Eight titles that puncture the myths of Silicon Valley

Claire Stapleton is a writer, communications consultant, and tech labor activist. She began her career at Google, where she spent 12 years in a variety of influential communications, marketing, and executive ghostwriting roles, before co-organizing the Google Walkout in 2018, in which 20,000 employees loudly protested the company’s mishandling of sexual harassment. Stapleton now advises executives and organizations on navigating the complicated communications landscape, speaks and writes frequently about tech worker issues, and publishes an existential advice column for tech workers on Substack.

Her new book is Don't Be Evil: Bad Bosses, Fake Promises, and My Escape from Big Tech.

At Lit Hub Stapleton tagged the eight "books that most shaped my understanding of [Silicon Valley] that has become the air we all breathe—and, increasingly, choke on." One title on the list:

From Counterculture to Cyberculture by Fred Turner

Fred Turner is my GOAT. No one has done more to explain Silicon Valley’s founding mythology—or to show how the industry has rendered the material consequences of its power strangely invisible. Turner has pointed out that Santa Clara County, the heart of Silicon Valley, is among the most polluted places in America, while roughly a quarter of local families experience food insecurity. Neither fact squares with the paradise the Valley tells about itself.

At the center of the book is Stewart Brand, founder of the Whole Earth Catalog and a mythological figure in Valley lore (immortalized by Steve Jobs’s “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish” Stanford commencement address). Turner shows how Brand and his countercultural contemporaries transformed the computer from a symbol of military bureaucracy into an emblem of personal freedom and self-expression.

That moral vocabulary became Silicon Valley’s native language: Google didn’t just organize information; it empowered people. Facebook didn’t harvest attention; it connected humanity. AI companies aren’t merely building products; they’re democratizing intelligence.

The genius and danger of that worldview is that it recasts political problems as engineering problems. Turner gave me a framework for understanding how a profoundly anti-institutional ethos took hold, one that treated democratic institutions as obstacles to be bulldozed on the way to cyber-utopia.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top titles about chess players

Allison Saft is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Wings of Starlight, A Dark and Drowning Tide, A Far Wilder Magic, and other romantic fantasy novels. Her work has won a Scribe Award and has been translated into over ten languages. She holds an MA in English Literature from Tulane University and teaches creative writing at Wilkes University. In her free time, she practices aerial circus arts. She lives in West Virginia with her partner and an Italian greyhound named Marzipan.

Saft's new novel is Immortal Game.

At The Nerd Daily the author tagged five of her "favorite books about chess players." One title on the list:

Bobby Fischer Goes to War: How A Lone American Star Defeated the Soviet Chess Machine by David Edmonds and John Eidinow

Bobby Fischer Goes to War was hands-down my favorite book I read while researching Immortal Game. It’s breezily written and a lot of fun, even if you don’t play chess. It tells the bizarre, engrossing, and incredibly dramatic story of the 1972 World Chess Championship. It also paints sympathetic, nuanced portraits of the two competitors, Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky, both of whom were complicated men and both of whom faced enormous pressure going into the match. The book captures something meaningful about the Cold War era, chess history, and the price of brilliance.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Also see K.W. Colyard's list "books like The Queen's Gambit that prove chess is far from boring" and Aisling Twomey's list of seven books for fans of The Queen’s Gambit.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six humorous mystery novels

Gloria Chao is a USA Today bestselling author and a screenwriter. Her novels include The Mortal Enemy Murder Club, The Ex-Girlfriend Murder Club, Ex Marks the Spot, When You Wish Upon a Lantern, Rent a Boyfriend, Our Wayward Fate, and American Panda. She graduated from MIT and became a dentist before realizing she’d rather spend her days in fictional characters’ heads instead of real people’s mouths. When she’s not writing, you can find her on the curling ice, where she and her husband are world-ranked in mixed doubles.

[The Page 69 Test: American Panda; The Page 69 Test: When You Wish Upon a Lantern]

At CrimeReads Chao tagged six "humorous mysteries that I have loved, ranging from laugh-out-loud funny to more subtle humor." One title on the list:

Emma Mills, Rachel West and the Fallen Starlet

When Rachel’s celebrity friend Molly is found dead, she’s the only one who knows she didn’t die of an overdose like everyone claims, and she’s going to have to prove it. This book was filled with humor and banter, all while feeling like you’re living inside a magazine getting the celebrity gossip first. You’ll be sucked into this fun ride immediately and kept guessing until the end!

Read about the other mysteries on Chao's list at CrimeReads.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven memoirs about discovering close relatives late in life

BK (Kate) Jackson is an author, developmental editor, book coach, and a journalist with bylines in HuffPost, The Los Angeles Times, The Sun, Whale Road Review, Hippocampus Magazine, WIRED, and more. She earned a BA and an MA from UCLA. Jackson is the editor of the anthology Relative Strangers: Inheritance, Identity, and the Meaning of Family and the founder and editor of Severance, a magazine and community for adoptees and individuals who’ve discovered misattributed parentage. She also has a Substack about writing with ADHD.

At Electric Lit Jackson tagged seven memoirs that take "readers deep into the mind-bending and sometimes shattering experience of discovering close family late in life." One title on the list:

Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls by T Kira Madden

T Kira Madden’s memoir is a funny, fierce, and heartbreaking story of coming of age as a queer, biracial, glorious misfit in a complex family in Boca Raton, Florida. It’s impossible to pin down a theme because the book is—in the best of all possible ways—all over the place. It’s about addiction, acceptance, rejection, desire, privilege, trauma, violence, identity, and the families we’re born into and the families we choose. Her voice as a memoirist renders the narrator as indelible as the most memorable of fictional characters, and while her girlhood may not be remotely typical, it is universal in ways that will resonate with all readers. Like the narrators of each of these seven memoirs, Madden finds unexpected close family, in her case when a DNA test unspools her mother’s secrets. The revelation is the coda to her memoir, suggesting that families are like glaciers, with much remaining invisible and inaccessible deep below the surface.

Read about the other entries on Jackson's list at Electric Lit.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top SFF books about gods and demons

Lyndsie Manusos’s fiction has appeared in PANK, SmokeLong Quarterly, and other publications. She holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has worked in web production and content management. When she’s not nesting among her books and rough drafts, she’s chasing the baby while the dog watches in confused amusement. She lives with her family in a suburb of Indianapolis.

At Book Riot she tagged six of the best science fiction and fantasy books about gods and demons, including:

The Sea Hides Its Dead by Megan Bontrager

Let’s get a little cultish. Orbit’s imprint Run For It, which focuses more on horror and dark SFF, has been one of my favorite imprints to dive into as of late. The Sea Hides Its Dead really encompasses both gods and demons.

In a post-apocalyptic world where the Northeast is suddenly doused with an immovable, unquenchable storm, Caro is asked by her professor and lover to accompany him to a stone monolith that suddenly appeared offshore. Suddenly, Caro, the professor, and other crew members become trapped in what is supposedly the dwelling place of the Cult of the Leviathan and its god. And soon, they find out they’re not alone. This story certainly leans more toward horror, but the dystopian near-future the author created is fascinating, as is the mysterious and horrific mythos of the Cult of the Leviathan.

Read about the other titles on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five seriously scary horror books

Hannah Whitten has been writing to amuse herself since she could hold a pen, and sometime in high school, figured out that what amused her might also amuse others. Her books have been international bestsellers and translated into multiple languages. When she’s not writing, she’s reading, watching horror movies, or chasing after her feral children. She lives in Tennessee with her family, two dogs who think they run the house, and a cat who actually does.

Whitten's new novel is Reliquary .

At People magazine the author tagged five "favorite horrors with autumnal vibes, so we can pretend the air doesn’t feel like walking through hot soup." One title on the list:

Other Words For Smoke by Sarah Maria Griffin

I absolutely love Griffin’s work, and this was the book that made me a fan. A house fire claims the lives of two people in Ireland, but the other members of the household know what actually happened, and it’s far more fantastical than a simple tragedy. This is a witch novel, but entirely unique in the way it’s presented, complete with alternate realities, buildings that don’t work quite right and mysterious animals doing the most. Autumn might not be explicitly invoked, but the vibes are baked into the gorgeous, layered prose.

Read about the other titles on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven titles that complicate the marriage plot

Alysia Li Ying Sawchyn teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Bucknell University. Formerly the editor in chief of The Rumpus, she has received fellowships from The Kenyon Review and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. Their first essay collection, A Fish Growing Lungs, was a finalist for The Believer Book Awards.

Sawchyn's new essay collection is I Have This Thing for Flowers.

At Lit Hub the author tagged seven "favorite titles, both fiction and non-fiction, that complicate and distract from and look askance at the traditional story of two people falling in love and getting married." One title on the list:

This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage, Ann Patchett

Surely you’ve seen the cover of Patchett latest novel, Whistler, all over this summer’s Best Of lists. Though she’s probably best known as a novelist, her nonfiction is—I think—equally wonderful. Despite the book’s title, this collection of essays is as much about Patchett’s life as an artist as it is about her romantic relationships.

In an early essay, “The Sacrament of Divorce,” we learn that the dissolution of Patchett’s first marriage “began less than a week before we were married.” For many years afterward, Patchett happily lives her life eschewing marital commitment, in several “wonderful, long relationships with people I deeply enjoyed but would not have wanted to marry for a minute.” This does not change when she meets the man who will eventually become her second husband. They live in separate houses for eleven years before her then-boyfriend’s health emergency and the benefits that legal marriage bestow tip the scales. It’s the story of a happy marriage, but a book about how to live happily without being married.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five creature feature horror novels

K. W. Colyard is the author of the BNW-nominated “Those Who Forget and Those Who Perish,” published by Seize the Press in 2022. Their fiction has also appeared in Clarkesworld and Diabolical Plots.

At Book Riot Colyard tagged five novels in which "the horrors are externalized, even personified, in the shape of the villains." One title on the list:

Whalefall by Daniel Kraus

An unlucky diver has one hour to escape the bowels of a sperm whale in this remarkable novel from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Daniel Kraus.

Jay’s father died by suicide in the waters near Monastery Beach. Months later, Jay is determined to bring his father’s remains home. It’s a nearly impossible task, made even more difficult when a sperm whale swallows Jay with its intended meal, a giant squid. With only an hour of oxygen left, Jay will have to muster all his courage and grit to survive.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five thrilling and chilling supernatural mysteries

Carinn Jade is a lawyer, writer, and cohost of the Pop Fiction Women podcast. Her debut novel, The Astrology House, was a 2025 International Thriller Writers’ Awards finalist in the category of Best First Novel.

The Dahlia Suite is her second novel.

At CrimeReads Jade tagged five "favorite books that refuse to stay grounded in the reality we can explain." One title on the list:

Sarah Pekkanen, The Women in White

I am on the edge of my seat waiting for the latest from bestselling author Sarah Pekkanen, not only because she’s a fantastic writer but because this one “goes there.” The Women In White combines a decades-old mystery with paranormal elements guaranteed to make the hair on your arms stand up.

The novel follows four remarkable young women at a prestigious university when they become the subjects of parapsychology experiments in 1964. Do they have extrasensory perception? A sixth sense? Or is it something else entirely? Told in dual timelines, the real story unfolds as old secrets rise to the surface when some would rather than stay down.

Read about the other novels on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

The ten greatest novellas of all time

Luc Haasbroek is a writer and videographer from Durban, South Africa.

At Collider he tagged the ten greatest novellas of all time...and ranked them. Number seven on the list:

The Third Man (1950)

"Death's at the bottom of everything." Once again, we have a novella that served as the basis for an acclaimed film. Set amid the ruins of postwar Vienna, The Third Man follows struggling writer Rollo Martins, who arrives to visit his old friend Harry Lime only to discover that Lime has supposedly died in a suspicious accident. Martins investigates, quickly uncovering a web of deception and black-market crime.

The story was written by English journalist and author Graham Greene, who also penned The End of the Affair and the Vietnam classic The Quiet American. As with those works, The Third Man is very much concerned with the lingering impact of war. Divided among the occupying Allied powers, Vienna reflects a Europe still struggling to emerge from the devastation of World War II. The city itself becomes a kind of character in its own right, something true of the movie as well.

Read about the other titles on the list.

The Third Man ia among Timothy Phillips's top ten books about the iron curtain.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top time loop mysteries and thrillers

Elisa Shoenberger is a freelance writer and journalist. At Book Riot she tagged "six time loop mysteries and thrillers for you to enjoy over and over again." One title on the list:

Who Killed One the Gun? by Gigi Little

This book is for the hard-boiled detective fans out there, even down to the overladen similes and metaphors. Detective One the Gun is on the case to find out who killed Five the No Longer Alive. He’s got a not-so-secret crush on his secretary, Two the True Blue. As he tracks down witnesses and suspects, he realizes something is off about the day. Soon, he realizes that the day is repeating, ending in his own murder. Can he figure out who killed Five the No Longer Alive and himself in time? On top of the time loop aspect, it’s also a satire of the genre.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five titles that inspired Emily Wilson’s translation of the "Odyssey"

Emily Wilson is Department Chair and Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, holding the College for Women Class of 1963 Term Professor in the Humanities. Wilson attended Oxford University (Balliol College B.A. in Classics and Corpus Christi College M.Phil. in Renaissance English Literature) and Yale University (Ph.D. in Classics and Comparative Literature). She has been named a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome in Renaissance & Early Modern scholarship, a MacArthur Fellow, and a Guggenheim Fellow. She has published four books on ancient literature, philosophy and translation, an edited volume on tragedy, and many essays and articles, as well as verse translations of Seneca, Sophocles, Euripides and Homer.

For Vogue Wilson tagged five books that aided her translation of the Odyssey. One title on her list:

A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin

I’ve loved this book since I was a child. I’ve reread it many times. It is, like the Odyssey, a book about travel, identity, and a clever man’s journey away from one community and back to another. But primarily, I thought of LeGuin’s style, especially in that book, as one of many guiding lights as I considered and experimented with how to convey the vividness (enargeia in Greek) of Homeric poetry. Of course, LeGuin is writing prose, not metrical poetry, but there’s something both very beautiful, very plain/noble/rapid, and very Homeric about her style in this book. The sentences actually often have a beautiful rhythmicality to them: “This is a tale of the time before his fame, before the songs were made.”

Read about the other books on Wilson's list.

A Wizard of Earthsea is among four books that changed Mardi McConnochie, Maria Turtschaninoff's ten favorite feminist heroes in fiction, BBC.com Culture’s best children’s books ever published in English, five books that changed Gary Corby, and Lev Grossman's top five fantasy novels.

--Marshal Zeringue