged seven Hamptons novels to read this winter. One title on the list:

The Guest by Emma Cline

The summer this came out, every linen-clad maniac was clutching this in their greasy hands on their morning stroll past The Golden Pear. A classic tale of a beautiful young woman just tipping her prime and freeloading with a boring older man. Our fearless heroine gets into all sorts of trouble, and what started out as a charmed vacation ends up becoming a horrific, picaresque nightmare. Read it if you like age-gap relationships or beautiful sentences about sand dunes.

Read about the other novels on Sellew's list at Lit Hub.

The Guest is among Arielle Egozi's eight books about women being bad.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven titles about women becoming beasts

Caitlin Breeze lives in London in a tiny house full of books. She has a BA from the University of Cambridge, a Creative MA from Falmouth University, and a love of all things eldritch.

The Fox Hunt is her first novel.

At Electric Lit Breeze tagged seven novels in which women turn monstrous to reclaim their humanity. One title on the list:

The Brides of Rollrock Island by Margo Lanagan

In Margo Lanagan’s take on selkie folklore, the women of Rollrock Island are seal-wives. They have been called from the sea and trapped in human skins so that men can claim them as brides. These seal-women are not cheerful wives, but exiles aching for the water. Their marriages are abductions, separating them from their true selves. In prose that stings like wind off the sea, Lanagan paints the domesticity the brides are forced to wear by hopeful husbands, and their unabating longing for the cold, deep water and their true forms. In this story, beast form is a lost dream of freedom: a utopia of female existence, freed from civilization, in which women’s original forms are sleek, powerful, and magical. It is a haunting and beautiful read suggesting that women do not want to turn beastly, so much as to return to their rightful beastly selves.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine thriller-y, crime-y speculative novels

Michelle Maryk graduated from Cornell University with a degree in English and attended the Yale Writer’s Workshop. For the better part of twenty-five years, she’s been a successful voiceover, on-camera commercial, and comedic actor, and she is a dual Swedish and US citizen.

The Found Object Society is her debut novel.

At CrimeReads Maryk tagged nine of her "recent (and one of my oldest) speculative favorites that thrillingly delve into crime and murder in its many forms." One entry on the list:

The Paradox Hotel, Rob Hart

Time travel for the ultrarich? Check. Powerful government entities privatizing the technology for their dubious gain? Check. One grieving female security officer trying to solve a murder while she slips between the present and past due to her time travel sickness called, Unstuck? Check and check. The time portal is starting to glitch; baby dinosaurs keep popping up; and things are going all kinds of wrong at the Paradox Hotel. Here, Hart showcases his mastery of melding noir, sci-fi and thriller in this wild ride.

Read about the other novels on Maryk's list at CrimeReads.

The Paradox Hotel is among Michelle Maryk's six of the best time-travel titles and Molly Odintz's seven top novels set in supernatural hotels.

The Page 69 Test: The Paradox Hotel.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight titles inspired by lucky Chinese New Year rituals

Lauren Kung Jessen is a mixed-race Chinese American writer with a fondness for witty, flirtatious dialogue and making meals with too many steps but lots of flavor. She is fascinated by myths and superstitions and how ideas, beliefs, traditions, and stories evolve over time. From attending culinary school to working in the world of Big Tech to writing love stories, Kung Jessen cares about creating experiences that make people feel something. When she’s not writing novels, she works as a content strategist and user experience writer. She also has a food and film blog, A Dash of Cinema, where she makes food inspired by movies and TV shows. She lives in Nashville with her husband (who she met thanks to fate—read: the algorithms of online dating), two cats, and dog.

Kung Jessen's new novel is The Fortune Flip.

At The Nerd Daily the author tagged eight books inspired by lucky Chinese New Year rituals, including:

If you’re hanging lanterns, paper cuttings, and decorations to usher in good fortune and happiness: Double Happiness by Heather Eng

Mei must learn—and choose—what it is she really wants in work, life, and love in this novel about a woman with a carefully constructed life who’s caught between a relentless tech job, her fiancé, and an unexpected new relationship. This one comes out on May 19, 2026, so this is a peek at what’s on my TBR!

