Seven books that explore the bonds between brothers

Carson Markland is a writer and filmmaker from South Carolina. Her first novel, Men Like Us, was published by Algonquin/Little, Brown in July 2026. Her short stories have appeared in Breakwater Review and SmokeLong Quarterly, have been included in the Best Microfiction anthology, and have been longlisted for the Disquiet International Literary Prize.

At Electric Lit Markland tagged seven books in which "we see a variety of brothers and permutations of this thorny relationship—some younger brothers who look up to the older, some who want nothing to do with them, all inextricably bonded to a person who understands them (or doesn’t) like no one else in the world." One title on the list:

Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward

Salvage the Bones follows siblings Randall, Skeetah, Esch, and Junior as they prepare for Hurricane Katrina in their rural Mississippi town. Although the novel juggles multiple threads, including the coming storm and Esch’s unexpected pregnancy, one of the most compelling arcs for me centers on Skeetah—the second son—and his place within the family. While his older brother Randall is a talented basketball player whose skill offers a possible route out of their town, Skeetah devotes himself to a completely different path with the same intensity: pitbull fighting. With the two, Ward captures the subtle tension that can exist between younger and older brothers—less an outright, declared rivalry than an unspoken attempt by the younger brother to carve out a unique identity for himself. The result is an understated but no less powerful example of how birth order can shape the identities of brothers themselves.

Read about the other books on the list.

Salvage the Bones is among Bonnie Kistler's five novels that use hurricanes to heighten the drama, Kai Harris's six top portrayals of Black girlhood in fiction, Christine Hume's ten top feminist retellings of mythology, Michelle Sacks's five books with complex and credible child narrators, Amy Brady's seven books that provocatively tackle climate change, Jodi Picoult's six recommended books, Peggy Frew's ten top books about "bad" mothers, and Jenny Shanks's five least supervised children in literature. 

--Marshal Zeringue

Six great uplifting titles

Jeffrey Davies is a professional introvert and writer with imposter syndrome whose work spans the worlds of pop culture, books, music, feminism, and mental health. His work has appeared on HuffPost, CBC Arts, Collider, Slant Magazine, PopMatters, and other places.

At Book Riot Davis tagged six great uplifting books. One title on the list:

The Guncle by Steven Rowley

Patrick has always loved being a guncle, or Gay Uncle Patrick, to his niece, Maisie, and nephew, Grant, whenever they come to visit him in Palm Springs, or he goes home to Connecticut for the holidays. But as far as his actual caretaking skills, he doesn’t really know what he’s doing — but he’s going to have to figure it out. When Maisie and Grant suddenly lose their mother, and their father is going through a crisis of his own, Patrick has to step up and look after them as their primary guardian. Although he already has a set list of “Guncle Rules” to follow, Patrick struggles to admit that he might be out of his league on this one, having never gotten over the loss of his own great love nor his stalled acting career. Not to mention being used to a lifestyle that doesn’t usually cater to young children.

As Patrick learns the hard way that sometimes parenting isn’t as easy as weekend visits, he might also learn some valuable lessons about his own life, too.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six titles that try to keep up with Elizabeth Taylor

Stephen Greco is a novelist, journalist, media executive, editor, dramatist and Executive Director of the Ferro-Grumley Literary Awards, which he co-founded in 1988. He is a regular contributor to the magazine Upstate Diary and has contributed as a feature writer and editor to numerous publications including Interview magazine, New York magazine, Air Mail, The Advocate, American Way, Art News, Dance Magazine, Elle, Harper's Bazaar, Latina, the London Observer, Stagebill, and The New York Times online.

His new novel is The Woman Who Had Everything.

At Lit Hub Greco tagged six books that approach the question: "Was [Elizabeth Taylor] a great actress, a great beauty, the ultimate movie star, a creature of vulgar excess, or some magnificent combination of all four?" One title on the list:

Donald Spoto, A Passion for Life: The Biography of Elizabeth Taylor

If you want to begin with Elizabeth rather than “Liz,” begin with Donald Spoto. His is the most conventionally serious biography of the bunch, and the one with the deepest interest in Taylor as an actress—not simply as the proprietor of eight marriages, several world-famous diamonds, and a medical history that could fill a teaching hospital.

Spoto is particularly good on the strange doubleness of Taylor’s life: she was both the triumphant creator of an extraordinary public self and the first person it consumed. He sees the marriages not as a string of scandals but as attempts at transformation, each offering Taylor another part to play and another possible escape from the part she had been playing since childhood. At times, his psychological explanations may seem almost too orderly for a woman who lived so exuberantly in disorder. But no other biographer I’ve read gets as close to explaining how the vulnerable child, the formidable actress, and the reckless soap opera heroine could all occupy the same five-foot-two-inch frame.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

The 10 most ambitious books of all time

At Collider Jeremy Urquhart tagged ten of the most ambitious (and longest) books of all time, including:

Underworld (1997) by Don DeLillo

If Underworld progressed in chronological order, it would still qualify as quite ambitious, what with it being dense, covering a great deal of history (much of the second half of the 20th century), and being lengthy, at over 800 pages. Structurally, though, it’s all those things plus something told largely in reverse, starting with a story about a prized baseball from a match in the early 1950s, and then jumping forward to the 1990s.

It’s about people who had – or wanted to have – that baseball in their possession, but everything keeps jumping back, and though there are some people in it who are sort of main characters, Underworld goes off on tangents fairly often. It does so in a way that works unusually well, with there being something powerful about the novel overall, even if it sometimes feels hard to say just what exactly makes it feel such a way.

Read about the other books on the list.

Underworld is among Andrew O'Hagan's six favorite books, Gabe Habash's nine best art-and-book-cover matches, Alex Clark's top ten long books, and Chad Harbach's top five notable novels with sporting themes.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five excellent sci-fi and fantasy mystery novels

At Book Riot Liberty Hardy tagged five "exciting sci-fi and fantasy books that dip into the mystery genre." One entry on the list:

The Shamshine Blind by Paz Pardo

And if you want more sci-fi noir, then this book will scratch that itch. It’s a wildly original tale about an alternate United States, where chemical weapons have been created that cause emotions. The colorful weapons are quickly adopted to be used recreationally and for medical treatments. Kay Curtida is an agent with Psychopigment Enforcement, which investigates the black market sales of the drugs. And Kay’s new case has the potential to make her career…if she can survive it.

Read about the other titles on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight top femgore titles

S. M. Hallow’s short story “How to Stay Married to Baba Yaga” was included in the Locus 2023 Recommended Reading List and anthologized in The Year’s Best Fantasy Volume 3, edited by Paula Guran. Other short work can be found in Baffling Magazine, Seize the Press, Taco Bell Quarterly, and We’re Here: The Best Queer Speculative Fiction 2023. Her novella, How to Survive This Fairytale, was published in January 2025 and received a special edition in Rainbow Crate, a book box exclusively for queer books. The Halls of the Dead is Hallow’s debut novel.

At People magazine the author tagged eight "femgore novels that reveal the women of horror can be just as Monstrous as the patriarchy." One title on the list:

I’m Sorry if I Scared You by Mae Murray

After Odie Tucker is raped at college, she drives home to Arkansas for Thanksgiving and experiences a pill-induced abortion at a gas station. Instead of leaving it behind, she collects the fetal material in a water bottle, and brings it home with her. What follows is a beautifully bizarre story of agency and aliens, in which the fetus possesses Odie’s mind and helps her to get revenge on the man who raped her. Anchored by Murray’s gorgeous prose and unflinching exploration of queer identity, poverty, substance abuse and generational cycles, I’m Sorry if I Scared You is a page-turner I couldn’t put down.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ann Patchett's five best family saga books

Ann Patchett is the author of novels, works of nonfiction, and children's books. She has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the PEN/Faulkner, the Women's Prize for Fiction in the UK, and the Book Sense Book of the Year. Her novel The Dutch House was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her work has been translated into more than thirty languages, and Time magazine named her one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World. President Biden awarded her the National Humanities Medal in recognition of her contributions to American culture. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee, where she is the owner of Parnassus Books.

At Woman's World Patchett tagged five favorite family saga books, including:

Sandwich by Catherine Newman

In this novel by bestselling author Catherine Newman, 54-year-old Rocky finds herself caught in a painful middle ground: She’s no longer needed by her adult children for their day-to-day concerns, yet she’s constantly worried about her aging parents, all while navigating the unpredictable symptoms of menopause. When Rocky and her husband Nick embark on their annual beach vacation in Cape Cod with their kids Jamie and Willa, plus Jamie’s girlfriend, she finds herself flooded with memories—both joyful and heartbreaking—from a lifetime of unforgettable family summers.

What Ann says: “Sandwich is joy in book form. I laughed continuously, except for the parts that made me cry. Catherine Newman does a miraculous job reminding us of all the wonder there is to be found in life.”

Read about the other entries on the list.

Sandwich is among Colleen Oakley's seven novels featuring women over 40.

--Marshal Zeringue

Simon Schama's top 10 history books

Simon Schama is University Professor of Art History and History at Columbia University in New York. His award-winning books include Scribble, Scribble, Scribble; The American Future: A History; National Book Critics Circle Award winner Rough Crossings; The Power of Art; The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age; Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution; Dead Certainties (Unwarranted Speculations); Landscape and Memory; Rembrandt's Eyes; and the History of Britain trilogy. He has written and presented forty television documentary films for the BBC, PBS, and The History Channel, including the Emmy-winning Power of Art, on subjects that range from John Donne to Tolstoy.

Back in 1999 Schama tagged his top ten history books for the Guardian. One title on the list:

The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson by Bernard Bailyn

A very unlikely book about a man in paradoxical torment. An incredible book about a loyalist, and the ultimate biography of a loser, which simultaneously puts you in his position and makes you incredibly glad you're not him. He's demanding and repulsive at the same time: it's an incredible history of an impossible man in an impossible situation.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson is among Maya Jasanoff's five best books on anti-revolutionary British loyalists and Jay Winik's five best portraits of the era of America's founding.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five of the most WTF thrillers & crime novels

Jamie Canaves is a contributing editor at Book Riot. She tagged five great thrillers and crime novels with WTF premises, including:

The Man in My Basement by Walter Mosley

This slow-burn suspense novel is built and caged (heh) in a WTF premise.

If a stranger shows up to your house with a bunch of money (which you desperately need) and a request that they be caged in your basement, you’re gonna think you’re being pranked. But this goes into seriously “I’m sorry, what now?!” territory because this is not a prank. For additional context, the homeowner is Black, and the stranger asking to be caged in his basement is white…

Read about the other titles on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten titles about people making art together

Emma Copley Eisenberg is the nationally bestselling author of two books of fiction— Fat Swim and Housemates, nominated for a Lambda Literary Award in Lesbian Fiction and the VCU Cabell First Novelist Prize — and the nonfiction book The Third Rainbow Girl, a New York Times Notable Book and Editor’s Choice.

The Page 99 Test: The Third Rainbow Girl.

At Tertulia Eisenberg tagged ten "essential reads that explore the life-changing possibilities of creating things with other people." One title on the list:

Zora and Langston: A Story of Friendship and Betrayal by Yuval Taylor

This work of narrative nonfiction book about the complicated friendship and tragic artistic collaboration between Zora Neale Hurtson and Langston Hughes reads like the best kind of novel.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Page 99 Test: Zora and Langston.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine terrifying Native American and Indigenous horror books

Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. are the editors of Back for Blood: Never Whistle at Night Part II, an Indigenous horror anthology featuring stories by acclaimed Native American and Indigenous authors.

The collection features stories by: Jessica Doe • P.C. Verrone • Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. • Jim Terry • Jessica Johns • A.J. Eversole • Sonia Marie Barry • Shane Hawk • Stephen Graham Jones • Alicia Elliott • Mat RudeWalker • Shaawan Francis Keahna • Billy-Ray Belcourt • Jake Arrowtop • Alina Pete • Debra Magpie Earling • Joshua Whitehead • Tommy Orange • Ramona Emerson • Erica Tremblay • Kimberly Blaeser

At People magazine the editors tagged "some of their favorite horror novels written by Indigenous authors," including:

It Looks Like You in the Dark by Mathilda Zeller

When a predatory mining company brings corporate rot into a remote Alaskan village and her sister vanishes, a young Inuk woman plunges into the Arctic dark to find her. Stalked by the kushtuka — a shapeshifting creature that wears the faces of loved ones — this novel proves how industrial greed wakes horrors far older than the colonial project of the “United States of America.”

I love how Zeller twists Alaskan Native folklore into a suffocating trap where you can’t even trust a soul. This horror debut acts like an ice pick to the nervous system: freezing, terrifying and guaranteed to make you second-guess everything sharing a room with you in the dark. —Shane Hawk

Learn about the other titles on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five epistolary works of historical fiction

Rachel Brittain is a writer, Day Dreamer, and Amateur Aerialist. Her short fiction has appeared in Luna Station Quarterly, Andromeda Spaceways, and others. She is a contributing editor for Book Riot, where she screams into the void about her love of books. Brittain lives in Northwest Arkansas with a rambunctious rescue pup, a snake, and a houseful of plants (most of which aren’t carnivorous).

At Book Riot she tagged five epistolary historical fiction novels. including:

A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

A girl desperate to escape the bullying of her fellow classmates in Tokyo writes a series of diary entries documenting the life of her great-grandmother, a Buddhist nun. An ocean away, a novelist living on a remote island discovers a Hello Kitty lunchbox filled with mysterious artifacts she suspects washed away in the 2011 tsunami that devastated Japan. It reveals the lives of people completely unknown to her. Their stories may change her completely, even so.

TW for bullying and mentions of suicide.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue