Nine must-read near-future novels by women

After graduating from Wellesley College and the Columbia Publishing Course, Leslie Stephens worked on the Editorial team at Food52 in New York before heading west to Los Angeles, where she served as the Vice President of Content for the brand, cupcakes and cashmere. Her writing has also appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Eater, Apartment Therapy, and Tasting Table. Her weekly newsletter, Morning Person is among Substack’s most popular paid newsletters and her debut novel You’re Safe Here was released in 2024.

Stephens recently earned her Master's in Professional Mental Health Counseling with a Specialization in Addictions from Lewis and Clark College. With her degree, she hopes to treat adults struggling with technology addiction, through nature-based therapy. She currently lives in Portland, Oregon with her hyperactive pit-mix Toast.

At Tertulia Stephens tagged nine favorite speculative fiction near-future titles by women, including:

Good Morning, Midnight
Lily Brooks-Dalton

The end of the world, from the perspective of people stuck in the most isolated places imaginable—an Arctic research facility and a space ship.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Good Morning, Midnight is among Michelle Anne Schingler's top five books where women in space take center stage.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven crime titles that feature outsiders who challenge the status quo

Tanya Grant writes twisty thrillers full of secrets, murder, and gossipy group dynamics. When not conducting highly suspicious web searches (for research!), she also writes romances.

Grant's new psychological thriller is A Beautiful Lie.

At CrimeReads the author tagged "seven novels about characters whose outsider status disrupts the status quo and leads to dangerous places." One title on the list:

Rachel Hawkins, The Wife Upstairs

Jane is an underemployed young woman working as a dog walker in a wealthy community after escaping a traumatic past. She meets Eddie Rochester and feels an instant connection with the handsome man, whose wife is missing and presumed dead. Soon, Jane and Eddie begin dating, and Jane finds herself embedded in his exclusive community, trying to fit in while keeping her secrets safe.

It’s a lot to handle, and that’s before you count the thumping sounds coming from upstairs….

Read about the other entries on the list at CrimeReads.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top 10 books to impress a prospective lover

Mariella Frostrup has enjoyed a four-decade career as one of the UK’s most respected broadcasters and journalists. Her ground-breaking BBC documentary The Truth About Menopause (2018) helped to ignite a national conversation. In 2022, she was named one of Vogue’s 25 most influential women in the UK. She is co-founder and Chair of the campaign group Menopause Mandate, and in 2024 was appointed the UK Government’s Menopause Employment Ambassador.

In 2025, Frostrup became a Trustee of both the V&A and the British Council, following six years on the executive board of the Royal Academy of Arts.

Her books include Menolicious (a menopause-focused cookbook co-authored with Belles Berry), Cracking the Menopause (with Alice Smellie), and three anthologies.

Back in 2000 for the Guardian, Frostrup tagged ten books to impress a prospective lover, including:

Tourist Season by Carl Hiaasen

A columnist and environmental campaigner for the Miami Herald, this is Hiaasen's first novel in what has evolved into a series of blackly comic and utterly readable satires set in his native Florida. Those who saw the dreadful screen adaptation of his novel Striptease shouldn't be put off the author himself. Essential holiday/aeroplane reading.

Read about the other titles on the list.

Tourist Season is among Joy Fielding's five essential thrillers perfect for the aspiring writer.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine titles that make an art of earnestness

Stef Ferrari is an Emmy Award-winning producer, New York Times bestselling co-author, illustrator, and reformed ice cream entrepreneur. She’s also a recipe developer and has published several cookbooks.

Now Ferrari writes queer fiction and is a freelance journalist covering her obsession: women’s sports, her work on which has been featured in the New York Times. She resides in Brooklyn with her soon-to-be wife, their puppets, Pete-Za, Scraggles and Killer, and their beloved Christmas tree, Stewart (#30).

Her new novel is Pining for You.

At Lit Hub Ferrari tagged nine books that "represent a rich range of literary earnestness." One title on the list:

Rufi Thorpe, Margo’s Got Money Troubles

Earnestness as a repeat performance.

A drug addict, professional wrestler, and absent father, Jinx doesn’t initially sit comfortably on Mount Earnest. But although he wasn’t around for much of Margo’s life, now that he’s made the decision to be a part of it, he’s unwavering. And while his fatherly advice is, well, unconventional (and usually of the wrestling variety), it lands because he isn’t dispensing from some father-of-the-year handbook, he’s always talking to Margo. And he always shows up in Margo’s corner, supporting her with choices that would be cause for coronaries among most fathers. Jinx proves you don’t have to be perfect, moneyed, or so-called educated to be an ideal father and grandfather, and that even when it feels like the final bell has rung, there’s still time to show up.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Margo’s Got Money Troubles is among Allie Tagle-Dokus's eight books that reckon with the impacts of cancel culture.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven titles for Dolly Parton fans

Tertulia's list of "a few essential reads by and about Dolly with some of the grown-up books she loved herself" includes:

For a little old-fashioned magic that delighted Dolly

Water for Elephants
Sara Gruen

Dolly named Water for Elephants among her favorite books—a sweeping, romantic tale of circus life, unlikely love, and finding where you belong. And so much better than the watered-down movie!

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five scrappy sci-fi titles for everyone who loves an underdog

At Book Riot Liberty Hardy tagged "five fun sci-fi novels about the protagonists using their wits and whatever else is available to fight the good fight." One entry on the list:

The Salvage Crew by Yudhanjaya Wijeratne

Scraps are literally the job description for the crew of this fun sci-fi novel! The disgruntled, seemingly unremarkable team sent to salvage an old UN spacecraft thinks the job is business as usual. But the planet where the ship resides reveals secrets that could destroy humanity, and the team will have to fight the feral planet with whatever is available to survive long enough to save the day.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five titles that make you root for con artists, grifters, and tricksters

Lana Harper is the New York Times bestselling author of Payback's a Witch and the rest of the Witches of Thistle Grove series. Writing as Lana Popovic, she is also the author of YA novels Wicked Like a Wildfire, Fierce Like a Firestorm, Blood Countess, and Poison Priestess. Harper was born in Serbia and lived in Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania before moving to the United States, where she now lives in Naperville, Illinois, with her family. Jilly Gagnon is the author of eight novels, most recently What if it's You? Her humor writing, personal essays, and op-eds have appeared in Newsweek, Elle, Vanity Fair, Boston Magazine, and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, among others. She lives in Salem, Massachusetts, with her family and two black cats.

Harper and Gagnon's new mystery is Cards on the Table.

At CrimeReads the authors tagged five "delightful stories of grifters, tricksters, and cons," including:

Frank Abagnale, Catch Me If You Can

It’s impossible to pull together a list of ultimate con artist stories without a hat tip to Frank Abagnale’s memoir of his years-long series of scams, forgeries, and international run-ins with the law. The ultimate charismatic con, Abagnale pulled off his many heists with breathtaking chutzpah, earning millions from check forgeries, passing himself off variously as a hospital supervisor, an attorney, a college professor, and a PanAm pilot—committing so fully to the bit that he actually co-piloted a commercial plane. Perhaps most impressive of all, he claims to have managed all these feats before he even reached his twenty-first birthday.

As charming a writer as he must have been when practicing his first “art,” Abagnale’s memoir reads like fiction…and some of it might be (after all, he was in the business of fakery for years). Honestly, though, does it really matter? Whether or not every heist he describes is fully “true,” the story is unputdownable.

Read about the other entries on the list at CrimeReads.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten literary SFF titles that offer hope for the future

Chloe Benjamin is the author of The Immortalists, a New York Times bestseller, and The Anatomy of Dreams. A Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, LibraryReads favorite, and #1 Indie Next pick, The Immortalists was named a best book of 2018 by NPR, The Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, and others. The Anatomy of Dreams received the Edna Ferber Fiction Book Award and was longlisted for the 2014 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Originally from San Francisco, CA, Benjamin is a graduate of Vassar College and the M.F.A. in fiction at the University of Wisconsin.

Her new novel is Under Story.

At Lit Hub the author tagged ten literary-leaning science fiction and fantasy titles that offer hope for the future. One title on the list:

Marina and Sergey Dyachenko, translated by Julia Meitov Hersey, Vita Nostra

My friend Brittany Cavallaro gives me some of the best book recommendations, because she knows that what I crave most is immersion. Reading Vita Nostra—written by a Ukrainian couple and set in Russia—means being immersed in a metaphysical magic school: rain and streetlights and clanking radiators, enigmatic professors and strange gold coins, overnight trains, the smell of damp leaves, mortal danger, and the kind of mind-bending that reminds you how little we know of reality after all. The novel follows teenager Sasha Samokhina’s matriculation at the Institute of Special Technologies. The Institute’s professors teach something utterly mystifying: for years, neither Sasha nor her classmates can figure out exactly what it is. While reading Vita Nostra, I felt like a fellow student at the Institute, studying their materials, experiencing my own metamorphosis. The full reveal is as satisfying as any fantasy concept I’ve encountered.

Read about the other books on Benjamin's list at Lit Hub.

Vita Nostra is among Liberty Hardy's five top sci-fi and fantasy books set at school, Caroline Wolff's seven mysterious and unsettling novels set on campuses, and Olivie Blake's five books about regretting that cult you joined.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five great SFF titles set at schools

At Book Riot Liberty Hardy tagged five top sci-fi and fantasy books set at school. One entry on the list:

Arcana Academy by Elise Kova

After being caught and imprisoned for thieving and illegally using magic, Clara Graysword thinks her life will be spent in a cell. Instead, she’s approached by the head of Arcana Academy, who has a mission for her. In exchange for her freedom, he wants her to steal a tarot card from the king. And in order to pull off this job, Clara must first enroll in the academy, full of magic, danger, and prying eyes.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven titles that reflect on 9/11 and its lasting impact

The She Reads Editors tagged seven "stories [that] remind us of not only what transpired, but the long-lasting ripple effects of 9/11." One novel on the list:

The Memory of Things by Gae Polisner

On the morning of September 11, 2001, Kyle Donohue watches a plane crash into the first tower. Fleeing the mayhem, he encounters a girl covered in ash, unable to convey what has happened to her. In a spontaneous decision, he brings her home to see if he can help. Can she remember anything? He begins to bond to her as they endure the tragedy together, strangers, but connected.

Read about the other titles on the list.

The Page 69 Test: The Memory of Things.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five exciting adaptations of classic myths and legends

Chloe Gong is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of critically acclaimed fantasy and science fiction novels, including These Violent Delights, Immortal Longings, and Coldwire. Her books have been published in over twenty countries and she was named one of Forbes’ 30 Under 30 for 2024. Gong graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in English and International Relations. Born in Shanghai and raised in Auckland, New Zealand, she is now located in New York City.

Her new novel is Eyes of Kings.

At People magazine Gong tagged five of her favorite retellings of classic myths and legends, including:

Scions by Josephine Angelini

A prequel to her Starcrossed series, which follows the reborn heroes of the Trojan War in the modern day, Josephine Angelini’s romance duology tells the story of Daphne and Ajax as the latest iteration of star-crossed lovers in an endless war.

Read about the other titles on the list.

Also see John Wiswell's six stellar Greek mythology retellings, Mark Skinner's nineteen top Greek myth retellings, Christine Hume's ten top feminist retellings of mythology, and the B&N Reads editors' twenty-four best mythological retellings.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight gothic horror titles set across the globe

Courtney Rodgers has been reading and collecting books almost as long as she's been alive. She holds a B.A. in Theatre and Creative Writing.

At Book Riot she tagged eight top gothic horror books set across the globe, including:

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Süskind

In the slums of 18th-century Paris, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born with an extraordinary sense of smell. As a perfumer’s apprentice, Grenouille learns to distill and mix scents. He is obsessed with perfecting the exact scent of grass, wood, and, then one day, the scent of a beautiful young woman. Driven by his obsession, Grenouille hunts down women to distill their body odor for his ultimate fragrance. This German novel reads like a dark and beautiful fairytale.

Read about the other books on the list.

Perfume is among Heather Parry's five novels featuring monstrous men, Liz Nugent's top ten first lines in fiction, Liz Boulter's ten best novels about France, Glenn Skwerer's top ten real-life monsters in fiction, four books that changed Meg Keneally, four books that changed Katrina Lawrence, Karen Runge's five (damn-near) perfect (dark) novels, and Lara Feigel's top ten smelly books.

--Marshal Zeringue