Five excellent sci-fi and fantasy mystery novels

At Book Riot Liberty Hardy tagged five "exciting sci-fi and fantasy books that dip into the mystery genre." One entry on the list:

The Shamshine Blind by Paz Pardo

And if you want more sci-fi noir, then this book will scratch that itch. It’s a wildly original tale about an alternate United States, where chemical weapons have been created that cause emotions. The colorful weapons are quickly adopted to be used recreationally and for medical treatments. Kay Curtida is an agent with Psychopigment Enforcement, which investigates the black market sales of the drugs. And Kay’s new case has the potential to make her career…if she can survive it.

Read about the other titles on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight top femgore titles

S. M. Hallow’s short story “How to Stay Married to Baba Yaga” was included in the Locus 2023 Recommended Reading List and anthologized in The Year’s Best Fantasy Volume 3, edited by Paula Guran. Other short work can be found in Baffling Magazine, Seize the Press, Taco Bell Quarterly, and We’re Here: The Best Queer Speculative Fiction 2023. Her novella, How to Survive This Fairytale, was published in January 2025 and received a special edition in Rainbow Crate, a book box exclusively for queer books. The Halls of the Dead is Hallow’s debut novel.

At People magazine the author tagged eight "femgore novels that reveal the women of horror can be just as Monstrous as the patriarchy." One title on the list:

I’m Sorry if I Scared You by Mae Murray

After Odie Tucker is raped at college, she drives home to Arkansas for Thanksgiving and experiences a pill-induced abortion at a gas station. Instead of leaving it behind, she collects the fetal material in a water bottle, and brings it home with her. What follows is a beautifully bizarre story of agency and aliens, in which the fetus possesses Odie’s mind and helps her to get revenge on the man who raped her. Anchored by Murray’s gorgeous prose and unflinching exploration of queer identity, poverty, substance abuse and generational cycles, I’m Sorry if I Scared You is a page-turner I couldn’t put down.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ann Patchett's five best family saga books

Ann Patchett is the author of novels, works of nonfiction, and children's books. She has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the PEN/Faulkner, the Women's Prize for Fiction in the UK, and the Book Sense Book of the Year. Her novel The Dutch House was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her work has been translated into more than thirty languages, and Time magazine named her one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World. President Biden awarded her the National Humanities Medal in recognition of her contributions to American culture. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee, where she is the owner of Parnassus Books.

At Woman's World Patchett tagged five favorite family saga books, including:

Sandwich by Catherine Newman

In this novel by bestselling author Catherine Newman, 54-year-old Rocky finds herself caught in a painful middle ground: She’s no longer needed by her adult children for their day-to-day concerns, yet she’s constantly worried about her aging parents, all while navigating the unpredictable symptoms of menopause. When Rocky and her husband Nick embark on their annual beach vacation in Cape Cod with their kids Jamie and Willa, plus Jamie’s girlfriend, she finds herself flooded with memories—both joyful and heartbreaking—from a lifetime of unforgettable family summers.

What Ann says: “Sandwich is joy in book form. I laughed continuously, except for the parts that made me cry. Catherine Newman does a miraculous job reminding us of all the wonder there is to be found in life.”

Read about the other entries on the list.

Sandwich is among Colleen Oakley's seven novels featuring women over 40.

--Marshal Zeringue

Simon Schama's top 10 history books

Simon Schama is University Professor of Art History and History at Columbia University in New York. His award-winning books include Scribble, Scribble, Scribble; The American Future: A History; National Book Critics Circle Award winner Rough Crossings; The Power of Art; The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age; Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution; Dead Certainties (Unwarranted Speculations); Landscape and Memory; Rembrandt's Eyes; and the History of Britain trilogy. He has written and presented forty television documentary films for the BBC, PBS, and The History Channel, including the Emmy-winning Power of Art, on subjects that range from John Donne to Tolstoy.

Back in 1999 Schama tagged his top ten history books for the Guardian. One title on the list:

The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson by Bernard Bailyn

A very unlikely book about a man in paradoxical torment. An incredible book about a loyalist, and the ultimate biography of a loser, which simultaneously puts you in his position and makes you incredibly glad you're not him. He's demanding and repulsive at the same time: it's an incredible history of an impossible man in an impossible situation.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson is among Maya Jasanoff's five best books on anti-revolutionary British loyalists and Jay Winik's five best portraits of the era of America's founding.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five of the most WTF thrillers & crime novels

Jamie Canaves is a contributing editor at Book Riot. She tagged five great thrillers and crime novels with WTF premises, including:

The Man in My Basement by Walter Mosley

This slow-burn suspense novel is built and caged (heh) in a WTF premise.

If a stranger shows up to your house with a bunch of money (which you desperately need) and a request that they be caged in your basement, you’re gonna think you’re being pranked. But this goes into seriously “I’m sorry, what now?!” territory because this is not a prank. For additional context, the homeowner is Black, and the stranger asking to be caged in his basement is white…

Read about the other titles on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten titles about people making art together

Emma Copley Eisenberg is the nationally bestselling author of two books of fiction— Fat Swim and Housemates, nominated for a Lambda Literary Award in Lesbian Fiction and the VCU Cabell First Novelist Prize — and the nonfiction book The Third Rainbow Girl, a New York Times Notable Book and Editor’s Choice.

The Page 99 Test: The Third Rainbow Girl.

At Tertulia Eisenberg tagged ten "essential reads that explore the life-changing possibilities of creating things with other people." One title on the list:

Zora and Langston: A Story of Friendship and Betrayal by Yuval Taylor

This work of narrative nonfiction book about the complicated friendship and tragic artistic collaboration between Zora Neale Hurtson and Langston Hughes reads like the best kind of novel.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Page 99 Test: Zora and Langston.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine terrifying Native American and Indigenous horror books

Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. are the editors of Back for Blood: Never Whistle at Night Part II, an Indigenous horror anthology featuring stories by acclaimed Native American and Indigenous authors.

The collection features stories by: Jessica Doe • P.C. Verrone • Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. • Jim Terry • Jessica Johns • A.J. Eversole • Sonia Marie Barry • Shane Hawk • Stephen Graham Jones • Alicia Elliott • Mat RudeWalker • Shaawan Francis Keahna • Billy-Ray Belcourt • Jake Arrowtop • Alina Pete • Debra Magpie Earling • Joshua Whitehead • Tommy Orange • Ramona Emerson • Erica Tremblay • Kimberly Blaeser

At People magazine the editors tagged "some of their favorite horror novels written by Indigenous authors," including:

It Looks Like You in the Dark by Mathilda Zeller

When a predatory mining company brings corporate rot into a remote Alaskan village and her sister vanishes, a young Inuk woman plunges into the Arctic dark to find her. Stalked by the kushtuka — a shapeshifting creature that wears the faces of loved ones — this novel proves how industrial greed wakes horrors far older than the colonial project of the “United States of America.”

I love how Zeller twists Alaskan Native folklore into a suffocating trap where you can’t even trust a soul. This horror debut acts like an ice pick to the nervous system: freezing, terrifying and guaranteed to make you second-guess everything sharing a room with you in the dark. —Shane Hawk

Learn about the other titles on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five epistolary works of historical fiction

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 five epistolary historical fiction novels. including:

A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

A girl desperate to escape the bullying of her fellow classmates in Tokyo writes a series of diary entries documenting the life of her great-grandmother, a Buddhist nun. An ocean away, a novelist living on a remote island discovers a Hello Kitty lunchbox filled with mysterious artifacts she suspects washed away in the 2011 tsunami that devastated Japan. It reveals the lives of people completely unknown to her. Their stories may change her completely, even so.

TW for bullying and mentions of suicide.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five cli-fi novels and eco-thrillers

Nicole Brooks has a bachelor of environmental science and a lifelong love of reading, which has enabled her to blend two of her passions - nature and writing - into stories that put people into the thick of environmental disasters. She lives just outside Calgary with her husband and two daughters and can be found curled up with a book during long, cold Canadian winters, searching the skies for bald eagles, or hurting herself while playing pickleball.

No Higher Ground is her thriller debut.

At CrimeReads Brooks tagged "favorite books which tell deeply human stories in a world where Mother Nature is more than a supporting character." One title on the list:

Jane Harper, The Dry

Aaron Faulk escaped his small town roots and became a successful police investigator in the city, returns for the funerals of his old friend and the family he apparently murdered.

This tried-and-true plot line gets elevated by the thoroughly intoxicating atmosphere of this small town in the grip of a drought. Aaron gets pulled into the investigation and his own past gets brought up in the burning heat and the suffocating lack of moisture. This is truly a story that is elevated by Mother Nature. Gripping and twisty, Harper had me racing through the pages, desperate for the conclusion. And a glass of water.

Read about the other titles on the list at CrimeReads.

The Dry is among Elizabeth Arnott's six atmospheric thrillers set during heatwaves, Peter Nichols's six novels whose crimes and mysteries grow out of place & manners, Kate Alice Marshall's five mysteries and thrillers about returning to your hometown, Olivia Kiernan's seven modern classics of small town mystery, Sarah J. Harris's top eight mysteries with images that might stay with you forever and Fiona Barton's eight favorite cold-case mysteries.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eleven books about women who rewrote life and art

Anne E. Fernald is a professor of English at Fordham University. She is a scholar of British and global modernism with a specialty in twentieth-century women artists and is one of the world’s best-known experts on Virginia Woolf. She lives in New York City with her family.

Her new book is Her Own Voice: Eight Women Who Rewrote Life and Art.

At Lit Hub Fernald tagged eleven books that "expand our ideas of what a woman’s life can be and narratives can do." One title on the list:

Katie Kitamura, Intimacies

Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth comes to the admission of the many traumas she suffered as a nurse in World War One only gradually. She recounts her bravery and her determination and only after the war can she admit how grief stricken, tired, and disheartened she has become. Similarly, Kitamura’s unnamed protagonist only gradually shares the traumas she suffers as a translator at the International Court of Justice in the Hague. Her job is to translate, not to think, edit, or opine. Thus, every workday she sits and speaks the words of a notorious and evil ex-president, a man who has committed horrific war crimes. Having those atrocities, and his denials, spoken into her headphones, has a powerful effect. These are women who put themselves in danger, live in denial, and only belatedly reckon with the cost of their choices. The elegance and restraint of Brittain and Kitamura’s narratives intensify the unfolding impact.

Read about the other books on Fernald's list.

Intimacies is among Cleo Qian's nine titles about women’s loneliness.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top SFF books with unusual narrators

At Book Riot Liberty Hardy tagged five great SFF novels centering older characters. One entry on the list:

The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie

Now, since this is a list of unusual narrators, you might think that with this title, the book would be narrated by a raven. But it isn’t. (And there was already a talking bird book mentioned.) This fantasy novel is even more unusual, because its story of kingdoms, battles, and gods is told by a rock that contains the life force of an immortal god. What’s it doing in there? You’ll have to read it to find out.

Read about the other titles on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eleven top horrormance novels

Clay McLeod Chapman is the author of novels What Kind of Mother, Ghost Eaters, Whisper Down the Lane, The Remaking, and miss corpus, story collections nothing untoward, commencement, and rest area, as well as The Tribe middlegrade series: Homeroom Headhunters, Camp Cannibal, and Academic Assassins.

[My Book, The Movie: The Remaking; The Page 69 Test: The Remaking; My Book, The Movie: Whisper Down the Lane; Q&A with Clay McLeod Chapman; The Page 69 Test: Whisper Down the Lane; Writers Read: Clay McLeod Chapman (September 2022); The Page 69 Test: What Kind of Mother; Writers Read: Clay McLeod Chapman (September 2023); Writers Read: Clay McLeod Chapman (January 2025)]

Chapman's new novel is Devil Inside.

At People magazine the author tagged eleven top steamy, sultry, scary horror romance novels. One novel on the list:

Lethal Kiss by Taylor Grothe

Sure, Marcella might be a monster, but she’s always been discreet in who she eats, which is why meeting fellow professor Lacie comes at the most inopportune time. Tenure is on the line! This lovely bloody blend of dark academia and sapphic romance is not for the faint of heart, but rest assured: once you’re finished, you’ll be absolutely drenched in red.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue