The top ten noir novels for beginners

At The Strand Magazine Bob Rivers tagged ten "top picks for anyone looking to dip their toe into the dark, smoke-filled world of noir." One title on the list:

The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain

Here’s a story about a drifter who thinks flipping burgers in a roadside diner might be a good gig—until he meets the owner’s wife and ends up with a murder rap. Cain was a master of exposing how easily people slip into sin, no matter how clean their collars look. He understood that beneath the trench coats and hats, most of humanity is one bad idea away from getting kicked out of the zoo for moral hygiene violations.

Frank and Cora decide to kill her husband. Things go south fast. If you think murder is the end of your problems, Cain will teach you it’s usually just the beginning—and the end. Just ask Cora. Just ask Frank. Oh wait—you can’t.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Postman Always Rings Twice is among Emily Temple's fifty great classic novels under 200 pages, Douglas Kennedy's ten favorite "novels on the agonies and ecstasies of the extramarital adventure," Vincent Zandri's top ten doomed and deadly romances in noir fiction, and Benjamin Black/John Banville's five top works of noir.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top thrillers where mothers fight for their children

Sara Foster is an internationally published, bestselling psychological suspense author living in Western Australia. Her new novel is When She Was Gone.

Foster has previously published seven novels: the near-future acclaimed thriller The Hush, and suspense thrillers You Don’t Know Me, The Hidden Hours, All That is Lost Between Us, Shallow Breath, Beneath the Shadows, and Come Back to Me.

At CrimeReads Foster tagged six "outstanding thrillers where different kinds of mothers have needed to fight for their daughters in order to keep them safe or to discover what has happened to them." One title on the list:

Wrong Place, Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister

Right outside her front window, Jen witnesses her son Todd murder a total stranger on Halloween, but when she wakes the next day she has gone back in time and the murder has yet to happen. As she continues to wake up at different points in their past, she realizes that somewhere in these revisitings lies the trigger for Todd’s crime – and it becomes her mission to find it and stop these this terrible event from happening. I love this premise, and McAllister delivers a clever and unique read.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Wrong Place, Wrong Time is among Sarah Bonner's thirteen top psychological thrillers with gobsmacking twists.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven intense titles about messy relationships

Anu Kandikuppa has worked as an engineer, a software developer, and an economics consultant, most recently as Principal. The social structures of Indian families among which she grew up inform the stories in her first book, The Confines. Kandikuppa’s fiction and essays have appeared in Colorado Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, New England Review, The Cincinnati Review, Story, and other journals. In 2024, Kandikuppa received a Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant for Creative Individuals. Her work has thrice received special mention in the Pushcart Prize anthologies and has also been recognized by fellowships and residencies by the Virginia Center for Creative Arts and The Ragdale Foundation. Kandikuppa holds a Ph.D. in Finance and an MFA in Writing from Warren Wilson College. She lives outside Boston.

At Electric Lit Kandikuppa tagged seven intense books featuring messy relationships. One entry on the list:

First Love by Gwendoline Riley

In Gwendoline Riley’s First Love, Neve is in a volatile, dysfunctional marriage with an older man, Edwyn. She has never lived with anyone before him and comes from an unstable family, particularly her mother. Edwyn, meanwhile, is needy, manipulative, and recovering from a serious illness. They stumble through their marriage, with Neve making excuses for him and wondering, whenever they find a pocket of calm, whether they are “coming to an accommodation, two people who’d always expected, planned, to live their lives alone.” Riley’s sparse, laser-sharp writing makes almost every line of this sad yet improbably funny novel feel underlineable.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top preppy reads

Alyson Gerber is the bestselling author of The Liars Society, a middle grade mystery set at a New England prep school. The Liars Society is a USA Today bestseller, Barnes & Noble Bookseller Favorite, B&N Most Anticipated Book of the Month, and B&N Best Book of the Year (So Far), as well as an American Booksellers Association’s Best Books for Young Readers, Roku's Best Book of the Month, Bookshop's Favorite New Books. It's also a nominee for the Texas Bluebonnet Award and Indiana's Young Hoosier Award. The Liars Society #2: A Risky Game was published in April 2025.

At The Nerd Daily Gerber tagged five iconic preppy reads, including:

The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger

A few years after The Westing Game made me a reader—I was an angsty prep school teenager assigned to read The Catcher in the Rye. At the very first mention of phonies by Holden Caulfield, I was hooked. So much so that my daughter’s middle name is an ode to this book. To soak in all aspects of the boarding school experience, this story is a must.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Catcher In The Rye appears on John Patrick McHugh's top ten list of stories about bored teenagers, A.F. Brady's list of seven literary anti-heroes who expose the dark side of NYC, Liz Phair's ten desert island books list, Brian Boone's list of five great novels that will probably never be made into movies, Natalie Zutter's list of nine classic YA books ripe for some creative genderbending of the main characters, Lance Rubin's top ten list of books with a funny first-person narrator, Andy Griffiths's list of five books that changed him, Chris Pavone's list of five books that changed him, Gabe Habash's list of the 10 most notorious parts of famous books, Robert McCrum's list of the 10 best books with teenage narrators, Antoine Wilson's list of the 10 best narrators in literature, A.E. Hotchner's list of five favorite coming-of-age tales, Jay McInerney's list of five essential New York novels, Woody Allen's top five books list, Patrick Ness's top 10 list of "unsuitable" books for teenagers, David Ulin's six favorite books list, Nicholas Royle's list of the top ten writers on the telephone, TIME magazine's list of the top ten books you were forced to read in school, Tony Parsons' list of the top ten troubled males in fiction, Dan Rhodes' top ten list of short books, and Sarah Ebner's top 25 list of boarding school books; it is one of Sophie Thompson's six best books. Upon rereading, the novel disappointed Khaled Hosseini, Mary Gordon, and Laura Lippman.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five titles featuring reporter sleuths who dig too deep

Olesya Lyuzna is a historical fiction writer with a passion for queer noir.

Her debut novel Glitter in the Dark was selected for a 2020 Pitch Wars mentorship by Layne Fargo and Halley Sutton.

She lives in Toronto and spends her free time hosting murder mystery parties and scouring the archives for unsolved crimes.

At CrimeReads Lyuzna tagged five works featuring favorite reporter sleuths, including:

The Jasmine Trade by Denise Hamilton

The murder of Marina Lu looks like a robbery gone bad. A teenage girl found dead in her car, her bridal gowns still in the backseat, her diamond ring catching the last of the LA sun. But Los Angeles Times reporter Eve Diamond knows better.

She follows the story into the world of “parachute kids”—wealthy Asian teenagers sent to America for education and opportunity, left behind in mansions while their parents run businesses overseas. Money doesn’t keep them safe. Neither does privilege. Marina had both, and she still wound up dead.

Eve has a knack for spotting the cracks beneath the city’s surface. The deeper she digs, the darker the picture gets. What was Marina doing with a much older fiancé? Why won’t her father answer any questions? And why does the trail keep leading Eve into a far uglier subculture—where young women like Marina aren’t debutantes, but property?

This is Los Angeles noir at its sharpest—a world of power and isolation, a neon-lit dream that rots from the inside out. Hamilton writes LA like she owns it, laying bare the places most people don’t want to see: the empty mansions, the late-night diners where secrets trade hands, and the rooms where silence is bought and paid for.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven titles about women and food

Hannah Selinger is a James Beard Award-nominated lifestyle writer and mother of two based in Boxford, MA. Her print and digital work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, Travel + Leisure, Food & Wine, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and elsewhere. Her 2021 Bon Appétit essay, "In My Childhood Kitchen, I Learned Both Fear and Love," is anthologized in the 2022 Best American Food Writing collection.

Selinger's new book is Cellar Rat: My Life in the Restaurant Underbelly.

At Electric Lit she tagged seven books about women and food, including:

Margo’s Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe

Rufi Thorpe’s latest novel–juicy, relatable, and simultaneously over-the-top–follows financially strapped Margo, a young woman with (you guessed it) no cash but plenty of other problems. One such problem: she’s pregnant, unexpectedly, with a child from an ill-advised romance with her professor. Like many young women with diminished options and an overdrawn bank account, Margo ends up in restaurant work. The rest is a story of wit and whimsy and a bit of exaggeration. Restaurant work fails Margo, but there is more out there for her, an arc of redemption for both her and for the people who have caused her harm.

Read about the other books on Selinger's list at Electric Lit.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top titles set in the wilderness

In addition to being a writer, Alice Henderson is a dedicated wildlife researcher, geographic information systems specialist, and bioacoustician. She documents wildlife on specialized recording equipment, checks remote cameras, creates maps, and undertakes wildlife surveys to determine what species are present on preserves, while ensuring there are no signs of poaching. She’s surveyed for the presence of grizzlies, wolves, wolverines, jaguars, endangered bats, and more.

Henderson's new novel, The Vanishing Kind, is the fourth book in the Alex Carter series.

At The Strand Magazine the author tagged ten stirring reads set in the wilderness. One title on the list:

The River of Souls by Robert McCammon

In 1703, detective Matthew Corbett journeys up the Solstice River in the Carolinas in search of an accused murderer. There he encounters strange settlements steeped in mysticism and eerie stories of a mythical beast hunting humans in the fetid landscape. But nothing will stop Corbett, an intelligent, resourceful, and honor-bound character, from seeing justice done.

Robert McCammon is one of our finest contemporary writers. He has the gift of transporting readers to the settings of his books, in this case to the swamps of the Carolinas in colonial America, where alligators and snakes prowl the dark waters.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight titles about the complicated history of U.S. citizenship

Katie Moench is a librarian, runner, and lover of baked goods. A school librarian in the Upper Midwest, Moench lives with her husband and dog and spends her free time drinking coffee, trying new recipes, and adding to her TBR list.

At Book Riot she tagged eight books that show "the idea of citizenship was not something once defined in the early years of the U.S. as a country, but it is rather a nebulous concept that has been defined and redefined over and over since the nation’s beginnings." One title on the list:

Americans in Waiting: The Lost Story of Immigration and Citizenship in the United States by Hiroshi Motomura

In this expansive text, Professor Hiroshi Motomura compares and contrasts the experiences of immigrants to the United States across two centuries. Examining immigration statutes, deportation laws, and cultural conceptions of whether newcomers should assimilate to their new country, Motomura provides a comprehensive look at how American laws and American attitudes toward immigration and naturalization have shifted over time.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six YA reads in stunning locations

Rachel Ekstrom Courage is the author of the Young Adult thriller Nothing Bad Happens Here and Murder By Cheesecake: A Golden Girls Cozy Mystery.

She lives in Pittsburgh, PA with her husband (the children’s book author Nick Courage) and their dog, Chaely.

At The Nerd Daily Courage tagged six "young adult thrillers and romances [that] will transport you to beautiful and unique locales from the comfort of your favorite reading nook." One title on the list:

Hop a train from France to Italy and fall in love with All Roads Lead To Rome by Sabrina Fedel, a Roman Holiday-esque YA romance featuring an anxious introvert who thinks she knows all the gelato shops and picturesque ruins of the Eternal City. But when she meets a Scottish hottie and gets embroiled in a fake-dating scheme, will it be her heart that’s left in ruins?

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Twelve titles that center work & working-class lives

Dustin M. Hoffman writes stories about working people. His newest story collection is Such a Good Man. He’s also the author of the story collectionNo Good for Digging and the fiction chapbook Secrets of the Wild. His first book One-Hundred-Knuckled Fist won the 2015 Prairie Schooner Book Prize. He’s published more than one hundred stories in journals including Black Warrior Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Ninth Letter, Masters Review, Witness, Wigleaf, The Threepenny Review, Gulf Coast, and One Story. Before getting his MFA in fiction from Bowling Green State University and his PhD in creative writing from Western Michigan University, he spent ten years painting houses in Michigan. Now he lives in South Carolina and teaches creative writing at Winthrop University.

At Electric Lit Hoffman tagged "twelve books of poetry and prose that depict not just working-class people but that foreground work as the feature." One title on the list:

The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell

I also adore Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London, which depicts low-wage restaurant work in some of Orwell’s most scene-driven narrative. But The Road to Wigan Pier is an absolutely brilliant and insightful investigative piece into the work and conditions of coal miners. When I first read this, the television show Dirty Jobs was quite popular, and Orwell was doing something similar yet much more in-depth—full immersion into this very dangerous, dirty job. He depicts the human lives at the center of this work with great sensitivity, while also capturing the sensory pain of forever crouching so as not to bang your head on a rocky roof. The book goes on to discuss class consciousness and socialism in ways that still feel valid and important today. Beyond being fascinating and important, this is such an entertaining read. I’m a huge Orwell fan, but I actually find Animal Farm and 1984 overly didactic to the point of being a bit obvious. In my opinion, Orwell’s nonfiction is his most interesting work.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Road to Wigan Pier is among Ben Highmore's ten best books about houses and Robert McCrum's books to inspire busy public figures.

--Marshal Zeringue

Four mystery titles that explore legacy

Benjamin Bradley is a member of both Mystery Writers of America and International Thriller Writers. He's the author of the Shepard & Kelly Mystery series through Indies United Publishing House and his short fiction has appeared in literary magazines including Reckon Review and Flash Fiction Magazine. He works in public health and homelessness and lives in Raleigh, North Carolina with his wife, their cat Fox, and their dog Harper.

Bradley's new novel is What He Left Behind.

At CrimeReads he tagged four mystery novels that explore legacy. One entry on the list:

What You Leave Behind by Wanda Morris

Set on the coast of Georgia, Morris’ novel brings protagonist Deena Wood into the world of Holcomb, who is fighting desperately to keep land that has been in his family for generations. Holcomb’s story is a grim one, with strained familial relationships and a lonely existence, and it’s apparent that one of his last great hopes is to keep the land safe. Morris sprinkles these life-and-death questions throughout, keeping Holcomb and their legacy as a common thread through a great mystery.

Read about the other mysteries on the list at CrimeReads.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine horror titles about monstrous women

Susie Dumond is a queer writer originally from Little Rock, Arkansas. She is the author of Queerly Beloved, Looking for a Sign, and Bed and Breakup, and she also talks about books as a senior contributor at Book Riot and a bookseller at her local indie bookstore. Dumond lives in Washington, D.C., with her spouse, Mickey, and her cat, Maple. When she’s not writing or reading, you can find her baking cupcakes or belting karaoke at the nearest gay bar.

At Book Riot Dumond tagged nine books featuring monstrous yet deeply complicated women and girls. One title on the list:

Motheater by Linda H. Codega

Bennie is sick and tired of the Appalachian mining company where she works putting its employees in danger. After her best friend dies in a coal mine, Bennie quits her job and starts investigating the deaths of local miners to prove the company is at fault. She soon finds a nearly-drowned woman in a mine slough who turns out to be a frightening ancient witch named Motheater, destined to protect the mountains from being exploited. Together, Bennie and Motheater find unexpected power to change the future for their mountain home.

With eerily beautiful prose, mystical characters, and an immersive natural setting, it’s a powerful story about the sacrifices we make to protect the places and people we love.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue