Six top mythology- and folklore-inspired horror titles

Lyndsie Manusos’s fiction has appeared in PANK, SmokeLong Quarterly, and other publications. She holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has worked in web production and content management. When she’s not nesting among her books and rough drafts, she’s chasing the baby while the dog watches in confused amusement. She lives with her family in a suburb of Indianapolis.

At Book Riot she tagged six of the best mythology- and folklore-inspired horror books, including:

Skin Folk: Stories by Nalo Hopkinson

Nalo Hopkinson is a titan in speculative fiction. In 2021, Hopkinson was named the 37th SFWA Damon Knight Grand Master of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association. Among her many brilliant works, Skin Folk is a great title to jump into if you’re looking for a place to start with her oeuvre. Hopkinson’s collection shows her mastery not only of the short form but also of a range of genres. From stories inspired by Caribbean folklore to chilling superstitions and mind-blowing science fiction, this is a perfect read for the Fall season.

Read about the other titles on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top thrillers about mothers and daughters and sisters

USA Today bestselling author Hank Phillippi Ryan is the author of more than seventeen thrillers including All This Could Be Yours, One Wrong Word, and The House Guest which have won every major mystery award in the industry and have been translated into multiple languages throughout the world. Her fiction is inspired by a lifetime of groundbreaking true-crime cases from a storied career as an on-air investigative journalist for Boston’s WHDH-TV for which she was awarded multiple journalism honors, including thirty-seven Emmy Awards. A TedX speaker and in-demand literary moderator, she has been called a “master of suspense” (Publishers Weekly). A native of Chicago with roots in Indianapolis, Ryan lives in Boston.

Her latest novel is Mother Daughter Sister Stranger.

At CrimeReads Ryan tagged six favorite thrillers about mothers and daughters and sisters, including:

The Stranger Diaries by Elly Griffiths.

Diaries are supposed to be secret, that’s inviolable. And in this brilliant gothic-adjacent thriller, the mother and the daughter are each keeping one. When there’s a murder and both diaries become pivotal evidence, what the mother and daughter learn about each other’s devastating secrets in these no-longer-private entries will keep you turning the pages as fast as you can. This is a perfect book club book—when the killer uses the daughter as leverage, how will the vulnerable mom stop them?

Read about the other entries on the list at CrimeReads.

The Stranger Diaries is among M. E. Hilliard's seven best, creepiest old houses in fiction.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five books about the body

Lydia Mathis has an MFA in fiction from New York University. She earned her BA in English Literature with a minor in Classical Civilizations from Agnes Scott College. She has worked as a teacher for Teach for America in Memphis and as a teaching fellow at Coler-Goldwater Hospital in New York City. She is the recipient of A Public Space’s 2023 Editorial Fellowship and is currently an assistant editor at A Public Space. She has stories published in North American Review, Southeast Review, Torch Magazine, Stanchion, Five on the Fifth, and oranges journal.

Mathis's debut story collection is Desperate Bodies.

At Lit Hub she tagged five "books that have an entrancing focus on the body." One title on the list:

Naben Ruthnum, Helpmeet

I’m not one to typically read horror, as I’m a baby and prone to nightmares, but I read this with a friend and lived for the descriptions of a decaying body. The horror here is understated, observational. Emotions are near entirely removed, and we get to watch as if this is a kind of Cronenberg directed nature documentary. Besides the beauty and preciseness of language describing a deteriorating body, there’s also the quiet contemplation of the characters affected. There’s the crumbling husband, who makes you consider what you’d do if your body so viciously revolted against you. And then there’s the wife, who takes care of her husband. How do you bear watching a live decomposition? What must you do to survive that?

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Four top books for fans of "Slow Horses"

At Book Riot Megan Mabee tagged four entertaining espionage books for fans of Slow Horses. One title on the list:

Assassins Anonymous by Rob Hart

Like Slow Horses, this action-packed assassin story promises plenty of dark humor, as well as a protagonist trying to move on from his notorious past. While Mark was once known as the most dangerous assassin-for-hire in the world, he’s changed his ways, given up this questionable career, and joined a program to help him turn things around. Unfortunately, there seems to be someone who wants him dead, and this will send Mark on a hunt around the world trying to figure out who’s got it out for him.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Assassins Anonymous is among Isabelle McConville's eight hitman stories you don’t want to miss.

Q&A with Rob Hart.

The Page 69 Test: Assassins Anonymous.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top campus novels

Merve Emre is the Shapiro-Silverberg Professor of Creative Writing and Criticism at Wesleyan University and the Director of the Shapiro Center for Creative Writing and Criticism. She earned a BA from Harvard and a PhD from Yale. She is the author of Paraliterary: The Making of Bad Readers in Postwar America (2017), The Ferrante Letters (2019), and The Personality Brokers (2018), which was selected as one of the best books of 2018 by the New York Times, the Economist, NPR, CBC, and the Spectator, and informs the CNN/HBO Max documentary feature film Persona. She is the editor of Once and Future Feminist (2018), The Annotated Mrs. Dalloway (2021), and The Norton Modern Library Mrs. Dalloway (2021). She is finishing a book titled Post-Discipline: Two Futures for Literary Study and writing a book called Love and Other Useless Pursuits.

At The New Yorker, where she is a contributing writer, Emre tagged five great campus novels, including:

Possession, by A. S. Byatt (1990)

A swoony double romance. The first love affair is between a Victorian poet and poetess who wrote coded letters and poems to each other in the nineteenth century. The second is between two scholars in the nineteen-eighties who set out to answer the only question worth asking: Did the poets do it? A little-known fact: great chunks of the poems are sentences in blank verse from Henry James’s “The Golden Bowl.”

Read about the other entries on the list.

Possession also appears on Alison Doherty's top five list of literary romance books, Molly O’Sullivan's list of seven works that push narrative boundaries, Ceillie Clark-Keane's list of nine literary mysteries with a big winter mood, Emily Temple's list of the twelve best descriptions of flowers in literature, Jae-Yeon Yoo's list of ten books about the importance of the post office, Paraic O’Donnell's top ten list of modern Victorian novels, a list of four books that changed Charlie Lovett, Michelle Dean's list of the six best books about university life, Kelly Anderson's top five list of books for newlyweds, Rebecca Mead's list of six favorite books that illuminate the Victorian era, Marina Warner's ten top list of fairytales, Ester Bloom's top ten list of fictional feminists, Niall Williams's list of ten of the best books that manage to make heroes out of readers, Kyle Minor's list of fifteen of the hottest affairs in literature, Emily Temple's list of the fifty greatest campus novels ever written, John Mullan's lists of ten of the best fossils in literature, ten of the most memorable libraries in literature, ten of the best fictional poets, ten of the best locks of hair in fiction, ten of the best graveyard scenes in fiction, and ten of the best lawyers in literature, and on Rachel Syme's list of the ten most attractive men in literature, Christina Koning's critic's chart of six top romances, and Elizabeth Kostova's top ten list of books for winter nights.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven cozy, "Gilmore Girls"-coded fall titles

Kristy Woodson Harvey is the New York Times, USA TODAY, and Publishers Weekly bestselling author of fourteen novels, including Summer State of Mind, Beach House Rules, and the Peachtree Bluff series.

Her new book is Falling for Peachtree Bluff.

[My Book, The Movie: Dear Carolina; The Page 69 Test: Dear Carolina; The Page 69 Test: The Southern Side of Paradise; Writers Read: Kristy Woodson Harvey]

At People magazine Harvey tagged seven of her favorite autumnal reads, including:

The Academy by Elin Hilderbrand and Shelby Cunningham

Beach read master Elin Hilderbrand has teamed up with her daughter Shelby Cunningham to take us behind the scenes in the hallowed halls of Tiffin Academy, a fictional New England boarding school filled with secrets, scandals and a multi-generational cast of intriguing, complicated characters. Nothing says fall like back to school — with more than a few twists and turns!

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine must-read near-future novels by women

After graduating from Wellesley College and the Columbia Publishing Course, Leslie Stephens worked on the Editorial team at Food52 in New York before heading west to Los Angeles, where she served as the Vice President of Content for the brand, cupcakes and cashmere. Her writing has also appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Eater, Apartment Therapy, and Tasting Table. Her weekly newsletter, Morning Person is among Substack’s most popular paid newsletters and her debut novel You’re Safe Here was released in 2024.

Stephens recently earned her Master's in Professional Mental Health Counseling with a Specialization in Addictions from Lewis and Clark College. With her degree, she hopes to treat adults struggling with technology addiction, through nature-based therapy. She currently lives in Portland, Oregon with her hyperactive pit-mix Toast.

At Tertulia Stephens tagged nine favorite speculative fiction near-future titles by women, including:

Good Morning, Midnight
Lily Brooks-Dalton

The end of the world, from the perspective of people stuck in the most isolated places imaginable—an Arctic research facility and a space ship.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Good Morning, Midnight is among Michelle Anne Schingler's top five books where women in space take center stage.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven crime titles that feature outsiders who challenge the status quo

Tanya Grant writes twisty thrillers full of secrets, murder, and gossipy group dynamics. When not conducting highly suspicious web searches (for research!), she also writes romances.

Grant's new psychological thriller is A Beautiful Lie.

At CrimeReads the author tagged "seven novels about characters whose outsider status disrupts the status quo and leads to dangerous places." One title on the list:

Rachel Hawkins, The Wife Upstairs

Jane is an underemployed young woman working as a dog walker in a wealthy community after escaping a traumatic past. She meets Eddie Rochester and feels an instant connection with the handsome man, whose wife is missing and presumed dead. Soon, Jane and Eddie begin dating, and Jane finds herself embedded in his exclusive community, trying to fit in while keeping her secrets safe.

It’s a lot to handle, and that’s before you count the thumping sounds coming from upstairs….

Read about the other entries on the list at CrimeReads.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top 10 books to impress a prospective lover

Mariella Frostrup has enjoyed a four-decade career as one of the UK’s most respected broadcasters and journalists. Her ground-breaking BBC documentary The Truth About Menopause (2018) helped to ignite a national conversation. In 2022, she was named one of Vogue’s 25 most influential women in the UK. She is co-founder and Chair of the campaign group Menopause Mandate, and in 2024 was appointed the UK Government’s Menopause Employment Ambassador.

In 2025, Frostrup became a Trustee of both the V&A and the British Council, following six years on the executive board of the Royal Academy of Arts.

Her books include Menolicious (a menopause-focused cookbook co-authored with Belles Berry), Cracking the Menopause (with Alice Smellie), and three anthologies.

Back in 2000 for the Guardian, Frostrup tagged ten books to impress a prospective lover, including:

Tourist Season by Carl Hiaasen

A columnist and environmental campaigner for the Miami Herald, this is Hiaasen's first novel in what has evolved into a series of blackly comic and utterly readable satires set in his native Florida. Those who saw the dreadful screen adaptation of his novel Striptease shouldn't be put off the author himself. Essential holiday/aeroplane reading.

Read about the other titles on the list.

Tourist Season is among Joy Fielding's five essential thrillers perfect for the aspiring writer.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine titles that make an art of earnestness

Stef Ferrari is an Emmy Award-winning producer, New York Times bestselling co-author, illustrator, and reformed ice cream entrepreneur. She’s also a recipe developer and has published several cookbooks.

Now Ferrari writes queer fiction and is a freelance journalist covering her obsession: women’s sports, her work on which has been featured in the New York Times. She resides in Brooklyn with her soon-to-be wife, their puppets, Pete-Za, Scraggles and Killer, and their beloved Christmas tree, Stewart (#30).

Her new novel is Pining for You.

At Lit Hub Ferrari tagged nine books that "represent a rich range of literary earnestness." One title on the list:

Rufi Thorpe, Margo’s Got Money Troubles

Earnestness as a repeat performance.

A drug addict, professional wrestler, and absent father, Jinx doesn’t initially sit comfortably on Mount Earnest. But although he wasn’t around for much of Margo’s life, now that he’s made the decision to be a part of it, he’s unwavering. And while his fatherly advice is, well, unconventional (and usually of the wrestling variety), it lands because he isn’t dispensing from some father-of-the-year handbook, he’s always talking to Margo. And he always shows up in Margo’s corner, supporting her with choices that would be cause for coronaries among most fathers. Jinx proves you don’t have to be perfect, moneyed, or so-called educated to be an ideal father and grandfather, and that even when it feels like the final bell has rung, there’s still time to show up.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Margo’s Got Money Troubles is among Allie Tagle-Dokus's eight books that reckon with the impacts of cancel culture.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven titles for Dolly Parton fans

Tertulia's list of "a few essential reads by and about Dolly with some of the grown-up books she loved herself" includes:

For a little old-fashioned magic that delighted Dolly

Water for Elephants
Sara Gruen

Dolly named Water for Elephants among her favorite books—a sweeping, romantic tale of circus life, unlikely love, and finding where you belong. And so much better than the watered-down movie!

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five scrappy sci-fi titles for everyone who loves an underdog

At Book Riot Liberty Hardy tagged "five fun sci-fi novels about the protagonists using their wits and whatever else is available to fight the good fight." One entry on the list:

The Salvage Crew by Yudhanjaya Wijeratne

Scraps are literally the job description for the crew of this fun sci-fi novel! The disgruntled, seemingly unremarkable team sent to salvage an old UN spacecraft thinks the job is business as usual. But the planet where the ship resides reveals secrets that could destroy humanity, and the team will have to fight the feral planet with whatever is available to survive long enough to save the day.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue