Six thrillers that feature contagions and pandemics

Alice Martin is a writer, reader, and teacher from North Carolina. She holds a PhD in Literature from Rutgers University and works as an Assistant Professor of English Studies at Western Carolina University, where she teaches fiction writing and American literature. She lives outside of Asheville, North Carolina with her husband, her son, and too many typewriters.

Westward Women is Martin's debut novel.

At CrimeReads the author tagged six novels that are

stories about societies on the edge in the face of contagions, stories made pulse-pounding not only because of the way they demonstrate contagion as a threat but also the way they reveal how contagion can be a catalyst for social change, a reminder of the potential reckless delights in being free of social constraint.

One title on Martin's list:

Chuck Wendig, Wanderers

Like Westward Women, Chuck Wendig’s Wanderers features a biologically mysterious contagion that compels people to trek across the United States in a zombie-like fashion. Unlike in Westward Women, detaining the infected causes those very infected to explode (yes, really). The result is an unstoppable movement that inspires loved ones, called “Shepards,” to join the trek.

The reverberates of this phenomenon are widespread: the development of an AI to predict other pandemics, the formation extremist groups who see the Walkers as a threat, and the rise of a smalltown preacher who tries to take charge of the situation while under the influence of a white supremacist. The outcomes are explosive, but so is the subtler truth the contagion embodies: that sometimes we are drawn to compulsion; that despite our better judgements, sometimes we, too, wish to submit to forces beyond our control.

Read about the other entries on the list at CrimeReads.

Wanderers is among Vanessa Armstrong's seven top books featuring frightening fungi and Mark Skinner's ten top reads for Stranger Things fans.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five mystery titles set in the aftermath of WWII

Shaina Steinberg is the author of the Bishop & Gallagher Mysteries, as well as a film and television writer who’s worked on Malcolm in the Middle, Everwood, Cold Case, Bionic Woman, and Spartacus. Named to the Young and Hungry List in 2013 and the WriteHer List in 2017, she has developed pitches, pilots and features with companies such as Temple Hill, Endgame Entertainment, Fremantle, eOne, Blondie Girl, Josephson Entertainment and Alcon.

At The Strand Magazine she tagged five mystery books set in the aftermath of World War Two. One title on the list:

Evergreen – Naomi Hirahara

The follow-up to Naomi Hirahara’s brilliant Clark and Division, Evergreen continues Aki (neé Ito) Nakasone’s story. Aki and her family returned to Los Angeles, after being forced into internment camps. While somewhere able to find housing, many people were forced into camps located in Burbank. They were dirty, crime-ridden places, that proved hard to leave with the shortage of affordable housing.

Aki is working as a nurse’s aide when an old man, who has been badly beaten, is brought into the hospital. To Aki’s surprise, he is the father of her husband’s best friend, Babe, from the war. She cannot help but suspect him of elder abuse. When the old man killed a few days later and Babe goes missing, Aki is determined to unravel this mystery. The bond Aki’s husband developed with Babe while serving as soldiers in the 442nd is something Aki cannot understand. It makes her realize how much she still has to learn about her husband. They got married during the war and are only now living together for the first time.

Aki’s quest to find the killer reunites her with old friends from Chicago as she navigates Los Angeles from Pasadena to Little Tokyo, in search of answers.

Read about the other novels on the list.

Q&A with Naomi Hirahara.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five books about breaking up... with your friend

Sarvat Hasin is a novelist and dramaturg from Pakistan. She has a masters in creative writing from the University of Oxford. Her first novel, This Wide Night, was published by Penguin Random House India and longlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. Her second book, You Can’t Go Home Again, was published in 2018 and featured in Vogue India's and The Hindu's best of the year lists. Her third novel, The Giant Dark, was a runaway critical success, won the Mo Siewcharran Prize, and was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Encore Award. Strange Girls is her US debut. She lives in London.

