Five nonfiction books for true crime lovers

Katie McLain Horner has an MLIS from the University of Illinois and works full time as a Circulation & Reference Manager in Illinois.

At Book Riot she tagged five nonfiction books that are sure to fascinate true crime lovers. One title on the list:

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach

What happens to our bodies after we die? Mary Roach’s hilarious investigation takes readers on a journey from plane crashes to forensic cadaver farms to crash test dummies — some of it gruesome, but all of it fascinating. Even though this book was originally written in 2003, it’s still an enduring classic for true crime fans and science buffs. (Just be careful about reading this one while you’re eating.)

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten funerals in literature

At the Guardian, John Mullan named ten of the best funerals in literature.

One title on the list:

Exit Ghost by Philip Roth

The centrepiece of this death-tending novel, with its title snatched from Hamlet, is naturally a funeral. Richard Kliman, one of the "agitators and affronters" who pursue narrator Nathan Zuckerman, describes the (real) funeral of sports writer George Plimpton, complete with oration by Norman Mailer.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six mysteries set on generation ships

Molly Odintz is the managing editor for CrimeReads and the editor of Austin Noir. She grew up in Austin and worked as a bookseller before becoming a Very Professional Internet Person. She lives in central Texas with her cat, Fritz Lang.

At CrimeReads Odintz tagged six mysteries set on generation ships. One title on the list:

Adam Oyebanji, Braking Day

Braking Day takes place on a generation ship whose colonists have rejected the home world’s dependence on AI in favor of neural augments and other bioware. At the novel’s start, an apprentice engineer begins to see visions of a floating girl screaming for help, and enlists his hacker cousin (the whole family has ties to the ship’s thriving underworld economy) to figure out if he’s hallucinating. Instead of a sign of oxygen deprivation of space-induced cabin sickness, she’s real: and they are not ready for the wild truths behind her sudden appearance.

Read about the other entries on the list at CrimeReads.

Braking Day is among Jenny Hamilton's five top spine-chilling space books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six of the best queer fiction titles of the century

Danika Ellis spends most of their time talking about sapphic books at the Lesbrary.

At Book Riot Ellis and their colleagues tagged six of the best queer fiction books of the century (so far), including:

Jonny Appleseed by Joshua Whitehead

In this beautifully written novel, Jonny is an Indigiqueer person returning to the reservation to attend his stepfather’s funeral. In the week that follows, he tries to reconcile his life in the city with his life on the rez, including the complex relationship he has with his family. Jonny Appleseed came out in 2018 and was one of the first traditionally published books with a Two-Spirit main character. It was nominated for the biggest literary awards in Canada, including the Governor General’s Awards and the Giller Prize, and it won a Lambda Literary Award. It also won the 2021 Canada Reads competition. —Danika Ellis

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight of the best zombie novels

Lorna Wallace has a PhD in English Literature and is a lover of all things science fiction and horror. She lives in Scotland with her rescue greyhound, Misty.

At Mental Floss Wallace tagged eight zombie novels to feast on, including:

The Girl with All the Gifts (2014) // M. R. Carey

Before The Girl with All the Gifts had even been published, the rights were acquired to turn it into a movie and M. R. Carey was even hired to be the screenwriter. “I was actually writing the novel and the screenplay at the same time,” Carey explained in a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything). The story revolves around a 10-year-old girl called Melanie, who has been infected with the fungal zombie virus that ended the world as we know it two decades earlier. But unlike most zombies (known as hungries in this book), she has somehow retained her ability to think—that is, unless she smells human flesh. Melanie is being schooled and scientifically studied at a military base in England when all hell breaks loose.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Girl with All the Gifts is among Neena Viel's five titles where black women are doing the most, Vanessa Armstrong's seven frightening books featuring fungi, C.J. Tudor's eight thrillers featuring a child with a mysterious supernatural power, Keith Yatsuhashi's five gateway books that opened the door for him to specific genres and C. A. Higgins's top five books with plot twists that flip your perception.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten chilling thrillers for the holidays

Carter Wilson is the USA Today and Publishers Weekly bestselling author of eleven standalone psychological thrillers. His stories focus on ordinary people pushed into situations where survival and morality collide, and every decision has consequences. His 2025 novel Tell Me What You Did was a national monthly pick by Barnes & Noble, and his work has been optioned for film and television.

Wilson's new novel is When They Find Me.

At People magazine the author tagged ten "books featuring people who would very much like to leave. But can’t." One title on the list:

No Exit by Taylor Adams

A blizzard strands college student Darby Thorne at a Colorado highway rest stop with four strangers. Then she discovers a kidnapped child locked in a van outside. The person responsible is inside with her, and calling for help isn’t an option. That’s a hell of a predicament: knowing someone needs you to act while having no idea whom you can trust. A rest stop might keep you out of the snow. Keeping you alive is another matter.

Read about the other entries on the list.

No Exit is among Krista Simmons's eight winter reads rooted in the West, Heather Gudenkauf's five great winter storm thrillers, Rektok Ross's nine top YA survival thrillers, and Sophia LeFevre's six top isolated, snowy thrillers.

The Page 69 Test: No Exit.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seventeen top titles about Native American culture

David Congdon is senior editor at the University Press of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas, and an adjunct instructor at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary. He is the author of several books, including The Mission of Demythologizing: Rudolf Bultmann's Dialectical Theology, Rudolf Bultmann: A Companion to His Theology, The God Who Saves: A Dogmatic Sketch, and Who Is a True Christian? Contesting Religious Identity in American Culture.

[The Page 99 Test: Who Is a True Christian?]

At Lit Hub Congdon tagged seventeen "outstanding Native American and Indigenous Studies books published by university presses." One title on the list:

Thomas Michael Swensen, The Great Land: An Indigenous History of Alaska

Reconstructs Alaska’s history from Indigenous perspectives, showing how Native communities forged the region’s political, economic, and cultural foundations and offering a powerful new understanding of how Native peoples shaped the modern Alaskan state.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Four top witchy, weird girl YA titles

Gloria Muñoz is the author of They Called Us Wicked and of the poetry collection Danzirly, which won the Ambroggio Prize. She is an Academy of American Poets Poet Laureate Fellow, a Hedgebrook Fellow, an Esperimento Sul Respiro Fellow, a Macondista, a Highlights Foundation Diverse Verse Fellow, and a part of Las Musas. Her debut novel, This Is the Year, a YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults title and winner of the International Literacy Association’s Young Adult Book Award, was hailed as “brilliantly layered” by Booklist in a starred review.

Muñoz's new novel is They Called Us Wicked.

At Book Riot the author tagged four "favorite recent books with witchy, weird-girl YA characters," including:

A Wild Radiance by Maria Ingrande Mora

With an electric magic, the main character of A Wild Radiance, Josephine, is driven to question everything she once believed to be true. Following rules and believing lies that disempower her is no longer an option for Josephine. What is she willing to face to become who she’s meant to be? This novel asks how we stand up to a rigid monolith that doesn’t see us or value truth and community.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven great horror novels set in the American South

Del Sandeen lives in northeast Florida, where she works as a copy editor and writes speculative fiction. Her work has appeared in FIYAH: Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction and Gay Mag and on the Nightlight podcast.

She is the author of This Cursed House and These Walls Remember.

At CrimeReads Sandeen tagged seven "favorite horror books which just so happen to take place in the hot and sticky South, where the gators aren’t even the scariest things you’ll find." One title on the list:

Anne Rice, Interview With the Vampire

This book follows Louis the vampire narrating the story of his long life to a young journalist. For me, after Bram Stoker’s Dracula, this was the quintessential vampire novel (at least until Stephen Graham Jones’s The Buffalo Hunter Hunter came along). The descriptions alone, from Louisiana to Europe, are rich and engaging, but these vampires? They’re actually terrifying.

Read about the other entries on the list at CrimeReads.

Interview With The Vampire is among Drew Broussard's twelve modern classic horror books, Mark Skinner's top ten vampire books, Craig DiLouie’s top ten fantasy books steeped in the Southern Gothic, Tara Sonin's five sexy novels to unleash your wanderlust, Jeff Somers's eight good, bad, and weird dad/child pairs in science fiction and fantasy, Jonathan Hatfull's ten best vampire novels, Ryan Menezes' top five movies that improved the book, Will Hill's top ten vampires in fiction and popular culture, and Lynda Resnick's six best books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best identical twins in literature

At the Guardian, John Mullan named ten of the best identical twins in fiction.

One title on Mullan's list:

The Cheerybles

In Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby, Charles and Ned Cheeryble are benevolent, interchangeable twins and wealthy philanthropists. Both possess "the utmost serenity of mind that the kindliest and most unsuspecting nature could bestow", and "both had lost nearly the same teeth, which imparted the same peculiarity to their speech". They rescue Nicholas and thwart the schemes of his villainous uncle.

Nicholas Nickleby is among John Mullan's top ten fictional teachers and ten best wicked uncles in literature, Andy Mulligan's top ten school stories, and Paulette Jiles's twelve favorite books.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven top titles about Iran

One title on Tertulia's list of seven books that offer essential insight into Iran’s history, politics, and culture:

King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation by Scott Anderson

Winner of the 2025 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction, this account revisits the months leading to the fall of the Shah and the rise of the Islamic Republic. Written by a New York Times Magazine contributing writer and veteran war correspondent, the book traces the protests, political missteps, and international pressures that drove the 1979 revolution. Kirkus judges called it “a masterful and propulsive account…of events whose aftereffects reverberate to this day.”

Read about the other entries on the list.

Also see Nazanine Hozar's top ten books about Iran.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven essential 1970s NYC noir books and films

Rosanne Limoncelli is a writer and filmmaker living in Brooklyn. Her short fiction has appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Suspense Magazine, and Noir Nation, and her short films have been screened in festivals around the world. Limoncelli also writes plays, screenplays, poetry, games, mysteries, and science fiction and has taught writing and filmmaking for more than three decades at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

[My Book, The Movie: The Four Queens of Crime; The Page 69 Test: The Four Queens of Crime; Q&A with Rosanne Limoncelli; Writers Read: Rosanne Limoncelli (July 2026); My Book, The Movie: The Spiral; The Page 69 Test: The Spiral; Writers Read: Rosanne Limoncelli (October 2026)]

Limoncelli's new novel is The Spiral.

At CrimeReads the author tagged seven essential 1970s NYC noir books and films. One title on the list:

Judith Rossner, Looking for Mr. Goodbar

This novel was inspired by true events and starts at the very beginning of the life story of Theresa from the Bronx, a woman who has been on a downhill journey since childhood. Her life is articulated in a way that pulls us right alongside her, through her unlucky life events, misguided experiences, poor decision-making, and damaging self-treatment, all giving a realistic understanding of what it was like to live in that era. It is the full backstory of a dedicated teacher and lonely lost soul, in the film played brilliantly by Diane Keaton, as she consistently puts herself in dangerous situations that finally lead to the tragic ending.

Adapted for the screen and directed by Richard Brooks, he gives the story a thriller angle with a slightly different focus. Read the book first, and Theresa’s story will resonate even more forcefully.

Read about the other titles on Limoncelli's list at CrimeReads.

Looking for Mr. Goodbar is among Wendy Walker's six most memorable bad dates in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue