Nine crime novels about stolen children

Sarah Stewart Taylor is the author of the Sweeney St. George series and the Maggie D'arcy series. The first Maggie D'arcy mystery, The Mountains Wild, was on numerous Best of the Year lists and was a Library Journal Pick of the Month. The fourth Maggie D'arcy mystery, A Stolen Child, was released in June, 2023.

[The Page 69 Test: The Mountains Wild; The Page 69 Test: A Distant Grave; Q&A with Sarah Stewart Taylor; The Page 69 Test: The Drowning Sea]

At CrimeReads the author tagged nine of "the richest and most chilling crime stories and novels about the disappearances of young children," including:

Rose Gold by Walter Mosley

The central missing person in Mosley’s thirteenth Easy Rawlins mystery is actually a college student named Rosemary Goldsmith, the daughter of a weapons manufacturer. But in a strikingly affecting subplot, Mosley also tracks down a five-year-old boy abducted while his mother grieves her dead husband. Mosley’s depiction of the mother’s exhausted terror is especially well-done, and the answers he finds strike a satisfying note.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top 10 books about chosen families

Fatin Abbas received her MFA from Hunter College, where she was a recipient of the Bernard Cohen Short Story Prize and the Miriam Weinberg Richter Award. Her writing has appeared in Granta, Freeman’s, and the Nation.

She lives in Berlin, Germany.

Abbas's new novel is Ghost Season.

At the Guardian she tagged ten books "that envision families of choice in all their beauty, complexity, and occasional dysfunction." One title on the list:

The Overstory by Richard Powers

To choose family in this epic environmental novel is to step outside of human society and into the natural world. A group of environmental activists side with trees against fellow humans who seek to raze ancient forests for profit. The trees in this novel are as alive and sharply drawn as the human characters, and, in their capacity for cooperation and communication, they provide a blueprint for a more balanced and just human society.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Overstory is among Andrew Siegrist's eight titles that capture the essence of Tennessee, Katie Yee's ten titles that make the Earth come alive, and Lia Leendertz's six best books to celebrate spring.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten must-read cat-and-mouse thrillers

At B&N Reads Brittany Bunzey tagged ten top cat-and-mouse thrillers, including:

Orphan X (Orphan X Series #1) by Gregg Hurwitz

Jack Reacher. Jason Bourne. Evan Smoak. With high-tech gadgetry and a made-for-movie plot, Orphan X is a brilliant first novel in a fascinating series. The ninth Smoak novel is coming in February, so this is the perfect time to jump into Greg Hurwitz’s thrillers.

Learn about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven titles featuring power duos

Drew Buxton is a writer and social worker from Texas.

His debut story collection So Much Heart is now available from With an X Books.

His script Bassy Gets Loose won Best Short Script at both the Independent Horror Movie Awards and the Peephole Filmfest.

Buxton's work has been featured in The Drift, Joyland, Electric Literature, Ninth Letter, and Vice among other publications.

At Electric Lit he tagged seven "great books about duos—odd couple books; buddy books, if you will." One title on the list:

Brother & Sister Enter the Forest by Richard Mirabella

Growing up, Willa always looked after her brother, Justin, while they endured their difficult childhood. As an adult, she’s created a steady life for herself as a nurse, but Justin is lost after his toxic boyfriend commits an unspeakable act. When he suddenly shows up at her doorstep, she is torn between wanting to help and not wanting to disrupt the peace she’s worked so hard to build for herself. In Justin, Mirabella has rendered a fully dimensional character. Justin has suffered, but he is not a perfect victim—flawed, human. Mirabella precisely captures the complex feeling of loving someone but struggling to deal with some of their traits, the loss felt when a loved one no longer resembles your memory of them from childhood.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine top novels about protagonists going back home

Sara Flannery Murphy grew up in Arkansas, where she divided her time between Little Rock and Eureka Springs, a small artists’ community in the Ozark Mountains. She received her MFA in creative writing at Washington University in St. Louis and studied library science in British Columbia. She lives in Utah with her husband and her two young sons.

Murphy is the author of The Possessions (2017), Girl One (2021), and The Wonder State (2023).

[My Book, The Movie: The Possessions; The Page 69 Test: The Possessions; Writers Read: Sara Flannery Murphy (March 2017).]

At CrimeReads she tagged "nine favorite novels about protagonists going back home – both thrillers and more lighthearted stories." One title on the list:

Unlikely Animals by Annie Hartnett

Emma Starling comes home to New Hampshire, ostensibly to look after her ailing father, but also because she’s feeling rudderless – hardly the success story her small town expects her to be. Hartnett uses her warm sense of humor to straddle the line between showing Everton as a town hindered by addiction and celebrating the complexity of the people who live there. Readers even meet the people who die in Everton, a Greek chorus from beyond the grave. Emma’s reckoning with her “unused” potential triggers some beautifully philosophical moments. By the end, I found myself almost wanting to live in this town. Or at least visit.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top 10 books by neglected female thinkers

Regan Penaluna is a writer with a master’s degree in journalism and a PhD in philosophy. Previously, she was an editor at Nautilus Magazine and Guernica, where she wrote and edited long-form stories and interviews. A feature she wrote was listed in the Atlantic as one of “100 Exceptional Works of Journalism.”

She lives in Brooklyn.

Penaluna's new book is How to Think Like a Woman: Four Women Philosophers Who Taught Me How to Love the Life of the Mind.

At the Guardian she tagged ten "books by women, some of them long overlooked, but all deserving to be better known." One title on the list:

This Sex Which Is Not One by Luce Irigaray

This is the only book by a living philosopher on my list, but I admire how French philosopher Irigaray aims at nothing less than to punch through the western canon and create an entirely new discourse for women. She’s captivated by the paradox of how language can free women from sexist discourse, if the entire discourse is sexist. She has some good advice. When you describe sexism in the texts of men, mimic the harmful content of their words – but do so unfaithfully. I have had endless fun with this.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven titles about daughters grieving their fathers

Kristina Busch is a lesbian writer living in Minnesota. She is an intern at Electric Literature, a prose editor for the Lumiere Review, and a staff editor at HerStry. She holds a BA in English from the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities.

At Electric Lit Busch tagged "seven books [that] portray the fragile and complex relationships between fathers and daughters, and the shock as that bond is forever severed," including:

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

A departure from the other books in this list is “family tragicomic” Fun Home by cartoonist Alison Bechdel. In this graphic memoir, Bechdel recalls her adolescence in a pristine Victorian house renovated by her father, a volatile man she struggled to connect with. When she comes out to her parents as a lesbian in the form of a letter, she learns that her father had affairs with men. This stuns Bechdel, and things become more complicated when her father dies weeks later after being hit by a truck, which she determines to be suicide and the “effect” of her coming out. In Fun Home, she desires to be truly seen by her father, a man who cannot truly live authentically himself, and seeks out this connection again through the page as she reflects on her childhood and his death. This heart-wrenching, beautifully illustrated book is considered a classic in the sapphic community for good reason.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Fun Home is among Andrew G. S. Thurman's four "bad dad" memoirs, Sam Miller's ten top books about fathers, and Ann Patchett's best books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five time travel stories that explore what it means to be human

Holly Smale is the author of Geek Girl, Model Misfit, Picture Perfect, and All That Glitters. She was unexpectedly spotted by a top London modeling agency at the age of fifteen and spent the following two years falling over on catwalks, going bright red and breaking things she couldn’t afford to replace. By the time Smale had graduated from Bristol University with a BA in English Literature and an MA in Shakespeare she had given up modeling and set herself on the path to becoming a writer.

Smale's new novel is Cassandra in Reverse.

At Lit Hub she tagged five of the best time travel stories that explore what it means to be human, including:

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

In this beautiful novel, Kate Atkinson uses a form of time-travel to investigate the fragility of being alive in a warm, luminous and witty way. Ursula is consistently dying and being re-born—with each life repeating until she uses her memories (and often instinct) to send it in slightly different directions and make alternative choices. One of the biggest issues of writing a time travel book is making sure that the repetition isn’t boring for the reader, and this book does that sublimely. Every sentence is so beautifully and clearly observed, and its companion book (A God In Ruins) plays with an off-shoot of the same basic idea: where would we all end up if we got another chance?

Read about the other entries on the list.

Life After Life is among Catriona Silvey's five top time-bending books, Clare Mackintosh's ten great books with “What if?” moments, Emily Temple's fifty best contemporary novels over 500 pages, Miriam Parker indisputably best dogs in (contemporary) literature, Liese O'Halloran Schwarz's top ten books about self-reinvention, Caitlin Kleinschmidt tagged twelve moving novels of the Second World War, Jenny Shank's top five innovative novels that mess with chronology, Dell Villa's top twelve books from 2013 to give your mom, and Judith Mackrell's five best young fictional heroines in coming-of-age novels.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five mysteries set in still waters

Alice Blanchard is an award-winning author.

Her latest novel is The Shadow Girls.

At CrimeReads, Blanchard tagged five mysteries involving murderous lakes, including:

The House Across the Lake, by Riley Sager

This twisty psychological thriller is about a widowed actress named Casey Fletcher who seeks solace in a peaceful lakeside house in Vermont after her husband has drowned in this very lake. Now Casey spends her time grieving, drinking too much, and snooping on an attractive couple, Katherine and Tom, who live across the lake. When Katherine suddenly vanishes, Casey discovers things aren’t what they seem—and she suspects there’s something evil in the lake. It’s an updated Rear Window with lots of surprising turns. Just when you think you’ve figured it out—you haven’t.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten books that will change how you think about fairy tales

Charlie Jane Anders is the author of the young adult Unstoppable trilogy: Victories Greater Than Death, Dreams Bigger Than Heartbreak, and Promises Stronger Than Darkness. She's also the author of the short story collection Even Greater Mistakes, and Never Say You Can't Survive, a book about how to use creative writing to get through hard times. Her other books include The City in the Middle of the Night and All the Birds in the Sky. She's won the Hugo, Nebula, Sturgeon, Lambda Literary, Crawford and Locus Awards.

In 2016 at Gizmondo she tagged ten books that will change how you see the fairy tale, including:

Once Upon a Time: A Short History of Fairy Tale by Marina Warner

Marina Warner is one of the great experts on fairy tales, and in this book she sets out to create a simple map of the territory, ranging from the familiar to the unknown. Warner covers the diversity and strangeness of fairy tales, as well as explaining how they came to be sanitized and bowdlerized for young audiences. And she looks at how the same stories crossed borders and cultures, changing themselves to adapt to new contexts while proving robust and unkillable. The Guardian calls this book “wide-ranging and wonderful,” and “a winning exploration of the scope and power of fairy stories.”

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven crime titles featuring special events going off the rails

Jamie Day lives in one of those picture-perfect, coastal New England towns you see in the movies. And just like the movies, Day has two children and an adorable dog to fawn over. When not writing or reading, Day enjoys yoga, the ocean, cooking, and long walks on the beach with the dog, or the kids, or sometimes both.

At CrimeReads the author tagged seven "favorite twisted tales of special events that go from pleasant to catastrophic," including:

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

What happens when a lavish birthday party, thrown by a powerful Japanese businessman who is also a devoted opera fan, takes a drastic turn as terrorists storm the mansion where the party is taking place? A weeks-long hostage situation ensues when the terrorists learn their intended kidnapping target is not in attendance. Patchett, a master at conveying the depth and complexity of human emotion and connection, explores the intricate ways in which beauty can enter our lives even under the bleakest of circumstances.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Bel Canto is among Mark Skinner's twenty great contemporary love stories, Nicole Holofcener’s ten favorite books, Jenny Shank's top five fabulous works of fiction for musicians, Jeff Somers's top five novels set in a single pressure cooker location, Tatjana Soli's six favorite books that conjure exotic locales, Kathryn Williams's six top novels set in just one place, Dell Villa's top eight books to read when you’re in the mood to cry for days, John Mullen's ten best birthday parties in literature, and Joyce Hackett's top ten musical novels.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight titles for every era of Barbie

Claudia Guthrie is a writer covering culture, entertainment, and lifestyle content. Her work has appeared in ELLE, The Muse, Food52, and more. Originally from Kansas City, she now resides in Denver, where you can find her reading the newest thriller or knitting sweaters for her cats.

At Electric Lit she tagged eight "books for the different eras of Barbie," including:

CEO Barbie: Under the Influence by Noelle Crooks

A woman of many professions, Barbie has worked more than 250 careers, including astronaut, journalist, and firefighter. And in 1985, CEO Barbie conquered the business world. So what career would 2023 #GirlBoss Barbie be waltzing into in her high heels? The answer is obvious: an influencer, duhhh!

In Under the Influence, Harper Cruz is broke—like might be evicted soon broke—after being laid off from her publishing job. When she stumbles upon a lucrative job listing for “Visionary Support Strategist” to famous influencer/self-help guru Charlotte Greene, she goes for it and trades New York City for Tennessee. At The Greenhouse, it’s all “we’re not colleagues, we’re a family,” which is, of course, code for toxic workplace where there’s motivational messages on tap (literally in the bathroom) and mandatory Katy Perry dance parties. As She.E.O Barbie would say: “If you can dream it, you can be it!”

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue