Six top thrillers featuring manipulative mom-friends

Ashley Audrain’s debut novel, The Push, was a New York Times, Sunday Times (London), and number-one international bestseller, and a Good Morning America Book Club pick. It has sold in more than forty territories, and a limited television series is currently in development. Audrain previously worked as the publicity director of Penguin Books Canada, and prior to that she worked in public relations. She lives in Toronto, where she and her partner are raising their two young children.

Audrain's new novel is The Whispers.

At CrimeReads she tagged six "stand-out thrillers featuring manipulative mom-friends at their best." One title on the list:

The Herd by Emily Edwards

Edwards’ debut pits a group of mom friends against each other over the very timely topic of vaccines, after a harmless white lie at a child’s birthday party has catastrophic consequences for everyone. Edwards does a skilled job of pitting mom against mom in a way that will make you see all sides of the story. This book asks big moral questions and the emotional tensions are high—the perfect pick for a book club of mom friends who want to go deep.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top titles for National Crime Reading Month

The UK-based Crime Writers' Association is now celebrating National Crime Reading Month. For the Waterstones blog ten CWA authors recommended one of their favorite page-turning reads. Steve Cavanagh's pick:

The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith’s most famous creation is the grifter, con-man, art connoisseur and killer – Tom Ripley. I keep coming back to this book for two reasons. First, so that I can enjoy Ripley’s various schemes and so that I can try to understand how Highsmith pulled off such an amazing premise. In any other novel, Ripley would be a villain who we would delight in being vanquished at the end of the story, but in this one – he is our hero. And not only do we want him to get away with his dastardly plans, we also want him to be happy. A masterpiece.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Talented Mr Ripley is on Nathan Oates's list of eight of the best bad seed novels, Lizzy Barber's list of seven titles about wealthy people behaving badly, 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

Seven books about people feeling out of place

Jeff Boyd is a former public-school teacher from Chicago and a recent graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he received the Deena Davidson Friedman Prize for Fiction. He currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his partner and child.

His debut novel is The Weight.

Jess Walter called The Weight "wondrous ... [a] moving, comic and prodigious debut."

At Electric Lit Boyd tagged seven books about "finding belonging in an environment of otherness," including:

No One Left to Come Looking for You by Sam Lipsyte

As a budding punk rock bassist, Jack Shit is reminded on multiple occasions that he is an outsider, a wannabe; that New York was not made for him. But Jack doesn’t want to go back home to the suburbs, he wants to be in on the action. He wants his band back together, but that’s not possible because his bass guitar and lead singer have both gone missing. And without those two things, who is Jack Shit, anyway? No One Left to Come Looking for You is a page turning mystery set in the lively music scene of early 1990s Manhattan.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven titles featuring musicians & the lure of rock stardom

Matthew Norman was born in Omaha, Nebraska. His debut novel, Domestic Violets, was nominated in the Best Humor category at the 2011 Goodreads Choice Awards. Since then, he’s written four other novels. We’re All Damaged was an Amazon bestseller, Last Couple Standing was named one of the best books of 2020 so far by Esquire, All Together Now was one of the New York Post’s best books of the summer in 2021, and Charm City Rocks.

At LitHub Norman tagged seven of his "favorite novels that feature musicians and the seductive lure of rock stardom." One title on the list:

Nick Hornby, Juliet, Naked

This list wouldn’t be complete without Nick Hornby, because as far as I’m concerned—and again, I’m in charge here—Nick Hornby is a rock star, and Juliet, Naked is a freaking delight. It features a reclusive, Dylan-like singer-songwriter named Tucker Crowe, a Tucker Crowe superfan named Duncan, and Duncan’s jilted partner, Annie. Things get interesting quickly when Annie begins an email relationship with Tucker, and they get even more interesting when Tucker and Annie meet in real life.

Smart, funny, and full of music, this is Hornby at his best.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Juliet, Naked is among Brian Boone's six notable fictional musicians. Susann Cokal called it "a wonderfully funny, wistful, hopeful book about second chances and reasons to live."

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven new classics in Southern noir

Polly Stewart grew up in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, where she still lives. She graduated from Hollins University and has an MFA in fiction and a PhD in British literature from Washington University in St. Louis. Her short fiction has appeared in literary collections and journals, including Best New American Voices, The Best American Mystery Stories, Epoch, and the Alaska Quarterly Review. Her nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times, CrimeReads, and Poets & Writers, among other publications.

Stewart's new novel is The Good Ones.

At CrimeReads she tagged "seven great novels that celebrate the beauty and the magic of [the South], while also acknowledging it’s not always an easy place to call home." One title on the list:

Attica Locke, Bluebird, Bluebird

I don’t know Locke’s East Texas the way I know the settings of some of the other novels on this list, but her writing is so vivid and immersive that I feel like I’ve been there. Bluebird, Bluebird is the story of Darren Matthews, a Black Texas Ranger investigating two murders in the small town of Lark. Locke captures the ambivalence of feeling tied to a place known mostly in the outside world for a tragic history of violence, as in this scene when Darren remembers his law school classmates talking about the lynching of James Byrd: “he felt a hot rage at the students and professors around him, most of them white northerners, clucking their tongues and whispering Texas in a way that suggested both pity and disdain for a land that Darren loved, a state that had made him a gentleman and a fighter in equal measure.” Locke asks crucial questions about who gets to claim a Southern identity, and what that identity might mean in a more equitable future.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Bluebird, Bluebird is among L. Alison Heller's eight crime novels in which a small town is the perfect incubator, Janice Hallett's five gripping mysteries set in small towns, and Katie Tallo's top ten crime novels about returning home.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine titles honoring women’s unseen contributions to science

C. E. McGill was born in Scotland and raised in North Carolina. Their short fiction has appeared in Fantasy Magazine and Strange Constellations, and they are a two-time finalist for the Dell Award for Undergraduate Excellence in SF/F Writing. They now live in Scotland with their family, two cats, and a growing number of fake succulents (the real ones keep dying).

Our Hideous Progeny is their first novel and they have begun writing their second.

At Electric Lit McGill tagged nine novels honoring women’s unseen contributions to science, including:

The Fair Botanists by Sara Sheridan

This novel follows another Elizabeth, the recently widowed Elizabeth Rocheid, who arrives in Edinburgh in the 1820s. An eager botanist and artist, she offers her services as an illustrator to capture the once-in-a-lifetime flowering of the Agave Americana plant in the city’s brand-new Botanic Garden. Along the way, Elizabeth strikes up a touching friendship with Belle Brodie, a fellow botany enthusiast (whose interest in the rare flower, however, runs in a far more commercially-exploitable direction). With plenty of cameos from famous scientists and thinkers of the era, Sheridan skillfully captures the buzz and excitement of this period of scientific history, painting a fascinating portrait of the Botanic Garden and Georgian Edinburgh as a whole.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top mysteries about motherhood & crime

Nicole Hackett is a reader, writer, and below-average toddler negotiator. She lives with her husband and two kids in a small town just outside Baltimore, Maryland, where she works as a biochemical patent agent.

Her debut novel is The Perfect Ones.

At CrimeReads Hackett tagged her six favorite mysteries about motherhood and crime. One title on the list:

Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty

Let’s start with the queen of mom-mysteries: Liane Moriarty. She has authored several winners, but I think Big Little Lies sits at the top. The story follows a group of upper-class mothers after the shocking death of a fellow parent at their children’s prestigious elementary school. As the mystery unfolds, the web of the mothers’ sometimes shocking, sometimes shockingly ordinary personal lives begins to tangle. Liane Moriarty is known for her laugh out loud humor, and this novel is no exception, but where this novel really shines is the balance between these upper-class antics and deeper conversations about motherhood.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Big Little Lies is among Janice Hallett's five notable gripping mysteries set in small towns, Tracy Dobmeier and Wendy Katzman's six riveting titles of ultra-competitive parents, Pamela Crane's five novels featuring parenting gone wild, Michelle Frances's eight top workplace thrillers, and Jeff Somers's ten novels that teach you something about marriage.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten essential titles of Northern Irish literature

Alexander Poots was born in London in 1985. After studying at the University of Manchester and Magdalen College, Oxford, he worked as a bookseller.

The Strangers’ House: Writing Northern Ireland is his first book.

He lives in Belfast.

At Publishers Weekly Poots tagged ten works with the "tact, nuance, and deep historical understanding" essential to capturing the "predicament" (Seamus Heaney's term) that is Northern Ireland. One title on the list:

Sweet Home by Wendy Erskine

One aspect of the Troubles that receives little attention is the manner in which decades of conflict quashed all other stories in Northern Ireland. Even during the worst years, people got married, started bands, moved house, and changed careers. Erskine’s debut collection of short stories, largely set in contemporary Belfast, moves the focus back to the inner lives and struggles of Northern Irish people. While the Troubles cast a shadow—as in “To All Their Dues,” in which a woman who opens a beauty salon must deal with the demands of local paramilitaries—sectarianism is a background hum, not the subject. My favorite story here is “the soul has no skin,” where an act of kindness hollows out a young man’s life.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten sinister small town thrillers

At B&N Reads Brittany Bunzey tagged ten sinister small town thrillers, including:

Dirt Creek by Hayley Scrivenor

Our June Mystery and Thriller Monthly Pick, Dirt Creek, follows an investigation after a local girl’s disappearance shakes a town. Determined to bring her best friend home, Ronnie launches her own investigation, and the more people talk to her, the more she wonders how many of them are lying about what they know. All about the ties that bind us together and the past that follows us, this debut is a powerful story with twists and turns that will catch you by surprise.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Dirt Creek is among Jane Harper's five top Australian thrillers and mysteries.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five noir classics at the corner of Hollywood and music

Daniel Weizmann is a writer and editor whose work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Billboard, the Guardian, AP Newswire, and more. Under the nom de plume, Shredder, Weizmann also wrote for the long running Flipside fanzine, as well as LA Weekly, which once called him “an incomparable punk stylist.”

His new novel is The Last Songbird.

At CrimeReads Weizmann tagged five noir titles that "feature mysteries, musicians, and mayhem against a Tinseltown backdrop." One entry on the list:

Speaking of L.A. in the freak-out Sixties, nobody has ever taken a more sobering look at it than the great Walter Mosley, in one of his many Easy Rawlins masterpieces, Little Green. The book starts with Easy half-comatose after a near fatal car crash, but just as soon as he steps off his sick bed, he slips, like Alice falling up, into a new Wonderland, the dizzying world of hippie counterculture. Easy’s assignment: find Evander Noon, a young Black man who has gone missing while up on the Sunset Strip checking out some rock bands. Reading Little Green, I couldn’t help but reflect on Arthur Lee and Johnny Echols, Black heroes of the band Love, and the insidious way that L.A.’s invisible color line has always tried in vain to keep worlds apart.

Read about the other titles on Weizmann's list at CrimeReads.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine books about book people

Jane L. Rosen is an author and screenwriter whose critically acclaimed first novel, Nine Women, One Dress, has been translated into ten languages. Katie Couric called her novel Eliza Starts a Rumor “A smart, engaging treat for Big Little Lies fans. The perfect summer read!” Rosen lives in New York City and on Fire Island with her husband and three daughters.

[The Page 69 Test: Eliza Starts a Rumor; My Book, The Movie: Eliza Starts a Rumor]

Rosen's new novel is On Fire Island.

At Lit Hub she tagged nine books about book people, including:

The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz

Another of my never-miss authors, Jean Hanff Korelitz’s literary gem drew me in from page one.When a once-promising young writer turned professor hears his student has died, he steals the plot of the student’s destined-for-success book in hopes of enjoying success of his own. As an author, little is scarier than being out of ideas, and while I don’t recommend Jacob Finch Bonner’s solution, it was a thrill to watch the twists unfold.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Plot is among Elyse Friedman's eight novels featuring schemers & opportunists, E.G. Scott's five best books-within-books, Kimberly Belle's four thrillers with maximum escapism, and Louise Dean's top ten novels about novelists.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top 10 books about connecting with nature

Hannah Stowe writes, paints, and sails. Her boat is named Larry.

I am drawn to literature that cements humans as a part of nature and stories than use the natural world to anchor our lived experiences, to explore what it means to be human, to help to understand ourselves as a part of the ecosystem [she writes at the Guardian]. In my own writing, I explore my changing relationship with the sea, how nature has both hurt and healed my body and mind, and how wild creatures have provided waypoints along a physical and emotional navigation.

Stowe's new book is Move Like Water: My Story of the Sea.

At the Guardian she tagged ten books that "explore how nature can help us understand the human experiences of addiction, illness, loss, loneliness and allow us to find solace, sanctuary, connection and subtle wisdom in the wild." One title on the list:

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

A professor, a botanist, a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, a mother. Kimmerer draws on her scientific background and Indigenous wisdom to teach us how to listen to the natural world, and reinforce our place in it, as part of a whole. The author has used all of herself, her background, her training, to deliver a book that is ecologically complete, vital in its message, its intelligence, its argument, its celebration.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Braiding Sweetgrass is among Sarah Thomas's top ten nature memoirs.

--Marshal Zeringue