Six suspense novels about art, museums, and forgers

Called “an author to watch” by Booklist, Carol Snow has written numerous novels for teens and adults. A former contributor to Salon’s “Mothers Who Think” column, her writing has also appeared in The Los Angeles Review of Books and Park City Magazine.

Snow holds a BA in psychology from Brown University and a MAT in English from Boston College. A native of New Jersey, she now splits her time between Cape Cod and Southern California.

[My Book, The Movie: Just Like Me, Only Better; My Book, The Movie: What Came First; The Page 69 Test: Bubble World]

Snow's new novel is The Girl on the Beach.

At CrimeReads the author tagged six "suspenseful reads about art and artists worth checking out." One title on the list:

Katie Lattari, Dark Things I Adore

If you’ve ever fantasized about spending the summer at a picture-perfect art retreat, complete with towering pines, a glistening lake, and, best of all, not just “a room of your own” but your own log cabin, this one’s for you…assuming your fantasy also includes simmering class tensions, mental illness, and a young woman who may or may not have been murdered.

At the book’s center, Max Durant, a professor and renowned painter whose best work is behind him, acts as mentor—and aspiring lover—to Audra Colfax, an MFA student as inscrutable as she is gifted. When Audra takes Max to her house in the wilds of Maine, prey becomes predator as Audra’s motivations, revealed in a split timeline, become clear. Lattari uses Audra’s MFA thesis as a narrative device while exploring themes of control, authenticity, and exploitation among artists.

Read about the other entries on the list at CrimeReads.

--Marshal Zeringue

Fifty of the greatest summer titles of all time

The staff at Literary Hib tagged fifty of the greatest summer novels of all time, including:

Alex Garland, The Beach

Nothing says summer like a nice beach, and there are few literary beaches beachier than the titular beach from The Beach. Beach. Alex Garland’s 1996 debut—now rightly considered one of Gen X’s Mount Rushmore novels—is the darkly hallucinogenic tale of a restless English backpacker’s search for a fabled island paradise off the coast of Thailand, and the nightmarish unraveling of the utopian community he discovers therein.

I, like thousands upon thousands of similarly gormless Banana Pancake Trail-ers, read The Beach while backpacking around Southeast Asia. It was the summer of 2008, and I was young and wild and free… sigh… Anyway, The Beach holds a special place in my heart, as does the flawed-but-fun 2000 movie adaption. I heartily recommend both.

Read about the other novels on the list at Lit Hub.

The Beach appears on Jo Morey's list of eight thrillers with beach & jungle settings, Ivy Pochoda's lit of five books that dive into the drug-fueled darkness of the club scene, Andrea Bartz's list of seven psychological thrillers for White Lotus fans, Lucy Clarke's top ten list of books about castaways, Hephzibah Anderson's list of eleven previously hip books that have not aged well, S J watson's list of six novels that could only take place at the seashore, Cat Barton's top five list of books on Southeast Asian travel literature, Kate Kellaway's ten best list of fictional holidays, Eleanor Muffitt top 12 list of books that make you want to pack your bags and trot the globe, Anna Wilson's top ten list of books set on the seaside, the Guardian editors' list of the 50 best summer reads ever, John Mullan's list of ten of the best swimming scenes in literature, and Sloane Crosley's list of five depressing beach reads.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top horror retellings of well-known stories

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 horror retellings of well-known stories, including:

The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle
Retelling of H.P. Lovecraft’s notoriously racist story “The Horror at Red Hook.”

Victor LaValle is one of the best writers of the century, hands down. His works have been adapted to the screen. His novel, The Devil in Silver, will be airing as a miniseries on AMC later this year.

This year marks the ten-year anniversary of the novella, The Ballad of Black Tom, a retelling of H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Horror at Red Hook.” Lovecraft’s tales were often racist, reflecting Lovecraft’s own prejudices, but LaValle takes Lovecraft’s story and molds into this stunning, dark, magical tale. It follows Charles Thomas Tester, a hustler who tries to keep a roof over his father’s head and food on the table. Charles knows how powerful magic can be, and when he’s sent to deliver a magical tome to a sorceress, a journey full of sorcery and things better left buried begins.

This novella has sorcery and LaValle’s signature wit and commentary. You don’t want to miss this.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Ballad of Black Tom is among Erica Ezeifedi's six books for fans of the movie Sinners, Brittany K. Allen's ten top books for fans of Sinners, Chase Dearinger's seven horror titles where the setting is a monster, and Colleen Kinder's ten titles about chance encounters with strangers.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top thrillers where writers are at the center of the action

Jamie Day, author of the new Beach Thriller, lives in one of those picture-perfect, coastal New England towns you see in the movies. And just like the movies, Day has two children and an adorable dog to fawn over. When not writing or reading, Day enjoys yoga, the ocean, cooking, and long walks on the beach with the dog, or the kids, or sometimes both.

At CrimeReads the author tagged "five books I’d recommend that give an inside look at the life (and grief) of a wordsmith," including:

The Writing Retreat — Julia Bartz

In this gripping psychological thriller, Bartz takes the cutthroat business of writing the best book quite literally when ambition turns to murder. Alex, the writer taking her last career gasp, can’t pass up the invitation to the isolated Blackbriar estate, the home of her idol, controversial feminist horror writer Roza Vallo. But when the competition is announced and the best book written in a month is guaranteed a life-changing contract, the typically collegial and supportive writing community turns inward, revealing our darker human nature.

Read about the other novels on the list at CrimeReads.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top soccer titles

One title on Tertulia's list of ten soccer books to read during World Cup 2026:

The History of the World in 12 Soccer Matches
Stefano Bizzotto

An Italian broadcaster and veteran World Cup commentator explores moments when soccer collided with war, revolution, dictatorship, and social change. From the Christmas Truce of World War I to matches shadowed by coups and national upheaval, these twelve games reveal how events on the pitch often echo far beyond it.

Read about the other titles on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nonfiction books for Caribbean Heritage Month

At Book Riot Kendra Winchester tagged three top nonfiction books for Caribbean Heritage Month, including:

Brother, I’m Dying by Edwidge Danticat

Edwidge Danticat is truly a treasure of Haitian Literature, and this is her story. When she was just a girl, her parents left her in the care of her uncle, Joseph. When her parents finally sent for her, she struggled to remember them and grieved for the parental figure she had left behind. Later in 2004, when the political situation in Haiti began to deteriorate, Uncle Joseph was forced to flee to Miami in search of safety. In a whirlwind story of family connection and the tender ties that bind one person to another, Danticat illustrates the strength of familial love, even from across the ocean.

Read about the other titles on the list.

Brother, I’m Dying is among Joe Meno's seven true tales about the journey to seek asylum in the U.S.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six thrillers with troubled parent-child relationships

Leah Rowan is an author living in Brooklyn and the Catskills.

Marion is her new thriller.

Megan Collins, author of Cross My Heart, called Marion a "pitch-perfect thriller that feels like the primal scream every woman has been holding back her entire life."

At CrimeReads Rowan tagged "six scintillating stories where the parent-child relationship is a little (or a lot) off." One title on the list:

Ainslie Hogarth, Motherthing

We’ve all heard of the mother-in-law from hell trope, but what if your vengeful mother-in-law was actually a ghost? Abby had a traumatic childhood, and so when she marries Ralph, she’s desperate to heal old wounds and bond with the new maternal figure in her life, her mother-in-law, Laura—but Laura’s cruelty and vitriol make that impossible, and when she takes her own life, her ghost threatens to destroy all that Abby cherishes.

Equal parts fierce and funny, Motherthing is a cathartic balm for anyone who’s ever had issues with their in-laws.

Read about the other thrillers on the list at CrimeReads.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five Gothic novels about cults

Catriona Silvey was born in Glasgow and grew up in Scotland and England. After collecting an unreasonable number of degrees from various universities in the UK and the US, she moved to Edinburgh where she lives with her husband and children. She is the author of Meet Me in Another Life (2021), Love and Other Paradoxes (2025), and the newly released Vervain Hollow.

At The Nerd Daily she tagged five "Gothic novels about cults, where the aesthetic and thematic tropes of the Gothic marry perfectly with the authors’ explorations of brainwashing, groupthink, and coercive control." One title on the list:

Bunny by Mona Awad

Like Catherine House, Bunny takes an elite college as its setting. But the focus here, as in Bunny’s Gothic predecessor Frankenstein, is on the perilous allure of creation. When misfit MFA student Samantha discovers that the other women in her cohort, the creepily identical Bunnies, are transforming rabbits into uncanny simulacra of men, she gets sucked into their world and into their hive-mind. As Samantha gradually loses her identity, the Bunnies cannibalize her creativity, rooted in hardship, to lend some grit to their insipid creations.

Bunny is both an allegory about privilege and authenticity, and a very funny satire of critique workshop culture. It’s also extremely Gothic, from the aching isolation that pushes Samantha toward the Bunnies, to the eldritch, horrifying version of Providence, RI that she scurries through ‘like prey from some unknown but imminent beast’. Like a classical Gothic heroine reclaiming her agency, Samantha can only escape from the Bunnies’ control once she discovers the extent of her own creative power.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Bunny is among Isabelle McConville's six novels for novelists, Chris Wheatley's six top dark academia novels, and Gnesis Villar's seven books about the struggle of being a writer.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven titles about deep human-animal connections

Lauren Acampora is the author of The Animal Room, The Hundred Waters, The Paper Wasp, and The Wonder Garden. Her work has won or been nominated for the GLCA New Writers Award, the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, the Story Prize, and the New England Book Award, and she’s been named an Artist Fellow in Fiction by The New York Foundation for the Arts. Her writing has appeared in publications such as The Paris Review, One Story, and The New York Times Book Review and has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories.

At Lit Hub the author tagged "seven standout works of fiction that illuminate the inextricable links we share with our animal compatriots." One title on the list:

Lydia Millet, Love in Infant Monkeys

Madonna hunts pheasant in the English countryside, Thomas Edison electrocutes an elephant, Harry Harlow conducts callous experiments on monkeys, and Jimmy Carter fends off a swamp rabbit attack. Millet’s collection of tight and unsettling short stories operates through the conceit of fictionalized true tales about famous people and the animals associated with them. At times comical, each of these stories swerves and plunges deep into dark truths of human nature. Here, animals serve as vessels for our worst impulses, suffering at the point where curiosity turns to sadism, domination to cruelty, and self-interest to neglect. In the brilliant story “Sir Henry,” a dedicated dogwalker to the stars remarks, “Dogs were the martyrs of the human race.” And yet, while the animals in these stories are sacrificed to selfish purpose and whim, the human characters are astonished and haunted by them. Like Thomas Edison’s electrocuted elephant, they glow like saints, symbols of innocence and divinity, embodying the impossibility of human perfection and the original sin of our nature. As the guilt-ridden Edison imagines of his executed elephant: “I hear you. You say: I do not forgive. You say: this is my gift to you. I will never forgive.”

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

--Marshal Zeringue

Five dual-timeline historical fiction titles

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 dual-timeline historical fiction novels that bring past and present together." One entry on the list:

The Seven Daughters of Dupree by Nikesha Elise Williams

1917, 1934, 1980s, and 1995 United States

In this multi-generational saga, seven generations of women in the Dupree family navigate love, loss, and generational trauma even as the ties that bind them prove to be the strongest force of all. When fourteen-year-old Tati begins asking questions about the identity of her father in 1995, she’s met with secrets and silence. Her mother and grandmother don’t talk about the past. They won’t talk about who Tati’s father is or why Gladys left Alabama in the 1950s. As the narrative weaves back through generations of women, it becomes clear why the Dupree women keep their secrets close and their family even closer.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top mysteries set in the Boston area

Hannah Selinger is a James Beard Award-nominated lifestyle writer and mother of two based in Boxford, MA, and the author of the memoir Cellar Rat: My Life in the Restaurant Underbelly. Her print and digital work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, Eater, Travel + Leisure, Food & Wine, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and elsewhere. Her 2021 Bon Appétit essay, “In My Childhood Kitchen, I Learned Both Fear and Love,” is anthologized in the 2022 Best American Food Writing collection.

Selinger's new novel is Valley of the Moms.

At CrimeReads the author tagged "five titles, set in Massachusetts towns, [that] bring together people, plot, and place." One novel on the list:

Hank Phillippi Ryan, All This Could Be Yours

The 2026 winner of the Edgar Award, All This Could Be Yours traces the fly-by-night success of debut New York Times-bestselling author Tessa Calloway. Calloway, who recently relocated from Boston to the North Shore’s Rockport with her family, must dodge nefarious forces at every stop of her tour: apparent stalkers, fans who want to dig deep into her hidden past, and even duplicitous livery drivers.

Rockport makes a pivotal appearance in this work, a place meant to provide respite but that haunts the protagonist as she spins farther and farther from the life she knows.

Read about the other books on the list at CrimeReads.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six titles with actually realistic sex

Brodie Crellin lives in London and is an editor at Granta Magazine.

A Sense of Occasion is their first novel.

At Lit Hub the author tagged six books by "writers whose depictions of sex had most closely held my attention." One title on the list:

Simple Passion by Annie Ernaux

Telephones, in any era, carry a specific erotic potency. Everyone can relate to a character waiting for a phone call, or a text, that feeling of being stuck in a purgatorial gap that won’t end until the other person has made contact. It’s so intense, and carries so much weight, that it’s unsurprising that for Ernaux, the waiting starts to feel like a precursor to the sexual act itself. The sex is brilliantly written in this book—intentional and unabashed—but the strength of Ernaux’s obsession makes every moment feel sexual. Whether she is getting dressed, sitting in the kitchen, or going to the university, each small gesture or decision is implicated in the game of her desire. It can’t really even be argued that this is a game unfolding between two adults. This pair seem incompatible, with little chance at a future, but Ernaux is so immersed in her passion, that she is can quite easily sustain the narrative singlehanded. A perfect object lesson in the distorting impact of good sex.

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

Simple Passion is among Bronwyn Fischer's seven obsessive love affairs in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue