Five of the best adoption thrillers

Jeff Abbott is the New York Times bestselling, award-winning author of many mystery and suspense novels.

His new novel is Never Ask Me.

At CrimeReads Abbott tagged five top adoption thrillers. One title on the list:

Little Boy Lost by Marghanita Laski (1949)

This novel should be better known—but it’s such a wonderfully well-kept secret. (It was strangely turned into a film musical in 1953 starring. . .Bing Crosby. No, I haven’t seen it.) It’s an emotionally wrenching journey through one man’s decision about fatherhood. English poet Hilary Wainwright is told that he left behind a son in wartime France. The child’s French mother died at the hands of the Nazis—is her child Hilary’s? When Hilary—selfish, unsure if he wants to be a father—attempts to connect with the orphan who is supposedly his son, the reader is drawn into an unbearably tense reckoning. These two souls have now encountered each other—how will each change the other? Will Hilary accept him as his son—and will the boy accept Hilary? And if he is not Hilary’s son, will Hilary abandon the boy? This is a book to be read in one sitting. In 2001, Nicholas Lezard wrote a re-appraisal of Little Boy Lost for The Guardian: “If you like a novel that expertly puts you through the wringer, this is the one.”

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight books to make you glad you’re not at the beach

Preety Sidhu, an intern at Electric Literature, tagged eight books that will make you glad you’re not at the beach, including:

Here Comes the Sun by Nicole Dennis-Benn

30-year-old Margot works as a desk clerk at a Jamaican beach resort frequented by wealthy white tourists. Pimped out by her abusive mother at a young age, she now has sex on the side with white men who visit the island looking for poor women to exploit. While she does this to pay her younger sister’s tuition at a private school, her romantic inclinations tend toward a wealthy local lesbian who has been branded a witch by their village.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten novels that use momentous events as a catalyst

Suzanne Rindell received her Ph.D. in English literature from Rice University in spring 2018. She is the author of the forthcoming historical mystery, The Two Mrs. Carlyles.

At CrimeReds, Rindell tagged ten novels that use large-scale events as a catalyst, including:

Fever by Mary Beth Keane

Catalyst: Infectious Disease

Typhoid…another infectious disease that wreaked havoc with each outbreak. And I suppose history has solved the “mystery” that is Mary Mallon—”Typhoid Mary,” the asymptomatic carrier who infected 53 people in the New York area. The book is driven in part by this famous historical outbreak (or series of outbreaks, really), and how difficult it can be to comprehend the reality of being an “asymptomatic carrier.” Mary Beth Keane seeks to restore humanity to a much-maligned historical figure.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Page 69 Test: Fever.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top books about the allure of crowds and community

John Drury is professor of social psychology at the University of Sussex; his research interests focus on collective behaviour in mass emergencies, riots and other crowd events.

At the Guardian he tagged six of the best books about the allure of crowds and community, including:

New bonds of community are often created by disaster, as Rebecca Solnit charts in A Paradise Built in Hell. The shanty town built by survivors of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and the self-organised evacuations New Yorkers arranged with strangers after 9/11, show how people facing a common fate can see themselves as belonging to a single group. Like the Covid-19 mutual aid groups we see today, these altruistic communities provide glimpses of an alternative world.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven obsession thrillers

Seraphina Nova Glass is an Assistant Professor of Instruction and Playwright-In-Residence at the University of Texas, Arlington where she teaches Film Studies and Playwriting.

She holds an MFA degree in Dramatic Writing from Smith College, and a second MFA in Directing from the University of Idaho. She’s also a screenwriter and award-winning playwright.

Her new novel is Someone's Listening.

At CrimeReads Glass tagged seven crime and suspense novels that explore the causes and consequences of infatuation, including:

The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware

Lo Blacklock’s obsession, in The Woman in Cabin 10, is neither love nor revenge, it’s in uncovering the truth about a murder and these are my favorite kind of stories. As a Ruth Ware fanatic, I cannot say enough good things about her Agatha Christie-esque style of weaving a mystery. When Lo takes a journalism assignment on a posh cruise ship, she’s excited for the opportunity, but it quickly turns nightmarish when she’s certain she sees a woman being thrown overboard. When all the passengers are present and accounted for, nobody takes her claims seriously. Lo knows what she saw and is determined to find the truth, but someone wants to shut her up. This twisty, run-for-your life story ticks all the boxes for what a thriller should be. And if you like to listen to your thrillers, Imogen Church’s narration is award-worthy in my book.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Woman in Cabin 10 is among Lisa Alther's top seven books about lives lived at sea and Jeff Somers's six best locked-room mysteries.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight books to take you back to the 1980s

Amanda Brainerd is a New York City real estate broker, wife and mother of three. She graduated from Harvard College and earned a Master of Architecture from Columbia University after being expelled from Choate Rosemary Hall boarding school in the 10th grade. Age of Consent is her first novel.

At Electric Lit she tagged eight books to take you back to the Eighties, including:

Swing Time by Zadie Smith

This is a tale of the bond between two teenage girls from the projects, and the story of how friendship can tether us to home and comfort even if we travel far away.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Swing Time is among Robert Haller's six top novels that reference pop music.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top books by Charles Dickens

A.N. Wilson was born in 1950 and educated at Rugby and New College, Oxford. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he holds a prominent position in the world of literature and journalism. He is an award-winning biographer and a celebrated novelist, winning prizes for much of his work. He lives in North London.

Wilson's new book is The Mystery of Charles Dickens.

At the Guardian he tagged Dickens's top ten books, including:

David Copperfield

His own personal favourite among the novels. A book that can make me – and millions of others – weep and laugh out loud, often on the same page. A sort of autobiography, but one in which all his family have been expunged. David’s father is dead before the book begins, his mother dies when he is still very young. And unlike Dickens, David has no siblings. The awful woes and cruelties for which in real life he blamed his parents are the fault of the wicked stepfather Mr Murdstone. This book has some of Dickens’s finest characters – Mr Dick, Mr Micawber, Betsey Trotwood – and, in the storm that engulfs the Suffolk coast, one of his most powerful descriptions of nature.

Read about the other entries on the list.

David Copperfield is among Kathryn Harrison's six  best epic novels, Nigella Lawson's ten best books, ShortList's forty greatest villains in literature. Siri Hustvedt's six favorite books, Janet Davey’s top ten schoolchildren in fiction, Frank Rich's top ten books, John Boyne's top ten child narrators, Lynn Shepherd's top ten fictional drownings and Elizabeth Gilbert's six favorite books. It appears on John Mullan's lists of ten of the best seductions in literature, ten of the best trips to Canterbury in literature and ten of the best valets in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight top novels featuring odd couples and unexpected partnerships

Alice Feeney is a writer and journalist. She spent fifteen years with BBC News where she worked as a reporter, news editor, arts and entertainment producer, and One O'Clock news producer. Feeney has lived in London and Sydney and has now settled in the Surrey countryside, where she lives with her husband and dog. His & Hers is her third novel, after Sometimes I Lie and I Know Who You Are.

At CrimeReads Feeney tagged eight of her "favorite novels that have odd couples and unexpected partnerships at the heart of their stories," including:

Behind Her Eyes, Sarah Pinborough

Meet single mom Louise and Adele, the perfect housewife. Opposites definitely attract in this brilliant book. Told from both points of view, this clever and original story will keep you on your toes and keep you guessing. I find I can often predict the endings of thrillers, but not this time. This book absolutely deserved the #WTFending reputation it earned, in a good way. One of my favorite twists ever.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Behind Her Eyes is among Leah Konen's seven dark thrillers about friendships gone wrong and Camilla Bruce's eight novels to make you question reality.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten great mysteries set in Maine

Mary Kubica is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Good Girl, Pretty Baby, Don't You Cry, Every Last Lie, and When the Lights Go Out.

A former high school history teacher, Kubica holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, in History and American Literature.

Her newest novel is The Other Mrs..

At The Strand Magazine, Kubica tagged ten favorite mysteries set in Maine, including:

EMMA IN THE NIGHT by Wendy Walker

Wendy Walker gives readers a terrifying, intimate look at true narcissism and a totally dysfunctional family in this twisted psychological thriller set partially on a rugged, nearly-vacant island off the coast of Maine. Two sisters disappear but when, three years later, only one comes back, a forensic psychologist must get to the bottom of this mystery and decipher the truth from the lies.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight books about cross-generational friendships

Diane Zinna's new novel is The All-Night Sun.

At Electric Lit she tagged eight books about connections that transcend age. One title on the list:

The Octopus and I by Erin Hortle

In this 2020 debut novel, Lucy is recovering from breast cancer when she becomes friends with two older women who gather and preserve octopuses that swamp the Tasmanian coast. While saving an octopus that is pulling itself across a road dividing the ocean, Lucy is hit by a car, and her injuries force her to come to terms with her body all the more. As she heals, Lucy has a tangle of octopuses tattooed across her scarred chest, and her relationship with Flo becomes a shared respite from loneliness and loss. With emotional and rhythmic sections written from the perspective of octopuses and seals, this novel shows us all searching for connection while unknowingly being carried along by the ever-present current of it.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven top books to inspire hope for the planet

Ann Pettifor is director of Prime: Policy Research in Macroeconomics and a fellow of the New Economics Foundation. She is the author of The Case for the Green New Deal.

At the Guardian she tagged seven books that offer hope for the future and the Green New Deal, including:

JA Baker’s 1967 memoir The Peregrine, is another vision – of the ecstatic joy brought on by a deep connectedness to nature. Baker documents his daily and increasingly close connection to the austere Essex landscape that was his home, and to what Gerard Manley Hopkins called “the brute beauty and valour” of an extraordinary bird. For greater understanding of how connected all living things are, Peter Wohlleben’s The Secret Network of Nature is less intense, but startling and delightful. Each chapter is a self-contained exploration of some link in nature: “How Earthworms Control Wild Boar”; “Fairy Tales, Myths and Species Diversity”. Or try Lev Parikian’s witty Into the Tangled Bank. He starts with the wildlife found in your kitchen sink, and gradually deepens connections to nature within and outside your own four walls.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine books about being homesick for a place that doesn’t exist anymore

Stephanie Soileau's new collection of short stories is Last One Out Shut Off the Lights. Her work has also appeared in Glimmer Train, Oxford American, Ecotone, Tin House, New Stories from the South, and other journals and anthologies, and has been supported by fellowships from the Wallace Stegner Fellowship Program at Stanford University, the Camargo Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and has taught creative writing at the Art Institute of Chicago, Stanford University, and the University of Southern Maine. Originally from Lake Charles, Louisiana, Soileau now lives in Chicago and teaches at the University of Chicago.

At Electric Lit she tagged nine favorite literary expressions of homesickness "for a place that does not exist anymore—and maybe never did exist as you imagined it." One title on the list:

Inheritors by Asako Serizawa

The interwoven stories in this new collection by Asako Serizawa follow a Japanese family through 150 years of history. In a kaleidoscope of places and points of view, Serizawa explores the lives of characters whose sense of home and history is disrupted by war, imperialism and migration.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue