Eight books based on real-life female spies

Stephanie Marie Thornton is a USA Today bestselling author and a high school history teacher. She lives in Alaska with her husband and daughter.

[The Page 69 Test: The Conqueror's Wife; Writers Read: Stephanie Thornton; My Book, The Movie: The Conqueror's Wife]

Her latest book, A Most Clever Girl: A Novel of an American Spy is a novel of love, loyalty, and espionage, based on the incredible true story of Elizabeth Bentley, a Cold War double agent spying for the Russians and the United States.

At CrimeReads Thornton tagged eight favorite books based on real-life female spies. One title on the list:

The Invisible Woman by Erika Robuck

Uninterested in gossip or balls, young Virginia Hall instead seeks to help the Allies win the war against Hitler by becoming a spy. Despite having lost part of her leg in a hunting accident—and naming her prosthesis “Cuthbert”—Virginia becomes a pioneering spy early in the war and will be considered by the Gestapo to be the most dangerous of all the Allied Spies. Bold and courageous, this “limping lady” will receive the Distinguished Service Cross for her service during the war.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine books to put your job in perspective

Sophie Stein is an intern at Electric Literature. She was born in Chicago and is currently an MFA candidate at Indiana University, where she is the Fiction Editor of the Indiana Review. Her short fiction has won awards from The Hypertext Review and december magazine; her work has also appeared in The Briar Cliff Review, The Tangerine, and elsewhere.

At Electric Lit Stein tagged nine books that "tackle the clashes inherent in everyday work environments and demonstrate that there can be a light at the end of the tunnel," including:

Empire Falls by Richard Russo

Russo’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel follows Miles Roby, who manages the most popular restaurant in the decaying mill town of Empire Falls, Maine. His manipulative employer has promised to leave the restaurant to him when she dies, but Roby is suspicious. The restaurant isn’t the only thing rooting him in Empire Falls—there’s his weed-growing younger brother, his equally ne’er-do-well father, his almost-ex-wife, and his teenage daughter—an unforgettable cast that slowly reveals Roby’s troubled past and his secrets. This character-driven opus examines America’s blue-collar towns through the lens of work, duty, and family.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Empire Falls is among Weston Williams's top fifteen books with memorable dads.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six books set in, and about, New York

Vince Passaro is the author of the novel Crazy Sorrow.

His criticism and essays have appeared in many prominent publications, including Harper’s Magazine, of which he is a contributing editor, The Nation, The New York Times Sunday Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, Elle, Salon, and others, along with short fiction in such national magazines and literary journals as Esquire, GQ, Open City, Agni, Story, Boulevard, and Quarterly West. His first book, Violence, Nudity, Adult Content: A Novel, was published in 2002. He lives a few miles north of New York City in an old Huguenot town with his wife, son, and a smattering of film cameras, fountain pens, and other fellow-traveling refuse from the mid-20th century.

At Lit Hub Passaro tagged six favorite books set in, and about, New York. One title on the list:

Don DeLillo, Cosmopolis

Not DeLillo’s most famous book, it nevertheless delivers perfectly on its conceit, a late 90s wunderkind banker, not yet 30, in his white stretch limo, a young man with no end of technology in his car and immense power over global currency markets, crossing Manhattan on 47th Street from east to west one day to get a haircut. It’s a wild and brilliant ride and takes all day. The book has an appearance by Bill Clinton, a Sufi rapper funeral, a labor strike accompanied by the big blow-up plastic rat swooning on the sidewalk and actual dead rats to heave at the rich—as well as a ghostly young wife and an assassin. What could go wrong?

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six notable novels set in the ancient world

Elodie Harper is a journalist and prize-winning short story writer. Her story 'Wild Swimming' won the 2016 Bazaar of Bad Dreams short story competition, which was judged by Stephen King.

She is currently a reporter at ITV News Anglia, and before that worked as a producer for Channel 4 News. Her job as a journalist has seen her join one of the most secretive wings of the Church of Scientology and cover the far right hip hop scene in Berlin, as well as crime reporting in Norfolk where her first two novels were set – The Binding Song and The Death Knock.

Harper studied Latin poetry both in the original and in translation as part of her English Literature degree at Oxford, instilling a lifelong interest in the ancient world. The Wolf Den is the first in a trilogy of novels about the lives of women in ancient Pompeii.

At the Waterstones blog Harper tagged six favorite novels set in the ancient world, including:

The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker

The Silence of the Girls is a visceral recreation of the Greek siege of Troy told from the perspective of the captured and prostituted women who were enslaved by the Greek heroes. The relationship between the central character Briseis and her legendary owner/lover Achilles is depicted with a total lack of sentimentality and Barker is unflinching in depicting the psychological and physical horrors the women would have faced, without being overly graphic. It is an approach that upends the myth’s sense of familiarity, forcing you to look at some of literature’s most famous characters with new eyes.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Silence of the Girls is among Abbie Greaves's ten top books about silence and Kris Waldherr's ten favorite books inspired by mythology.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six of the best bookstore romances

Mimi Granger began her publishing career writing historical romance. Many years later, there’s still nothing she likes better than a happily-ever-after...as long as there’s a little murder and mayhem thrown in. Her Love is Murder mystery series provides the perfect opportunity to salute the two genres she loves most—romance and mystery—and to play out every reader’s dream of owning a fabulous bookstore. Granger lives outside of Cleveland with her own personal romance hero and two dogs: Eliot, an enthusiastic Airedale, and Lucy, who provides the inspiration for Violet in her stories (including the incredible amount of shed fur).

The newest Love is Murder mystery is Death of a Red-Hot Rancher.

At CrimeReads Granger tagged six novels in which romance blooms in the stacks, including:

The Lost and Found Bookshop by Susan Wiggs

Natalie Harper inherits her mother’s financially strapped bookshop and also becomes the caretaker of her ailing grandfather. When Grandpa’s health declines, Natalie decides to sell the shop and the aging building that houses it. There’s only one problem: Grandpa owns the building and he refuses to sell. Enter Peach Gallagher, a contractor hired to handle repairs. So begins Natalie’s journey of making new connections and discovering the truth about her family, her future, and her own heart.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top 10 books about human consciousness

Charles Foster is a Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford.

His books cover many fields. They include books on travel, evolutionary biology, natural history, anthropology, theology, archaeology, philosophy and law. Ultimately they are all attempts to answer the questions ‘Who or what are we?’, and ‘what on earth are we doing here?

Foster's newest book is Being a Human: Adventures in 40,000 years of consciousness. It tries to answer the question ‘What sort of creature is a human?’

At the Guardian Foster tagged ten top books about human consciousness, including:

Nine-Headed Dragon River by Peter Matthiessen

Matthiessen, best known for The Snow Leopard, was an advanced Zen practitioner. This book contains some of his meditation diaries. They’re full of vertiginous worked examples, showing how to watch your own mind working.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Also see Adrian Owen's top ten books about consciousness.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten notable books about water

Giulio Boccaletti is a globally recognized expert on natural resource security and environmental sustainability. He is an honorary research associate at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford. Trained as a physicist and climate scientist, he holds a doctorate from Princeton University, where he was a NASA Earth Systems Science Fellow. He has been a research scientist at MIT and was a partner at McKinsey & Company, where he was one of the leaders of its Sustainability and Resource Productivity Practice, and the chief strategy officer and global ambassador for water at The Nature Conservancy, one of the world’s largest environmental organizations.

Boccaletti's new book is Water: A Biography.

At Lit Hub he tagged ten top books about water, including:

Frances Perkins, The Roosevelt I Knew

Perkins was in the Roosevelt administration. The first woman to hold a cabinet office in the history of the United States, she was a leader of remarkable consequence. Aside from being the longest serving Secretary of Labor, she was the architect of countless policy reforms, not least the architect of Social Security. The book is interesting both because of who wrote it and because of the portrait of FDR that emerges. Through her words, amongst other things, you see just how devoted Roosevelt was to the success of the Tennessee Valley Authority as a model for the world. Plus, it is well written: a first-person account of one of the most important periods in modern American history. Well worth it.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five notable aviation books

T.J. Newman, a former bookseller turned flight attendant, worked for Virgin America and Alaska Airlines from 2011 to 2021.

She wrote much of Falling, her first novel, on cross-country red-eye flights while her passengers were asleep.

Newman lives in Phoenix, Arizona.

At the Waterstones blog she tagged five favorite stories set in the world of aviation, including:

Flight 232 by Laurence Gonzales

An absolutely gripping piece of real-life detective work, Gonzales' meticulous piecing together of a horrific aeroplane crash from survivors' testimonies and official records reads like the most page-turning fiction.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Newman's Falling is among Louise Candlish's six top mysteries set on moving vehicles.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten mysteries featuring the high country of the American West

Margaret Mizushima is the author of the award-winning and internationally published Timber Creek K-9 Mysteries. She serves as president for the Rocky Mountain Chapter of Mystery Writers of America, was elected the 2019 Writer of the Year by Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers, and is also a member of Northern Colorado Writers, Sisters in Crime, and Women Writing the West. She lives in Colorado on a small ranch with her veterinarian husband where they raised two daughters and a multitude of animals.

Mizushima's latest novel is Striking Range.

[Coffee with a Canine: Margaret Mizushima & Hannah, Bertie, Lily and Tess; Coffee with a Canine: Margaret Mizushima & Hannah; My Book, The Movie: Burning Ridge; The Page 69 Test: Burning Ridge; The Page 69 Test: Tracking Game; My Book, The Movie: Hanging Falls; The Page 69 Test: Hanging Falls; Q&A with Margaret Mizushima]

At Crimereads Mizushima tagged ten mysteries in which the rugged terrain and unforgiving elements of the high country of the American West become characters central to the story, including:

Dana Stabenow, A Cold Day for Murder

New York Times bestselling author Dana Stabenow writes the Kate Shugak novels set in the Alaskan wilderness among millions of mountainous acres that comprise The Park. A Cold Day for Murder is book one of twenty-two in the series and introduces Kate Shugak, an Aleut who left her home village of Niniltna to pursue education and a career in the justice system. When two national park rangers go missing, Kate, a former investigator for the Anchorage DA, is called back from a self-imposed exile to help find them. Readers can immerse themselves in the rugged Alaskan mountains as they follow Kate and her canine partner Mutt from one adventure to another in this terrific series.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

The top 10 party girls in literature

Marlowe Granados is a writer and filmmaker.

She co-hosts The Mean Reds, a podcast dedicated to women-led films. Her advice column, "Designs for Living," appears in The Baffler. After spending time in New York and London, Granados currently resides in Toronto. Happy Hour is her début novel.

At Electric List she tagged ten favorite titles featuring "glittering characters who pursue pleasure in a world that doesn't want them to succeed," including:

Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys

When I think of a Rhys novel, I envision scenes of a lone woman drinking Pernod at a café she can’t afford and gazing at shop windows for a dress she’ll spend the last of her allowance on. Good Morning, Midnight follows a middle-aged Sasha Jansen as she returns to Paris and is haunted by memories of a life that she’ll never return to. Rhys’s talent is in painting a scene that at turns is tragic, but cut through with moments of humor and lightness.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Good Morning, Midnight is among Leslie Jamison's six top books about addiction.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top 10 novels of the 1930s

Alec Marsh is the author of the Drabble & Harris books.

Rule Britannia, a light-hearted historical adventure set against the backdrop of the Abdication Crisis in 1936, is the first in a series featuring protagonists Ernest Drabble and Percival Harris. The second novel in the series, Enemy of the Raj, is set in British India in 1937. The latest installment, Ghosts of the West, sees Drabble and Harris journey to the United States. Marsh is working on the fourth book in the series which will be set in Turkey.

At the Guardian Marsh tagged ten top novels of the 1930s, including:

Right Ho, Jeeves by PG Wodehouse

Jeeves, who first appeared in 1915, is an Edwardian immortal who had barely got into his stride in 1934 when this second full-length Jeeves and Wooster novel appeared. Regarded by some as the best in the series, John le Carré said it was one of his favourite books, and Stephen Fry is a noted admirer. Gerald Gould, reviewing it for the Observer, described it as “one long scream from start to finish”. It has a great comedic conceit: that Wooster is fed up with friends asking Jeeves for help, so insists on solving their problems for himself. In the end, only one gentleman’s gentleman can possibly save the day. Jeeves and Bertie, of course, kept going until 1974.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Right Ho, Jeeves is among Michael Hogan's top ten bachelors.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five books about death & what comes next

TJ Klune is a Lambda Literary Award-winning author (Into This River I Drown) and an ex-claims examiner for an insurance company. His novels include the Green Creek series, The House on the Cerulean Sea and The Extraordinaries. Being queer himself, Klune believes it's important—now more than ever—to have accurate, positive, queer representation in stories.

His new novel is Flash Fire, the sequel to The Extraordinaries.

[Q&A with TJ Klune; The Page 69 Test: Flash Fire]

At Tor.com Klune tagged five books about death and what comes next, including:

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

A different take on what comes next. The novel follows a girl named Susie Salmon who is murdered at the age of fourteen. She finds her heaven, but worries about those left behind: her family. Sebold’s prose is lovely and kind, even given the heavy subject matter. This novel is heartbreakingly wonderful look at the relationships between parents and their children, and what they do in order to protect each other. It’s also an unflinching look at grief, both Susie’s and her community reeling from her murder. There is a film version of this novel helmed by Peter Jackson (of Lord of the Rings fame), but to me, it loses something in the translation. In this case, the book is much, much better than the adaptation.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Lovely Bones is among Tim Thornton's top ten books about the afterlife, Louise Doughty's top ten ghost stories, Tim Thornton's top ten books about the afterlife, Jeff Somers's top eight speculative works with dead narrators, Nadiya Hussain's six best books, Judith Claire Mitchell's ten best (unconventional) ghosts, Laura McHugh's ten favorite books about serial killers, and Tamzin Outhwaite's six best books.

--Marshal Zeringue