Fourteen top essay collections

At GQ (UK edition) Josiah Gogarty tagged the "best essay collections for proving how amazingly well-read you are." One title on the list:

Feel Free by Zadie Smith

For all Zadie Smith’s talents and successes as a novelist, some in the literary world think her real strength is non-fiction. They have a strong case: Feel Free, Smith’s second essay collection, is full of superb writing. She’s razor-sharp at times, but also unafraid to confess genuine love and admiration for the subject at hand. The book and exhibition reviews are deft, but the highlights come with weirder subjects: a meditation on joy, in relation to ecstasy and British rave culture, and an improbable but brilliant comparison between Justin Bieber and the philosopher Martin Buber.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Amateur sleuths with offbeat jobs

Molly MacRae spent twenty years in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Upper East Tennessee, where she managed The Book Place, an independent bookstore; may it rest in peace. Before the lure of books hooked her, she was curator of the history museum in Jonesborough, Tennessee’s oldest town.

MacRae lives with her family in Champaign, Illinois, where she recently retired from connecting children with books at the public library.

Her latest novel is There'll Be Shell to Pay.

[My Book, The Movie: Plaid and Plagiarism; The Page 69 Test: Plaid and Plagiarism; The Page 69 Test: Scones and Scoundrels; My Book, The Movie: Scones and Scoundrels; 
The Page 69 Test: Crewel and Unusual; The Page 69 Test: Heather and Homicide; Q&A with Molly MacRae; Writers Read: Molly MacRae (July 2024); The Page 69 Test: Come Shell or High Water; My Book, The Movie: Come Shell or High Water]

At CrimeReads MacRae tagged a few favorite amateur sleuths with offbeat jobs, including:

Gloria Lamerino, protagonist in the Periodical Tables Mysteries by Camille Minichino, is a former Berkeley physics professor. Gloria left California for her hometown, Revere, Massachusetts, and now works part-time as a science consultant for the Revere police department. Her former and current jobs are offbeat only because so many cozy mysteries feature crafters, cooks, café owners, and the like. Gloria is fifty-six, turning gray, and thinks of herself as amply proportioned. She has brains and hips. She uses her science background and everything she absorbed from the dynamics and traditions of her Italian family to help her solve murders in her own well-mannered way. There’s something else offbeat about her—she doesn’t live in a quaint or cute cottage and she hasn’t inherited an inn or B&B. She lives in an apartment above a friend’s funeral home. These are intelligent, well-written, tightly-paced mysteries with appealing, sympathetic characters and a real Boston feel. There are eight books in the series and several short stories.

Read about the other entries on MacRae's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Four horror books for the Fourth of July

At Book Riot Emily Martin tagged "four horror novels to get you in the mood for the 4th of July this year (…or not)." One title on the list:

Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark

This alternative history horror novel imagines the KKK as literal demons. The release of the film Birth of a Nation in 1915 spread hatred across America and spawned hellish members of the Klan who planned to proliferate violence wherever they went. The only ones who can stop them are Maryse Boudreaux and her fellow resistance fighters. But the Klan has plans for Macon, Georgia, and Maryse and her demon-hunters will have to resist them with everything they’ve got.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight mysteries and thrillers starring older sleuths and criminals

Sue Hincenbergs is a former television producer who has worked on multiple award-winning programs. She lives in Toronto with her (very much alive) husband, her scruffy, middle-aged rescue dog, Kramer, and the rooms full of the stuff her three sons left behind when they moved out. The porch light is always on in case one comes by for a visit.

The Retirement Plan is her first novel.

At People magazine Hincenbergs tagged eight mysteries and thrillers "that prove that age really can be just a number — for both those seeking to solve the crime and the ones committing it." One title on the list:

Too Old for This by Samantha Downing

Seventy-five-year-old retired serial killer Lottie Jones is forced back into action when an investigative reporter comes for a visit and asks too many questions. Technological advances since she was last disposing of bodies require some navigation in a story that has a bit of bingo and a bit of blood with a dash of church drama and family dysfunction.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine London-set historical mysteries

Julia Seales is a novelist and screenwriter. She earned an MFA in screenwriting from UCLA, and a BA in English from Vanderbilt University. She is a lifelong Anglophile with a passion for both murder mysteries and Jane Austen. Seales is originally from Kentucky, where she learned about manners (and bourbon).

Her new novel is A Terribly Nasty Business.

At CrimeReads Seales tagged nine "fantastic London-set historical mysteries ... which wonderfully showcase the fictional detectives who populate the City of Mystery." One title on the list:

Silent in the Grave by Deanna Raybourn

Lady Julia Grey’s husband Sir Edward drops dead in their London home, murdered – and thus begins the Lady Julia Grey mystery series. Set in the Victorian era against the backdrop of London society, this is a lush showcase of the city. And once you’ve read all of Julia Grey, you can move to Veronica Speedwell, the detective in Raybourn’s other fantastic, London-set mystery series.

Read about the other titles on the list.

My Book, The Movie: Silent in the Grave and Silent in the Sanctuary.

--Marshal Zeringue

Twenty authors' summer reading

The Guardian asked twenty authors (including Anne Enright, Rutger Bregman, David Nicholls, Zadie Smith, and Colm Tóibín) about their summer reading.

Bernardine Evaristo's contribution to the survey:

No Small Thing by Orlaine McDonald is one of the best debut novels I’ve read in recent years. A family of women, mother, daughter and granddaughter, carry unresolved and unspoken trauma that’s passed down through the generations. This poisons their relationships and ability to fully function in society. Intense, visceral and beautifully written, McDonald’s novel captures their damaged souls. Stag Dance by Torrey Peters is the follow-up to her bestselling novel Detransition, Baby. Consisting of three short stories and a novella, this is adventurous, mind-expanding and provocative fiction that skilfully serves up different possibilities of gender and sexuality.

Read about the other recommended books at The Guardian.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine stories and folktales featuring sisters

Fran Littlewood is the author of Amazing Grace Adams, which was an instant New York Times bestseller and a #ReadWithJenna book club pick. She has an MA in creative writing from Royal Holloway, University of London. Before her MA, she worked as a journalist, including a stint at the Times. She lives in London with her husband and their three daughters.

Littlewood's new novel is The Accidental Favorite.

At Lit Hub the author tagged nine favorite stories and folktales featuring sisters. One title on the list:

Hannah Pittard, We Are Too Many: A Memoir (Kind of)

Described as “A Memoir (kind of),” this genius, genre-defying book blurs fact with fiction to brilliantly explosive and quietly devastating effect. A reconstruction of the breakdown of the author’s marriage, following her husband’s affair with her best friend, Pittard fills in the blanks creatively—detailing calls and meetings between the two, as she imagines they might have happened.

But it’s the Fleabag-esque relationship between the author and her sister, that’s a breakout star of the book for me. In caustic exchanges, which pulse with unconditional love, the sisters riff on everything from a lacklustre suicide attempt to their grandpa’s porn stash, usually both validating and invalidating one another in a single pitch-perfect encounter. Raw, irreverent and funny as hell, this is a slim volume that punches powerfully.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top literary mysteries set in coastal Massachusetts

Dwyer Murphy is the author of An Honest Living and The Stolen Coast, both of which were New York Times Editors’ Choice selections. He is the editor in chief of Literary Hub‘s CrimeReads vertical.

Murphy's new book is The House on Buzzards Bay.

At CrimeReads he tagged five favorite literary mysteries set in coastal Massachusetts, including:

Stephen L. Carter, The Emperor of Ocean Park

Carter’s 1993 novel tells the story of the Garland family through the eyes of Talcott Garland, a Yale Law professor reckoning with scandal and regret in the wake of his father’s death. The paterfamilias was Judge Oliver Garland, a DC power player once snubbed on the cusp of an appointment to the Supreme Court. Upon the Judge’s death, his son finds himself caught up in a sprawling conspiracy of former spies and politicos, and the action soon shifts to the family’s summer haunts on Martha’s Vineyard. Carter paints a lively scene on the island and off, moving through rarefied circles of African-American power and community. And Carter is a dedicated stylist, too, with a voice that presumes a level of sophistication in its readers you rarely find in thrillers today. It makes for a highly enjoyable and deeply satisfying novel that resonates all the more on a second reading.

Read about the other entries on the list at CrimeReads.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight novels that capture the drama and intrigue of filmmaking

Joanna Howard is the author of the novel Porthole (2025) and the memoir Rerun Era (2019). Other works include Foreign Correspondent (2013), On the Winding Stair (2009), and In the Colorless Round, a prose collaboration with artist Rikki Ducornet (2006). She co-wrote Field Glass, a speculative novel, with Joanna Ruocco (2017). Her work has appeared in Conjunctions, The Paris Review, Verse, Bomb, and parts elsewhere. She lives in Denver and Providence and teaches at University of Denver.

At Electric Lit Howard tagged eight novels that "offer some compelling explorations of the drama and intrigue of filmmaking." One title on the list:

Innocents and Others by Dana Spiotta

Dana Spiotta’s Innocents and Others centers a pair of female filmmakers, Meadow and Carrie, whose long-standing friendship must endure the pressure-cooker of corporatized filmmaking as they grow into their very different film careers. Peppered with film history and the anxiety of influence—Orson Welles looms large—the book uses formal experimentation in the flavor of cinematic montage to mimic the technological immersion of modern filmmaking, and the fragmented modes of composition and communication it demands. Spiotta challenges any simple, singular category of woman-as-artist and maker, highlighting nuanced differences in aesthetic, ideology, and methodology for the two friends, and a difference in their feminisms, and strategies for navigating the male-dominated industry.

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

Innocents and Others is among Rachel Kushner’s ten favorite books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven books about our passion & need for reading

Donna Seaman is the adult books editor at Booklist, a member of the Content Leadership Team for the American Writers Museum, and a recipient of the Louis Shore Award for excellence in book reviewing, the James Friend Memorial Award for Literary Criticism, and the Studs Terkel Humanities Service Award. Seaman has written for the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, and other publications. She has been a writer-in-residence for Columbia College Chicago and has taught at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago. Seaman created the anthology In Our Nature: Stories of Wildness, her author interviews are collected in Writers on the Air: Conversations about Books, and she is the author of Identity Unknown: Rediscovering Seven American Women Artists.

Seaman's latest book is River of Books: A Life in Reading.

At Lit Hub she tagged seven books in which "writers ardently and incisively attest to how books save and sustain them, elucidating our profound need for books and affirming the need for us to defend our right to read and write freely." One title on the list:

Glory Edim, Gather Me: A Memoir in Praise of the Books That Saved Me

Many of us say that books have saved us by providing perspective, companionship, and sanctuary, but the predicaments Edim needed help navigating were exceptionally difficult. The firstborn child of immigrants from Nigeria, Edim was five when her brother, Maurice, was born; she was eight when their parents divorced and her mother, a former teacher who taught a very young Edim to read, began working long shifts as a nurse, leaving Edim to care for her brother. The siblings reveled in the weekends spent with their father until he abruptly disappeared. Worse yet was her mother’s doomed second marriage which left Edim responsible for Maurice and a new baby brother. Not even college brought relief when her long-traumatized mother needed care.

From the start, Edim read hungrily, searchingly, steeping herself in “survival stories.” She found comfort in Little Women, as have so many book-loving girls and future writers, and inspiration in Mildred D. Taylor’s Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, a novel about a ten-year-old Black girl in Mississippi during the Great Depression. Edim loved both books because, like her, their young female characters “were struggling, they had burdens and responsibilities beyond their years, and they still found a way to be emotionally fulfilled. They found a way out of the danger that surrounded them.” The more demanding her life became, the more urgently and astutely Edim read, finding her way to the wisdom and artistry of Zora Neale Hurston, Maya Angelou, Alice Walker, bell hooks, Sonia Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni, Audre Lorde, Jamaica Kincaid, and Toni Morrison. Ultimately her ardor for and abiding faith in literature, especially writing by Black women poets and writers, inspired her to found Well-Read Black Girl, an innovative, impactful, and award-winning nonprofit literary organization.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine great mystery and thriller novels set at sea

Sian Gilbert was born in Bristol, UK. She studied history at the University of Warwick, before teaching at a comprehensive school in Birmingham for almost five years. She now lives in Cambridge with her partner.

Gilbert's new novel is I Did Warn Her.

At CrimeReads she tagged nine novels that

explore the different ways setting a book at sea can impact characters and plot, from the inherent dangers of sailing, to being stranded, to what happens when the boat sinks and relationships are tested. The protagonists often have an offer they can’t refuse, a desire to taste a life so different from their own, and this leads to fatal consequences.

One title on the list:

The Last Passenger by Will Dean

Dean describes stepping onto a boat as “an act of faith”. This sentiment feels more common when considering something like flying—plenty of people are afraid of that, even those that fly often. There’s an implicit fear difficult to shake, and you truly feel dependent on the pilots and crew. Really, there should be a similar sentiment just as the main character describes when on a ship. If something goes wrong, you cannot outswim the ocean. The captain is everything. Which is why, when Caroline wakes up aboard the Atlantica and finds herself entirely alone, it is a worst nightmare come true. Her boyfriend is gone, her phone has no reception, and the crew have vanished. There are only a small number of other passengers who seem equally as confused about what’s going on. This book strips back life on board a vessel and shows the amount of work that goes into simply staying alive, which becomes ever more important in the game of survival that develops.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six exciting thrillers set on planes and trains

At Book Riot Liberty Hardy tagged six exciting thrillers set on planes and trains, including:

Falling by T. J. Newman

This is also a story of a member of the airline being put in an impossible situation. After a passenger plane to New York takes off, the pilot gets (secret) word that his family has been kidnapped. The kidnappers have one demand: either crash the plane or his family will die. Unsure who he can trust, Captain Bill Hoffman must make an unimaginable decision. Newman’s thrillers are terrifying, bolstered by the fact that she once worked as a flight attendant, so she knows the ins and outs of air travel.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Falling is among Ward Larsen's five novels that get the pressures of flying right and Louise Candlish's six top mysteries set on moving vehicles.

--Marshal Zeringue