Five top literary titles by Southern writers

Suzanne Van Atten is a columnist for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

She tagged five "summer novels more substantive than your typical beach read," including:

How to Date a Fanatic by Aruni Kashyap

Rohit is a professor at Delhi University in modern-day India who lives in a bubble of like-minded queer academics in this new novel by Aruni Kashyap, an associate professor at the University of Georgia and director of the creative writing program. Obsessed by an unrequited love, Rohit seeks solace in relationships with other men. Meanwhile, religious and ethnic unrest mounts, to which Rohit remains oblivious until the growing movement of conservative extremism threatens his insulated world.

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

The best science fiction titles of the century

The experts at Book Riot tagged the best science fiction books of the century (so far). One title on the list:

All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders

This has been a comfort read since I first read it almost 20 years ago. A story of two childhood friends who eventually took different paths: one went to school for witchcraft while the other pursued science. They are forever bound together by fate and the mysterious man who has followed them for years. They grow up, they make mistakes, they gain knowledge, and once again cross paths as adults in warring factions who find themselves fighting to save the world from destruction. I’ve always loved tales of science vs. magic and this is my favorite. Full disclosure: I’m friends with the author but read this long before we became friends.
- Patricia Elzie-Tuttle

Read about the other books on the list.

All The Birds in The Sky is among Akemi C. Brodsky's top ten novels about mad scientists, Jeff Somers's fifty science fiction essentials written by women, Nancy Kress's five best books with ambitious birds, and Laura Lam's five top books about futuristic California.

My Book, The Movie: All the Birds in the Sky.

--Marshal Zeringue

Karin Slaughter’s favorite dark and twisty books

Karin Slaughter is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than twenty-five novels, including the Edgar nominated Cop Town and standalone novels Pretty Girls and False Witness. An international bestseller, Slaughter is published in 120 countries with more than 40 million copies sold across the globe. Pieces of Her, based on her novel, debuted at #1 worldwide on Netflix as an original series in 2022. Her bestselling thriller series, Will Trent, is now a television and streaming sensation in its 4th season. The Good Daughter will soon be a limited series starring Rose Byrne and Meghann Fahy, and further projects are currently in development for film/TV.

Slaughter's newest novel is The Secrets We Hide.

At Oprah Daily she tagged the seven thrillers she considers essential reading. One title on the list:

King of Ashes, by S.A. Cosby

The latest book from the award-winning crime writer is a Southern Noir family saga—two genres I am pulled towards in my own writing—with The Godfather vibes. King of Ashes follows Roman Carruthers, a charming and complicated Atlanta businessman, who returns to his oppressively small hometown to care for his ailing father. From the moment Roman returns to Virginia, things begin to unravel. His siblings are both a mess. The family business is falling apart. And there is an outsized debt that must be paid. This book is high-stakes from the very first pages. It’s dark, gritty, emotionally charged, and has incredible twists that all hinge on what people will do, or won’t do, to protect their family secrets. If this one doesn’t keep your heart pounding, then you might want to make sure that you still have a pulse.

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven top messy love stories

Alicia Upano was born and raised in Hawai‘i. She is the recipient of the Poets & Writers Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award Hawai‘i, the James Jones First Novel Fellowship, and a Bread Loaf-Rona Jaffe Scholarship. Her short fiction has appeared in The Massachusetts Review, The Southern Review, The Best Peace Fiction: A Social Justice Anthology, and more. After living in Asia and both U.S. continental coasts, she now resides on O‘ahu with her family.

Upano's debut novel is Everything to the Sea.

At Lit Hub the author tagged seven books that are "interested in romantic love as a process of transformation, not a terminus." One title on the list:

Mohsin Hamid, Exit West

This slim book is magical. Love blooms between Saeed and Nadia as civil war breaks out in their unnamed city. The stakes could not be higher, as Hamid writes as the novel opens, “[O]ne moment we are pottering about our errands as usual and the next we are dying.” In such a landscape, what are young lovers to do?

Exit West explores the tension between duty and independence, desire and convention, and how to move forward when the present is untenable. Our young lovers must leave their families and country, fleeing through the first of many doors as refugees. This novel highlights the refugee crisis, with sharp interstitials of global violence, while also grappling with the questions of any relationship that is no longer new: How do we change through every door we pass through? Have we passed through so many doors that we are no longer the people we were? Can we continue this journey together? And will you remember me, no matter how this journey ends?

Read about the other entries on the list.

Exit West is among Andrew Forrester's ten love stories for the romance reluctant, Forbes's thirty greatest dystopian books of all time, Ore Agbaje-Williams's seven top books featuring very complicated friendships, Gian Sardar's eight of the best novels about war-torn love, C Pam Zhang's top ten novels about moving and Helen Phillips's six notable novels involving alternate realities.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine top Southern Gothic novels

Lo Patrick is a former lawyer and current novelist living in the suburbs of Atlanta.

Her debut, The Floating Girls, earned a starred review from Publishers Weekly, was a finalist for the Townsend Prize for Fiction, and was a Reader's Digest Editor's Pick.

Patrick's newest novel is The Sins of Summer Daughters.

At People magazine the author tagged nine must-read Southern Gothic novels. One title on the list:

Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell

Nobody writes the hard edge of the South better, or poverty and isolation. Winter’s Bone is also an excellent example of the often warped trajectory of adolescence in some rural communities. Kids are asked to take on adult responsibilities, leaning on years of dysfunction as their preparation.

Read about the other novels on the list.

Winter's Bone is among Louisa Luna's four difficult women characters worth celebrating, Carl Vonderau's nine greatest moral compromises in crime fiction, Adam Sternbergh's six top crime novels that double as great literature and Lauren Passell's ten must-read books that take place in the Midwest.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight fantastic short SFF books

At Book Riot Liberty Hardy tagged “eight slim science fiction and fantasy novels you can read in one sitting." One entry on the list:

The Dead Cat Tail Assassins by P. Djèlí Clark

This is an exciting dark fantasy about assassins and honor. Eveen the Eviscerator is a professional killer who skillfully carries out every job she is assigned. But when one job turns out to hit a little too close to home, she fails to complete it. Now she’s running from the people she used to work with, while trying to make sense of everything. (FYI, there are no dead cats in this book. They just liked the name.)

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top mysteries set in lavish fictional manors

Louise Candlish is the internationally bestselling author of The Other Passenger and Our House, winner of the British Book Awards Crime & Thriller of the Year and adapted for TV as a limited series starring Martin Compston and Tuppence Middleton. She is the winner of a Ned Kelly Award for International Crime Fiction in Australia and is a three-time nominee for the prestigious Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award in the UK.

Candlish's new novel is A Neighbor's Guide to Murder.

At CrimeReads the author tagged five favorite mysteries set in grand, intricate residences. One title on the list:

Ira Levin, Rosemary’s Baby

‘Old, black and elephantine’, the Bramford is a Gothic building in New York City with a history of witchcraft and murder. Not much, then, to deter Rosemary and Guy from snapping up the lease for Apartment 7E when it becomes unexpectedly available. Soon Guy has fallen under the influence of elderly neighbors the Castevets, while a pregnant Rosemary finds herself increasingly isolated and menaced.

I think most of us know what it is that makes her baby so infamous, but what are the clues that the building itself harbours satanic vibes? Well, the elevator is oak-paneled, the hallways dimly lit, the previous occupant dead—to name but three.

The Bramford was famously modeled on the Dakota, the Upper West Side icon now best known for being the scene of John Lennon’s murder in 1980. In Polanski’s classic adaptation of the novel starring Mia Farrow, the Dakota provides the exterior shots, cementing forevermore the connection between the real and the imagined.

Read about the other entries on the list at CrimeReads.

Rosemary's Baby is among Anna Barrington's six top social thrillers that will make you wonder who you can trust, Chin-Sun Lee's five best gothic novels about distressed women, Lisa Unger's five top horror novels that explore the darkest corners of our minds, Alice Blanchard's ten chilling thrillers to get you through a winter storm, Ania Ahlborn's ten scariest books of all time, Jeff Somers's twenty-one books that will give you an idea of how the horror genre has evolved and "twenty-five books that might not necessarily be the best horror novels, but are certainly the scariest," Christopher Shultz's top ten literary chillers, and Kat Rosenfield's top seven scary autumnal stories.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine splashy sea creature titles

Tessa Yang is a reader, writer, and shark enthusiast from New York State. She received her MFA from Indiana University where she served as the Editor of Indiana Review.

Yang's story collection, The Runaway Restaurant, was published by 7.13 Books in 2022. Her stories have appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, The Cincinnati Review, Foglifter, and elsewhere, and her flash fiction has been featured in Best Small Fictions 2024, Flash Fiction America, and Wigleaf's Top 50 Very Short Fictions of 2018 and 2019.

Her debut novel is The Jellyfish Problem.

[Q&A with Tessa Yang]

At People magazine Yang tagged nine favorite sea creature books, including:

Venomous Lumpsucker by Ned Beauman

When he’s not making you laugh out loud, Beauman will disturb you with this novel’s near-future dystopia, in which mass species extinction has been fully monetized and an unlikely duo must search for the most intelligent fish on the planet: the Venomous Lumpsucker. Beauman’s world-building cleverly balances the probably hyperbolic and the eerily plausible. The result is an eco-thriller as unsettling as it is entertaining.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten books to help you understand America

NPR staff and critics tagged ten books to help you understand America as its 250th birthday. One title on the list:

We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution, by Jill Lepore

As the U.S. approaches the 250th anniversary of its founding, it feels like an appropriate time to reflect on where we're at as a country and how we got here. We the People, by Jill Lepore, a history and law professor at Harvard University, helps satisfy that impulse. It tells the story of the U.S. Constitution, which is among the world's oldest constitutions. Lepore focuses on battles over amendments, which were fought not just by politicians but by ordinary Americans. The founders designed the Constitution to be amended, but it has become much more difficult to do so over the years. As the Constitution becomes harder to amend, Lepore writes, the risk of political violence becomes greater.
— Milton Guevara, producer, Morning Edition and Up First

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven titles that feel like a movie

Marion Winik is the author of nine books, including The Big Book of the Dead (2019) and First Comes Love (1996; reissued with a new introduction in 2026). Her essays have been published in The New York Times Magazine, The Sun, and elsewhere; her column at BaltimoreFishbowl.com has been running since 2011.

[Coffee with a Canine: Marion Winik and Beau (December 2009); Coffee with a Canine: Marion Winik and Beau (June 2013); Writers Read: Marion Winik (June 2013)]

A professor at the University of Baltimore, she reviews books for The Washington Post, Oprah Daily, and People, among others, and hosts the NPR podcast The Weekly Reader. She was a commentator on All Things Considered for fifteen years. She is the recipient of the 2023 National Book Critics Circle Service Award.

At Oprah Daily Winik tagged seven books with fast-paced, visual storytelling, including:

She's Under Here by Karen Palmer

For a memoir that grabs you on page one and doesn't let go, pick up this chilling account of one woman's escape from domestic abuse. One day in 1989, the freshly minted “Karen Palmer” and her husband of about a week, “Vinnie,” packed up a carload of possessions, every cent they had, and Palmer’s two daughters, aged three and seven, and left California for what the author calls “do-it-yourself witness protection.” They were running from Palmer’s ex-husband, an older man she had been with since she was in high school. When she left the coercive, controlling relationship to pursue a romance with an old friend, her spouse turned violent and dangerous. Palmer's story combines the energy of a psychological thriller with the deep resonance of heartfelt personal truth, as she courageously considers the moral implications of her decision to disappear.

Read about the other entries on the list.

-Marshal Zeringue

Six titles that invert horror tropes

Michael J. Seidlinger is the Filipino-American author of On Submission, Anybody Home?, and other books. He has written for, among others, Wired, Buzzfeed, The Believer, and Publishers Weekly. He teaches at Portland State University and has led workshops at Catapult, Kettle Pond Writers’ Conference, and Sarah Lawrence.

Seidlinger's new novel is Brokeula.

At CrimeReads the author tagged six novels that spin horror tropes in interesting ways. One title on the list:

Carissa Orlando, The September House

If you happen to end up living in a haunted house, odds are you’re going to want to pick up roots post-haste and peace out. Not the case with Margaret, Carissa Orlando’s protagonist in her addictive and inventive redesign of the haunted house trope, The September House.

Even after her husband leaves, unable to deal with the paranormal activity, Margaret stays. She is not leaving. You cannot even imagine what she gets into, and it’s not just the usual “bump in the night.” The September House is as much fun as it is frightening, and a great spin on a touchstone trope.

Read about the other novels on Seidlinger's list at CrimeReads.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven top titles about fresh starts

Alex Luppens-Dale won the “Enthusiastic Reader Award” all four years of high school. She is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and received her MFA in Creative Writing from The New School. Her favorite genres are memoir, witches, and anything with cults. She lives in New Jersey.

At Book Riot Luppens-Dale tagged seven "books in various genres that celebrate fresh starts and new lives in all of their forms." One title on the list:

Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop by Hwang Bo-reum

Yeongju did everything she was supposed to do and is burnt out. She decides to do something different: quit her high-level career and open up a book shop. She and her community of staff members and customers find something very special in the community that forms there.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue