Ten novels centering women finding their power

J.T. Ellison is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of more than thirty novels and the Emmy Award–winning cohost of the literary TV show A Word on Words. She also writes urban fantasy under the pen name Joss Walker.

With millions of books in print, her work has won critical acclaim and prestigious awards. Her titles have been optioned for television and published in twenty-eight countries.

[The Page 69 Test: Edge of Black; The Page 69 Test: When Shadows Fall; My Book, The Movie: When Shadows Fall; My Book, The Movie: What Lies Behind; The Page 69 Test: What Lies Behind; The Page 69 Test: No One Knows; My Book, The Movie: No One Knows; The Page 69 Test: Lie to Me; My Book, The Movie: Good Girls Lie; The Page 69 Test: Good Girls Lie; Writers Read: J. T. Ellison (January 2020); Q&A with J.T. Ellison; The Page 69 Test: A Very Bad Thing]

Ellison's new novel is A Very Bad Thing.

At CrimeReads the author tagged ten novels that "celebrate women embracing their inner fires, mastering mystical abilities, and claiming power through acts of heroic leadership against daunting odds." One title on the list:

Circe by Madeline Miller

A reimagining of the mythological Circe, daughter of the sun god Helios, and the nymph Perse, a minor goddess who discovers her power in witchcraft. An absolute stunner of a tale, Circe is banished to the isle of Aiaia, where she takes full advantage of her burgeoning power to right the wrongs against her and womankind in general. Even her infamous encounter with Odysseus has a completely new spin, and she makes her own place in the history books. Without a single misstep throughout, Madeline Miller weaves a tale so heartbreaking and true that one wonders how mythology itself would have been reshaped were it understood to be true.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Circe is among Paula Munier's eight top works informed by The Odyssey, J. Nicole Jones's seven books about people accused of being witches, Diana Helmuth's seven top books about modern witchcraft, Megan Barnard's eleven books about misunderstood women in history & mythology, Rita Chang-Eppig's ten top books with irresistible anti-heroines, Emilia Hart's five novels featuring witchcraft, Brittany Bunzey's top ten books centering women in mythology, Mark Skinner's twenty top books in witch lit, Hannah Kaner's five best novels featuring gods, the B&N Reads editors' twenty-four best mythological retellings, Ashleigh Bell Pedersen's eight novels of wonder and darkness by women writers, Kelly Barnhill's eight books about women's rage, Sascha Rothchild's most captivating literary antiheroes, Rachel Kapelke-Dale's eleven top unexpected thrillers about female rage, Kat Sarfas's thirteen enchanted reads for spooky season, Fire Lyte's nine current classics in magic and covens and spells, Elodie Harper's six top novels set in the ancient world, Kiran Millwood Hargrave's seven best books about islands, Zen Cho's six SFF titles about gods and pantheons, Jennifer Saint's ten top books inspired by Greek myth, Adrienne Westenfeld's fifteen feminist books that will inspire, enrage, & educate you, Ali Benjamin's top ten classic stories retold, Lucile Scott's eight books about hexing the patriarchy, E. Foley and B. Coates's top ten goddesses in fiction, Jordan Ifueko's five fantasy titles driven by traumatic family bonds, Eleanor Porter's top ten books about witch-hunts, Emily B. Martin's six stunning fantasies for nature lovers, Allison Pataki's top six books that feature strong female voices, Pam Grossman's thirteen stories about strong women with magical powers, Kris Waldherr's nine top books inspired by mythology, Katharine Duckett's eight novels that reexamine literature from the margins, and Steph Posts's thirteen top novels set in the world of myth.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten books on maritime disasters and ecological collapse

Eiren Caffall is a writer and musician based in Chicago. Her writing on loss and nature, oceans and extinction has appeared in Guernica, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Literary Hub, Al Jazeera, The Rumpus, and the anthology Elementals: Volume IV. Fire forthcoming in 2024 from The Center for Humans and Nature. She received a 2023 Whiting Award in Creative Nonfiction, a Social Justice News Nexus fellowship, and residencies at the Banff Centre, Millay Colony, MacDowell Colony (waitlisted), Hedgebrook, and Ragdale. Her memoir The Mourner’s Bestiary is out now from Row House Publishing in 2024 and her novel All the Water in the World is forthcoming from St. Martin’s Press in early 2025.

At Lit Hub Caffall tagged ten books on maritime disasters and ecocollapse, including:

Erik Larson, Isaac’s Storm: A Man, A Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History

Isaac’s Storm is a nonfiction recounting of the Galveston hurricane of 1900, which killed twelve thousand people, the worst weather disaster in American history. I bought the bestseller on impulse in a Midway Airport bookshop on my way from Chicago to Boston to care for my father as he was dying from the kidney disease we share. I read it through on the plane, then read it again for weeks at his bedside.

It is a town-wreck, a hurricane book, but it also features ships caught in the storm at sea, ships wrecking into a city, and the heartbreaking wreck of the raft made to escape a flooding home. It conveys the science of weather, the history weather prediction, and the American politics that made the disaster worse.

It presents a fully realized world within the creative nonfiction, with recreated conversations, the heat of the Gulf Coast, the smell of fresh sawn wood, the sound of the Bavarian beer hall, the heartbreaking feeling of losing the grip of the hand of your beloved underwater.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Isaac’s Storm is a book that made a difference to Brian Williams.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven titles about the history of voting in America

Tommy Jenkins is the humanities division chair at Louisburg College in Louisburg, North Carolina, and an associate professor of English. He received his BA from the University of North Carolina, studied film at Columbia University, and received an MFA in fiction writing from North Carolina State University.

Jenkins is thea author of Drawing the Vote: A Graphic Novel History for Future Voters, illustrated by Kati Lacker.

At Electric Lit Jenkins tagged "a list of books that cover various significant aspects of the history of voting in the United States." One title on the list:

The Myth of Seneca Falls by Lisa Tetrault

Women’s suffragists have existed in America almost as long as the country itself. The Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 was the beginning of a concerted, focused women’s suffrage movement. The Myth of Seneca Falls deftly covers women’s voting at this time, the different factions that came together in Seneca Falls, and the aftermath of the convention. Why did it still take another 70 years for women to gain the right to vote? This book explains why in gripping detail.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five of the best Christmas crime novels

Denzil Meyrick was educated in Argyll, then after studying politics, joined Strathclyde Police, serving in Glasgow. After being injured and developing back problems, he entered the business world, and has operated in many diverse roles, including director of a large engineering company and distillery manager, as well as owning a number of his own companies, such as a public bar and sales and marketing company. "D. A. Meyrick has also worked as a freelance journalist in both print and on radio. Well-known for his gritty series of police procedurals centred on the maverick DCI Daley," writes Mark Skinner at the Waterstones blog. "Meyrick has displayed his versatility in the past couple of years with his festive cosy crime mysteries - Murder at Holly House and The Christmas Stocking Murders."

One of Meyrick's favorite Christmas crime reads:

Tied Up in Tinsel by Ngaio Marsh

My late mother was a huge fan of Marsh’s writing. I remember the books on shelves in the house in the seventies and well beyond. This particular novel was written in 1972, but don’t let that put you off.

We’re back in the country house over Christmas, where resentments and rivalries, all stewing under the surface, manifest themselves in murder.

Ngaio Marsh, like P. D. James, is one of those who kept the Agatha Christie tradition alive into the modern era. Her books are all worth a read. This one is perfect for the festive season. Sit back and watch the plot evolve. You won’t be disappointed.

Read about the other entries on the list at the Waterstones blog.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six coastal reads for brisk autumn days

Hailey Piper is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Queen of Teeth, All the Hearts You Eat, A Light Most Hateful, The Worm and His Kings series, and other books of dark fiction.

"I have a soft spot for the beach outside the thrills of summertime," she writes at CrimeReads. It's an atmosphere shared by her modern coastal gothic, All the Hearts You Eat.

One title on her list of "books that will coil you in that delicious dismal atmosphere and never let go:"

They Drown Our Daughters by Katrina Monroe

What better way to begin than with a book taking place at a haunted locale by the name of Cape Disappointment? We arrive outside the tourist season, where Meredith Strand has left her wife, taking their daughter back to her family’s home to stay with Meredith’s ailing mother. But family can be a curse, and as we discover early on (helped by a handy family tree!), Meredith’s family has endured a fate of being hunted by the sea for generations. If she isn’t careful, her daughter might be next. From the desolate lighthouse to the troublesome water to the secrets waiting in the depths, there’s a doomed nature to Cape Disappointment’s dread, but each clue into the past makes you eager to endure the next wave.

Read about the other entries on the list at CrimeReads.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven novels featuring protagonists over 70

Anna Montague is a writer and editor living in Brooklyn.

How Does That Make You Feel, Magda Eklund? is her first novel.

At Electric Lit the author tagged seven favorite novels "with senior protagonists on great adventures." One title on the list:

Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout

Lucy Barton, a writer, embarks on a road trip with her ex-husband, William, in the hope of understanding a family secret just revealed to him. Over the course of the journey, Strout beautifully depicts the peaks and valleys of a marriage, and the ways in which family— despite everything that can tear them apart—will endure.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

Fifteen bone-chilling new horror titles

Michael J. Seidlinger is the Filipino-American author of The Body Harvest, Anybody Home?, Tekken 5, and other books.

He teaches at Portland State University.

At Publishers Weekly Seidlinger tagged fifteen "recent titles ... guaranteed not only to scare but to expand your definition of what horror can be." One book on the list:

The Devil by Name by Keith Rosson

Rosson’s stellar sequel to 2023’s Fever House maintains that book’s artful combination of chilling postapocalyptic worldbuilding and fully developed characters. Five years ago, “most of the world suddenly started devouring each other” after hearing “The Message,” a communication that American president Preston Yardley had intended to target only the populations of enemy countries. The aural weapon transformed those who heard it into bloodthirsty zombie-like beings dubbed the fevered. To get the outbreak under control, Yardley allies the federal government with Terradyne Industries, launching a harsh initiative to restore order. Hopes for a reversal of the apocalypse may lie with Naomi Laurent, a French woman rumored to somehow have gained the ability to reverse the effects of The Message and make the fevered human again. The search for Laurent is interwoven with the narratives of several other characters, including John Bonner, a security officer for Terradyne, and Katherine Moriarty, who tends to her son even after he becomes one of the fevered. Rosson’s sophisticated plotting manages to toggle between these perspectives without ever slackening the tension. This is literary horror at its finest.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best books on guns in America

Catherine Habgood is a writer and editor living in New York City. She is one of the fiction editors at The Washington Square Review and is pursuing an MFA in Fiction at New York University.

"To understand America’s complicated culture of guns is an interdisciplinary pursuit: legal, historical, sociological, economic," she writes at Lit Hub, shere she tagged ten "exemplary attempts at that understanding." One title on the list:

Carl T. Bogus, Madison’s Militia: The Hidden History of the Second Amendment, 2023

In Madison’s Militia, Carl T. Bogus shows that “the right to bear arms was not about protecting liberty but preserving slavery.” He argues that “a close examination of the context in which Madison drafted the Second Amendment reveals the text as an offering to white southerners preoccupied with containing slave rebellion and uneasy about losing control of the primary instrument for it, the militia” (The New England Quarterly). Carl T. Bogus is a professor of law emeritus at Roger Williams University, but Madison’s Militia is a history, told with the scrupulousness of a lawyer, “a surprisingly fast-paced account of the events leading up to the Second Amendment” (Jeannine DeLombard, author of In the Shadow of the Gallows).

Read about the other books on the list.

The Page 99 Test: Madison's Militia.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven top book villains

At B&N Reads Isabelle McConville tagged seven favorite book villains. One title on the list:

Long Live Evil by Sarah Rees Brennan

Be careful what you wish for — on the verge of death, this romantasy lover gets a second chance at life in between the pages of her favorite books. Loving this villain is a not-so-guilty pleasure you’ll want to tell all your friends about.

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven titles channeling the mythic horror of girlhood

Tyler Wetherall is a journalist and author. Her first book, No Way Home: A Memoir of Life on the Run, came out in 2018, following her childhood spent on the run with her fugitive father. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, British Vogue, The Guardian, National Geographic, LitHub, Vice, and Condé Nast Traveler, amongst others.

Wetherall's new novel, her debut, is Amphibian.

At Electric Lit she tagged seven books that "borrow from the toolbox of magic realism and horror to convey the experience of girlhood in all its delight and barbarity." One title on the list:

Chlorine by Jade Song

Ren Yu is a mermaid. She tells you so on the first page. She doesn’t come from the tradition of red-haired shell-breasted singing mermaids; she is ripped, disinterested in humans, particularly men, and, by the climax of the book—she’s bloody. Ren narrates the story of her self-determined transformation starting from her life as a young competitive swimmer, so addicted to the water and the race that she licked the chlorine from her skin when she missed the pool. But as the pressure to win, and to prove herself by getting into an Ivy League college mounts, along with cruelties from her crew of fellow swimmers, she starts to pursue her longing to be a mermaid with a near holy embrace of physical pain.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six great suspense novels featuring mysterious mansions

Tom Ryan is an award winning author, screenwriter and producer. His YA mystery Keep This to Yourself was the winner of the 2020 ITW Thriller Award for Best YA Thriller, the 2020 Arthur Ellis Award for Best YA Crime Book, and the 2021 Ann Connor Brimer Award, and is currently being adapted for television. His followup YA mystery I Hope You're Listening was the winner of the 2021 Lambda “Lammy” Award for Best LGBTQ Mystery. He was a 2017 Lambda Literary Fellow in Young Adult Fiction.

Ryan's new novel, his adult mystery debut, is The Treasure Hunters Club.

At CrimeReads the author tagged six "fantastic novels featuring creepy houses that will keep you on the edge of your seat." One title on the list:

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters

Fingersmith is one of my all time favourite novels, featuring a twist so delicious and elegantly orchestrated that I gasped out loud when it was sprung upon me. Set in Victorian-era England, Fingersmith is a crime novel centering on two young women, Sue Trinder and Maud Lilly, whose lives become entangled in a complex web of betrayal and deception. Sue, raised in a den of thieves, is recruited to help swindle Maud, a wealthy orphan, out of her inheritance by posing as her maid. As Sue integrates into Maud’s household, she discovers unexpected feelings for her, which complicates the plan. However, nothing is as it seems, and the novel is filled with twists and reversals, exploring themes of class, identity, and betrayal.

Read about the other titles on the list at CrimeReads.

Fingersmith is among Jean Louise's five books with first-rate worldbuilding, Jenni Murray's six best books about history’s forgotten women, Santa Montefiore's six best books, Stuart Jeffries's five sexiest scenes in literature, and Kirsty Logan's ten best LGBT sex scenes in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine gripping thrillers featuring women on the run

At Likewise Turner Gray & Likewise Pix tagged nine "tantalizing thrillers that delve deep into the intense journeys of women who find themselves fleeing from danger, unraveling mysteries, and discovering unexpected secrets along the way." One title on the list:

Wallace Stroby’s "Heaven's a Lie" weaves a gritty tale of desperation and moral ambiguity. Joette Harper, a widow with mounting debts, sees a chance for a new start in the form of a briefcase filled with cash found at a crash site. However, the bag's origins tie her into a deadly game with its dangerous owner. Readers will find themselves enthralled in Joette's journey of survival as she navigates gang violence and the weight of her decisions.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Page 69 Test: Heaven's a Lie.

Q&A with Wallace Stroby.

--Marshal Zeringue