Ten must-read modern classics of historical fiction

Leah Rachel von Essen is an editor, writer, and book reviewer. She is a copyeditor and fact-checker at Encyclopedia Britannica, as well as a contributing editor, Adult Books, for American Library Association’s magazine Booklist. She writes regularly for Chicago Review of Books and is a senior contributor at Book Riot.

At Book Riot she tagged ten must-read modern classics of historical fiction. One title on the list:

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

In the early 1900s, a Korean immigrant family settled in Japan, beginning with a young pregnant woman named Sunja and the sickly minister Baek Isak. Over the next century, Sunja, as a matriarch, fights to feed and keep her family alive, fostering her sons into what she hopes will be a prosperous future. This modern historical fiction classic covers everything from the temptation and pressures to assimilate and “pass” as Japanese to the institutional, social, and political oppression of Koreans in Japan over the years.

Read about the other books on the list.

Pachinko is among McKenzie Watson-Fore's eight titles featuring cathartic bathhouse scenes, Adrienne Westenfeld and Sirena He's twenty-five essential books about the Asian American experience, Daphne Fama's seven top novels set during times of great political upheaval, Mia Barzilay Freund's eighteen best historical fiction books of the last several decades, Courtney Rodgers's best historical fiction of the 21st century so far, Bethanne Patrick's twenty-five best historical fiction books of all time, Asha Thanki seven books about families surviving political unrest, the Amazon Book Review editors' twelve favorite long books, Gina Chen's twelve books for fans of HBO’s Succession, Cindy Fazzi's eight books about the impact of Japanese imperialism during WWII, Eman Quotah's eight books about mothers separated from their daughters, Karolina Waclawiak's six favorite books on loss and longing, Allison Patkai's top six books with strong female voices, Tara Sonin's twenty-one books for fans of HBO’s Succession, and six books Jia Tolentino recommends.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six contemporary titles that center caretaking through crisis

Sarah Bruni is a graduate of the MFA program at Washington University in St. Louis and the MA in Latin American Studies at Tulane University. She has taught English and writing classes in New York and St. Louis, and she has volunteered as a writer-in-schools in San Francisco and Montevideo, Uruguay. She is also the author of the novel The Night Gwen Stacy Died. Her fiction has appeared in Boston Review, and her translations have appeared in the Buenos Aires Review. She lives in Chicago with her family.

Bruni's new novel is Mass Mothering.

At Lit Hub the author tagged six contemporary novels that "explore the psychological toll of caretaking, the challenge of parenting through personal and political awakening, or the legacy of mutual aid within community." One title on the list:

Brit Bennett, The Mothers

The Mothers opens with an abortion and spans the friendship of two motherless girls into adulthood, living in the aftermath of decisions their mothers have made. When, following her own mother’s suicide, seventeen-year-old Nadia gets pregnant by the pastor’s son, she forges an unlikely friendship with Aubrey, whose mother has left her family behind. The titular mothers of Bennett’s novel—narrating in the first-person plural—offer observations and judgements from the of Upper Room of a Southern California Black church: “We were all mothers by then, some by heart and some by womb. We rocked grandbabies left in our care and taught the neighborhood kids piano and baked pies for the sick and the shut-in. We all mothered somebody.” The novel is haunting, asking what we owe our mothers, the communities given to us by birth, and those we create for ourselves.

Read about the other novels on the list.

The Mothers is among Kelsey McKinney's seven top novels about losing faith in religion, Priyanka Champaneri's nine top novels about gossip, and Patrick Coleman's eight top San Diego books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top atmospheric thrillers set during heatwaves

Elizabeth Arnott is an award-winning writer and journalist and has written critically acclaimed historical fiction as Lizzie Pook. Her work—covering everything from true crime to Arctic exploration—has featured in publications including The Sunday Times, National Geographic, The New York Times Book Review, and The Guardian. She lives with her husband and their young daughter in London, where she spends far too much time drinking iced coffee and watching serial killer shows.

Arnott's new novel is The Secret Lives of Murderers' Wives.

At CrimeReads the author tagged six "of the finest, most evocative crime novels that take place during heatwaves." One title on the list:

Patricia Highsmith, The Talented Mr. Ripley

Sprawling across a long, hot summer in Italy, Highsmith’s sun-baked 1950s classic follows the ruthlessly ambitious Tom Ripley, who’ll stop at nothing in his bid for success and self-preservation. When he is approached by shipping magnate Herbert Greenleaf and asked to persuade Greenleaf’s wayward son, Dickie, to return to the United States, Ripley has no qualms with exaggerating his own connections and accepting.

The resulting recce mission is filled with lies, manipulation and, ultimately, murder. Ripley is tantalizingly amoral, but it’s the picturesque coastal setting, with its mirrored seas and sultry summer heat, that make this an irresistible heatwave read.

Read about the other entries on the list at CrimeReads.

The Talented Mr Ripley is on Adam Hamdy's list of ten of the most popular literary antiheroes, Nadia Khomami's list of five of the best psychological thrillers by women, the UK-based Crime Writers' Association's list of ten page-turning reads, Nathan Oates's list of eight of the best bad seed novels, Lizzy Barber's list of seven titles about wealthy people behaving badly, Charlotte Northedge's top ten list of novels about toxic friendships, Elizabeth Macneal's list of five books that explore the dark side of fitting in, Saul A. Lelchuk's nine great thrillers featuring alter egos, Emma Stonex's list of seven top mystery novels set by the sea, Russ Thomas's top ten list of queer protagonists in crime fiction, Paul Vidich's list of five of the most enduring imposters in crime fiction & espionage, Lisa Levy's list of eight of the most toxic friendships in crime fiction, Elizabeth Macneal's list of five sympathetic fictional psychopaths, Laurence Scott's list of seven top books about doppelgangers, J.S. Monroe's list of seven suspenseful literary thrillers, Simon Lelic's top ten list of false identities in fiction, Jeff Somers's list of fifty novels that changed novels, Olivia Sudjic's list of eight favorite books about love and obsession, Roz Chast's six favorite books list, Nicholas Searle's top five list of favorite deceivers in fiction, Chris Ewan's list of the ten top chases in literature, Meave Gallagher's top twenty list of gripping page-turners every twentysomething woman should read, Sophia Bennett's top ten list of books set in the Mediterranean, Emma Straub's top ten list of holidays in fiction, E. Lockhart's list of favorite suspense novels, Sally O'Reilly's top ten list of novels inspired by Shakespeare, Walter Kirn's top six list of books on deception, Stephen May's top ten list of impostors in fiction, Simon Mason's top ten list of chilling fictional crimes, Melissa Albert's list of eight books to change a villain, Koren Zailckas's list of eleven of literature's more evil characters, Alex Berenson's five best list of books about Americans abroad John Mullan's list of ten of the best examples of rowing in literature, Tana French's top ten maverick mysteries list, the Guardian's list of the 50 best summer reads ever, the Telegraph's ultimate reading list, and Francesca Simon's top ten list of antiheroes.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six notable bad moms from fiction

Ej Dickson is a senior writer at New York magazine’s The Cut. She previously worked as a senior writer for Rolling Stone and her writing has also been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, GQ, Elle, and many others. She lives with her family in Brooklyn, New York.

Dickson's new book is One Bad Mother: In Praise of Psycho Housewives, Stage Parents, Momfluencers, and Other Women We Love to Hate.

At Lit Hub Dickson tagged six "favorite bad moms from fiction, from the archetypical overbearing suburban Jewish bubbes to horny housewives." One title on the list:

Frida Liu; School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan

This book by Jessamine Chan crept its way into my marrow and refused to get out. It is absolutely chilling and it shaped my perspective on a lot of the issues I discuss in my book. It’s basically a dystopian black comedy (though really there’s nothing funny about it) about a single mom who gets sent by a judge to a yearlong school for good mothers after she has a momentary freak out and leaves her child alone in her crib to pick up some papers at her office. She and the other mothers (who are mostly women of color, as is the case in real life with mothers whose kids are removed by the state) are subject to an increasingly impossible series of tasks to prove their worth as mothers, which of course makes it impossible for them to get their kids back. It’s chillingly inspired by a true story and it’s the most terrifying book I have ever read.

Read about the other entries on Dickson's list at Lit Hub.

School for Good Mothers is among Ainslie Hogarth's eight titles about monstrous mothers.

--Marshal Zeringue

Four thrillers that capture the horror of siblings left behind

Isabel Booth is the pen name of Karen Jewell, a former trial attorney and now a writer. She holds an undergraduate degree in English, a Master’s in Business Administration, and a Juris Doctorate degree. When she’s not writing she loves to read, travel, and cook dinner for friends. She lives in Houston, Texas, with her husband.

Booth's new novel is Then He Was Gone.

At CrimeReads the author tagged four thrillers "examine the effects on the sibling left behind." One title on the list:

Tim Johnston, Descent

The Courtland family is on vacation in Colorado when eighteen-year-old Caitlin, starting college in a few weeks on a track scholarship, is abducted. Her younger brother Sean is left lying by the side of the road, his leg shattered by the stranger in yellow-tinted glasses who took her.

Months go by, then years, and Sean undergoes transformation from a shy, overweight teenage boy his sister called Dudley, to a muscular, cigarette-smoking young man. He wanders aimlessly around the country in a truck he stole from his father, taking odd jobs to earn gas money to keep going. Ready to fight anyone abusing or disrespecting young women, he is haunted by shame that he didn’t do more to stop Caitlin from climbing into the kidnapper’s vehicle to go get help for her brother.

Beat up, released after a night in jail, Sean asks his father, “Do you think we’ll ever feel normal again?” When his father asks what’s normal, Sean replies, “I don’t know….Not this.” The novel is a powerful story of guilt, loneliness, and a family falling apart.

Read about the other novels on the list at CrimeReads.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten sunny destination thrillers

Robyn Harding is the international bestselling author of several novels including The Haters, The Perfect Family, The Arrangement, and Her Pretty Face. Her novels The Party and The Drowning Woman were both finalists for the Crime Writers of Canada best crime novel award. Her novel The Swap debuted at #1 on the Globe and Mail and Toronto Star Canadian bestsellers lists. She is also the screenwriter and executive producer of the independent film, The Steps. She lives in Vancouver, BC, with her family and two cute but deadly rescue chihuahuas.

[Coffee with a Canine: Robyn Harding & Ozzie; The Page 69 Test: The Arrangement; My Book, The Movie: The Swap; The Page 69 Test: The Perfect Family]

Harding's new novel is Strangers in the Villa.

At People magazine the author tagged ten destination thrillers set in warm and sunny locales. One title on the list:

With Malice by Eileen Cook

This riveting YA thriller has echoes of the Amanda Knox case, including its gorgeous Italian setting and a public trial by media. Eighteen-year-old Jill wakes up in a hospital room with serious injuries, and no memory of the devastating Tuscany car accident that killed her best friend. In the headlines, Jill is painted as a jealous monster, a sociopath. She must piece together the events of her forgotten trip to prove her innocence.

Read about the other thrillers on Harding's list.

With Malice is among Kit Frick's five YA thrillers about vacations gone horribly wrong and Darren Croucher's six YA murder mysteries for fans of Big Little Lies.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven notable Hamptons novels

Nicole Sellew is a writer and English teacher based in Connecticut and New York City. In 2022, she received an MLitt in fiction from the University of St Andrews, where she is currently studying for her PhD.

Sellew's new novel is Lover Girl. The publisher calls it a "picaresque debut of forbidden desire, in which a young woman escapes NYC to work on her novel in the Hamptons, falling into a downward spiral of lovers and other destructive behaviors."

At Lit Hub the author tagged seven Hamptons novels to read this winter. One title on the list:

The Guest by Emma Cline

The summer this came out, every linen-clad maniac was clutching this in their greasy hands on their morning stroll past The Golden Pear. A classic tale of a beautiful young woman just tipping her prime and freeloading with a boring older man. Our fearless heroine gets into all sorts of trouble, and what started out as a charmed vacation ends up becoming a horrific, picaresque nightmare. Read it if you like age-gap relationships or beautiful sentences about sand dunes.

Read about the other novels on Sellew's list at Lit Hub.

The Guest is among Arielle Egozi's eight books about women being bad.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven titles about women becoming beasts

Caitlin Breeze lives in London in a tiny house full of books. She has a BA from the University of Cambridge, a Creative MA from Falmouth University, and a love of all things eldritch.

The Fox Hunt is her first novel.

At Electric Lit Breeze tagged seven novels in which women turn monstrous to reclaim their humanity. One title on the list:

The Brides of Rollrock Island by Margo Lanagan

In Margo Lanagan’s take on selkie folklore, the women of Rollrock Island are seal-wives. They have been called from the sea and trapped in human skins so that men can claim them as brides. These seal-women are not cheerful wives, but exiles aching for the water. Their marriages are abductions, separating them from their true selves. In prose that stings like wind off the sea, Lanagan paints the domesticity the brides are forced to wear by hopeful husbands, and their unabating longing for the cold, deep water and their true forms. In this story, beast form is a lost dream of freedom: a utopia of female existence, freed from civilization, in which women’s original forms are sleek, powerful, and magical. It is a haunting and beautiful read suggesting that women do not want to turn beastly, so much as to return to their rightful beastly selves.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine thriller-y, crime-y speculative novels

Michelle Maryk graduated from Cornell University with a degree in English and attended the Yale Writer’s Workshop. For the better part of twenty-five years, she’s been a successful voiceover, on-camera commercial, and comedic actor, and she is a dual Swedish and US citizen.

The Found Object Society is her debut novel.

At CrimeReads Maryk tagged nine of her "recent (and one of my oldest) speculative favorites that thrillingly delve into crime and murder in its many forms." One entry on the list:

The Paradox Hotel, Rob Hart

Time travel for the ultrarich? Check. Powerful government entities privatizing the technology for their dubious gain? Check. One grieving female security officer trying to solve a murder while she slips between the present and past due to her time travel sickness called, Unstuck? Check and check. The time portal is starting to glitch; baby dinosaurs keep popping up; and things are going all kinds of wrong at the Paradox Hotel. Here, Hart showcases his mastery of melding noir, sci-fi and thriller in this wild ride.

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

The Paradox Hotel is among Michelle Maryk's six of the best time-travel titles and Molly Odintz's seven top novels set in supernatural hotels.

The Page 69 Test: The Paradox Hotel.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight titles inspired by lucky Chinese New Year rituals

Lauren Kung Jessen is a mixed-race Chinese American writer with a fondness for witty, flirtatious dialogue and making meals with too many steps but lots of flavor. She is fascinated by myths and superstitions and how ideas, beliefs, traditions, and stories evolve over time. From attending culinary school to working in the world of Big Tech to writing love stories, Kung Jessen cares about creating experiences that make people feel something. When she’s not writing novels, she works as a content strategist and user experience writer. She also has a food and film blog, A Dash of Cinema, where she makes food inspired by movies and TV shows. She lives in Nashville with her husband (who she met thanks to fate—read: the algorithms of online dating), two cats, and dog.

Kung Jessen's new novel is The Fortune Flip.

At The Nerd Daily the author tagged eight books inspired by lucky Chinese New Year rituals, including:

If you’re hanging lanterns, paper cuttings, and decorations to usher in good fortune and happiness: Double Happiness by Heather Eng

Mei must learn—and choose—what it is she really wants in work, life, and love in this novel about a woman with a carefully constructed life who’s caught between a relentless tech job, her fiancé, and an unexpected new relationship. This one comes out on May 19, 2026, so this is a peek at what’s on my TBR!

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine memorable depictions of AI in fiction

Justin C. Key is a practicing psychiatrist and a speculative fiction writer. He is the author of the debut novel The Hospital at the End of the World and the story collection The World Wasn’t Ready for You. His stories have appeared in the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, Escape Pod, Lightspeed, and on Tor.com. He received a BA in biology from Stanford University and completed his residency in psychiatry at UCLA. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and three children.

At Lit Hub Key tagged nine favorite depictions of AI in fiction, including:

Cortana (Eric Nylund, Halo: The Fall of Reach)

My favorite AI sidekick. She’s what we hope Siri or Alexa will one day be, a companion that can feed us all the information we need in any given situation, hack into alien computer systems, and brew our morning coffee all while keeping it entertaining. I was first introduced to her not in the video game, but in the written prequel, which I devoured before while I waited for 2001’s Christmas to come.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight works featuring cathartic bathhouse scenes

McKenzie Watson-Fore is a writer, artist, and neighbor currently based in her hometown of Boulder, Colorado. She holds an MFA in Nonfiction from Pacific University. She writes about evangelicalism, relationships to people and place, and self-discovery. Watson-Fore serves as the executive editor for sneaker wave magazine and is the founder and host of the Thunderdome Conference. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and Best American Essays.

At Electric Lit Watson-Fore tagged eight works featuring cathartic bathhouse scenes, including:

Splinters by Leslie Jamison

A spa visit is ideal fodder for Jamison: a bespoke, sensory setting that gradually recedes into background to allow for dialogue or interior reflection. In this case, Jamison and her friend Anna spend an evening at the Russian and Turkish Baths on Tenth Street. Jamison’s descriptions are lush and steamy, much more florid than either Zauner’s or Koh’s. The presence of others in the bathhouse is a fact Jamison uses to console herself against her personal disappointments and deprivations, and she gestures toward the communal nature of these spaces and the sense of shared humanity they open up. As elsewhere in Splinters, Jamison is straining for transcendence, and she asserts it via her projections onto and vivid descriptions of others.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Splinters is among Nathalie Atkinson's eight new books about sex, relationships and romance.

--Marshal Zeringue