Six titles with actually realistic sex

Brodie Crellin lives in London and is an editor at Granta Magazine.

A Sense of Occasion is their first novel.

At Lit Hub the author tagged six books by "writers whose depictions of sex had most closely held my attention." One title on the list:

Simple Passion by Annie Ernaux

Telephones, in any era, carry a specific erotic potency. Everyone can relate to a character waiting for a phone call, or a text, that feeling of being stuck in a purgatorial gap that won’t end until the other person has made contact. It’s so intense, and carries so much weight, that it’s unsurprising that for Ernaux, the waiting starts to feel like a precursor to the sexual act itself. The sex is brilliantly written in this book—intentional and unabashed—but the strength of Ernaux’s obsession makes every moment feel sexual. Whether she is getting dressed, sitting in the kitchen, or going to the university, each small gesture or decision is implicated in the game of her desire. It can’t really even be argued that this is a game unfolding between two adults. This pair seem incompatible, with little chance at a future, but Ernaux is so immersed in her passion, that she is can quite easily sustain the narrative singlehanded. A perfect object lesson in the distorting impact of good sex.

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

Simple Passion is among Bronwyn Fischer's seven obsessive love affairs in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue

Four books where the dog survives

Camille Perri is the author of The Assistants and When Katie Met Cassidy. She has worked as a books editor for Cosmopolitan and Esquire. She has also been a ghostwriter of young adult novels and a reference librarian. She holds a bachelor of arts degree from New York University, where she majored in English and gender and sexuality studies, and a masters of library science degree from Queens College. She splits her time between New York City and the Hudson Valley with her wife and their Brussels Griffon named Pip.

Perri's new novel is Social Animals.

At People magazine the author tagged twelve books, shows, and movies where the dog survives. One book on the list:

Six-Thirty from Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

Six-Thirty, named after the time he was found by Elizabeth Zott, is a highly intelligent Goldendoodle who has a key role in the story and serves as its narrator. Although not all the novel’s major characters make it to the end of this uplifting yet tear-jerking work of historical fiction, Six-Thirty safely perseveres.

Read about the other dogs that survive.

Lessons in Chemistry is among Ruth F. Stevens's five novels on smart, quirky women facing personal struggles, Lorna Graham's seven top workplace novels, and Claire Alexander's five books to read for when you’re lonely.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six YA thrillers about friendship

Katie Moench is a librarian, runner, and lover of baked goods. A school librarian in the Upper Midwest, Moench lives with her husband and dog and spends her free time drinking coffee, trying new recipes, and adding to her TBR list.

At Book Riot she tagged six thrillers about friendship, including:

The Agathas by Kathleen Glasgow and Liz Lawson

A modern twist on the Golden Age mysteries of Agatha Christie, The Agathas starts off with the disappearance, and then reappearance, of Alice Ogilvie. After getting dumped by her basketball star boyfriend Steve, Alice disappeared for five days and then came back, refusing to talk about where she went and what happened. Then, Steve’s new girlfriend, and Alice’s ex-best friend, Brooke, disappears as well, but Brooke doesn’t come back. Armed with the complete works of Agatha Christie and the motivation of a hefty reward for information about what happened to Brooke, Alice becomes determined to solve the mystery of Brooke’s murder with the help of her new friend Iris, a less popular girl from her school who has become Alice’s tutor.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven thrillers that mine the depths of confession and revenge

Christine Carbo is a recipient of the Women’s National Book Association Pinckley Prize, the Silver Falchion Award, the High Plains Book Award, and has been a finalist for the Barry Award. She has an MA in English/Linguistics and taught college-level courses for over a decade. She still teaches, in a vastly different realm, as a Pilates instructor. She lives in Montana where she finds inspiration from the wild beauty surrounding her.

Carbo's new novel is The Confession Artist.

At CrimeReads the author tagged seven thrillers that let "us imagine someone taking matters into their own hands and then asks what it cost them to do so." One title on the list:

Alison Gaylin, The Collective

Revenge as identity is also carefully crafted by Alison Gaylin in The Collective (2021), where a grieving mother is drawn into an underground network of women whose children were killed by men the courts let walk. Gaylin is shrewd about how the seductiveness of finally being accepted can quietly transform into permission, and how easily a movement built on grief can curdle into something harrowing.

Read about the other entries on Carbo's list at CrimeReads.

The Collective is among Sian Gilbert's nine novels featuring complex female friendships and Wendy Corsi Staub's six top twist endings in contemporary fiction.

The Page 69 Test: The Collective.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six titles about the thrilling dynamics of girls’ friendship

Sonia Feldman lives in Cleveland, Ohio. She won the PEN America PEN/Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers, and her poetry and fiction have appeared in The Missouri Review, The Southern Review, and Waxwing. She also runs Sonia’s Poem of the Week, a popular email newsletter.

Girl’s Girl is her first novel.

At Lit Hub Feldman tagged six "excellent books about girl friendship, all of which invite you into a dynamic, the feeling of being among—a thrilling place to be." One title on the list:

Andrea Abreu, translated by Julia Sanches, Dogs of Summer

This short novel about feral ten-year-olds gave me permission to write a book about teenage girls for an adult literary audience that doesn’t bother justifying its interest in exactly the things the girls themselves are most interested in.

Set in the Canary Islands, Dogs of Summer has Gameboys and frantic masturbation, song lyrics and eating disorders. Isora and Shit—the moniker given by Isora to the novel’s unnamed narrator—melt into and out of one another in an exhilarating depiction of the boundarilessness of friendship at that age. Their relationship vibrates with power imbalance and unarticulated desire. This novel’s depiction of sapphic friendship and the pleasures and miseries of that infinite summer feeling have remained with me since I read the book in a single, rapt sitting.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

Eighteen titles that explore the complexity of motherhood

The editors at Oprah Daily featured a list of eighteen books to help explore the complexity of motherhood. One title on the list:

All You Can Ever Know, by Nicole Chung

Despite loving—and feeling deeply loved by—her white adoptive parents, Chung always wondered about the Korean strangers who, in a narrative that was repeated to her endlessly growing up, made the ultimate sacrifice to give her a better life. In her overwhelmingly white community in Oregon, she faced prejudice that her adoptive family could neither see nor relate to. It wasn’t until she was pregnant, expecting a child that would be “connected to me in a way no one else had ever been,” that she decided to pry open the black box of her biological family and peer inside. This memoir is at once an account of her search, a nuanced critique of “colorblind” adoptions, and an exploration of what happens when the tidy “legends” that supposedly keep a family together finally break down.

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six notable thrillers about marriage

At Book Riot Addison Rizer tagged six thrillers about marriage, including:

Kill Your Darlings by Peter Swanson

Thom and Wendy have been married nearly three decades, childhood sweethearts who managed to find their way to each other after Wendy’s first husband died. Despite infidelity and fighting, they stay married because of a secret binding them together. Told in reverse chronological order, you’ll trace their love story back all the way to its secretive beginning.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Also see Courtney Rodgers's nine chilling thrillers about marriage and L.K. Bowen's top ten marriage-gone-bad thrillers.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top thrillers set in the near future

A former white water kayaker who competed on the World Cup circuit, Perrin Pring is now a park ranger. She has worked and lived across the U.S., riding horses in the Rocky Mountains, driving Jeeps in the wilds of the desert, greeting the sunrise in Hawaii, and running chainsaws in the Sierra Mountains. She holds an MFA in creative writing and screenwriting from UC Riverside Palm Desert and a BA from Tufts University. Her writing has appeared in Backcountry Journal, the Coachella Review, and Kelp Literary. She lives in the Rocky Mountain West.

Pring's new novel is Cash and Gravity.

At CrimeReads the author tagged ten "page-turning, edge of your seat, near-ish future thrillers that span the gambit of tastes." One title on the list:

Mason Coile, Exiles

Novella. Horror. Sci-Fi. What happens when the robots sent to Mars to build the base for the first humans go offline? Dive into Exiles and you’ll find out.

Read about the other titles on Pring's list at CrimeReads.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six titles centered around art that doesn’t actually exist

Melissa Albert is the New York Times and indie bestselling author of The Bad Ones, Our Crooked Hearts, and the Hazel Wood series.

Her work has been translated into more than twenty languages and included in the New York Times list of Notable Children’s Books.

The Children is her first adult novel.

At Lit Hub Albert tagged "six books I’ve loved that have made-up art inside them." One title on the list:

Elizabeth Hand, Wylding Hall

A slender, riveting oral history about the disappearance of Julian Blake, lead singer of an invented 1970s acid-folk band. In order to finish their second album, the band takes up residence in a creaky old house in the British countryside. Decades after Julian’s vanishing there, the band and various hangers-on recall eerie incidents both in and out of the house—rooms full of occult literature; pub full of haunting photographs—as well as the glimmering stranger circling the Orpheus-esque Julian. As an appreciator of freak folk and tolerator of mandolins, I want to hear the album made in this pressure cooker.

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

Wylding Hall is among Sam Reader's nine top modern SFF rock mythologies, Robert Brockway's five weird books for the jaded reader, and Meghan Ball's eleven top fictional bands in sci-fi & fantasy.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six romance reads for book lovers

At Book Riot Nikki DeMarco tagged six "romance reads for book lovers, featuring librarians, booksellers, and writers." One title on the list:

Kiss Me, Maybe by Gabriella Gamez

Angela Gutierrez is a librarian who has never been kissed—and after accidentally going viral for coming out as an asexual lesbian, she decides to do something about it. Her plan: a scavenger hunt where the winner earns her first kiss. Her problem: pulling it off requires the help of Krystal Ramirez, the bartender she’s had a crush on for five years and who is absolutely, definitely not interested in love. Except, the more time they spend together planning Angela’s romantic future, the harder it gets to pretend there’s nothing between them. This book has the very specific joy of watching someone who has spent years organizing other people’s stories finally get to star in her own.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten titles about African Americans reclaiming the South

Kortney Morrow is a poet and writer creating from her studio in Cleveland, Ohio. Her work has received support from 68to05, The Academy of American Poets, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Prairie Schooner, Tin House, and Transition Magazine.

Her debut poetry collection, Run It Back, was the winner of the 2024 Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize.

At Electric Lit Morrow tagged ten books that "guided my thinking around place-based liberation, the hopes we put into geography, and the complexities of reclaiming an ever-changing place in search of freedom." One title on the list:

The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom

Broom’s debut memoir, The Yellow House, recounts the post-Katrina transformation of New Orleans East through the material history of her titular family house. On and off again, Broom returns to, journeys away, against, from, and towards the mythology of her city, her family, and the South. When Hurricane Katrina displaces Broom’s family—going from 24 family members in New Orleans to two brothers in all of Louisiana—her family’s house receives a letter from the city government announcing its demolition. Broom is forced to come to a new understanding of home beyond materiality. The Yellow House ends with the line “the story of our house was the only thing left.” In doing so, it becomes clear that the stories we hold and share can act as an embodiment and a transference of memory, of foundation, and shelter.

Read about the other books on Morrow's list at Electric Lit.

The Yellow House is among Juliet Patterson's eight titles that tackle the subject of ancestral legacy, J.R. Ramakrishnan's seven New Orleans books that go beyond Mardi Gras, and Lit Hub's ten best memoirs of the decade.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six mysteries featuring miniatures, effigies, and tiny scenes

Diane Josefowicz is the author of Guardians & Saints: Stories, L’Air du Temps (1985), and Ready, Set, Oh: A Novel. She is also the author, with Jed Z. Buchwald, of two histories of Egyptology: The Zodiac of Paris and The Riddle of the Rosetta. She serves as managing editor of the Victorian Web, the internet’s oldest and largest website devoted to Victoriana. A graduate of Brown University, she holds a PhD in History of Science from MIT and an MFA in fiction from Columbia University. She lives in Providence, Rhode Island.

Josefowicz's new novel is The Great Houses of Pill Hill.

[Q&A with Diane Josefowicz]

At CrimeReads the author tagged six favorite mysteries featuring miniatures, effigies, and tiny scenes. One title on the list:

Elise Hooper, The Library of Lost Dollhouses

The Belva Curtis Lafarge Library is a landmark Beaux Arts building that conceals many secrets about its founder and her collections of books and art. One morning Tildy Barrows, the head curator, stumbles into one of these secrets: a hidden room where she discovers a collection of spectacular and perfectly preserved dollhouses—in which Tildy is shocked to find a miniature framed portrait of her own mysterious mother.

As Tildy unravels the connection between the artist who made the dollhouses, the wealthy benefactress who tucked them away, and her own family’s history, Hooper takes the reader on a whirlwind tour from fin-de-siècle Paris to the hospital wards of shellshocked soldiers returning from World War I. Through it all, author Elise Hooper shows women quietly keeping explosive secrets, shunning the limelight while holding everything together.

Read about the other entries on the list at CrimeReads.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six can’t-miss thrillers for fans of "Black Mirror"

At Book Riot Addison Rizer tagged six top thrillers for fans of Black Mirror, including:

The Warehouse by Rob Hart

Cloud is an all-encompassing, all-seeing company that delivers packages via drone to customers around the world. Its employees live at the company, work at the company, and do everything there. Everyone is happy and taken care of, and nothing is ever wrong at Cloud. But when Zinnia goes undercover as an employee to ferret out the company’s sinister secrets, the visage of this grand empire threatens to reveal a dark underbelly.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Warehouse is among Preety Sidhu's eleven novels featuring essential workers.

The Page 69 Test: The Warehouse.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six books about the American Dream and social striving

Heather Eng is a third-generation Chinese American who grew up in Queens, New York. A lifelong writer, she graduated from Boston University with a journalism degree, and worked as a newspaper journalist, web editor, and senior marketing leader in the tech industry.

Eng lives in Manhattan with her husband and daughter.

Double Happiness is her first novel.

At Lit Hub the author tagged six titles about the American Dream and social striving, including:

Susie Yang, White Ivy

People assume Ivy Lin is a quiet, obedient, young Chinese American woman. But that’s the problem with conflating stereotypes with reality: the truth is much more complex. In White Ivy, Ivy Lin is actually a dogged social climber who becomes infatuated with Gideon Speyer, a wealthy former classmate from an old-moneyed Boston family. Over fancy brunches and Cape Cod vacations, Ivy gradually integrates herself into the Speyer clan. But just when Ivy is on the brink of becoming Mrs. Gideon Speyer, an old flame from her working-class past threatens to dismantle the new life she’s created.I tore through this novel. Yang smashes the model minority stereotype by creating a deeply flawed antihero and deliciously twisty tale.

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

White Ivy is among Robyn Harding's seven top unlikely friendships in crime fiction and Rebecca Kelley's nine titles featuring female villains who lean into their wickedness.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven titles in which obsession is the plot

Emily Haworth-Booth teaches at the Royal Drawing School and is an illustrator, graphic novelist, and the author of three children's books: The King Who Banned the Dark (short-listed for the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize, the Carnegie Medal for Illustration, and the Klaus Flugge Prize), The Last Tree, and Protest.

Mare is her debut adult novel. She lives in Devon with her husband, dog, and several horses.

At Electric Lit Haworth-Booth tagged seven books, written by women, in which obsession is the plot. One title on the list:

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata, translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori

When Keiko begins her job at the convenience store she becomes what she most wants to be: “a normal cog in society.” Not only has the store supplied her with a personality, a purpose, and a behavioural code in the form of the store manual, it is literally the stuff she is made of: “When I think that my whole body is made up of food from this store, I feel like I’m as much a part of the store as the magazine racks or the coffee machine.” She thinks of the store on her days off; she even dreams of it at night. When the novel begins, Keiko has been working at the convenience store for 18 years. What follows, as the events of the novel threaten to dismantle her obsession, is not the whimsical comedy we might expect from a story set in a supermarket, but a provocative investigation into societal pressure.

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

Convenience Store Woman is among Sarah Maria Griffin's seven titles that turn the workplace into a nightmare, Eliza Browning's ten novels about resisting productivity culture and Anne Heltzel's seven books about women who refuse to fit in.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six horror titles where the setting itself is evil

Mary Berman is a Philadelphia-based writer. She earned her MFA in creative writing from the University of Mississippi, where she was a Graduate Excellence Fellow, and she also holds a BA in writing seminars from Johns Hopkins University.

Her short works have been published in Cicada, PseudoPod, Fireside Magazine, and elsewhere.

Until Death is Berman's debut novel.

At CrimeReads the author tagged "six horror novels where the place is the problem." One title on the list:

Giorgio de Maria, The Twenty Days of Turin

This 1977 Italian novel, detailing a “phenomenon of collective psychosis” in the gothic city of Turin, is packed to the gills with ambitious, weird, bizarre imagery that chills the bones. A mysterious Library that eerily foreshadows social media; mass insomnia; people killed by someone picking them up by the ankles and smashing them into trees; anonymous letters from a man whose stairwell is filling with human excrement and trash; a man with a dried-up lake inside of him, and he can see bas-reliefs on the bottom, and they fills him with terror and dread.

De Maria’s Turin is the truest kind of horror setting there is, both haunted and doing the haunting. And the mass psychosis of the citizenry underscores a fact that we—thanks, Internet—now know only too well. De Maria knew it too. “What is shared can never be unshared.” In fact, it can haunt you.

Read about the other entries on Berman's list at CrimeReads.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven top novels of sisterhood

Rachel Mills is Director and literary agent at Rachel Mills Literary.

She is a regular contributor across UK media, including The Telegraph, Front Row, The Times and as a columnist for the Bookseller.

Her new novel is The Players Club.

At Lit Hub Mills tagged seven novels featuring some of her favorite fictional sisters. One title on the list:

White Chrysanthemum by Mary Lynn Bracht

This is the most powerful story about two Korean sisters separated during Japanese occupation in WW2—Hana is taken to Japan and forced to become a comfort woman, meanwhile Emi left behind grows up and spends her life searching for her lost sister. The sisters are bonded not only by blood—they are haenyeo, the remarkable free diving women who can hold their breath and reach incredible depths in the ocean to catch fish. Alongside the heartbreaking testament to what many Korean women faced in the war, I read it as a story of how sisters need each other to keep their family’s sacred wisdom alive—the skill of diving, like so many skills, is passed down only through the female line.

Read about the other novels on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven novels about dysfunctional (but charming) families

Jessika Bouvier is a queer Cajun writer. Her work appears in The Rumpus, Waxwing, HAD, Split Lip, and elsewhere. She is currently writing a novel about a friendship that falls apart in the Alaskan wilderness. She is also a founding editor of Chatterbox!, a journal dedicated to longform fiction.

At Electric Lit Bouvier tagged seven "family portraits [that] are full of chaos and sometimes sadness, but also deep love." One title on the list:

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo

For some friends, I am the only writer they know, which generally means I am also the only reader they know. That means I’m called upon as Book Recommender often, and Girl, Woman, Other is one of my staple suggestions. It’s an immersive book with equal parts seriousness and levity. There is something for everyone here. A novel-in-stories, it offers a window into the lives of 12 Black British women, ages spanning from their teens to well into their nineties. Though not all of the main cast meet on the page, they are almost all interconnected in some way—as mothers, daughters, aunts, mentors, friends, lovers. (For the curious, search engine results will reveal maps hand-drawn by readers who’ve gone through the trouble of sorting all the links.) The novel tackles several thorny topics through an intersectional lens: feminism, immigration, racism, sexuality, class, and gender identity, though these hardly scratch the surface. But the characters are not always victims. In an interview about the novel, Evaristo explained that the inclusion of “Other” in the title refers, yes, to how they’re othered by society, but also sometimes by one another. For me, this book encapsulates the full meaning of family, because it includes community as part of its working definition.

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

Girl, Woman, Other is among Erin O. White's five novels that showcase queer domesticity, Emma Specter's thirteen notable feminist books, Sarah Davis-Goff's six top books about women working together, Ore Agbaje-Williams's seven books featuring very, very complicated friendships, Cecile Pin's seven novels featuring displacement in multicultural London, and Kasim Ali's nine top books about interracial relationships.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven bad mom books

Tracy Lynne Oliver is a writer based in Los Angeles. She has been published online at a variety of places such as Medium, Fanzine, and Occulum. She co-authored the graphic novel, The Sacrifice of Darkness, with Roxane Gay. Her story, “This Weekend” was included in Best Microfiction 2019.

Her new book, Magician, is "dark magic debut novel featuring the Boy who becomes the Magician and the villainous Mother whose sadism might end it all."

At The Nerd Daily Oliver tagged seven notable bad mom books, including:

Carrie by Stephen King

I would like to think (or hope) that most everyone has seen the 1976 movie, “Carrie” based on the debut novel by Stephen King. (Or perhaps it’s just my SK fanaticism that leads me to assume this.) Even though I was only eight years old when the movie was released, I know I must have watched it as–having no knowledge of menstruation–I’ll never forget being thoroughly confused by the shower scene. With the blood, flying tampons and pads along with the teenage girl chants of “Plug it up! Plug it up!” it all felt very puzzling and a bit scary.

The movie’s impact on my juvenile self, eventually led me to pick up the novel hoping to get some insight into why Margaret White, Carrie White’s mother, was so cruel to her. Her abuse going as far as wanting to (spoiler alert!) murder her. The novel drops plenty of traumatic tidbits about Margaret’s childhood that sow the seeds of how she grew into the religious fanatic that would come to regularly lock Carrie in the “prayer closet” to atone for whatever manufactured “sin” she assumed her daughter had made. The disturbing depiction of a mother laying her own issues on the mind and body of her daughter obviously made an impact on my young psyche.

Read about the other books on the list.

Carrie is on Amy Engel's list of five top titles in the complicated literature of daughters & mothers, Lizzy Barber's list of five of the most chilling extreme religion believers in fiction, Katie Lowe's top ten list of books about angry women, Jo Jakeman's list of the ten best revenge novels, Ania Ahlborn's list of ten of the scariest books of all time, Jeff Somers's list of the five worst mothers in literary history, Becky Ferreira's list of six of the most memorable bullies in literature, Julie Buntin's list of favorite literary kids with deadbeat and/or absent dads, Gregg Olsen's top ten list of deadly YA books, and James Dawson's top ten list of books to get you through high school.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight top dystopian and post-apocalyptic novels

Matt Harry's novels include Sorcery for Beginners, which was optioned for television by Boatrocker Media (Palm Royale). He has edited over 25 novels, created two immersive plays, and taught hundreds of students in creative fields. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two sons, all of whom (thankfully) like to read.

Harry's new novel is Ash Land.

At CrimeReads the author tagged his eight favorite end-of-the-world stories. One title on the list:

Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven

This is the loveliest, most hopeful novel on the list. Like The Stand, most of humanity dies from a virus. Unlike The Stand, the survivors don’t form marauding gangs or murder each other. They put on plays. The main characters travel the Michigan countryside, performing Shakespeare for small farming villages. Their motto is “Survival Is Insufficient,” which should be a clarion call for all of humanity.

Read about the other entries on the list at CrimeReads.

Station Eleven is among Alice Martin's six thrillers that feature contagions & pandemics, Rebecca Fallon's five top Shakespeare-inspired novels, Lauren Wilson's eight top books featuring cults, Barnaby Martin's seven titles featuring parents & children at the end of the world, Brittany K. Allen's ten books that get the theatre world right, Jeanette Horn's nine twisted novels about theatrical performers, Isabelle McConville's fifteen books for fans of the post-apocalyptic TV-drama Fallout, Joanna Quinn's six best books set in & around the theatrical world, Carolyn Quimby's 38 best dystopian novels, Tara Sonin's seven books for fans of Margaret Atwood's The Testaments, Maggie Stiefvater's five fantasy books about artists & the magic of creativity, Mark Skinner's five top literary dystopias, Claudia Gray's five essential books about plagues and pandemics, K Chess's five top fictional books inside of real books, Rebecca Kauffman's ten top musical novels, Nathan Englander’s ten favorite books, M.L. Rio’s five top novels inspired by Shakespeare, Anne Corlett's five top books with different takes on the apocalypse, Christopher Priest’s five top sci-fi books that make use of music, and Anne Charnock's five favorite books with fictitious works of art.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five great family-centered crime titles

Jamie Canaves is a contributing editor at Book Riot. She tagged five great family-centered crime books, including:

Salt Bones by Jennifer Givhan

The mystery: Mal’s sister disappeared years ago in high school, which remains an unsolved case. Now Mal’s coworker has disappeared, and she won’t be the last…

The family: Mal is one of four siblings. Her sister Elena disappeared in high school. Her older brother Esteban is now going by “Steve” as he throws himself into political life, and her younger brother is a police officer. Her family has never recovered from what happened to her sister, and her relationship with her mother is especially strained. Add to that Mal’s two daughters, who have never learned who their real father is.

Read about the other titles on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five titles featuring strangers crossing paths in unexpected ways

Ilona Bannister is the author of three novels, When I Ran Away, Little Prisons, and the newly released Five.

[Q&A with Ilona Bannister; The Page 69 Test: When I Ran Away]

At Lit Hub the author tagged five novels that

involve strangers crossing paths in unexpected ways. They are about what happens when people who don’t know each other are suddenly entangled in one another’s lives. But they are also about the chance experiences that connect us to each other and change us, sometimes for a moment. Sometimes forever.

One title on the list:

Strangers on a Train, Patricia Highsmith

The master of stories about chance encounters between strangers was undoubtedly Patricia Highsmith. Her unnerving 1950 classic, which became a Hitchcock film, is about two strangers who meet on a train and decide to exchange murders. Bruno will kill Guy’s wife, if Guy will kill Bruno’s father. It’s the perfect crime, because neither man will have a connection to the other, so the police won’t suspect them.

This dark psychological thriller about guilt, obsession, truth and morality arises out of just a single conversation between strangers who happen to sit next to one another. It will make you think, and look at your next subway ride a little differently.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Strangers on a Train is on Jamie Kornegay's five notable novels with criminals covering their tracks, Jeff Somers's top five list of timeless old-school thrillers, Stella Gonet's six best best books, Lars Iyer's top ten list of literary frenemies, and John Mullan's list of ten of the best railway journeys in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight titles that break the silence around suicide

Rocky Callen is a critically acclaimed author and passionate mental health advocate. Her novel, A Breath Too Late, was born out of her own experiences with depression, domestic violence, and suicidal ideation. She was a co-contributing editor to the Ab(solutely) Normal: Sixteen Stories that Smash Mental Health Stereotypes. She’s a frequent speaker and panelist about art and mental health. She founded The HoldOn2Hope Project, an initiative that unites creatives in suicide prevention.

At People magazine Callen tagged eight "books [that] grapple with mental health, grief, and suicide with honesty." One title on the list:

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

This novel imagines a library between life and death where alternate lives unfold. It gently challenges the allure of “what if,” revealing beauty within limitation and offering hope through the radical idea that an ordinary life can still be meaningful. A philosophical, accessible meditation on regret and possibility.

Read about the other titles on the list.

The Midnight Library is among Tobias Madden's seven books that take you places, Mark Skinner's twenty-five best time travel books and twelve great novels set in a bookshop or library, and Clare Mackintosh's top ten books with “What if?” moments.

--Marshal Zeringue

Twelve titles about losing perspective in Los Angeles

Luke Goebel is an American novelist, screenwriter, producer, and publisher.

He is the author of Fourteen Stories, None of Them Are Yours, winner of the Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize, and the novel Kill Dick.

He co-wrote the films Causeway and Eileen, starring Thomasin McKenzie and Anne Hathaway; for Causeway, Brian Tyree Henry received an Academy Award nomination.

At Electric Lit Goebel tagged twelve books about losing perspective in Los Angeles. One title on the list:

Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha

Real violence, the kind that Your House WIll Pay is concerned with-–specifically the shooting of a Black teenager in the early 1990s (echoing the real-world killing of Latasha Harlins)—is different from the fictive unrest and ultraviolence essential to the LA novel. Different from the fun and games of Pynchon or the riot-as-trope of LA literature that stretches back even before the riots we all know off the top of our heads. YHWP is about how the past resurfaces as fever pitch. Underneath are years of violence that never leave, never go anywhere. This LA doesn’t disappear, it gets glossed over by soundbytes. Steph Cha understands the way people look at each other beyond what they say. There’s less performance here, and no escape hatch. This novel isn’t about LA erasing you through illusion or ambition, it’s about how LA uses sleight of hand in POV when it comes to race and inequality.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Your House Will Pay is among Addison Rizer's eight top revenge thrillers, 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

Five historical romance books set in France

At Book Riot Julia Rittenberg tagged five historical romance titles set in France, including:

A Caribbean Heiress in Paris by Adriana Herrera

Luz Alana is the heiress of a rum business from the Dominican Republic, looking to expand into France. She arrives in Paris in 1889 during the Exposition Universelle (famously when the Eiffel Tower went up). She meets and quickly begins verbally sparring with James Evanston Sinclair, a Scottish whiskey brand owner. They’re both looking to start over, and are somehow stuck together.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six thrillers that sit with discomfort and ethical ambiguities

A confirmed Francophile, Michael Cowan taught writing at UCLA School of Law, sang professionally, argued and won a case before the California Supreme Court, had two songs published, co-owned a dairy manufacturing business, and became the general counsel of two major corporations. Born and raised in Buffalo, NY, Cowan attended Amherst High School, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Michigan Law School. Father of three and grandfather of four, he lives in Los Angeles with his wife and their eccentric rescue dog Percie.

Cowan's new novel is John B. Peoples.

At CrimeReads he tagged six favorite thrillers that sit with discomfort and ethical ambiguities. One title on the list:

John Grisham, A Time To Kill

This novel is next on my list because, as in [Robert Traver's] Anatomy Of A Murder, it includes a temporary insanity defense. To be clear, I am not saying that John Grisham was thinking about or even borrowing from Anatomy of a Murder when he wrote A Time To Kill. Even if he was, there is no copyright on a novel including a temporary insanity defense. A Time To Kill might even be in part an homage to the earlier novel. After all, “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”

A Time To Kill has a “happy ending” in the sense that the black man who killed the two white men who had raped his ten-year-old daughter is eventually exonerated by the white jury. However, after reading the book, one is left horrified by the level of racial hate and violence that is portrayed in the book and that persists to this day.

Read about the other entries on the list at CrimeReads.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten love stories for the romance reluctant

Andrew Forrester is a writer and former English teacher whose work has appeared in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and Parents magazine. He holds a PhD in nineteenth-century British literature and lives in Austin, Texas with his family.

How The Story Goes is his first novel.

At The Nerd Daily Forrester tagged "ten love stories that may or may not be capital-R romances, but which have a little something extra going on, too." One title on the list:

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid

This is a love story, and I won’t hear any argument against it. Nadia and Saeed meet as students in a city experiencing strange unrest—which, it turns out, has to do with unexplained (magical?) doors that are opening up all over the world. Walking through these portals takes someone from one point to another, usually across the globe. Together, Nadia and Saeed escape their city and explore Greece, London, and California, falling in love, yes, but also growing into themselves in beautiful, unexpected ways. Told in lyrical, moving prose… it’s just a perfect book.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Exit West is among Forbes's thirty greatest dystopian books of all time, Ore Agbaje-Williams's seven top books featuring very complicated friendships, Gian Sardar's eight of the best novels about war-torn love, C Pam Zhang's top ten novels about moving and Helen Phillips's six notable novels involving alternate realities.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven books about actually-old women

Laurie Frankel is the New York Times bestselling, award-winning author of six novels. Her writing has also appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, Poets & Writers, Publishers Weekly, People Magazine, Lit Hub, The Sydney Morning Herald, and other publications. She is the recipient of the Washington State Book Award and the Endeavor Award. Her novels have been translated into more than twenty-five languages and been optioned for film and TV. A former college professor, she now writes full-time in Seattle, Washington where she lives with her family and makes good soup.

[Coffee with a Canine: Laurie Frankel and Calli; The Page 69 Test: The Atlas of Love; My Book, The Movie: Goodbye for Now; The Page 69 Test: Goodbye for Now; My Book, The Movie: This Is How It Always Is; The Page 69 Test: This Is How It Always Is; Writers Read: Laurie Frankel (February 2017); The Page 69 Test: One Two Three; Q&A with Laurie Frankel; The Page 69 Test: Enormous Wings]

Frankel's new novel is Enormous Wings.

At Lit Hub the author tagged seven great books about "actually-old women behaving as actually old." One title on Frankel's list:

Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout

In the first Olive book, Pulitzer Prize winning Olive Kitteridge, we see Olive struggling with retirement, her adult son and his family, her sick husband, the death of old friends. She’s cantankerous certainly, but we sense this has been true of Olive since childhood and has little to do with aging. But the sequel, Olive, Again, takes Olive well into genuinely old age. In this one, by the end of which Olive is in her mid-eighties, we get widowhood, elderly romance, disappointing grandchildren, incontinence, round-the-clock nursing, and an assisted-living facility. The writing is beautiful and elegant, in contrast with Olive herself who is stark, raw, unapologetic, angry, and, usually, absolutely right.

Read about the other titles on Frankel's list at Lit Hub.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six novels set in the 1970s

At Book Riot Julia Rittenberg tagged six novels set in the 1970s, including:

Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O’Farrell

In the summer of 1976, there was a record-breakingly terrible heatwave in London. Gretta, an Irish matriarch, is suffering extra during the horrible weather event because her husband has recently left without a trace. Her three grown-up children, Michael, Monica, and Aoife, return to help her and figure out what happened. When the group returns to Ireland, even more family secrets come to light, and they all have to deal with old wounds.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight quintessentially Québécois novels

Jake Pitre is a writer and scholar based in Montreal. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Globe and Mail, JSTOR Daily, Fast Company, and elsewhere.

At Electric Lit he tagged eight novels that "capture the diversity and cultural wealth of Québec’s storied metropolis." One title on the list:

Dandelion Daughter by Gabrielle Boulianne-Tremblay, translated by Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch

Gabrielle Boulianne-Tremblay, an actress, turned to literature with her debut, Dandelion Daughter, a coming-of-age story about the prejudices of rural Québec and a protagonist who realizes they were assigned the wrong gender at birth. It is a story of transgender discovery told with radical honesty and a deep understanding of character—nothing about the self is ever simple. As the protagonist moves to Québec City and then Montreal, the book excavates poetry from deep emotional wounds and demonstrates what it means to own your identity.

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

--Marshal Zeringue