At Lit Hub Hasin tagged "five novels [that] are a kind of canon for the friendship breakup," including:

Kamila Shamsie, Kartography

This novel is full of friendship breakups, both past and present. It’s about a quartet of young Karachiites, whose parents all know each other and have a shared and knotty history that our heroes discover over the course of the book. Shamsie’s early novel is an elegant portrayal of breakups, coloured by many different things: bigotry, misunderstandings and shame are all things that tear people apart in this book. Raheen and Karim are at the heart of the book, friends first and an eventual love story. Even when they both leave Pakistan and move to American, they continue to satellite each other. The friendship breakup in the diaspora is its own particular haunting: representing not just your past relationship but the home you’ve left behind.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight historical fiction titles about women fighting fascism

Susie Dumond is a queer writer originally from Little Rock, Arkansas. She is the author of Queerly Beloved, Looking for a Sign, and Bed and Breakup, and she also talks about books as a senior contributor at Book Riot and a bookseller at her local indie bookstore. Dumond lives in Washington, D.C., with her spouse, Mickey, and her cat, Maple. When she’s not writing or reading, you can find her baking cupcakes or belting karaoke at the nearest gay bar.

At Book Riot Dumond tagged eight works of historical fiction about women fighting fascism. One title on the list:

The Library of Legends by Janie Chang

One of fascism’s most powerful tools is the erasure of history from conflicting viewpoints. Janie Chang puts a magical spin on the real history of a group of Chinese students tasked with protecting ancient books from fascist attacks. As Japanese bombs fell on 1937 Nanking, an entire university’s students, faculty, and staff were forced to walk 1,000 miles west to safety. Each person was tasked with carrying a different volume of the 500-year-old Library of Legends. Their brave journey awakens spirits that accompany them along the way in this luscious, fantastical tale inspired by real events.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Library of Legends is among Bryn Turnbull's seven top books about life under occupation in WWII and Megan Mabee's eight books about magical and mysterious libraries.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five thrillers featuring technofascism

Ani Katz is a writer, photographer, and teacher. She was born and raised on the South Shore of Long Island, New York, and lives in Brooklyn.

Her new novel is Haven, which she calls "a meditation on techno-dystopia masquerading as a locked room mystery."

At CrimeReads Katz tagged five "genre-bending thrillers that employ elements of sci-fi, noir, and horror to explore what happens when the imaginations of the powerful serve the most venal and repressive of goals." One title on the list:

Gliff by Ali Smith

A harrowing and heartbreaking novel, Gliff, like all great thrillers, demands to be read in a few breathless gulps. Siblings Bri and Rose were raised by their mother to reject new technologies and the grasping tentacles of the algorithm in an attempt to hold on to their freedom and humanity, a choice which renders them “unverifiable” and uniquely vulnerable. When their mother is called away, Bri and Rose find themselves running from an authority that is both inexorable and faceless, a threat made visible by the seemingly inescapable painting of red lines around the dwellings of undesirables—a detail both banal and chilling. Gliff explores the terrifying consequences of surveillance and intolerance in a grim, technocratic and totalitarian society that is perilously close in character to the present, and finds possibilities for resistance and resilience in language, art, and connection.

Read about the other titles on the list at CrimeReads.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six essential titles about birds

Eric Wagner is a staff writer with the Puget Sound Institute at University of Washington, Tacoma. He is author of After the Blast: The Ecological Recovery of Mount St. Helens and Penguins in the Desert, and wrote the text for Once and Future River: Reclaiming the Duwamish.

His new book is Seabirds as Sentinels: Auklets, Puffins, Shearwaters, and the View from Destruction Island.

At Lit Hub Wagner tagged six essential books about birds, including:

Maria Mudd Ruth, The Bird with Flaming Red Feet: Seasons with an Uncommonly Common Seabird

The pigeon guillemot is in many ways everything the rhinoceros auklet is not—loud, visually dramatic, gregarious, conspicuous, with a willingness to come to land during the day. In The Bird with Flaming Red Feet, Maria joins a citizen science group devoted to their study and follows the birds for years. Documenting her and her fellow volunteers’ attentions, the book is an ode to the kind of careful, patient natural history that contemporary science practiced at its increasingly rapid pace does not encourage as much anymore.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top literary romance titles

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 top literary romance novels, including:

This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

This genre-bending sci-fi sapphic love story features time-traveling spies from warring empires. Red and Blue jump from timeline to timeline and universe to universe. They start out on opposite sides, but start leaving each other messages that slowly morph from adversarial to friendly to loving. Through the letters they write each other, the book takes on a lyrical and often philosophical quality. At just under 200 pages, it’s a short read that will keep your mind occupied with big thoughts long after you finish.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six titles that explore disrupted and shattered childhoods

As a passionate advocate of lifelong learning, Frances Crawford was delighted to graduate with distinction at age sixty from Glasgow University’s Creative Writing program. Frances grew up in North Glasgow, and credits the people of Possilpark and Milton as her writing inspiration. She still lives in Glasgow with her family and likes libraries and punk rock.

A Bad, Bad Place is Crawford's debut novel.

At CrimeReads the author tagged six of her favorite books that explore disrupted and shattered childhoods, including:

Angie Thomas, The Hate U Give

Aimed at young adults, this novel describes the fallout of a racist shooting in inner-city America. Sixteen-year-old Starr is the only witness to the shooting and her ordinary life with loving family comes to a shocking and abrupt end. When Starr makes the courageous decision to testify in court, she faces outrage, danger and threat.

The novel is a powerful depiction not only of a young black life wrecked by one incident, but also by daily injustice and inequality.

Read about the other titles on the list at CrimeReads.

The Hate U Give is among Kai Harris's six portrayals of Black girlhood in fiction, Chris Whitaker's six top kid narrators in literature, Sif Sigmarsdóttir's top ten novels about burning issues for young adults, and Natasha Ochshorn's seven banned books that should be required reading.

--Marshal Zeringue

Fifteen memoirs and bios for Women’s History Month

One title on Tertulia's list of "memoirs and biographies [that] spotlight remarkable women across literature, activism, and the arts:"

Judy Blume: A Life
Mark Oppenheimer

For generations of readers, Judy Blume’s novels said what no one else would. With books like Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret and Deenie, she transformed children’s literature into something frank, candid, and deeply human. Drawing on extensive interviews and archival material, journalist Mark Oppenheimer traces Blume’s rise from suburban housewife to one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century.

Read about the other titles on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten must-read modern classics of historical fiction

Leah Rachel von Essen is an editor, writer, and book reviewer. She is a copyeditor and fact-checker at Encyclopedia Britannica, as well as a contributing editor, Adult Books, for American Library Association’s magazine Booklist. She writes regularly for Chicago Review of Books and is a senior contributor at Book Riot.

At Book Riot she tagged ten must-read modern classics of historical fiction. One title on the list:

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

In the early 1900s, a Korean immigrant family settled in Japan, beginning with a young pregnant woman named Sunja and the sickly minister Baek Isak. Over the next century, Sunja, as a matriarch, fights to feed and keep her family alive, fostering her sons into what she hopes will be a prosperous future. This modern historical fiction classic covers everything from the temptation and pressures to assimilate and “pass” as Japanese to the institutional, social, and political oppression of Koreans in Japan over the years.

Read about the other books on the list.

Pachinko is among McKenzie Watson-Fore's eight titles featuring cathartic bathhouse scenes, Adrienne Westenfeld and Sirena He's twenty-five essential books about the Asian American experience, Daphne Fama's seven top novels set during times of great political upheaval, Mia Barzilay Freund's eighteen best historical fiction books of the last several decades, Courtney Rodgers's best historical fiction of the 21st century so far, Bethanne Patrick's twenty-five best historical fiction books of all time, Asha Thanki seven books about families surviving political unrest, the Amazon Book Review editors' twelve favorite long books, Gina Chen's twelve books for fans of HBO’s Succession, Cindy Fazzi's eight books about the impact of Japanese imperialism during WWII, Eman Quotah's eight books about mothers separated from their daughters, Karolina Waclawiak's six favorite books on loss and longing, Allison Patkai's top six books with strong female voices, Tara Sonin's twenty-one books for fans of HBO’s Succession, and six books Jia Tolentino recommends.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six contemporary titles that center caretaking through crisis

Sarah Bruni is a graduate of the MFA program at Washington University in St. Louis and the MA in Latin American Studies at Tulane University. She has taught English and writing classes in New York and St. Louis, and she has volunteered as a writer-in-schools in San Francisco and Montevideo, Uruguay. She is also the author of the novel The Night Gwen Stacy Died. Her fiction has appeared in Boston Review, and her translations have appeared in the Buenos Aires Review. She lives in Chicago with her family.

Bruni's new novel is Mass Mothering.

At Lit Hub the author tagged six contemporary novels that "explore the psychological toll of caretaking, the challenge of parenting through personal and political awakening, or the legacy of mutual aid within community." One title on the list:

Brit Bennett, The Mothers

The Mothers opens with an abortion and spans the friendship of two motherless girls into adulthood, living in the aftermath of decisions their mothers have made. When, following her own mother’s suicide, seventeen-year-old Nadia gets pregnant by the pastor’s son, she forges an unlikely friendship with Aubrey, whose mother has left her family behind. The titular mothers of Bennett’s novel—narrating in the first-person plural—offer observations and judgements from the of Upper Room of a Southern California Black church: “We were all mothers by then, some by heart and some by womb. We rocked grandbabies left in our care and taught the neighborhood kids piano and baked pies for the sick and the shut-in. We all mothered somebody.” The novel is haunting, asking what we owe our mothers, the communities given to us by birth, and those we create for ourselves.

Read about the other novels on the list.

The Mothers is among Kelsey McKinney's seven top novels about losing faith in religion, Priyanka Champaneri's nine top novels about gossip, and Patrick Coleman's eight top San Diego books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top atmospheric thrillers set during heatwaves

Elizabeth Arnott is an award-winning writer and journalist and has written critically acclaimed historical fiction as Lizzie Pook. Her work—covering everything from true crime to Arctic exploration—has featured in publications including The Sunday Times, National Geographic, The New York Times Book Review, and The Guardian. She lives with her husband and their young daughter in London, where she spends far too much time drinking iced coffee and watching serial killer shows.

Arnott's new novel is The Secret Lives of Murderers' Wives.

At CrimeReads the author tagged six "of the finest, most evocative crime novels that take place during heatwaves." One title on the list:

Patricia Highsmith, The Talented Mr. Ripley

Sprawling across a long, hot summer in Italy, Highsmith’s sun-baked 1950s classic follows the ruthlessly ambitious Tom Ripley, who’ll stop at nothing in his bid for success and self-preservation. When he is approached by shipping magnate Herbert Greenleaf and asked to persuade Greenleaf’s wayward son, Dickie, to return to the United States, Ripley has no qualms with exaggerating his own connections and accepting.

The resulting recce mission is filled with lies, manipulation and, ultimately, murder. Ripley is tantalizingly amoral, but it’s the picturesque coastal setting, with its mirrored seas and sultry summer heat, that make this an irresistible heatwave read.

Read about the other entries on the list at CrimeReads.

The Talented Mr Ripley is on Adam Hamdy's list of ten of the most popular literary antiheroes, Nadia Khomami's list of five of the best psychological thrillers by women, the UK-based Crime Writers' Association's list of ten page-turning reads, Nathan Oates's list of eight of the best bad seed novels, Lizzy Barber's list of seven titles about wealthy people behaving badly, Charlotte Northedge's top ten list of novels about toxic friendships, Elizabeth Macneal's list of five books that explore the dark side of fitting in, Saul A. Lelchuk's nine great thrillers featuring alter egos, Emma Stonex's list of seven top mystery novels set by the sea, Russ Thomas's top ten list of queer protagonists in crime fiction, Paul Vidich's list of five of the most enduring imposters in crime fiction & espionage, Lisa Levy's list of eight of the most toxic friendships in crime fiction, Elizabeth Macneal's list of five sympathetic fictional psychopaths, Laurence Scott's list of seven top books about doppelgangers, J.S. Monroe's list of seven suspenseful literary thrillers, Simon Lelic's top ten list of false identities in fiction, Jeff Somers's list of fifty novels that changed novels, Olivia Sudjic's list of eight favorite books about love and obsession, Roz Chast's six favorite books list, Nicholas Searle's top five list of favorite deceivers in fiction, Chris Ewan's list of the ten top chases in literature, Meave Gallagher's top twenty list of gripping page-turners every twentysomething woman should read, Sophia Bennett's top ten list of books set in the Mediterranean, Emma Straub's top ten list of holidays in fiction, E. Lockhart's list of favorite suspense novels, Sally O'Reilly's top ten list of novels inspired by Shakespeare, Walter Kirn's top six list of books on deception, Stephen May's top ten list of impostors in fiction, Simon Mason's top ten list of chilling fictional crimes, Melissa Albert's list of eight books to change a villain, Koren Zailckas's list of eleven of literature's more evil characters, Alex Berenson's five best list of books about Americans abroad John Mullan's list of ten of the best examples of rowing in literature, Tana French's top ten maverick mysteries list, the Guardian's list of the 50 best summer reads ever, the Telegraph's ultimate reading list, and Francesca Simon's top ten list of antiheroes.

--Marshal Zeringue