Eighteen of the best romantasy books

Sofia Lodato is a staff writer at Oprah Daily. Aside from reading, writing, and wellness, she is a lover of all things media-related, and can usually be found overanalyzing her latest favorite show, album, or video game.

One title on Lodato's list of the eighteen best romantasy books:

A Court of Thorns and Roses, by Sarah J. Maas

No romantasy list would be complete without the BookTok sensation. Impoverished Feyre kills a wolf in the forest, only to learn that the animal was actually a shape-changed fae. Now, Fae High Lord Tamlin requires her life as recompense, and she agrees to live out her days in the faery realm of Prythian. Deeply suspicious at first, eventually Feyre finds herself enjoying her comfortable existence at Tamlin’s estate… and her growing attraction to its lord. But his court is under a curse, and a sinister, more powerful noble is threatening to take over. This twist on Beauty and the Beast is high-pitched romantic drama at its fantastical best, and just the first volume in an ongoing series—the latest of which releases at the end of this month.

Read about the other titles on the list at Oprah Daily.

A Court of Thorns and Roses is among Jenny Kawecki's five top YA love triangles.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven top books featuring bogs

Anna North is the author of the instant New York Times bestseller and Reese's Book Club pick Outlawed, America Pacifica, and Lambda Literary Award winner The Life and Death of Sophie Stark. She is a senior correspondent at Vox. She lives in Brooklyn.

North's latest novel is Bog Queen.

[The Page 69 Test: The Life and Death of Sophie Stark; The Page 69 Test: Outlawed; Q&A with Anna North]

At Lit Hub the author tagged seven "books [that] will satisfy your bog witch cravings, while also reminding you of the real-world importance of bogs as bulwarks against climate change, cradles of biodiversity, and keepers of ancestral memory." One title on the list:

The Bog Wife by Kay Chronister

An eerie fable that seems to take place across and outside of time, The Bog Wife is already a classic of the modern bog-core genre. This story of a West Virginia family with a very unusual tradition has notes of Edward Gorey and Rebecca, but Chronister creates a world all her own, its mossy darkness illuminated by flashes of humor.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

Five campus mystery novels

At Book Riot Julia Rittenberg tagged five titles that "provide the perfect backdrop for diving headfirst into research in musty libraries and sorting through the clues," including:

Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas

I read this book back during the doldrums of 2020, and it broke my anxiety-induced reading slump, so I still highly recommend it. A secretive institution called Catherine House only takes and produces the best of the best. When Ines arrives, she expects rigorous academia, but gets a much more exploratory, experimental, hippie-ish education. The longer Indes spends there, the darker the school becomes.

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five horror novels set in the art world

Faith Gladwin grew up in Nova Scotia, Canada, and studied Political Science at Dalhousie University in Halifax. She now works at a museum, and in between research work and writing, she tries to keep her houseplants alive and safe from her cat, Cleo. She is the author of The Finalist.

At CrimeReads Gladwin tagged "five chilling novels set in the world of the arts, from theatre to isolated artistic retreats." One title on the list:

Ling Ling Huang, Immaculate Conception

From the past to the cutting-edge future of art, Ling Ling Huang’s Immaculate Conception follows two women in art school, caught in an obsessive, toxic friendship, as the public release of a tool that generates AI art instantly throws the scene into chaos. Mathilde is marked as a prodigy while Enka is struggling to keep up with her. In a drastic move, Enka throws herself into a new technology that allows the user to inhabit another person’s mind and absorb their emotions and memories, kicking off a twisted, addictive downward spiral between Enka and Mathilde.

Psychological and speculative, Immaculate Conception covers everything from trauma, the intersections of technology, capitalism, and art, to the way generative AI erodes creativity and community. It’s a sci-fi dystopian horror that’s only becoming more timely.

Read about the other entries on the list at CrimeReads.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top speculative thrillers

At Book Riot Rey Rowland tagged six must-read speculative thrillers, including:

Bang Bang Bodhisattva by Aubrey Wood

Moving on to another sci-fi, this one is set in a dark cyberpunk future. Bang Bang Bodhisattva follows Kiera, who takes on any job she can find just to survive. Things take a turn when the person she was looking for is found murdered. The killer left behind a stick of incense and nothing else.

When her crush goes missing and another stick of incense is found at the scene, Kiera is blamed for both crimes. Her only chance to clear her name is to work with Angel Herrera, a private investigator. From here, the story becomes a buddy comedy that you won’t be able to put down!

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine suspense titles with unforgettable settings

Hallie Shepherd is a screenwriter, actor, and producer. She is a Pacific Northwest native who now lives in LA with her filmmaker husband.

Call Off the Dark is her debut novel.

At CrimeReads the author tagged "nine suspense novels with unforgettable settings." One title on the list:

Attica Locke, The Cutting Season

The story takes place at Belle Vie, a fictional antebellum sugar plantation in rural southern Louisiana. When a female migrant worker is found dead at the edge of the property, Belle Vie’s Black manager is drawn into the plantation’s history of slavery and her own family’s connection to the land.

The inspiration behind the setting comes from a real place: Oak Alley. The author attended a wedding there and describes feeling a mix of rage and revulsion as well as longing and love toward the pre-Civil War landmark. I visited Oak Alley myself during a 2007 trip to New Orleans, and I can see how it inspired such a beautiful but deeply unsettling place for the story.

Locke’s prose draws you into the lush, dreamy landscape, with its terrible history pulsing beneath the surface.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Cutting Season is among Stacy Willingham's eight top mysteries with southern swampy settings, Karen Dietrich's eight top red herrings in contemporary crime literature, T. Marie Vandelly's top ten suspenseful horror novels featuring housebound terrors and Wil Medearis's seven favorite novels that explore real estate swindles.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven books that foresaw our digital lives

At Mental Floss Nicolle Sloan tagged seven novels that eerily predicted technological advancements of today. One title on the list:

Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart (2010)

In this oddly tender, darkly funny novel, Gary Shteyngart imagines a crumbling America where everyone’s value is visible. You carry a device that ranks you on desirability, credit score, income, and political status. Dating profiles scroll overhead. Privacy is extinct, and the government is mostly broke.

At the center of it all is Lenny, a sweet old school guy in love with Eunice, a digitally native, emotionally unavailable millennial. Their relationship unfolds in a world that’s part Black Mirror and part Love Story.

Shteyngart captures the queasy reality of being ranked, rated, and datamined in public, long before influencer culture made it feel normal.

Read about the other novels on the list.

Super Sad True Love Story appears on Raul Palma's list of seven books about falling into debt, Olivia Sudjic’s list of five of the best books to explain how we behave in the digital world, Leslie Berlin's top ten list of books about high-tech, Corey J. White's list of five books about the collapse of New York City, Ginni Chen's list of seven books that belong on your social media–obsessed friend’s shelf, Molly Schoemann-McCann's list of five of the best--and more familiar--tropes in fiction, Charlie Jane Anders's lists of ten great science fiction novels, published since 2000, that raise huge, important questions and ten satirical novels that could teach you to survive the future, and Nicholas Carr's list of five notable books on the impact of the Information Age.

--Marshal Zeringue

Three books that celebrate complicated women

Natalie Baszile's novel Queen Sugar was adapted for seven television seasons by writer/director Ava DuVernay, and co-produced by Oprah Winfrey.

Her new novel is Friends and Family.

At Book Riot Baszile tagged three books celebrating complicated women. One entry on the list:

Take What You Can by Naima Coster

Set in France and New York, this novel explores the lives of best friends Milly and Val, two young Black women whose bond is forged during their year abroad and stretches into their thirties. What they share is the pain of having lost their mothers and a shared history with a woman from their past. Now, young mothers themselves, both living in Brooklyn, Milly and Val soon discover that love for each other might not be enough to bridge the divide that’s growing between them. Differences in their economic and familial circumstances, marital tensions, plus divergent responses to the demands of raising a child soon breed resentment and jealousy, misunderstandings. Take What You Can is a meditation on motherhood, class, and the deep satisfaction that comes from being complicated women.

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Twelve creepy small town horror titles

Richard Chizmar is the author of New York Times bestselling novels Chasing the Boogeyman, Becoming the Boogeyman, Memorials, and Widow’s Point: The Complete Haunting (cowritten with son, W.H. Chizmar), and coauthor (with Stephen King) of the New York Times bestselling novella Gwendy’s Button Box, the novel Gwendy’s Final Task, and the solo novella Gwendy’s Magic Feather. His short fiction has appeared in dozens of publications, most recently, the bestselling anthology, The End of The World as We Know It: New Stories of Stephen King’s The Stand.

Chizmar's new novel is Killing the Boogeyman.

At People magazine the author tagged twelve top creepy small town horror novels, including:

Dark Harvest by Norman Partridge

With echoes of Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery and Stephen King’s The Long Walk, Dark Harvest serves up a tasty Halloween treat — or is it a trick? — for all seasons. Set in a small midwestern farming town in 1963, Partridge gives us the story of the October Boy and a strange and violent All Hallow’s Eve tradition. If you’re thinking it sounds like a modern-day Ray Bradbury tale, you would be right.

Read about the other novels on the list.

The Page 99 Test: Dark Harvest.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top historical mysteries set in the early modern era

Jane Bitomsky is an award-winning author of historical fiction. Her debut historical mystery novel is Death by Misadventure.

Bitomsky has a PhD in early modern English history, a BA (Hons) and an LLB (Hons) from the University of Queensland. She’s published in academic journals, and volunteers as a baker (specialising in brownies and cheesecake) for New Zealand charity Good Bitches Baking.

At CrimeReads Bitomsky tagged six favorite historical mysteries set in the early modern era, including:

Elsa Hart, Jade Dragon Mountain

Former imperial librarian Li Du arrives in a mountainous Chinese outpost by the Tibetan border to find it teeming with traders, astronomers and soldiers, who are gathered to witness the spectacle of a solar eclipse in 1708. During the celebrations, an elderly Jesuit astronomer, and Li Du’s recent acquaintance, is murdered. The ex-librarian takes it upon himself to investigate.

What ensues is a Poirot-esque whodunit, where Li Du uses a combination of logic and luck to break down the clues, and gather suspects. There’s a colourful cast of side characters, a glimpse into everyday life in eighteenth-century China, and the reader is thoroughly educated on the proper way to prepare tea.

Read about the other titles on the list at CrimeReads.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six horror books about feminine rage

Addison Ciuchta loves writing, reading, and writing about what she reads. She has an MA in Professional Writing, a BA in English, and a lifelong love of books. In addition to Book Riot, has written for Publishers Weekly and Independent Book Review.

At Book Riot Ciuchta tagged "six horror books about feminine rage [that will] leave readers saying, Good for her!" One title on the list:

Motherthing by Ainslie Hogarth

Despite a rocky relationship with her own mother and her mother-in-law, Abby Lamb wants to be a mother more than anything. As a caretaker at an elderly home, Abby makes everything she does about fostering motherly skills. When her husband Ralph’s mother dies, though, he falls into a deep depression, and their perfect future is threatened. Especially after he starts to believe his mother’s ghost is haunting them. Abby will do whatever it takes to get her husband out of his despair and break the enduring hold his mother has on him, even in death.

Read about the other books on the list.

Motherthing is among Leah Rowan's six thrillers with troubled parent-child relationships.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight top utopian fiction novels

At Mental Floss Chris Wheatley tagged eight utopian fiction novels to get us through these dystopian times, including:

The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia (1974) by Ursula K. Le Guin

This novel from acclaimed author Ursula K. Le Guin numbers among only a handful of works to achieve the feat of winning all of the “big three” science fiction awards: the Hugo, Locus, and Nebula. The setting for each chapter in The Dispossessed alternates between the planet Urras and its moon Anarres. Urras is a deeply hierarchical and authoritarian capitalist society; Anarres has no laws and is essentially cooperative in nature. Le Guin offers no easy answers and highlights the difficulties that arise from the struggle between individualism and collectivism.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Dispossessed is among Daisy Atterbury's eight titles about space that reimagine what it means to live on Earth, Naomi Klein's six favorite books, and Luke Rhinehart's five favorite sci-fi satires.

--Marshal Zeringue