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

Nine great books about survival at sea

Kathleen Rooney is the nationally bestselling author of Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk, as well as Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey and From Dust to Stardust. She has won the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize from Poetry magazine and the Adam Morgan Literary Citizen Award from the Chicago Review of Books. Rooney’s criticism can be found in The New York Times, The Minnesota Star Tribune, The Brooklyn Rail, Chicago magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and beyond. She lives in Chicago with her spouse, the writer Martin Seay, and teaches English and creative writing at DePaul University.

Rooney's new novel is Man Overboard!.

[The Page 99 Test: Live Nude Girl; The Page 99 Test: For You, for You I Am Trilling These Songs; My Book, The Movie: For You, for You I Am Trilling These Songs; My Book, The Movie: Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk; The Page 69 Test: Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey; My Book, The Movie: Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey; Writers Read: Kathleen Rooney (July 2022); The Page 69 Test: Where Are the Snows; Writers Read: Kathleen Rooney (September 2022); The Page 69 Test: From Dust to Stardust; My Book, The Movie: From Dust to Stardust; Q&A with Kathleen Rooney; Writers Read: Kathleen Rooney (September 2023); The Page 69 Test: Man Overboard!]

At Lit Hub the author tagged nine great "accounts of people lost at sea, struggling to be found." One title on the list:

Outerbridge Reach by Robert Stone

Everybody read this thriller so we can all talk about it. Cool, dry, sexy, and philosophical, it tells the story of ex-Navy Vietnam War veteran Owen Browne’s courageous yet foolish attempt to win a highly publicized race by sailing solo around the world. It’s like if Joan Didion wrote manly adventure stories. Robert Stone said he based this, his fifth novel, loosely on the real-life businessman and amateur sailor Donald Crowhurst, but the genius of his fictional approach lies not only in the character of Browne, but also in those of Browne’s ambitious wife Anne and of Ron Strickland, the sleazy countercultural documentarian that Browne’s boat-manufacturer employer hires to make a film about the feat.

Dread hangs over this book like fog over the sea. In the end, the story is as much about how, if at all, a person can make meaning in a meaningless world as it is about trying not to drown: “Carefully, he examined his imagined positions on the chart. All the stories were embroidered, so it was said. Sailors privately ridiculed each other’s accounts. No one had ever brought the truth ashore. It was not to be had.”

Read about the other books on Rooney's list at Lit Hub.

--Marshal Zeringue

Sixteen historical fiction novels to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary

At People magazine Shyla Watson and Lizz Schumer tagged sixteen "historical novels transport readers to pivotal moments in the nation’s past ... and illuminate the many stories woven into America’s history." One title on the list:

The Harvey Girls by Juliette Fay

Two women train in the hospitality industry as “Harvey Girls,” or waitresses who serve in America’s first hospitality chain on the Santa Fe railroad in the 1920s American Southwest. Initially bound together by their shared dislike of one another, the roommates also each carry a secret that could end their employment.

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven titles that blur the boundary between fact and fiction

Meg Charlton is a writer based in New York City. Her debut novel Voyagers is now out from Harper. Other work has appeared in The Yale Review, Slate, Lux, Atlas Obscura, and Vice, and the anthology Letter to a Stranger: Essays to the Ones Who Haunt Us. Her writing has been supported by the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and covered in Indiewire, Above the Law, and Australian National Radio's Future Tense. She holds an MFA in fiction from Brooklyn College and teaches at Sackett Street Writers.

At Electric Lit Charleton tagged seven books that "live in that borderland of uncertainty, peering over the edge of consensus reality into the irresolvable." One title on the list:

Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin, translated by Megan McDowell

Structured as a kind of cross-examination between a dying woman named Amanda and a young boy named David, Fever Dream retraces the events that led to Amanda’s mysterious illness. “Keep going, don’t forget the details,” David urges. But as the details accrete, the investigation grows only more unsettling and irresolvable. Why does David insist certain seemingly minor moments are essential while others are deemed irrelevant? Is David’s interrogation even real? Or is it all in Amanda’s head? And what, exactly, has poisoned David and Amanda both? Ultimately a horror story about parenting, Fever Dream is about the terror of trying to protect a child from the most frightening dangers of all: those you didn’t even know existed.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Fever Dream is among Stephanie Feldman's five scary novels that use setting to embody horror.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six epic fantasy romances

At Book Riot Megan Mabee tagged six "swoon-worthy stories [that] take place in different worlds, include immersive fantasy world-building and epic plots, while also promising a strong romance." One title on the list:

Paladin’s Grace by T. Kingfisher

T. Kingfisher excels at building compelling fantasy worlds and interweaving romance within them. I also love how relatable Kingfisher’s characters are. They’re often awkward, average-looking, and trying their best rather than being beautiful and perfect protagonists. It’s one of my favorite things about her writing. After Stephen’s god dies, he lives as a paladin trying to find purpose again. When he saves a fugitive named Grace in an alley, the pair soon get caught up in a twisty assassination plot with a killer trailing behind them!

Read about the other novels on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six titles that make us question those closest to us

Lucy Ashe trained at The Royal Ballet School for eight years, first as a Junior Associate and then at White Lodge. She has a Diploma in Dance Teaching with the British Ballet Organisation. Her first two novels, The Dance of the Dolls and The Sleeping Beauties, were inspired by her years immersed in the world of classical dance.

Ashe's new novel is The Model Patient.

At CrimeReads the author tagged "six novels that reveal how terrifying it is to have one’s sense of reality systematically dismantled by the person we are supposed to love and trust." One title on the list:

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

In this gothic horror novel, Noemí Taboada travels to her newlywed cousin Catalina’s home in the mountains to help investigate her claims that her husband wants to poison her. When Noemí enters High Place, her intelligence and logic are weaponized against her and the Doyle family use medical claims about inherited mental stability and supernatural elements to make her question everything. The novel is part of a long tradition of gothic novels —Jane Eyre, The Mysteries of Udolpho, Rebecca—where a woman’s ability to trust her instincts begins to unravel. The isolation of the setting makes her particularly vulnerable in this beautifully written and deeply unsettling novel.

Read about the other entries on Ashe's list at CrimeReads.

Mexican Gothic is among C.J. Dotson's five novels featuring decaying settings and Samsun Knight's seven horror novels about mysticism.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six books that take you behind the scenes of Black Hollywood

Rasheed Newson is the author of the national bestseller My Government Means to Kill Me, which was selected as a Lambda Literary finalist for Gay Fiction and was named one of the “100 Notable Books of 2022” by The New York Times. He is also a television drama writer, producer, and showrunner. He codeveloped Bel-Air and worked on The Chi, Animal Kingdom, and Narcos, among other drama series. Newson is a 2025–26 American Library in Paris Visiting Fellow. He currently lives with his husband and their two children in Pasadena.

Newson's new novel is There’s Only One Sin in Hollywood.

At Oprah Daily he tagged six books "that brilliantly capture the balancing act required of Black stars in Hollywood and give non–Hollywood insiders a peek behind the velvet curtain at a world that creates alluring idols for the masses." One title on the list:

A More Perfect Party by Juanita Tolliver

Civil Rights–era stars like Harry Belafonte, Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, Sidney Poitier, and Diahann Carroll are often remembered for their public activism: marching, giving interviews, and speaking out on television when doing so came with real risk. But some of their most consequential work happened far from the cameras. They were strategists, connectors, and funders, using their fame to help turn moral urgency into political power.

In A More Perfect Party, MSNBC political analyst Juanita Tolliver offers a lively, behind-the-scenes look at one especially dazzling example: the 1972 fundraiser Carroll hosted in her home for Shirley Chisholm’s groundbreaking presidential campaign.

The guest list alone is worth the price of admission; it brought together strange bedfellows, including Black Panther Huey P. Newton, comedian Flip Wilson, and rising starlet Goldie Hawn on a shared mission: electing the first Black woman to the highest office in the land.

Tolliver makes a persuasive case that Chisholm and Carroll’s coalition-building playbook echoed far beyond that night, shaping the kind of grassroots fundraising and cross-cultural organizing later used by campaigns like Barack Obama’s. Chisholm may not have won the presidency, but she changed what political possibility looked like. And Carroll emerges as more than a glamorous star: She was a woman who understood the power of her Rolodex, her reputation, and her living room. Today’s celebrities should take notes.

Read about the other titles on Newson's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top books on the American Revolution

Thomas S. Kidd serves as Research Professor of Church History at Midwestern and the John and Sharon Yeats Endowed Chair of Baptist Studies. Kidd completed a Ph.D. in history at the University of Notre Dame, where he worked with historian of religion George Marsden. He also earned Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees at Clemson University in South Carolina.

His books include Thomas Jefferson: A Biography of Spirit and Flesh, Benjamin Franklin: The Religious Life of a Founding Father, American Christians and Islam: Evangelical Culture and Muslims from the Colonial Period to the Age of Terrorism, and Who Is an Evangelical? The History of a Movement in Crisis.

[The Page 99 Test: American Christians and Islam]

He tagged "five excellent books that would be a great start on learning about the Revolution and American independence." One title on the list:

Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (1997).

A definitive history of the Declaration, its creation, and the way that Americans came to revere it as a quasi-sacred document.

Read about the other entries on Kidd's list.

--Marshal Zeringue