Ten chilling thrillers for the holidays

Carter Wilson is the USA Today and Publishers Weekly bestselling author of eleven standalone psychological thrillers. His stories focus on ordinary people pushed into situations where survival and morality collide, and every decision has consequences. His 2025 novel Tell Me What You Did was a national monthly pick by Barnes & Noble, and his work has been optioned for film and television.

Wilson's new novel is When They Find Me.

At People magazine the author tagged ten "books featuring people who would very much like to leave. But can’t." One title on the list:

No Exit by Taylor Adams

A blizzard strands college student Darby Thorne at a Colorado highway rest stop with four strangers. Then she discovers a kidnapped child locked in a van outside. The person responsible is inside with her, and calling for help isn’t an option. That’s a hell of a predicament: knowing someone needs you to act while having no idea whom you can trust. A rest stop might keep you out of the snow. Keeping you alive is another matter.

Read about the other entries on the list.

No Exit is among Krista Simmons's eight winter reads rooted in the West, Heather Gudenkauf's five great winter storm thrillers, Rektok Ross's nine top YA survival thrillers, and Sophia LeFevre's six top isolated, snowy thrillers.

The Page 69 Test: No Exit.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seventeen top titles about Native American culture

David Congdon is senior editor at the University Press of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas, and an adjunct instructor at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary. He is the author of several books, including The Mission of Demythologizing: Rudolf Bultmann's Dialectical Theology, Rudolf Bultmann: A Companion to His Theology, The God Who Saves: A Dogmatic Sketch, and Who Is a True Christian? Contesting Religious Identity in American Culture.

[The Page 99 Test: Who Is a True Christian?]

At Lit Hub Congdon tagged seventeen "outstanding Native American and Indigenous Studies books published by university presses." One title on the list:

Thomas Michael Swensen, The Great Land: An Indigenous History of Alaska

Reconstructs Alaska’s history from Indigenous perspectives, showing how Native communities forged the region’s political, economic, and cultural foundations and offering a powerful new understanding of how Native peoples shaped the modern Alaskan state.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Four top witchy, weird girl YA titles

Gloria Muñoz is the author of They Called Us Wicked and of the poetry collection Danzirly, which won the Ambroggio Prize. She is an Academy of American Poets Poet Laureate Fellow, a Hedgebrook Fellow, an Esperimento Sul Respiro Fellow, a Macondista, a Highlights Foundation Diverse Verse Fellow, and a part of Las Musas. Her debut novel, This Is the Year, a YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults title and winner of the International Literacy Association’s Young Adult Book Award, was hailed as “brilliantly layered” by Booklist in a starred review.

Muñoz's new novel is They Called Us Wicked.

At Book Riot the author tagged four "favorite recent books with witchy, weird-girl YA characters," including:

A Wild Radiance by Maria Ingrande Mora

With an electric magic, the main character of A Wild Radiance, Josephine, is driven to question everything she once believed to be true. Following rules and believing lies that disempower her is no longer an option for Josephine. What is she willing to face to become who she’s meant to be? This novel asks how we stand up to a rigid monolith that doesn’t see us or value truth and community.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven great horror novels set in the American South

Del Sandeen lives in northeast Florida, where she works as a copy editor and writes speculative fiction. Her work has appeared in FIYAH: Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction and Gay Mag and on the Nightlight podcast.

She is the author of This Cursed House and These Walls Remember.

At CrimeReads Sandeen tagged seven "favorite horror books which just so happen to take place in the hot and sticky South, where the gators aren’t even the scariest things you’ll find." One title on the list:

Anne Rice, Interview With the Vampire

This book follows Louis the vampire narrating the story of his long life to a young journalist. For me, after Bram Stoker’s Dracula, this was the quintessential vampire novel (at least until Stephen Graham Jones’s The Buffalo Hunter Hunter came along). The descriptions alone, from Louisiana to Europe, are rich and engaging, but these vampires? They’re actually terrifying.

Read about the other entries on the list at CrimeReads.

Interview With The Vampire is among Drew Broussard's twelve modern classic horror books, Mark Skinner's top ten vampire books, Craig DiLouie’s top ten fantasy books steeped in the Southern Gothic, Tara Sonin's five sexy novels to unleash your wanderlust, Jeff Somers's eight good, bad, and weird dad/child pairs in science fiction and fantasy, Jonathan Hatfull's ten best vampire novels, Ryan Menezes' top five movies that improved the book, Will Hill's top ten vampires in fiction and popular culture, and Lynda Resnick's six best books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best identical twins in literature

At the Guardian, John Mullan named ten of the best identical twins in fiction.

One title on Mullan's list:

The Cheerybles

In Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby, Charles and Ned Cheeryble are benevolent, interchangeable twins and wealthy philanthropists. Both possess "the utmost serenity of mind that the kindliest and most unsuspecting nature could bestow", and "both had lost nearly the same teeth, which imparted the same peculiarity to their speech". They rescue Nicholas and thwart the schemes of his villainous uncle.

Nicholas Nickleby is among John Mullan's top ten fictional teachers and ten best wicked uncles in literature, Andy Mulligan's top ten school stories, and Paulette Jiles's twelve favorite books.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven top titles about Iran

One title on Tertulia's list of seven books that offer essential insight into Iran’s history, politics, and culture:

King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation by Scott Anderson

Winner of the 2025 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction, this account revisits the months leading to the fall of the Shah and the rise of the Islamic Republic. Written by a New York Times Magazine contributing writer and veteran war correspondent, the book traces the protests, political missteps, and international pressures that drove the 1979 revolution. Kirkus judges called it “a masterful and propulsive account…of events whose aftereffects reverberate to this day.”

Read about the other entries on the list.

Also see Nazanine Hozar's top ten books about Iran.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven essential 1970s NYC noir books and films

Rosanne Limoncelli is a writer and filmmaker living in Brooklyn. Her short fiction has appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Suspense Magazine, and Noir Nation, and her short films have been screened in festivals around the world. Limoncelli also writes plays, screenplays, poetry, games, mysteries, and science fiction and has taught writing and filmmaking for more than three decades at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

[My Book, The Movie: The Four Queens of Crime; The Page 69 Test: The Four Queens of Crime; Q&A with Rosanne Limoncelli; Writers Read: Rosanne Limoncelli (July 2026); My Book, The Movie: The Spiral; The Page 69 Test: The Spiral; Writers Read: Rosanne Limoncelli (October 2026)]

Limoncelli's new novel is The Spiral.

At CrimeReads the author tagged seven essential 1970s NYC noir books and films. One title on the list:

Judith Rossner, Looking for Mr. Goodbar

This novel was inspired by true events and starts at the very beginning of the life story of Theresa from the Bronx, a woman who has been on a downhill journey since childhood. Her life is articulated in a way that pulls us right alongside her, through her unlucky life events, misguided experiences, poor decision-making, and damaging self-treatment, all giving a realistic understanding of what it was like to live in that era. It is the full backstory of a dedicated teacher and lonely lost soul, in the film played brilliantly by Diane Keaton, as she consistently puts herself in dangerous situations that finally lead to the tragic ending.

Adapted for the screen and directed by Richard Brooks, he gives the story a thriller angle with a slightly different focus. Read the book first, and Theresa’s story will resonate even more forcefully.

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

Looking for Mr. Goodbar is among Wendy Walker's six most memorable bad dates in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue

Four sweet and satisfying books to read for Diwali

USA Today bestselling author Sonali Dev writes hilarious and heartwarming stories about families without boundaries. Her novels have been named Best Books of the Year by Library Journal, NPR, The Washington Post, and Kirkus Reviews. She has won the American Library Association’s award for best in genre, the RT Reviewers’ Choice Award, and multiple RT Seals of Excellence. Dev has also earned acclaim as a RITA finalist and has been listed for the Dublin Literary Award. Shelf Awareness calls the author “not only one of the best but one of the bravest romance novelists working today.”

Her new novel, What's Lucky Got to Do with It, arrives in February 2027.

At Book Riot Dev tagged four books "that feel every bit as sweet and satisfying as Diwali goodies." One title on the list:

Dina Gets Lucky by Uzma Jalaluddin

A fiery attorney is stuck hiding the news of her own divorce to keep from ruining her sister’s wedding. Then the ex—the one who got away—shows up. This one has three of my favorite things: a desi wedding, a second chance at love, and Uzma Jalaluddin’s smart and delightful writing.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven titles that weigh the choice of motherhood

Alexia Nader is the author of the The Meaning of Daughter. She was a 2023-2024 Steinbeck Fellow. Her work has been published in The Nation, Los Angeles Review of Books, and The New Yorker among other publications. She is from Miami, Florida and currently lives in San Francisco where she teaches creative writing to children and teens.

At Electric Lit Nader tagged seven novels that "have shown me that there are many variations to the questions I grappled with in my novel about what goes into reproductive decisions." One title on the list:

Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami, translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd

The heart of this novel lies in a complicated desire shared by two sisters, Natsuko and Makiko, who both want to exert control over their bodies in ways that don’t make sense to the other. In the first section of the novel, Natsuko, the narrator, hosts Makiko and Makiko’s daughter in her apartment in Tokyo, as Makiko looks into getting breast implants. Natsuko doesn’t understand Makiko’s obsession with changing her breasts and doesn’t make an effort to understand what’s driving her sister either. In the novel’s second section, the tables are turned. Natsuko wants to try to have a child on her own. Makiko wonders why Natsuko would choose to be a single mother—knowing from Makiko’s life as well as their shared childhood—how hard it can be. Natsuko ends up turning to friends, colleagues, and other people in her community to help her understand her desire to have a child. The novel not only explores the power of women fully owning their bodily desires, but also the psychic pain of not truly being accepted on your own terms by those closest to you.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five non-traditional crime novels

The staff at Publishers Weekly tagged five non-traditional crime novels for fans of James Sallis, who work "often folds the tropes of genre fiction into strange, contemplative tales of self-discovery." One title on the list:

The Night Always Comes by Willy Vlautin

Taking a cue from classic noir, Vlautin (Don’t Skip Out on Me) offers a stunning, heartbreaking study of one woman’s struggle against fate and circumstance in an America that’s left her behind. The housing boom in Portland, Ore., has priced many working-class families out, but 30-year-old Lynette’s landlord offers her a good deal on the decrepit house she and her mother have been renting for years. Lynette works two jobs while caring for her developmentally disabled brother, Kenny, who also lives with them, and she has finally saved up enough for a down payment. All she needs is her mother to cosign on the loan. At the last minute her mother, exhausted by her own life of struggle and disappointment, backs out of the deal. Desperate, Lynette makes a last-ditch effort to buy the house herself. Along the way, a plot to steal a safe from a friend who owes Lynette money takes her into her dark past of mental illness, sexual abuse, and prostitution, and up against men who prey upon vulnerable women. This gritty page-turner sings with pitch-perfect prose, and Lynette’s desperation is palpable. Vlautin has achieved a brilliant synthesis of Raymond Carver and Jim Thompson.

Read about the other titles on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven Austen-inspired historical romance retellings

Rachel Brittain is a writer, Day Dreamer, and Amateur Aerialist. Her short fiction has appeared in Luna Station Quarterly, Andromeda Spaceways, and others. She is a contributing editor for Book Riot, where she screams into the void about her love of books. Brittain lives in Northwest Arkansas with a rambunctious rescue pup, a snake, and a houseful of plants (most of which aren’t carnivorous).

At Book Riot she tagged seven Austen-inspired historical romance retellings. One entry on the list:

The Unlikely Pursuit of Mary Bennet by Lindz McLeod

Much like in The Other Bennet Sister, Mary takes center stage—along with Charlotte—in this sequel to Pride and Prejudice. Lizzy and Jane already got their love stories. Even Lydia found her match. Now, it’s Mary’s turn. But when the middle Bennet sister comes to stay with the recently widowed Charlotte, she’s not the ungainly kid sister Charlotte remembers. Mary has gone to live with her aunt and uncle, has discovered herself, and has possibly, even, a thing or two to teach Charlotte these days. It’s an unlikely match I never would’ve guessed, but McLeod brings them together seamlessly.

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight of the of best books about the Romanovs

At Town & Country Lauren Hubbard and Norman Vanamee tagged eight of the best books to explore the history of the Romanov family. One title on the list:

Rasputin: Faith, Power, and the Twilight of the Romanovs by Douglas Smith

Perhaps the most famous figure associated with the Romanovs and their dramatic downfall wasn't a member of the royal family himself. Debauched and devoted, openly despised yet politically powerful, the strange dichotomy of Grigori Rasputin made the so-called Mad Monk as much a mystery during his life as it has since his infamous death and has turned him into a figure of modern legend.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue