Nine titles about being the poorest person in the room

Carla Vass holds a degree in English literature and economics from Barnard College, Columbia University. She began her career at Goldman Sachs before joining Uber in 2013. At Uber, she helped build the rideshare business in New York City and was part of the founding UberEATS team. In 2018, Vass was recruited by Waymo, Google's self-driving car division, to develop their delivery business, and then went on to found Civi in 2020, a tech startup focused on safety in Latin America. Born in New York City, Vass and her husband now live in Miami, Florida. When not writing or reading, she enjoys spending time with loved ones, traveling, cooking, and horseback riding.

Vass's new novel is The Rally.

At Lit Hub the author tagged nine novels featuring the poorest person among rich people behaving badly. One title on the list:

Pineapple Street, Jenny Jackson

The RPBB supergenre in a very specific subworld. Jackson gives you a whole clan of old-money Brooklyn Heights Stocktons, but the character who carries the thesis is Sasha, the middle-class New England girl who marries in and is instantly, permanently cast as the arriviste. It’s a beach read with a sharp eye for the machinery of inherited money: the tennis, the trust funds, the very particular cruelty of people who’ve never had to think about money toward the one person in the room who has. Funny, sharp, and a fascinating dissection of how money works inside a family.

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

Pineapple Street is among Glenn R. Miller's five novels of generational wealth & income inequality.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five horror titles set in grand country homes

Jennifer Thorne is the USA Today bestselling author of Diavola and Lute, as well as several books for younger readers. With Lee Kelly, she is the co-writer of novels The Midnight Show, My Fair Frauds, The Starlets, and The Antiquity Affair. Born in the US, she now lives with her husband and two sons in the west of England.

Thorne's latest novel is Newbourne Park.

At CrimeReads she tagged "five literary country houses that also play host to devils." One title on the list:

T.H. Huddleston, The Cracks

What if the only way out of a desperate financial situation is to take up your rich friend’s offer to stay at the historic family home of his aristocratic wife while you get back on your feet? And if you happen to have certain skills in the kitchen, why wouldn’t you take on some of the domestic tasks as a means of showing your thanks? And if the ghosts of Hautmond Hall, perhaps even the house itself, would prefer to keep you in service forever…how on earth can you fight back?

This deliciously satirical horror novel shows that class distinctions are insidiously pernicious traps, even in the year 2026.

Read about the other books on Thorne's list at CrimeReads.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six of the best YA mysteries/thrillers for adult readers

Jamie Canaves is a contributing editor at Book Riot. She tagged six "excellent books written for young adults that understand and love the crime genre in a way that adults will deeply appreciate, from revenge plots to a retelling of a Gen X classic," including:

The Initial Insult by Mindy McGinnis

If you’re ever worried that YA won’t feel dark enough or will feel like you’re being spoken down to, you can rest assured that Mindy McGinnis’ books are brutal; there’s no hand-holding here.

What this YA duology does have is an exploration of family secrets, class, anger, and revenge. Tress Montor decides to get revenge on her ex-best friend, convinced that Felicity Turnado knows who graffitied her home, fed her dog to an alligator, and what happened to her parents. How exactly will she get this revenge? By forcing a confession out of her by slowly bricking her in à la Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado.” Claustrophobia inducing much?

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight Agatha Christie-inspired mysteries

Katherine Reay is a national bestselling and award-winning author who has enjoyed a lifelong affair with books. She publishes both fiction and nonfiction, holds a BA and MS from Northwestern University, and currently lives outside Bozeman, MT, with her husband and too many dogs.

Her new novel is The Undercover Bookshop.

At People magazine Reay tagged eight "contemporary novels I’ve devoured this past year and offerings I believe any Christie aficionado will love." One title on the list:

The Guest List by Lucy Foley

This novel made a splash in 2020 but good books never lose their power so it’s equally worth picking up today. I’ve included it here particularly for its sense of place. Just like Michaelides and Christie, Foley takes advantage of her isolated location — this time an island off the coast of Ireland — and throws in storms, tension and the requisite twists and turns, to create an incredibly satisfying and page-turning mystery.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Guest List is among Celia Laskey's eight wedding novels for all the lovers and the haters.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine titles with big secrets

Julia Cohen's latest book is Freak Lip (2026). She is the author of I Was Not Born (2014), a collection of lyric essays, which was translated into German and released by Literaturverlag Droschl. She’s also written two books of poetry, Collateral Light (2014) and Triggermoon Triggermoon (2011). Her nonfiction and poetry appear in issues of The Georgia Review, Southeast Review, The New England Review, Fugue, Heavy Feather Review, Boston Review, and BOMB.

Cohen has a BA from Wesleyan University, an MFA from The New School, and a PhD from the University of Denver. She’s an Associate Professor of English and Literature at Rocky Mountain College of Art & Design. She teaches creative writing, literature, and composition courses. Cohen lives in Colorado Springs with her husband and fellow writer, Noel Black, and their kids.

At Lit Hub she tagged "nine books that guided my understanding of how holding or exposing long-kept secrets creates a palpable tension between regret and relief." One title on the list:

Latoya Watkins, Holler, Child: Stories

Watkins is a master of dialogue, dialect, and narrative intimacy. In this stunning collection, which centers Black women in West Texas, Watkins perfectly balances familial interactions with protagonists’ internal thoughts, creating immersive, local rhythms that invite you right into the living rooms of her characters. Their secrets manifest in different ways: infidelity, the truths hidden underneath the lies mothers tell children to protect them and the secrets children keep to shield their mothers from grief, the apologies never given.

In both “The Mother” and “Holler, Child” mothers keep from their sons their fathers’ identities to minimize potential pain and embarrassment, only to see the negative ripple effect this has on their sons’ choices as they grow. In “Vigil,” the protagonist has a simmering hatred for her childhood friend’s Muslim husband, whose gay relationship with his best friend is an indiscrete secret. She reflects on what no one will say aloud: “Thala and me ain’t close enough for me to tell her that her husband supposed to come home to her at night. Snuggle up to her at night. Not with his best friend, La Mare. La Mare who lived with them for the first three months of their marriage. La Mare who slept on their couch while Wale slept on the floor close to him.” These stories wrestle with the entanglement between desperate love and unknowability, what might be gained from speaking up, and why sometimes, we still can’t.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Four bewitching books for fans of "Practical Magic"

At Book Riot Megan Mabee tagged "four beautifully written books for fans of Practical Magic." One title on the list:

The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow

When it comes to authors like Alice Hoffman, Alix E. Harrow is an excellent readalike option. Like Hoffman, Harrow’s writing style includes lush world-building, intriguing magic systems enmeshed in the real world, and thoughtful reflections on deep topics. As with Practical Magic, this novel by Harrow explores themes of witches and the bonds between sisters. The story takes place in 1893 as the Eastwood sisters—James Juniper, Agnes Amaranth, and Beatrice Belladonna—join forces with the suffragettes of New Salem. Perhaps the women’s movement may also become the witches movement.

Read about the other titles on the list.

The Once and Future Witches is among Chelsea Iversen's five supernatural sister stories, Kim DeRose's seven top books about witches and badass covens, Mark Skinner's twenty top witch lit titles, Sarah Pinsker's five SFF books that showcase siblings at their core, and Heather Walter's five SFF books about wicked women.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five powerful horror books for animal lovers

Carrie Lee South earned her MFA at the Arkansas Writers Workshop where she served as the fiction editor for the literary magazine Arkana. She's currently the fiction editor at StoryBottle Co. Her work has appeared in Waxwing, F(r)iction, Iron Horse Literary Review, Tales to Terrify, and elsewhere. She is the author of In the Woods They Wait. When she's not reading and writing, she's spending time with birds: the ones outside and the four parrots that live in her house.

At CrimeReads South tagged five powerful horror novels in which "the animal characters are given agency." One title on the list:

Josh Malerman, Pearl

Pigs are highly intelligent, social animals. Their eyes look so human, and they always seem to be smiling. It’s not that much of a stretch to imagine that they could be telepathic, which is exactly what Malerman explores in this high-concept slasher. The story opens with a boy named Jeff beheading a pig on his grandfather’s farm. He’s horrified when he realizes what he’s done, because it wasn’t his idea–Pearl made him do it.

Pearl is an intimidating hog who sits like a human, and has avoided the axe for years by manipulating the farmer’s thoughts. Now that he’s tested and realized the strength of his influence, Pearl begins a gruesome murder spree. Why? “Time to kill the people who killed the pigs.” It should come as no surprise that Malerman is a vegetarian.

Read about the other novels on the list at CrimeReads.

--Marshal Zeringue

Fifteen of the best mystery titles of all time

Andy Minshew is an author and book reviewer who explores the intersections between queerness, faith, and neurodivergence in fiction and nonfiction.

At Book Riot he tagged fifteen of "the best mystery books of all time that have defined the genre in meaningful ways." One title on the list:

Bluebird, Bluebird (Highway 59 #1) by Attica Locke

Considered one of the best mystery-thrillers of all time, Bluebird, Bluebird follows Black Texas Ranger Darren Matthews who returns to his hometown Lark while on suspension and separated from his wife. Here he investigates the recent murders of a man and a woman that, despite what the local authorities say, he knows were racially motivated.

Read about the other mysteries on the list.

Bluebird, Bluebird is among Rebecca Joines Schinsky's seven pulse-pounding thrillers, Polly Stewart's seven new classics in Southern noir, L. Alison Heller's eight crime novels in which a small town is the perfect incubator, Janice Hallett's five gripping mysteries set in small towns, and Katie Tallo's top ten crime novels about returning home.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten titles where the main character is, or may be, a psychopath

Hank Schwaeble is a two-time Bram Stoker Award-winning author of horror, suspense and thrillers.

He lives in Texas with his wife, fellow novelist Rhodi Hawk.

His latest novel is Normal for the Spider.

At CrimeReads Schwaeble tagged ten books where the main character is, or may be, a psychopath. One entry on the list:

Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

This critically praised but relatively low-profile novel about a young man lost in the sea of malaise that is his life who has a life-changing encounter with a self-proclaimed cultural terrorist named Tyler Durden catapulted seemingly out of nowhere to take the literary community by storm in the late 90s when the movie of the same name came out starring Edward Norton, Brad Pitt and Helena Bonham Carter. It’s a book about manhood, maturity, responsibility, survival and the mental strain of living in a world where absent fathers are the norm and men hold contradictory and often dangerous ideas of what manhood means, and where pathologies of the mind run rampant.

Read about the other books on the list at CrimeReads.

Fight Club is among Adam Hamdy's ten popular literary antiheroes, Benjamin Buchholz's five top novels with devilishly unreliable narrators, Camilla Bruce's ten best books about imaginary friends, Catherine Steadman's six favorite books that feature unreliable narrators, Sarah Pinborough's top ten unreliable narrators, Richard Kadrey's top five books about awful, awful people, Chris Moss's top 19 books on how to be a man, E. Lockhart's seven favorite suspense novels, Joel Cunningham's top five books short enough to polish off in an afternoon, but deep enough to keep you thinking long into the night, Kathryn Williams's eight craziest unreliable narrators in fiction, Jessica Soffer's ten best book endings, Sebastian Beaumont's top ten books about psychological journeys, and Pauline Melville's top ten revolutionary tales.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight edge-of-your-seat reality TV thriller titles

L.M. Chilton is a journalist with fifteen years of experience working on TV shows for the BBC, ITV, and Channel 4 in the UK, as well as writing columns for magazines such as Cosmopolitan and Glamour, and reporting for national newspapers across the world, everywhere from Doncaster to Delhi. He lives in London, procrastinating.

Chliton's new novel is I Think We Should Kill Other People.

At People magazine he tagged "eight of the best thrillers and mysteries set in the terrifying world of television," including:

The Really Dead Wives of New Jersey by Astrid Dahl is The Real Housewives meets Knives Out

This campy mystery follows the scandalous lives of the back-stabbing (sometimes literally) cast of Garden State Goddesses. When a murder occurs, the cast become suspects and a producer must turn detective. Every lead she follows is one she helped create.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven of the best twisty horror retellings

At Book Riot Kendra Winchester tagged seven titles that take a familiar story and reimagine it in the most delightfully gruesome way, including:

The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle

In this award-winning novella, Victor LaValle subverts Lovecraft’s Cthulhu story “The Horror at Red Hook,” this time telling the story from a new perspective. Charles Thomas Tester takes risky jobs to keep a roof over his head and take care of his father. But when he delivers a magical tome to a sorceress, he accidentally opens up a door to another world. This story is all-engrossing, so it’s no wonder that it won the Shirley Jackson Award and British Fantasy Award. When we’re talking about the best retellings, this novella has to make the list.

Read about the other titles on the list.

The Ballad of Black Tom is among Lyndsie Manusos’s six top horror retellings of well-known stories, 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

Seven experimental books that reimagine how trauma is told

Erik Fuhrer is a queer, nonbinary poet, playwright, and trauma writing teacher. They hold a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from the University of Glasgow, an MFA from the University of Notre Dame, and a PMP. They are the author of nine books, including Gellar Studies (2023) and the forthcoming hybrid memoir My Buffed Up Life (2026). They were the UCLA Extension Winter 2026 Writer in Residence.

At Electric Lit Fuhrer tagged seven books by "writers use form to convey the experience, emotions, and structure of trauma, keeping the gaps, the flaws, the inventions, scalping together image and sensation into something legible but messy and tangled and raw." One title on the list:

Nox by Anne Carson

Nox is an elegy for Carson’s brother, who was already partially ghost before he passed, as he left home and called rarely in his absence. In a way this elegy started years before his death, and the reproduced letters, family photographs, and sketches montaged into the book are a testament to the imprints of his presence in her life before and after death. Its accordion spine mimics an ancient scroll, log, and epic, its creased pages paralleling the fracturedness of grief. It cannot be viewed all at once, so sprawling that it would take up many rooms of feet, and therefore becomes like the history and the memory and the body lost to it: accessible in small unfoldings of time and space, but never quite tangible and accessible as a whole.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue