Six top non-fiction books about real spies

Ava Glass (a pseudonym for an internationally bestselling author who has sold over two and a half million copies of her books worldwide) is a former civil servant and journalist who once worked closely with spies. She lives in the same town in the south of England as Christopher Steele. But this is, of course, a coincidence.

Her new spy novel is Alias Emma.

At CrimeReads Glass tagged six of her "favorite, stranger than fiction, utterly gripping, non-fiction books about real spies," including:

A Woman of No Importance, by Sonia Purnell

I’d heard of Virginia Hall before I read this book but I knew little about her, which is ludicrous because as a child she once wore a bracelet of live snakes to school, and that alone is reason to make learning about her life a priority. A society girl from a wealthy family, Hall lost her leg in a hunting accident while still young, and perhaps that propelled her to break free of the expectations of her background and choose another path. When World War II broke out, she travelled to France to volunteer as an ambulance driver, but that was just the start. Somehow, she flew under the Vichy radar, working with the French Resistance and the British secret service to undermine and destabilize the Nazi regime with such success that she became the Germans’ most wanted Allied agent in France. Her extraordinary bravery and resilience are inspiring, and Purnell’s writing flows. This is one of those books that make you believe in heroes.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight books on bad Hollywood

Ken Auletta inaugurated the Annals of Communications column and profiles for The New Yorker in 1992. His national bestsellers include Three Blind Mice: How the TV Networks Lost Their Way, Greed and Glory on Wall Street: The Fall of The House of Lehman, and Googled: The End of the World as We Know It.

Auletta's new book is Hollywood Ending: Harvey Weinstein and the Culture of Silence.

At Lit Hub Auletta tagged "eight books to read to understand the world in which Weinstein flourished." One title on the list:

Neal Gabler, An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood

To understand the early days of Hollywood and the shaping of a sometimes brutal culture, you can’t do better than Neal Gabler’s book. The proverbial casting couch is very visible in these pages. And while sexual abuse was prevalent, studio heads—unlike Harvey Weinstein—did not commonly rape their prey.

Read about the other books on Auletta's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven titles that epitomize bookseller noir

Dwyer Murphy is a New York-based writer and editor. He is the editor-in-chief of CrimeReads, Literary Hub‘s crime fiction vertical and the world’s most popular destination for thriller readers. He practiced law at Debevoise & Plimpton in New York City, where he was a litigator, and served as editor of the Columbia Law Review. He was previously an Emerging Writer Fellow at the Center for Fiction. His writing has appeared in The Common, Rolling Stone, Guernica, The Paris Review Daily, Electric Literature, and other publications.

Murphy's new novel is An Honest Living.

At Electric Lit he tagged seven "books that capture the heady magic of walking into a bookstore," including:

The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling by Lawrence Block

Block is the quintessential New York City crime writer, still going strong on a decades-long run that spans series and genres. A few protagonists stand out from the pack, and first among them is Bernie Rhodenbarr, the careful thief who always seems to get tangled up with a dead body and who consistently funnels the profits of his burglaries into his Village bookshop. You can choose from just about any of the novels in the series and find the same exhilarating spirit, but I’d suggest starting with The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling. In it, Bernie acquires the bookshop and starts teaching himself the trade, and also, naturally, gets drawn into a robbery requiring an odyssey across a city populated by fences, racketeers, art experts, bartenders, friends, and foes. The story includes an elaborate heist targeting a rare volume that nobody seems to think has much literary merit, another nice twist on the genre and a wry wink to those of discerning taste.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight unconventional coming-of-age horror novels

Born in North Carolina, raised in Arizona, and now residing in New York, Nat Cassidy in an award-winning playwright, director, actor, musician, and author.

His new novel is Mary: An Awakening of Terror.

At CrimeReads Cassidy tagged eight "coming-of-age horror novels that aren’t about teenagerhood." One title on the list:

The Return, by Rachel Harrison

As I said at the top, the first thing most people probably think of when it comes to coming-of-age horror stories is kids on bikes. A key element to the subgenre is the friend group. Our friends are how we mark our own growth, as well as how we understand our place in the world—and as Stephen King, the post-Bradbury Pope of Coming-of-Age Horror Fiction himself said, “I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, did you?” The answer to that question is no. But the same question could be asked about the friends you have in your 20s, and that answer just might be ‘no, and thank god.’ Our college-era friends know a very specific version of ourselves, and the friendships from that age that last are likely to be among life’s strongest. That’s where Rachel Harrison’s brilliant novel comes in. It explores the uniquely complicated dynamics of the friend group that crosses from late adolescence into adulthood: what it’s like when they start to make more money than you, start to be able to hang out in different ways than you can, start to get married, start to move past you. You all still have the same references—and have likely seen each other at your most pathetic and broken—but life starts taking you in different directions and turning you into new people. The Return’s depictions of that brutal, confusing, painful transition into Real Adulthood are no less harrowing than the more supernatural horrors that follow.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten indispensable black, queer, & feminist coming-of-age titles

Mecca Jamilah Sullivan is the author of The Poetics of Difference: Queer Feminist Forms in the African Diaspora (2021), the short story collection, Blue Talk and Love (2015), winner of the Judith Markowitz Award for Fiction from Lambda Literary, and the new novel Big Girl.

Sullivan is Associate Professor of English at Georgetown University, where she teaches courses in African American poetry and poetics, Black queer and feminist literatures, and creative writing. She lives in Washington, DC.

At Publishers Weekly she tagged ten "indispensable stories of Black, feminist, and LGBTQ+ coming of age," including:

Love War Stories by Ivelisse Rodriguez

In nine short stories, Rodriguez tracks the coming-of-age experiences of several generations of Puerto Rican girls with exquisite humor and heart. Through her narrators’ eyes, we see the power of friendship, the quiet danger of blindly accepting inherited standards of womanhood, and the beauty of finding your way to adulthood with a crew of irreverent homegirls as your companions and guides.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine books about the beauty & complexities of chosen families

Gabe Montesanti is a queer, Midwestern roller derby player. She earned her BA in mathematics and studio art from Kalamazoo College and her MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Washington University in St. Louis. She has had work published in Belt Magazine, Brevity, The Offing, and Boulevard Magazine. Her piece, "The Worldwide Roller Derby Convention" was recognized as a notable essay in The Best American Essays 2020. Her roller derby memoir, Brace for Impact, came out from The Dial Press in May, 2022.

At Electric Lit Montesanti tagged "nine books, by authors whose sexualities and gender identities span the gamut, [that] portray the beauty and complexity of chosen family," including:

Just Kids by Patti Smith

I had just finished studying in New York City for a term when I was introduced to Just Kids by Patti Smith. My experience living in a townhouse in Chelsea with twenty other budding artists meant that I could relate to Smith’s longing to find a community at the Pratt Institute. We were both 19, just kids, when we found ourselves in New York.

Smith’s book primarily details her profound relationship with the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, who died of AIDS in 1989. The two become an inseparable pair, and the artists and writers who surround Smith and Mapplethorpe at art openings and in the Chelsea Hotel become somewhat of a surrogate family. There’s a certain grittiness in Just Kids I hope will resonate with my readers, too.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Just Kids is among Fiona Sturges's ten best music biographies, Christopher Bonanos's six best New York City biographies, Barbara Bourland's ten essential books about contemporary artists, Dana Czapnik's favorite novels featuring kids or young adults coming of age in cities, and Dan Holmes's twenty best memoirs written by musicians.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top 10 stories of modern India

Aravind Jayan is a young writer from India.

His novel Teen Couple Have Fun Outdoors describes the personal and familial catastrophes that unfold after a young man and his girlfriend discover an explicit video of themselves circulating online.

At the Guardian Jayan tagged ten top books on modern India, including:

Prelude to a Riot by Annie Zaidi

In this short novel Zaidi goes about assembling a bomb. The setting is a small south Indian town. Religious tension, caste differences, labour exploitation and the ill-treatment of migrants all provide excellent bomb-making material. As the novel progresses, a quiet bleakness settles over much of the town and keeps growing. No one seems to have the power to stop it. The bigots, on the other hand, are industrious. They form committees, organise marches, send letters to the local newspaper editor and buy guns. While the book has humour and beauty, the urgent narrative that Zaidi creates – by very careful crafting of each character’s soliloquy – is one that will make you feel terrified and outnumbered.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six private school thrillers for the grown-up and graduated

Before turning to fiction, Aggie Blum Thompson covered real-life crime as a newspaper reporter for a number of papers, including The Boston Globe and The Washington Post. She lives with her husband and two children, a cat, and a dog in the suburbs of Washington D.C. She is the author of I Don't Forgive You and All the Dirty Secrets.

At CrimeReads she tagged six favorite private school thrillers. One title on the list:

Good Girls Lie by J.T. Ellison

This psychological thriller is set at a prep school in rural Virginia, which has been nicknamed a Silent Ivy due to its reputation for sending its young graduates to Ivy League universities. Each class contains only fifty girls—hand-picked by the dean herself—and all of whom are gifted, intelligent and belonging to powerful and connected families. But not all is good at The Goode School, and when a student is found dead, Ash Carlisle, a new student who has recently lost her parents, must figure out whether her new classmates are friends or killers.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Good Girls Lie is among Amy Gentry's top novels of the Dark Academia canon and Avery Bishop's five thrillers that explore "mean girl" culture.

My Book, The Movie: Good Girls Lie.

The Page 69 Test: Good Girls Lie.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top books on Middle East military history

Kenneth M. Pollack is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he works on Middle Eastern political-military affairs, focusing in particular on Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf countries.

Pollack is the author of ten books, including Armies of Sand: The Past, Present, and Future of Arab Military Effectiveness, a history of Arab armies from the end of World War II to the present, in which he assesses the performance of Arab armed forces and the reason for their difficulties.

At Shepherd Pollack tagged five of the best books on Middle East military history, including:

The Iran-Iraq War by Williamson Murray and Kevin M. Woods

Wick Murray is one of America’s greatest military historians and Kevin Woods was the leader of the team sent by the U.S. government to exploit the documents and taped conversations captured by U.S. forces in Iraq after 2003. Murray was a key member of that team and they also interviewed many former Iraqi generals. Finally, they also managed to unearth some Iranian accounts of the war—some from the Iraqi intelligence archives. Not surprisingly, this is a terrific account of the war, one that brings in all kinds of new material, especially from the Iraqi side. Their narrative description hits all of the key points of a very long, complex conflict, their insights and analysis are spot on, and the addition of the new material from the Iraqi side makes this the definitive work on the subject at least until comparable materials come to light from the Iranian side.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Twelve novels about assistants trapped in jobs they’re too good for

Alison B. Hart’s writing has appeared in Joyland Magazine, Literary Hub, The Missouri Review, and The Millions, among others. She co-founded the long-running reading series at Pete’s Candy Store in Brooklyn and received her MFA from The New School. She grew up in Los Angeles and lives in North Carolina.

Hart's debut novel is The Work Wife.

At Electric Lit she tagged twelve novels that "tell the tales of the assistants, temps, apprentices, and unpaid laborers who also smooth the way for others." One title on the list:

Several People Are Typing by Calvin Kasulke

Told entirely through Slack message threads, Several People Are Typing is a satirical romp through workplace culture and a meditation on the pathos and poetry of digital communication. Gerald is a mid-level employee at a public relations firm when he finds himself somehow stuck inside the app. At first he’s desperate to return to the land of living—no thanks to his coworkers, who are convinced he’s only out to milk his remote setup—but he grows to savor his increased productivity and life inside the matrix. After all, “what is a workplace but a cult where everyone gets paid, really?” He also develops surprisingly intimate relationships with both the coworker he pays to check on his body and Slackbot, a helpful but menacing piece of AI in search of a human form. You don’t have to have the rat-a-tat-tat of Slack’s new message notification etched in your consciousness like one of Pavlov’s dogs to enjoy this book, but it doesn’t hurt.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven titles about wealthy people behaving badly

Lizzy Barber is a London-based author of female-driven psychological suspense novels which are rich in atmosphere and character.

Her new novel is Out Of Her Depth.

At CrimeReads Barber tagged seven novels about the lifestyles of the rich and shameless, including:

The Talented Mr Ripley, by Patricia Highsmith

I owe a huge debt to Highsmith’s Italian-set Ripley novel, which was a major inspiration for Out of her Depth. Like my protagonist Rachel, the eponymous Tom Ripley is a ‘fish out of water,’ drawn in to the world of the capricious Dickie Greenleaf and his somewhat-girlfriend, Marge. Tom lusts after Dickie and Marge’s lifestyle…to a dark end…but by using a protagonist who only has one foot in their world, Highsmith is able to comment on their appalling antics in a way Tom himself is too blinkered to see.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Talented Mr Ripley is on Charlotte Northedge's top ten list of novels about toxic friendships, Elizabeth Macneal's list of five books that explore the dark side of fitting in, Saul A. Lelchuk's nine great thrillers featuring alter egos, Emma Stonex's list of seven top mystery novels set by the sea, Russ Thomas's top ten list of queer protagonists in crime fiction, Paul Vidich's list of five of the most enduring imposters in crime fiction & espionage, Lisa Levy's list of eight of the most toxic friendships in crime fiction, Elizabeth Macneal's list of five sympathetic fictional psychopaths, Laurence Scott's list of seven top books about doppelgangers, J.S. Monroe's list of seven suspenseful literary thrillers, Simon Lelic's top ten list of false identities in fiction, Jeff Somers's list of fifty novels that changed novels, Olivia Sudjic's list of eight favorite books about love and obsession, Roz Chast's six favorite books list, Nicholas Searle's top five list of favorite deceivers in fiction, Chris Ewan's list of the ten top chases in literature, Meave Gallagher's top twenty list of gripping page-turners every twentysomething woman should read, Sophia Bennett's top ten list of books set in the Mediterranean, Emma Straub's top ten list of holidays in fiction, E. Lockhart's list of favorite suspense novels, Sally O'Reilly's top ten list of novels inspired by Shakespeare, Walter Kirn's top six list of books on deception, Stephen May's top ten list of impostors in fiction, Simon Mason's top ten list of chilling fictional crimes, Melissa Albert's list of eight books to change a villain, Koren Zailckas's list of eleven of literature's more evil characters, Alex Berenson's five best list of books about Americans abroad John Mullan's list of ten of the best examples of rowing in literature, Tana French's top ten maverick mysteries list, the Guardian's list of the 50 best summer reads ever, the Telegraph's ultimate reading list, and Francesca Simon's top ten list of antiheroes.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the most puzzling impossible crime mysteries

Tom Mead is a UK crime fiction author specialising in locked-room mysteries.

He is a member of the Crime Writers’ Association, International Thriller Writers, and the Society of Authors.

Mead's debut novel is Death and the Conjuror.

[My Book, The Movie: Death and the Conjuror; The Page 69 Test: Death and the Conjuror; Q&A with Tom Mead]

At Publishers Weekly Mead tagged ten of the best locked-room or impossible crime mysteries, including:

The Three Coffins/The Hollow Man by John Dickson Carr

Whenever I am asked what is my favorite locked-room mystery or impossible crime story, this is always my answer. The murder of Professor Charles Grimaud by the mysterious “hollow man” who vanishes without trace is a perfect locked-room problem. Meanwhile, the killing of illusionist Pierre Fley in a street carpeted with unmarked snow is an archetypal example of the popular impossible crime variant, the no-footprints puzzle.

As well as one of the most famous examples of the subgenre, this novel remains an indisputable masterpiece. Not only is it a tour-de-force of plotting, prose, and atmosphere, it also happens to contain within it one of the definitive critical overviews of the genre itself: the famous “locked-room lecture,” a perfect piece of meta-fiction in which Dr. Gideon Fell examines the very nature of the impossible crime. It’s a treatise which probes just about every category of impossible crime, providing numerous examples of methods by which they could be achieved. But is the solution to these two murders lurking somewhere in those scant few pages? Or is the locked-room lecture itself just a red herring?

When I first read this book, the brilliance of the solution left me giddy. Reading it again today, it has lost none of its impact. This book is one of the many reasons that John Dickson Carr remains (to borrow a phrase from Agatha Christie) the “supreme conjurer, the King of the Art of Misdirection.”

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue