Eight novels featuring artificial intelligence

Evie Green is a pseudonym for a British author who has written professionally for her entire adult life. She lives by the sea in England with her husband, children, and guinea pigs, and loves writing in the very early morning, fueled by coffee.

Her latest novel in the US is The New One.

At CrimeReads, Green tagged eight novels featuring artificial intelligence, including:

Every Line of You by Naomi Gibson

Teenage Lydia is brilliant at coding. She loves Henry — Henry is the only one who just gets her, and with her dysfunctional and tragic family background, he gives her the stability and understanding she craves. There’s just one problem: Henry has no body. He started as a line of code and has grown into a sentient and charismatic AI, Lydia’s only friend. With Henry’s help Lydia confronts her problems in a way that goes beyond empowerment and into something altogether darker. When a mysterious government agent starts taking an interest in the hacking that Lydia and Henry are doing together things spiral, and the peace Lydia has always craved recedes over the horizon.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven novels about selling your soul

Jennifer Banash is a former professor of English and creative writing, and author of the novels Silent Alarm, a finalist for the American Library Association’s Best Fiction for Young Adults; White Lines; Simply Irresistible; In Too Deep; and The Elite.

Her new novel is The Rise and Fall of Ava Arcana.

At Electric Lit Banash tagged seven "books about losing your way on the climb to the top, where the pursuit of fame and power beyond your wildest dreams may be the ultimate devil’s bargain." One title on the list:

Look at Me by Jennifer Egan

I have always been fascinated by celebrity, but even more so by imposters. Growing up, I devoured all of Highsmith’s Ripley books like candy. Egan’s Look at Me is, in my opinion, an overlooked masterpiece, light-years ahead of its time in prefiguring our current obsession with influencer culture. Egan’s novel is the story of two Charlottes: Charlotte Swenson, a model, who after a horrific car wreck, is left with eighty titanium screws in her face, and her namesake, the daughter of her best friend from high school, a precocious suburban teen coming of age in small town Illinois. Although the surgery model Charlotte endures after the crash succeeds in restoring her former beauty, she is now weirdly unrecognizable, a veritable stranger in the glamorous world she once occupied so seamlessly. Eventually, she becomes involved with an Internet start-up seeking to monetize the lives of both “Ordinary” and “Extraordinary” people, and her alter-ego becomes a viral sensation for viewers to obsess over, watching and cataloging her every move. The novel explores how and why identities shift throughout the course of a life, and how one’s teenage years are a catalyst for the person we will one day become. But most of all, it serves as a warning of the very real dangers of constructing an identity for the sole purpose of mass consumption.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Look At Me is among Jenny Shank's five big, engrossing books and Julie Christie's seven favorite books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven crime books where characters make terrible yet totally believable decisions

Lina Chern has been published in Mystery Weekly, The Marlboro Review, The Bellingham Review, Rhino, The Collagist, Black Fox Literary Magazine, and The Coil. She lives in the Chicago area with her family.

Play the Fool is Chern's debut novel.

At CrimeReads she tagged seven of her "favorite books where characters make terrible yet totally believable decisions," including:

Out of Sight, Elmore Leonard

As a rule, Elmore Leonard’s heroes – even the criminal ones – don’t make bad decisions. They’re heroes in the classic sense: confident, quick with a gun or a quip, damn-near invincible.

This is why Out of Sight is such a delight. The worst possible thing deadly-cool federal marshal Karen Sisco and fugitive bank robber Jack Foley can do is fall for each other, considering she’s trying to haul his ass back to prison. Leonard is the undisputed master of setting up shop in his characters’ heads, compelling our full-buy-in into their most harebrained choices. It’s tremendously appealing for strong characters to show vulnerability, and the conversation in which Sisco and Foley, alone in a cocktail bar at the top of a Detroit skyscraper, admit they’re powerless to stop what’s going on between them – is heart-stopping.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five SFF books about radical community

Phoebe Wagner is an author, editor, and academic writing at the intersection of speculative fiction and climate change. Their debut novel is A Shot of Gin (2023), and their new novella is When We Hold Each Other Up (2023). She is the editor of three solarpunk anthologies, including Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk & Eco-Speculation. They blog about speculative literature at the Hugo-winning Nerds of a Feather, Flock Together. Wagner holds a PhD in literature, and she is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Lycoming College in Pennsylvania.

At Tor.com they tagged five favorite SFF books about radical community, including:

Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

Butler’s classic dystopia demonstrates that community is vital to surviving social collapse. As a teenager, Lauren doesn’t believe her community in a walled cul-de-sac is prepared for the worsening social and environmental issues. The community led by her Baptist preacher father is focused on the past, and the idea that the world might return to the “good old days.”

Lauren believes the only way to prepare for disaster is to read the future by examining what has happened to the communities around them and changing to adapt and prepare. When her community is destroyed by people outside the walls, she takes to the road in search of a new home. She gathers two survivors, but while she is wary of others, she soon attracts people to her group. The community forms around kindness as a method for survival. At first Lauren is wary of others, but when she trusts her instincts to help people–such as two young parents with a baby–she attracts her strongest supporters. Rather than focusing on people with resources, she embraces those who need the help of others.

This need and desire to move beyond just survival to some sort of hopeful future gathers a diverse group of people to Lauren.In addition to a strong, trusting community, Lauren shares her spiritual belief called Earthseed, a religion based on the idea that “god is change” and that such change can be shaped. Lauren shapes change in her life by growing her community and finding a place to build a permanent home called Acorn. There, Lauren plans to live sustainably while strengthening the community by encouraging new skills, new friendships, and welcoming those in need.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Parable of the Sower is among Jessie Greengrass's nine haunting postapocalyptic novels and Liz Harmer's five works involving weird, unsettling isolation.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten terrifying serial killer thrillers

Ren DeStefano lives in Connecticut, where she was born and raised. When she’s not writing thrillers, she’s listening to true crime podcasts and crocheting way too many blankets.

Her new novel is How I'll Kill You.

"The best serial killer thrillers are the ones we pretend could never happen in real life," writes DeStefano at Publishers Weekly, "but still touch upon our deepest-held fear that anything is possible." One entry from her list of the ten most disturbing titles in the genre:

Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter

Family trauma runs deep in this story about two sisters and a past that haunts them. Decades ago, their sister went missing and was never found. Now, the surviving sisters are estranged and living very different lives. But when another girl goes missing, the truth comes to the surface in a very unsettling and unexpected way.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Pretty Girls is among Stacy Willingham's five best serial killer thrillers, Leanne Kale Sparks's six novels that push the limit of acceptable thriller storylines, and Harry Dolan's eight top crime novels about people haunted by their pasts.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top alternate history thrillers

Josh Weiss is a first-time author from South Jersey. Raised in a proud Jewish home, he was instilled with an appreciation for his cultural heritage from a very young age. Today, Weiss is utterly fascinated with the convergence of Judaism and popular culture in film, television, comics, literature, and other media. After college, he became a freelance entertainment journalist, writing stories for SYFY WIRE, The Hollywood Reporter, Forbes, and Marvel Entertainment.

Weiss's new novel is Sunset Empire, the thrilling alternate history sequel to Beat the Devils.

[My Book, The Movie: Beat the Devils; The Page 69 Test: Beat the Devils; My Book, The Movie: Sunset Empire]

At CrimeReads Weiss recommended ten must-read alternate history thrillers, including:

In the Presence of Mine Enemies, Harry Turtledove (2003)

It’s hard to discuss alternate history without mentioning Harry Turtledove, one of the most (if not the most) prolific writer of the genre. Not only is the author’s output impressive, but the work itself is astonishingly great every time. One might even go so far as to call Mr. Turtledove the Stephen King of multiversal storytelling.

I haven’t even made a tiny dent in his bibliography, but In the Presence of Mine Enemies is one of those reads I simply could not put down. As a practicing Jew — and, more importantly, a practicing Jew whose family was directly affected by the Holocaust — making my way through the novel felt like a constant panic attack.

In this universe, the United States remained neutral and the Axis powers conquered the world. Nearly half a century later, the self-proclaimed “Germanic Empire” flexes its supremacy on the global stage with manned missions to Mars, the radioactive remains of the Liberty Bell, and a society completely devoid of Jews…or so they think.

A number of Hebraic individuals actually survived the Final Solution and have been living (and procreating) in secret all these years — just like the Marranos of the Spanish Inquisition. If anyone in this civilization raised on a steady diet of hate were to find out the truth…

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top 10 stories about wolves

Erica Berry is a writer based in her hometown of Portland, Oregon. She has an MFA from the University of Minnesota, where she was a College of Liberal Arts Fellow. Her writing has appeared in The Guardian, The New York Times Magazine, The Yale Review, Outside Magazine, Catapult, The Atlantic, Guernica, and elsewhere. Winner of the Steinberg Essay Prize and the Kurt Brown Prize in Nonfiction, she has received fellowships and funding from the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, Tin House, the Ucross Foundation, the Minnesota State Arts Board, and the Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources. A former Writer-in-Residence with the National Writers Series in Traverse City, Michigan, she is currently a Writer-in-the-Schools with Literary Arts in Portland.

[The Page 99 Test: Wolfish]

Berry's new book is Wolfish: Wolf, Self, and the Stories We Tell About Fear.

At the Guardian she tagged ten stories that "made me consider the wolf and our vision of it in an important new light," including:

The Wolf [US title: American Wolf] by Nate Blakeslee

In tracing the reign of O-Six, a wolf mother renowned for her empathy and leadership in Yellowstone Park, Blakeslee pulls off a high-wire journalistic feat, unspooling moments of the wolf’s life as if from some hidden Go-Pro camera. He patched together these novelistic scenes after receiving more than 2,500 pages of notes from dedicated wolf-watchers and the result, rendered in high-definition prose, at times makes you feel you are inside a wolf’s skin. He describes O-Six seeing a car as “like anything else on the landscape that was neither predator nor prey – like a rock or a tree or even a bison. It wouldn’t harm her, and she couldn’t eat it; it was a nonentity.” Even now, years after first encountering this book, I sometimes see a car and think of this sentence – of how the car would appear if I were a wolf.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten novels with heroines who are hot messes

Justine Sullivan was born and raised just outside of Baltimore, Maryland, where she failed to learn how to shuck a crab and never attended a single Orioles game. She did, however, discover a passion for reading at her local Harford County Library. She went on to study English Literature at the University of Delaware and then earned her master's in journalism from Boston University and has since spent a number of years working in both newsrooms and the world of branded content. Sullivan lives outside of Boston with her husband and two terribly behaved dogs. He Said He Would Be Late is her debut novel.

At Lit Hub Sullivan tagged ten favorite novels with heroines who are hot messes, including:

Wahala by Nikki May

Why have one hot mess heroine when you can have three? In Nigerian culture, “wahala” means “trouble.” So sets the stage for this delightfully messy novel about three Anglo-Nigerian besties navigating friendship, motherhood, ambition and betrayal.

This book is juicy; so many twists and turns, I had whiplash by the last page.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight titles with all the band drama of "Daisy Jones & the Six"

At Vulture Jessica Gentile tagged eight books with all the band drama of Daisy Jones & the Six, including:

Making Rumours: The Inside Story of the Classic Fleetwood Mac Album, by Ken Cailait and Steve Stiefel

Rumours is an album chock full of sensational hits with just as much sensational interpersonal drama behind it. It’s an obvious inspiration for Daisy Jones & the Six’s Aurora — if you’re familiar with the dynamics within Fleetwood Mac you’ll quickly recognize the parallels. The 1977 record gave us the songs that earwormed their way up the Billboard charts, onto our TikTok feeds, and deep into our lovelorn hearts for decades. If you’re interested in learning more about how Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham’s screaming matches (much akin to Billy and Daisy’s) resulted in the stone-cold pop classics, this is the read for you.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven crime titles that engage with reality TV

Molly Odintz is the Senior Editor for CrimeReads and the editor of Austin Noir, forthcoming from Akashic Books. She grew up in Austin and worked as a bookseller at BookPeople, and recently returned to Central Texas after five years in NYC. She likes cats, crime novels, and coffee.

At CrimeReads Odintz tagged seven "great thrillers and mysteries coming out over the past few years that engage with reality

TV, its artifice, its struggies, and its discontents." One title on the list:

Sarah Strohmeyer, We Love to Entertain

Home improvement gone haywire!!! In We Love to Entertain, three teams are competing to win a design and home improvement contest on a reality show called “To the Manor Build,” but disaster strikes when the engaged couple rehabbing an estate in Vermont disappears on the eve of their wedding. Their assistant, already ostracized by her home town for a mysterious incident in high school, quickly becomes the main suspect, but her mother is determined to clear her name and find the real culprit.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight titles with characters who go to therapy

Lisa Zhuang is an intern at Electric Literature. She holds a BA in Creative Writing from Emory University and currently resides in mid-Missouri.

At Electric Lit she tagged eight books that "showcase characters who receive some kind of mental health care," including:

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

Eleanor Oliphant is a bit of a social misfit, but she’s fine with that. Really. She enjoys her life of solitude, routine and her weekly “chats” with Mummy. She even splurges on pizza and vodka over the weekends. Nothing is missing—until she sees Johnnie Lomond in concert and realizes he is the love of her life. What follows is one woman’s unhinged attempt to fill every empty vacuum of her life with her celebrity crush. When Eleanlor’s attempts predictably prove unsustainable, she subsequently crashes and burns.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine is among Emily R. Austin's seven books that will make you feel happy to be sad, Fay Bound Alberti's top ten books about loneliness and Liese O'Halloran Schwarz's top ten books about self-reinvention.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven novels featuring multicultural London

Cecile Pin grew up in Paris and New York City. She moved to London at eighteen to study Philosophy at University College London, followed by an MA at King’s College London. She writes for Bad Form Review, was longlisted for their Young Writer’s prize and is a London Writers Awards 2021 winner (Literary Fiction category). Her debut novel is Wandering Souls.

At Lit Hub she tagged seven favorite "novels that deal with displacement in London," including:

The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak

On the then-divided island of Cyprus in the 1970s, two teenagers, one a Greek Cypriot the other a Turkish Cypriot, meet at a taverna on the island they both call home. There, a fig tree bears witness to their growing love, and their ultimate departure – war breaks out, and the capital is destroyed.

Years later, a Ficus tree grows in Ada’s back garden in London, the only connection she has to an island – and past – she knows little about. A troubled teenager, Ada is given a school assignment which leads her to untangle her family’s troubled history.

Dealing with war and its aftermaths, loss, love, and also the environment, The Island of Missing Trees is a wonderful tale about belonging and longing for a home you don’t know.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue