Eight crime novels focused on the bonds of parent and child

Haylen Beck is the pseudonym of acclaimed, Edgar Award-nominated author Stuart Neville. His latest novel is Lost You.

At CrimeReads he tagged eight crime novels that focus on the bonds of parent and child, including:

Gone Baby Gone, by Dennis Lehane

While most novels involving missing children show us frantic parents enduring a living nightmare, little Amanda McCready’s mother Helene doesn’t seem overly distraught at her daughter’s abduction. Lehane’s detective duo, Kenzie and Gennaro, discover that Amanda has been little more than an inconvenience to her neglectful mother, but the story raises the question: does that wipe out Helene’s moral right to her child? The author refuses to give an easy solution to the conundrum, and the book is all the better for it.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nineteen books about white supremacy

At Bustle Kristian Wilson tagged nineteen books about white supremacy and how to combat it, including:

The History of White People by Nell Irvin Painter

If you've ever heard the argument that "the Irish were slaves, too," or had to endure complaints of "historical inaccuracy" over the inclusion of a nonwhite person in a work of fiction, this is the book you're going to want to read. In The History of White People, Nell Irvin Painter traces the history of racial concepts from ancient tribalism to modern-day whiteness, which came to be defined through exclusion in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten (UK) true crime books

Duncan Campbell has been writing about crime for nearly half a century. He was the crime correspondent of the Guardian and chairman of the Crime Reporters’ Association. He has written extensively on the subject of crime for various publications, including Guardian, Observer, Esquire, New Statesman, London Review of Books, Radio Times and Oldie.

His books on crime include: That Was Business, This Is Personal; A Stranger and Afraid; If It Bleeds; We’ll All Be Murdered in Our Beds! The Shocking History of Crime Reporting in Britain; and Underworld: The Definitive History of Britain’s Organised Crime.

At the Guardian he tagged ten (UK centric) examples of the "best writing by and about criminals and cops, villains and victims," including:

The Profession of Violence by John Pearson

The best book of the more than 50 volumes so far on the Kray twins. Pearson was granted remarkable access to Ronnie and Reggie at the same time as they were busy posing for David Bailey portraits. Hard to imagine that any modern-day gangsters will be quite as open with any would-be biographer.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten novels that harness unreliable narrators

New York Times bestselling author Hallie Ephron, Edgar Award finalist and five-time finalist for the Mary Higgins Clark Award, writes books she hopes readers can’t put down.

Her latest suspense novel, Careful What You Wish For, was inspired by the Marie Kondo life-changing decluttering tips. It explores the relationships built by professional organizers and their clients—showing just how easily the lines between professional and personal can be blurred. In it, Emily Harlow is a professional organizer who helps people declutter their lives; she’s married to man who can’t drive past a yard sale without stopping. Sometimes she find herself wondering if he sparks joy. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly called it “outstanding.”

At CrimeReads Ephron tagged "ten of [her] favorite novels that harness unreliable narrators, playing just this side of fair." One title on the list:

Defending Jacob by William Landay

Please tell the court…

Criminal prosecutor Andy Barber tries to “lawyer away” mounting evidence that his son Jacob killed a classmate. Barber knows that violence runs in his family, but he can’t believe that his son could kill. Wracked with guilt, Jacob’s mother Laurie revisits incidents from Jacob’s childhood that she can no longer rationalize. Through the clever use of courtroom transcripts, Landay withholds what Andy is unwilling to face and what Laurie is willing to do about it.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Defending Jacob is among Charlie Donlea's top ten slow-burn thrillers, Alafair Burke's six top legal fiction / domestic suspense hybrids, Kate Moretti's eight suspense novels that explore nurture vs. nature and Nicholas Sparks' six top books about family.

The Page 69 Test: Defending Jacob.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven of the best books about running

English poet and critic Ben Wilkinson is a keen distance runner, lifelong Liverpool Football Club fan, and among other things he works as poetry critic for The Guardian and the Times Literary Supplement.

His debut full collection of poems, Way More Than Luck, appeared from Seren Books in February 2018.

Wilkinson is co‑editor of The Result Is What You See Today: Poems about Running.

At the Guardian he tagged a few books books that explore our love of running, including:

Writers of all stripes have questioned why we run. In Born to Run, Christopher McDougall discovers a hidden tribe in Mexico’s Copper Canyon; the realisation dawns that “the world’s most enlightened people were also the world’s most amazing runners”. An author’s quest to run injury-free broadens into an anthropological study of our running lineage.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jia Tolentino's book recommendations

Jia Tolentino is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of the essay collection Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion.

Formerly, she was the deputy editor at Jezebel and a contributing editor at the Hairpin. She grew up in Texas, went to University of Virginia, and got her MFA in fiction from the University of Michigan.

Tolentino recommended six books at The Week magazine. One title on the list:

The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud (2006).

As a treat to myself, I reread this 500-page novel every summer, and every time I feel totally swallowed up in it, as if the book were soaking me with golden light. There's so much pleasure in the plotting, the emotional acuity, the satire, the language itself. It also makes the best use of September 11 of any work of fiction I've ever read.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Emperor’s Children is on Rebecca Jane Stokes's list of ten must-reads for Liane Moriarty fans, Porochista Khakpour's top ten list of novels about 9/11, Jimmy So's list of five novels that deal with 9/11 in significant if oblique ways, Rachel Syme's list of the ten most attractive men in literature, the (London) Times' list of the 100 best books of the last decade, and the New York Times' list of the 10 best books of 2006.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight top paranormal books

Craig Davidson was born and grew up in St. Catharines, Ontario, near Niagara Falls. His books of literary fiction include Rust and Bone, which was made into an Oscar-nominated feature film of the same name, The Fighter, and Sarah Court. Davidson is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and his articles and journalism have been published in the National Post, Esquire, GQ, The Walrus, and The Washington Post, among other places.

His latest novel is The Saturday Night Ghost Club.

At LitHub Davidson tagged eight top works of paranormal literature, including:

Victor LaValle, The Devil in Silver

LaValle’s The Changeling and The Ballad of Black Tom are excellent, but his third novel hits all the right notes. Shades of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, with the patients at a mental hospital battling the uncaring staff and a monster (of sorts) roaming the halls.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Devil in Silver is among Jason Segel's six favorite books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five great Cold War thrillers

Owen Matthews reported on conflicts in Bosnia, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Iraq and Ukraine and was Newsweek’s Bureau Chief in Moscow from 2006-2016. He is the author of several nonfiction books including Stalin’s Children, Glorious Misadventures and An Impeccable Spy.

Matthews's debut novel is Black Sun.

At CrimeReads he tagged five favorite Cold War thrillers, including:

The Innocent by Ian McEwan (1990)

Based on the true story of Soviet spy George Blake who betrayed a secret tunnel bored under the Berlin Wall by the CIA to intercept Soviet telephone cables, the Innocent is an exquisitely written portrait of a young man caught in a moral maze. Leonard Marnham is a young British Post Office telephone engineer who is employed by the Americans to install monitoring equipment in the secret tunnel. Post-war Berlin, still half-ruined, represents the wreck of the old world. Bob Glass, a CIA officer who befriends Marnham, represents the new world of the Cold War—paranoid, self-righteous, obsessed with security for its own sake. The innocent Leonard discovers love, sex, and death, but never finds any kind of righteousness in his own side’s cause beyond his own unthinking childish patriotism. The superb plot winds the life and fate of ordinary, frightened, loving humans through the politics and subterfuge of the Cold War—and in the end Leonard finds a way to save himself and his lover by using the pervasive culture of secrecy to his own, intensely personal ends.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Innocent is among Malcolm Burgess's ten best books set in Berlin and Suzanne Munshower's top ten books about the Berlin Wall.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six fantasy novels that infuse a real city with new magic

At the B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy blog, Nicole Hill tagged six fantasy novels that infuse the real cities in which they're set with new magic, including:

Borderline, by Mishell Baker
Los Angeles

Could there be a better setting for a faerie story than Los Angeles, the city where any flight of fantasy seems within the realm of possibility? The titular word “borderline” here refers to a couple of things: First is Millie Roper, recovering from the consequences of a failed suicide attempt and coming to terms with her Borderline Personality Disorder diagnosis. When she’s contacted by the top-secret (and a little sketchy) Arcadia Project, however, the borderline of emphasis becomes the quite-literal portal between the streets of LA and the world of the fey. The predicament Millie finds herself mired in is a stew of inter-world complications: the glitz of Hollywood on a collision course with the glamour of the fey.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top libraries in fiction

Stuart Kells is an author and expert on antiquarian books. His books include Rare, a biography of Kay Craddock, Penguin and the Lane Brothers: The Untold Story of a Publishing Revolution, and The Library: A Catalogue of Wonders.

At the Guardian Kells tagged ten top libraries in fiction, including:

Peter Kien’s books in Auto-da-Fé by Elias Canetti

Peter Kien, a middle-aged Sinologist, assembles some 25,000 volumes in his Vienna apartment. His insatiable appetite for books is matched only by the fear that they will be lost in fire. He marries his sturdy housekeeper with the idea that she will help keep the books safe. Instead, she forces him out of his apartment and he enters a nightmarish world of cutthroats, con artists, seedy bars and bungling police. The book ends with a powerful depiction of the horror of burning books.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven top workplace thrillers

Chandler Baker lives in Austin with her husband and toddler where she also works as a corporate attorney. Whisper Network is her adult debut. Baker is the author of the young adult thriller, Alive, as well as the High School Horror series.

At CrimeReads she tagged seven "workplace thrillers guaranteed to make you feel better about your job," including:

Force of Nature by Jane Harper

This book will make you think twice about going on next year’s corporate retreat. A woman goes missing in the midst of a weekend of team-building exercises and it turns out not only did she not have the rosiest of relationships with her coworkers (#relatable), but she also was onto some less than savory financial behavior by the company’s CEO. Harper revisits Aaron Falk, who is one of my favorite book detectives and some readers might remember from the book, The Dry, which—bonus points—will soon be a movie starring Eric Bana. So, jump on the bandwagon before it’s cool. Actually, wait, sorry it already is cool, but do it anyway.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top historical novels

The King’s Evil is the third novel in acclaimed author Andrew Taylor's Marwood-and-Lovett series set in the aftermath of the Great Fire, which began with The Ashes of London.

Taylor has won many awards, including the CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger, an Edgar Scroll from the Mystery Writers of America, the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Award (the only author to win it three times) and the CWA’s prestigious Diamond Dagger, awarded for sustained excellence in crime writing.

He lives with his wife Caroline in the Forest of Dean.

At the Waterstones blog Taylor tagged five favorite historical novels, including:

Master and Commander by Patrick O’Brian

This is the first novel in the O’Brian’s Aubrey and Maturin series. Read it, and then plunge joyfully into the next nineteen of them. Set during the Napoleonic Wars, the series deals with the adventures of a British naval officer and his ship’s surgeon, a Catalan-Irishman who also works as a spy and as a naturalist. The novels combine an absorbing narrative with a total immersion into another time, another culture.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Aubrey/Maturin Series appears on Jeff Somers's lists of five great books that will expand your vocabulary and top five books and series for old-fashioned adventure in the 19th century, the Telegraph's list of the ten best historical novels, Bella Bathurst's top ten list of books on the sea. Master & Commander is one of Peter Mayle's six best books. Dr Stephen Maturin is on John Mullan's list of ten of the best good doctors in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue