The 13 best zombie fiction releases of 2012

Paul Goat Allen named the 13 best zombie fiction releases of 2012 for Barnes & Noble. One book on the list:

Plague Town by Dana Fredsti

About the book: Ashley was just trying to get through a tough day when the world turned upside down.

A terrifying virus appears, quickly becoming a pandemic that leaves its victims, not dead, but far worse. Attacked by zombies, Ashley discovers that she is a 'Wild-Card' -- immune to the virus -- and she is recruited to fight back and try to control the outbreak.

It's Buffy meets the Walking Dead in a rapid-fire zombie adventure!

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Best books of 2012 -- Houston Chronicle

One title among the Houston Chronicle's best books of 2012:

A Land More Kind Than Home, Wiley Cash:

Crime fiction melds with Southern gothic for an emotional, lyrical story about two brothers that explores the power of forgiveness, the strength of family bonds and how religion can be misused.

Read about the other books to make the grade.

Learn more about the book and author at Wiley Cash's website.

Writers Read: Wiley Cash.

My Book, The Movie: A Land More Kind Than Home.

--Marshal Zeringue

Three notable books on faith in the U.S.

Ayad Akhtar is the author of the novel American Dervish. One of three books on faith in the U.S. that he tagged for NPR:

Gilead
by Marilynne Robinson

Marilyn Robinson's Gilead won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2005. Not since Jonathan Edwards and Herman Melville has American prose been so deeply infused with an understanding of faith's capacity to illuminate daily life with shimmering wonder. Narrated by the Rev. John Ames of Gilead, Iowa, the book is structured as Ames' written address to his young son. Already in his 70s, Ames is afraid he doesn't have much time left to convey his heritage and his wisdom. What results is a quietly resplendent chronicle of Ames' personal and spiritual development, keen to the majesties of the earth and sky, and also of the human heart. His interpretations of the Gospels alone are filled with tenderness and wisdom — e.g. that poverty is the greatest of blessings, but perhaps not one that we are all strong enough to bear — that linger in the mind long after the last page is turned. It is rare to read so loving a book, and even rarer to read one that emboldens the reader to live more fully.

Read about the other books Akhtar tagged at NPR.

Gilead is on Michael Crummey's top ten list of literary feuds and Geraldine Brooks's five most important books list; it is a book Dalia Sofer would like to share with her children.

Visit Ayad Akhtar's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top books on secret agents

William Stevenson was trained in aerial espionage as a British naval fighter pilot during World War II. A distinguished journalist and war correspondent, he is the author of sixteen books, including A Man Called Intrepid, Intrepid’s Last Case, Ninety Minutes at Entebbe, and, most recently, Past to Present: A Reporter's Story of War, Spies, People, and Politics.

For the Wall Street Journal, he named a five best list of books about secret agents, including:

Between Silk and Cyanide
by Leo Marks (1998)

World War II spymasters have traditionally been tight-lipped, rarely exposing personal reflections about their work or who they worked with. Not the author of this memoir. Marks, who revolutionized Allied codemaking, provides an insider's view of the planning and organization of some of the war's most secret operations. As head of communications for Britain's Special Operations Executive, he insisted on knowing his agents personally: It allowed him to devise better codes for them and figure out when the codes fell into enemy hands. Perhaps the most poignant moment in the book is when he describes meeting his friend Tommy, the legendary spy "White Rabbit," after the war: "They were hanging from his eyes," he writes, referring to fellow agents who had been hung from hooks and slowly strangled. He goes on, "I waited until [Tommy was gone] and was then violently sick on behalf of mankind."

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top books about road trips

One title on the Barnes & Noble Review's list of five top books on road trips:

Roads
by Larry McMurtry

Growing up in a landlocked Texas town, the highway was Larry McMurtry's river, offering mystery, adventure, endless possibility. In this wide-ranging work of nonfiction, the author of novels including The Last Picture Show and the celebrated Lonesome Dove series crisscrosses the country in search of a national character and the key to his own identity. From South Florida to North Dakota, from Long Island to Oregon, McMurtry contemplates the American obsession with travel and the pioneering spirit.

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Publishers Weekly's 12 best mystery/thrillers, 2012

Publishers Weekly named its twelve best mystery/thrillers of 2012.

One title on the list:

Kill You Twice
Chelsea Cain (Minotaur)

Incarcerated serial killer Gretchen Lowell says she has some useful tips for Det. Archie Sheridan in the case of two Portland, Ore., murders that appear to be the work of another serial killer. But can Archie take Gretchen at her word? Four previous books featuring these two damaged souls suggest not.

Read about the other books on the list.

Learn about Chelsea Cain's 6 favorite detective stories.

The Page 99 Test: Sweetheart.

The Page 69 Test: Evil at Heart.

The Page 69 Test: Kill You Twice.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten slipstream books

From Wikipedia:

Slipstream is a kind of fantastic or non-realistic fiction that crosses conventional genre boundaries between science fiction, fantasy, and mainstream literary fiction.

The term slipstream was coined by cyberpunk author Bruce Sterling in an article originally published in SF Eye #5, in July 1989. He wrote: "...this is a kind of writing which simply makes you feel very strange; the way that living in the twentieth century makes you feel, if you are a person of a certain sensibility." Slipstream fiction has consequently been referred to as "the fiction of strangeness," which is as clear a definition as any of the others in wide use.

In 2003 Arthur C. Clarke award-winning author Christopher Priest named his top 10 slipstream books for the Guardian.  One title on the list:

The Knife Thrower and Other Stories by Steven Millhauser

Millhauser is interestingly concerned with unlikely things: department stores, roller-coasters, underground theme parks, board games, magic acts. His prose is steady, exact and attentive, almost devoid of dialogue, a reasonable-sounding discourse on unreasonable subjects. Others by Millhauser worth trying are Edwin Mullhouse (a novel, which defies description in such a small space) and another wonderful collection, The Barnum Museum.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top crime fiction debuts, 2012

At the Miami Herald, Oline H. Cogdill named her picks of the best of 2012’s crime fiction debuts.

One title on the list:

The Three-Day Affair, Michael Kardos:

Four friends from Princeton become kidnappers and robbers at their ninth annual reunion when one of their group goes off the deep end.

Read about the other titles to make the grade.

Learn more about the book and author at Michael Kardos's website.

Writers Read: Michael Kardos.

The Page 69 Test: The Three Day Affair.

My Book, The Movie: The Three-Day Affair.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best dog books of 2012

Dorri Olds is a New York-based writer and web designer, ably assisted by her purebred Cavalier King Charles Spaniel Buddy James.

At Petside.com, she named ten of the best dog books of 2012, including:

A Fistful of Collars: A Chet and Bernie Mystery by Spencer Quinn

This is the fifth installment in the New York Times bestselling Quinn series that stars the detective team of canine character, Chet, and his humanoid partner, private investigator Bernie Little. The books are all narrated by Chet and are surprisingly well-written mysteries full of suspense and humor. This time, Chet and Bernie are hired to “babysit” a handsome and horribly overbearing Hollywood movie star, Thad Perry. The team says yes because the pay is good. Thad has some serious secrets and what makes things worse is he is a cat lover whose little Brando can’t stand Chet. It’s a mad-cap, fast-paced adventure that will not disappoint. Stephen King had this to say about the author, “Spencer Quinn speaks two languages, suspense and dog, very fluently.”

Read about the other books on the list.

Visit Chet the Dog's blog and Facebook page, and Peter Abrahams's website.

The Page 69 Test: Spencer Quinn's The Dog Who Knew Too Much.

Read--Coffee with a Canine: Peter Abrahams and Audrey and Coffee with a Canine: Peter Abrahams and Pearl.

--Marshal Zeringue

Publishers Weekly's top nonfiction books of 2012

One of Publishers Weekly's top nonfiction books of 2012:

On Extinction: How We Became Estranged from Nature
Melanie Challenger (Counterpoint)

Analyzing our "estrangement from nature" in the 20th century, Challenger's moving and lyrical first nonfiction book meditates on big picture questions as she travels from a writer's solitary cabin on England's Ding Dong Moor to Antarctica with the British Antarctic Survey, back to the North Yorkshire town of Whitby and on to the tundra of the Arctic.

Read about the other books on the list.

Learn more about On Extinction at the Counterpoint website.

The Page 99 Test: On Extinction.

--Marshal Zeringue

Beth Raymer's six favorite books

Beth Raymer is the author of the gambling memoir Lay the Favorite.

One of her six favorite books, as told to The Week magazine:

Fat City by Leonard Gardner

The most realistic account of boxing I've ever read. There is no televised bout or belt to be won, no such thing as the "one big fight." There is only a poster nailed to a whitewashed wall and a trainer so burned out on domestic life that, "when his children ran across the street without looking, he said nothing." To me, Fat City is a story about unending loss: what happens when the little things — splintered bones, damaged noses, swollen brows — add up.

Read about the other books on the list.

Fat City is one of Markus Zusak's top ten boxing books.

Gerald Haslam nominated Fat City as the Great California Novel.

Raymer's Lay the Favorite is one of Matthew O'Brien's five notable books on Las Vegas.

--Marshal Zeringue

The best fiction of 2012 -- Reluctant Habits

One title from Edward Champion's list of the best fiction of 2012:

Liz Moore, Heft:

Last year, a research team at the University of Buffalo conducted a study with 140 undergraduates which suggested that fiction causes readers to feel more empathy towards others. Empathy seems to be getting a bad rap in fiction these days, especially among some enfants terribles who seem to believe that novels are more about slick heartless style rather than human existence. On the flip side, you have the gushing New Sincerity movement, in which people are interested in mashing irony and sincerity into a roseate sandwich. These strange tonal prohibitions on what one should or should not do in a novel drive me up the wall. If you’re spending so much of your time second-guessing how you should write, then how can ever achieve any original viewpoint? So it was with great joy and relief to discover Liz Moore’s wonderfully endearing novel early in the year about Arthur Opp, a 550 pound man who has not left his Greenwood Heights home in more than a decade and a teenager from a troubled upbringing. Heft proves, first and foremost, that caring about people has little to do with falling along an irony/sincerity axis. Moore told Jennifer Weiner that writing about Arthur let her “write sentences I would have felt self-conscious about writing.”

Read about the other entries on the list.

Learn more about the book and author at Liz Moore's website.

The Page 69 Test: Heft.

--Marshal Zeringue