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine memorable depictions of AI in fiction

Justin C. Key is a practicing psychiatrist and a speculative fiction writer. He is the author of the debut novel The Hospital at the End of the World and the story collection The World Wasn’t Ready for You. His stories have appeared in the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, Escape Pod, Lightspeed, and on Tor.com. He received a BA in biology from Stanford University and completed his residency in psychiatry at UCLA. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and three children.

At Lit Hub Key tagged nine favorite depictions of AI in fiction, including:

Cortana (Eric Nylund, Halo: The Fall of Reach)

My favorite AI sidekick. She’s what we hope Siri or Alexa will one day be, a companion that can feed us all the information we need in any given situation, hack into alien computer systems, and brew our morning coffee all while keeping it entertaining. I was first introduced to her not in the video game, but in the written prequel, which I devoured before while I waited for 2001’s Christmas to come.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight works featuring cathartic bathhouse scenes

McKenzie Watson-Fore is a writer, artist, and neighbor currently based in her hometown of Boulder, Colorado. She holds an MFA in Nonfiction from Pacific University. She writes about evangelicalism, relationships to people and place, and self-discovery. Watson-Fore serves as the executive editor for sneaker wave magazine and is the founder and host of the Thunderdome Conference. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and Best American Essays.

At Electric Lit Watson-Fore tagged eight works featuring cathartic bathhouse scenes, including:

Splinters by Leslie Jamison

A spa visit is ideal fodder for Jamison: a bespoke, sensory setting that gradually recedes into background to allow for dialogue or interior reflection. In this case, Jamison and her friend Anna spend an evening at the Russian and Turkish Baths on Tenth Street. Jamison’s descriptions are lush and steamy, much more florid than either Zauner’s or Koh’s. The presence of others in the bathhouse is a fact Jamison uses to console herself against her personal disappointments and deprivations, and she gestures toward the communal nature of these spaces and the sense of shared humanity they open up. As elsewhere in Splinters, Jamison is straining for transcendence, and she asserts it via her projections onto and vivid descriptions of others.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Splinters is among Nathalie Atkinson's eight new books about sex, relationships and romance.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven great titles about bad moms

M.K. Oliver is a former English teacher and headteacher originally from Liverpool. He long dreamed of becoming a writer and after many years of working in schools, he took the exciting decision to put down the whiteboard marker, take up the keyboard, and give it a go.

Oliver's new novel is A Sociopath's Guide to a Successful Marriage.

At People magazine the author tagged "a few great books in which mothers range from a little bit selfish to completely, dreadfully awful!" One title on the list:

Finlay Donovan is Killing It by Elle Cosimano

A wonderfully comic take on the overwhelmed single mother. The conceit that opens the book is brilliant and sets the tone for the series. Finlay is a struggling crime writer who is outlining the plot of her novel over lunch to her agent and is mistaken for an assassin.

This is cosy and comic crime territory, but it is a study of a single mom operating outside the boundaries of acceptability, and showcasing what it feels like to be constantly operating in a hugely entertaining crisis mode.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Finlay Donovan is Killing It is among Darynda Jones's thirteen must-read laugh-out-loud mysteries.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight creepy post-apocalyptic titles

At Book Riot Liberty Hardy tagged eight creepy post-apocalyptic novels. One entry on the list:

Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson

And finally, in what feels more and more likely, technology has turned against the humans. The AI that the world has depended upon has decided it doesn’t need people around anymore, and its robots attack, killing most of civilization. A lone group of survivors narrates the novel, telling the story of the deadly strikes while trying to decide if they have any chance of ever fighting back.

Read about the other novels on the list.

Robopocalypse is among Liberty Hardy's five great robot sci-fi books and Emily Temple's fifty greatest apocalypse novels.

The Page 69 Test: Robopocalypse.

--Marshal Zeringue