Seven fun novels that reimagine the afterlife

Maxie Dara is a writer and actor from Ontario, Canada. She has been a freelance journalist focusing on the local arts and culture scene for more than five years, with bylines in publications such as Hamilton Magazine and Beyond James, among others. She is also a two-time award-winning playwright, taking home the Best of Fringe award at the 2017 Hamilton Fringe Festival for the musical comedy This Is Not a Musical: The Musical! and the 2020 Torpedo Prize for her play Alone Together, a pandemic drama. Dara knew she wanted to be a writer at the age of seven, when she first fell in love with the written word. She also wanted to be a mermaid but has mostly focused on the writing side of things.

Her new novel is A Grim Reaper's Guide to Catching a Killer.

At Electric Lit Dara tagged "seven fun, innovative reads that really put some 'life' into the afterlife." One title on the list:

A Rip Through Time by Kelley Armstrong

It takes a pretty special detective to solve their own attempted murder—twice. After being strangled in an alleyway in modern-day Edinburgh, Scotland, Detective Mallory wakes up in the body of a Victorian maid who’d had the very same rope around her neck 150 years earlier. Now Mallory gets to put her 21st-century knowledge to the test and help her cute undertaker boss figure out who keeps trying to kill her across lifetimes. This book struck the perfect balance between pithy, macabre, and supernatural to keep me hooked (though it certainly didn’t hurt that I got to read it while traveling through Edinburgh myself, thankfully with no ropes involved).

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top fictional female detectives

Alison Gaylin is a USA Today and international bestselling author whose novels have won the Edgar and Shamus awards. Her work has been published in numerous countries and has been nominated for many awards, including the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Macavity, Anthony, ITW Thriller and Strand Book Award.

[The Page 69 Test: Into the Dark; The Page 69 Test: What Remains of Me; The Page 69 Test: If I Die Tonight; The Page 69 Test: The Collective]

Gaylin's newest book is Robert B. Parker's Buzz Kill.

At CrimeReads Gaylin tagged six of her favorite fictional female detectives, including:

Dayna Anderson (Kellye Garrett): Like your PI books with a side of humor and a large dollop of pop culture? I definitely do, which I why I devoured the Detective by Day books, which feature this resilient and clever actress-turned-apprentice PI. While there are only two books in this series (the first is 2017’s Hollywood Homicide) Dayna’s a stand-out leading lady, who navigates the glitzy and seedy world of showbiz with aplomb – making readers feel like true Hollywood insiders.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Mrshal Zeringue

Eight thrilling titles about getting what you want by taking it

Brendan Gillen is an Emmy-winning writer living in Brooklyn. His fiction has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and appears in Wigleaf, Taco Bell Quarterly, New Delta Review, HAD, X-R-A-Y, South Carolina Review and elsewhere. His debut chapbook is I've Given This a Lot of Thought, and his first novel Static.

At Electric Lit Gillen tagged eight "favorite books [that] deal with stealing in some capacity, or at the very least, getting the things you want by taking them from others." One title on the list:

Teenager by Bud Smith

Teenager is much more than a road trip novel. In some ways, it’s the adolescent cousin of [Joy Williams's] Breaking & Entering. Trade a married couple and beach home B&E for a pair of Bonnie and Clyde-esque teen lovers and a healthy dose of grand theft auto, and you’re in the right area code.

Seventeen-year-old Kody Rawlee Green and his girlfriend Tella Carticelli, who he calls Teal Cartwheels, are the stars of the show. Within the first few pages, Kody escapes from juvenile detention, murders Teal’s parents to save her from abuse, steals a car and peels off with the love of his life in the passenger seat. From there, we’re off on a surreal journey across America following two teens whose trauma has forced them to grow up much too fast.

Teenager is about what it means to be an adolescent in all of its aching, yearning, idiocy and explosiveness. It’s about what happens when your heart writes checks that your brain can’t cash. The voice is unexpected, funny, full of pathos in every sentence. If you’re looking for plausible plot and hyper-real characters, look elsewhere. But if you’re looking for the truth about what it means to be young and wild and free and in love? Look no further.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top thrillers and horror novels set in hotels

Stephanie Wrobel is an international and USA Today bestselling author. Her debut, Darling Rose Gold, has sold rights in twenty-one countries and was a finalist for the Edgar® Award for Best First Novel.

[The Page 69 Test: Darling Rose Gold; My Book, The Movie: Darling Rose Gold; Q&A with Stephanie Wrobel]

Wrobel's new novel is The Hitchcock Hotel.

At CrimeReads she tagged six excellent thrillers and horror novels set in hotels, including:

The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay

I admit that with this selection, I’m stretching the definition of hotel, but if you’ve yet to read Cabin, I promise you’ll thank me later. Seven-year-old Wen and her parents, Andrew and Eric, rent a cabin in a remote part of New Hampshire. One afternoon a giant man shows up in the yard and befriends Wen. With him come three additional strangers, all carrying terrifying, unusual weapons and insisting they need the family’s help in order to save the world. I highly recommend reading this book in one sitting. Don’t forget to breathe.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Cabin at the End of the World is among Jane Hennigan's six top quiet apocalypse titles.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eleven of the best recent vampire titles

At B&N Reads Isabelle McConville tagged eleven of the greatest, recent bloodsucking books. One title on the list:

The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

A funny, campy take on a modern-day vampire invasion, Grady Hendrix (The Final Girl Support Group, How to Sell a Haunted House) tells the story of a woman’s accidental entanglement with a monster.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires is among James S. Murray's five books about women fighting their way out.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top books with strong tween characters

Stuart Gibbs is the New York Times bestselling author of the Charlie Thorne series, FunJungle series, Moon Base Alpha series, Once Upon a Tim series, and Spy School series. He has written screenplays, worked on a whole bunch of animated films, developed TV shows, been a newspaper columnist, and researched capybaras (the world’s largest rodents).

The newest book in the Spy School series is Spy School Goes Wild.

[The Page 69 Test: Space Case; The Page 69 Test: Spy Ski School]

At Lit Hub Gibbs tagged ten great books with strong tween characters, including:

Christina Diaz Gonzalez, Concealed

This book won the prestigious Edgar Award for best mystery, and it’s easy to see why when you read it. Katrina and her family are in the Federal Witness Protection Program—although Karina hasn’t ever been told why.

But when their location is leaked and her parents suddenly disappear, Karina is suddenly in a race to find the answers—and her parents as well. This is a taut, page-turning thriller that I’m very, very jealous of.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight top books about women being bad

Arielle Egozi has been featured across major publications for her destigmatizing work. She was Salon’s inaugural sex and love advice columnist, and has spoken on stages around the world. As a writer and creative director, they use their queer, Latine, and neurodivergent perspective to center the stories of stigmatized bodies and identities. She shares a bed with her two perrhijos and partner.

Being Bad: Breaking the Rules and Becoming Everything You're Not Supposed to Be is her first book.

At Electric Lit Egozi tagged eight books that are "not only achingly well-written, but infused with the particular perspective of those who know what it is to be on the outside—even if they pretend not to be." One title on their list:

Nevada by Imogen Binnie

Easily one of my favorites, this book is often considered the first work of the new “trans lit”. Written by a trans woman for other trans women, the novel follows Maria, a Brooklyn internet blogging trans woman who writes tips for other trans women online. Although she’s positioned herself as an “educator” of sorts for baby trans women, she’s a mess. Her external and internal lives come undone as she gets dumped, gets fired, and borrows-but-actually-steals her best friend’s car and begins a roadtrip across the country, meeting a young sales assistant at a Walmart in Nevada who she can tell is maybe, probably, trans. She takes James under her wing and you’ll have to read the rest because it’s an absolute cult classic for a reason, primarily because it’s not written for anyone else but Binnie’s own community.

Read about the other entries on the list at Electric Lit.

--Marshal Zeringue

Fifteen random books every environmentalist should read

At The Revelator John R. Platt tagged fifteen random books that every environmentalist should read. One title on the list:

The Einstein Effect: How the World’s Favorite Genius Got into Our Cars, Our Bathrooms, and Our Minds by Benyamin Cohen

A planet-hopping travelog through the late scientist’s achievements and impact on the world, including several surprising environmental tie-ins. You’ll gain a new appreciation for the white-haired icon and a better understanding of how one person can have a powerful ripple effect that lasts for decades. Plus, you get to find out what happened to Einstein’s brain after he died. (Spoiler alert: It ain’t pretty).

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven eerie crime novels

In addition to her eerie psychological thriller, The Therapist’s Daughter, Megan Taylor’s dark novels include We Wait, her take on a traditional haunted house mystery, and she’s also had many short stories published, some of which are included in her collection, The Woman Under the Ground. Taylor lives in Nottingham, UK, where she’s working on her next twisted thriller and a second collection.

At CrimeReads she tagged seven crime novels "steeped in the kind of eerie atmosphere that threatens to unsettle your perceptions and infect your dreams." One title on the list:

Sarah Waters, Affinity

It was tricky to decide which wonderful Waters novel to choose. The Little Stranger, which begins as a traditional haunted house story and, layer by layer, becomes something creepily else, was tempting, but I’m going with Affinity because, for all its overtly gothic tropes, it’s concerned with crime and conspiracy from the outset.

Margaret Prior is a volunteer visitor at Millbank prison when she meets disgraced spiritualist Selena Dawes, convicted for her role in an unexplained death at a séance. With her trademark twists and reveals, Waters deftly delivers the noirish story of the affinity between these two women, but what lingers is the novel’s darkness. Dread slithers through love and longing as queasily as the crawling fingers of Selena’s spirit guide’s waxy hand.

Read about the other entries on the list at CrimeReads.

Affinity is among M. M. DeLuca's five great books that feature mediums & the spirit world.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven mysterious and unsettling novels set on campuses

Caroline Wolff is a writer and editor. She holds an MFA in Fiction from New York University, where she also taught undergraduate creative writing. She lives in downtown Manhattan.

Wolff's new novel The Wayside

takes place at Paloma College, a (fictional) liberal arts school in Northern California. The novel opens with a pair of hikers discovering the body of Jake Cleary, a student at Paloma, at the bottom of a cliff. Local police deem Jake’s death a suicide. But as Jake’s mother Kate uncovers the secrets of his life on campus, she becomes convinced that something even more sinister might have pushed Jake over the edge.

[Q&A with Caroline Wolff]

At Electric Lit Wolff tagged seven more mysterious and unsettling novels set on campuses, including:

Vita Nostra by Marina and Sergey Dyachenko

The first in a trilogy by a Ukrainian husband-and-wife writing team, Vita Nostra lingers in some liminal space along the spectrum of dark fantasy, speculative fiction, and (stay with me here) metaphysical treatise. Briefly, it follows Sasha, a teenaged girl who’s recruited to enter a mysterious university. There, Sasha and her peers undergo increasingly bizarre tests, such as memorizing nonsense passages and listening to excruciatingly long recordings of absolute silence. The students are never told the purpose of these lessons—only that they’re of vital importance, and that progressing through them will result in uncanny changes in their biological and psychological makeups. If they fail, their instructors warn them, their loved ones will die.

This is an intellectually rigorous read, as we’re left to our own devices to uncover both the what and the why of Sasha’s byzantine education. The translation from its original Russian captures the bleak setting for a deeply unsettling sensory experience overall. But this is incredibly rewarding, too, and it’ll stay with you long after you read the final page.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven mysteries featuring librarian sleuths

New York Times bestselling author, Sofie Kelly, writes the Magical Cats mysteries, set in the small town of Mayville Heights, Minnesota. As Sofie Ryan, she is the author of the popular bestselling Second Chance Cat mysteries that feature repurpose shop owner, Sarah Grayson, a group of senior sleuths and the world's oldest computer hacker.

Kelly has been a late night disk jockey—which explains her love of coffee--and taught absolutely terrified adults how to swim. Like Kathleen Paulson in the Magical Cats books, she practices Wu style Tai Chi. Kelly is also a mixed-media artist and likes to prowl thrift shops looking for things to re-purpose in her art.

Her new novel is Furever After.

[My Book, The Movie: Curiosity Thrilled the Cat; The Page 69 Test: Faux Pas; Writers Read: Sofie Kelly (August 2024); My Book, The Movie: Furever After]

At CrimeReads Kelly tagged seven mysteries featuring bookish sleuths, including:

Ann Beckett in the Village Library Mysteries by Elizabeth Spann Craig

Set in the small town of Whitby, North Carolina, this series offers the charm of a small town, quirky supporting characters and a smart, resourceful amateur sleuth in librarian Ann Beckett. (And yes, there’s a cat.)

Start with Checked Out.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top books shaped by lists

Sophie Ratcliffe is professor of literature and creative criticism at the University of Oxford and a fellow and tutor at Lady Margaret Hall. In addition to her scholarly books, including On Sympathy, she has published commentary pieces and book reviews for the Guardian, the New Statesman, and the Times Literary Supplement, among other outlets, and has served a judge for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction and the Wellcome Book Prize.

Ratcliffe's latest book is Loss, A Love Story: Imagined Histories and Brief Encounters.

At the Guardian she tagged five of the best books shaped by lists, including:

Schindler’s Ark by Thomas Keneally

Published in the US as Schindler’s List, Keneally’s Booker prize-winning historical novel tells of the German industrialist who saved more than 1,000 Jewish factory workers from Nazi death camps. Oskar Schindler used the medium by which the Nazis worked – the dehumanising list – to save lives, writing a list of his own by which he extricated his employees: “Oskar’s list, in the mind of some, was already more than a mere tabulation … It was a sweet chariot which might swing low.” The novel also focuses on the tragedy of those not carried to safety. Schindler’s list “is life”, but “all round its cramped margins lies the gulf”.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue