Five romance novels with teacher leads

Alison Doherty is a writing teacher and part time assistant professor living in Brooklyn, New York. She has an MFA from The New School in writing for children and teenagers. She loves
writing about books on the Internet, listening to audiobooks on the subway, and reading anything with a twisty plot or a happily ever after.

At Book Riot she tagged five "favorite teacher romance novels featuring flirty banter over the school copy machine, longing glances over finger painting, happily ever afters for the people who deserve them most…and absolutely NO romances with students." One title on the list:

The Love Simulation by Etta Easton

Etta is a dedicated middle school vice principal who joins a six-week Mars simulation to compete for a cash prize she needs to upgrade the school library. When science teacher Roman joins her team, at first she thinks he must be there to sabotage her chances. They’ve had an occasionally flirtatious, frenemy relationship all year. And he’s the son of her football-obsessed principal. But day by day, he proves how dedicated he is to this project and the school, and the feelings and attraction between them are definitely growing. But Etta still can’t shake the feeling that this cute science teacher is hiding something from her. This book is perfect for any romance readers who wanted to go to space camp. And I, personally, loved reading about a female vice principal!

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Twelve historical mysteries that make the past feel dangerously alive

Oprah Daily tagged historical fiction titles that "use mystery not merely to decorate history, but to interrogate it, asking whose secrets were protected, whose stories were suppressed, and what the past can reveal when someone finally starts asking the right questions." One novel on the list:

Hall of Mirrors, by John Copenhaver

The “Lavender Scare” of the 1950s, during which gay men and women were targeted by J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI as un-American, led to countless tragedies, lost jobs, lost loved ones, and lost lives. Copenhaver employs the noir atmosphere of the time to great effect in his second installment in his Nightingale and Watson series. Lovers Philippa and Judy struggle to find out who set the fire that killed their friend Roger, while also struggling to keep their relationship strong and loving in the face of government and societal threats, including the danger Philippa’s Black family faces due to her ability to pass as white.
—Bethanne Patrick

Read about the other historical mysteries on the list.

-Marshal Zeringue

Ten chilling slasher novels

Alaina Urquhart is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Dr. Wren Muller series which has been published internationally in over twenty languages. When she isn’t writing, she is also the cohost of the chart-topping podcast Morbid, and an autopsy technician by trade.

The latest Dr. Wren Muller novel is The Butcher Legacy.

At People magazine Urquhart tagged ten "summer slashers [that] are meant to be read with the porch light on." One title on the list:

Slasher Summer by E.L. Chen

This is the newest entry into my favorite summer slasher reads and it delivers at every turn. Slasher Summer follows a group of seven friends (with real Midnight Society vibes) reuniting in their sleepy, lakeside hometown of Cedar Lake Falls. The reunion takes place at a secluded cabin in the woods that served as the primary filming location for the cult classic horror flick, Slasher. With a setting like that, nothing could go wrong, right? Wrong.

A masked killer crashes their reunion and the campy, slasher energy flows right in with them. It’s fast-paced, tense and includes nods to some of the best slasher films we all know and love. With Slasher Summer, E.L. Chen has made a self-aware homage to the genre that you should read with the light on.

Read about the other novels on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven historical novels set during revolutions

At Book Riot Julia Rittenberg tagged seven historical novels set during revolutions, including:

Book of Sands by Karim Alrawi

During the Arab Spring protests in Cairo, Tarek and his daughter Neda are faced with numerous difficult choices. Tarek thinks deeply about what it means to look towards an uncertain future, and how they came to be in their current situation. Alrawi’s style and fabulism communicate how difficult it was to live through such a revolutionary upheaval.

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight titles that puncture the myths of Silicon Valley

Claire Stapleton is a writer, communications consultant, and tech labor activist. She began her career at Google, where she spent 12 years in a variety of influential communications, marketing, and executive ghostwriting roles, before co-organizing the Google Walkout in 2018, in which 20,000 employees loudly protested the company’s mishandling of sexual harassment. Stapleton now advises executives and organizations on navigating the complicated communications landscape, speaks and writes frequently about tech worker issues, and publishes an existential advice column for tech workers on Substack.

Her new book is Don't Be Evil: Bad Bosses, Fake Promises, and My Escape from Big Tech.

At Lit Hub Stapleton tagged the eight "books that most shaped my understanding of [Silicon Valley] that has become the air we all breathe—and, increasingly, choke on." One title on the list:

From Counterculture to Cyberculture by Fred Turner

Fred Turner is my GOAT. No one has done more to explain Silicon Valley’s founding mythology—or to show how the industry has rendered the material consequences of its power strangely invisible. Turner has pointed out that Santa Clara County, the heart of Silicon Valley, is among the most polluted places in America, while roughly a quarter of local families experience food insecurity. Neither fact squares with the paradise the Valley tells about itself.

At the center of the book is Stewart Brand, founder of the Whole Earth Catalog and a mythological figure in Valley lore (immortalized by Steve Jobs’s “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish” Stanford commencement address). Turner shows how Brand and his countercultural contemporaries transformed the computer from a symbol of military bureaucracy into an emblem of personal freedom and self-expression.

That moral vocabulary became Silicon Valley’s native language: Google didn’t just organize information; it empowered people. Facebook didn’t harvest attention; it connected humanity. AI companies aren’t merely building products; they’re democratizing intelligence.

The genius and danger of that worldview is that it recasts political problems as engineering problems. Turner gave me a framework for understanding how a profoundly anti-institutional ethos took hold, one that treated democratic institutions as obstacles to be bulldozed on the way to cyber-utopia.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top titles about chess players

Allison Saft is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Wings of Starlight, A Dark and Drowning Tide, A Far Wilder Magic, and other romantic fantasy novels. Her work has won a Scribe Award and has been translated into over ten languages. She holds an MA in English Literature from Tulane University and teaches creative writing at Wilkes University. In her free time, she practices aerial circus arts. She lives in West Virginia with her partner and an Italian greyhound named Marzipan.

Saft's new novel is Immortal Game.

At The Nerd Daily the author tagged five of her "favorite books about chess players." One title on the list:

Bobby Fischer Goes to War: How A Lone American Star Defeated the Soviet Chess Machine by David Edmonds and John Eidinow

Bobby Fischer Goes to War was hands-down my favorite book I read while researching Immortal Game. It’s breezily written and a lot of fun, even if you don’t play chess. It tells the bizarre, engrossing, and incredibly dramatic story of the 1972 World Chess Championship. It also paints sympathetic, nuanced portraits of the two competitors, Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky, both of whom were complicated men and both of whom faced enormous pressure going into the match. The book captures something meaningful about the Cold War era, chess history, and the price of brilliance.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Also see K.W. Colyard's list "books like The Queen's Gambit that prove chess is far from boring" and Aisling Twomey's list of seven books for fans of The Queen’s Gambit.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six humorous mystery novels

Gloria Chao is a USA Today bestselling author and a screenwriter. Her novels include The Mortal Enemy Murder Club, The Ex-Girlfriend Murder Club, Ex Marks the Spot, When You Wish Upon a Lantern, Rent a Boyfriend, Our Wayward Fate, and American Panda. She graduated from MIT and became a dentist before realizing she’d rather spend her days in fictional characters’ heads instead of real people’s mouths. When she’s not writing, you can find her on the curling ice, where she and her husband are world-ranked in mixed doubles.

[The Page 69 Test: American Panda; The Page 69 Test: When You Wish Upon a Lantern]

At CrimeReads Chao tagged six "humorous mysteries that I have loved, ranging from laugh-out-loud funny to more subtle humor." One title on the list:

Emma Mills, Rachel West and the Fallen Starlet

When Rachel’s celebrity friend Molly is found dead, she’s the only one who knows she didn’t die of an overdose like everyone claims, and she’s going to have to prove it. This book was filled with humor and banter, all while feeling like you’re living inside a magazine getting the celebrity gossip first. You’ll be sucked into this fun ride immediately and kept guessing until the end!

Read about the other mysteries on Chao's list at CrimeReads.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven memoirs about discovering close relatives late in life

BK (Kate) Jackson is an author, developmental editor, book coach, and a journalist with bylines in HuffPost, The Los Angeles Times, The Sun, Whale Road Review, Hippocampus Magazine, WIRED, and more. She earned a BA and an MA from UCLA. Jackson is the editor of the anthology Relative Strangers: Inheritance, Identity, and the Meaning of Family and the founder and editor of Severance, a magazine and community for adoptees and individuals who’ve discovered misattributed parentage. She also has a Substack about writing with ADHD.

At Electric Lit Jackson tagged seven memoirs that take "readers deep into the mind-bending and sometimes shattering experience of discovering close family late in life." One title on the list:

Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls by T Kira Madden

T Kira Madden’s memoir is a funny, fierce, and heartbreaking story of coming of age as a queer, biracial, glorious misfit in a complex family in Boca Raton, Florida. It’s impossible to pin down a theme because the book is—in the best of all possible ways—all over the place. It’s about addiction, acceptance, rejection, desire, privilege, trauma, violence, identity, and the families we’re born into and the families we choose. Her voice as a memoirist renders the narrator as indelible as the most memorable of fictional characters, and while her girlhood may not be remotely typical, it is universal in ways that will resonate with all readers. Like the narrators of each of these seven memoirs, Madden finds unexpected close family, in her case when a DNA test unspools her mother’s secrets. The revelation is the coda to her memoir, suggesting that families are like glaciers, with much remaining invisible and inaccessible deep below the surface.

Read about the other entries on Jackson's list at Electric Lit.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top SFF books about gods and demons

Lyndsie Manusos’s fiction has appeared in PANK, SmokeLong Quarterly, and other publications. She holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has worked in web production and content management. When she’s not nesting among her books and rough drafts, she’s chasing the baby while the dog watches in confused amusement. She lives with her family in a suburb of Indianapolis.

At Book Riot she tagged six of the best science fiction and fantasy books about gods and demons, including:

The Sea Hides Its Dead by Megan Bontrager

Let’s get a little cultish. Orbit’s imprint Run For It, which focuses more on horror and dark SFF, has been one of my favorite imprints to dive into as of late. The Sea Hides Its Dead really encompasses both gods and demons.

In a post-apocalyptic world where the Northeast is suddenly doused with an immovable, unquenchable storm, Caro is asked by her professor and lover to accompany him to a stone monolith that suddenly appeared offshore. Suddenly, Caro, the professor, and other crew members become trapped in what is supposedly the dwelling place of the Cult of the Leviathan and its god. And soon, they find out they’re not alone. This story certainly leans more toward horror, but the dystopian near-future the author created is fascinating, as is the mysterious and horrific mythos of the Cult of the Leviathan.

Read about the other titles on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five seriously scary horror books

Hannah Whitten has been writing to amuse herself since she could hold a pen, and sometime in high school, figured out that what amused her might also amuse others. Her books have been international bestsellers and translated into multiple languages. When she’s not writing, she’s reading, watching horror movies, or chasing after her feral children. She lives in Tennessee with her family, two dogs who think they run the house, and a cat who actually does.

Whitten's new novel is Reliquary .

At People magazine the author tagged five "favorite horrors with autumnal vibes, so we can pretend the air doesn’t feel like walking through hot soup." One title on the list:

Other Words For Smoke by Sarah Maria Griffin

I absolutely love Griffin’s work, and this was the book that made me a fan. A house fire claims the lives of two people in Ireland, but the other members of the household know what actually happened, and it’s far more fantastical than a simple tragedy. This is a witch novel, but entirely unique in the way it’s presented, complete with alternate realities, buildings that don’t work quite right and mysterious animals doing the most. Autumn might not be explicitly invoked, but the vibes are baked into the gorgeous, layered prose.

Read about the other titles on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven titles that complicate the marriage plot

Alysia Li Ying Sawchyn teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Bucknell University. Formerly the editor in chief of The Rumpus, she has received fellowships from The Kenyon Review and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. Their first essay collection, A Fish Growing Lungs, was a finalist for The Believer Book Awards.

Sawchyn's new essay collection is I Have This Thing for Flowers.

At Lit Hub the author tagged seven "favorite titles, both fiction and non-fiction, that complicate and distract from and look askance at the traditional story of two people falling in love and getting married." One title on the list:

This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage, Ann Patchett

Surely you’ve seen the cover of Patchett latest novel, Whistler, all over this summer’s Best Of lists. Though she’s probably best known as a novelist, her nonfiction is—I think—equally wonderful. Despite the book’s title, this collection of essays is as much about Patchett’s life as an artist as it is about her romantic relationships.

In an early essay, “The Sacrament of Divorce,” we learn that the dissolution of Patchett’s first marriage “began less than a week before we were married.” For many years afterward, Patchett happily lives her life eschewing marital commitment, in several “wonderful, long relationships with people I deeply enjoyed but would not have wanted to marry for a minute.” This does not change when she meets the man who will eventually become her second husband. They live in separate houses for eleven years before her then-boyfriend’s health emergency and the benefits that legal marriage bestow tip the scales. It’s the story of a happy marriage, but a book about how to live happily without being married.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five creature feature horror novels

K. W. Colyard is the author of the BNW-nominated “Those Who Forget and Those Who Perish,” published by Seize the Press in 2022. Their fiction has also appeared in Clarkesworld and Diabolical Plots.

At Book Riot Colyard tagged five novels in which "the horrors are externalized, even personified, in the shape of the villains." One title on the list:

Whalefall by Daniel Kraus

An unlucky diver has one hour to escape the bowels of a sperm whale in this remarkable novel from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Daniel Kraus.

Jay’s father died by suicide in the waters near Monastery Beach. Months later, Jay is determined to bring his father’s remains home. It’s a nearly impossible task, made even more difficult when a sperm whale swallows Jay with its intended meal, a giant squid. With only an hour of oxygen left, Jay will have to muster all his courage and grit to survive.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue