Six literary mysteries set in the 1980s

T. Greenwood grew up in rural Vermont in the 1970s. She began writing stories at seven years old and wrote her first "novel" at nine on her dad's electric typewriter.

Since then, she has published sixteen novels. She has received grants from the Sherwood Anderson Foundation, the Christopher Isherwood Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Maryland State Arts Council. She has won three San Diego Book Awards. Five of her novels have been Indie Next picks. Bodies of Water was finalist for a Lambda Foundation award, and Keeping Lucy was a Target Book Club Pick.

[My Book, The Movie: Rust and Stardust; The Page 69 Test: Rust and Stardust; Writers Read: T. Greenwood (August 2019); The Page 69 Test: Keeping Lucy; My Book, The Movie: Keeping Lucy; Q&A with T. Greenwood; The Page 69 Test: Such a Pretty Girl; My Book, The Movie: The Still Point; My Book, The Movie: Everything Has Happened]

Greenwood's new novel is Everything Has Happened.

At CrimeReads the author tagged six favorite literary mysteries set in the 1980s, including:

Megan Abbott, The End of Everything

Megan Abbott has become known as the contemporary queen of noir, but The End of Everything, published in 2011, is the first novel of Abbott’s which explores the intensity of friendships between girls, a subject found in many of her subsequent novels. The End of Everything, set in a midwestern suburb in the mid-1980s, centers on thirteen-year-old Lizzy Hood, whose best friend, Evie, is kidnapped. The novel illuminates the complexity of this friendship, the girls’ burgeoning sexuality, and their respective attractions to older men.

Abbott has said that it was inspired by Lolita, drawing from the second half of the novel during which Humbert Humbert kidnaps the young Dolores Haze and takes her on the road. As with all of Abbott’s books, The End of Everything is atmospheric, and much of the suspense psychologically driven.

Read about the other titles on Greenwood's list.

The End of Everything is among Heather Levy's eight books about dark desires that will crush you, Lisa Levy's eight most toxic friendships in crime fiction and Hallie Ephron's top ten mysteries that harness unreliable narrators.

The Page 69 Test: The End of Everything.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten memoirs that explore the nuances of family estrangement

Jenny Bartoy is a French American writer, critic, and editor based in the Pacific Northwest.

Her new book, No Contact, is an anthology about family estrangement. Ocean Vuong called it "a landmark work."

Bartoy writes essays, author profiles and interviews, and book reviews. Her work appears in a variety of publications, including The Boston Globe, The Seattle Times, The Rumpus, CrimeReads, Chicago Review of Books, Under the Gum Tree, Room, and Hippocampus Magazine, and in literary anthologies such as Sharp Notions: Essays from the Stitching Life.

At Lit Hub Bartoy tagged ten great memoirs that explore "the realities of [family] estrangement with the vulnerability and nuance it deserves, providing a powerful counterpoint to pervasive and reductive sociocultural talking points." One title on the list:

Stephanie Foo, What My Bones Know

In this best-selling memoir, Foo investigates the repercussions of complex PTSD (C-PTSD) caused by her abusive parents and her subsequent estrangement from each of them in turn. The book describes both her research into C-PTSD and her extensive efforts to heal. This is a rich, complex memoir in which Foo explores her familial roots, the impact of intergenerational trauma in Asian-American immigrant communities, the failures of American healthcare, and the patriarchal erasure of women’s suffering. While trauma is its focus, at heart the book wrestles with the concept of parent-less identity and the question of deserving to be loved. “Trauma isn’t just the sadness that comes from being beaten, or neglected, or insulted. That’s just one layer of it. Trauma also is mourning the childhood you could have had,” Foo writes. “Trauma is mourning the fact that, as an adult, you have to parent yourself.” At times heartwrenching, at others darkly funny, this story provides a vivid and layered glimpse into the perspective of a no-contact adult child.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven literary characters who break the “teen girl” trope

Caroline Bicks is the Stephen E. King Chair in Literature at the University of Maine, where she teaches courses in Shakespeare, early modern culture, and horror fiction. She is the author of Cognition and Girlhood in Shakespeare’s World and Midwiving Subjects in Shakespeare’s England; co-author of Shakespeare Not Stirred: Cocktails for Your Everyday Dramas; and co-host of the Everyday Shakespeare podcast. Her essays and humor pieces have appeared in the Modern Love column of the New York Times, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and the show Afterbirth. She lives in Blue Hill, Maine, with her family.

Bicks's new book is Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King.

At Electric Lit Bicks tagged "seven stories [that] feature girls who use their cognitive abilities to challenge social norms and imagine their own destinies." One title on the list:

Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson

“Why is the measure of love loss?” This question drives Winterson’s memoir about growing up with an abusive adoptive mother, searching for her past, and making her future. The elder Winterson locks Jeannette outside in the winter and forbids all books except for the Bible. When she discovers that 14-year-old Jeanette is sleeping with her girlfriend, she has a Pentecostal minister force her daughter through three brutal (and unsuccessful) days of conversion therapy. Eventually, Jeanette saves herself by escaping into fiction. She works her way through every work of literature, A-Z, in her local library; and, after Mrs. Winterson evicts her at 16, gets herself into Oxford where she becomes a fiction writer. Here, she writes about how stories give words to those who have been silenced: “We get our language back through the language of others.” Fiction “isn’t a hiding place. It’s a finding place.”

Read about the other entries on the list.

Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? is among Tara Westover's four inspirational memoirs.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven titles for fans of "Margo’s Got Money Troubles"

At Book Riot Megan Mabee tagged seven books for fans of Margo’s Got Money Troubles, including:

The Girls from Corona del Mar by Rufi Thorpe

I couldn’t kick off this list without mentioning Rufi Thorpe’s exceptional backlist, which I’m working my way through now. While I’d recommend them all, this debut novel by Thorpe emphasizes motherhood themes, so it has the closest feel to Margo’s story. Mia and Lorrie Ann have been best friends since they were kids, and as they grow up, they’ll face ups and downs in life, including abortion, motherhood, love, loss, substance abuse, and discovering their passions. I like Thorpe’s nuanced examination of friendship and how these relationships change as we do. This story is so heartbreaking at times, yet hopeful too. It’s one of those books that stays with you.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Girls from Corona del Mar is among Ellen Wehle's five books to whisk us away to sunny vistas and ocean-swept sands.

The Page 69 Test: The Girls from Corona del Mar.

My Book, The Movie: The Girls from Corona del Mar.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five titles about historic betrayals

Emma Parry's debut novel, Mrs. Benedict Arnold, is a compelling exploration of the life of Peggy Shippen, the wife of Benedict Arnold, during the American Revolution. The novel delves into the complexities of love, loyalty, and treason, as Peggy navigates the political currents of the time while seeking safety and peace for her family. Parry's writing is noted for its historical accuracy and the vivid portrayal of the characters, including the famous figures of the era. The novel has been praised for its fresh take on a well-known historical figure and its ability to shift the reader's perception of America's most famous traitor.

At The Nerd Daily Parry tagged five books about historic betrayals, including:

Alison Weir’s INNOCENT TRAITOR contains a betrayal a page, culminating in the execution of Lady Jane Grey for treason. This was the first work of fiction from the popular historian, and her deep research is beautifully distilled through a fantastic constellation of characters.

Weir leaves the gate and keeps the pace with such assurance, we are delighted by the storytelling even as we are outraged by accelerating events. The poisoning of a King, switching of a body, heresies, rape, endless scheming and the unnecessary death of a sixteen year old girl at the will of her cousin.

I’ve heard fun snark about the Tudors and their dominance of the English heritage industry, but their dramatic stories first excited my interest in history, and definitely made me susceptible to heroines at the center of wildly consequential events getting to exercise some agency…

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five suspense novels with heart

Allison Winn Scotch is the New York Times bestselling author of eleven novels, including Cleo McDougal Regrets Nothing, In Twenty Years, and Time of My Life.

She graduated cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania with a BA in Honors History and Concentration in Marketing from the Wharton School of Business.

Scotch lives in Los Angeles with her family and their two rescue dogs, Hugo and Mr. Peanut.

Her new novel is The Insomniacs.

At CrimeReads Scotch tagged five mysteries that pack an emotional punch, including:

Razorblade Tears by S.A Cosby

I know that Cosby is a smash success but if you haven’t read this masterpiece, please correct that immediately. Two fathers go searching for justice for their murdered sons. It’s a beautiful exploration of biases, prejudice, love, acceptance and the lengths parents will go for their children. I listened to this one, and I highly recommend the audio. Genuinely exceptional.

Read about the other entries on the list at CrimeReads.

Razorblade Tears is among Leodora Darlington's five top thrillers by Black writers, David Bell's five great thrillers about domineering parents, Robyn Harding's seven unlikely friendships in crime fiction, Lesley Kara's six crime novels about settling old scores, and Liz Nugent's top ten first lines in fiction.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight titles about women with secret lives

Bonnie Friedman is the author of the bestselling, widely anthologized Writing Past Dark: Envy, Fear, Distraction, and Other Dilemmas in the Writer’s Life. She is also the author of the memoirs The Thief of Happiness: The Story of an Extraordinary Psychotherapy and Surrendering Oz.

Her essays have been selected for inclusion in The Best Writing on Writing, The Best American Movie Writing, The Best Buddhist Writing, and The Best Spiritual Writing. Her new novel is Don’t Stop.

At Lit Hub Friedman tagged eight "books that reveal covert lives, truths that society forbids or shames, and an effusion of vibrant spirit." One title on the list:

Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert, translated by Lydia Davis

“You cannot understand that,” said my high school English teacher when her glance fell on this novel on my desk. I rankled. I understood it perfectly! It was about a woman having an affair. Because I knew the literal meaning of the words, I thought I understood the story they told. And I wondered at this teacher’s greedy need to own and to mystify.

But of course she was right. Since then I’ve read this book at least four times, once a decade. Even now I feel Emma Bovary’s novel has more to teach me, about the ways that fantasy can pollute one’s mind, about how appetites aroused can grow ever larger, ever more corrupt, about how ordinary, mundane life itself can seem an affront, and, beyond this, about the construction of magnificent sentences that are marvels of precise detail: “the musicians cooled the tips of their fingers on their tongues” “she put away . . . her satin shoes, whose soles had been yellowed by the slippery wax of the dance floor. Her heart was like them: contact with wealth had laid something over it that would not be wiped away.”

Every story of an affair has some point of contact with Madame Bovary, and one feels somehow the way that high school English teacher did, possessive, wishing to make special claims, as if the book itself had a tender, intimate message that the Charles Bovarys of the world—i.e. everyone else—can’t understand.

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

Madame Bovary is on Alastair Campbell's six best books list, Paul Theroux's six favorite books list, Peter Brooks's list of favorite Flaubert's works (at #1), Ed Sikov's list of eight great books that got slammed by critics, BBC.com Culture's list of the three of the worst mothers in literature, Alex Preston's top ten list of sex scenes from film, TV and literature, Rachel Holmes's top ten list of books on the struggle against gender-based inequality, Jill Boyd's list of six memorable marriage proposals in literature, Julia Sawalha's six best books list, Jennifer Gilmore's list of the ten worst mothers in books, Amy Sohn's list of six favorite books, Sue Townsend's 6 best books list, Helena Frith Powell's list of ten of the best sexy French books, the Christian Science Monitor's list of six novels about grand passions, John Mullan's lists of ten landmark coach rides in literature, ten of the best cathedrals in literature, ten of the best balls in literature, ten of the best bad lawyers in literature, ten of the best lotharios in literature, and ten of the best bad doctors in fiction, Valerie Martin's list of six novels about doomed marriages, and Louis Begley's list of favorite novels about cheating lovers. It tops Peter Carey's list of the top ten works of literature and was second on a top ten works of literature list selected by leading writers from Britain, America and Australia in 2007. It is one of John Bowe's six favorite books on love.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight mysteries about cryptids and cryptozoology

Elisa Shoenberger is a freelance writer and journalist. At Book Riot she tagged eight "mystery books [that] explore the wide world of cryptids, from werewolves to Big Foot and the Loch Ness Monster." One title on the list:

Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch

Probationary Constable Peter Grant was in the right place at the right time … or wrong place, wrong time. He’s keen to make something of himself in London’s Metropolitan Police. But when he gets assigned guard duty over a crime scene, it’s not the kind of work he wants to be doing. That is, until he talks to a witness, who turns out to be a ghost. He finds himself the newest member of the Folly, a formerly dormant part of the Met focusing on magic or weird things. Now he’s befriending genius loci in rivers and other waterways, facing off with otherworldly beings, and trying to stop more horrible crimes. The series has 15 books and novellas so far, including graphic novels; the most recent is Stone and Sky (2025). Peter and his mentor, Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale, have to solve cases involving a wide range of mythical creatures and cryptids.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven music-themed books

Delphine Seddon, a graduate of Faber & Faber’s writing academy and studied poetry at Goldsmiths University, writes female-driven contemporary fiction and poetry.

Her debut novel is Darkening Song.

For the past 20 years she has worked in the music business.

At The Nerd Daily Seddon tagged seven favorite books with a music theme. One of the novels on the list:

A Visit From The Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

Brilliant, funny, poignant
This book won the Pulitzer Prize. I don’t know if I’d describe it as music fiction exactly – one of the characters is a record label executive, so there is an element of music business, but it felt to me like this was more a book about human behaviour and why we are who we are and the choices we make. There’s an entire chapter which is made up of diagrams on power point slides. Truthfully, I never really understood what that chapter was saying, but big respect to the author for doing something so radical – I love that. Sasha is an incredible character – another strong, flawed, female protagonist (I clearly love a strong, flawed female protagonist!). A Visit From The Goon Squad is to my mind a modern day classic.

Read about the other entries on the list.

A Visit From the Goon Squad is among the Amazon Book Review's list of ten books for fans of Daisy Jones & the Six, Julian Gough's ten top books to help you survive the digital age, Marina Benjamin's ten top books about middle age, four books that changed Alison Lester, Jeff Somers's five top books that blur the line between the novel and short story, Gillian Anderson's six favorite books, and Julie Christie's seven favorite books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten must-read titles for "Devil Wears Prada" lovers

At People magazine Shyla Watson and Lizz Schumer tagged ten must-read workplace dramas for Devil Wears Prada lovers. One title on the list:

Love on Paper by Danielle Parker

At a prestigious teen writing retreat, Macy and Caleb are destined to clash — their parents have been literary rivals for years. But when they’re paired up as critique partners, they’ll have to set aside their differences for a shot at publication. This year’s theme is romance, at least on the page, but as the tension between them turns into something more, Macy and Caleb may find themselves caught in a love story that might just surpass fiction.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven titles featuring self-sabotaging characters

Pardeep Toor is a winner of the PEN America Dau Prize. His writing has appeared in Best Debut Short Stories: The PEN America Dau Prize, Southern Humanities Review, Electric Literature, Catapult, and Longreads. His new short story collection is Hands (Cornerstone Press). Toor grew up in Brampton, Ontario, Canada, and now lives in Colorado.

At Electric Lit the author tagged seven

stories of characters who can’t get out of their own way. These characters are both the aggressors and victims of their circumstances. They are hard to love, but it’s still painful to read about their collapses. In the end, readers are left feeling queasy, hoping for the best while realizing that the worst is inevitable.

One title on Toor's list:

Whiteout Conditions by Tariq Shah

The setup: Ant returns home to Chicago to attend the funeral of his friend’s cousin, who was killed by a neighborhood dog. It’s a complicated setup that is enriched by childhood memories sprinkled throughout the short novel. All Whiteout Conditions’s characters are drunk, high, and unhinged as they mourn the sudden loss in their family. But it’s not Ant’s family. So what is he even doing there? Ant’s unexpected and often unwanted arrival causes drug-induced chaos at the funeral as a family tries to move forward while Ant pulls them back and drowns them in the past. But of course, Ant doesn’t realize his own part in the oxy-laced toxicity of this emotionally and physically violent novel.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

Five historical fiction titles featuring older women

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 historical fiction books in which "older women prove that it’s never too late to begin a new adventure." One entry on the list:

The Woman Next Door by Yewande Omotoso

Neighbors Hortensia James and Marion Agostino share a hedge and an animosity that belies their eighty-odd years of age. Both women, one white and one Black, have led good lives with impressive careers but have been failed by their late husbands. Now living out their golden years in post-Apartheid South Africa, the women pass their time in committee meetings, volleying thinly veiled insults back and forth. But when unforeseen circumstances force them together, their bickering begins to turn into deeper debates and reminiscences of the lives they’ve both lived. Will it be enough to bridge the divide of racism and animosity that has kept them at each other’s throats all these years?

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue